Redefining Tech Training with Andy Desanctis

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
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(00:21):
Hello all, my entrepreneurs and business leaders, and welcome to
the Michael Esposito Show, where I interview titans of industry
in order to inform, educate, and inspire you to be great.
Worked in environmental policy for a very long time before
pivoting to salesforce, a CRM system used globally in fortune

(00:45):
five hundred companies all the way to solopreneurs. He became
an air Quotes's accidental admin you'll learn more about what
that means in this episode, and soon left to found
his own company, a small salesforce consulting firm, back in

(01:06):
twoenty twenty three. He's an avid skier and we'll be
talking a lot about that today. Please welcome founder of Upskiller,
Andy de Sanctis.

Speaker 2 (01:17):
Welcome, Andy, Hi, Michael, thanks for having me. Man happy
to have you.

Speaker 1 (01:21):
On the show today. So let's get the skiing first.

Speaker 2 (01:24):
Yeah, okay, all right, I'm also an avid skier.

Speaker 1 (01:29):
Oh nice, okay, and I didn't get to share that
with you earlier. Yeah, but I've been skiing since I
was four years.

Speaker 2 (01:35):
Old about the same. Okay, great, great, And you grew
up in Jersey, right I did.

Speaker 3 (01:39):
That's right.

Speaker 1 (01:40):
I grew up in Queen's Yep, so we didn't have
too many big mountains by us. So tell me you're
skiing journey. I'm interested in that.

Speaker 2 (01:46):
I started when I was about seven. I had an
older brother. I have much older siblings, to be clear,
they're My oldest sibling is twenty years older than I am,
and then my next oldest sibling is twelve. So he
was a teenager when I was seven, and he got
me into skiing, and I.

Speaker 1 (02:03):
Would we had.

Speaker 2 (02:04):
I was fortunate enough to have a family a second
home in the Poconos in northeastern Pennsylvania, and so I
spent a lot of time on the weekends in the
winter at camel well no, no, I get it, be
in a camel back, Okay.

Speaker 3 (02:19):
I spent most of my time at.

Speaker 2 (02:20):
A mountain called Montage Mountain, which is just outside Scranton.

Speaker 3 (02:23):
It's in Moosic, Pennsylvania.

Speaker 2 (02:26):
It's in the shadow of the Scranton Wolfsparra Red Barons,
which is the farm team for I think they changed it.
It used to be the farm team for the Phillies.
They may actually be the farm team now for the Yankees.
Don't quote me on that cool little mountain.

Speaker 3 (02:41):
I was there for.

Speaker 2 (02:44):
Gosh, probably fifteen years, just as a dummy skier kid
doing dummy skier stuff. And then I started racing, and
then I raced through i'd say sophomore year of high school,
and then started coaching, and then yeah, just after high school,
didn't co just ski for fun, and so Elk was
my mountain for a long time as well.

Speaker 1 (03:04):
Yeah. I grew up skiing at Camelback, Okay, that's why
when you were going there, I was like, all right,
I want to jump in this one.

Speaker 3 (03:09):
I know, Yeah, yeah, I know. Well, yeah, I've been
there a bunch.

Speaker 1 (03:11):
I grew up skiing there a couple other small mountains,
and then later graduated I guess to to Gore Mountains. Okay,
I did most of my skiing, and then more recently
White Faces, where our family typically goes and get to
ski there. I did. I was on the Mari ski
team in college. Nice. So I got to get that
little racing experience excellent, perhaps not the same as yours.

(03:34):
My my racing story is when I was at Gore,
I was in I want to say I was in
fifth grade. I was in fifth grade and the ski
team recruited me, and I chose.

Speaker 3 (03:48):
Basketball over skiing.

Speaker 1 (03:51):
I had just joined the Cyo basketball team. Okay, I
was away. I still am a way better skier than
a basketball player. Okay, but for whatever reason, I said,
oh no, I want to play basketball.

Speaker 2 (04:04):
I get it. I mean, I get it. You did
the right thing. Whatever you did, you did the right thing. Well.

Speaker 1 (04:09):
When I joined the race team at Maris, which is
a club team, yeah yeah, but competitive enough, we met
a couple of skiers that were probably like you where
you ski throughout ye young competitive and I think, and
I'd love for you to kind of share more about
what you said about doing the right thing. Is what
I learned from them is they took it to such

(04:30):
a different level, changed the way that they skied.

Speaker 2 (04:33):
It's funny you say that, because that was something that
I was never that competitive.

Speaker 3 (04:36):
I just wasn't. I was there to have fun. I
had a lot of good friends on the team. I
was on.

Speaker 2 (04:42):
Went to prom with with one of my friends two
years in a row from that team, like, we had
a great time. It was so much fun. And I
realized once I stopped skiing competitively that it wasn't as
fun because I didn't have a coach yelling at me
all the time, and I felt like I needed someone.
I always felt like I needed like someone in my
year telling me that turn wasn't good enough, this isn't

(05:03):
good enough, You're not good enough. And so that was
sort of this sort of like negative feedback loop to
push me to be better. But then it was like
we'll be better for what or why?

Speaker 3 (05:11):
You're not competing? Who cares?

Speaker 2 (05:13):
So I had to kind of relearn how to have
fun with it. And that came I'd say, yeah, so
maybe like about five six years later, I just sort
of I don't know, man, I just like relaxed a lot.

Speaker 3 (05:24):
And that's when.

Speaker 2 (05:26):
Parabolic skis came out, and if you remember that little transition,
and I was considering going on a snowboard, and then
I got a pair of Parablox skis and I just
laid them over and started riding those edges and it
was like, oh, this is new, this is a lot
of fun.

Speaker 1 (05:38):
For our non skiers out there and for all our
entrepreneurs out there. It's going to be relatable with entrepreneurship
for sure. The straight skis was what we really had, right,
which it is hard to turn edges. You really had
to force.

Speaker 3 (05:51):
You had to make them work.

Speaker 1 (05:52):
Yes, you had to really force your body into the turns.

Speaker 3 (05:55):
And it's like a series of ten steps to get through.

Speaker 1 (05:57):
The turn lifts. I remember lifting your up ski and.

Speaker 2 (06:00):
Oh yeah, like no one was skiing on on two skis.
It was always like a seventy thirty wait distribution because
outside ski Yeah, it was a whole thing.

Speaker 1 (06:08):
Yeah. And they were long skis too, like they were
always they had to be like in order to be fast,
you had to be above your.

Speaker 3 (06:14):
Your I had like two of threes for a while,
and two threes and your your.

Speaker 1 (06:18):
Five to seven.

Speaker 3 (06:19):
They were. They stood very tall.

Speaker 1 (06:20):
Yes, yes, because my tallest that I ever had because
I I got parabolics. Probably when I was I want
to say right going into high school maybe so I
probably was at full full height then maybe five nine.
I'm five ten and a half now, let's call it right,
But my highest was one eighties. Yeah, and then when

(06:41):
I got Parabolics, it was I went down one fifty
really small. I know, I said one fifties were too small.

Speaker 3 (06:47):
I couldn't.

Speaker 2 (06:48):
I'm on like I've uh, I have three pair, two pair,
three pair, it doesn't matter, it does Listen. I'm not
that good anymore. I've slowed down a lot.

Speaker 3 (06:59):
I just kind of go out there and like roll
them over and make turns.

Speaker 1 (07:02):
But the power, but the Parabolics made the turns for us.
That was it.

Speaker 3 (07:05):
That's it made a lot of people really good.

Speaker 1 (07:07):
It made us really good, and it made it I
feel like more enjoyable, more fun, yeah, way more fun.
Almost safer too, because I know, like when we're going fast,
it's like and you see that that you got to
make that quick turn on those old skis, sometimes you
just weren't making you were ready for it.

Speaker 2 (07:20):
Yeah, you just you sort of you know, Jesus take
the wheel kind of thing.

Speaker 1 (07:23):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (07:24):
With these, you you're you're more control for sure.

Speaker 1 (07:26):
And now the newer ones are just tremendous. I haven't
gotten on a new pair in probably good ten years.

Speaker 3 (07:32):
I got a new I got.

Speaker 2 (07:34):
I mean it's I won't get too deep into it,
but I bought a new pair when I was on
the road two years ago.

Speaker 3 (07:39):
They mismounted the bindings.

Speaker 2 (07:41):
I have a very specific like I wanted them center
mounted dead center, and uh they mounted them six millimeters
past center, so the tips were actually shorter than the tails.

Speaker 1 (07:51):
Oh my goodness.

Speaker 2 (07:52):
And I didn't know it for a day or two.
I was in Taos, Oh, and I was like, these
are turning really weird. I don't know what's going on.
I really wanted these. And then I figured it out
and they I had a guy in town fix them.

Speaker 3 (08:03):
They paid for that. That was one hundred and thirty
bucks just to have them remounted.

Speaker 1 (08:06):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (08:06):
And then they gave me a voucher for a brand
new pair or whatever I wanted out of their online
Wow warehouse. So yeah, I got a brand new pair
that I only got to get on this past season
and they were They're awesome.

Speaker 1 (08:19):
That's pretty sweet.

Speaker 3 (08:20):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (08:20):
So the way I kind of want to relate this
back to everything which kind of happened accidentally, which is
what you were just talking about, the negative feedback loopy
and kind of had to relearn. Yeah, and I think
so many of us experienced that in our in our
adolescence of like going through school, of teachers being really
hard on us, parents being really hard on us, feeling
a lot of pressure, and sometimes that pressure drives us

(08:43):
and it drives us to be really successful. But that's
also what leads to burnout. And what I remember experiencing
with a lot of these skiers that were racers where
they were burnt out. That's right, they were burnt out.
We were in college and they were already burnt out
skiers to where I mean, I know for me and
my buddies that were on the team, and I say buddies,

(09:03):
girls included especially one of our one of our best
friends on the team. Her name is Sarah, but she
always went by girl because she was the only girl
in the group. But anyway, so one of the things
that we enjoyed the most was racing, and then we
had free passes for the weekend. That's it. Yeah, you
just you know, we were skiing the whole mountain, going
all over the place.

Speaker 3 (09:20):
You run your heats, who cares what time you get?
And then yeah, that's it.

Speaker 1 (09:23):
But the difference is with some of these competitive skiers
that had grown up like yourself, was they only did
the race and then you didn't see them after they
were they were in I remember seeing them just on
their boots, just doing practicing their gs turns and their
slalom turns and just not even enjoying them.

Speaker 3 (09:39):
They're in their own head.

Speaker 2 (09:40):
And you know what, I'll say it, And it was
a club. Everybody I know, I know, and they're they're
doing that because that's what their parents wanted them to do.
I really don't know anybody now I did. My parents
were not pushing me, which is why I was not
competitive in part. Right, there were a lot of kids
who when I when I was coming in seventeenth ninth grade,
they are actually these high schools up in New England
and in Colorado where you can just go and do

(10:02):
it full time.

Speaker 3 (10:03):
Yes, yeah, Killn's Mountain.

Speaker 2 (10:06):
School, Carabasset at all these schools and like you know, yeah,
the kids want to go because it's fun your skin
all the time. But like that is some money, right,
and people who are paying for it really want their
kids to do that, and that's fine. But I do
feel like there's the kids you met were the ones
who's I think folks were maybe too hard on them
to do this this thing that's really, word's going to

(10:26):
take them right, it's no one's no one's making money
being a pro skear, you know what I'm saying, Like
the old is to it.

Speaker 1 (10:32):
You know, you're not top of the top Olympic even
those guys exactly, and they're not.

Speaker 2 (10:38):
You know, great you get to do it. And there's
a whole like subculture of skiing that like I could
get into another time that I'm not too.

Speaker 3 (10:43):
Big of a fan of really, but you know it's curious,
are you okay.

Speaker 2 (10:49):
I'll i'll uh you know, sorry, Mom and Dad. I
I drank my first beer on a ski lift, Okay,
I smoked my first part of a joint on a
ski lift when I was way too young. And that
stuff that's part of the culture, I mean, And that's
one of the things that like I'm not saying I

(11:09):
didn't do that stuff, or maybe I don't still do
some of that stuff, but I also knew how to
pull myself into a space where it was like, all right,
I know my limits, I know where I need to.

Speaker 1 (11:17):
Be, and I know that subculture too, because I mean,
that's really what a lot of the weekend was. If
I remember correctly, I remember I remember correctly it was partying.
I mean, you know it from the eighties and the
nineties ski movies where you see a lot of the partying.
I was fortunate for me. I was a hardcore skier,
so I didn't really mess with anything when I skied,

(11:38):
and it really affected me. But I did party on
the weekends with with my buddies on a ski team,
and I noticed that, you know, being hungover skiing was awful. Awful.
I know, it's the worst thing, and it's like, why
did we do this for ourselves? I just lost my day, right, Yes,
that's how I viewed it was, especially now wh're lift
tickets are over one hundred bucks. And I think, you know,
a lot of what you're talking about in terms of

(11:59):
that subculture is things that we talk about in terms
of habits today as entrepreneurs, as business leaders, is setting
ourselves up for success. And you know, relating this back
to skiing is when we're being dragged into the subculture
of the partying, of the drinking and whatever extracurricular other
things that are happening around us, and we're kind of

(12:22):
sucked into it because we feel this is what makes
me a part of exactly right, you feel a part
of you realize that your production on the other end,
because we're way down, Like I went from being a
really great skier to like being hungover and not even
being able to get down an intermediate feeling strong, right,
feeling good about myself and being like, let's call it

(12:44):
at half day. And meanwhile, you know this is a
guy who I used to be skiing from six till
till the chairl of clothes exactly. And you know, again
to relate it back to business, it's the same thing
like when you're out drinking and you want to come
back in on a Monday morning and you wonder why
you're anxiety levels are through the roof and you're not
able to perform, and you know things are not happening

(13:06):
the way that you had imagined them to happen. A
lot of it has to do with.

Speaker 3 (13:10):
All of that, and it's choice. It's a choice, right.
It's one of those things.

Speaker 2 (13:13):
Where you're sort of looking around and you're going, I
want to do this, I want to do all these things,
and this element feels like it's supposed to be a
part of it, and it's the way that I'll get
more perhaps ingratiated with the community I'm in, and you know,
sometimes sure, there's definitely some of that. But I think
I learned early on, just like you did, that I

(13:34):
was into the social aspect, but I also learned to
make better choices about why I was there and what
I was doing, And that's something that I think you
sort of hopefully continue to take that through.

Speaker 1 (13:44):
I think that's so important. I love that you just
said that why am I there and what am I doing?
And I think again, you know, like we're going to
stick to this game because it's so much more fun
than talking about just business, right, But from the business aspect,
that's the thing is like why am I here?

Speaker 3 (13:56):
What am I doing here?

Speaker 1 (13:57):
Why am I at this job? Why am I starting
this com Why am I doing this? Because if I
know why I'm doing it and what I'm doing, then
it's going to be easier to say, you know what,
you guys, go have fun us, catch you next time.

Speaker 2 (14:10):
Yeah, make better choices on those things. And there's a
time and a place. Yeah, Right, there's definitely time and
a place. It just becomes it can become, you know,
and it is a larger conversation around other things that aren't,
as you know, sexy or whatever. But when it becomes habitual,
it becomes problematic. When I worked at Deloitte, I saw

(14:31):
it because at Deloit, you're traveling each weekend, excuse me,
each week you know, you're getting up at four in
the morning on Monday and you're flying wherever, and then
you're coming back Thursday night.

Speaker 3 (14:44):
Well, they got you on all day.

Speaker 2 (14:45):
I mean, you're doing these ten, twelve, sixteen hour days
and the first thing you're doing when you're done is
you're going to the bar on the per diem that
they gave you. And yeah, there was definitely I saw
a lot of senior leadership and a great experience to learn.
I want to speak ill of it. It was just
like a lot of folks you watch get into these
loops that they tell themselves this is part of it

(15:11):
and if I stop doing this, I won't be here anymore.

Speaker 3 (15:15):
When you really don't need to do any of it.
Yeah you know what I mean.

Speaker 1 (15:18):
Yeah, what I learned. So I stopped drinking probably about
two years now, close to it. Yeah, well it happened accidentally, Okay,
it happened kind of because of everything I'm saying to
you in that, like, I just had a bigger reason
why not to exactly, That's really what happened for me.
But but I did. I used to think, Oh, I
need to hang out late with everybody after a chamber

(15:38):
meeting or you know, it's almost a business decision right right,
and you're thinking, oh, I got to do I gotta
do that, I gotta do that. And what you find
out is like most of the people that you hung
out with late, especially if you close the bar with them,
they don't even remember what you guys talked.

Speaker 3 (15:52):
To me exactly. Yeah, drunk talk is pretty has a
short shelf life.

Speaker 1 (15:55):
You actually, you actually can maximize your time if you
get if you get a hold of everybody right before
they hit the bar or right at their first drink,
you know, talk business, talk shop with them, and then
just bounce after that first drink, because that's what they're
gonna remember. Remember, they're not gonna remember anything.

Speaker 2 (16:10):
Else exactly exactly. Yeah, No, that's a great points and
you get to.

Speaker 1 (16:14):
Go to bed early. It feel good the next day
while everybody else is hungover, and you got to you
gotta head start on everybody exactly. Just to kind of
go back to this negative feedback loop. Sure you mentioned
that that you know, a lot of it was you.
You didn't you were kind of lost because you were like,
I don't have a coach in my year. I don't
have this person my year. And I was just talking
about the pressure that so many of us are under.

(16:34):
And we see this in entrepreneurship. Is this pressure to succeed.
We have this this feedback loop, whether it's positive or negative,
that happens all over social media of the successful entrepreneurs
of look at me, here's what I'm doing. And and
I think that that puts a lot of pressure on
new founders, on people with new ideas. And so what

(16:55):
I'm curious on here is and we're gonna go back
to your ski story, here is what did what did
you start doing in order to relearn how to enjoy
the art of skiing, how to enjoy something that you're
passionate about. And so when you think about entrepreneurship, you're
starting a business because you're passionate about it, you enjoy it.
So how do we go back to that moment of

(17:17):
re enjoying and new skiing go ahead of how you
were able to do it?

Speaker 2 (17:20):
So, yeah, it's more of like an, I feel like
it's I think I was getting bored with it with skiing, right,
And I did have that sort of person in the
back of my brain telling me you're not good enough.
This isn't this turn wasn't good, this isn't whatever. And
in the back of my mind, I thought, yeah, but
this is something I am right, Like, I am just
continually going to be doing this for as long as

(17:41):
I can. And I think I just had some weird
faith that something was going to come along that was
going to make it exciting again, right, And even if
it didn't, I'm not gonna quit, you know what I mean,
I'm still going to go. I'm still going to get
out there do whatever. You know, I'll find a way
to make it fun. And so that's when those when
those skis came out, that's when it like, really I

(18:02):
was like, oh I can this is something now new
that I can work with, right. And I'm not saying
I wouldn't have done it. Let's say I quit two
three years earlier. I'm not saying I wouldn't have picked
up a pair and and said, oh I like this again,
this is fun. But I do firmly believe in h grit,
just like to keep.

Speaker 3 (18:21):
Going because.

Speaker 2 (18:25):
There's something will just the nature of time and space
and people moving through it, new things will present themselves.

Speaker 3 (18:33):
That's all there is to it.

Speaker 2 (18:34):
It's an inevitability, right, And so if you continue on
that vector and that that that arc, something will intersect
with it and you either and it could be it
could be something bad. I'm not gonna lie like it's
not gonna be great, you know, but it'll happen, and
it's all about what you do when it does, you know.

Speaker 1 (18:53):
I like that two things, the grit and we're going
to talk more about the great in a second, but
the new thing, and the new thing could be good
or bad. I really like that because I think, like
you said, to try to get out of this feedback,
this loop that we're in of pressure of all this
other stuff, is maybe look for the new outlet. What's
the new thing that's happening in your industry, what's the

(19:15):
new what's the new conference, what's a new skill you
could learn in your industry in what you're trying to create?

Speaker 2 (19:22):
Right, And listening is a part of that, right, because
you can't This is something I learned when I in
my transition from this huge investment I made into my
future to you get a master of science and environmental
policy and economics. And then the recession hit and like
nobody wanted to pay for what I was doing right

(19:45):
within that space. And fast forward a few years, I
just kind of got my hands on doing salesforce stuff.

Speaker 3 (19:52):
Still really wanted to do the.

Speaker 2 (19:53):
Environmental piece, but no one was calling me for that.
They were calling me because I had the word salesforce
on my resume. And so you know when someone called
and said, hey, can you build us an application, we'll
pay you this incredibly large amount of money over six months.
For me, it was it was like, well, even if
I messed it up, I got paid. And so I thought,

(20:16):
I'll listen to the market, I'll do this and I'll
learn along the way. And then even after I finished
that project successfully, right because now I made a commitment
to this entire team, it's counting on me to do this,
I'm going to learn it right, Even after that, I thought, Okay,
I'm gonna get back into the environmental space, the energy space.
They didn't want me. That wasn't what the market was

(20:38):
telling me. The market kept saying salesforce, and so that
was the I wasn't a feedback loop at that time,
but I kept going.

Speaker 1 (20:45):
Yeah right, yeah, And that speaks to the grit part, right,
pushing through of realizing, you know, I got to push through,
I gotta find I got to keep going. A couple
of things come to mind here. One of them that
I've been I'm wearing the shirt today. Mindset is everything, yep.
And so the big, the big one for me that
I've been really talking a lot about lately is is

(21:07):
the fixed mindset versus the growth mindset. I attribute this
to Carol Dweck's book called Mindset, and I mean I
had to pick it up. And when when you hear
these terms, you may have heard growth versus fix or
may not have. But really what it comes down to
is are you a quitter or not quitter? Are you
someone who says everything's happening to me or someone who

(21:29):
says everything's happening for me? You know? How are you
looking at challenge? Are you running away from challenge? Are
you hiding? Are you scared of it? We're all scared
of it, sure, or are you confronting the challenge and
seeing what it's all about and trying to work through
it and uncover how you can get through it. And
that's where the grit comes in. And so obviously I
think I hope everybody can make the distinction what I

(21:51):
just said there of like the fix versus the growth.
The growth is the one that's looking at everything saying
how can I learn? How can I grow? How can
I build? How can I get out of this? It's
the grit that's it, and that you know. This book,
I love it. It's an old book, but I'm referencing
it right now for everybody. Definitely definitely gets your hands
on it because it not only addresses the business parenting.

Speaker 3 (22:14):
Which it applies to everything, I'm sure.

Speaker 1 (22:16):
Which it applies to so many things, but she addresses
them specifically, which I thought she did a great job at.
But it really highlights a lot of things that we
see in the world of business and in the world
of entrepreneurship. Of the people that you say, you know,
maybe are just going at five o'clock to the bar
because they're like, I got nothing left right and I

(22:37):
don't know how I could change anything, and so whatever,
I'm just gonna sit here, Versus the people that at
five o'clock go what else can I learn, like you, right, Like,
what else can I learn? What else can I do
so that maybe tomorrow could be different?

Speaker 2 (22:51):
Yeah, And even there are days, for sure, even in
my current situation, when I know I'm not doing enough,
and there are some days I don't do anything. I'm
not gonna lie about that. There are some days where
it's just so it can be just so difficult to like,
I don't want to say keep going, but like muster

(23:11):
the energy to start and finish all the things I
did the day before, right. And I'm starting to realize that,
with the exception of obviously agreements I may make with clients,
it's okay to not do something for a day or two, right,
to kind.

Speaker 3 (23:27):
Of just let that.

Speaker 2 (23:31):
Break, take the time that you need to have, right,
and then get back into it. And I found that
that was one thing that I was doing too much of.
I was not taking breaks like I was setting my
week up. I was because again, we're still kind of
in startup mode here with my company, and so getting

(23:52):
out there and putting myself in front of people and
trying to get people's attention, as you know, as a
prospecting is all lot it is mentally draining it can
be physically draining. And then to hear I do get
on the phone a lot with people and on zoom
calls who are like, what you're doing is great, and

(24:12):
it's almost worse than getting a no because they don't
follow through with the purchase, right, And so that's like,
but that's how it goes, right, Like, maybe this is
the Maybe I'm in a space where I'm ahead of
my time and I just need to keep going, like
I said, until people start listening and hearing and seeing
the value.

Speaker 1 (24:29):
Right.

Speaker 2 (24:30):
So anyway, a little bit of a tangent, I think,
But yeah, it's I mean, this is the whole reason
you and I are speaking really because I was spending
all of my time trying a network and trying to
get people's attention online right through LinkedIn, through all these
different venues that don't exist in space, right, they're not physical.

(24:51):
It is an architecture of just communication. And I'm like,
I found a guy, a lead in Woodstock. He lives
in Woodstock. He's become a friend. He works at Ulster
County Community College and their apprenticeship program, and I'm like, oh,
why aren't I doing it here?

Speaker 1 (25:07):
Right? Like?

Speaker 3 (25:08):
Why am I not.

Speaker 2 (25:09):
Paying attention to the people who are actually in front
of me and trying to get in front of them.
And that was why I joined the Ulster County Chamber
of Commerce in part was to actually, yeah, like meet
other people and be where they are instead of trying
to you know, throw my nets as wide as I
could and hopefully pull in a few people to do
a demo or something. So that has been a real

(25:30):
that was that was a shift though, right that was
still was, it was keeping going. It was just a
totally different avenue that you know, I just hadn't even
thought ever heard of.

Speaker 1 (25:39):
You know, it's interesting I've you know, so you brought
the Ulster kind of chamber and we were talking earlier.
You know, I'm part of the Dutchess Kuinty of Chamber
and the Ultra County Chamber's Ambassador program, and in there
I reach out to the new members that join and
welcome them and you know, help them get introductions to
people and about the different resources that the Chamber has

(26:01):
to offer, which are many. And what I've the feedback
I've received just very much like what you just said
to me, from other Chamber members who have joined and
are in similar industries as yours, because it's not from everybody, sure,
It's typically from people that are the solopreneur to the
you know, maybe have five employees, maybe contract workers, but

(26:23):
are pretty much working from home, are doing a lot online,
are marketing their business online. And so the feedback I've
heard from a lot of them is when I asked them, so,
why did you join the chamber? How can I help you?
What are you looking for? A lot of them are
just like I just want to meet people, just want
to shake a hand. I just want to touch a person,
look a person in the eye without it being a

(26:44):
screen or a camera or a zoom and I want
to have that interconnection. And you know, the great part
about COVID was that we were able to learn about
the technology. We learned how to use it, We learned
how to incorporate it into our daily lives. We learned

(27:05):
how to incorporate it into our business lives, and corporations
and big businesses learned how to do it as well. Great,
that's wonderful, But what kind of got lost in all
of that. There's a cost, right, is the importance of
the human touch of being like this with us yep,
and I you know, I'm happy to see that it's

(27:27):
coming back around to this, and I think this mix
that we're having now is really great, you know, and
this opportunity, Like, I mean, you know, just today, right,
we texted each other about meeting early, and you said
I could do it, but it would have to be
on zoom.

Speaker 3 (27:44):
Right, because we kept at two o'clock.

Speaker 1 (27:46):
That's right, right, So how cool is it that we
have the option if we want it, right, That's what
it afforded us. That's what Covid afforded us, is the
option because before we we wouldn't never, we would have
never considered the option exactly right, Now we have the option.
You're like, I could do it, but it on zoom, yeah,
And I mean I don't know how long the text
took to get through to you, but I think within seconds, right, yeah,
I said, no, no, no, right, we're doing in face face Yeah, yeah,

(28:10):
we'll push it out so that we can come in
person because it's just so much better.

Speaker 2 (28:14):
Yeah, it's one better and totally right about that better.
And it's I think it's I'm glad that you know
we're kind of talking about that because my work has
always been remote with the exception of the work I
did in Philly when I when I ran an energy
efficiency program that was, you know, day to day, going
to work every day for the most part. Yeah, it's

(28:34):
it's a this is sort of the text space that
we're in right the you know, I don't know fifth
Pillar of Industry or whatever they're calling it now. Yeah,
some it's I can't remember who came up with it,
pillar of industry. Yeah, I don't know what the other
four are. But maybe maybe it's the Third Industrial Revolution.
I can't remember. There's all sorts of there's all these
you know, sort of macroeconomic terms to describe this current workspace,

(28:57):
right this this new workspace where the quote unquote in
middle class is expanding into tech jobs that are not
or perhaps we're not thought of as available right with
high paying jobs, right like when you think of I
know a lot of people who I work with who
don't have a college degree, but they had that skill

(29:18):
set that was in demand right now.

Speaker 3 (29:20):
I don't care if you don't have a college degree.
I need you to fix this.

Speaker 2 (29:23):
And then they fix the next thing, and the next
thing and the next thing, and then it doesn't matter
anymore because they're a practitioner, right, and so because you
could do that remotely, it's not like you have to
wait for the automotive you know, manufacturing to come into
town or some other manufacturing to come into town to.

Speaker 3 (29:40):
Get that, you know, get that good job.

Speaker 2 (29:43):
They're now available at large and that I think is
also having a much bigger effect on things right from
a labor standpoint. And to your point about COVID, that's
where everybody went. Everyone went remote immediately. And again when
I was at Deloitte, one of the interesting contracts we had,
we I was start ar a new contract. I had
done a very good job of not traveling my second

(30:04):
year there because I did not like the back and forth.
I was commuting for nine months straight to LA from Portland, Oregon.

Speaker 3 (30:11):
Which was it.

Speaker 2 (30:12):
You know, sounds romantic perhaps, but it was. It got
real old, real fast. And got an internal job, an
internal gig at Deloitte for about a year and then
they said, okay, you got to go back on the road.

Speaker 3 (30:26):
I said, okay.

Speaker 2 (30:27):
And it was with a very large technology firm whose
name will not be mentioned. Good firm like them, no problems,
just you know, they probably don't want to know anyway,
I the day I was supposed to fly down to
San Francisco to start this contract, everything shut down and
my team, the senior leadership, was like, all right, guys,

(30:48):
we're all on hold. We don't know what's going to
happen with the contract, so we're just going to hold
type for a while. What happened was because we weren't
the client was not spending. They had a budget like
fifteen million dollars, right, four million of it four was
travel for this giant team over the course of the
next twelve months. Okay, but now that team's not traveling.

(31:11):
So now because they already had budgeted fourteen million, now
they can actually apply that four million to other projects.
And what ended up happening was my firm made a
strategic decision to start laying peopled off, but all these
other contracts started spooling up, and so there was like
a labor shortage inside of my firm, and all the

(31:32):
people who got laid off ended up going to the
other big three that were left, KPMG, Press, Waterhouse and
what's the other one, like oh Erson Young No eccentric,
excuse me, And so they made the wrong call. But
everyone made money because these firms that were on these

(31:53):
large contracts now had more budget to spend than they did.
And so, yeah, I spent nine months working for this company.

Speaker 3 (31:59):
Was it was.

Speaker 2 (32:00):
It's a great experience. I learned a ton. But people
came back to Earth because as things started to open
up again, wherever people were spending money, maybe they were
now spending money in different areas than they were before
the pandemic. Maybe they were not going to stop spending
money in the areas that they had become accustomed to

(32:20):
during the pandemic as well. So I think there were
a lot of changes there. But at any rate, we
sort of nailed down the infrastructure for how to work remotely.
I don't think we've nailed down the costs associated with
it quite yet. I think a lot of people didn't
do well with the remote side of things, particularly students, right,

(32:41):
but workers, there's a great use case to expand that
kind of like that kind of tech work into new
spaces that previously weren't there.

Speaker 1 (32:50):
Yeah, and you know, to go back a little bit
to a couple of things that you said, One, I
want to just go back to that human interaction sure
of just seeing this hybrid now of what we have yep.
I think is just really great. You just mentioned it too,
of like you know, now you have a lot of
people that can work from home, but it's also really

(33:12):
great that they can also come out and go to
a chamber, go to a meeting. Yeah, be in person.
So I think that that's really great. Another thing I
want to go back to is you were talking about
sometimes you don't do enough, sometimes you do nothing. And
I was going to make the joke was that when
you moved out to Portland, Oregon, Ah.

Speaker 3 (33:30):
But that's when I killed it in Portland.

Speaker 2 (33:33):
When the work ethic was when I got out there,
and I love my Portland people, but many were They
hired me for this forty hour contract. It was fifty
an hour, guaranteed forty four six months, and I remember
getting there and man, we did I did the work,
but they were taken off every Friday and I'm like,

(33:56):
I can't, I'm going to bill you for the day,
and they're like, go ahead, it's fun. And it was
like there's no way that would have flown out here, right,
There's just no way. And so you know, there was
definitely like a I felt like I did have an
advantage because It's not like people didn't work hard out there,
it's just a different type of Quite frankly, it's more balanced.

Speaker 3 (34:15):
I would say, well.

Speaker 1 (34:16):
That's where I'm going with kind of like this line
of questions, right, is the doing nothing and the doing
less which leads to more I'll give I'll give a
little example here for everybody. I think that you'll appreciate this.
I was on a class trip yesterday for my daughter
and some of us parents were talking and one of

(34:37):
the parents is at tech at a hospital. So she
didn't realize how beautiful what is it Tuesday?

Speaker 3 (34:43):
Was?

Speaker 1 (34:44):
She know? She was like, I was in the hospital
all day. I said, oh man, it was a gorgeous day.
She goes, really, She goes, oh man, I didn't know
so gorgeous. I said, oh yeah, I was outside all day.
She goes, you know, didn't you have to work? And
I said yeah, I was working. She goes, so how
are you outside? What do you do? Right? I said, well,
you know the work that I do from managing my
insurance company, and I guess my public speaking work and

(35:06):
my workshops and my coaching and everything. I work from home.
And so because I'm either writing like right now, I'm
working on a book, so I'm either writing, or I'm
working on a speech. Again, I'm writing, or in terms
of coaching, it's a conversation via zoom a lot of times,
or over the phone. I don't need to be tied
to a desk at all times. And so it was

(35:27):
a beautiful day out. Popped up the umbrella for the
sun and got the nice chairs out with the cushions
and everything, got my laptop, set up my own little
my own I do this regularly, but just to paint
a picture for everybody. Set up my whole little office
outside in the yard, like in the grass, like in
the center of the yard, in the grass, beautiful trees,

(35:49):
beautiful everything around the environment. We have the kids pool,
the little kiddie pool set up nearby. And so I
was taking a little you know, writing for an hour.
Take it a little dip, and then come back to writing.
And you know, take a little dip. I mean you
and I. Actually we had our meeting over the phone.
I was on a bike ride on the rail, you know.
I mean. Where I'm going with this is this balance

(36:14):
of being able to work hard when when you need
you know, when I sit down and I write, an
hour and a half goes by like nothinging, and to
the point where the reason why I'm getting up is
not because of the writing, but because my butt hurts
exactly like I need to get up and move. So,

(36:35):
you know, I wanted to kind of paint that picture
for everybody of like there's a way to work and
enjoy your environment. I mean, there's definitely people and I like,
like this woman, who are in a structure environment to
where you can't leave. I can't speak to how to
make that different for them, but in terms of us entrepreneurs,
we can try to create that work life balance for

(36:57):
ourselves for sure.

Speaker 3 (36:58):
For sure, and I think that it also.

Speaker 2 (37:02):
I think that people are more entrepreneurial in those spaces
than they perhaps give themselves credit for, right because a
big part of what we're talking about is managing our
time around the things we need to get done. And
you know, going back to the pandemic, I know a
lot of parents who are freaking out because they were
remote for two years and they realized, oh man, I

(37:25):
can do laundry, I can drive my kids to school.
I can do all of these things that were just
not possible when I had to go in too the
office every day.

Speaker 3 (37:34):
And so I think that.

Speaker 2 (37:36):
People if you give people those opportunities to realize those possibilities,
even if they're just small and what perhaps could be
considered insignificant, they still are new opportunities to spend time
doing things that make you make your day better. Right, So, yeah,
I get that, And that's what you did.

Speaker 1 (37:54):
And with what you just mentioned. I remember meeting a
doctor a long time ago. This is years ago, and
this this was before I understood like growth habits, you know,
and we were talking and I had and he had
said something about that he wakes up at four in
the morning. And I said, you wake up at four
in the morning. He said, what are you nuts? And
he said, well, yeah, you know, I have to be

(38:15):
in by eight or nine, you know for what I do.
He goes, but I like waking up at four because
it gives me time to enjoy a walk, you know.
I remember him talking about walking his dog, you know,
enjoy a walk, and you know, walking my dog and
having a cup of coffee and having a relaxed breakfast
and reading and doing all these different things. So I

(38:35):
think that you might be in a structured workplace of
where you maybe can't leave for the day because you're
on call, and every moment, you know, when we think
about a hospital, you can't just say, you know, my
job is done here and let me just go outside
and get a right. We understand, we understand, right, you're
in that profession for a reason. But there are ways
to kind of hack the system of getting up earlier

(38:57):
and kind of like enjoying your time, taking that hour
lunch and instead of on that hour lunch scrolling, you know,
because you're exhausted or feeling run down, instead of scrolling,
go outside for a walk, you know, feel that sun
on your body and take a walk, or do a
meditation or relax some sort of hypnosis of some sort
to be able to refresh and and regroup. There are ways,

(39:22):
certainly around it. I want to go back to what
you were just mentioning in terms of doing nothing, and
what I want to go in terms of that is
is helping people understand how to do that, because right
now I'm just I'm kind of sharing some stories here
and you are too of like, hey, this is great, right,
we're entrepreneurs and we're able to kind of just do Okay.
The people on the other end are going, How how

(39:43):
do you do it? So I'm curious on your mindset
on being able to do that, of being able to say,
you know what today, I'm just gonna chill.

Speaker 3 (39:51):
Yeah, I think it just has to do.

Speaker 2 (39:54):
I think that would not work for a lot of
people who don't have very high self confidence. Because I
know I'm going to do this, Like I know I'm
going to get this stuff done. It might not be
right now, and I can think it through and go
I don't need to do it right now.

Speaker 3 (40:14):
Like I just submitted a.

Speaker 2 (40:15):
Big bid for work with the City of Boston, and
the proposal was assembled ready to go pretty quickly.

Speaker 3 (40:24):
I think.

Speaker 2 (40:27):
I had three days to review it, make sure all
my eyes were dotted teaser crossed, and it's like, I
don't need to do this right now. I don't really
feel like doing this right now, but I will be
submitting this bid twelve hours ahead of the deadline, right
And so I just had trust in myself that that
would happen. And so if you don't have trust in yourself,

(40:48):
even and that was a specific example, I trust that
this business venture will be successful because I already know
what I'm doing. People like me that I think, and
they like the service, right, So as long as those
three things continue in perpetuity, it's going to be fine.
So if I need to take a break from prospecting

(41:10):
LinkedIn getting all the business cards out that I got
at the Ulster County Networking event a couple of weeks
ago and putting them into my salesforce Org and then
following up with those people, I'm going to do that stuff.
But if I don't do it right now, it's not
going to be a make or break situation. That's really
what it kind of comes down to me.

Speaker 1 (41:26):
I like how you identified self confidence and that it's
that knowing, and you're so right in that. My wife
and I are total opposites. My wife's like, if I
have to do something, I have to do it right
this moment, right right, And it's just we're just wired differently.
And with me it's it's like with you, it's that
I know I have to do this thing, and I
know I'm going to get it done by the time
it needs to get done, it will get done. It

(41:48):
will get done. I'll put it on some sort of
task list, I'll put it on some sort of reminder,
I'll set a calendar. I'll do anything I need to
do in order to make sure that I know it'll
get done. The other thing in that I think gives
us the confidence is the I feel like, I feel
like you're a creative and I think as creatives is

(42:09):
in the moment of procrastination, in this time of procrastination,
which we can call it right where we're saying, you know,
I'm gonna put this off till tomorrow. I'm going to
put this off. As creative, our mind are still working
around the reason why we're a lot of times we're
not doing that task, Like the reason why I'm not
writing that speech or writing that book or whatever or
whatever it is in that moment is because I'm still
formulating in my mind.

Speaker 3 (42:30):
Yeah I could, I could, I could. Yeah, I can
relate to.

Speaker 1 (42:33):
That, right. Yeah. And we need that that moment. We
need that day, We need that hour to just say
let it just percolate. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (42:40):
There's some I don't know who said it, but there
was a story that I heard many years ago and
it happened to me. Again, I can't rememberho said it,
but it was a writer who said his best ideas
came to him in that space between coming out of
a dream and completely waking up in the morning, this
sort of like interstitionayer of that transition, and I remember

(43:04):
hearing that. And then several years later, I was really
frustrated with a technical problem that I had with a client.
I was trying to build something. It wasn't working, it
couldn't figure it out. I spent way too much time
on it. And then I was waking up one morning
in that space and it just suddenly was crystal clear,
and it was almost like I was like in a

(43:25):
train looking out the window and I saw the sign
go by Wow, and it was like, Oh, that's what
it means, that's what it says. But you're still going right,
I'm still waking up. It's kind of hard to go
right back to it, you know. So I kind of
let it sit, realized i'd figured it out, but was like,
there's no way it's that simple, you know. And then
I got on there and tested it, and that's exactly
what it was. So I think there's definitely you're right.

(43:47):
There's it's always And I think that's a confidence you
have to have in yourself too, that that even if
you're not working, your your brain is always going right,
it's not really shutting off.

Speaker 1 (43:57):
You're an entrepreneur, right, but listening right now. You're an achiever. Well,
I'm working right, But you're always working. Yes, that's it.

Speaker 3 (44:06):
You're always something's always happening.

Speaker 1 (44:08):
That's the growth mindset. If the fixed mindset is when
you're procrastinating, it's because there's nothing going on right. Procrastinating
in the fixed mindset is you are at the bar
right right, and there's nothing happening at the bar. Yes,
the growth is I'm percolating right like you. The watch
pot never boils, that's right, right. You gotta let that
thing sit. You gotta let it. You know, you've got

(44:29):
a big pot of water going.

Speaker 3 (44:30):
And it'll go, it'll go, just give it a second.

Speaker 1 (44:33):
I kind of have a little story to share in
terms of that right now too, which is a good
transition for us, because I want to talk a little
bit about implementation and something that we talked about in
terms of a keynote that I'll be doing soon. And
I've been working on this for a while. You know,
this is a big This is a this is a
big keynote for me. It's putting me in front of
the most amount of people I have ever been in.

(44:55):
It's it's paying me the most I've ever been.

Speaker 3 (44:57):
Paid, which makes it very intimidated.

Speaker 1 (45:00):
Intimidating, which is awesome. I mean, this is this is
talk about confronting the challenge, right, this is this is
the dream and and here it is in front of me,
and it's providing me all the feelings that I trained
people on overcoming, you know, and it's like I got
to put the training wheels back on and I got
to overcome them. I was just telling you before, I
was just in a public speaking training this morning, not

(45:20):
giving receiving, and it was so awesome because it was
just like I'm like, oh, man, of course I know that.
You know, he's Anthony Trucks was given the lecture this morning,
and well he wasn't this morning. He wasn't a live one.
It was it was a recording that I was watching.
And anyway, I'm part of Growth Day and they have
a live training that happens every Wednesday. So this was

(45:41):
a recorded version of the trainings. I could just watch
it whenever I want, and and in it, he's going
your your job isn't a you know, so let me
just let me just get everybody set up here. So
this morning, I'm in the shower and I'm thinking about
the keynote, and a little an anxiety hits me, and
I'm gonna get to the procrastination in a moment, because

(46:03):
last night I ended up staying up later than I
ever stay up on a weeknight. I was up till
twelve thirty last night. To find out why in a second.
So I'm in the shower and a little anxiety hits
me because I start visualizing the conference. I could really
see it all.

Speaker 3 (46:17):
This is what in Indiana you were talking about.

Speaker 1 (46:19):
It's crystal clear to me. I can see the audience,
I see the monitors, I see the stage. I'm up
there and boom, anxiety hits me and I'm like whoa.
I'm in the shower and I'm like whoa. Now I
know how to get myself out of this because I
trained people on how to get get themselves out of this.

Speaker 3 (46:36):
Right.

Speaker 1 (46:37):
So I go through my breathing process, I go through
my mindset process of you know, why am I doing this? Why?
Why am I doing this? Is? What is this? What
is this speaking on stage thing doing for me? In
my mind? And without going too far into detail, because
that's not the purpose of this story. I'm like, it's

(46:58):
to empower others, right, it's to help it's to help
them where they're at. Right. So anyway, so I jump
into this training. Anthony Trucks is talking, and guess what
he says, Like in one of his one of his things,
he goes, the moment that people get nervous and get
scared on stage is when they're doing it for themselves.
You got to be up here to connect with others.
And I'm like, oh my gosh, right, that's exactly what

(47:18):
I was just experiencing. Ye, And so now so it's
just amazing how the fundamentals of public speaking will get
you through anything.

Speaker 3 (47:27):
Yes, agreed.

Speaker 1 (47:28):
Back to the procrastination for us, right started preparing for it,
preparing for this keynote. I've been just reading a ton
of books that I believe are really leveling me up
as not just a speaker, but as a coach and
as everything else that I do in this business. And
that's been part of my procrastinations. Like I'm just gonna
keep reading. I'm not gonna taking as much information as
I possibly can, right, And I'm like, and one day

(47:50):
it's gonna hit me. Last night, I'm going to bed.
Just watched one of the basketball games that it was
the Celtics game. I was happy that they lost because
I'm trying to get them warned down a little bit
so the Knicks can win, can beat them. Hopefully, if
the Knicks make it out of this series, it doesn't matter.
So my brain starts spinning and I start thinking about
the keynote last night and what happens is in a

(48:12):
good way. It starts spinning. I start, and I do
this very often with speeches. They play in my mind.
I start playing it out. I start I see the people,
I see the stage, I see the conference, I see
myself up on stage, and I start going and I'm
in my mind, I am doing it in person. I'll
give everybody like a little heads up. I go into

(48:34):
it and I'm just like, what got you here is
not going to get you there? And I want you
to walk into your manager's office and tell them what
got you here is not going to get you there?
Because we're at a tech conference and we're talking about,
you know, implementing new technology, and what got you here
is not going to get you there? And I start
going through my whole process of communication and adaptation, implementation support.

(48:56):
I go through the whole thing in my mind to
the point where I got out of bed with my
eyes closed. I stayed with my eyes closed, got out
of bed, sat on the floor, and started stretching and
doing my I do this typically when I can't sleep.
This moment, I was like, I want to not sleep.
You playing the speech out?

Speaker 3 (49:12):
You want to keep going?

Speaker 1 (49:13):
I'm playing the speech out. Yeah. So I was like,
all right. So now I finished it in my mind
and I was like, wait a second, I got to
write this down. I'm not don't remember this in the morning.
I'm not going to remember this. So I went out
to the living room, broke out my phone here and
I got the note. So it's got like the writing
screen with the stylist that people that never use but
I use. I broke it out because I wanted to write.

(49:34):
I didn't want to type because typing is going to
mess me up. So I start writing. I wrote out
the whole thing that I had just visualized. I haven't
re read it to see if this is exactly the
keynote I'm going to be giving, sure, but I know
that this is on target to what we're going to
be doing. And so to that point of talking about

(49:56):
procrastination is this has been months leading into this event
for me last night, and I think what we're talking
about is taking that time to let it percolate. But
when it comes, it comes. You can't say, you know what,
this is my bedtime, It's like and that's what I thought.
I was just like, wait a second, it's eleven o'clock

(50:17):
at night. I'm going, nah, this is it? This is
it right now? Because it's not hitting me at three
o'clock in the afternoon.

Speaker 3 (50:23):
No, No, it comes when it comes, and you gotta
be ready for it.

Speaker 1 (50:26):
And you gotta be ready for it. And then before
we get into any of that other stuff, so I
just want to get now. So we talked about maybe
not doing anything procrastination, and then the other thing that
you had mentioned was something along the lines of just
doing enough. And I think that that's another big point

(50:46):
to hit is sometimes enough is enough.

Speaker 3 (50:52):
You know. I know it's kind of.

Speaker 2 (50:57):
And this will sound cynical, okay, but in my world,
I do like to set the bar kind of low.

Speaker 1 (51:06):
Okay, Okay, I know I feel like I know where
you're going on.

Speaker 2 (51:09):
Because if you sell them everything and you deliver them everything,
they're going to want more than everything next time. And
I like to set the bar reasonable, not too low, obviously,
but to deliver things that are very impactful in that moment, right.

(51:30):
And so to kind of think about what you were
saying earlier about doing enough in the same vein it's
never enough, right, and so understand that what you're doing
right now, you're not done. You did it, it's enough
for now, but you're going to keep going to do more.

(51:51):
And that's the kind of mindset I tried. I think
that's sort of the equivalent of saying saying the bar low, right,
because from a customer standpoint, they want you to tell
them you're going to give them everything, and I don't
like doing.

Speaker 1 (52:00):
That, right.

Speaker 2 (52:01):
I like to be like, here's where we are, here's
where we're going to go, and then we'll talk about
the other stuff.

Speaker 3 (52:06):
Right.

Speaker 2 (52:06):
So that's I think that's where that phrase probably comes from.

Speaker 1 (52:10):
I think so. For I in my first sales job
was with Yellow Book, and they had their ten ten
core principles or something like that. But one of them
has stuck with me, and it's what you just said.
It's under promise over deliver.

Speaker 3 (52:23):
That's right, and.

Speaker 1 (52:24):
That has always stuck with me. It's like just a
different way of saying. What you just said is under
promise and overdeliver. Yeah, under promising doesn't mean, like you know,
do your worst work right or tell them that you
can do your worst work. Under promise is simply saying
yeah I could.

Speaker 2 (52:39):
Do that, yeah, and I'm gonna do that, and then
I'm also going to throw in this other little thing
that you didn't ask for that I know you'd really like.
And that's sort of the I mean it again, That's
where I think I said it sounded a little cynical.
It's really just building a good relationship and continuing with
that relationship, you know what I mean, instead of you know,
trying to to give again give them everything at once. Right,

(53:03):
that's you do that, and it's it's where do you
go from there?

Speaker 1 (53:06):
Really? Yeah? Yeah, because I love that you just said that,
because that's almost that's the reason why you don't feel enough, right,
that's the reason like if you if if you underpromise
and overdeliver, So if you go on this mindset of
under promising, which is such a weird way of saying

(53:26):
what we're trying to say. It's like, I think there's
a better way of saying it, so bear with us everyone.
But if you're in this mindset of like, hey, you
asked for for X, I'm gonna give you X. Let's
just call it right, right, let's just say that as REX,
I'm gonna give you X. Well, then now you feel
like enough. So when you go to X y Z, right,
so we're gonna throw y Z in there, it's like boom,
they feel great and you feel great. Right. But if

(53:48):
they ask for X and you say I'm gonna do
X y Z, now they want X y Z and
then so when you deliver X y Z, it's like
and is that all you got? Right, You're like, well, yeah,
there's only twenty six letters in aphabet.

Speaker 3 (53:58):
Ye yah, I can't go that far. Z's we're z
right right exactly, We're done. We're done.

Speaker 1 (54:03):
It's over. Yeah. Yeah. Is that why they use the
expression X y Z under that?

Speaker 3 (54:07):
It might be it might be towards the end of
the road there maybe.

Speaker 1 (54:10):
Is a fun word. Yeah, Okay, So I want to
get the upsciller here, because this is what you do
right and and in what you do is you've taken
all of these years of experience in all the different
levels of positions that you've been in, and then you've
tooken a salesforce experience that you've had, and salesforce for
everybody out there is a CRM, right, and it does

(54:31):
a tremendous amount more. I know, we can get into
the weeds about all the different cool things that does,
drip campaigns, all these amazing things. We'll describe what chip
can campaigns are for those who don't know, but it
does all these amazing things. You've you've taken it all
and you've created this company upskiller and in this company,
essentially what you do is you one help people integrate

(54:53):
their systems into Salesforce and be able to figure out
how to use the CRM yep. And the other part
is crucial is you train their team or a specific
person on their team on how to use this CRM,
how to use Salesforce so that essentially they don't need
you anymore other than for little things here and there,

(55:15):
which is so important.

Speaker 2 (55:16):
Yeah, and that's a good way to describe it. I
will build on it a little bit. While it is
a CRM, it is fundamentally a.

Speaker 1 (55:25):
Software platform and CRM for everybody.

Speaker 2 (55:29):
Customer relationship management, right, And there's a ton of products
out there that do all that stuff, and it's all
sort of this basic database architecture. The difference with Salesforce
is that the person you're talking about me training isn't
a user. It's not the person necessarily using the system.
It's the technician who is supporting it, right. It's that
it's that administrator, right, or even that developer who is

(55:54):
going in the back end to deliver custom features that
maybe you as a user want. Because you're not actually
going to call Salesforce all the time to say, hey,
I want this new product. You may call your admin
and say, Andy, I really want this field to calculate X,
Y and z and then automate this action somewhere else

(56:16):
in the database to let this team know that something's happening.

Speaker 3 (56:19):
Right, I got to go build that.

Speaker 2 (56:22):
So I will be the person who will not only
get you set up with your instance of Salesforce, but
then when you have an internal resource, who you want
to be that technical resource so that you're not calling
me all the time, I will train them in how
I do what I do. The difference is that we
don't use classroom training, we don't use learning management systems.

(56:47):
The method that I developed over the course of two
years with the technology apprenticeship with my former company at
bit wise is a simulation based training approach where from
day one, they're showing up as if they are at work,
as if they are going to build products for a
fictional customer, a fictional stakeholder, but that stakeholder does not exist.

(57:14):
There's a whole methodology we have there to support that.
But you're going to be using the tools that you
would use to build those things for them, and you're
going to use the best practices around software development, around testing,
around deployment, so that as a new resource, you don't
show up just with the certification that they sent you

(57:36):
to go get right. You can be certified, you could
be a certified accountant, right, but if you haven't worked
in that space yet, what do you know?

Speaker 1 (57:44):
Right?

Speaker 2 (57:45):
You know you passed a test and they know you
pass a test. And so that's what our training is
meant to actually do, is to sort of like close
that experience gap so that they are using the tooling
they are using in all the scenarios that they would
be in. But they can fail and you're not going
to break anything. You're going to learn from that moment
when you do set up a piece of automation that

(58:06):
sends out an email to one hundred people instead of
one that actually is never gonna happen. You're never going
to send an email to one hundred people because it's
a safe space to make that mistake, right, But will
root cause why that happened so that it doesn't happen again,
because that's the stuff that cost companies money. This is
a big in the space.

Speaker 1 (58:25):
That I'm in.

Speaker 2 (58:26):
There is high demand for technical resources in the salesforce space,
and there are a lot of people who want to
get into it right. But companies realize in the past
four or five years, we can't just hire people who
are certified because they're going to come in and they're
just going to break my stuff because they're.

Speaker 3 (58:42):
Figuring out as they go.

Speaker 2 (58:44):
They're certified, great, but look at this mess they made, right,
So that's what we're trying to do. We do the consulting,
we'll do implementation, we'll do the managed services stuff right,
but ultimately, what we're really trying to do is to
take that perfectly good resource that just doesn't have the
experience yet and put them through our experience architecture so

(59:04):
that they can get there without breaking your stuff and
show up with a really good toolkit. I'm not just
like how to do it, but why they're doing it
in the first place.

Speaker 1 (59:13):
Yeah. So it's that experiential learning with no risk.

Speaker 3 (59:17):
That's right. That's great, with no risk, that's right. That's right.

Speaker 2 (59:21):
And again this came about in part because of my
experience with the last company that I was at, bit
Wise bit Wise Industries, which is no longer with us.
That's a whole other tangent I'll I could go into
at some point, but to what I was saying before

(59:42):
about just sort of waiting for things to happen and
just kind of to keep going. They had hired me
to build out a salesforce technology apprenticeship. I was holding
up my end of the bargain, and when it was
time to place my apprentices in the teams that they
were going to go with to actually do the apprenticeship
stop work. That day never came. They did not provide,

(01:00:04):
they were unable to provide the actual project work where
my apprentices would sit and learn with other professionals, and
so I had to make up this architecture to deliver
basically a role played out complete project experiences because they're
they needed to get the experience, Like, how am I

(01:00:25):
going to We just hired these people for a year,
you know, and they're going to have two thousand hours
of what at the end of it, sitting around waiting
for someone to tell them what to do. Now we're
going to build some stuff. And that's sort of those
moments where you you sort of see the landscape and
see what's going on, and.

Speaker 3 (01:00:40):
You it's how you react to it.

Speaker 1 (01:00:42):
Now.

Speaker 2 (01:00:42):
I reacted in some ways poorly because I have a
little bit of a jumper, so I got a little
mad a few times. But I also I had some
really great apprentices who are really willing to go there
with me. And so when I said, hey, this is
how we're going to do it going forward, are there
any objections? Of course, they're like, of course not. We're
going to work right, Yes, you're going to work. You're
actually going to build things. You're going to have interactions

(01:01:04):
with people that are expecting you to build something, right,
And you know, we ended up building several applications that
ended up becoming part of the bit Wise toolkit right
for an internal internal use, and we did actually build
a pretty robust project management tool that unfortunately didn't get

(01:01:27):
to go live because the company stopped existing, so that
was kind of a bummer. But those people that were
in that program, you know, they were from literally all
walks of life, all levels of experience. I had one
guy that came in with five certifications, and I remember
the day I got him, I'm like, you do not
you should not be here. He turned out to be
one of my best teaching assistants, one of my best guys.

(01:01:50):
I had another young lady that came in who I
remember her first day. She's like, yeah, I worked at
a grocery store store in the frozen food section. And
you know, I've heard this whole salesforce thing. I'm really
good with customers. I know I can sell stuff. And
I remember thinking, like, she's going to be really disappointed

(01:02:12):
because this has nothing to do with selling anything, right, Like, this.

Speaker 3 (01:02:15):
Is not this is not that at all job.

Speaker 1 (01:02:17):
But she was.

Speaker 2 (01:02:18):
She turned out to be so good. I mean she
wash man. Yeah, she was amazing. And they all were,
I mean they really were. And so you know, again,
you present people with the situations where they can rise
to the occasion. Right, even if you have to create
those situations, nine times out of ten they'll do it,
and a lot of times they won't do it because
they feel like maybe they're an imposter and they don't

(01:02:38):
deserve to be there. And I do feel like in
the tech space there's a ton of that going on,
and you know this, what my training is meant to
do is to get them past that robustly, get them
well pasted it, beyond it to the point where they're
doing projects in this simulated space that are beyond the

(01:02:59):
jobs scription of the work they're going to be doing
when they do actually start their day job, and it's
you know, it pays dividends. It's definitely been something that
was very successful and so upsciller came from that experience
because again in my space, when I was a bit wise,
I started to realize, like this, no one else is
doing this sort of training. This is not happening like anywhere. Right,

(01:03:20):
you can a lot of the code camps or the
other sort of technology training spaces we'll say okay, we're
going to do eighty percent will be classroom and at
the last twenty percent you'll be doing a capstone project
or again a simulated experience for your portfolio. And I'm like, well,
why not just flip it, like, just get working from
day one and guide them along the way and then

(01:03:43):
reserve the twenty percent for the classroom reflection stuff, right, like, Okay,
let's talk about why this didn't go right or went well,
and no one's doing that. So I thought, well, this
is a product, right, this is a service. This is
something that we should be talking more about in the
communities that we're trying to set these programs. It took
a while, but by the time we got there again,
the company was just no longer viable. And if your

(01:04:05):
listeners want to google bitwise industries, there's a lot of
really upsetting the things that they did to their employees
and to their investors. Ye. So, but I came out
of it not okay, I'm still working my way through it,
and a lot of people who there were nine hundred
employees that just suddenly just weren't.

Speaker 1 (01:04:23):
Working, woke up and that was it. That was it.

Speaker 2 (01:04:26):
Yeah, it was more worl Day twenty twenty two, No three,
excuse me, it was a wild, wild phone call.

Speaker 1 (01:04:33):
I'll tell you. Yeah, And I mean, obviously you're not
speaking about that experience for a lot of reasons. And
like you said, everybody can google those reasons. That's right.

Speaker 2 (01:04:40):
They can go biggest what that company did, and you know, yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:04:44):
And whatever is written about it, we'll shed light on that.
But what we learned from this experience or a couple
of things, and one of them is you mentioned grit before. Yeah,
it's it's this grit to keep pushing forward after getting
that phone call, which you take the time, like you said,
probably took the time and did nothing for a couple

(01:05:05):
of days, right, maybe had a couple of ski habits,
and well.

Speaker 2 (01:05:08):
No, actually there was that was that time was spent
very definitely, like because I had thought. I thought I
knew I had something, right, I didn't know if the
market was ready for it.

Speaker 1 (01:05:22):
Where was this company?

Speaker 3 (01:05:23):
By the way, just so they were based in Fresno, California.

Speaker 1 (01:05:25):
You were in California at the time.

Speaker 2 (01:05:26):
Well, it's a whole other thing. I was actually living
in my van at the time, and I went I
basically yeah, I did it. I'll show you pictures of
the the rig I built.

Speaker 3 (01:05:37):
But that's when I left Portland. I left Oregon.

Speaker 2 (01:05:41):
Right when I got this job, and basically just lived
out of my van for a year and I skied
a bunch, went through the back and forth to the country,
had a great time. It was pretty awesome. But that's
where they were based. And then I moved out here.
That was sort of the end of my trip. Was
was upstate New York, and I'm glad I landed here.
It's a good area.

Speaker 1 (01:06:01):
Yeah yeah, yeah, So you did so pushing through that.
And then the other thing that I always love talking about,
I really do. It's it's these these experiences that transfer
into our next position, right, and these transferable skills, and
you're and you're just talked about it about it like,
I mean, this is this is how upskillers got started.
Was you you were at this company that gave you

(01:06:23):
the task or didn't, and you were like, well, we
got to do something. Yes, So you developed this task, right,
you developed this whole program for this company. Company goes away,
and you're like, well what do I do now? Well,
why not take this and create a company out of it?
And I mean it's brilliant because so often we forget

(01:06:43):
that the experiences that we have leading up to where
we are today, or one got us here, got us
to today, but two we can use we can use
every one of those experiences.

Speaker 2 (01:06:55):
That's right, and there's no real there's nothing really preventing
you from doing it. I mean, there's just you.

Speaker 3 (01:07:01):
If you can see the demand.

Speaker 2 (01:07:04):
And again, the demand for what I'm out there selling
right now in that space isn't that high. It's sort
of like the space I'm competing in is platforms, learning management, platforms,
self paced things right that you pay fifty dollars a
month for so that you can go get your certification
and then maybe you have something at the end where

(01:07:24):
it's you know, some sort of project you work on.
This is very different, it's pointed at very different customers,
but it ultimately is pointed back at the community that
we were trying to help in the beginning, which are
you know, sort of economically disadvantaged, socio disadvantage folks in
underestimated economies around the country. So sorry, I got a
little bit on a tangent there, but you know that

(01:07:46):
was sort of the.

Speaker 1 (01:07:47):
Well, I'm glad you said that, because I think the
cool part about Salesforce is that it does offer its
platform at no cost to nonprofits.

Speaker 2 (01:07:56):
Right and well it's it's also no cost to go
use you just wanted to go spin up a devil
org right now?

Speaker 1 (01:08:03):
Really, yes, you.

Speaker 2 (01:08:04):
Can do and we can do that, Michael. We can
do that at another time. I can share my screen
show you all the cool stuff. Because what you're really
buying when you buy Salesforce is the data capacity. That's
what you're paying for. So you get this top layer
of the entire software.

Speaker 3 (01:08:21):
Platform that you can then go.

Speaker 2 (01:08:23):
You can put some data in there and figure out
it's like a thousand records or something which is nothing,
and mess around with it, build some stuff, watch it work,
watch it not work.

Speaker 1 (01:08:30):
Whatever.

Speaker 2 (01:08:31):
And that's where that's why I'm passionate about it for
the work I'm trying.

Speaker 3 (01:08:35):
To do now is because it is so accessible.

Speaker 2 (01:08:38):
Anybody can do it. You don't need a really even
fast network connection. You need to a crappy Chromebook and
a dial up.

Speaker 1 (01:08:45):
You use HubSpot. Yes, and it's very similar in that
it has the paid version as the free version. I
use the free version currently, but I know that there
are a lot of paywalls in it, and so I
encounter a lot.

Speaker 2 (01:08:57):
Of the paywalls right, And so structurally I think hubspots
it could example, because it's not open sourced, so there's
closed source, which is I think HubSpot certainly Oracles products
like their CRM, and SAP has similar products, or all
relational databases. And if you want more stuff, you have

(01:09:18):
to buy it, right. And it's not that that's not
true with Salesforce, but to the extent that I can
go into Salesforce and you know, if Michael, if you
have something that you want done and built, I can
just go in and build it for you, and you
and I have the relationship. You don't go to the
big company to say, oh, I want more. The only

(01:09:39):
thing you do with Salesforce, for the most part is
buy more licenses, right to get more users right right.
It doesn't matter what you've built inside of that space.
It's not like they're going to charge you for the
stuff I built because they didn't have another last life.

Speaker 1 (01:09:52):
So well, on that point, we're talking about your drip campaigns,
your marketing campaigns. You're different and these are so just
for everybody's knowledge. These are you set up your emails
and your email sequences, so your your drip campaigns or
your email sequences. I don't know how much of a
difference there is. You're going to have to educate me
on that one, but really they're about the same. Where
you're setting it up to say, Hey, send Andy a
message on his birthday, say happy birthday, Andy, send him

(01:10:16):
a message following up three weeks later, let's get coffee.
Send them a message three weeks later saying hey, I
haven't heard from you in a while, blah blah blah.
And it's just that's what a drip campaign is. It's
staying in touch with this client, prospect, whatever it is,
on a regular basis, and the sequences maybe are a
little bit different because the drip is more to stay
in touch. The sequences are more of maybe I'm saying, hey, Andy,
I'm doing this. I'm doing workshops for companies, you know,

(01:10:39):
like yours, let's touch base. And then I go into
maybe another sequence of hey, here's a workshop that I
did recently, what do you think of it? Go into
another one. It's probably like a five part sequence that
ends with a all right, I haven't heard from you
in a long time. You know, maybe we'll everybody's seen them, everybody.
But essentially, what you're saying is what I know is

(01:11:01):
at HubSpot, I have to pay for that. Yep, no, no,
I'm not trying to knock HubSpot. HubSpot people. If you're
out there and you want to and you want to
get me a free license, great awesome, but that's not
my point of this whole conversation. It's a HubSpot, I
have to pay for that because it's closed sources. What
I'm understanding here right, that's where the paywall comes up
whenever I go into because I know that when I
go to marketing, paywall comes up. And what you're saying
is that with Salesforce, it's open source, meaning that as

(01:11:24):
the user, and currently I have a free, free opportunity
at it as the user. And so this is this
is important for everybody listening because if you are a
solo practitioner, solo preneur, whatever you're gonna call yourself, or
a nonprofit organization, you have access to this where it's
open source Salesforce not paying anything out of pocket. And

(01:11:45):
what you at upskiller can do is now go in
and say, hey, remember that drip campaign that you want
to build, Remember those email sequences that you want to build.
You can do.

Speaker 2 (01:11:55):
That for them in a sense, it's a little you
got most of it basically, yeah, so it's it is
a I think the I think maybe not a better example,
but one that might have a little bit more for
me relatability is think about it as like it's a mirror, okay,

(01:12:20):
and your company is reflected in that mirror when you
when you use Salesforce property. So it's not just the
marketing the drip campaign. There's a whole thing of Salesforce
objects and automation.

Speaker 3 (01:12:34):
That can make that happen.

Speaker 2 (01:12:35):
What happens when they come in and they want to
buy it, that's a whole other sales process, right. What
happens when you deliver it, that's a whole other set
of processes. What happens when you want to repeat that business?
What happens when you have a program or you have
a product. If you're a nonprofit you've got a program,
if you're perhaps even a company like me that has
a service offering, right, you can manage all of that

(01:12:56):
in Salesforce such that when it comes from the you know,
the first time it touches a customer to the last
time it.

Speaker 3 (01:13:03):
Touches a customer.

Speaker 2 (01:13:04):
Whatever the product service is, it can be reflected in
salesforce and supported in salesforce. So I'll give you an example,
a sort of a non traditional use of it is
where I live. I actually prefer to do sort of
the the non the custom architecture that isn't related to sales.

Speaker 3 (01:13:22):
I like to do all that other stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:13:23):
So I had a client many years ago that was
a nonprofit that did refugee relocation and they had an
entire intake process for new individuals or families that were
coming in from At the time, I think it was
a DRC, it was Democratic Republic of Congo.

Speaker 1 (01:13:41):
They were bringing a lot.

Speaker 2 (01:13:41):
People, a lot of sudent news folks in right, and
so there's a whole process of intake to get them situated, right.
Who are their case managers? Are their local you know,
services that they can that they can tap into, and
then tracking them once they are situated locally. I think
they were in Nashville providing wrap around services, right, providing

(01:14:03):
the interaction for counseling. Is it a family, do they
have kids? What are all the things that need to happen?
We build an application that manage all that stuff for
them so that they're when the intake people got this
family situated or an individual, then they hand it off
to the program managers. Now the program managers are in
a different part of the app managing and tracking and

(01:14:24):
interacting with that family or that individual to help them
get their first job, to help them find their first apartment,
to help them do all of those things until they're
all the way through the process of being functionally relocated.

Speaker 1 (01:14:36):
Right.

Speaker 2 (01:14:37):
And then those those six month out drip campaigns as
you're calling them, right, Like, those are the Hey, how's
it going. We haven't heard from you in a while.
Come on in and talk to us about what you're
doing and where you're doing it.

Speaker 3 (01:14:49):
Have you moved? Do you need more services?

Speaker 1 (01:14:52):
Right?

Speaker 2 (01:14:52):
And so that's what I'm saying. It's like it is
so much bigger. And that customer didn't pay extra from
Salesforce for those features. They already had the licenses for
the users they picked out for those jobs to do
that work. They paid me to build it out for them,
so that the process, again the mirror was reflected in

(01:15:14):
what the organization was actually doing.

Speaker 3 (01:15:16):
Does it make sense?

Speaker 1 (01:15:17):
Yes, it does. And I like how you use the
analogy of the mirror, because I mean, essentially that's what
you're trying to get out there. You know, I think
I think it's good that you bring that up because
when we're talking about sequences, drip campaigns, marketing in general,
if you're just trying to sell, people are gonna get
turned off. Yeah, And so I like that you use

(01:15:37):
the example of the mirror, because what do you want
people to see? So you might hear that doing a
drip campaign and the sequence is good for your business.
And so you put together this whole sales y drip
campaign and sequence and you get zero results or terrible results, right,
or negative feedback, let's say. And you're like, well, why
I thought this was supposed to because it's a mirror

(01:15:58):
of your bits. I love that you said that, Yeah,
because it's what is the purpose? And like you said,
with this drip campaign, the purpose is to see do
they need more services? Are they okay? Right? And it's
reflecting what does non for profit stands for as to
really trying to help these people, And so it's helping
them and it's it's also.

Speaker 2 (01:16:14):
And in addition to the image component and making sure
that the rest of the world understands what they're doing,
it's also a reflection of the process, right, there's like
the process of doing these things. As you said, there's
a sequence, right, Well, there's a sequence to everything.

Speaker 3 (01:16:30):
It doesn't matter.

Speaker 2 (01:16:31):
If it's a drip campaign, it doesn't matter if it's
delivering this humanitarian service to this new family that just
got to Nashville. There's a sequence and a process in
that that you know, you are going to engage with
and you're going to want to capture the data that's
happening at certain stage gates along the way to make
sure that you're doing it right, you know, and you
can look at that data to make sure to see like, oh, yeah,

(01:16:52):
this is actually this is really great. You know this
this is this is actually working or it's not working
right right. And so that's really where the value comes in.
Because as much as we talk about automation, we're going
to you know, there's a big conversation and AI about it.

Speaker 3 (01:17:09):
All automation does is free us up to do other shit.

Speaker 2 (01:17:12):
Yeah you know what I'm saying, Like, I mean, that's
really if if you're you know, I from spending all
my time plugging in all this data right on a
sheet right where it's already living over here, I feel
like I remember I went through this a lot when
I was like applying for jobs after a session where
they would say upload your resume, right, and then you'd

(01:17:33):
upload it and then they would be like fill out
your work history in these fields, and you're like, I
just did this right, And so it's like that kind
of stuff. I mean, the opportunity cost there is do
I continue with this application to apply for this job
or do I just say fit, I'm leaving, I'm off
this side. I'm going to go to a site that
is just going to take my resume and review it, right.

(01:17:54):
And so those those opportunity costs exist inside nonprofits, they
exist inside of companies, and so all of those minor
pain points, once you address them and deal with them,
that's when you can start thinking about the things you
really want to be doing and engaging with someone like
me to help you figure out how to manipulate the
system so that you do less work in that system

(01:18:14):
and do more work outside of it.

Speaker 1 (01:18:16):
And to be clear for everybody that you're not looking
to sell more Salesforce.

Speaker 3 (01:18:20):
I will never sell a Salesforce license, right, You.

Speaker 1 (01:18:23):
Just are able to operate the back end. And so
with that context, are you also able to work at
the back end of other CRMs as well that are
open source.

Speaker 3 (01:18:31):
There are really no others there open source.

Speaker 2 (01:18:34):
Yeah, they really do lockdown most of it to keep
people like you out, well, they do, and and to
keep a lot of I mean this a whole another
technical debt, you know, not so not so visible, right.

Speaker 1 (01:18:45):
Yeah, okay. And so the other question I have, and
it goes back to you training and team members, has
to do with implementation and adoption. And again remember this
was this was something I had talked about that I
really want to be able to share some tips on

(01:19:05):
for the people I'll be speaking to coming up. And
I think this is really great for anybody listening right
now who as a team member and you know, maybe
brings you in and they need to kind of get
be in the right mindset to be able to kind
of free up the reins to this employee. So I'm
curious on your tips in order to help this implementation

(01:19:26):
process happen of training this new employee and being able
to adopt this new technology.

Speaker 2 (01:19:30):
I think that one of the things that I typically
do is, you know, there's always low hanging fruit, and
there's always pain points, and if you can go in there.
If I can go in and quickly alleviate your pain
points and bring someone along for the ride so that
they start doing that. There's definitely a human satisfaction that happens.

(01:19:55):
Right when you come to me and you say, any
this thing is not working. It's driving me insane. I
go in the back and I fix it, and your
your whole day is now better. Right, there's this There's
a as technical as you can get with it, there's
still a human reaction to that. And so that's kind
of where I try to get people into that headspace,
right and sort of the the fixer headspace. You know

(01:20:18):
that I'm here to help headspace, not the I know
more about this than you do and that's why we're talking, right.
That's that is never a good place to start. I
think a lot of consultants do live in that space
right there.

Speaker 1 (01:20:33):
There.

Speaker 3 (01:20:34):
There's always a uh an era like.

Speaker 1 (01:20:37):
What was it?

Speaker 3 (01:20:37):
The the expression?

Speaker 2 (01:20:39):
You know you hire consultants sometimes and you know you
ask them what time it is, and all they're going
to do is totally look at your own watch. Right,
That's not That's not where I live. So I'd say
that's kind of one tip I would use to focus
on the pain points and try and fix those things.
I think that's probably my I really can't think of

(01:21:01):
any others.

Speaker 1 (01:21:01):
Well, really, what I'm asking too is you have not
you the company right has purchased this new technology, right,
and because you live in those space of salesforce, let's
say that, right. So let's go with a fifty employee
company and most of the people that will be using
it probably your sales team, your account managers type. Right,

(01:21:23):
So let's say out of those fifty people, about twenty
people are going to be using it. Right. Let's just
make that number up, right, So twenty people in the
organization are going to be using it. They never used
this kind of technology before. Yep, they've it's an old
school company and they've used paper and pen Excel spreadsheets
call it right, that's for the most part, we've use

(01:21:45):
Excel spreadsheets. They are masters wizards and we've seen them, right,
I've seen them at using an Excel spreadsheet. You know
how to put their numbers in the how to make
the charts. They know how to make it look real
beautiful and kind of put on a nice show for
board meetings and all the rest. Sure, and so now
this CEO, this president of the sales team says, hey,

(01:22:06):
we're going to bring in this new technology. We're going
to bring in salesforce, and it's going to change the game.
We're no longer going to be using spreadsheets. We're going
to be able to collect data. We're going to be
able to use that data. We're going to be able
to set up all sorts of marketing campaigns and and
workflows and all these other things. Here's where the question lies.
What is your biggest tip for these captains, these sales managers,

(01:22:32):
these team leaders on being able to help their team
start adopting this technology, remove themselves from the old school
way of doing it and saying Okay, I'm willing to
meet with Andy, Okay, I'm also willing to use it.

Speaker 2 (01:22:47):
You need to find an internal champion, and it can't
be the boss. The boss is typically, you know, very
bottom line oriented, right, It's it's show me, show me
the big the big picture stuff. It's the middle management
or sort of foot soldier that's in it every day

(01:23:07):
that is really into you know, new things right and
has the capacity to bring others with them. And so
once you get that sort of internal buy in you
sort of you know, you sort of you turn that
one juror right, you sort of you know, get them
to turn the whole jury, so to speak. Because there's

(01:23:28):
you're gonna have a lot of that. I mean that
specifically with sales teams. The problem that's actually really being
solved for from most sales teams is the idea that
they're you got ten people, how many different ways do
you think they're doing stuff? Ten different ways?

Speaker 1 (01:23:43):
Right?

Speaker 2 (01:23:43):
And so from that sense, you're gonna have people who
are on the on that team that hate that. You're
also going to have people on that team that love
it because it makes them it hides a lot of
their inconsistencies. And so there's at times you could you
could articulate that become threatened by this new service and
this new software. In reality, what it ends up doing

(01:24:06):
is it does make people better because it does offer
more transparency and it does offer I mean, you know
where you are, you know where your people are in
time and space, and whether or not you're getting to
hit your goals, and if you're not hitting your goals,
how are we going to get there?

Speaker 1 (01:24:20):
Right?

Speaker 2 (01:24:21):
And so it's not a it's a it really does
I think bring more of a team element to play
than sort of the individuals out there just trying to hustle.
But the old school of folks, I think, you know,
sort of like it that way, I think.

Speaker 1 (01:24:34):
But well I think too, I think you're right onto
it in that you've got to have those internal champions, right.
I mean, I was in sales for many years. We
were just talking about my experience at another corporation, yep.
And the foot soldiers are real around people who are
not in management. But I have been in the company
for a long time, well seasoned, well experienced. There are

(01:24:55):
a lot of times the mentors to others if they
want to be, because you also have the ones who
just don't totally disengaged. But I'm talking, we're talking about
the foot soldiers, the ones who are engaged, who are
mentoring new new hires, who are who are a good
source of honesty in the organization, and in all fairness
to the middle managers and the managers, I think a
lot of it is they can't share everything, you know,

(01:25:17):
they're they're brought into certain meetings where it's kind of
like closed door meetings for a reason because of the
way the organization is structured, and there are certain things
that they are, you know, that they're privy to that
they really can't share with everyone, and there's whatever reasons
for that. But those managers sometimes share a little bit
with that foot soldier that you're talking about, that experienced leader,

(01:25:38):
with that person that maybe has been in the organization
longer than that manager. And what that great foot soldier
as you called it, can do is if they adopt
this technology and they're mentoring this new team, this new
team has what we didn't say, trust in this foot soldier,
that's right, and there's this trust, there's this camaraderie. And
when that foot soldier says it and says, hey, you know,

(01:26:01):
I know that I've been doing it this way for
twenty years, but this thing is changing the game for me.

Speaker 2 (01:26:06):
It solved all these problems I didn't even know exactly
because I know this with my experience that there was
one at the company I worked at and he was
right below the radar of management, and and.

Speaker 1 (01:26:21):
He was and he just didn't want to be in management, right.
I mean, there's a lot of people that just don't
want to manage. I don't want to do that because
of all the other things that come with it, rightly,
but they're willing a mentor and anything this guy told
me I did if he said to me, because because
the company would say do this, and I'd say, hey,
you know, I'm banging my head against the wall doing
what they're telling me to do and I'm not getting

(01:26:42):
the results, you know what's going on. He's just like,
don't do that, right That's how I remember him telling
you that. He was just like, don't do what they're
telling you. He's like, but do this. It's similar to
what they're telling you. You'll get results and then they
won't ask you to do that other stuff. You know,
like because at the end of the day of the company,
all they care about is results.

Speaker 3 (01:27:01):
That's it.

Speaker 1 (01:27:02):
So they think that there's a way of doing it,
and sometimes there's a real way of doing it, and
that's that foot soldier and they're like, hey, look, adopt
this new text. So I love that you put it
in that perspective, and I kind of want to test
this other this other theory that I have out okay
with you on on adopt adopting new technologies, and it's

(01:27:23):
along the lines of what I love. I love this statement.
I love this statement. Brendan Burchard says it all the time.
It's people fight for what they create. And so when
I think along those lines and I think from a
leadership standpoint, I think, okay, here's the problem. As a leader, right,
we're identifying a problem. We're going look our work. We're
going to use this example of fifty employees twenty twenty

(01:27:46):
in the salesforce. We've been running this company. How are
we going to get to the next level. We need
to either hire more people or really refine our sales process,
which we know is antiquated, right. We know it's we're
using Excel spreadsheets, right. And so this this, this leader
says we need to solve this problem. We need to
be able to refine it and do it in a better, faster,

(01:28:06):
more efficient way. And here's so we know what we
want to do. We know why we want to do it,
because the why is we want to get to the
next level, right, we want ten x whatever it's called. Right.
And so here's where I'm testing this theory out with
you is to me, it's go to the team and
say how, yes, do we solve it and allow them

(01:28:30):
to be a part of this solution process.

Speaker 2 (01:28:33):
Yeah, and that's how I've always managed when I've had
management roles. Okay, as long as you make sure they
have what they need to do their job, and they
will tell you they'll do their job better than they've
ever done it, particularly when they see you go to
bat so in those in the scenary you just gave.

(01:28:57):
That's the conversation that if I were a manager, I'd
say where does it hurt? Right, and they'll tell you.
I mean, this is like I always go back to
pain points. It's just like a doctor, right, Like, you
know you're in pain, and a lot of times people
are in pain and they don't even know it.

Speaker 1 (01:29:12):
Right.

Speaker 2 (01:29:12):
You sort of like live with it. And then that
one you know day you have with the messeuse and
that crack of the back and you're like, oh my god,
that's gone.

Speaker 3 (01:29:21):
You know, how did you do that? Right?

Speaker 2 (01:29:23):
Those are the moments where all that stuff really comes together,
as opposed to senior management coming in and saying, this
is what we're doing and this is how we're doing it.
You need to go learn it and then they leave, right,
They sort of come back in a quarter and say
how's it going, and half your team is gone because
they're like, screw this place. They're not helping me out.
I'm here to help them. So that's that's sort.

Speaker 3 (01:29:45):
Of my my approach to it.

Speaker 1 (01:29:48):
And you're right on.

Speaker 3 (01:29:48):
I mean, it's.

Speaker 2 (01:29:50):
This and Salesforce is aware of this. They are often
not selling to senior leadership. They are often selling to
that well, just low management individual who's in the space
where they're actually involved with a lot of data collection,
a lot of data analysis, a lot of reporting, and
they're on spreadsheets or they're on Google sheets or whatever

(01:30:11):
they are, right and they look at this product and
they take it to their bossing and go, hey, this
thing would.

Speaker 3 (01:30:15):
Really help us.

Speaker 2 (01:30:15):
Here, here are the five ways this can help us.
And now, of course Salesforce has teed them up right
for this in their marketing, but it really does help.
And that's and that's really the the you know, getting
again that champion in that space to.

Speaker 1 (01:30:28):
Really push Yeah. Yeah, and I I mean I experienced
it myself when I was starting out in insurance. So
I worked at a small agency where we didn't have
anything right, and I was the one checking out Zoho right, yeah, yeah,
I was the one checking out all these different CRMs
streak was another one. I was.

Speaker 3 (01:30:44):
I was, and in your mind, you're going, there has
to be an easier way.

Speaker 1 (01:30:48):
There has to be easier way, That's exactly it. And
we end up being the ones that fight for these platforms, right,
that fight for this technology. And so that's why I
really believe that if you're a leader and you want
to implement a new tech or a new software or
a new solution in your organization, it's I love what
you said. It's ask them, do you see the same problem? Right?

(01:31:10):
Are we on the same page here? Are you experiencing
the problem that I'm seeing from top down? Right? Because
we're because management seeing it or ownership is seeing it
from a spreadsheet type of problem. That's right. They're going,
we're not getting enough leads in we're not closing enough deals,
right about the sales team, right, Sure, we're not getting
enough leads, we're not closing enough deals, we're not getting
enough at bats, right, And so they go to the
sales team to say, is it's true. Sales team says, yeah,

(01:31:31):
it's true. Okay, So what's the problem is identify it? Well,
I'm spending ten hours doing a spreadsheet a week, right, exactly, Okay,
So if we were able to you know, as a leader,
if we were able to reduce that time to maybe
two hours to maybe even less than that, right, because
maybe it's automated, right, would that help you? Of course
it would, Yeah, of course it would. Okay, And I think, now, okay, great,

(01:31:53):
come to me with three solutions. You come up with
the three solutions, because if you come up with them,
like you just said, you're going to sell me on
the ones that you want exactly. And if you're selling
me on it, then I don't have to get you
to adopt to it. You're adopting it because you're selling.

Speaker 3 (01:32:07):
Me exactly exactly.

Speaker 2 (01:32:08):
And you get that going, and then you get that
positive feedback loop, right that that space where people are
contributing good ideas and then seeing the outcome and is
what was it?

Speaker 3 (01:32:19):
People fightforward, they create.

Speaker 2 (01:32:20):
Yeah, that's I mean, once you get that going, it's
like a you know, you can almost sit back and
just let it happen. And that's a trick, right, That's
definitely something that takes.

Speaker 1 (01:32:29):
And I think the cool part about that too is
when you think about goals, which is the next part
of it all. Is like when you think about goals
and sales goals and all quotas and all this other stuff.
Is at that point, the sales team is coming up
with their own goals and their own quotas because they're
saying it because in their pitch to management, they're saying,
if we had this, I could do right X right right,

(01:32:51):
and then where are we back? We're back to X
y Z. That's right exactly, and they've created their own
X y Z. So it's I think it's yeah, I'm
happy that we had this conversation and about it, and
you know, I'm curious anybody listening to what your thoughts
are on it, So definitely hit me up on that.
You know, the the opportunity that you offer to the

(01:33:13):
small business, the mid sized business, I mean you go
all the way up to any anything even higher.

Speaker 2 (01:33:17):
There's spaces where we can we can deliver, and most
of those customers are bigger customers are not are already implemented, right,
they already have salesforce. It is kind of a higher
gun thing, right it is. You know, hey, we've got
this problem we're trying to solve for it might be organizational.
There's conversations I'm having with a with a very large

(01:33:38):
commercial real estate development firm, and.

Speaker 3 (01:33:41):
They're doing a lot of things right.

Speaker 2 (01:33:42):
But the product owner I know, is like, well, we're
doing a lot of things that are not right from
a delivery standpoint internally. When I say delivery internally, I
mean they're using Salesforce to run their entire business, and
they have a dev team that is working as fast
as they can and to deliver all of these things
and features to the salespeople. Because once the salespeople are

(01:34:05):
in on it, they get hooked, right.

Speaker 3 (01:34:07):
I mean they have.

Speaker 2 (01:34:07):
This release cycle right where we're going to release new
stuff every month or every quarter or whatever. And you
know it's like, yes, does okay, great, Well what about
that other thing I want? I want that now? And
so there's a you know, there's sort of a breakdown
in the in the delivery process, and so those are
the spaces I will often jump into. I built my
own tools that I can deliver to those clients that

(01:34:29):
can help them manage those processes better. But yeah, once once,
once it's in, it's in. I think their ORG has
been They've had their org for like ten years now,
so there's like a whole I.

Speaker 1 (01:34:39):
From my own experience not using Salesforce. For my insurance agency,
we use the software and we had a deva, a
team like you've you and I talked about this come
in and kind of build the back end, and it
was I mean, it changed the game for us because
for me to spend the amount of time that I
would have had to spend to build it out would
not have made sense. Also, I I'd have to learn

(01:35:01):
this whole program that you don't really need to because
they customize it intentionally so that it could be customizable.

Speaker 3 (01:35:06):
To the agency.

Speaker 2 (01:35:07):
And I'm gonna this is not a knock, okay, but
a lot of the work that I get and that
a lot of my colleagues are are actually fixing the
things that the new guy or just got in there
in the back end and started sort of you know,

(01:35:28):
messing around with stuff and then they left right and
they're doing it in such a way that they're not
following any best practices associated with software development. Because what
we're talking about is a software development platform. It's still software.
So you know, if you go in there and there's
a great article in Forbes, I'll send it to you.
It's called the Rise of the Citizen developer. And because

(01:35:50):
these platforms are low code or no code, all the
things that they're building don't require any sort of development
at interface. Right, you don't need it. You just tell
it what you want it to do and it does it.

Speaker 1 (01:36:05):
Well.

Speaker 2 (01:36:06):
That creates what's known as technical debt. And the technical
debt is what gets in the way of someone coming
in three four years later who's like, oh, man, I'm
going to do this, and then it's like, no, you're not,
because there's a year or two of technical debt you
need to take care of first before you go to
do that thing. It's like a house, right, there's like

(01:36:26):
deferred maintenance. You buy house, it needs a new roof.
Well does it need.

Speaker 3 (01:36:31):
A new roof? I don't know, We're going to do
that this year.

Speaker 2 (01:36:34):
And then you sell it with that old roof. Someone's
got to put a new roof on there. Is it
you during the sale or is it the new buyer?
It might be the new buyer, right, And so it's
the same process. It's like you continuously take care of
it and continuously deliver what you need to deliver within
the best practices that you know, or you just fucking

(01:36:54):
car My Frinch slap it together, walk away, and let
someone else deal with it later.

Speaker 1 (01:36:59):
Right. Yeah, it's a really good analogy and on way
to put it. One of the things I always like
to wrap with is is a mantra, and I really
liked yours. It's it's deep and and really it really
is deep. It's it's I am a drop in the ocean.
I am the ocean. I'm curious on where you got that.

Speaker 3 (01:37:18):
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (01:37:19):
I probably heard it on an MPR, you know, but
it's it came came from somewhere.

Speaker 3 (01:37:27):
Yeah, I don't know.

Speaker 1 (01:37:28):
I wish I wish to do is really what matters.

Speaker 2 (01:37:31):
It's as individual as we are, we're all connected, right,
And I think that was part of this part of
my process of like reconnecting a lot with people in
face to face, like what we're doing now, and just
being conscious you need to be super conscious of it.

Speaker 3 (01:37:46):
I do feel like some people get a little.

Speaker 1 (01:37:48):
Too carried away with.

Speaker 2 (01:37:50):
Some some elements of wellness and consciousness and the things
around you, Like you can just accept where you are
and who you're with and what you're doing and just
know that even if you feel alone, you're still connected everything.
And that's I think that's just really important to kind
of like carry through.

Speaker 1 (01:38:08):
I think it's really cool, and it's a really great
point about that connection to everything. I'm currently I'm loving
Adam Grant. I'm currently reading one of his books. And
when we see that we're connected, it makes things so
much It makes the things that we make so big
that we inflate so much smaller. And the thing that

(01:38:31):
I'm that I'm trying to reference right now is he
talks about this picture who is trying to make his
way into majors and just couldn't make it. R A.
Dickey trying to make his way and the major just
couldn't make it and finally gets his big break to
the majors, but it's still kind of like not there yet,
and that finally makes gets his big break, and that
year he decides I'm going to go climb Mount Kilimajaro,

(01:38:55):
the highest peak in Africa, and the Mets who had
signed him said, listen, if if anything happens to you,
we're breaking the contract. Like, meanwhile, this guy's been working
his whole butt, his butt off his whole time. He's
thirty seven years old, he's way past his prime to
get to the majors made it and he decides, I'm
gonna go climb this mountain, but he climbs it. And
he said that when he got there was extraordinary because

(01:39:16):
he realized how small he is, and that season was
his best season of his career. But also in the books,
in the record books for the Mats, like it was
most games pitched without a hit, something like thirty two
games or without some sort of stat that was important
for MLB, Sure not for this conversation. Yeah. The point

(01:39:37):
is is that by climbing his peak and we're talking,
I'm bringing it to the connection piece. It's like, we
realize how small we are, how none of this it matters,
but it doesn't matter to the level that of importance
that we put on it.

Speaker 2 (01:39:50):
That's right, And I think that's why, and I swear
to God, I'm not going there, but I think that's
why people people say that politics is local, Right, It's
about this relationship that you have with people and how
you manage those relationships. Right, But we get spun up
into other spaces that aren't inconsequential, but they're really just

(01:40:14):
not that important, you know. It's what you're doing now
with the connections you have now and with the people
around you. Yeah, I think it's I think people I
don't know if we've evolved enough yet to really consistently
put ourselves outside of our own spaces to really feel
what other people are feeling or what situations exist. I

(01:40:35):
think we are inherently pretty self motivated, and that's fine,
that's sort of how it goes, right, But I do
think that to your point, it's like you have to
have an experience or have an experience happened to you
without Perhaps he clearly was voluntarily doing that, right, But
I think a lot of times it's the experiences that
are involuntary that sort of remind you how connected you

(01:40:58):
are to other things and how small you really are.

Speaker 1 (01:41:00):
Yeah, and we the drop in the ocean thing, I mean, here,
the thing that's cool about this quote is like it says,
I am a drop in the ocean. I am the ocean.
And the coolest part about that that we know is
that because we consume water, and water is part of
our ecosystem, right, and it's been here for billions of
years on his planet, we've consumed the same water coming

(01:41:22):
from the ocean in the rate and all the different
streams and our specially that we are truly all connected
through this thing of water where our bodies are eighty
percent water. And I mean, so it's just it's it's
not just a quote, it's science. It's literally. Yeah, it's
pretty cool.

Speaker 2 (01:41:37):
I had a physics teacher in high school who talked
about how we're literally breathing the same air that you know,
the Romans breathed, right, it is the exact same chemistry.
It's just continually being repurposed and recycled into new things,
just like we are.

Speaker 1 (01:41:54):
It's so cool. Yeah, cool if anybody. Of course, this
will be in the show notes, but I want to
just make sure for all of our audio listeners want
to get in touch with you, want to learn about
how they can hire you or learn more about your services,
even just to get a demo. Yeah, how can they
reach you?

Speaker 2 (01:42:08):
They can reach me at Andy at y why upskiller
up s k I l R dot com. That's also
the domain name for the website. They can find me
on LinkedIn. I have an open profile, so you can
search me pretty easily.

Speaker 1 (01:42:28):
Hyupskiller dot com real simple, whyupskiller dot com? It's right,
So just check it out there and I'll be the
show notes. This has been it's been awesome getting to
know you today.

Speaker 2 (01:42:35):
It's been really really nice. This flew by, Yes, and uh,
I just told you well and I love to talk
to so I think we're in a good space on
that one.

Speaker 3 (01:42:43):
So yeah, but this is really great. I really appreciate
you doing this.

Speaker 1 (01:42:45):
Thank you for listening to The Michael Esposito Show. For
show notes, video clips, and more episodes, go to Michael
Esposito Inc. Dot com backslash podcast. Thank you again to
our sponsor ten ten Insurance Services helping businesses get the
right insurance for all their insurance needs. Visit Denten dot
io to get a quote that's d E N ten

(01:43:08):
dot io and remember when you buy an insurance policy
from Denten, you're giving back on a global scale. This
episode was produced by Uncle Mike at the iHeart Studios
in Poughkeepsie. Special thanks to Lara Rodrian for the opportunity
and my team at Mike Lesposito, Inc.

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