June 18, 2025 • 49 mins
This Week's Episode:
In this episode Kevin Donville and Matt Long welcome technology growth leader Jessica White. The conversation explores Jessica's unique methodology, the 'Circles of Connection', which emphasizes the importance of building genuine relationships in the digital age. They discuss the epidemic of loneliness, the need for intentionality in fostering connections, and the role of AI in enhancing human interactions. Jessica shares insights on creating a culture of growth and trust within organizations, strategies for gaining executive buy-in, and the significance of finding purpose beyond employment. The episode concludes with advice for navigating career transitions and the importance of community engagement.
About Our Guest - Jessica White:
Jessica White is a Growth Executive passionate about helping companies grow through international expansion, new channels, and new capabilities. With over 25 years of experience at IBM, Accenture, and now Honeywell, she has a proven track record of developing people-first software and services practices on the world’s leading technology platforms such as IBM, Google and Microsoft. Jessica’s expertise spans corporate strategy, M&A, consulting, software sales, and building industry-leading strategic alliances with companies such as SFDC and NASCAR. Jessica is also the author of a methodology for connection in the digital age called #circlesofconnection.
How to Find out More About Jessica:You can find Jessica's profile on LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessicaswhite4701/
How to Find out More About Circles of Connection: Check out the LinkedIn Group for more info: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/9558277/
Chapter List:
00:00 Introduction to Software Sales Simplified
01:44 Meet Jessica White: A Technology Growth Leader
03:28 The Role of a Growth Leader
06:13 Circles of Connection: A Methodology for Empathy
13:15 Addressing the Loneliness Epidemic
17:41 Fostering Physical Connections in Remote Teams
21:27 Building Community in the Workplace
25:03 Strategies for Client Connection
25:31 Building Trust Through Peer Connections
28:35 The Impact of Connection on Sales Success
29:31 Navigating AI in Human Connections
33:31 Optimizing Human Talent with AI
36:12 Overcoming Challenges in Team Dynamics
38:08 Creating Executive Buy-In
38:28 Finding Purpose Beyond Employment
42:10 Resources for Circles of Connection and Jessica
48:53 See You Next Week!
About Software Sales Simplified:Visit us at: https://www.strategicsalesoptimization.com/
Follow us on Linkedin: https://tinyurl.com/2tcx7mjx
Send us your questions at - Sales@stratsalesllc.com
"What is a Sales Engineer?" - Education Series on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLxuHbkRfIWtVj_Hg1GYBIg-o5M-icJLn0
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:09):
Welcome everybody to Software Sales Simplified Move to
Success, our weekly podcast for software sales professionals who
want to get better. Whether you are brand new to
enterprise software sales or you're an old hand, please come
by and join us every week where we share insights and the latest
and greatest that's happening inthe world of enterprise software
sales. I am your Coach Co host Kevin
(00:30):
Donville and I'm joined by my good friend and partner, Matt
Long. Matt Long and I have over 50
years of experience software, sales, services and all kinds of
things related to software. Matt, how are you doing today?
How's your how's your weekend been?
I'm doing fantastic. I actually just got off a six
day fast, so I'm feeling energized.
(00:52):
I'm feeling feeling felt ready to go.
Outstanding. Well, it's the season for that
and you're on the you're in the neighborhood where being being
healthy and looking good is super important out there in the
island of Hawaii. So I'm jealous.
I think maybe I'll have to try something like that as well.
And we're joined here today by our good friends and we've had
the pleasure of working with ourguest for today is Jessica
(01:16):
White. Jessica, how are you?
Have you? Been I'm fabulous and now I'm
thinking I might need a fast. That's probably exactly what I
need. We'll talk later.
Yeah, please I need some tips. Yeah, that's going to do a whole
other series all about fasting and juicing and all that other
stuff I love. It sign me.
Up on our channel, but you will be able to find it where you get
(01:37):
your local podcasts, so it'll definitely be there.
So Jessica, we've had the pleasure of working with you and
presently right now you're a technology executive.
You've been with IBM, Honeywell and Microsoft.
You've been with a lot of different companies.
I know a little bit about your background.
Matt does too, but our guests donot.
If you would be so kind, take a moment, take the floor and tell
everybody about who you are, what you do, and who you work
(01:59):
with. I'm happy to, but first I have
to say I am so delighted to see the two of you.
We can't let a decade go by again, honestly.
We won't be around. I mean, we literally can't.
But I've missed you guys. And you know, I have such fond
memories of our time working together.
And you both played a huge role and kind of the lens with which
(02:19):
I see things now. And so I'm excited you're doing
this and that you've invited allof our old friends who are, you
know, best in the business when it comes to sales acumen and and
just natural talents. And I'm honored to be here.
Thank you for having me. Well, very high praise and we're
we're pleased and honored to have you here as well.
And yes, we got to make sure that we keep everybody in the
(02:40):
loop a little bit more aggressively.
It has been fun because it has allowed us, we've reached out to
people we've never worked with before, folks that we are, we're
are just kind of coming to know in our professional careers and
trajectories. But it is always a thrill to
talk to somebody who was instrumental and foundational in
the way that I look at how I sawand treat customers and treat
(03:01):
the industries. But I know all about that.
But why don't you go ahead and tell everybody about who, what,
what you're doing now, what yourrole is and, and all that other
good stuff? Well, you won't be surprised,
but I've been very busy over thelast, I don't know, 12 years.
You. I can't believe that.
No. Anyway, so I am a technology
growth leader and honestly, that's kind of a new term.
(03:24):
We start to see it more now. It's kind of a term I gave
myself because it's hard to describe maybe what I do, but
it's it's a new title. And so here's how I define it.
It's really someone who builds new markets, new products,
creates new channels. It's really about new or
nascent, right? And doing it through the lens of
(03:45):
growths. The mission is building
something that's going to drive growth or bringing something
back to life, resurrecting it from the dark side or wherever
it was, but bringing it back andthen and then driving growth for
a company. And it's, it's kind of like
being a Swiss Army knife because, you know, when you and
I, when the three of us were working together with our
(04:06):
fraternity of brothers and sisters, before I even met you
guys, I had already done corporate strategy in a channel
sales partner program development, all these things.
Because by the time I met you, I'd already been at IBM for 12
years. When you're with a company for
that long, you can wear a lot ofdifferent hats.
And then after being with you guys, I went on to then be a
(04:29):
marketer, lead sales enablement,be a consultant, you know, do
all of these sort of these sort of things.
And so I think of a growth leader is that person who has
lived through or played the roleof all these corporate
functions. For me, it's all about having
the DNA of sales and consulting right with customer at the
center. But pulling from years of
(04:50):
experience and working in all those different roles to say,
how do I build something that's a practice that's scalable and
that honestly brings life and love to people.
You know, growth leader is, you know, you've got in the heritage
of it kind of falls into the strategy category of, of roles
and you have this like heritage of guys and girls who maybe were
(05:13):
McKenzie or BCG and it's very like inorganic top line.
How do I find those two or threepoints?
But that's for me just the strategy piece, which of course
I can do and I do all the time. But a growth leader is like
getting into the field, getting with the people.
Transformational businesses likecreating cultural change to make
(05:37):
people want to be a part of whatyou're doing.
Most of the time when we're building something, first of
all, when we're building something new, it's always hard.
It always requires cultural change.
And most of the time, the peopleyou're doing it with don't
report to you, right? So a growth leader, you're doing
a new thing, you're building something new.
(05:58):
You have to find these ways of bringing people along and, and
helping them see how they achieve success through it.
And so that's kind of how I brand myself honestly, because I
don't really know what else to call it, but honestly, I love
it. And I have been officially a
growth leader with that title since I joined Accenture.
So 17 years at IBM, six years atAccenture.
(06:21):
At Accenture, I got to build theIBM digital practice.
I got to be a part of the GoogleBusiness Group.
I got to lead our biggest Microsoft territory.
I got to kind of work on the employee side of digital
workplace. And now here I am in the
operational technology space. So I'm kind of converging also
IT and OT now kind of living in that industrials and building
(06:42):
space doing what is probably, I guess we call it my 5th major
practice. You can't.
Is it still especially not in today's industry?
I'm, I'm curious though, becauseall those different roles and
being exposed to all those different types of practice
areas, the different hats as youjust described them.
Along the way, you ended up developing kind of your own
(07:03):
methodology as you were going through there, which was really
kind of leveraging aspects of, of empathy at scale.
If, if we could say that, if that.
So I believe it's called the thecircles of connection.
What is that methodology #1 and kind of when did you kind of
come to that? At what?
(07:24):
At what point over the course ofthat career trajectory?
Honestly, I think I've been doing it all my life, but
specifically at IBM and it doesn't the concept of circles
and this like how do we connect in the digital age is what this
methodology is all about. And it didn't necessarily come
(07:45):
from this really great place, honestly, it came from trying to
survive layoff after layoff, youknow, like 17 years at IBM and I
only got laid off one time and that was in the very beginning
of my career when I was supplemental and they just went
no more of those, right? Had another job in 10 days, but
the rest of the time for the next 15 years, I was just, you
know, dugging, ducking, you know, to avoid these layoffs.
(08:08):
And so you learn to develop really deep relationships and
you learn to develop sponsorshipand your board of directors and
you learn to form these connections.
And it was much, much later, only about two years ago, that I
sat down and, and said, oh, gosh, this is actually a thing.
And the thing it is, is, is it'san approach that that shortens
(08:29):
the space between me and you, right?
That if we really look into who we are, if we know who we are,
then we can easily find those relation points to other people
and the opportunities to connectand to be the same and to feel
aligned are endless. And in fact, they far outnumber
(08:50):
our differences. But it requires that we sort of
sit down personally and make an effort at knowing who we are.
So we know how to relate to other people.
And so the methodology kind of goes through these, these
circles and, and by the way, circles is like, you know, we've
been doing this since the beginning of time and we can
dive into this in a minute, but you know, kind of goes back to
(09:13):
our primitive DNA and where we came from primitive man and who
to to today is not that long a period of time.
You know, it's 200, three, 100,000 years, right?
And if you go back and you look at the heritage of lions, for
example, it's like you can find fossils back 2,000,000 years.
(09:34):
We haven't had that long to evolve.
And so we're actually the same people, right?
You look at Maslow's hierarchy of needs and at the bottom, once
you once you get past, you know,food, shelter, water, the next
layer layer up is safety and security.
And honestly, most of us are operating every day out of that
(09:54):
space of assessing. Is something a threat?
Is it a friend or is it a foe? And if we, if we approach
connection through the lens of how do I help this person feel
comfortable, safe and secure, that we're aligned, that we're
the same, that we live in the same circle or community, we're
part of the same circles, then we can expedite our ability to
(10:17):
work together. And, and in sales, that means
expediting the path to yes. So when you're doing this, I
mean, it's, it's both a personaloutlook as well as an
organizational outlook, right? But it all, it all stems, I
think from the individual that you have to understand the sort
of mindset first. And then you kind of bubble it
(10:39):
up to a community or organization in terms of how you
then together focus on certain things.
I'll take an example just to take a, a little bit of a
sidetrack, but I spent many years at Burning Man running
camps and things where you're just trying to herd cats, right?
And there's two approaches to it.
And I think this is the same in business.
(10:59):
You know, you could have this stick where it's like, if you
don't do this, you're going to get punished, you're going to
get XYZ or you have the carrot, which is like, this is our
common goal. This is what we're trying to
achieve. This is how we can be great.
This is what we're going to do. And I found that much more
effective. And I, I think that somewhat
(11:20):
aligns with the kind of what you're doing.
But what what are some of the techniques you use to instill
that sort of group outlook or group goals you know that
everyone can buy into? Yeah.
Well, first, first I'll say whatyou're describing is a growth
mindset. A growth mindset says that I
really believe we can do this and that if we invest the amount
(11:43):
of time and effort and whatever into it, we can build the skills
and the intellect, the practice,the acumen, whatever, we can do
it. And you don't see failures as a
way of reinforcing that it can'tbe done, but you see failures as
opportunity. And so you're right, it is, it
is a lens. It's like you can, you can
approach things. And I worked across 12 different
(12:04):
companies at IBM and then since then have been through many,
many more. And so all of us, and you guys
are the same way, have seen different cultures and healthy
cultures. And honestly, when it's bad,
when it's bad, we learn the most.
When it's great, we grow the most.
That's how I think about our time together.
When we were with Tea Leaf, you know, before that, it had some
(12:24):
really bad managers and I learned what not to do.
But then when we were working together, I was inspired around
what to do right? And so it is like, you know,
there you can either be part of a command and control culture
that dictates you must, and if you don't, there's consequence,
or you can come at it through the lens of wanting to optimize
(12:47):
human potential. We're all human.
We all have the same struggles. We all want to be successful.
When one of us is successful, ifwe do it right, a whole bunch of
us are successful. So why not approach it through
the lens of how we create platforms where other people can
be successful, find their success be a light versus you
(13:10):
know the way some of us have seen it in other places.
So anyway, I don't I remember your question now, but you got
to be thinking about well. It's interesting because you
know, some of the organizations you've worked with are pretty
large, but to your point, we as human beings not that far along
the evolutionary path, right, Interms of, you know, you've seen
those calendars where it's like the the dawn of man.
(13:30):
If you look at an entire calendar, it's like we're like a
right before New Year's Eve on the at the end of the calendar
kind of thing. So in the current tech that
we're in where it's all digital is, is it easier?
Is it harder? How do you manifest and and make
sure that you're managing those connections correctly in this
(13:53):
current world? Well, I think, you know, we've
always like if if when you, whenwe were all working together, if
I had developed a methodology for connection, you would have
said, oh, that that's cool. You know, I can use that in
sales or I can use that in my nonprofit pursuits or board
level pursuits or like I get it,I can connect with other people.
(14:13):
But now it's become an imperative because we are living
in an epidemic of loneliness. The digital platforms that you,
we all sell, I mean, this is what I do.
Digital workplace is what I've done in a lot of, in a lot of my
roles. And then of course, all the
other technologies that we've sold are all about connecting
(14:35):
us, right? But it's those same platforms
that help us feel more removed and more isolated.
And what that really means is, is that it creates A
superficiality to our connections to our engagements.
It's really easy to hide behind a camera and to do your thing at
(14:56):
home and to not venture out and to not make an intention to get
to the next level of depth in your relationship with others.
And so what's happened is we areall more connected than ever,
but we're actually more lonely than ever.
And that the the numbers are really crazy.
It's like nearly half of US adults report feeling lonely.
(15:17):
That was in a 2023 report. This isn't COVID, this isn't
during the pandemic. This is post pandemic.
The people feel that way. And we know from the research
that's been done that we don't get the same biological need met
when we're virtual. And I mean, everything I do is,
I mean, I do a ton of stuff that's virtual, but the, the
(15:40):
truth is, is that we have a biological need to connect.
And when we don't feel connected, just like in
primitive man, we were living ina community, you know, it
provided safety and security andsocial, all those things fed us.
It's what we need as part of ourcore DNA.
When we don't have those needs met, we actually start to have
(16:03):
all kinds of health problems. Like, literally, it's killing
us. You know, you have higher rates
of heart disease, you have higher rates of diabetes.
And then of course, loneliness itself, the emotional toll that
that takes just can pervade so many other health challenges.
So when I use circles, it's really in a proactive way.
It's really like, OK, how can I,whether it's you're caring for
(16:26):
an aging adult, like your, your parents are aging and you need
to get them care at a nursing home.
You're working on a board and you want your board to work more
effectively. You're working on a team.
Or like we would use it is like,how do I, how do I become a
trusted advisor to my client? You know, like that's how we use
it. But the reality is, is that when
(16:47):
we're not connecting, that actually does have really
negative impacts. And so it in the digital age, it
takes more effort and it takes intentionality.
And that's what Circles is all about.
It's it's not super complex, butit just puts steps behind how we
can do this better. Yeah, I think it's a great point
(17:08):
and it's something that's pervasive and certainly
prevalent for the last several years across our society about
this loneliness epidemic. Thinking back to my earlier
career when I was single and working a lot etcetera, I mean
work and was my community, it was my social group, etcetera
and there was so much time spenttogether, you know, at work,
(17:29):
after work, doing things, etcetera.
Then having a family has also mitigated some of that because
of course, spending time, my family rewards me in so many
different ways. And almost all my connections
professionally now are over video.
Now part of that's I'm in Hawaii, right?
So there's, there's an aspect tothat.
It's a physical barrier, but I find I work best when I have
(17:52):
regular check insurance with my team or people that I'm working
with. And then it has to be augmented
though with a physical connection, though, you know,
because I, I agree. It's I, I know people virtually,
but until you get together with them, share a drink, share a
meal, share some experience and just look at each other and have
(18:14):
that experience, it doesn't, it does take it to another level.
So I'm curious now with just theremote nature of all these
teams, right? How do you kind of bring this
together? Is it, is it about having more
on sites or team building thingsor what?
What would you suggest to companies to help foster that
environment where people can come together in a physical
(18:35):
fashion? Again, it's about
intentionality, right? Like I, I allocate Fridays to
get out of my house, not to go in the office, to go and sit
down with a colleague over lunch, you know, to connect with
people in my network, to work with my mentees, you know, being
(18:56):
in a global role and building this.
I'm building a new channel rightnow.
It's never been done in a I'm in117 year old engineering
operational technology firm doing a new thing.
Man, you got to get out there inthe field, right?
First of all, you have an engineering mindset which says
there's a process. I don't know what this looks
(19:17):
like. It doesn't ever process.
I don't know how to do it right.That's the first thing, but then
you also have just the fact thatit's a new thing and the people
have to be a little courageous and they have to kind of get out
of their comfort zone and they have to feel protected from
leadership and supported throughcommissions and all this sort of
things. It takes, you know, at the
global level, I'm doing all thissort of the infrastructure to
(19:40):
help people feel comfortable, but you got to get out in the
field. And last time I did a podcast on
growth, leadership and connection, I was in Dubai
because I was connecting with our team and MEA.
And honestly, that's one of our most successful regions in terms
of aligning with this new channel because the physical
connections were made while we were there.
(20:00):
We had all these meetings. We even maybe, you know, like
Matt, you're far away, but when you're stateside, you probably
schedule a whole bunch of stuff so you can see a whole bunch of
people. And that little bit of time and
effort spent to be physical, whether it's 20 minutes.
Or it's two hours it takes you, it's such an accelerator and how
you work together. And then when you're applying
(20:22):
the lens of connection, saying that I have some curiosity about
how we're the same, you know what, what's going on in your
life? How can we relate and feel like
we are more like than different?Then that 5 minutes, 20 minutes,
2 hours feels like much longer. I recently did a, a sales
workshop with Witty, the global women's international technology
(20:44):
group. And we did these breakouts,
these workshops and we, we use Venn diagram because I'm a
consultant by trade. So we love a Venn diagram love.
It. You put together a Venn diagram
that showed, you know, people who'd never met.
They didn't know each other. They used the circles
methodology. They mapped all of their circles
and communities, which is what we do in circles.
I said, OK, well, you know, I have two siblings.
(21:05):
I'm from this. I like to hike.
I, you know, whatever you find all the, all the things that are
you, all the things that are them, you find the overlap.
And at the end of it, the feedback was, I feel like I've
known this person for two years,you know, and I literally just
spent 10 minutes with them. That is the intentionality.
And it does. I think the physical Part 1,
it's good for us. Two, it's an accelerator.
(21:28):
It expedites the trust. Like we build more trust.
We feel like we've known each other longer and that allows us
to feel comfortable doing new, hard, complicated things
together. You know it in this day and age,
you know my last manifestations before Matt and I went and hung
up our own shingle. I was in a global leadership
(21:50):
position and literally my team was spread all over the globe.
And this day and age, that couldbe really hard to sit down and
find opportunities or create opportunities, budgetarily
speaking, to get into that kind of physical proximity with
people. There's usually global ones that
take place at some point over the course of the year, but they
(22:11):
can be very hard to do because, you know, everybody's pinching
pennies these days. In that circumstance, what would
your advice be to somebody who'strying to establish that degree
of connection with their team, if I dare use the word, that
degree of intimacy with the people that they're working with
so that they can get those benefits?
What are some of the tactics or some of the approaches they
(22:33):
might consider? Well, in my last practice that I
was building at Accenture, I created this program called We
Are the Workplace. We were about 100, I think it
was 90 people, and we were selling the sexiest stuff in the
business. I mean, digital workplace
screens, AI bots, IEA, concierge, you know, whatever.
It was sexy stuff and we were losing people left and right.
(22:58):
And it's because people didn't feel like they're a part of a
community. And if and if there's tons of
research on this, but especiallymillennials.
And of course, you know, like some of us millennials are not
that young anymore. My brother's a mill.
He's only four years younger than me.
He's a millennial. But you know, as you go down the
different generations, they crave community.
They want more community. And So what we did is we created
(23:19):
a whole programmatic approach tofeeling connected.
So we had, I was a manager director, we had open office
hours. It would just be me and four
other people. That's it.
Having a conversation, talking about our lives, letting them
like being vulnerable, but allowing people to ask hard
questions and feeling like they're in a nest.
(23:41):
We had we called it water coolertalks where we would Crowdsource
like would you? What's your favorite books?
What are the things that are nourishing you?
The podcast, you know, we'd havesomebody come on like every time
we did it, a different person would kind of host.
So again, we're not command to control.
This is Jessica's program. I'm telling you, all the content
(24:02):
that is a part of the program came from the people on the call
and it's being led by the peopleon the call.
And so we're talking about the things that nourish us and make
us feel, you know, this a lot ofthis was during the pandemic,
right? So it's like, what apps are you
using? What books are you reading?
Like how are you spending your time?
And and then we would center that around enablement.
(24:23):
This is who we are as a community.
We're all behind this offering. This is how we're doing it.
You can do it too. Let us show you how.
You have someone come in and talk about anatomy of a deal.
If someone sees that someone else has done it, they believe
they can do it too, right? So everything was
programmatically designed for connection, even when you were
(24:46):
in these really broad environments.
And it it changed our metrics. We didn't have the attrition
problem anymore. We had people stepping up and
saying, oh, I want to own this and can I contribute to this and
can I be a part of that community?
But it's one of those things where you have to be intentional
and you have to stay in the gamethe whole time.
(25:06):
You can't turn your back becausenow you have a community of
people who are being fed by a platform, right?
And so you have to, you just have to be committed to it.
But that's one way virtually to do it.
Yeah, I, I love all those ideas.You know, when you, when you are
part of a community, part of it is not wanting to let the
community down and wanted to perform and stuff.
(25:27):
And I think it's a, it's a greatmotivator, internal motivator.
It's not like you feel like you're obligated to things, but
you really want to try hard to, to contribute to what's going
on. I'm curious though, since we've
been talking a lot about kind ofinternally within organizations,
because I've seen the same thingin sales cycles now, right?
You imagine the intimacy and connection and level of trust is
(25:50):
even less, right as a seller to client.
And there's so many examples of just clients ghosting you, you
know, after you've had these long conversations for months
and things like that. You know, and I, I've always
encouraged people at some point you got to get on a plane and go
there. Even if you can't have a meeting
in the office, because not everyone in the office at least
(26:10):
go have lunch or dinner or coffee or something, you know,
with this person to have that connection.
Are there any additional strategies that you apply there?
Because you obviously don't havethe ability to create the same
community things that you can internally.
One thing that I love and I justgot reintroduced together.
Just got reminded how much I love this strategy is that one
(26:33):
of the big challenges in sales is people feel like, OK, they're
selling to me, right? And we always as salespeople and
practice leaders and growth leaders, we're what we're trying
to do is just feel like we're onthe same team.
Like I want my customer to be successful.
I need to know what makes you successful.
That means we got to connect. You got to tell me, I want to, I
want to be a part of what you'redoing.
(26:54):
And one of the strategies that Iwould use with my clients so
that I felt more connected to them or they felt more that I
was a trusted advisor, enabler for them is Kate is being case
study one. So like at Accenture, we would
always do the thing. We would implement the
technology first ourselves. And then so when it came time
(27:15):
for me to go and sell that thing, instead of saying, hey,
do you want to buy this thing oryou have this pain point, I have
a solution. We would say, let me introduce
you to your peers, people who'vebeen on the same path that
you've been on the same journey.They're in the same place a year
ago, two years ago they were in the same place.
You are help you build your peergroup of people that can support
(27:40):
you through this challenge so that not only are you learning
how to solve the problem, but you're developing a group of
your broadening their group of trusted advisors that can
support them. And so you're the the catalyst
to them feeling supported. Again, we get back always to
that biological need. If I'm pitching you or if some
(28:03):
let's just take like a telemarketer, right?
That's like the worst case sales, right?
So they're calling me, OK, I don't recognize the number.
I don't know who they are. I go straight back to
biological, you know, safety andsecurity.
I go back to my massive hierarchy of needs.
I immediately are like, I, is this person a threat?
(28:24):
Am I safe? What do they want from me?
Now if I am introducing someone to their peer group because they
have a problem to solve and I want them to feel more
supportive and have a better friend network and colleague
network, well, immediately you're in a place of safety.
They're supporting me versus a threat.
So I just, I think always going back to that biological need, we
(28:46):
can't every, every interaction starts with safety and security.
So when you address that upfront, you know, like, let's
say, let's say I was a cold caller telemarketer, and I said,
I said, hey, this is Jessica White.
Kevin Donville sent me your way.He said we have a lot in common.
He felt like we should connect. Well, you still don't know who
(29:08):
Jessica White is, but you know who Kevin Donville is.
And Kevin Donville's a friend. And if Kevin Donville sent her
over, wow, it must be OK. She's safe, right?
And that's what we do in circles.
It's, it's like, communicate, figure out who you are, figure
out who I am, find the overlap. But they'll learn how to
communicate it in a way that's reinforcing all of those common
(29:30):
elements. I can see now how you're
bringing in the external aspects, the customer into the
conversation and talking about being able to employ this
methodology to them as well, notjust the internal people inside
the organization. What's been the result of of
taking on that kind of methodology with respect to the
success your team has been able to recognize and realize?
(29:52):
Yeah, Yeah, that's a good question.
So you know, as a consultant andmanaging director at Accenture,
I was not only using connection with my clients, but I was
observing connection, right? And I could tell that whether
the teams were connected and aligned very early stage.
And if you're good salespeople are really good at watching.
(30:13):
They're looking for soft queues.They're looking for body
language, they're looking for eye contact.
They're looking for also really avert queues.
The clients not showing up to the meetings.
I got a call. You know, you're putting like if
you're, if you're good at seeingthe signs early, you're you're
realizing very early in a project when things are not
(30:34):
connecting and then you can do something about it.
You can say, OK, these two people either aren't making
enough effort or they're never going to connect.
They can't find the Venn diagramoverlap, so I need to switch
somebody out. This happened to me when I was
on a project when I was a consultant.
I could see the personality clashes.
I could see like the tension that was, it was like a slow
(30:57):
build, but it felt like a tidal wave coming.
If you're you're paying attention to how people are
connecting and whether they're connecting, then you can do
something about it early on. And I think like just naturally
using this, this kind of helped kind of help do that.
Yeah, I mean it. It all is going back to just
(31:19):
steal. If you're in a room with five
people presenting, you can read all those signals.
If you're on a Zoom, maybe you get some of them right.
If you're on the phone, forget it.
I mean, it's like it's really hard.
And e-mail another saying chat. Oh my God, don't even get me
started. I just want to throw one more
wrench into the works here though, when it comes to this
AI. Right now, people are using AI
(31:42):
to initiate conversations, continue conversations, you
sometimes you don't know who you're talking to, talk about no
signals at all. I think AI is great and there's
a lot of very valuable uses for it in the sales process and any
process really. But it we got to understand it's
not just a process, it is a human connection and
(32:04):
understanding and agreement, micro agreements of how you're
going to proceed, whether they're verbalized or not.
Can you talk a little bit about AI and how that maybe disrupts
things or how to accommodate forthat?
Oh, yeah, yeah. One of my favorite topics
because it takes us back to friend or foe.
It takes us straight back to authenticity, right?
(32:25):
If you don't know the person you're talking to, or you're
texting with, or on the other side is a real human, or that
they understand your needs, you're gonna have trust issues
from the very beginning. And so AI has the equal ability
to be an accelerator of connection as it does to be the
(32:45):
the biggest inhibitor of connection.
And yeah, authenticity is where we're going to really be
challenged. And that's why it's so important
that we continue to just have that human element and all of
our relationships. You know, I see all these big
brands taking the human element out of their relationships
because it's cost cutting call. And we were doing this, we were
(33:07):
doing this when we were all working together.
It was like a, how do I shorten the amount of time on the call
to solve for a person's need? But we were doing with the
technology that helped us see the customers issue from the
outside in, right? The whole concept of the product
we were selling honestly changedthe way that I look at
(33:28):
everything because it was all about the customer experience.
And now what we see with AI is some of that, but we we are, we
sacrifice a lot of customer experience and we do a lot more
for bottom line. I think when we're working with
AI, we have to apply a rubric. One, we have to hold AI
accountable to the same ethics that we have and the ways of
(33:52):
working that we expect other people to adhere to this.
I have to go through ethics and compliance training and business
conduct guideline training everyyear.
AI should have the same standards and I think every
company should look at the applications of AI and the
rubric that they should use onceyou get past basic ethics and
(34:13):
business control guidelines. Is is this helping my workforce
or is it hurting my workforce? Because the goal is to optimize.
We want to optimize people. We want to give them a platform
for success. We want to align their strengths
to need. There's this really great book,
Think like a monk. I don't know if you guys have
read it, but but he talks about this concept called Dharma.
(34:35):
And Dharma is where you're you have your strengths, but if
you're not connecting those strengths to a real need, then
it just falls short. So we can find the places where
people's strengths are aligned to a need.
Then people are optimized, they're happy, they're
performing better. We have what he calls Dharma,
and that's how I think we shoulduse AI.
(34:56):
Mean there's obviously some things like we're managing
contracts. We need to understand the
content of our contracts better.You know, doing it just through
human mechanisms isn't being successful.
There's obviously use cases where, you know, you should
apply AI for efficiency and all that kind of stuff.
But if you think about just eventhat scenario, I don't want my
(35:17):
people sitting, let's say they're in procurement or legal.
I don't want them sitting there reading contracts.
I want them saying, what do I dowith this contract next?
You know, how do I optimize thiscontract?
How do I consolidate these things?
How do I get efficiency? So that's I think the lens with
which we have to apply AI and wehave to be even more intentional
about being authentic. Boy, that's that's a big lesson
(35:39):
learned there. And I wholeheartedly agree with
you. And there's so many AI companies
that are out there right now andI can't help but wonder how many
of them are thinking ahead aboutwhat it is you just described
there. Some of the products you work
with have AI in them right now, but you're.
Almost all of them. Yeah, exactly.
And you're just like us. You're probably being inundated
(36:02):
on a daily basis with the latestAI insert name of AI company
here. What is it?
Some advice you might give to someone who's at that stage with
an organization. They're either building a
program where they're building aproduct, they're leveraging AI
so that they don't take their eyes off of that goal.
(36:24):
Well, again, it goes back to therubric.
Are you optimizing your human talent and solving for a need?
Like I'll give you an example inthe business that I'm in, we
have a aging workforce, you know, the engineers that work on
the rigs and, you know, in oil and gas and all these different
refineries, places like that, they're aging out because like,
(36:46):
you know, the factory might be in a remote location and, and
people, younger generations, they don't want to be there or
they don't perceive factories asbeing intelligent.
It doesn't have the technology that they're used to.
So we're solving a problem with AI because we we have, we
actually don't have the people to do the work anymore.
So we have to have more intelligence and we have to have
(37:06):
more knowledge stored. But then I want to recruit
people into my field. I need humans to do this.
So I'm using AI then to say, OK,how can I give you field support
or I send you out with a device with 5G connectivity all around
and you can then go and have everything you need if
(37:30):
conversationally because you're using generative and know what
to do with that asset or that device.
Or like in a building, how do I,how do I take it and make it a
better place for people to work because people are more
comfortable temperature wise or I'm able to assess how people
are using the space and so I canmake it more modular.
(37:51):
And so the building becomes likea living building because we're
changing the way it's shaped andthe way it operates based on the
demand. You know, there's, there's all
these ways where we can use AI to solve a problem because we
don't have people, but then alsooptimize it for people.
This, this is a great conversation, Jessica.
I really have enjoyed every partof it.
(38:13):
I just have one more question around this and this is more
about how do you get buy in fromthe senior leadership that this
is needed or this is a program to or approach to take, You
know, because a lot of lot of times they might be focused on
bottom line and just execution all this stuff and then being
able to get buy in from them from top down.
(38:35):
Because of course if it's not set at the top, I don't think
this is successful. But what are any techniques or
tricks you can use there? Yeah, you can do, you know, use
every trick in the book in the field, one O 1 with people.
But unless someone says we're doing this from the top, here's
the comp plan that goes with it.Here's the framework.
(38:56):
It's it's you might have like some small gains, but then
you're just going to be set way back.
So it is really important that you have executive buy in, you
know, and, and the company that really wants to grow, the
executive leadership sees the opportunity for growth or, or if
it's a healthy culture, they areopen to having a conversation.
(39:17):
If you can get a forum with thatodd.
I mean, someone hired a person like me to begin with or they
hired a person like you to do a new thing.
There's a sponsor there. If that person can open the door
and then everyone can see the potential and then they can
again see the platform where they're successful, right, Those
sea levels, they have metrics. This thing is going to make them
(39:39):
successful. We don't do it for to feel good.
That's a side benefit. We do it because it drives real
material revenue growth and returns to the business.
So it's you got to find compelling ways to open those
doors and get that buy in. But you know, good growth
leaders and compelling salespeople, you know, they know
(39:59):
their pitch and they're thinkingabout their customer.
You know, whether it's an executive or whether it's a
external customer, there's stilla person on the other side of
the table with tea leaf. You know, we always looked at
seeing. Seeing the world through the
lens of that other person, seeing it through the customer.
And it's, it's the same here. So you know, when you're meeting
with those executives, you know,what is going to make this
(40:20):
person successful? Like what are the catalysts that
this can perform for them? That's going to help them
leapfrog, help them personally. And so you know, it's, it's
using all those strategies for help them to see their success
and what you're building, because that is, we talked about
the, the field connections as anaccelerator, the executive
(40:42):
connections is a huge accelerator.
You really have to have both. You really.
Have to have both. Yeah.
There's a lot of folks, you know, kind of tying this all
together here. There are a lot of organizations
that are really struggling rightnow.
There's some folks that that arelistening to this call right now
that aren't even in an organization anymore.
They're transitioning and they're having that to contend
with. But for those folks that are
(41:04):
still in organizations that are struggling, what, what would you
say based on everything we've been talking about today, what
would you say that the key thingto give them, what would be,
what do they really need to be focusing on right now in order
to make themselves more successful?
Well, now that my friend is a spiritual conversation,
honestly, it is it honestly, it is the job search is a journey.
(41:27):
You know, it's, I call it careermanagement.
My husband had to coach me into it.
You know, like a job is not a destination.
It's a stop along the way. You got to kind of it's, it's
hard to be unemployed. You know, we've all been there
where you're like, you know, you're not, you're separated
from your purpose. A lot of us find purpose and
work. I encourage everybody to find
(41:47):
their purpose outside of work and community and family and
hobbies and all the other thingsthat nurture us.
But when, when we're thinking about job search, to me, that's
a spiritual conversation becauseyou got to believe there's a
bigger plan. There's a reason why I met the
two of you and that we clicked and we had this golden age of
(42:07):
sales and that we had this fraternity and that we're all
like friends. We will always be friends.
That played a huge role in my development.
But Tea Leaf was a stop along the way.
There's been, you know, 15 stopssince then, right?
So either you're earning a paycheck or not earning your
paycheck. There's purpose and what you're
(42:28):
doing. You know, like if you're not
getting your purpose from work, you're not getting your
connection from work. Man, there's a ton of nonprofits
that need you or you have something to say.
Look at what the 2 are you are doing.
You are helping people be more successful.
You've created a platform for people to be more successful
based on your experience and you're, you're giving that back.
(42:52):
And even when we're not fully employed, we have the
opportunity to do that. That I developed circles when I
was in one of those periods. It gave me purpose and it helped
me say, OK, I, I do have something of value outside of
this day job thing to contribute.
And so, so the answer is it's a spiritual journey.
(43:13):
So there is a bigger plan, you know there is a purpose for your
life. You are worthy and have value if
you don't do a thing today. But The thing is, is that you
can do so much, even when you'renot just working for one
employer, you still have value. There's so, so many ways that
you can help people, love people, connect with people,
(43:35):
provide meaning. Especially for us in this phase
of our lives. It's all about, there's younger
people coming up, you know, it'sso inspiring to see them be
successful. I mean, most of us have 25 years
or more, right? Like spend that time with
somebody who needs it. I mentor a high school girl and
I don't know who's benefiting more from this.
(43:56):
Honestly, I think it's me. She has just touched my heart.
I mean, she is amazing. Every time she has a success, I
feel successful, and not becauseI did it, but just because I was
a part of it. It's just there's so many ways
to find meaning in life. And on the career thing, I mean,
we just have to constantly just got to remember it's not a
(44:17):
destination, it's a journey. So constantly connect with your
network. Take Fridays, go have lunches.
You don't have conversations like we're having here now.
Constantly be in touch with those people, actively
interview. You don't know what the market
wants until you're constantly infront of another party at the
other end of the line that's asking you questions, right?
(44:38):
So it's all it's, it's a journey, but it's a beautiful
journey. And I think we can all find a
lot of meaning, we can find a lot of connection, we can all
find a lot of value in it. Absolutely.
And I find everything that you're talking about here, you
say it's spiritual. It definitely is enlightening,
definitely is enlightening from that perspective.
If somebody in our audience wanted to know more about the
(45:01):
methodology that we've been talking about here with you,
the, the, the circles, what would be be a good asset for
them to go take a look at? How would they be able to find
out more about it? Yeah, I do workshops.
It's kind of my give back. I do them a lot for nonprofits.
I do them for boards. I'm happy to do them for sales
groups. You know, it's just something
that nourishes me if I can help others.
(45:23):
There is a page on LinkedIn called Circles of Connection
where curate content that kind of supports the research behind
connection and the need for connection, how we create
connection. And then I'm always out there
talking about this growth leadership concept because I do
think there are people like me who, you know, we don't, we
didn't stay on one conveyor beltour whole career.
(45:46):
It's not easy for people to knowwhat to do with us, but there's
a lot of value that can be givenif we can put that person in the
right role. I have some podcasts out there
on the growth mindset and just encouraging people to kind of
move from this, you know, top level strategy, margins, points,
inorganic to what can we do together?
(46:08):
How do I build platforms where others can be successful?
Because when others are successful, I'm successful.
And that, of course, includes AI.
Absolutely. Well, I am intrigued.
I've already seen a couple of your podcasts.
I think I want to go see a couple more because I was
learning a lot when I was watching them.
They're fascinating. If somebody wanted to reach out
to you, Jessica, someone wanted to try and connect with you,
(46:31):
what would be the the best Ave. for them to do that?
Yeah, just find me on LinkedIn. Yeah, through you they can find
me. Through you.
Through both of you and our little fraternity of friends.
Well, we're definitely going to put in the description of this
episode. We'll have some of the links
over to some of those assets youjust described so that people
want to go and learn more about the methodology, want to know
more about you personally. They'll be able to go and reach
(46:53):
out and do that. And as much as I hate saying
this, we do need to wrap up our episode for this week.
But it was was spiritual and it was enlightening.
And I really appreciate you taking the time to come in and
share your perspective with Mattand myself and also with the
folks that are tuning in today. Was really appreciate it.
Well, the honor is mine. I'm so grateful to be
(47:14):
reconnected with you guys. I love what you're doing.
You are helping people with whatyou do and I, I love that you
have this platform. So thank you for having me.
Thank you very much for coming in.
It was our delight and our pleasure to have you here this
week. And folks, that does wrap up our
episode for this week. I appreciate you spending time
here. I know our guests and Matt does
(47:36):
as well. Matt, anything you'd like to go
and share before we go and closeup today?
No, but I feel inspired, so thank you Jessica.
Nice way to end the week. Here.
End of the week, I absolutely agree.
So folks, thank you for spendingtime here with software sales
simplified move to success. Please join us back here again.
(47:56):
Next week we'll have another guest and we'll talk about more
interesting topics in the world and enterprise software sales.
If you would like to know more about Jessica's material, her
methodology, and the other the other podcast that she has been
involved in, we will have links in the description.
You'll be able to go and take a look at those and get to those.
Or if you'd like to go to our website and learn about the
methodology that Matt and I haveproduced that you hear us
(48:19):
referencing all the time on our show.
You can absolutely go there as well where you can get your own
copy of Winning Faster, the MoveFramework for Enterprise
Software Sales Success, where you can buy that right off of
our website there. But that brings our episode to a
close. And with that having been said,
folks, Please remember to like, follow, subscribe, comment on
(48:40):
the show. It really helps us with the
algorithms of the different platforms that we produce on.
If you take a moment to do that,we'd be greatly appreciative.
But more importantly, we'd love to see you here again next week.
So until then, take care, be well.
Welcome everybody to Software Sales Simplified Move to
Success, our weekly podcast for software sales professionals who
want to get better. Whether you are brand new to
enterprise software sales or you're an old hand, please come
by and join us every week where we share insights and the latest
and greatest that's happening inthe world of enterprise software
sales. I am your Coach Co host Kevin
(00:30):
Donville and I'm joined by my good friend and partner, Matt
Long. Matt Long and I have over 50
years of experience software, sales, services and all kinds of
things related to software. Matt, how are you doing today?
How's your how's your weekend been?
I'm doing fantastic. I actually just got off a six
day fast, so I'm feeling energized.
(00:52):
I'm feeling feeling felt ready to go.
Outstanding. Well, it's the season for that
and you're on the you're in the neighborhood where being being
healthy and looking good is super important out there in the
island of Hawaii. So I'm jealous.
I think maybe I'll have to try something like that as well.
And we're joined here today by our good friends and we've had
the pleasure of working with ourguest for today is Jessica
(01:16):
White. Jessica, how are you?
Have you? Been I'm fabulous and now I'm
thinking I might need a fast. That's probably exactly what I
need. We'll talk later.
Yeah, please I need some tips. Yeah, that's going to do a whole
other series all about fasting and juicing and all that other
stuff I love. It sign me.
Up on our channel, but you will be able to find it where you get
(01:37):
your local podcasts, so it'll definitely be there.
So Jessica, we've had the pleasure of working with you and
presently right now you're a technology executive.
You've been with IBM, Honeywell and Microsoft.
You've been with a lot of different companies.
I know a little bit about your background.
Matt does too, but our guests donot.
If you would be so kind, take a moment, take the floor and tell
everybody about who you are, what you do, and who you work
(01:59):
with. I'm happy to, but first I have
to say I am so delighted to see the two of you.
We can't let a decade go by again, honestly.
We won't be around. I mean, we literally can't.
But I've missed you guys. And you know, I have such fond
memories of our time working together.
And you both played a huge role and kind of the lens with which
(02:19):
I see things now. And so I'm excited you're doing
this and that you've invited allof our old friends who are, you
know, best in the business when it comes to sales acumen and and
just natural talents. And I'm honored to be here.
Thank you for having me. Well, very high praise and we're
we're pleased and honored to have you here as well.
And yes, we got to make sure that we keep everybody in the
(02:40):
loop a little bit more aggressively.
It has been fun because it has allowed us, we've reached out to
people we've never worked with before, folks that we are, we're
are just kind of coming to know in our professional careers and
trajectories. But it is always a thrill to
talk to somebody who was instrumental and foundational in
the way that I look at how I sawand treat customers and treat
(03:01):
the industries. But I know all about that.
But why don't you go ahead and tell everybody about who, what,
what you're doing now, what yourrole is and, and all that other
good stuff? Well, you won't be surprised,
but I've been very busy over thelast, I don't know, 12 years.
You. I can't believe that.
No. Anyway, so I am a technology
growth leader and honestly, that's kind of a new term.
(03:24):
We start to see it more now. It's kind of a term I gave
myself because it's hard to describe maybe what I do, but
it's it's a new title. And so here's how I define it.
It's really someone who builds new markets, new products,
creates new channels. It's really about new or
nascent, right? And doing it through the lens of
(03:45):
growths. The mission is building
something that's going to drive growth or bringing something
back to life, resurrecting it from the dark side or wherever
it was, but bringing it back andthen and then driving growth for
a company. And it's, it's kind of like
being a Swiss Army knife because, you know, when you and
I, when the three of us were working together with our
(04:06):
fraternity of brothers and sisters, before I even met you
guys, I had already done corporate strategy in a channel
sales partner program development, all these things.
Because by the time I met you, I'd already been at IBM for 12
years. When you're with a company for
that long, you can wear a lot ofdifferent hats.
And then after being with you guys, I went on to then be a
(04:29):
marketer, lead sales enablement,be a consultant, you know, do
all of these sort of these sort of things.
And so I think of a growth leader is that person who has
lived through or played the roleof all these corporate
functions. For me, it's all about having
the DNA of sales and consulting right with customer at the
center. But pulling from years of
(04:50):
experience and working in all those different roles to say,
how do I build something that's a practice that's scalable and
that honestly brings life and love to people.
You know, growth leader is, you know, you've got in the heritage
of it kind of falls into the strategy category of, of roles
and you have this like heritage of guys and girls who maybe were
(05:13):
McKenzie or BCG and it's very like inorganic top line.
How do I find those two or threepoints?
But that's for me just the strategy piece, which of course
I can do and I do all the time. But a growth leader is like
getting into the field, getting with the people.
Transformational businesses likecreating cultural change to make
(05:37):
people want to be a part of whatyou're doing.
Most of the time when we're building something, first of
all, when we're building something new, it's always hard.
It always requires cultural change.
And most of the time, the peopleyou're doing it with don't
report to you, right? So a growth leader, you're doing
a new thing, you're building something new.
(05:58):
You have to find these ways of bringing people along and, and
helping them see how they achieve success through it.
And so that's kind of how I brand myself honestly, because I
don't really know what else to call it, but honestly, I love
it. And I have been officially a
growth leader with that title since I joined Accenture.
So 17 years at IBM, six years atAccenture.
(06:21):
At Accenture, I got to build theIBM digital practice.
I got to be a part of the GoogleBusiness Group.
I got to lead our biggest Microsoft territory.
I got to kind of work on the employee side of digital
workplace. And now here I am in the
operational technology space. So I'm kind of converging also
IT and OT now kind of living in that industrials and building
(06:42):
space doing what is probably, I guess we call it my 5th major
practice. You can't.
Is it still especially not in today's industry?
I'm, I'm curious though, becauseall those different roles and
being exposed to all those different types of practice
areas, the different hats as youjust described them.
Along the way, you ended up developing kind of your own
(07:03):
methodology as you were going through there, which was really
kind of leveraging aspects of, of empathy at scale.
If, if we could say that, if that.
So I believe it's called the thecircles of connection.
What is that methodology #1 and kind of when did you kind of
come to that? At what?
(07:24):
At what point over the course ofthat career trajectory?
Honestly, I think I've been doing it all my life, but
specifically at IBM and it doesn't the concept of circles
and this like how do we connect in the digital age is what this
methodology is all about. And it didn't necessarily come
(07:45):
from this really great place, honestly, it came from trying to
survive layoff after layoff, youknow, like 17 years at IBM and I
only got laid off one time and that was in the very beginning
of my career when I was supplemental and they just went
no more of those, right? Had another job in 10 days, but
the rest of the time for the next 15 years, I was just, you
know, dugging, ducking, you know, to avoid these layoffs.
(08:08):
And so you learn to develop really deep relationships and
you learn to develop sponsorshipand your board of directors and
you learn to form these connections.
And it was much, much later, only about two years ago, that I
sat down and, and said, oh, gosh, this is actually a thing.
And the thing it is, is, is it'san approach that that shortens
(08:29):
the space between me and you, right?
That if we really look into who we are, if we know who we are,
then we can easily find those relation points to other people
and the opportunities to connectand to be the same and to feel
aligned are endless. And in fact, they far outnumber
(08:50):
our differences. But it requires that we sort of
sit down personally and make an effort at knowing who we are.
So we know how to relate to other people.
And so the methodology kind of goes through these, these
circles and, and by the way, circles is like, you know, we've
been doing this since the beginning of time and we can
dive into this in a minute, but you know, kind of goes back to
(09:13):
our primitive DNA and where we came from primitive man and who
to to today is not that long a period of time.
You know, it's 200, three, 100,000 years, right?
And if you go back and you look at the heritage of lions, for
example, it's like you can find fossils back 2,000,000 years.
(09:34):
We haven't had that long to evolve.
And so we're actually the same people, right?
You look at Maslow's hierarchy of needs and at the bottom, once
you once you get past, you know,food, shelter, water, the next
layer layer up is safety and security.
And honestly, most of us are operating every day out of that
(09:54):
space of assessing. Is something a threat?
Is it a friend or is it a foe? And if we, if we approach
connection through the lens of how do I help this person feel
comfortable, safe and secure, that we're aligned, that we're
the same, that we live in the same circle or community, we're
part of the same circles, then we can expedite our ability to
(10:17):
work together. And, and in sales, that means
expediting the path to yes. So when you're doing this, I
mean, it's, it's both a personaloutlook as well as an
organizational outlook, right? But it all, it all stems, I
think from the individual that you have to understand the sort
of mindset first. And then you kind of bubble it
(10:39):
up to a community or organization in terms of how you
then together focus on certain things.
I'll take an example just to take a, a little bit of a
sidetrack, but I spent many years at Burning Man running
camps and things where you're just trying to herd cats, right?
And there's two approaches to it.
And I think this is the same in business.
(10:59):
You know, you could have this stick where it's like, if you
don't do this, you're going to get punished, you're going to
get XYZ or you have the carrot, which is like, this is our
common goal. This is what we're trying to
achieve. This is how we can be great.
This is what we're going to do. And I found that much more
effective. And I, I think that somewhat
(11:20):
aligns with the kind of what you're doing.
But what what are some of the techniques you use to instill
that sort of group outlook or group goals you know that
everyone can buy into? Yeah.
Well, first, first I'll say whatyou're describing is a growth
mindset. A growth mindset says that I
really believe we can do this and that if we invest the amount
(11:43):
of time and effort and whatever into it, we can build the skills
and the intellect, the practice,the acumen, whatever, we can do
it. And you don't see failures as a
way of reinforcing that it can'tbe done, but you see failures as
opportunity. And so you're right, it is, it
is a lens. It's like you can, you can
approach things. And I worked across 12 different
(12:04):
companies at IBM and then since then have been through many,
many more. And so all of us, and you guys
are the same way, have seen different cultures and healthy
cultures. And honestly, when it's bad,
when it's bad, we learn the most.
When it's great, we grow the most.
That's how I think about our time together.
When we were with Tea Leaf, you know, before that, it had some
(12:24):
really bad managers and I learned what not to do.
But then when we were working together, I was inspired around
what to do right? And so it is like, you know,
there you can either be part of a command and control culture
that dictates you must, and if you don't, there's consequence,
or you can come at it through the lens of wanting to optimize
(12:47):
human potential. We're all human.
We all have the same struggles. We all want to be successful.
When one of us is successful, ifwe do it right, a whole bunch of
us are successful. So why not approach it through
the lens of how we create platforms where other people can
be successful, find their success be a light versus you
(13:10):
know the way some of us have seen it in other places.
So anyway, I don't I remember your question now, but you got
to be thinking about well. It's interesting because you
know, some of the organizations you've worked with are pretty
large, but to your point, we as human beings not that far along
the evolutionary path, right, Interms of, you know, you've seen
those calendars where it's like the the dawn of man.
(13:30):
If you look at an entire calendar, it's like we're like a
right before New Year's Eve on the at the end of the calendar
kind of thing. So in the current tech that
we're in where it's all digital is, is it easier?
Is it harder? How do you manifest and and make
sure that you're managing those connections correctly in this
(13:53):
current world? Well, I think, you know, we've
always like if if when you, whenwe were all working together, if
I had developed a methodology for connection, you would have
said, oh, that that's cool. You know, I can use that in
sales or I can use that in my nonprofit pursuits or board
level pursuits or like I get it,I can connect with other people.
(14:13):
But now it's become an imperative because we are living
in an epidemic of loneliness. The digital platforms that you,
we all sell, I mean, this is what I do.
Digital workplace is what I've done in a lot of, in a lot of my
roles. And then of course, all the
other technologies that we've sold are all about connecting
(14:35):
us, right? But it's those same platforms
that help us feel more removed and more isolated.
And what that really means is, is that it creates A
superficiality to our connections to our engagements.
It's really easy to hide behind a camera and to do your thing at
(14:56):
home and to not venture out and to not make an intention to get
to the next level of depth in your relationship with others.
And so what's happened is we areall more connected than ever,
but we're actually more lonely than ever.
And that the the numbers are really crazy.
It's like nearly half of US adults report feeling lonely.
(15:17):
That was in a 2023 report. This isn't COVID, this isn't
during the pandemic. This is post pandemic.
The people feel that way. And we know from the research
that's been done that we don't get the same biological need met
when we're virtual. And I mean, everything I do is,
I mean, I do a ton of stuff that's virtual, but the, the
(15:40):
truth is, is that we have a biological need to connect.
And when we don't feel connected, just like in
primitive man, we were living ina community, you know, it
provided safety and security andsocial, all those things fed us.
It's what we need as part of ourcore DNA.
When we don't have those needs met, we actually start to have
(16:03):
all kinds of health problems. Like, literally, it's killing
us. You know, you have higher rates
of heart disease, you have higher rates of diabetes.
And then of course, loneliness itself, the emotional toll that
that takes just can pervade so many other health challenges.
So when I use circles, it's really in a proactive way.
It's really like, OK, how can I,whether it's you're caring for
(16:26):
an aging adult, like your, your parents are aging and you need
to get them care at a nursing home.
You're working on a board and you want your board to work more
effectively. You're working on a team.
Or like we would use it is like,how do I, how do I become a
trusted advisor to my client? You know, like that's how we use
it. But the reality is, is that when
(16:47):
we're not connecting, that actually does have really
negative impacts. And so it in the digital age, it
takes more effort and it takes intentionality.
And that's what Circles is all about.
It's it's not super complex, butit just puts steps behind how we
can do this better. Yeah, I think it's a great point
(17:08):
and it's something that's pervasive and certainly
prevalent for the last several years across our society about
this loneliness epidemic. Thinking back to my earlier
career when I was single and working a lot etcetera, I mean
work and was my community, it was my social group, etcetera
and there was so much time spenttogether, you know, at work,
(17:29):
after work, doing things, etcetera.
Then having a family has also mitigated some of that because
of course, spending time, my family rewards me in so many
different ways. And almost all my connections
professionally now are over video.
Now part of that's I'm in Hawaii, right?
So there's, there's an aspect tothat.
It's a physical barrier, but I find I work best when I have
(17:52):
regular check insurance with my team or people that I'm working
with. And then it has to be augmented
though with a physical connection, though, you know,
because I, I agree. It's I, I know people virtually,
but until you get together with them, share a drink, share a
meal, share some experience and just look at each other and have
(18:14):
that experience, it doesn't, it does take it to another level.
So I'm curious now with just theremote nature of all these
teams, right? How do you kind of bring this
together? Is it, is it about having more
on sites or team building thingsor what?
What would you suggest to companies to help foster that
environment where people can come together in a physical
(18:35):
fashion? Again, it's about
intentionality, right? Like I, I allocate Fridays to
get out of my house, not to go in the office, to go and sit
down with a colleague over lunch, you know, to connect with
people in my network, to work with my mentees, you know, being
(18:56):
in a global role and building this.
I'm building a new channel rightnow.
It's never been done in a I'm in117 year old engineering
operational technology firm doing a new thing.
Man, you got to get out there inthe field, right?
First of all, you have an engineering mindset which says
there's a process. I don't know what this looks
(19:17):
like. It doesn't ever process.
I don't know how to do it right.That's the first thing, but then
you also have just the fact thatit's a new thing and the people
have to be a little courageous and they have to kind of get out
of their comfort zone and they have to feel protected from
leadership and supported throughcommissions and all this sort of
things. It takes, you know, at the
global level, I'm doing all thissort of the infrastructure to
(19:40):
help people feel comfortable, but you got to get out in the
field. And last time I did a podcast on
growth, leadership and connection, I was in Dubai
because I was connecting with our team and MEA.
And honestly, that's one of our most successful regions in terms
of aligning with this new channel because the physical
connections were made while we were there.
(20:00):
We had all these meetings. We even maybe, you know, like
Matt, you're far away, but when you're stateside, you probably
schedule a whole bunch of stuff so you can see a whole bunch of
people. And that little bit of time and
effort spent to be physical, whether it's 20 minutes.
Or it's two hours it takes you, it's such an accelerator and how
you work together. And then when you're applying
(20:22):
the lens of connection, saying that I have some curiosity about
how we're the same, you know what, what's going on in your
life? How can we relate and feel like
we are more like than different?Then that 5 minutes, 20 minutes,
2 hours feels like much longer. I recently did a, a sales
workshop with Witty, the global women's international technology
(20:44):
group. And we did these breakouts,
these workshops and we, we use Venn diagram because I'm a
consultant by trade. So we love a Venn diagram love.
It. You put together a Venn diagram
that showed, you know, people who'd never met.
They didn't know each other. They used the circles
methodology. They mapped all of their circles
and communities, which is what we do in circles.
I said, OK, well, you know, I have two siblings.
(21:05):
I'm from this. I like to hike.
I, you know, whatever you find all the, all the things that are
you, all the things that are them, you find the overlap.
And at the end of it, the feedback was, I feel like I've
known this person for two years,you know, and I literally just
spent 10 minutes with them. That is the intentionality.
And it does. I think the physical Part 1,
it's good for us. Two, it's an accelerator.
(21:28):
It expedites the trust. Like we build more trust.
We feel like we've known each other longer and that allows us
to feel comfortable doing new, hard, complicated things
together. You know it in this day and age,
you know my last manifestations before Matt and I went and hung
up our own shingle. I was in a global leadership
(21:50):
position and literally my team was spread all over the globe.
And this day and age, that couldbe really hard to sit down and
find opportunities or create opportunities, budgetarily
speaking, to get into that kind of physical proximity with
people. There's usually global ones that
take place at some point over the course of the year, but they
(22:11):
can be very hard to do because, you know, everybody's pinching
pennies these days. In that circumstance, what would
your advice be to somebody who'strying to establish that degree
of connection with their team, if I dare use the word, that
degree of intimacy with the people that they're working with
so that they can get those benefits?
What are some of the tactics or some of the approaches they
(22:33):
might consider? Well, in my last practice that I
was building at Accenture, I created this program called We
Are the Workplace. We were about 100, I think it
was 90 people, and we were selling the sexiest stuff in the
business. I mean, digital workplace
screens, AI bots, IEA, concierge, you know, whatever.
It was sexy stuff and we were losing people left and right.
(22:58):
And it's because people didn't feel like they're a part of a
community. And if and if there's tons of
research on this, but especiallymillennials.
And of course, you know, like some of us millennials are not
that young anymore. My brother's a mill.
He's only four years younger than me.
He's a millennial. But you know, as you go down the
different generations, they crave community.
They want more community. And So what we did is we created
(23:19):
a whole programmatic approach tofeeling connected.
So we had, I was a manager director, we had open office
hours. It would just be me and four
other people. That's it.
Having a conversation, talking about our lives, letting them
like being vulnerable, but allowing people to ask hard
questions and feeling like they're in a nest.
(23:41):
We had we called it water coolertalks where we would Crowdsource
like would you? What's your favorite books?
What are the things that are nourishing you?
The podcast, you know, we'd havesomebody come on like every time
we did it, a different person would kind of host.
So again, we're not command to control.
This is Jessica's program. I'm telling you, all the content
(24:02):
that is a part of the program came from the people on the call
and it's being led by the peopleon the call.
And so we're talking about the things that nourish us and make
us feel, you know, this a lot ofthis was during the pandemic,
right? So it's like, what apps are you
using? What books are you reading?
Like how are you spending your time?
And and then we would center that around enablement.
(24:23):
This is who we are as a community.
We're all behind this offering. This is how we're doing it.
You can do it too. Let us show you how.
You have someone come in and talk about anatomy of a deal.
If someone sees that someone else has done it, they believe
they can do it too, right? So everything was
programmatically designed for connection, even when you were
(24:46):
in these really broad environments.
And it it changed our metrics. We didn't have the attrition
problem anymore. We had people stepping up and
saying, oh, I want to own this and can I contribute to this and
can I be a part of that community?
But it's one of those things where you have to be intentional
and you have to stay in the gamethe whole time.
(25:06):
You can't turn your back becausenow you have a community of
people who are being fed by a platform, right?
And so you have to, you just have to be committed to it.
But that's one way virtually to do it.
Yeah, I, I love all those ideas.You know, when you, when you are
part of a community, part of it is not wanting to let the
community down and wanted to perform and stuff.
(25:27):
And I think it's a, it's a greatmotivator, internal motivator.
It's not like you feel like you're obligated to things, but
you really want to try hard to, to contribute to what's going
on. I'm curious though, since we've
been talking a lot about kind ofinternally within organizations,
because I've seen the same thingin sales cycles now, right?
You imagine the intimacy and connection and level of trust is
(25:50):
even less, right as a seller to client.
And there's so many examples of just clients ghosting you, you
know, after you've had these long conversations for months
and things like that. You know, and I, I've always
encouraged people at some point you got to get on a plane and go
there. Even if you can't have a meeting
in the office, because not everyone in the office at least
(26:10):
go have lunch or dinner or coffee or something, you know,
with this person to have that connection.
Are there any additional strategies that you apply there?
Because you obviously don't havethe ability to create the same
community things that you can internally.
One thing that I love and I justgot reintroduced together.
Just got reminded how much I love this strategy is that one
(26:33):
of the big challenges in sales is people feel like, OK, they're
selling to me, right? And we always as salespeople and
practice leaders and growth leaders, we're what we're trying
to do is just feel like we're onthe same team.
Like I want my customer to be successful.
I need to know what makes you successful.
That means we got to connect. You got to tell me, I want to, I
want to be a part of what you'redoing.
(26:54):
And one of the strategies that Iwould use with my clients so
that I felt more connected to them or they felt more that I
was a trusted advisor, enabler for them is Kate is being case
study one. So like at Accenture, we would
always do the thing. We would implement the
technology first ourselves. And then so when it came time
(27:15):
for me to go and sell that thing, instead of saying, hey,
do you want to buy this thing oryou have this pain point, I have
a solution. We would say, let me introduce
you to your peers, people who'vebeen on the same path that
you've been on the same journey.They're in the same place a year
ago, two years ago they were in the same place.
You are help you build your peergroup of people that can support
(27:40):
you through this challenge so that not only are you learning
how to solve the problem, but you're developing a group of
your broadening their group of trusted advisors that can
support them. And so you're the the catalyst
to them feeling supported. Again, we get back always to
that biological need. If I'm pitching you or if some
(28:03):
let's just take like a telemarketer, right?
That's like the worst case sales, right?
So they're calling me, OK, I don't recognize the number.
I don't know who they are. I go straight back to
biological, you know, safety andsecurity.
I go back to my massive hierarchy of needs.
I immediately are like, I, is this person a threat?
(28:24):
Am I safe? What do they want from me?
Now if I am introducing someone to their peer group because they
have a problem to solve and I want them to feel more
supportive and have a better friend network and colleague
network, well, immediately you're in a place of safety.
They're supporting me versus a threat.
So I just, I think always going back to that biological need, we
(28:46):
can't every, every interaction starts with safety and security.
So when you address that upfront, you know, like, let's
say, let's say I was a cold caller telemarketer, and I said,
I said, hey, this is Jessica White.
Kevin Donville sent me your way.He said we have a lot in common.
He felt like we should connect. Well, you still don't know who
(29:08):
Jessica White is, but you know who Kevin Donville is.
And Kevin Donville's a friend. And if Kevin Donville sent her
over, wow, it must be OK. She's safe, right?
And that's what we do in circles.
It's, it's like, communicate, figure out who you are, figure
out who I am, find the overlap. But they'll learn how to
communicate it in a way that's reinforcing all of those common
(29:30):
elements. I can see now how you're
bringing in the external aspects, the customer into the
conversation and talking about being able to employ this
methodology to them as well, notjust the internal people inside
the organization. What's been the result of of
taking on that kind of methodology with respect to the
success your team has been able to recognize and realize?
(29:52):
Yeah, Yeah, that's a good question.
So you know, as a consultant andmanaging director at Accenture,
I was not only using connection with my clients, but I was
observing connection, right? And I could tell that whether
the teams were connected and aligned very early stage.
And if you're good salespeople are really good at watching.
(30:13):
They're looking for soft queues.They're looking for body
language, they're looking for eye contact.
They're looking for also really avert queues.
The clients not showing up to the meetings.
I got a call. You know, you're putting like if
you're, if you're good at seeingthe signs early, you're you're
realizing very early in a project when things are not
(30:34):
connecting and then you can do something about it.
You can say, OK, these two people either aren't making
enough effort or they're never going to connect.
They can't find the Venn diagramoverlap, so I need to switch
somebody out. This happened to me when I was
on a project when I was a consultant.
I could see the personality clashes.
I could see like the tension that was, it was like a slow
(30:57):
build, but it felt like a tidal wave coming.
If you're you're paying attention to how people are
connecting and whether they're connecting, then you can do
something about it early on. And I think like just naturally
using this, this kind of helped kind of help do that.
Yeah, I mean it. It all is going back to just
(31:19):
steal. If you're in a room with five
people presenting, you can read all those signals.
If you're on a Zoom, maybe you get some of them right.
If you're on the phone, forget it.
I mean, it's like it's really hard.
And e-mail another saying chat. Oh my God, don't even get me
started. I just want to throw one more
wrench into the works here though, when it comes to this
AI. Right now, people are using AI
(31:42):
to initiate conversations, continue conversations, you
sometimes you don't know who you're talking to, talk about no
signals at all. I think AI is great and there's
a lot of very valuable uses for it in the sales process and any
process really. But it we got to understand it's
not just a process, it is a human connection and
(32:04):
understanding and agreement, micro agreements of how you're
going to proceed, whether they're verbalized or not.
Can you talk a little bit about AI and how that maybe disrupts
things or how to accommodate forthat?
Oh, yeah, yeah. One of my favorite topics
because it takes us back to friend or foe.
It takes us straight back to authenticity, right?
(32:25):
If you don't know the person you're talking to, or you're
texting with, or on the other side is a real human, or that
they understand your needs, you're gonna have trust issues
from the very beginning. And so AI has the equal ability
to be an accelerator of connection as it does to be the
(32:45):
the biggest inhibitor of connection.
And yeah, authenticity is where we're going to really be
challenged. And that's why it's so important
that we continue to just have that human element and all of
our relationships. You know, I see all these big
brands taking the human element out of their relationships
because it's cost cutting call. And we were doing this, we were
(33:07):
doing this when we were all working together.
It was like a, how do I shorten the amount of time on the call
to solve for a person's need? But we were doing with the
technology that helped us see the customers issue from the
outside in, right? The whole concept of the product
we were selling honestly changedthe way that I look at
(33:28):
everything because it was all about the customer experience.
And now what we see with AI is some of that, but we we are, we
sacrifice a lot of customer experience and we do a lot more
for bottom line. I think when we're working with
AI, we have to apply a rubric. One, we have to hold AI
accountable to the same ethics that we have and the ways of
(33:52):
working that we expect other people to adhere to this.
I have to go through ethics and compliance training and business
conduct guideline training everyyear.
AI should have the same standards and I think every
company should look at the applications of AI and the
rubric that they should use onceyou get past basic ethics and
(34:13):
business control guidelines. Is is this helping my workforce
or is it hurting my workforce? Because the goal is to optimize.
We want to optimize people. We want to give them a platform
for success. We want to align their strengths
to need. There's this really great book,
Think like a monk. I don't know if you guys have
read it, but but he talks about this concept called Dharma.
(34:35):
And Dharma is where you're you have your strengths, but if
you're not connecting those strengths to a real need, then
it just falls short. So we can find the places where
people's strengths are aligned to a need.
Then people are optimized, they're happy, they're
performing better. We have what he calls Dharma,
and that's how I think we shoulduse AI.
(34:56):
Mean there's obviously some things like we're managing
contracts. We need to understand the
content of our contracts better.You know, doing it just through
human mechanisms isn't being successful.
There's obviously use cases where, you know, you should
apply AI for efficiency and all that kind of stuff.
But if you think about just eventhat scenario, I don't want my
(35:17):
people sitting, let's say they're in procurement or legal.
I don't want them sitting there reading contracts.
I want them saying, what do I dowith this contract next?
You know, how do I optimize thiscontract?
How do I consolidate these things?
How do I get efficiency? So that's I think the lens with
which we have to apply AI and wehave to be even more intentional
about being authentic. Boy, that's that's a big lesson
(35:39):
learned there. And I wholeheartedly agree with
you. And there's so many AI companies
that are out there right now andI can't help but wonder how many
of them are thinking ahead aboutwhat it is you just described
there. Some of the products you work
with have AI in them right now, but you're.
Almost all of them. Yeah, exactly.
And you're just like us. You're probably being inundated
(36:02):
on a daily basis with the latestAI insert name of AI company
here. What is it?
Some advice you might give to someone who's at that stage with
an organization. They're either building a
program where they're building aproduct, they're leveraging AI
so that they don't take their eyes off of that goal.
(36:24):
Well, again, it goes back to therubric.
Are you optimizing your human talent and solving for a need?
Like I'll give you an example inthe business that I'm in, we
have a aging workforce, you know, the engineers that work on
the rigs and, you know, in oil and gas and all these different
refineries, places like that, they're aging out because like,
(36:46):
you know, the factory might be in a remote location and, and
people, younger generations, they don't want to be there or
they don't perceive factories asbeing intelligent.
It doesn't have the technology that they're used to.
So we're solving a problem with AI because we we have, we
actually don't have the people to do the work anymore.
So we have to have more intelligence and we have to have
(37:06):
more knowledge stored. But then I want to recruit
people into my field. I need humans to do this.
So I'm using AI then to say, OK,how can I give you field support
or I send you out with a device with 5G connectivity all around
and you can then go and have everything you need if
(37:30):
conversationally because you're using generative and know what
to do with that asset or that device.
Or like in a building, how do I,how do I take it and make it a
better place for people to work because people are more
comfortable temperature wise or I'm able to assess how people
are using the space and so I canmake it more modular.
(37:51):
And so the building becomes likea living building because we're
changing the way it's shaped andthe way it operates based on the
demand. You know, there's, there's all
these ways where we can use AI to solve a problem because we
don't have people, but then alsooptimize it for people.
This, this is a great conversation, Jessica.
I really have enjoyed every partof it.
(38:13):
I just have one more question around this and this is more
about how do you get buy in fromthe senior leadership that this
is needed or this is a program to or approach to take, You
know, because a lot of lot of times they might be focused on
bottom line and just execution all this stuff and then being
able to get buy in from them from top down.
(38:35):
Because of course if it's not set at the top, I don't think
this is successful. But what are any techniques or
tricks you can use there? Yeah, you can do, you know, use
every trick in the book in the field, one O 1 with people.
But unless someone says we're doing this from the top, here's
the comp plan that goes with it.Here's the framework.
(38:56):
It's it's you might have like some small gains, but then
you're just going to be set way back.
So it is really important that you have executive buy in, you
know, and, and the company that really wants to grow, the
executive leadership sees the opportunity for growth or, or if
it's a healthy culture, they areopen to having a conversation.
(39:17):
If you can get a forum with thatodd.
I mean, someone hired a person like me to begin with or they
hired a person like you to do a new thing.
There's a sponsor there. If that person can open the door
and then everyone can see the potential and then they can
again see the platform where they're successful, right, Those
sea levels, they have metrics. This thing is going to make them
(39:39):
successful. We don't do it for to feel good.
That's a side benefit. We do it because it drives real
material revenue growth and returns to the business.
So it's you got to find compelling ways to open those
doors and get that buy in. But you know, good growth
leaders and compelling salespeople, you know, they know
(39:59):
their pitch and they're thinkingabout their customer.
You know, whether it's an executive or whether it's a
external customer, there's stilla person on the other side of
the table with tea leaf. You know, we always looked at
seeing. Seeing the world through the
lens of that other person, seeing it through the customer.
And it's, it's the same here. So you know, when you're meeting
with those executives, you know,what is going to make this
(40:20):
person successful? Like what are the catalysts that
this can perform for them? That's going to help them
leapfrog, help them personally. And so you know, it's, it's
using all those strategies for help them to see their success
and what you're building, because that is, we talked about
the, the field connections as anaccelerator, the executive
(40:42):
connections is a huge accelerator.
You really have to have both. You really.
Have to have both. Yeah.
There's a lot of folks, you know, kind of tying this all
together here. There are a lot of organizations
that are really struggling rightnow.
There's some folks that that arelistening to this call right now
that aren't even in an organization anymore.
They're transitioning and they're having that to contend
with. But for those folks that are
(41:04):
still in organizations that are struggling, what, what would you
say based on everything we've been talking about today, what
would you say that the key thingto give them, what would be,
what do they really need to be focusing on right now in order
to make themselves more successful?
Well, now that my friend is a spiritual conversation,
honestly, it is it honestly, it is the job search is a journey.
(41:27):
You know, it's, I call it careermanagement.
My husband had to coach me into it.
You know, like a job is not a destination.
It's a stop along the way. You got to kind of it's, it's
hard to be unemployed. You know, we've all been there
where you're like, you know, you're not, you're separated
from your purpose. A lot of us find purpose and
work. I encourage everybody to find
(41:47):
their purpose outside of work and community and family and
hobbies and all the other thingsthat nurture us.
But when, when we're thinking about job search, to me, that's
a spiritual conversation becauseyou got to believe there's a
bigger plan. There's a reason why I met the
two of you and that we clicked and we had this golden age of
(42:07):
sales and that we had this fraternity and that we're all
like friends. We will always be friends.
That played a huge role in my development.
But Tea Leaf was a stop along the way.
There's been, you know, 15 stopssince then, right?
So either you're earning a paycheck or not earning your
paycheck. There's purpose and what you're
(42:28):
doing. You know, like if you're not
getting your purpose from work, you're not getting your
connection from work. Man, there's a ton of nonprofits
that need you or you have something to say.
Look at what the 2 are you are doing.
You are helping people be more successful.
You've created a platform for people to be more successful
based on your experience and you're, you're giving that back.
(42:52):
And even when we're not fully employed, we have the
opportunity to do that. That I developed circles when I
was in one of those periods. It gave me purpose and it helped
me say, OK, I, I do have something of value outside of
this day job thing to contribute.
And so, so the answer is it's a spiritual journey.
(43:13):
So there is a bigger plan, you know there is a purpose for your
life. You are worthy and have value if
you don't do a thing today. But The thing is, is that you
can do so much, even when you'renot just working for one
employer, you still have value. There's so, so many ways that
you can help people, love people, connect with people,
(43:35):
provide meaning. Especially for us in this phase
of our lives. It's all about, there's younger
people coming up, you know, it'sso inspiring to see them be
successful. I mean, most of us have 25 years
or more, right? Like spend that time with
somebody who needs it. I mentor a high school girl and
I don't know who's benefiting more from this.
(43:56):
Honestly, I think it's me. She has just touched my heart.
I mean, she is amazing. Every time she has a success, I
feel successful, and not becauseI did it, but just because I was
a part of it. It's just there's so many ways
to find meaning in life. And on the career thing, I mean,
we just have to constantly just got to remember it's not a
(44:17):
destination, it's a journey. So constantly connect with your
network. Take Fridays, go have lunches.
You don't have conversations like we're having here now.
Constantly be in touch with those people, actively
interview. You don't know what the market
wants until you're constantly infront of another party at the
other end of the line that's asking you questions, right?
(44:38):
So it's all it's, it's a journey, but it's a beautiful
journey. And I think we can all find a
lot of meaning, we can find a lot of connection, we can all
find a lot of value in it. Absolutely.
And I find everything that you're talking about here, you
say it's spiritual. It definitely is enlightening,
definitely is enlightening from that perspective.
If somebody in our audience wanted to know more about the
(45:01):
methodology that we've been talking about here with you,
the, the, the circles, what would be be a good asset for
them to go take a look at? How would they be able to find
out more about it? Yeah, I do workshops.
It's kind of my give back. I do them a lot for nonprofits.
I do them for boards. I'm happy to do them for sales
groups. You know, it's just something
that nourishes me if I can help others.
(45:23):
There is a page on LinkedIn called Circles of Connection
where curate content that kind of supports the research behind
connection and the need for connection, how we create
connection. And then I'm always out there
talking about this growth leadership concept because I do
think there are people like me who, you know, we don't, we
didn't stay on one conveyor beltour whole career.
(45:46):
It's not easy for people to knowwhat to do with us, but there's
a lot of value that can be givenif we can put that person in the
right role. I have some podcasts out there
on the growth mindset and just encouraging people to kind of
move from this, you know, top level strategy, margins, points,
inorganic to what can we do together?
(46:08):
How do I build platforms where others can be successful?
Because when others are successful, I'm successful.
And that, of course, includes AI.
Absolutely. Well, I am intrigued.
I've already seen a couple of your podcasts.
I think I want to go see a couple more because I was
learning a lot when I was watching them.
They're fascinating. If somebody wanted to reach out
to you, Jessica, someone wanted to try and connect with you,
(46:31):
what would be the the best Ave. for them to do that?
Yeah, just find me on LinkedIn. Yeah, through you they can find
me. Through you.
Through both of you and our little fraternity of friends.
Well, we're definitely going to put in the description of this
episode. We'll have some of the links
over to some of those assets youjust described so that people
want to go and learn more about the methodology, want to know
more about you personally. They'll be able to go and reach
(46:53):
out and do that. And as much as I hate saying
this, we do need to wrap up our episode for this week.
But it was was spiritual and it was enlightening.
And I really appreciate you taking the time to come in and
share your perspective with Mattand myself and also with the
folks that are tuning in today. Was really appreciate it.
Well, the honor is mine. I'm so grateful to be
(47:14):
reconnected with you guys. I love what you're doing.
You are helping people with whatyou do and I, I love that you
have this platform. So thank you for having me.
Thank you very much for coming in.
It was our delight and our pleasure to have you here this
week. And folks, that does wrap up our
episode for this week. I appreciate you spending time
here. I know our guests and Matt does
(47:36):
as well. Matt, anything you'd like to go
and share before we go and closeup today?
No, but I feel inspired, so thank you Jessica.
Nice way to end the week. Here.
End of the week, I absolutely agree.
So folks, thank you for spendingtime here with software sales
simplified move to success. Please join us back here again.
(47:56):
Next week we'll have another guest and we'll talk about more
interesting topics in the world and enterprise software sales.
If you would like to know more about Jessica's material, her
methodology, and the other the other podcast that she has been
involved in, we will have links in the description.
You'll be able to go and take a look at those and get to those.
Or if you'd like to go to our website and learn about the
methodology that Matt and I haveproduced that you hear us
(48:19):
referencing all the time on our show.
You can absolutely go there as well where you can get your own
copy of Winning Faster, the MoveFramework for Enterprise
Software Sales Success, where you can buy that right off of
our website there. But that brings our episode to a
close. And with that having been said,
folks, Please remember to like, follow, subscribe, comment on
(48:40):
the show. It really helps us with the
algorithms of the different platforms that we produce on.
If you take a moment to do that,we'd be greatly appreciative.
But more importantly, we'd love to see you here again next week.
So until then, take care, be well.
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