Interviewer:                       Okay. We are onto another episode of executive breakthroughs, and I have a fantastic guest here today, Patrick at 128 Technology, and he’s the COO. And so we’re going to be working, talking a lot about questions and answers that you’re going to hear and a lot of insights. So welcome to the show.

Patrick:                                 Well, thank you very much.

Interviewer:                       So I want to find out a little bit where did you grow up, a little bit of your background? I read that you grew up in Pittsburgh and so why don’t you just tell us a little about family and …?

Patrick:                                 Yeah, I was raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in a rural area, with eight brothers and sisters so it was a big family.

Interviewer:                       Wow, you learnt to share and communicate and have to get a long?

Patrick:                                 Of course.

Interviewer:                       And what child were you out of the eight?

Patrick:                                 Third from the oldest.

Interviewer:                       Third from the oldest? I wonder what that says, usually there is youngest and oldest I know but I know in the middle.

Patrick:                                 I’m just in the middle, yeah.

Interviewer:                       Okay. So you figured how to get along … And your dad was an engineer too?

Patrick:                                 He was. My dad my engineer, worked at General motors and then of course got into the steel industry and that’s how we moved to Pittsburgh when I was very small.

Interviewer:                       Very small. So was dad like a driving force for you growing up or someone that you looked up to or was he just …?

Patrick:                                 Of course he was. Yeah, of course.

Interviewer:                       And that sounds like that’s led you on the path to going down the path that you’re on now getting really interested in technology and engineering. Although, back then I heard that it wasn’t just the technology part of it but just more of the engineering and you kind of fell onto that later on?

Patrick:                                 Well, when I was younger and going to school, I was good at math. And everybody said, well, if you’re good at math you should be an engineer. So I didn’t know much about engineering but I did okay at school, I wasn’t a great student but I did okay.

Interviewer:                       And then what was your first job outside of …?

Patrick:                                 I worked at the Timken Roller Bearing company in Columbus Ohio. I was a what they call a systems engineer there, trying to work on business methods and make things more efficient. And it was before computers really had … Personal computers had really been a part of how corporations made themselves efficient. It was just before they were coming in.

Interviewer:                       So how did you get into technology then from there? Was it the next job that you had or was it there?

Patrick:                                 Well, I did do some programming in college FORTRAN, and punch cards and a little bit of TTY stuff, but I didn’t take any computer science classes. That didn’t really exist at the university of Pittsburgh. So when I went to the Timken company, they had some mainframe computers and they still had some punch cards tabulators and all that. And they brought in IBM PCs, they were fresh brand new and they said, hey, college boy, come over here you do this. So they just sort of asked me to do it because I was young.

Interviewer:                       And you just figured that out on your own, or how did you …?

Patrick:                                 Yeah. There wasn’t much on those computers in those days. They had a 10 Megabyte hard drive, that’s all they had.

Interviewer:                       Well, that’s not much. So you just using them in the business and figured out like the applications for them? Did you get help?

Patrick:                                 Yeah. We did some projects, inventory projects and we did some … They did a lot of computations there manually and we replaced them with programs, or you could … That kind of thing.

Interviewer:                       Okay. And is that kind of the first time and you got really motivated to be in technology but sort of working on …?

Patrick:                                 Yes, yes. I might have learned by working. I didn’t learn much in college. I mean, I got … You know.

Interviewer:                       You had a taste of it.

Patrick:                                 In relation to high technology.

Interviewer:                       At this point, did you have any strong mentors or people that were in your life that were driving you or did you have anyone that …?

Patrick:                                 I mean, the guy that I worked for at the Timken company was also very interested in it. He was very helpful. He wanted to start a business. He didn’t while I was there, but he wanted to.

Interviewer:                       So when did you leave there and what led you to kind of on your next path?

Patrick:                                 Yeah. I came to Boston on … I was living in Columbus, Ohio at the time, and I came to Boston on Vacation. I had just leaned a language called C programming language, and I learned it on my own at night. And when I came to Boston, I got the Sunday Globe and I opened it up and … It’s hard for people to imagine this before the internet, but there were easily 300 pages of help wanted ads for C Unix programmers in the late 80s. And I said, wow, this is great. And it’s like I just went back to the Timken company, I resigned and I moved here, and started-

Interviewer:                       That first, you were just like I’m moving to Boston because-

Patrick:                                 Yeah. I had a relative here that let me stay with him for a while, so it helped out.

Interviewer:                       So what was that next job? What did you end up taking in …?

Patrick:                                 Well, oddly, I was looking at some really good high-tech jobs but I wanted to be in the city because I never lived in the city. I actually took a job doing systems engineering at the Harvard community health plan, which at the time was somewhat small and very, very fast-growing. So it was in its own way, it was the most … Compared to the Timken company, it was very entrepreneurial, very fast-growing, That was my first experience with companies that were growing fast.

Interviewer:                       So that was kind of your entrepreneurial folly, I guess working in that. What kind of led you down more of the path to starting your own thing? Like what kind of set of events?

Patrick:                                 Yep. So I continued to work on projects for about two or three years at the Harvard community health plan, finished my MBA. And the high-tech community in Boston was really starting to really get going. And I become interested in voicemail while I was working at the Harvard community plan, we were looking at systems from a converse network systems. And we were sizing them and pricing them and thinking about efficiencies and in the meantime I found out that there was a company here called Boston Technology that was making voicemail. And they had five engineers at the time, and they actually hired me and I was the fifth engineer actually. And that company was just get getting going, it was a lot of fun.

Interviewer:                       So you worked there for a while and you made some obviously some good connections and you started the [crosstalk 00:07:25]?

Patrick:                                 Well, that’s where I met Andy Ory, who’s been one of my … He and I have started a couple of businesses, or he did the first one and then we started Acme Packet together. And that’s where I met him. I also met Bob [Penfield 00:07:37], another engineer here, and Peter [Cumberford 00:07:41]. The company was run by younger people. They were younger than me that actually started the business. And they believed that business into being, they were just incredible. And they were great to watch, and it was fun.

Interviewer:                       And it actually gave you a lot of freedom, it sounds like?

Patrick:                                 Well, they worked really hard. These guys would sleep on the floor in their office. They were crazy and they worked really, really hard, but very, very inefficiently as well. But it was fun. It was fun, I have to say. It was a very good job. And most people when I left there, they had grown quite a bit. They had … I don’t know, 400, 500 employees by the time I left, which was about three years later. And when I left it was because I was going to start be part of an entrepreneur company.

Interviewer:                       And what did you take away from that experience? Was there any like big learning things that you took away from working?

Patrick:                                 At Boston Tech, they had a culture … They didn’t always … They weren’t 100% … Like they believed what they were doing so much, it wasn’t real. They believed in things that weren’t quite real. And I don’t want to say anything disparaging about the company, but they would do things like round up every chance they could. And I felt like they didn’t need to do that. I felt like the company and the products were good enough and they didn’t need to do that.

Interviewer:                       Got it. So you left there and then what did you do? What was the next step on the entrepreneurial journey?

Patrick:                                 Well, Andy Ory had already started a company called Priority call management. And I was helping him as a friend and as a consultant. I worked for beer or something. And he had started the company on a shoe-string. And was very excited and very … If you ever met our CEO, he is very … A fantastic leader. So he urged me to consider taking a job with him. And I was just newly married and I had a mortgage, and I just didn’t really feel like it made sense.

And he said, “Well, you should go and talk to your boss and see what he says anyway.” He thought that … And he was wise because I went and talked to my boss, he’s name Bill Claybrook and he said, he said, “You’ll be a fool not to go and try to start that company.” And this is the guy I worked for who really needed me to stay and do my job. He was urging me to go. And I was like, “Wow.” And he said, I’ll tell you what, I’ll take the risk away, you go and work with Andy, and if he runs out on money … He had three of four months of money in the bank, it’s all they had to run the business. He said, “If it doesn’t work out, I’ll hire you back.”

Interviewer:                       So why do you think he did that?

Patrick:                                 Because I think he was-

Interviewer:                       Because it’s a unique thing. I mean, I’ve had one person who did that for me, but that’s … It tells you have a unique relationship with that person.

Patrick:                                 Well, I mean, he liked me and I liked him. And he felt like it was something that I would regret if I didn’t do it. And he took away the reason why I wouldn’t do it, and so that was good and that was nice of him.

Interviewer:                       So then you jumped at the opportunity and went in to it and how did it … I mean, obviously, it’s worked out well over time?

Patrick:                                 Well, that business, you learn a lot about what not to do by making mistakes. And that business wasn’t really a good business in the beginning. We didn’t pick the right market, the technology was difficult and expensive. So we struggled for at least a year and a half, maybe going on two and then we found our way.

Interviewer:                       How did you find your way?

Patrick:                                 Well, as usual, our principle initial idea, a lot of startups wasn’t going to work. And so then you had to pivot or find some other way out or quite, right? Just say uncle. And what we did was we … It’s classic, but we had borrowed money from a lot of people in the form of advances of equipments. And one of the guys that advanced us a bunch of equipment, his name was Bob [Medona 00:12:18]. And he had given us, or advanced us equipment that we probably couldn’t pay for.

He didn’t want see us not pay for it, that’s not what he wanted. He was very interested in us also pivoting and finding a new … And he connected us with some people that wanted to do a particular feature called international calling card call back systems or whatever, which wasn’t what we were making. But we was close. We figured with a month of work or two we could get it working. And so that’s what we did. And actually we started making decent money for the first time shortly thereafter. And he funneled business to us and we were able to pay our bills and he was happier.

Interviewer:                       And then from there, so you had this business but it wasn’t the business that you wanted to, so how did you …?

Patrick:                                 Well, we pivoted one more time into pre-paid cellular systems and we did well much better, grew the business to … Andy would remember exactly the earnings and revenue growth. But it was a sizable business and we sold it to LHS group for roughly around $180 Million. And it was a good thing we sold it because that was a real tough business. And we never wanted to do that again. That was a tough business. And multiple pivots, complex sort of customer’s problems and … Not problems, but it was difficult, it was a hard business. For the dollars you earned it was hard work.

We were actually writing software and putting it on top of over people’s hardware, and the people that sold the hardware were making all the money. And the people that were buying the solution, valued the hardware not the software. That’s the way it was and we felt like we were adding most of the value but not getting a lot credit. So we decided never again would we be a system’s integrator slash software that re-markets other people’s hardware. We said we weren’t going to do that again.

Interviewer:                       Okay. So you sold the business. And did you all have to work in the business when [inaudible 00:14:39] a lot of time, people require you to do that at the next?

Patrick:                                 They didn’t require it, but I stayed on for about a year, a year and a half.

Interviewer:                       Did Andy too or did he …?

Patrick:                                 No, he left probably in about three months or so. But I stayed on and really wanted to make it work. And then the company that bought us, sold themselves. And when that happened all of the options we had vested right away and no one really believed that this company was well-run at that point, so everybody was starting to look for the doors. So I decided to leave and start Acme Packet. And I called Andy and he was very interested in helping me out, and we got it going.

Interviewer:                       Okay. So this time you actually were leading the way on this business, that’s interesting.

Patrick:                                 Yeah, not this one, but that was [crosstalk 00:15:31]

Interviewer:                       That one, yeah.

Patrick:                                 I mean, I had the idea and he was all for it. And we tried to … We had a couple of get-togethers with potential investors, everybody was excited. So that business we started it … It’s hard to believe it but it was in 1999, we were forming the business. And it was before the NASDAQ crash from 5,000 … Roughly where it is now, and before the airplanes hit the buildings and everything. And it was a pretty crazy time for the … Everyone was throwing money around willy nilly, so it was pretty crazy.

Interviewer:                       So talk about working with another founder because a lot of times these startups companies go south or things don’t work, it’s that people don’t have a way to compromise, arguments come up, divisions happened, it’s obvious since you two have been working together for a long time and a lot of different scenarios, that you found a way to communicate. Work together, find solutions, get on the same page. How have you done that? Like what needed to happen in order to …?

Patrick:                                 I mean, Andy is a great and easy person to work with. And I think we both just work together well, I guess that’s it. He has different strengths and I do. And we both respect each other. We’ve been working together for a very long time. When we started Acme Packet, we went to [inaudible 00:17:10] park adventures to raise money, and we only went in there as a courtesy call because we didn’t have a business plan pulled together. We just popped in to say hello and tell them we were starting a business and we’re going to come back in three, four months after we get our ducks in a row and we’re going to talk to you about raising money. And they wouldn’t let us leave that day without accepting an offer to invest. And we didn’t even have a plan.

And later on when we were asking them, why would you do that? And they said that the reason why businesses fail more than not is because people don’t get a long. They said, you guys get a long and we invested in your last company … They were an investor in the Priority call management. They said, we really, really like you guys, we think you guys are great. You learned a lot in your last business, your next business is going to be better. We don’t even care what you do, we’re in because the quality of the people and the integrity that we had. So they were in without really hearing the idea. And they made that judgment call based on well we got a long and how created teams.

Interviewer:                       So what did you learn as you started Acme Packet from working with Andy? What were some big Lessons that you learned that you put into that business?

Patrick:                                 We didn’t really chose a great market or even have a great idea on our first business. We did okay because we executed well, but the market was small, it wasn’t easy to understand, the product space changed, and we were lucky to sell the business when we did. With Acme Packet, we wanted to pick a bigger market. We wanted to look at the major trends and make sure we had a good thesis for a longterm value proposition. And so we were more thoughtful about that.

And if you looked at our original description of what we were going to do, then if you look the company when it was going public five years later, we hadn’t changed much. We didn’t have to pivot once. So the good news was, we at least made the right choice. And of course, things happened that we didn’t anticipate that resulted in selling the business to Oracle. But it was a great 13 year run, it was a great business. We made a lot of money. We sold billions of dollars of the product. So I think that we chose better the market and did a much better job.

Interviewer:                       Why did you end up selling the business? What led to you …?

Patrick:                                 Yeah, it’s a good question. It was hard to grow the business. The market for our product was 600 million and we had 300 million or 310 million or something. So we had 50 to 55% of the market, and there was probably 40 competitors, probably only three that were credible. But when you think about it, it’s pretty hard to take any market share when you have that big of a … So that was one reason. I think fundamentally, a second reason was the value of voice calls doesn’t matter where they are in the world, was plummeting. Just long-distance people didn’t stop paying for it, it was given away free by everybody. And people also stopped making phone calls, fax calls, phone calls all kinds of calls people stopped making them as much, they texted, they emailed, they found other ways to communicate.

And so what was happening is the market value of voice was declining. So we, our product, which was probably in 90% of the world’s network was facilitating voice going between IP networks. And we just decided that, gosh, with voice declining there is going to be less money for the business case therefore less dollars to spend and the $600 million market isn’t growing. And so without any market growth, there is no chance we were going to get to grow our business.

When you try to manage a business that isn’t growing, it’s hard because everybody wants a raise, everybody wants to hire more people, and not only do you have to say no, you actually have say, you have to do more with less if the business isn’t growing. And that’s a different kind of leadership than starting businesses and growing them when they can grow.

Interviewer:                       What advice would you give people on exiting the business and selling because obviously you’ve done this several times? What things have you learned that is being helpful when you go down that path?

Patrick:                                 I almost think you have an obligation to your customers and to your employees and to your investors to find a home for a business that you can’t grow because businesses have a life-cycle. And a business that isn’t growing that’s mid-sized or small that’s in a standalone environment isn’t going to thrive. I mean, it’s just not a good place for people that work there because they won’t have a career paths. It’s not a good place to try and convince investors that you’re going to be there, paying dividends or whatever it is, it’s just not good.

The life-cycle of these small businesses ultimately is to be acquired when they can’t sustain growth. And so you just got to face into it and say, all right, now it’s time.

Interviewer:                       And move on. Talk about your customer relationships that you build listening to the customers because if you gained that much of a market share … I mean, of course you’ve got great technology and services, but what … There’s obviously had to be some other stuff and how you’re building the relationship with these customers that separate yourself out from the other people that were in the industry and probably just in general technology to get that much of a market share in any market?

Patrick:                                 We had a very good reputation, and I think for a couple of reasons. I think one is, the product worked, and that’s important. We ran that business for 13 years, and we never really got dragged into any sort of legal issues around the product functionality not working, or meeting requirements or contracts. So we ran a good business. It was clean.

I think another reason why people had such loyalty to us is that, that whole market for voice over IP had a lot of really big players in it, CISCO, Avaya, Ericsson, Alcatel, Norton, I mean, over the years there were giant companies. And there was some small companies in the business, Sonus, Acme Packet, and a few others that had really credible products and people just loved the small businesses. It was almost an advantage for us. We could be responsive, we didn’t have bring out three inch stick contracts every time you wanted to have a discussion. So people liked that about us.

And I think for us, we were the last component that went into these solutions. And we were in the middle of the solution. And people had problems, and they’d come to us and say, gee, this doesn’t work, can you fix it? And they knew that no one else would fix it without being paid. And we frequently did fix it. So we had people liked us and-

Interviewer:                       And you solved their problem. You saw they were in pain … It’s like of Apple today, if I call Apple about something, they’re helping me and they’re going to do whatever they can even if the problem is not theirs. And that makes me want to be more of a loyal user because I know if something happens, I can call them and they will solve the problem. They won’t sit there and say, it’s going to cost you $59 to fix this, they will just stay on the phone and help me solve it.

Patrick:                                 Exactly. And you might say that it was the support and systems engineering hand-holding and problem solving that we did that-

Interviewer:                       But it’s the promise that you kept to people too. You said what you were going to do, you built it, you executed on it, and then you supported them around the edges and things that they needed to do.

Patrick:                                 These programs were very successful at these companies, so all of our customers at Acme Packet the people that ran those programs did very well. I mean, they had met all of their goals, they hit the mark on in terms of quality, in terms of return on investments, so they all did well. And so they had a good feeling about us.

Interviewer:                       So you sold the business, what happened before and then eventually you got here, so how did that iteration go? How did that pass go from some-

Patrick:                                 Yeah, after we sold the business, Andy left … There was no real place at Oracle for a CEO, so he left fairly quickly. And by the way, Oracle treated us really well, great company. Everyone talks about how bad they are, I think they’re actually pretty good.

Interviewer:                       Well, obviously, they did grow the business, they have to be otherwise in continuing forward and integrate all these other businesses and …

Patrick:                                 I mean, we tried to buy a couple of small companies at Acme Packet, well, we did buy three or four companies at Acme Packet. The way Oracle buys companies is amazing, really well-done. I learned an awful lot by watching-

Interviewer:                       But what do they do well that other people are not … Because I know that people probably would know like what’s their secret or [crosstalk 00:26:47]?

Patrick:                                 They have this rip the bandage approach that is phenomenal.

Interviewer:                       What’s that?

Patrick:                                 Well, when they buy you, there is always integration issues, multiple systems problems with old ways of doing business that they don’t want you to do. And rather than do a two-year project to build all of the new systems, run them in parallel and then cut over, they literally will just say, just do it. So people will say … I’ll just give you an example, so we were using salesforce.com at Acme Packet, which is an arch competitor of Oracle. So they buy us, and they say, okay, so you have to get off of that. And we were assuming that they’d give us two or three years to migrate off or find a way to transfer all of the data. And they said, we’re not going to transfer any of the data, we’re just going to shut it down, you guys have to type it all back in.

And so all of the sales guys, well, that means we’re going to stop selling because we have to go and type stuff in, and they said, that’s okay. And literally the sales ground to a halt, no sales were being made, the business ground to a halt for about six or eight weeks while everyone just got on to the new systems and then we were up and running.

They were smart because they also had very reasonable quotas for the sales guys. They knew that they were going to hurt us. They knew that was going to happen because they’d done it so many times and between reasonable quotas and between fair treatment of everybody, I think 85, 90% of the people felt they got treated very fairly. They were able to rip the bandage and get the business converted to their way of running-

Interviewer:                       A lot quicker than-

Patrick:                                 Very quickly. Oh, yeah, very quickly.

Interviewer:                       Which in their ROI I guess they thought would … Instead of two, three years of doing it, yes you’re not productive for eight weeks, but then we don’t have to sit there for a couple of years and work with the other system and have to [crosstalk 00:28:48]

Patrick:                                 And they buy 40 companies a year. I mean, how could you ever not … So they’re very good [crosstalk 00:28:54]

Interviewer:                       So how culturally, did they do anything that got people integrated better on a culture side, that you saw, or was it more of this process of getting everything integrated?

Patrick:                                 I think their culture … They don’t tell you what their culture is or they don’t describe it, but if I had to guess, everybody that introduces themselves at Oracle says by which acquisition they joined Oracle. Oh, I came in with this company, or I came in with this company. And maybe it’s because we were not their core sort of database business, we were in their peripherals, but it seemed to be the culture of the company was about being acquired and joining up and … Everyone said, if you stay here three years, you’ll stay forever, and I think that’s true. I think that they treat people fair and it’s a comfortable place to work.

Interviewer:                       So why did you end up leaving then? Because obviously you left.

Patrick:                                 Well, I did leave and they were treating me very well, so it needed to be a good reason to leave. Now I made a lot of money at Acme Packet, so I didn’t need to work, but I wanted to do something. I was too young to retire, so this five other founders in here that are engineers worked really had at Acme Packet, but weren’t independently wealthy. And they were constantly trying to start a business seeking my guidance. And they had terrible ideas. And they just didn’t think things through, and we would help them by introducing them to some venture people, and help them by getting meetings with potential customers to discuss their ideas, and they were just doing a really horrible job. And I thought, well, I need to help them out. We did come up with the idea for what we have-

Interviewer:                       Why did you feel like you needed to help them out?

Patrick:                                 Because they’re good guys. And besides I like … What am I going to do? I had to do something, I had to work. So we had a couple of meetings and we said, we agreed that we wanted to start a business then had to set about finding a market that we wanted to participate in.

Interviewer:                       So then what did all end up doing? What it this business here?

Patrick:                                 Yeah.

Interviewer:                       Okay. Oh, I didn’t know that … Okay, pivot right into here.

Patrick:                                 Yeah.

Interviewer:                       And then Andy joined up or he …?

Patrick:                                 Yeah. There was seven founders. Six of us sort of agreed to start the business, and then the six voted, let’s go see if Andy wants to participate. And we decided we wanted to have him as well. So he was the last one in. But I think it was by unanimous. We looked at each other and said, we need Andy.

Interviewer:                       So bring the band all back together on the way?

Patrick:                                 Yeah, I think so, yeah.

Interviewer:                       And so what’s your philosophy? Because obviously you’ve heard a lot of different things you’ve been doing, what’s like one core philosophy that you really hold up high?

Patrick:                                 I think you always have to do the right thing, and not just by the investors because obviously you have to do right by them, but by your employees and by your customers, you just do the right thing. Just treat people right, if you really screwed up at a customer, give them their money back. Whether you’re right or wrong, it doesn’t matter, if they are not happy, they’re not using the product. Just do the right thing, that’s really what we try to do. We always ask ourselves, is that the right thing to do? Then we try to do it. Sometimes it’s hard, but that’s we do.

Interviewer:                       What doe that come from? What philosophy doing the right thing, is it something you grew up with that you learned then, or is just something that you …?

Patrick:                                 I don’t know. I know we saw a lot of shenanigans in the late 90s and early 2000s at other companies, and maybe it’s a fall out of that. It’s just what we’ve always done. And it isn’t just me or Andy, it also with the CFOs we’ve had, we just always tried to do the right thing.

Interviewer:                       Got it. What separates a great leader from a good leader from your perspective?

Patrick:                                 Wow, I read that as one of your pre-questions and I was trying to think about a good answer-

Interviewer:                       Because I know people they’re watching and listening to this, they really want to know how do I take my leadership to the next level? And they maybe very successful now, but people are always looking on new ideas and nuances and things because often it’s a one or two degree change in what you’re doing can give you massive lift.

Patrick:                                 I think you’re right, and I think Andy our CEO is a great leader. I think he has … I’ll give you an example of a great leader. So when you hire people, really key people, you expect them because they’re leaders and they have leadership experience one would expect that they would be able to bring lots of people with them, follows, if you will. People that they could convince to come follow them and people that would want to follow them. And invariably, that’s the true test of how strong a leader is. Like you can use a retain search and bring in a top leader and pay him a lot of money, but if he doesn’t have 20 people that love him and want to be with him, then you’ve hired the wrong guy. And time and time again that’s happened.

We hired two very senior people at Acme Packet, I’m not going into too much detail because I don’t want to criticize them. But one of them came on board and brought literally 20 people that we didn’t know we needed and spent huge amounts of money and built a great organization and these people loved her and they followed her from multiple jobs. And we also hired someone to come in and run a bigger group of engineers and very senior level job, and he didn’t bring anybody. And so he didn’t anybody. And we said, hey, we’re looking to hire people, who do know? Nobody. So I think one was a great leader and the one was a good manager. And I think that’s the difference to me.

Interviewer:                       What’s your philosophy on hiring now? Because obviously you’ve been in a lot of different companies and a lot of different organizations. How do when you hire people what do you ask them, how do you think about these hirers, like what goes through your head like today if someone was going to come in for some position, how do you think through the hiring process? And how is that evolved and changed over time?

Patrick:                                 Well, that’s a very, very good question because we argue about that a lot internally here. This company, we’ve done the best hiring we’ve ever done. We made the least mistakes and have the greatest and best teams across the board. We’re now using and applying tests with all of our engineers, and finding that to be very helpful. I mean, it’s a three hour test, so if you want to work here, you got to take a three hour test. And that seems kind of … Right away, most people say forget it. I have kids, I’ve got a wife, I can’t spare three hours, yeah. It rules out people that don’t-

Interviewer:                       That’s an interesting thing that one little test it’s almost-

Patrick:                                 Well, it’s a three hour test.

Interviewer:                       Well, it’s three hours but three hours in a career that your going to spend time in seems pretty minimal. It’s just interesting to see that the bar for someone is that low that they’re not wanting to take a test.

Patrick:                                 Well, the test is also illuminating in a way because they can pick the language they want to use. They take the test and then it gives us something to dialogue with them as though it was real work. We get a chance to say, why did you do it this way, or you know. Just as though we were working. And that really helps give us a way to sort of role play what it would be like to work with person.

So the combination of people that won’t take the test and the improved interview process, we’ve hired very strongly our engineering team. And I think that’s the hardest function, to hire properly. I think it really is hard.

Interviewer:                       So the role playing actually sounds really interesting because then you’re really able to see what the make is the person, right? Not just how they’re solving the problem, but how they think, how they communicate, how they collaborate, how they’d solve a problem. I mean, you can probably get into people’s values, morals, ethics and everything else if they line up with sort of your thing of doing the right thing, or would they skip corners, or what they want to do?

Patrick:                                 Exactly. No, that’s exactly right. The test itself is very hard and almost no one does well on it-

Interviewer:                       Do you care as much how well they do on the test, or how they answer questions, or collaborate and talk to through this situation, or what’s …?

Patrick:                                 I think that the latter is the key, but if they don’t do well in the test, it’s unlikely. If they do really badly on the test, it’s unlikely that we would even waste time.

Interviewer:                       Okay, got it. How do you view, this point in your career, risk taking? Like how do you see …?

Patrick:                                 The other side of risk taking is what if you didn’t do something? I mean, it’s balanced. It’s between … People think, oh, wow, you’re an entrepreneur risk-taker. I don’t think any of us are better here.

I remember there was a young guy that was trying to start a business that worked for me at Oracle, and he said, gosh, he just isn’t sure about it. And I said, “Well, he’s trying to talk me into investing in his business.” And I said, “Why would I invest in your business if you won’t quit your job and do it.” Like if you’re that unsure, why would I do it? And he goes, “Well, gees.” And so I asked him, I said,” how much money do you have in the … And how long could you last without a paycheck?” He said, “I can probably go six months.” And I said, “Why don’t you just go do this business, and you’re either going to be successful or you’re not.” He goes, “That’s true.” And I said, “what’s the worst that could happen?” He said, “Well, I could fail.” I said, ” What would happen then?” “I have to get a job.

I said, “You probably have no trouble getting a job, right?” And he was pretty confident because he was a very senior guy, lots of good experience, that he could get a job. I said, “So really you have the capital to take a chance and if you won’t take a chance on yourself why would anyone invest in you” And so I said, “No one will invest in you if you don’t do it yourself.”

And I think that’s true, a lot of people run around trying to raise money but still have the job, and you’re like, well, gosh, you’re either all in or you’re not. And the risk of not doing it and staying in his case, staying at Oracle, would have been that he would have been miserable or not happy.

So he did quit, and he did go start the company. He had trouble raising money. Ran the business for a year and a half, sold it, probably broke even in terms of what he would have made had he stayed at Oracle. And now he’s got a really good job at a different company that’s a startup. He realized that he’s an entrepreneur himself, he realized that. But he’s at another small company and he’s doing quite well.

Interviewer:                       Last question for you is, when you look at other entrepreneurs, what do you think is the make of the people that end up being successful and those that don’t? And I know it’s a really broad generalization but obviously you’ve seen a lot of people in a lot of industries and spoken to people and has to be some things in your head that you see that really jump out?

Patrick:                                 Well, in our sector, in our high tech sector, and I don’t know anything about biotech or anything like that, but in our sector the people that focus and the science I think tend to fail more than the people that focus on the markets. California, that’s where everybody does all their consumer stuff, but over here in the Boston area, we’re more of a commercial, selling to enterprises startup area. The companies around here that’s kind of what we do. I think it’s actually quite interesting because the companies and the people that start businesses trying to take a patent or take a technical idea and say it’s better, don’t do well. The companies that really understand markets and really understand the customers and where products and technology how they impact customers, those guys-

Interviewer:                       [inaudible 00:41:49] that sounds like this psychology and emotions as well as … I mean, and the market itself may fit into that as well with the people?

Patrick:                                 Yeah. I think so. I think engineers tend to make lousy … Engineers who tend to make lousy entrepreneurs in general because they focus on … They think it’s logical and it’s not. And they also focus on technology instead of really what the true value proposition is to the rational buyer. The consumer is not a rational buyer but a business is. And so-

Interviewer:                       And solving the pain?

Patrick:                                 Yeah.

Interviewer:                       And the more the pain, the more they have to buy it.

Patrick:                                 Yeah.

Interviewer:                       And get on with that. Well, thanks a lot today for joining us on executive breakthroughs. It was fantastic having you on, you shared a lot of great insights and all these wonderful things that about build the company be successful, and the culture, and hiring. So thanks a lot for being on the show.

Patrick:                                 Well, thank you very much. Appreciate it.

Interviewer:                       Well, thanks it was fantastic, great. A lot of great nuggets and information that’s like a lot of fantastic things. It was like it could have gone on for a while.

Patrick:                                 Enjoy your socks.

Interviewer:                       I will. I can always use another pair of socks. So they’re always a good thing to have on there. So it is, it’s wonderful.

[Star of Transcript]

Interviewer: Hello and welcome to another episode of Executive Breakthroughs  and I have a very exciting guest here Becky Powell Schwartz and she is going to lay a lot of insight on her career, her transitions and a lot of other things on leadership and building teams and so much wonderful information, you’re going to love it. So, thanks for coming on the show today.

Becky: I’m excited; it’s great to see you.

Interviewer: It’s great to see you too.

Becky: I’m excited to see your journey and all the success that you have.

Interviewer: Thank you, I appreciate it. So, I love to start to talk about you know where you grew up, and a little bit about your family and just define about your entrepreneurial journey. I always talked about people’s story so can people understand where they came from then a lot of it makes a lot more sense when we talk about what you’re doing in your career.

Becky: So, I grew up in …. and I am the oldest and both of my Parents were older in terms of, my Dad was in his middle 30s, my Brother and I were adopted when I was growing up, my Parents were a lot older than my friend’s but now they would be contemporaries.

Interviewer: when did you get adopted?

Becky: I was adopted at birth. Back then, it was a little different. And so, growing up, I had a lot of great things around me physically but emotionally was very difficult. My brother had a lot of emotional challenges, drugs, alcohol, from a very early age. So, I had to learn to be pretty independent and take care of myself emotionally. And so that is kind of one of my bedrocks and one of the foundations for me that’s helped me I think to be successful in a business. My father and ……enough was a Corporate Executive and at age 50, decided that he was going to leave the corporate world and he was going to start commercial and residential Real Estate; and so he did that for 25years until he died. That was his second career.

Interviewer: Why did he decide to quit corporate America?

Becky: I don’t know I was little; I was like 6 or 7.

Interviewer: It’s really fascinating because people just don’t get up and quit a job [right] and start something else like that at that age.

Becky: I don’t know but I was young. I do know that while he was doing his corporate job, he had a farmyard and He was also building houses with my uncle. So, he was always doing two things.

Interviewer: So, he was always Entrepreneurial, he probably got it from the salesman from his Dad’s right always doing sort of multiple things?

Becky: Exactly!

Interviewer: He was pretty busy; then it must have been when you were growing up? Was it hard for him to be present?

Becky: That was part of the challenge and so you know, I was just asking the C.E.Os that I work with, when you were growing up, who was the most like influential to you, as a leader? And it was really an interesting exercise; that I had to think about it myself and what I realized was that, there were different people, but it wasn’t anybody really in my family because my Dad, I was inspired that he was so busy but…

Interviewer:  He wasn’t around but he wasn’t really around, what about your Mum?

Becky:  My Mom was around kind of, but she was not a happy person. So, there was a lot of conflict in our family with my Brother. My Mother was a club champion as a golfer, she was she was an oil painter. She’s kind of not really a happy person. So, my opportunity was kind of; either dig in or dig out, but I just dig out.

Interviewer: Why do you think at that point reflecting back, you decided to dig out? Or step away, a lot of people don’t dig out. They implore or something else happens in their lives.

Becky: You know I learned early on that my faith was really my pedal and so I prayed a lot and I said you know I’ve got to figure out a way to have not get stuck in all those. It was very negative, very challenging not a happy place. I don’t care, I wanted to be happy.

Interviewer: Where did you find your refuge?

Becky: My Friends, my Church, not my school. I was an OK student. Looking back now, there was a lot of noise going on. So, I wasn’t really focused you know I wasn’t like in Clubs, you know I didn’t do that. I was working. So, my way to get out was to work. Either to Babysit or to take swim lessons, you know I was introduced to the Y.M.C.A. when I was in [not clear] by my French Teacher and so volunteer in which got me into all this work at the YMCA College you know I was doing [not clear] I did swim lessons and I always had a second job.

Interviewer: You’re kind of like your Dad; you followed the multiple job pattern.

Becky: I love to do something, I wanted to get out of the house, I wanted something, I want do something else.

Interviewer: So how did being adopted, I guess affect you is it interesting as you talk to people who had that experience. Some people just roll through life; some people accepted them in many different ways, they had to come to a different realization, some people went back and try to find their birth parents. How did all that sort of…?

Becky: So early on, my Parents said you know before you go to school, you know they tell your adopter that you were chosen. I took the high road. My Brother for his entire life could not deal with it. So, we have two people exactly in the same family. One who really was challenged by, one who said let’s just it. So, I that was me. And so I just kind of took the high road and I said OK I’m chosen, I use it you know talk about it. Probably when I was about in my pre-teens, I wonder who my parents were and I said by time I’m 16, I’m going to get the hospital get my birth certificate to figure that out. Well then, I became like 19 and years have gone by I never really thought about again. And so for me, it only became important for my health reasons because I wanted to know kind of what you know did I have any health risk and [sure] I’ll probably not till I was in my 40s did I actually tracked down my birth mother and Indiana was the closest of Texas was open, I was in Texas by then by then and so through, actually when my father but I found an organization that helped me find a door so I was able to connect not physically with my mother but through a bag of corn and so I found that all the information that I want to know and so for me, if you can imagine, you grew up in a home where you’re a little bit disconnected from your Parents you have a little bit of hope, right? And some of that also leads to a lack of confidence and as a Leader, you’ve got to be confident. Sometimes I think I get to my life. And see it that you have to get the evidence for yourself; and so for me that was like a big hole it closed. The mystery was over. I have the facts that I needed. I chose not to move forward and really me because her family didn’t know about it, her husband didn’t know about it, her children know about it, only her mother knew. [Wow] And so it was like you know you’re on and she was a janitor and I’m in a small town in Indiana, she was a jeopardy whatever they called, by the way did you have this Child? You can imagine the challenge that what the on the rest of the problems. So, I feel like I had a lot of grace that was a that the Parents that I had, even though there were challenges that you know that’s an opportunity for me which is kind of how I look at life but what I try to say everything is an opportunity to learn.

Interviewer: So, when growing up not having a loop,  were there confidence issues?

Becky: Yes.

Interviewer: How did you overcome? How did you overcome that because it is one of the things that the confidence conundrum for P.S.A. can’t get it and is because we don’t have confidence we don’t have the evidence in the competency of knowing  because the only way to take leaps of faith in order to get there to be more confident so

Becky: Two things; No1, I always had a lot of people who believed in me probably more than I believed in myself.

Interviewer: But it’s an important thing, to be around  people to have that believe strongly and saw an optimism in you.

Becky: They saw a lot, I did have one aunt but mostly my friends that I grew up with that I’m still friends with. I mean she was a safe haven for me and she still to this day I mean, we’ve been friends we’ve been like 9. She lives in Florida and my one of my college surety. She would say OK we’ll be going to get involved in something you know that I’m going with you to try this I’ve never done before but I’m going with you you’re still doing that. And so, those people, I’ve had several people in my life who believed in me. You know when I started the business, my Boss he was a seam out that point. She said you know we cut your position open and use are you coming or not it’s something. What do you do I don’t know but I’m done with the corporate life. Choose to start as a summary of your place, that was 1n 1998. And she always believed in me far more than I ever believed in myself and then of course then it you know then it takes over so that you have the evidence and you believe but I also put myself in a lot of new situations. So, I put myself in an uncomfortable situation. I’m kind of courageous in that way, and when I’m afraid to do it, I do it anyway because that’s how you build confidence you know starting the third career and you know working you know building C.E.O. groups you know all of that work with C.E.O. since 1981. But going out is a whole different thing, now a different approach.

Interviewer: A whole different capacity. So you went to college?

Becky: So, I went to Ball State University was OK Letterman’s Top hundred a site which

Interviewer: I went to Indiana University for undergrad so I know.

Becky: You did? Are you from Indiana?

Interviewer: Chicago

Becky: So I started, I was going to be a Physiotherapist, that’s what I always wanted to do, but I could not have science all that. So, I could follow the test and they figured that social work so I was in one of the very first classes that had a Bachelors Social work. So, I was going to save the world and so I stayed in Muncie which is where a Ball State is based and I was a school social worker and I worked with a learning disability and Emotionally disturbed and I was an intern, you know and I worked with a teenage mothers. And so, my first Husband was an Architect and so we decided to leave you know come to Texas because Dallas was at that point so when I came to Dallas I waited tables which was one of my other jobs that I did all through college and I had a chance to go to work for the YWCA and I was a Program Director which I was basically a Marketing Director I was in charge the operations of the building. Put off the lights, talk to be groundskeeper who was Hispanic, I did not speak Spanish. And I started a program for teenage mothers there so I’ve always been kind of a fire starter if you can say so created that program is generally funded and that program and up until a few years ago was still in the eyes stage. But in that role what I found was that as a healthy profession not that great I was more of a you know I didn’t know what the goal was, the object is you know I want to have a [not clear……] I want to have accountability can always do that when you’re working with you know and that social work. So, that’s kind of how I started.

Interviewer: How did you kind of….

Becky:  So what happened was, is that interesting I was kind of the challenge with the no accountability, no bottom line performance, and so I’ve just started talking to people, I connected with the like through my sorority alumni and her husband was the owner of what was then the Dallas Fort Worth Business Journal [OK]. so, I went there as a Marketing Director, I had no clue really what was marketing and I don’t really know what that was for, I was the only non-family member. [Oh Wow ] Yes, it was a great experience, I stayed there all of 3months. I came to live on. And in this course we had school once all that stuff I’m quitting my job! I’m quitting my job, I’m going to the wait tables and then figure it out and then also I’m going to start a business. So I quit, I went to wait tables and I started a consulting business where I went to non-profits and saw all the marketing plans.

Interviewer: How did you just go in and he said you just quit and I relate Yeah but again you just did this for me to talk to people about this and figure this out?

Becky: I just did. I just said I’m doing this.

Interviewer: So how do you how to take that leap. Like that’s because that’s something that people really big problem with. You know when I read something about the 5second rule were you know trying to decide in five seconds or not that a difference so how do you make a conscious decision to keep making leap, that’s a pretty aggressive leap of faith to go see a list or a business and figure it out and just do it.

Becky: So now, most people who know me would say that I probably did a lot of research. Because you know me think I done a lot of you know I’ve done a lot of research. So, I might not have done like traditional but in my head, I’m kind of figured I’m already feeling them and figuring out something a lot going right. So, I’m going to lead for whatever I get and I have these supporters who say hey you should go do this; so it wasn’t just me, it was people saying up to do this my letters out what that look like.

Interviewer: So, it’s a combination of yes you were having the capacity to do this probably having done in the past all right building the support because

Becky: I think that’s one thing I want to really pull out of really they don’t have the rights for people around the I love cheerleaders I might have outside of church a lot of other charities and I hope that I do the same for other people. But I also have people say by inspired me and say that’s what people really love to see

Interviewer: That’s a critical thing about deliberate. About having people that are telling you the truth right and able to see or don’t want to fight and point them, they can communicate to you because it means you’ve developed a relationship with them, they can communicate that with you.

Becky: That’s why I love what I do, really

Interviewer: That’s pretty We’re all people have the final sayings with inside of other groups of people that they have to join it’s not necessarily their friends or people around them are giving them that level of insight

Becky: Yeah I have people who’ve been they’ve all work so they all have great they all different kinds of experiences some of them have been entrepreneurs, some of the corporate people are just that have really different you know it’s very… So I guess my family I mean that kind of like, I jump even when I’m scared. I do it anyway you know I don’t let that fear. You know I guess and I personally don’t like to hide so I feel like they’re trying to figure…

Interviewer: You think there’s something in how you build your relationships that creates that in a way where people reciprocate that back you mean that support and also they’re telling you the truth because that again it must be something you’re doing in order to facilitate that because that’s just not a normal thing, I think most people will get that as much as you’re getting from other people around.

Becky: It’s a give and take, it can’t just be you know I don’t, I’m not a taker, I’m a giver. Yes for me that’s one of the things I love, I always want to say, how can I help you? Know and so and I’ve had relationships where people did say, I’m done. [Yes] I’m done, it’s not I’m done so that’s part of friendship I want, I’m going to be direct with you; you’re in the direct with me. I don’t want when the dressing and I want to come you know I want you to be direct that’s the best friend that you can be that tell me something I don’t want to hear and sometimes you know there’s a lot. We don’t want to hear

Interviewer: Yes, we don’t want to be direct with people, [right] tell them the things they don’t want hear in a way that’s tactful and respectful [right]

Becky: Sometimes I say well sometimes not though I guess I didn’t a person through some really bad I mean I have to say yes I work as I could be but something like that knock over the head sometimes I would say the way that I learned is that as I like put my hand on the stove life in my hands you know that’s our attention.

Interviewer: Interesting, and so, then you started this business?

Becky: And so, I started this business so the goal was I was going to wait tables and I was going to try to figure out what I was going to do when I grew up. And I was also going to have this little side business. And so, I made goal of every week that I had a certain number of touch points and I had to have at least 10interviews a week that we did all this other stuff right and I made a list of about 20 different careers that I thought I want. Do I want to go to Law school? Do I want to be in the hospitality industry? You know do I want to be in advertising P.R? And so I just plan was I would go and I would just start asking people do you know somebody here? Do you know somebody here? Every person I met with I would get two more people and I built this huge big list and through that, I figured out that probably the best place for me was Advertising and Public Relations. Because I was kind of doing it, so I sent out these direct mails. So I got you the yellow pages which I know it sounds like I’m 100years old and I just advertise and I just send out a whole bunch I love to go on holiday and vacation and I come back and I get a call from a lady who literally her office is maybe a mile from where we live, like literally down the road. She was the P.R. maven of Dallas, I went to talk to her I was with her 3days/week and I had my own business 2-days/week. It was for yellow star she still is but I learned so much from her.

Interviewer: Did you send her direct mail?

Becky: I sit I can all I saw these people advertising I just sent it to set these people and I would just start follow up if she called me and she thought me so I’m not really sure what to do but it was a real clear on that wasn’t real sure but I had this you know I need somebody that help me you know write releases whatever and I said OK I’ll come down we had this little office

Interviewer: And she just said do a few days a week and you made an agreement?

Becky:  Yes I did 2-days my own clients and 3-days and I did that for hours with her for 3-years and I’ve been transitioned out of my own find someone with her and so I’ll learnt a lot and worked on a lot of you know we open up we were a lot in the hospitality and Real Estate, so we did a lot of that and then I had a chance to go to work at division of Federated which now is known as Macy’s but used to be center of the Folies. And so, I went to become their Events Director. So, I was in charge of very card give away, store opening, cosmetics, fashion show whatever. And I had like 6-7 people reporting to me, so that was really my first and only kind of corporate job. So, I was there for 8years and I did that for 3years and then all the Eastern stores are moving into the marketplace and so that’s when we had multiple media outlets and the traditional media was important and we were kind of getting beat up and we had all of our competitors and I talked about you know all the great things I said to the president. Then, I say I’ll create a position, Director public relations and I’m the spokesperson. And so I did that for about 8years.

Interviewer: So they created this position because you told them there was a need obviously I must do briefs a lawyer who said I agree with the president so I did

Becky: So I dealt directly with the President and the C.E.O.

Interviewer: How did you sway down because that’s bloody influence they create a position that doesn’t exist, I mean that’s a that’s a hard thing to do in a company to get to do.

Becky: I didn’t try actually I thought I took all my friends and I said these are the people who could you know these are the people you should hire, I don’t think it was going to be me. I just said we should do this. Probably, there’s another conversation I’m not sure it’s all about me but I think probably my Boss at that point was also very visionary realized the need for this and I pranced all my friends then you know and then the President said, why did you take this job? But I’m not really good writer, I wasn’t trying we don’t care a great writer you really great X. we’re going to this. So that’s what I did and then I was on the… tame of my Mars so that was my first larger you know so that was quite interesting and exciting and that’s where I got my experience really in doing press communication based on my first day on the job. Got a call from the President, I would have a really famous Doctor for a shot of a parking lot over there now and I have no car so I’ll write it out live you know people coming here and what I do I don’t know so you can see I’ve learned a lot on the job I mean really a lot of miles I’m left with really great instinct you know and trying to do a lot of research trying to you know just not out there

Interviewer: So what do you say to the people who try to get it perfect because a lot of people, the reason they don’t take action [right] is because they feel like they have to have it all [right] figured out [right] and I love to see your perspective also on the perspective people that you work for on having imperfect action they are getting better over time right because we are worried about their well-being judged that OK I don’t have a perfect [right] my Boss or other people will go down on me because I failed [Rice] on whether or not.

Becky: That was always you know some people are… I’m always motivated by fear so I was motivated that well, I don’t know what to do, ideas I don’t really know I’ve had a lot of people I call this how do you get to do this? You know I’d ask and then I would go about doing that? And then I would see I would get success right? its success kind of breeds you know looked down me,

Interviewer: So it was a little bit network of people you could call and good advice from get ideas from [right] so that’s also really important for people to be a part of groups have mentors, coaches. I’ve already done that but facilitate and also your career significantly faster because you know one thing say that you’re for a bunch of people. You got to figure out what to do and it’s hard to do

Becky: I remember that, I’m aware of that first one because I was like the good thing was, we didn’t have a right to be talking so I had like 45minutes of quiet that I could actually figure out what I was going to do when I got over there. And so I thought well my job is to curse at the brand in the reputation of my organization right while being authentic so highlighted that nobody told me that I mean I just in my D.N.A.

Interviewer: Words have been since a little kid like and so what I thought what we did the police department thought first let them because they have that now we can have some common over here.

Becky: And so that is a strategy right when you have some situation where you have law enforcement you want to be able on a crisis situation to have them talk first and then you’re just in real life or sorry I mean you know. So that’s how Harley as I live is just you know just like raw talent I guess out there and I watch a lot you know I had in Dallas we had an amazing group of women called Women in communication these women have gone up to be great leaders in communication and marketing that was a group where I can we help each other you know like somebody was in the sector some of the sector so we go and say Hey I’d only do this? That was a really important group for me you know I had different people that I had there was or there was the number one radio bring it out for 25years and then a man Ron Chapmen. He became tired I worked with him early on and I could go to him and you know ask him you know what to do. So I just had some great people that I aligned with, I had you know the publisher of the downswing is still Jim Washington you know he was a great he’s African-American leader and he was really instrumental in an initiative that I led with the downstairs in the natural history called The Great large ship that ever all the United States that was a pretty much a $10million business that we created from nothing and that part of that million dollars of that for the seed money for the pro.

Interviewer: How do you talk to people then?

Becky: So the perfect thing I’m sorry your answer to the thing is that I always felt like I was trying to be perfect. But I realized that that you have to make you can you will miss opportunities which I had missed opportunities that I did not respond, and you got to go with that 80/20 [Yes] that’s what you got to realize but you don’t know that some of us are you know wired differently you know some people really perfection but you cannot lead or be perfectionist. You can pick where are you know you have to be focused and you got to pick certain things that are the most important and then there are certain things you just have to left go and that’s a really hard thing for I think a lot of leaders I mean our lot in control. You know he’s Projected Index and that are not you know that tool but it’s an amazing tool and around selective days, it’s an assessment tool and so I profile, use it in my company and so you see kind of what their natural behavior is our right so a lot of these leaders I mean they have gotten because of that troll right yes left and so then we get to companies like you know trust that the core culture that’s what I call get a separate lation Yes you know is trust us remember or yeah exactly down the line that is caring is the key yes let’s kind of that kind of hype and then hand some of this now you know

Interviewer: One of the interesting things you build all these relationships and one of the things that I find is entrepreneurs are much better at it than people and in corporate America right and I run across a lot of senior leaders saying well you know build relationships later whether they say or whether it’s their actions? But what would you say to those people who are not doing that right now to encourage them also me fear as a motivator it seems to me, having those relationships allow you to take a leap of faith in have a lot more confidence and evidence that you could do them because of the people that you have around that, without that there probably would hinder your ability to either do that or be successful but

Becky:  What I think incorporation the lease is now my sister was up for a fact that for many years and really isolated they’re so busy right they’re so busy they’re not there are joining as many organizations if you look at organizations like American markets as you are say all those at least have a lot of people but a lot of people don’t even do it anymore. Right so it’s not as hard as they come to it honestly because they don’t have a lot of extra time. So, where they can’t reach up to those extra relationships right if it’s not in a work environment they can get it in Church, they get their neighborhood, they get another college alumni groups, you know they can get it on the golf course, there’s lots of different places that you get it. But you have to put every. In there takes a lot yet it takes a while for I was really blessed because I was working for 22years and so, I had this enormous band that I could go out and I was only limited by my energy which I have one and so, Still and so the thing is that that was a gift that I had that was a gift that I was able to make those relationships I’ve now been married for 11years and so what I know is that I have kids and family and all that stuff that I’ve been really happy for is that it takes that takes time away so as a leader in a company, where I and I see the leaders that I know where you have limited time still how are you going to spend that time? And if you’re today working a lot less than hopefully with your family right that’s the first place right you want to spend it with your family and where does it go so I think you do have to make a conscious decision as you know like well, how can I be better? What can I learn better? If I have these kind of relationships and maybe these relationships don’t what exactly like me yes right maybe there’s different right maybe they’re different and so how does that stretch me and so who lives in a push on that is organization push to get out there you do it yourself you have to want to do what

Interviewer: I think is interesting because one of the things you did early on was you had to leave the house people

Becky: Yeah I did, right

Interviewer: And so, it’s probably interesting that you know that you were forced to do it and then it became habitual and now it’s we’re talking about as a long story arc and have that right I think it’s always funny and sometimes inside a tragedy yes out of all this hardship that was going on, great happen great things happen actually some of the strengths that you have and greatness that you have now in mastery and I actually came out of that really tough family environment that forced you to do these things really high on and of course then you didn’t really understand it but you did it as a habits and oh you’re doing all right

Becky: So one of the other interesting things that kind that when I listen to hear you say that so when I saw my mother died when I was 21 side suspended for a bit just then married. My dad died a few years later and I literally 2months after I got divorced. So, I found myself kind of by myself because my Brother was still having those kind of challenges so I decided hey I’m family so I have my heart. So, to your point I went out and created my own family.

Interviewer: So, what’s a heart family?

Becky: Heart family are people that are connected with your heart. So, I have two Mamas, one just turn 100, the other is 85 and I have heart 5sisters.

Interviewer: How do you do this and how do you think about what you just made it up?

Becky: I decided, I want my own family and so I was single I was like I don’t know

Interviewer: That is such a great thing, I mean it’s funny, I don’t even I’ve never heard anyone say it was going to create my own family because if we talk people talk about that you’re born with your family your friends that’s righteous I can put it right with the differences that he said OK I have the that’s true, but now, All right we need to change the meaning of family right yeah people told me what it meant society has been you know I’m going to change it around to prove what I want and build it out. That’s interesting

Interviewer: And those women have been there and their husbands have felt that that my family doesn’t. And my biggest cheerleaders and then my husband is my huge Cheerleader for me, support you know when I decided to change my business I was going to go do this didn’t you know start the C.E.O. groups and executive coach and all that stuff, it was hard. It was hard harder than starting my business. And my husband, and those women are my Mama still my momma you know all right you know she’s up she just turned a hundred 3weeks ago and she’ll say can you hear groups you know what are you contacting? She’s 100years old, she’s my biggest cheerleader. So, the other I guess the other message of that is, when you think about mentoring and you think about your responsibility to write it and life is that I feel like I haven’t yet that maybe my mother didn’t mention me many I didn’t have a but then I’ve got two women that have loved me, gave me confidence who are my biggest cheerleader so it’s my responsibility and also the past that on which I have done my life you know so amazing it’s you know what I see…

Interviewer: That’s fantastic so we get out of your days and me see the White House after that was a next?

Becky: So that I started the power grid so after the power of the 1989 my goal was to go in and really make a difference and that was make a difference in helping them in terms of building awareness about their products or services you know what does that look like primarily using public traditional public relations tools and so I started and I. Learned completely early on is that I needed a team that was up to the by myself so I got a great lady who came in and she wrote for me part time and kind of helped me organize and so I mostly worked on local candidates and then in my fourth year I had my first national count which was seven eleven and it’s kind of took off. So, the goal was that we were and we worked. Industry leaders and retail and manufacturing some people like Starbucks, blockbuster, 7-eleven you know overhead or Hansen those kind of people that that’s the path that we were guys like really agency I have this network of fifty farms across the country so we have people at Seven like there is always work with industry leaders and really helping them from either brand awareness and traditional kind of promotions be our or it Brand after, after, protection from the crisis side that’s really my passion.

Interviewer: What was your biggest mistake or learning lesson and your sad time during that time of growing the power?

Becky: Two things- was a confidence thing was really have confidence in myself because as a leader you’ve got to be visionary, you’ve got to have a vision and you’ve got to trust your vision even if no one else trust it. Great leaders have a vision and there’s a lot of noise and sometimes there’s a lot of that’s not going to happen so I miss the social media market that was my big mistake. So, I could see it coming and I was like that to do it and I had my be you I had a lot of confidence in you know younger than me so I love that’s not a big deal so I thought OK fine OK I would see that but that I missed it.

Interviewer: And you think that because you didn’t obviously the conference began what about that person did that all sort of about coaching, or hiring you feel like maybe that person in retrospect wasn’t the right person for the…

Becky: No, she’s the right person those things she was with me for 13years, she now has her own agency she was I thought she was going to be the successor you know it didn’t work out, she went to work with a client that we kept that she left that clients are she has a very successful marketing business I’m really proud of what she’s accomplished. No, I just think it was the timing, you know and I could’ve we could’ve hurried up and kind of got on but it was; There always you know I had a business to say there are some things have to happen and I don’t sell such things do not. So, it’s the right thing.

Interviewer: Right now, we get to the end of ….tell people where you are now. Tell people of the different things that you’re working on.

Becky: So what happened in this 20+years that I happened business I had several times offer to take to buy and to sell and I was having a lot of fun and I didn’t want to sell OK. And so, the purpose of building a business is obviously to have a great asset at the end, right? And so, sometimes, we lose sight of that because we’re having a good time right and so the timing is everything and so when it came time the last time which is in 2012, I had a chance to sell and I spent a lot of the diligence on it and I decided that number one I never got hit by the recession where rock’n’roll I back it like everybody else did so why finances were not right so my numbers, I wasn’t going to really be able to sell for what I felt was worth you know yes I would get a lot of money, but not as much based on the efforts I was going to put up it was a great pivotal point for me. Because what I realized was I’m tired of this business, I’m tired of town I’m tired of that really what is my what’s my love? My love is really helping companies and really working with senior leaders C.E.O.s on this what I call asset protection how to end part of that is how to be a better leader, how to be a better communicator, as a leader right how do you anticipate high stakes events right and so that So what happened was that a beginning at the end of 2012, I kind of I had about 5people then I just ended up that I was left with about 3people and I said I’ve been rebuilt or I can I pivot over here to that’s all and that’s what I did so in that I worked with a temp company that had 11crisis in 12months. That’s a lot as it was during Obamacare so, I was in the health care space and so I realized wow we just this is crazy right? And that was a time when I got recruited by this stage took 6months for me to say yes and I said to David boy yet he was up best practice your first visit I did interviews to 2009 and this did you get it out of this it is the best practice so proud of your advisory board around science databases. About 21,000 C.E.O.s, Presidents and owners that are across the globe and so one side of their mental Marcus other midcap So they’re anywhere from a billion down to about five for a C.E.O. groups and so our sweet spot is somewhere between about 15million-250million about the pants are really that person the leader sure. Anyway so, I was so I was asked he said I think this is what you need to do and I might not have the office social right you know 6months I kept trying to say well I want in January 2014 and I oh my gosh, You know I’m already doing that and this is a chance for me to kind of be preventive right to be able to get people around a table, to be able to see the runway, oh this could happen right, if I don’t do this, or if I ignore my problem or my blindspot problem I held accountable so I started and sell out in 2014, so I now have three groups I have two C.E.O.’s groups that I have one trusted advisor group, my role is s for the right people around the room, I facilitate a full day session with the C.E.O. So I program that with speakers, content, and actual sizes and then we process issues and we have a proprietary way around getting clarity, around issues and the like executive coach in between, and I see  some private client and then I still do a little bit of crisis that protection as well so easy to do is the.

Interviewer: So, what you see today is the biggest leadership issues the people have

Becky: Focus actually the size of focus and clarity. Is that as a leader today, as a C.E.O. you have to know a lot of things and that’s very quickly right and so, being able to have the information that you need quickly, to make a decision is one thing that’s the benefit of having a group, I think that thing is really is. It’s really clarity is that, when everybody gets so distracted into the day to day right; and so as a leader you got to get out to be able to work on the business not in the business and that’s really what I love about

Interviewer: How does one get out of the business? What is it that you have to put in place? Or change your thinking?

Becky: To put it. Yes So one of the things is that you probably have an annual strategic planning with your team right and so sometimes, that strategic plan there are people that are assigned to different parts of that right so you can. If you’re real organizing  and discipline then we have to do this every month right. So, that’s what typically happens but a lot of what happens to you is that people do plan tonight they get off they just get so it’s so easy to go down this path, to solve all these problems so that’s what any product your advisor, No matter whether you’re white or whatever all the brands are that we have the goal is. The benefit is that you get out, so you’re looking at issues like it was the most important issue that you have to be solving? Are these like parties like big are they going to trample on you kind of issues are they you know they’re going to slowly, kind of just eat. And so you have to identify what those issues are. We have kind of a process that we use and so I like that it’s kind of a process that I kind of use not knowing that it was a process of you know I mean, that fits into right so, I think it’s and that’s the deliberate in every single month. So, it’s once a month, take a full day you look at you know your plans, you look at what is kind of coming up based on the issues that are being processed and executive coaching, what are those things that you bring to the group to talk about. it at the end of the year look we’re at were all were and were almost. We have second quarter right? And so I ran on body what did you know how do you know the first quarter goals, right? even if you have a board, here’s the it’s still a lot of people have a group to be able to come in and say you know he said you’re going to do that legacy employees right now right it’s a big challenge. So, we just kind of keep our plan for life form because people are going so fast and these people that started with you right? Who they took a reduced salary sometimes these are your mentors. And how do you deal with them nobody’s holding you accountable then then they’re over here right?

Interviewer: we will spend a lot of time of the industry to transition of the company actually the people that the skill set jack of all trades verses right actions

Becky:  So it’s deliberate

Interviewer: So how do you do it is a discipline a delibrate hire legal rights to get out of the business in take a look at it right and have people hold you slime from another perspective inside the businesses

Becky: That have different with the Financial Review right and some people might look at your finances and they might have a different perspective I have different experience.

Interviewer: And they can help you see that.

Becky: See that So I think that’s where that was the top of that I had always said that it out there can’t work that work on it.

Interviewer: So what advice would you have for women? There are women who are watching the show and listening, what career advice would you have for them in today’s world? In order for them to be successful, in order for them to find the things that the love? The balance that they need. What piece of advice would you have or pieces because you must be doing mentoring for other women right now for a lot of different groups.

Becky: so I think 1 is balance. I don’t really I think the different about it is different and I’ve always said that I think so I think that you have to plan. Balance is we kind of segment things right and I think it’s a wonderful challenge but I think it also just pulls at people because they’re always I mean, most of the women and children they’re feeling yeah I see this with my daughter, I see this with my sister’s children, you know that you always are how do you plan? It’s really we have whether we like it or not technology has forced us to blend, right? That doesn’t mean you’re on yourself on all the time I have I have actually. One of my CEO is a guy, goes home and he’s like he don’t have anything and I can make go on like that night he just separates. First thing is how do you highly blend? That’s one thing for women I think that thing is passion. You have to look for something that really that you really truly love because we’re giving a lot of ourselves right we have two jobs. We give a lot of ourselves during the day or that we know we have another job, so we got it we have to do something that we really love because that gives you positive strength. I think the third thing from a career standpoint is that find opportunities to put yourself in situations that are different in terms of you know within a corporation, different types of assignments, you know of financial assignments, if you’re in the marketing side, trying to find things or get that other thing. One of the big topics in a in a not profit or a board one of the big hot topics right now for women in leadership is hate board seats and I just let a panel discussion on this for our visit women in leadership network we have a conference and I did this in February and I invited three very successful women and one to corporate and one entrepreneur on how they found these paid work seeds and so one of the things that they talked about and one of the things that you’ll see is that you just have to get different kinds of experience.

Interviewer: How would one get experience?

Becky: Well it is that it’s a campaign just like you find a job; it’s a lot of work. It’s a lot of work you have to figure out like, I mean I’ve been around I’ve loved it there’s a link she has kind of the roadmap and kind of a class Kellogg is getting ready to do their first course in November. To help women get on pay board but this is a this a hot topic especially among corporate women and that women who are entrepreneurs, who own companies and want women on their boards. So, that’s one of the things you know there’s just came out with a study that showed only one in four managers are women. And so, the challenge is that we are making progress, but it is just. I think if you. I think you know what is great but it’s but you just have to feel that way and you got it probably work harder, that’s just the way it is.  There’s a lot of women are entrepreneurs just came out with I think the saxes and orange theory and I would just be that she started out like she was in her 50s she started that business Technology down space I forget her last site but you know she started that company you know that’s a huge big technology company and so I think that for women, that you’re confident and that support system is really important, really, really important.

Interviewer: What do you think that men Leaders can learn from this? Because one of the things that I find is on the whole topic. And so, I love to get your thoughts on how men can take what women are doing and implement it to up their game. Because a lot of time, men don’t really think like that. That they could leverage those skills inside.

Becky: I think the whole emotional intelligence of vulnerability, is something that as men and these are generally……We’re not taught that, I it’s interesting because I see dynamics I see this with my members you know I see it so I have women in my groups right when those women are there, it’s different. Because sometimes the women bring out the emotional side right, the men are of that side there on the facts side their own facts and also when they have conflict, that conflict always happens like in that meetings and afterwards they’re OK Women hold on to that because of their feelings and I find I’ve seen this happen in my busy work where there was maybe one woman and now there’s a little women and a group of men and the dynamic totally changed their kinder gentler they’re not as you know they’re there their directness, they’re direct but they’re a little bit more kind because the women are kind of neutralizing some of that I think some of that but I think the whole emotional intelligence and being vulnerable is something that you’re not taught.

Interviewer:  What would you tell men who are leaders? How can you  be more vulnerable? In your position as being a leader

Becky: So it’s interesting so I like to know what men have women in their lives. Do they have daughters? Do they nieces? You know do they have what is it their relationship the girlfriend or their wife right and so, I think that one thing is that you just have to it’s like this is you know you have cars and  ride, and you just have to take one step, one step, one step, one step, sometimes you have to go back. That’s where I’ve done a lot of things right that this cars that it seems scary right and you’re probably going to feel like yourself are vulnerable but the reality is that it’s going to feel really uncomfortable but you’re not used to doing it. So part of it is. Just asking people like, how are you?  But I really heard one of the ones I was on and my career when I worked at Federated my C.E.O. at my C.M.O. did one to one. OK So that’s one hour full attention with me working on the business not in the business and caring about me as a person that was a great tool. Right to all I did it my entire career and I asked my C.E.O.

Interviewer: What questions were those one on one single pivotal ones that a lot of people miss or don’t ask about?

Becky: It’s not about checking the box what are all the things you have to do number one is, how are you? And being sincerely interested. And people that work with, just want to get the job done. I think that’s a lot to do first you got to be sincerely interested and then you got to listen. You know how are you? Sincerely, that’s a big thing.

Interviewer: Why these guys I just heard from your aspected So battle right now which it is it the fact that caring and you care about other people that they’re going to care more about their job and investment and that’s not on that plane be the isolated are they going to have people to talk to

Becky: it’s true I think that when you hear I’m not such a simple

Interviewer: It seems simple, like simplest things people miss right?

Becky: But I think if you care about other people it’s also likely two way street Yes right and so if you’re sincerely interested, that is one of the I’m always impressed with you know the leaders at Jackson’s vaulting here in Dallas and also the land, they truly care about all their people. They care and that makes a difference that caring that means there that I care about you know about the business you care about them so one thing is really how are you? I remember that was one of the first things we’d be in the middle of did all these things I. Would say to me what how are you I really. Got one of my very first E.-L. that worked for Jack and I thought you said he was the C.E.O. of I heard which was better at this hour and he had walked around the area and what I thought of wars he used to come in my office and said that I am. Something a lot of global So you can’t you know you can’t do that right but that’s the happy that’s huge, that huge Hearing about by your people so in that one to one person at how are you as a person right how is it for and then what are the what is the most important thing we should be talking about today, like what are the three most important Right OK So that’s the other thing. What’s the most important thing we should be talking about today? So that those are some of the critical things that you know about. Those are some of the things we should be talking about today.  Today, up to the next level you know what are the challenges that you know what do you see trying to get at what are the biggest challenges and what I do to help remove some of those challenges because that is part of your role as a leader as some of those challenges are getting the tools.

Interviewer: Talking about that, what is your stance on personal issues and as a manager working with employee and helping them because. I find in working with all executives that you have significant personal problems, it impacts in a very high degree, in the performance. You can’t really get to the business if you don’t help the person but that’s as an outside person but is an internal company in most companies a matter. That doesn’t really count as much I don’t really see that person in helping us in shambles or problematic How would you. Help people with that or do you think they should or should be.

Interviewer: So. I work a lot of people the that were. So I am an professional I just kind of both it all comes together so we can sometimes more time on the person because socially the leader of that get away from the corporate side we had a corporate life psychologist we could just go in there I thought that was my life that I was doing that’s right and so when you say that I was like well. Help people so I did so to me it’s like yes because what happens is that you have to figure out if like you said that person is impacting their performance. Which are not quite that way but. You know what no it’s no no no it’s I can compartmentalize some people do it and some people do

Interviewer: I think yeah I believe in some people but there’s a point when their pain crosses over in the right. Way sort of down right brain up so you know

Becky: we have a lot of that labor laws H.R. issues I can’t speak to that I just think as a person that they are it’s a bright find that you care and that you want to help that person but that person also has to help themselves. So, in a corporation what are you prepared to do to help that person how valuable is that person to you right and so figure out that you need outside counseling you know and when I do the coaching on top by working with people that are you know my C.E.O. that might have people they might have issues that that’s something we have to do and I have to want to get those resolved as well. So, it’s a two way street

Interviewer: It’s a two way street.

Interviewer: Thank you for always wonderful introduction.

Insights we’ve been new in the show so how can find you reach out to work in the best ways we just me only Dan

Interviewer: So that’s a Best Buy is a fine man not all of that information. So right as I would like them to find me and I’d be happy you know help them in any way I can so well things again thanks all of you for joining in for another show of executive breakthroughs and we will back in next week with another fantastic show and another great guy so make it a great day.

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[Start of Transcript]

Interviewer: I have a fantastic Guest on the show today Dave Will, a serial Entrepreneur starting a new company ‘Prop Fuel’ which will get into a later and he’s been an EO and building relationships is what he does well and it’s I’ve researched you a lot and found amazing things and great insights and I’ve actually learned quite a bit about being an Entrepreneur and living in a startup world and exiting; So thanks for coming on the show.

Dave Will: Sure of course thanks, it’s actually nice.

Interviewer: Tell us a little bit about your background, where you grew up, your family because I think it’s great to give people insights where you came from so they can really understand your journey.

Dave Will: Yeah I wish I had a story about growing up in the plains of Africa or in school all there and you know living homeless and the thing that Tony Robbins he’s got some great stories. I don’t have a great grow-up story. Oh! let me rephrase that I actually do have a great grow-up story, it’s something I really enjoyed, my childhood was awesome you know we were lower-middle class, I grew up in kind of a nondescript part of Connecticut always going to New England boy and my Parents were married for a very long time until my Mother passed.

Interviewer: What do your parents do for a living?

Dave Will: My Mother was a Teacher; my Father was an Engineer OK My Father is still, is a really smart guy, like really smart guy and then he.

It’s for I must get a generation is my kids are really smart too my brother and I, we you know we get Celebes in school.

Interviewer: When you were going to school, is there anything that you loved or passionate about like studying or figuring things out?

Dave Will: I love the big cheese, that’s what we call that on the recess and assisting at look like a saddle and I don’t even know how to describe it I could probably of oblique drop picture there was this weird geometrical shape, it’s called The Big Cheese that’s what I loved in school. So, when it comes to what I loved in school, it was not the reading, it was not the writing and it wasn’t the Arithmetic.

Interviewer: How’s that?

Dave Will: So, that’s yeah I’m not an academic, which is a funny because at one point. I think it was it when I was actually so I left college and I went back to pretty traditional path and left college worked for a couple years a big Fortune 500 companies and then…

Interviewer: Why do you start on that path just work because it was like it seemed to be the natural way has things to do right?

Dave Will: Exactly! when your Mom’s a Teacher and your Dad’s an Engineer; Yeah and you grew up with this dream of one day making a hundred thousand dollars you know like if I could make a hundred thousand dollars in a career, that I’d look at that and I think my God that’s the talk about shooting for the stars, you know yeah I did not have great aspirations of walking on the moon. You know I grew up in it everything about my life growing up it was again it was a phenomenal childhood my Parents or family was wonderful what a great vacations now when I say that we I didn’t find an airplane till late high school I think and that was a school trip and you know I was in the Boy Scouts, I was in the marching band, I was in a great athlete, I developed late in life and I was an average student. So, I took an average path in life you know I worked for the big company.

Interviewer: And that’s S.A.P?

Dave Will: Not yet there was a label there so I went to college I got a job at the Fortune five hundred I got my M.B.A. and I know at that point interesting Lee enough I thought maybe I should be a professor because now I’m Gallo cocky and think I went to Penn State you know which is a top 25 Business school. Will it is it’s I say I like better because it’s funny you see that I thought…

Interviewer: What about teaching turned you on or excited you?

Dave Will: Access to the gym, access to the larking around campus just at the freedom that you have being a Professor on campus kind of defining your own career path, it wasn’t the reading, writing, arithmetic that turned me on, it’s so it is just you know I was young, I had all these strange per perspectives of how to create a career path you know, so my career path was focused on what can I get out of it as opposed to what can I dive into? You know is a totally different mentality and I went down that path from me.

Interviewer: What changed your perspective and what Seminole pivotal event or person real only made it all shift because obviously you’ve shifted gears in a big way from that thinking to where you are today?

Dave Will: It wasn’t necessarily a person as much as it was an event and the event was I got fired, so I worked. So, again I worked for Nilson Craft General Foods, MBA and Pricewaterhouse Coopers traveling nonstop to a good job, I had really good jobs and am making pretty good money. And then I didn’t want to travel as much so I found a niche boutique doing systems integration stuff and by the way, I worked for SAP for a very short period of time as an intern, a summer intern in between my M.B.A. And working for the small boutique, it just so happened that small boutiques don’t do so well when the bubble burst; Yes and so this is back in 2001 when technocrats you bubble burst and so now they’re not getting the business they need and so they look and figure out where is their greatest return. I was making a little more money than I should for what I was bringing into the business, they did the absolute right thing, and they fired me. So, I remember very clearly 10:30 in the morning 2001, in the spring was actually so it was actually in April. I remember walking to the Pier in Boston waiting for the ferry as I took the ferry and to downtown Boston from where I live and I called my wife from the pier to let her know I was coming home. And I remember as soon as I heard her voice I don’t think I said anything I just burst into tears. I imagined her and I could even hear our first born son is who’s 16 now, almost 17 and he was in her arms I could hear him cooing, blabbering talking about stuff. And she answered the phone and I thought we had just moved into this new home. And if someone affluent part of the South Shore of Boston, she wasn’t working and we have this baby. Shit! I just got fired and so you know in a heartbeat, my whole plan crumbled.

Interviewer: How were you feeling?

Dave Will: Oh Jesus! I was in tears, but what cause I mean the letting people down, did you think or hope no one ever expects that’s a great question so you know they say that you feel like you’re letting your wife down like every like son so I my 9months old son, my Wife, my Father.

Interviewer: Why your Father?

Dave Will: Well, they say that we’re always trying to please our fathers you know that’s something I read when I was, when we had three boys and as a raising Will I actually wrote this book called Raising Boys and so I was reasonably is one of the things I read which run through with me, no matter what stage of life around we’re always trying to impress our fathers. My father was a great Dad, he is a great Dad and there is nothing in particular he did that warrants me having to prove myself to him but it’s just something that that I think we as young men and adults always strive to do. Whether you come from an abusive relationship with your father wanted to prove to him that you’re a value or come from of a loving relationship with your father, you want to prove on that he was right. The latter is more true for me but regardless you know I felt like I had let other people down I felt like I’d been exposed like people need a little fraud now all of a sudden you know I’m not when I when I always said it was a being I’m not a not valuable to this company.

Interviewer: And you feel like an impostor or just being exposed to people just saw that you really couldn’t do? What you thought you could do?

Dave Will: I never felt like work was a part of who I was, very work was a place I went to, work was something I did, work was something I tried to get out of, and work is something I wasn’t very good at. So, did I feel like an impostor? I don’t know I felt like I lived for before 9 in the morning and after 5pm, it kind of it you know and even though I was 30years old, I wasn’t a kid you know, I was 30years old, you’d think by then I would have figured it out. Will I think most people do actually…

Interviewer: But as a people reinventing themselves now and you know way later on different stages of their lives, I think it’s challenging because everything changes different points and what you want or your things mattered to you from my experience yet in life and had it

Dave Will: It’s also possible that I mean I had lived a very comfortable life, I didn’t have a lot of hardship you know. We didn’t have a lot of wealth compared to a lot of people I knew either. But we had a very solid family I had great experiences in life, I was well educated. So, you know I needed something jarring

Interviewer: And this was something jarring. So, what did you do from this moment one of this moment propelled?

Dave Will: Yes, so I went home and I trimmed the edges so that’s And naturally as what anyone would do when you’re fired so it’s about noon, I’m home and not really hungry. So, no sandwich so what am I to do so? I trim the edges; so I remember that it’s are going out and I got my weed whacker and my wife, she doesn’t know what to do she’s just kind of trying to be as positive as possible and so I get the weed whacker and I think it was like 3-4minutes it and I sliced my finger open just like my mind was not there I was in a haze and weed whack in and that wasn’t weed whacker, it was like a edges, trimming the edges and in the blade from this is the thing trimming the edges, slices my finger and I got blown to look at a bone on my finger granted I could lose the finger and that would have been the greatest hardship my life or the point so but we did you know so I asked my wife, I said, I think we need to go to the hospital, so we get a car and again we’re new to town so I said. I know there’s a South Shore Hospital that’s like 20minutes away, let’s just go to this one I saw but it’s not that big a deal to is small hospitals fine so we go to this place that we don’t have to get on the highway just kind of around town never seen the sign for this hospital and so we take a left at the Dunkin Donuts and we’re going on the other 120yards or so and then on the left there’s this hospital and she goes into emergency just enough and I go in like this and like this and I cut my finger and might need some stages of some of this he says Will that’s that looks bad, you should go to a hospital like Oh Where am I And she says you were in a psychiatric hospital. So, that was my experience so that’s what I did that’s what I did when I got fired is I ended up going to a psychiatric hospital for the wrong reason but maybe it was the right place. So, ultimately I got a little scar that’s about it. To really answer your question I tried to get another job and I did actually, I got another job offer and I remember this feeling this is really dark feeling, it’s a feeling that I own that I have this feeling inside my head for the rest of my life but in my heart to remember thinking about this job and to commute into Cambridge Massachusetts and Tech company cool company cool job creator making about the same was making in my last job. The offer came through like within 2weeks of getting fired; sweet so I’ve even had a little severance and I mean perfect right yeah I should take. That I just didn’t want to it is just another whose is this point where I have hit this realization. That it’s just doing the wrong things and a friend of mine had come to me recently.

Interviewer: How do you figure that? I mean he just was just not passionate your dislike to after just do this another ‘9-5’ job all over again and like because…

Dave Will: You know there was a lot of fear knowing that that they thought I was much more capable at doing what they needed done than I actually confidence in, so going on the first day of the job I mean I sure I could probably learn it. But I His didn’t want to have a similar experience where you go into something with these people having expectations of something that you can deliver and you just got to figure it out

Interviewer: You’re just getting sick and tired of having to live up to these new expectations and you’re going to talk?

Dave Will: I’m a great chameleon, I did what I have a blended into what I was supposed to have the chameleon and so, I want to see him get dark feeling that the finances give you start feeling we have a dark feeling about something generally you don’t want to do it right? But we got to put food on the table and we did not have a big savings account.

Interviewer: So, what do you?

Dave Will: So, a friend of mine came to me with this is like with right around the same period of time for him I came to me with his name is Rick came to me with this thing called Web conferencing and that was back in 2001 OK So, he came to his web conferencing and said look I have a relationship so I think you can get us in licenses and I know a ton of people that need this stuff so, we actually had this acronym here and over the acronym but it stood for that tired old sales executive. That was exactly what it was but that was the person we’re going after not to be negative we weren’t necessarily insulting this person that was our persona, that was our target audience was the person that’s tired old and generally in the sales area and it did and by the way relative but somebody was late in their career now because you know typing with tons and fingers and this is a pre- phone from two and we wanted to hold their hand through this process so they weren’t going to just go by wed-X.. go to meeting didn’t exist yet. And didn’t go to meeting that we didn’t exist yet I don’t think so wetbacks was the only major player out there but we had licenses and we just started selling these things, reselling them and that over time evolved into the business that I sold 14years later to private equity, massive transition, massively pivoted

Interviewer: But you started out from nothing and got up to make these phone calls that mean [oh yeah a lot oh my God] that must have been the difficult if you had never done anything like that.

Interviewer: Oh my God! No for the first time ever, I made $40,000 my first year so I was making enough just to support a company I mean it’s making enough for the family in a new or at a fairly affluent area but when I got fired, then I come down making $40,000 a year which is really difficult to live on and again yet in this neighborhood with a baby and the word wife is not working not to mention debt from my M.B.A. and I’m sure we had a car loan and all this other stuff that we had to pay so you know I was making $40,000 in the first year and that was even debatable whether or not we could and that was $40,000 year that wasn’t like $40,000 profit that was $40,000 in revenue. I think we made the first year

Interviewer: Between you and your partner?

Dave Will: Yes So he had a full time job so he wasn’t getting there about an hour if you know that it was it was 50-50, I never thought about actually selling that business and I didn’t really sell that business and evolved the room turned into a different business but this was the start and the start was all about food on the table. we just needed some money to put on the table and I didn’t know how to run a business but to it wasn’t hard in the way that it was something that I’d never done before, it was the most amazing feeling because I would go down to my basement where I had a desk and a little window you know when I was basement windows and there’s a door going out to a backyard slope and I would I go down that basement I wouldn’t come up unless I had to go to the bathroom, I was hungry or it was dark. I loved it I just loved it like immediately I just found you found something found your thing loved to do and I don’t know why really because I didn’t have this you know this and have you seen Silicon Valley?

Interviewer: I’ve seen it a few times

Dave Will: A lot of the show Silicon Valley sort of a joke in Silicon Valley it’s all about changing the world and what this technology can do to change the world and I didn’t have any perspective of how selling Web conferencing the tired old sales executives was going to change the world I didn’t care for me it was more like again we’re just having fun you know it’s picking up the phone as a cop who conversations with cool people trying to get them to buy something or someone or some fun and it was paying and some of the bills and I remember saying this for like 7-8 years that one day I might have to get a real job but I said that for several years before I finally accepted I guess this is a real job like I guess I got a job here. And so anyway no it wasn’t that there of course there are a lot of hard things in growing the business

Interviewer: How do you tell the next learn because you’re making 40grand in and how did you get it from there? people Dave Will: Overnight success now is just a completely opposite it was extremely. I mean really.

Interviewer: Slow it was a pivotal moment that kind of put you on a tenant to the next level did you sell it was a big deal to you sell orders or something.

Dave Will: There are a lot of transitions right, so in one of the things…

Interviewer: I’ve heard you talk about is pivoting in the business here right there you were able to pivot the business and change it over time in order make it to what you eventually sold the company.

Dave Will: So, I think that’s the important thing whether it’s a pivot or an adjustment or taking advantage of opportunities, I don’t know whatever you want to call it I like the word pivot which may be overused especially in the tech and Silicon Valley, but instead of it going to move in one direction deciding that this is not at all who we are and switching to something else that’s a real pivot but I use the pivot in more of a 45⁰  angle yet again but I have all 90⁰ or 180^0. It was constant come through so there are two things I was constantly looking at in hindsight and one was how do I make this more valuable? There’s more leader in the business I should say it was an early on where I was thinking about the value of the business but how do I make this more valuable? Was something alternately that I asked myself just about every day and there wasn’t always an obvious answer is a mindset but the thing I thought about with especially early on, is what do I need to do to make sure that I’m here tomorrow? In other words what do I need to do? What demons are chasing me? And what I’m I chasing? So, looking over my shoulder. What are the competitors doing? I’ve always. like looking at competitors I know there’s a lot of people say don’t look at your competition. I was a competitive Archer growing up and I remember telling me and I’d ask what the closest guy’s name is Duncan was always real close to me and poured on to every one though and even then I remember asking what was and was Duncan going to score my sore don’t worry about it I’m not one of the it’s guys and so ultimately I figured out found out what Duncan had in knowing that I really liked it so I like keeping an eye on the competition so. I don’t always be watching the competition figuring out you know how can I stay just ahead of them and so that led to a lot of pivots; so one point of one more than a Milestone was when we went from Web conferencing and helping organizations run successful meetings, to creating an alliance and say because of Wal-Mart didn’t become our customer, Wal-Mart was kind of a strategic partner of ours where we would reach out to their supplier base a 50,000 suppliers so supplier being people that put stuff on their shelves so of the manufacturers of paper of equipment of glasses, pencils of anything you see in this room that they sell Wal-Mart those justifiers and so Procter and Gamble and Polaroid notions prey and all of these organizations that sell stuff at Wal-Mart those became our customer base because they were the ones interested in learning more about Wal-Mart’s. Inventory management software called retailing and so, we created the on line version of something that already existed which was retail user group and again this is I’m some my partner Rick brought to the table he had experience he was working in that industry and knowledge of this so Rick brought us into this world of the creating and the digital version of this learning community All right so that concept of creating these courses on line for 50,000 suppliers.

Interviewer: Because they were having a problem utilizing the system or had they couldn’t figure it out.

Dave Will: Wal-Mart was horrible at training they did zero training they said look take the software, this is how you save money now you don’t need to buy in the aisles and dater or idea take our software and give you all the data for free, for free which is millions of dollars worth of data so Wal-Mart gives that to their suppliers as good now you have this data now to make it less expensive for us and so but nobody knew how to do that or how to manage a system so they were experts in the industry, we tapped into their knowledge put it into courses and started selling it [interesting] so then we had a couple other organizations pop up this said he would come want to create a community like that a community that we can create and sell content to so I hired a developer, contracted didn’t hire contracted developer to build a learning site very similar the one we built with retailing and then another one so we got 3-4-6months each to build these things out is incredibly slow not scalable at all yeah. And that’s when ultimately we discovered the world of associations. So, we went from consumer goods tired old sales executive we realized that that’s fine we’re doing some business and we’re growing gradually but the opportunity for us now lay in the association world and so we found associations which are these organizations of members that have thousands of members and belong to an association and they are all craving knowledge about a certain subject area so instead of building these one sites I found another organization in the space that we partnered with and ultimately merged with to creative learning management system so that with the flick of a switch instead of 6months with a flick of a switch we could take what we’re doing earlier and make it scale so now, we had a learning manager system and we got up to about 20-50customers a fairly short period of time and I’d say if there was a hockey stick.

It’s more a field hockey stick I think but anyway it was if it was a it was a hockey stick that’s the whole myth where we really found who we were we found niche which another real key to doing things Well it’s finding a niche and of focusing on that niche.

Interviewer: But you’re determining perseverant and you pivoted along the way and because you eventually stayed the course you eventually found your hockey stick

Dave Will: Yeah it was a relentless forward motion is Montreal I subscribe to and then you find that with a lot I mean last year I don’t do relentless for emotional and mental.

Interviewer: And that seems to be a separating point for a lot of people is that relentless forward motion is what allows them of Benchley to break through and stay the course yeah and find their you know because most Entrepreneurs like it’s not like the you know maybe some people get lucky and they do within the first or two but most people when you talk of the journey it’s you know 5-10-15 or more years where they’re having their big moment

Dave Will:  Yeah people get tired and they desire and they just give up but I think you found your passion in your purpose and you also knew that if this didn’t work you have to go back to that tired old 9-5 job part of a to do sometimes the fuels around us get a sense it was never question of giving up the leg and I don’t even think of it as giving up what I know but other always will might look at it like that but for most people I think what happens is they get to a point where it’s so tiring that they think you know I’m going to get much more personal reward of going to work for State Street or this by itself ours or this other guy, they’re going to find more reward in that than they are doing this you know I so over the course of 14years a two different partners both of which a lot of us are playing my first partner, Rick I recall I mentioned him many times he’s still a very good friend.

Interviewer: And how did you decide to buy then out and approach them is just it when its course and they were not interested anymore?

Dave Will: So each one so with Rick and it got to a point where it was no longer just battling trying something you know with this $40,000 bringing in we were 2-3years into it finding some traction, we got to work read that you know if we’re going to go forward with this if this is something that we’re going to pursue got be all, we’ve got it we’ve really got to be all in and so I asked him to join me I actually quite the opposite of what happened I asked him to come and be all in with me or not, one or the other it was a goner let’s not meet him saying what we’ve got to be in or out and he understandably had a great career and he’s a little bit older than me and had you know he’s looking at his pension, he’s thinking about his future, he’s making good money, is going to steady job he’s enjoying it this is a hobby for him and so he said you know I think I think I’m out, I got a daughter going to college so we came up with a result phrase a bottom out for in hindsight I laughed at that time it was the writing on the bottom up for $17,000 in the laptop so I let him keep the laptop which I think he gave to his daughter going to college and the $17,000 to help pay for the first year of college and he was happy and I was happy so now on the sole owner of the business at the time. Then I mentioned that we found another company and did that company that that point.

We’re both about the same size at the time and We had an advisor that we trusted value to businesses and because mine was valued a little more profitable, I got the majority of the shares so which is relevant to the story so I got I think I was at 68% my partner was at 32% and so three or four years in to that relationship. He came to me at a conference I remember we were in the middle of a conference in D.C. for associations and he came to me really surprised me when he says you know you know what I’m tired and I have to be honest, I’m not a majority shareholder, we’re an equal shareholder and I just want to do some fun for me again. So, he was he stopped having fun for you so again he didn’t quit he what happened is he just found a greater return doing something different so and maybe some antics, I don’t consider that quitting I consider that a personal feeling right? So, he decided to leave it and we found a mutually agreeable value for his shares and I bought him out no. I didn’t expect I had every intent of selling the business at some point as that he neither one of us expected it to happen that soon but I created a 5year plan from that point with my executive team and said Here’s where it when I say I created it, we had some help from the outside it was a phenomenal process, but we created this vision, it’s actually a 3year vision without the Prometheans Yes you get Promethean. So, it’s called and we used a gentleman named Kyle HoWill and what is that probably to only you know he’s with the core group by the way so it’s and he was incredibly helpful. So, back to second so we created a 3year vision a very, very clear vision of where we wanted to be as an executive team and then we thought you know when we hit that goal we hit that room where there were meant that the vision were going to essentially open our minds the thought of selling to what that meant I didn’t really know yet but we’re going to prepare the business for sale and then we’re going to sell so that was very, very I was very transparent with my executive team about the selling part I don’t think I was as transparent with their employees about our goal to sell. Because there’s a lot of options that could have presented price of you know at that point but it happened much quicker so we ended up selling 2years into that 3years vision so instead of 5years as 2years later?

Interviewer: Do you think that having that vision held Do you sell the business better still

Dave Will: Oh my God! Absolutely!

Interviewer: Because I was I keep piece of it was actually having a crystal clear picture of where he want to go and then what happened is you sped up the process because everyone was aligned to where you were headed together and wanted to so…

Dave Will: So, at this point, I’m all in a culture like culture to me is incredibly important part of

Interviewer: what does culture mean to you?

Dave Will: Because people do say that and it was so culture I am a still isn’t buying it Brian Helegan and who is the founder of spot one of the two founders of the Hub Spot and Spot is a marketing automation and platform, they’ve gone in the past 12-13, years 12years I think to a $2b valuation, they’re public company so he’s done a great job one of his mentors described culture as the way people make decisions when you’re not in the room. So, culture is this guiding force that helps people behave the way they should…

Interviewer: And how did you create that guiding force? What concrete steps did you take in order?

Dave Will: So there are 3-elements to creating a great culture OK 1. is good motivation, finding the right motivation for your people and it’s actually pretty generic formula I think, second thing is trust that’s really the really hard. Because you’re bringing people in you don’t know yes and now you’re trust them. That’s hard and then you have a cadence and cadence is a word I like to use because I think cadence leads to habit. Habit is good or bad but cadence is something you actually can do to maintain a good habits so that’s why I like the word cadence better than forming habits or patterns. So looking at motivation if you can create an environment a culture I’m not talking about ads. So, I’m not talking about hats with the prop you a logo, I’m not talking about pens and pads actually there’s a let me put it put a little interlude in you’re. One of the few people that ever left my company. And I say that purposely and sounds a little arrogant but not a lot of people after company are very, very, low attrition but one of the people that left, left because she wasn’t injure a career she was into making money so she could pay for school. Her passion and I know this because she came to me and said I’m struggling I like it here, I love the people I work with. But I need to make more money and so while it’s going on because I need to pay for school that’s where I want to go and she said and can my but the last company work for inviting me back and pay me more my ass and encourages you. Because you’re not here to form a career and I here create a great life for yourself you’re here to make money to pay for college go take that career, bank it and go to college as quickly as you can. And so she called me back 2-3months later she sent me an e-mail saying so can you tell me where you get your hats and pens and belts and bags and all that stuff because I’m trying to teach my Bosses how to create great culture. And I think you know where to start it was so I wrote her back in this email saying, I can give you those links and those phone numbers but the perks that you’re talking about are not going to create the great culture. So, going back to motivation will creates motivation is not the extrinsic stuff right sedan Pink has its great video on what motivates people and I subscribe to a lot of what he says for me motivation often is confused with money. So, how much money do we need today to learn from the people or are carrots even a trip somewhere you know giving people a trip or bonuses and they’re nice, they really are nice but science proves it History shows that it doesn’t dry it’s about what happens inside it doesn’t drive greater it doesn’t drive her to success so there are greater results. So, it’s about the intrinsic

Interviewer: So how did you create that intrinsic?

Dave Will: Purpose and values so vision purpose and values are what drive people far more than money, people need money right but vision purpose and values are what drive people to come to work you’ve done it sure a nerd I think I hope I said his name right is the Patagonia founder is great quote this book ‘Let my people go surfing’ so in the 60s in the early 70s it was building Patagonia and they made parts and pieces for climbing gear that’s all they made. He actually fell into clothing. He didn’t love it but he fell into clothing because that’s when paid the bills so you will climb more than his book called ‘Let my people go surfing’. And he described as they were finding success, as they were getting bigger he said and I knew we needed to get bigger and I knew we needed to grow but he still knew how important it was for his people to come to work on the walls their feet climbing the stairs two at a time. So that the passion that’s the motivation how do you get people coming to work on the balls of the feet climbing the stairs two at a time and I get chills every time I said I just got this little chill saying it but. To me, that’s what drives that’s a big part of what drives a growing a business and so, the way to get people to come to work on the balls of their feet climbing the stairs two at a time, is from the inside and if you can create a vision and that’s where Prometheus for us came into play Prometheus was just the name of the process that Kyle HoWill and from the courtroom brought us through and I can describe that in a little bit of detail

Interviewer: Put links in the shell Nels for people?

Dave Will: So, they can figure out and take a look at sort of the core group is I think probably a quarter of dot com I get we can figure that out but. But Promethean is what helps create is crystal clear vision crystal clear with 12descriptors is what they call it all away from yes finance you want to talk about your financial goals, that is far from the vision. Too many people say oh we want to get to a 100m or we want to get to 50m, we want to get to 20m in profit. That’s cool that’s a great metric [Yeah] but it’s not going to drive people from the inside. So it’s all the finance is a part of it there’s there is the corporate citizenship there is the [flambé 40:01] to be there’s the outsider perspective the insider perspective there’s twelve of these elements that define what you really looks like now in the 3years and now and then how you get there so it’s very selective tractions similar Rockefeller happens you know so there’s all these methodology is that hell yes see something and then figure out a path to get there so vision and then whatever when you use a school you know whether it’s a core group or traction or Rockefeller have it doesn’t matter really as we found great success with Kyle. The second piece of that is good is the mission. So, this is where purpose comes into play, I actually prefer the word purpose but purpose is the thing that drives you it’s the reason you get up in the morning and that that comes for stories that comes from taking what you do and how it’s actually changing people’s lives because everything we do, every business we’re in the matter what it is you are improving people’s lives or else there’s no value to what you’re going and there’s probably some exceptions to that rule, but for the most part even when I mention Wal-Mart earlier a lot of people love to hate Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart is actually reducing the average income of the average spend the groceries by a couple thousand dollars in like $1,800-$22,000 per year for the grocery household income you know how important that is to middle America? to save $2000 a year on groceries that’s a huge impact not only that but they’re doing it when there’s a major World events like a hurricane they are there on the scene with us and they actually know what supplies their stores run out of first so boom they give the Red Cross the water, the toilet paper, the Band-Aids whatever people need in a major issue there on it far before any nonprofit or any governmental organization. So, my little soapbox and people like the bash Wal-Mart as I bring those two things up. So, having said that, every organization has a purpose and it’s our job as leaders of those organizations to be that they get funding.

Interviewer: Is that a statement that you gave people?

Dave Will: Yeah we did it was it wasn’t as important as the stories that got it where did it to the story of service statement if you just sicker of a statement it kind of sounds of bullshit it sounds like.

Interviewer: You’ve got the stories behind it to may have a little bit about that what about the values because away

Dave Will: And then there’s the values piece of it, which again alone can seem like bullshit it’s if to live it the Valley has to live in not just lives you need to constantly talk about it and to constantly bring it into your stories, you need to iterate and a great passion for me, the values didn’t come from me the values came from our employees we had a process probably not worth going into here we had a process how we developed and came up with our values by looking at the employees that epitomized our company and by describing them we created who we all wanted to be to.

Interviewer: How did you do the trust part of it quick?

Dave Will: So the trust piece of it is not about I trust you to pay me back for that lunch I bought you the other day, the trust piece of it comes from as a leader or a manager for that part, it comes from trusting that you’re going to deliver on something that I asked you to deliver on that may be more specific. Oftentimes you give somebody an important job the more important it is, the more we look over their shoulder the more important is more likely we are actually kind of take what they’re doing now we grab the pen for a second and we’re just marking things up when we get to pen back but then we take the pen and the paper an hour now they’re watching us do it and oftentimes we want to get involved in the most important piece of our business; trust comes from you getting things to people that are really important to the business and letting them run with it got and here’s the key and this is the really hard part is how do you let them run with it even though they’re doing it differently than you would do it? The only rule I had for myself and our executive team was, we can only interfere with people’s processes and their methodologies and what they’re doing if it’s going to hurt the business it’s not going to hurt business just because we think we can do a better. That’s not for us to mess with we need to trust that people are taking where they need to take another doesn’t mean you don’t help people improve, doesn’t mean you don’t coach your employees, what it means you trust your employees to do the job.

Interviewer: OK I want to talk about exiting the business how did you ultimately And how would you advise someone to figure out how do you exit of business Well, that’s a question people often says will wonder why sell or a like how do you come to that conclusion, or how would you advise someone else to do it?

Dave Will: Often times, I don’t tell you about my experience as opposed to telling other people how to how they should do it because I don’t know there’s so many scenarios and how people want to exit business whether you’re retiring or whether it’s a family business or whether you’re sick or whether the business is failing or whether the business is skyrocketing it’s just so many different scenarios I can only tell you about my OK My experience was one where I belong to a space where a great technology company that was doing Well it wasn’t it wasn’t like off the charts making hundreds of millions

Interviewer: I heard you say that you saw you saw the future and you figure at that point there wasn’t as much upside or you didn’t see it happening and growing at the rate that it had been was it?

Dave Will: No I actually on the contrary I think our business was it was really healthy like we could have taken our business and great heights I believe OK In fact we made a bunch of transitions where we went from being a services oriented business to assess software into business we became there was that we went from being project oriented revenue to being a recurring revenue, monthly recurring revenue yes we had it long term contracts as Well as a long term monthly recurring revenue contracts of them boy with our customers. So, we were creating We had recurring standardized processes, we’re incredibly scalable at this point we could double the business with very few additional people so we had to really, really we had a bright future very, very bright future for the business which actually put in a great position is health for yes so if so what happened is the industry we were in was becoming noticed by many. So, now private equity is coming into our space and I noticed they bought up a couple companies not a lot but there’s a little activity going on in their space and so what’s happening is a lot of the bigger entities are seeing an opportunity in a small community associations to get a niche if you have a niche in a specific area, you’re going to be strong in that area, we weren’t trying to be everything to corporations we were focused on associations so when money was coming in, I started to get more and more phone calls where I was getting phone calls every now and then from people just fishing or businesses. Them but I started get some phone calls a problem private equity firms that knew the businesses in our space and truly knew us which surprised me because most of the phone calls claimed to know you know we’ve been watching we’ve seen your site. But these guys actually knew the businesses and talked to the businesses in our space so I knew there was something going on so I entertain some conversations with multiple private equity firms in a certain point with a couple offers for business. Now, the offers it became very clear that we had good software but what attracted the private equity firms was the culture of our businesses, the way our customers talked about us and it was the way the reputation. The repetition of mark which becomes the big part comes from the culture of the organization. So, they confronted me now at this point I had the choice of finding a broker. Management of my own or working with a Lawyer we had I had a lawyer that I worked with for quite some time and I had a great deal of faith in Him I still do he saw me with Prop fuel or new company as Well. And so he became interested in buys or I had debated bringing in a broker to help her divestment banker to help navigate and help us benefit from the deal more but there was no point where I felt I wasn’t getting what we needed. So, I turned down the first couple offers because they simply weren’t what I felt they didn’t match the future of the business like I said business doing awesome, we’re doing great so but they kept coming back with more for sort of a certain point there’s a there becomes this point where the amount of money you’re being offered and the opportunity for your people and the opportunity for the entity the organization is of far better under that management than it is under our management [got it] so money was a piece of it a big piece of it don’t get me wrong but a requirement was a bright future for our customers, a bright future for plays and therefore a bright future for the business. So that’s how I made the decision and then you sold the business and I want to get the story quickly give few minutes remaining is that

Interviewer: you sold the business and you know how did you get to Prop fuel from there?

Dave Will: Yes I saw this I worked for the company the quire and company for a period of time and I think I got to a point were both I was grateful to step out and I think the company was probably grateful to have me step out. Because there are bumps along the way you know you know no matter how good a cultural fit it is it’s never the same culture as the one you’ve created in your organization that’s the difficult. I had no problem by the way selling the business, I hear from a lot of people it’s a sad thing, it’s a personal thing for me it was like dropping a kid off a college; you know there’s some sentiment it’s not like I’m a robot some sentiment but it’s like this joy of seeing yourself Yes a gated thrive so that’s how I felt about it so then. We were talking of this earlier on when we were setting up for this but then I left the company and I just started saying yes to everything because I thought I’m free, like I can do everything I’ve always wanted to do the first thing I did as I watched ‘The Godfather’ which is a movie I’ve never seen and that’s a long movie three parts lots of lots of downtime on the couch took me like three weeks to watch those 10hours. That was the first thing I did. I’m still working on reading and Rand Atlas Shrugged there was nothing I want to do after I sell the business. And I want to clean my basement, I haven’t got today yet either but I said yes to everything somehow I got really busy. What I was going to like I don’t know I didn’t have that purpose and I was no longer focused on that one major goal and so I just come running around like a chicken with my head cut off and I was OK with it, I wasn’t sad, I wasn’t depressed or anything.

Interviewer: But you didn’t have that one thing like you had in the past so you needed to have that one thing that’s yeah again so how did you come up with this?

Dave Will: So I think there were a bunch of ideas you know I went from I surely never had interest in writing. Book and a lot of people talk about writing a book another but people talk about consulting or coaching, didn’t want to do that either I thought about the incubator idea of creating fun is there a missionary thought about doing it with kids in high school and I thought about doing it with kid in college and then I thought about maybe just organizing a collection of the investors of creating a fund and again none of those got me as excited as when I’d be sitting down with a buddy over a beer or talking about an idea and bringing it to market. So, it can concluded that I needed to grow another business for two reasons 1.It will get it’s all got me turned on number one, number two it’s a cow wanted to prove myself that the first one wasn’t a hoax that it wasn’t I wasn’t clear yet I wanted to I still need to prove myself that that the first sell wasn’t just an accident so I struggle in calling myself a serial Entrepreneur, I don’t know I don’t use that term to describe myself oftentimes because I have yet to become a serial entrepreneur. So, ultimately after a lot of different ideas, I’m mean tons of ideas and how it rate them down in Evernote and I so I have lists in Evernote business ideas and I take what I’m playing with it for a month and then and either most of them just some point you know wall every business hits a wall with the idea and some of them I feel like what on earth there are and some I could which is Prop Fuel came from this concept of creating a great culture and it’s what we did really Will at my last company and what it really enjoyed a glass company was the culture piece of it one of the things we did in that culture piece to true so that I could understand what was going on the heads of my employees and so that I could get that feedback from them on a regular routine and cadence this is one of the things that having the builds a great culture is creating cadence reaching out to my employees giving him an opportunity pat each other on the back No1,is recognition a number two. Nothing to give me some feedback on what’s going on out there in the field what’s going on we’re talking your customers so we have this weekly survey for lack of a better word that went out for a customer to or to our employees asking them those two things are you happy in your job? And what I mean generally opening the door to what can we do that support you better job, number two is who do you want to give you give recognition to and who do you want to nominate with this feature the leaders employee of the week and so who do you want to nominate for that role, so every week in our company meeting we take the last 5minutes we go through the stuff if somebody wanted a what he acts or size ball to say we buy an exercise ball on Amazon, so we want to stand up that’s the kind of stand-up desk and those are the kind of things people wanted to make their job get better. So, this is the feedback and this is the recognition that drove the impetus behind Prop Fuel So now think about events quote people coming to work on the balls of the feet climbing Yes there’s to a time think about this other stat I learned that only 13% of the people in the world love their job. 13% ,the 87% B.S. before I got fired definitely and as soon as I figured out what I really enjoyed and became part of the thirteen percent I wanted people working for me to be a part of that 13% of people that love their job in the first step to doing that second step first step is, creating a vision purpose and values the second step is allowing them a chance to reward and recognize each other Intrinsically and then the other part is figuring out what’s going on their heads what are they doing? So, that we do at  Prop Fuel you’ll prop bills a super inexpensive way for Entrepreneurs of small businesses ten to one hundred employees to understand what’s going on in in the heads of their employees and give them a chance on weekly basis to get recognition because it’s a great super, super, simple easy to use where and it’s like fifty or one hundred bucks that thing on the site you think that’s awesome yeah it’s cool

Interviewer: so where can people find more about you and the business?

Dave Will: www.propfuel.com P-R-O P-F-U-E-L, propfuel.com You can find me at dave@propfuel.com That’s probably the best way to reach me is the mail.

Interviewer: OK Beautiful Will thanks a lot for joining us on another show of executive breakthroughs it’s been fantastic having Dave your show this year with his all his insights and things that happen in all of a lot of things in the show notes and probably some fun surprises as Well so watch out for that fun surprises, thanks for having me on the show.

[End of Transcript]

[Start of Transcript]

Jason: Welcome to another episode of Executive breakthroughs, I have a fantastic guest for you today and you’re going to learn a lot of insights and wonderful information, Stefania who is the CEO of eZcater and it’s a very interesting path she has traveled on and so I want to start off from the beginning because one of the quotes or things I just heard you talk about is that growing up you grew up in a difficult family. I just want to find out some of the people back around where people came from because easier to understand their journey. So, what does that mean, how was growing up?

Stefania: I grew up in a family that sent two messages at the same time. I guess everybody gets conflicting messages one of them is, you’re a citizen of the world there’s a lot of interesting stuff out there you should be out there figuring out how to learn as much as you can do as much as you can. The other message was but you don’t deserve to live and that combination was kind of confusing for me; took me a long time to realize the drag effect that you don’t deserve to live message which of course was never explicitly said had on me.

Jason: How did that play out though because I’m trying to get people like what things happen that told you that…

Stefania: It takes a lot to explain to one game from basically parents who, it was a strong message to turns out there were four us as adults, there was a moment where we all realized that you know we pretty much all came away with that message which is not something that my parents woke up everyday wanting to convey but that right what we got.

Jason: Was a challenging time a girl child with any other people influence you or advance on your path forward?

Stefania: I tell you the biggest thing was when I got out of the house and this exactly exemplifies the conflict. My mother who was a difficult woman, my mother is the one who figured out that I needed to go to MIT and she got me and I mean she arranged it that I applied and I got in and she arranged that I applied I got in and then, the minute I got there and was free of my family the same family that had propelled me into MIT, that was when I really started to become a healthier person from there on.

Jason: It forced on around their own letterhead my hands

Stefania: Got out from under there and flourished on my own.

Jason: What about MIT sort of helped you?

Stefania: MIT teaches everybody how to solve problems, like really teaches you how to use your brain and how to use everything you know and everything you can interpolate, extrapolate from what you know to solve problems. It also has an attitude which I would never have known articulated this way but now, this is a phrase we use here at the it has that attitude of well just try it, I don’t know what not sure if it would work but try it and the just try it.

Jason: Implemented rather than people a lot of times if you notice talking about I just I don’t know start believing it or a yeah and pivot as you go along.

Stefania: I think Engineers have courage because there’s this sense of like I can fix this, I can make something, I can build something, and so that strength and courage permeates MIT.

Jason: So, solving problems in Engineering technical is part of who you are as your [DNA] you figured out that when you’re in MIT or you know that ahead of time where do you figure that along the path?

Stefania: I would give my parents credit for having figured out that I was the kid do type who thought you should be able to make something and who had a I had a certain science and math bent got it and we grew up in Newton which is a suburb or you know not far from Cambridge and MIT My father went to the MIT of Switzerland, my father’s Italian but he went to the MIT of Switzerland and I was the kid most like him and so I think that was the natural path.

Jason: So, how do you find yourself in this entrepreneurial path like where did you come to get your hitch, and where you know your start.

Stefania: I think that entrepreneurs come in three camps. I think there’s the ones who want to prove something to a parent usually to their father [yes]. There’s the ones who need to prove to themselves it’s a smaller group than the first group that needs to prove something to the parents and then there’s another group which is pretty healthy sized which is, I am so sick of working for other people. I just want to quote work for myself. You work for your customers, you work for your Employees, you work for your investors but it feels somehow like you’re working for yourself and I was one of those. It took me 20years of working for other people’s companies before I finally was able to launch.

Jason: What was the event that pushed you finally down this path?

Stefania: so, I am an operating Exec. I’m not the idea person, I’m the one that idea people turn to say can you build this company? I have an idea for a product or you build a company around it. And in 1997, I was approached by or late 1996 I guess, I was approached by IDEA people who didn’t want to quit their day jobs before one of this idea to see the light of day and so they asked me if I would do that and I was in a job where I was kind of sick of it was time for change anyway and I said Sure; why don’t I give it a shot.

Jason: So, what company was that?

Stefania: It’s a company called Insight Marketing Technology, OK We sold that one for 14X. Some investors did better than 14X.

Jason: And it was in a very short period of time right a couple of years?

Stefania: Well 1997, I think we sold it around 2000-2001, I don’t remember, it was that one of them was during the Internet bubble right was a lot of fun people who say the Internet bubble was the era of silliness and we all should have done that they’re like, we had a great time you know great time we’ve all had a great time all of us.

Jason: That was pretty incredible that you got the company interjectory one when you went in there and what is it that you needed to do that wasn’t being done at the time?

Stefania: This was in the early days of the Web; the Web was still the wild west. We helped companies who were just moving into e-commerce create virtual sales people, software that made you feel like you were being helped in a situation and now yes to the best in-store situation you know you walk into a store and you find a salesperson actually knows this is doing it is dispassionate in their advice to you and gives you real help in making your decision, we created a virtual version of that and it made everybody happy, we tripled conversion rates, it was a big deal. It’s a great company I’m working right now technology so familiar with Con us on well yeah then we go above a so yes I have something that is there and then count it in the West Coast.

Jason: So, we wanted this whole process and then you were successful at it and then you started the next venture which was something different so what did you do?

Stefania: Well you ruined once you’ve done, that it’s hard to go back and work for some big company again. I love big companies a lot of strength, a lot of resources in big companies but I found that I like the smaller scenario where what you do has such a huge impact. Your mistakes have much bigger effect; yet your success is so much bigger make the things you did right have much bigger effect. So, I bounced around a bit helping other people I am an operate Exec right, so I was helping other people run their companies or take their companies to the next level people who were plateaued and needed to go to the next level, people who were who weren’t sure how far whether their idea had legs I was helping them and then. In 2004, I got involved with the company that was the precursor of this one. Briscoe Rogers is my co-founder here was the founder of the previous company. He’s an idea guy and he was looking for an operating Exec to help him take his idea forward and honestly at first, I didn’t want to work for the company at first I thought it oh sure problems that are interesting I just don’t know but he kept suggesting people for Him to hire and he kept hiring them and then I thought Oh my friends work there may be better just go work there and so I went.

Jason: Was this preferred time?

Stefania: Preferred time and so he wanted to do for time help pharmaceutical company sales reps get in front of the Doctors. But that’s a very broken dynamic and yes it is happy with the way that it works and we tried to inject sanity and mutual respect into that process and we got to where a third of all the pharm reps in the country were using us for at least some of their visits to some of the doctors that was really cool but still…

Jason: What was the resistance? People paying?

Stefania: The resistance was the pharma firms were kind of torn like well you’re either helping me or you’re getting between me and my customer I can’t decide and we figured out. The cases where people adopted us and felt that was really valuable that worked extremely well but there was the resistance like well are you actually going to slow down my excess or are you helping my access and our investors were at a different point in their funds where they ran out of interest, they didn’t have any more cash to put into the company. So, we shut the thing down. that was pretty discouraging

Jason: But what lesson that you were a man I want to get done how you got to where you are right now what lesson what lesson did you learn at that point you know one number one business that you sold successfully No I didn’t and as well what things did you take away from both experiences moving forward that you were

Stefania: Persistence is important that luck here is part of the game. You’ve got to just get back up pick yourself up and keep going you can’t assume because one of them works and the next one didn’t you can assume because one of the work the next one is going to work and you can’t assume because [a lot of people do] I know but you also can’t assume that because one of them didn’t work the next one is not going to work. You just think, I’m playing the numbers game. My life is my portfolio and I just kind of got to keep trying, keep trying, to keep trying. what in life have I done where every single time I touched some process it worked, oh it’s the same thing. I had an investor the day that we shut that company Preferred Time down. I called all the investors and it was no surprise to them all the employees all the investors knew that it was a very good likelihood that indeed we would have to shut this thing down and when the white knight prospect of investors didn’t materialize, we close that down pretty quickly. And I called the investors to say look I’m sorry I lost your money, this is the way the game is played I’m thinking this but still I felt terrible and the 4th or 5th guy whom I called said That’s OK Stefania, I’ll do whatever you and Briscoe are going to do next. I’ll invest in whatever you want.

Jason: But why do you think you do next he said that I saw you mention that I said

Stefania: Absolutely blew my mind and I remember still very clearly I remember feeling this weight come off my shoulders and he said to me well I was silent because I was feeling the weight, he said What is that next thing by the way and that’s when I realized people really invest in people more than the idea that I was heard people say an A-idea with a B-team is not as good as B-idea with an A-team that the team is what matters and clearly we were being respected for what we had accomplished even though the company was not successful.

Jason: The relationships also that you built with all of these people that want a better

Stefania: I think relationship mattered but I think it was more the way they all served how we performed OK. it’s not like we were best buddies and that they would have sold their first bond to fund our next come, [Got it] was more that they saw that we had performed as well as well as we could and how we had before was pretty reasonable. and the message that I took away from that was at that moment he reminded me of failure is the deal for an entrepreneur it’s OK failure is part of the game. I had to sort of know that intellectually but when he said it in those words emotionally I resurrected that concept of oh yeah, it’s OK it’s OK when it happened and I moved all had to be the joke but it’s actually not a joke is that you shut those things down the Thursday like I got drunk Oh we can do it on Monday we launch this thing. You know take yourself back up.

Jason: What do you think if you would have gotten away with it [part of the process] and you made peace with what had happened recently. You know I was reading somewhere that the arc of being a successful entrepreneur or is really more about knowing when to kill ideas and move forward and I’m wondering if you would have had that white knight come in would you have can would have continued? Would  you have continued on or not I mean I know, that a hypothetic question.

Stefania: It’s I’m a little cut and [yeah[ I mean that certainly was what we’re looking for the white knight for we certainly thought the business had legs in hindsight I see that it was a tough business, a really tough business Iine a way much tougher than the one we’re in now the one we’re in now, The difference is that people were clamoring for the kind of assistance [that Easy cater] provides in the in preferred time, it’s like almost every other business I’ve ever worked for, there was a need but people aren’t clamoring for a solution to that need.

Jason: There’s not massive pain.  

Stefania: There’s pain but it wasn’t such a strong pain there were all desperate for it and for a solution to that pain and so many companies are built quite successfully convincing us that the pain is really great and that we should buy this.

Jason: Yes, and instead of solving that the pain is there now because you found that right idea you found in the business you have now in the preferred time.

Stefania: We had literally thousands of people attempting to place orders, literally thousands of times we were asked, can you make the food appear for this business meeting, and we thought two things, we thought what we can bootstrap this thing and it’s a real need. So, let’s figure out how to do that. And so, we did we launched the thing again out of our house.

Jason: And you did in our Monday. So, I mean how did you how did most people take their wounds for a little while I know you’ve had that conversation the sense a very was that really just for you was that just a simple, getting the weight off your back?

Stefania: I think when you went over there a bit was that was it continue to work OK but also admittedly it was the beginning of summer and with that summer, we worked but we didn’t work balls to the wall 24hours a day over we did I know we were waiting to try to released software we’re waiting to try to have all the pieces lined up and I would say I work probably 30hours a week that first summer OK so I did take some time to just kick back a bit

Jason: And you had investors lined up or people that would give you money?

Stefania: Yes, we did but it was very small money you know Briscoe and I each put in, I don’t know I think together we put in $25,000 or something $22,000 and we raised $100,000 more from people like this investor who said I’ll put in money, we didn’t pay ourselves the first year or more of their surroundings model really bootstrapped. I remember the discussion about when winter came and we were still working in my house I said you know if I went to a job I would heat the house during the day I have a timer thermostat to be charged the company the heat bill and we decided that yes I could charge the company in the heat bill that was. For the part of the week for 40hours of the week that Monday-Friday, 9-5, If yes so we were back kind of careful about using the money we didn’t feather our own mess with it at all.

Jason: there are two schools of thoughts and then a bootstrapping it. And then there are people that are taking L-side capital, like how do you view that starting a company from infancy point of view because people probably listen to this and you know we have successful people.

Stefania: Your idea OK you know if you’re building a drug you need huge amount of money and bootstrapping is not an option. If you’re building a service, if you’re building a consulting service, if you’re doing software for hire, you probably can bootstrap that and then all the other ideas are somewhere in between on that spectrum. I think that it’s wise to not have a lot of money early on because it makes you be really creative and clever about what you’re about how to accomplish what you need to accomplish and it makes you be pretty ruthless about what’s important to work on first and I think that gives you a sharpened focus. So, I think never not having too much money is a good move at every stage of the company, and we’ve always raised only as much money as we knew what to do with we think that’s a wise discipline. I think also. Frugality breeds creativity, resourcefulness and I think that’s helpful I think it helps to be a little scared all the time I. Think that’s sharpens of the senses, there is a motivator.

Jason: Fear is a motivator.

Stefania: You do if you’re too much like everything else if you sue much then you end up unable to get out don’t get overwhelmed and you can’t really try anything in hindsight, I think we bootstrap for about a year too long. I think we were we could have brought in bigger money earlier but boy that day we brought in the big money, I mean to us at first $1million dollars raised it once was big money and then we raised $2-million at once it seemed like incredible and then $3million at once and then we raised $13million at once and while we could try a lot of experiments at that point and going fast, which is what with enough money you can move faster which was Hope money letting you move fast gives you a quicker learning cycles because that’s all this is about yes constantly learning and learning and learning and doing incorporate learning said moving quickly money helps you do that move when you’re ready when your ready money helps you move faster to get to be ready and yeah you can just everything the way in the beginning and people in place and of people that you can bring in more good people.

Jason: So, what did you want about hiring people because I’m interested in you know on Company Number three how has your hiring process or philosophy changed over time and what do you learn that’s kind of the secret source to finding the right people.

Stefania: so, I have over time I think I’ve developed my gut pretty well I think the big change is I try to listen one hundred percent to my God. To the collective guts of all the people who interview, I do not do the interviewing alone I don’t interview every day I don’t if I don’t even interview all the employees anymore I have people who have trained their guts that we have a group consensus and if someone if anybody in the group says I think so this is not like somebody that makes me go yes this is our kind of person and they have the skills, then we don’t hire you’ve got to have somebody in the group is really negative on an individual if the majority opinion is that there’s very strong Yeah this look oh my God this is a really a real keeper that we don’t hire and we’ve hired pretty well.

Jason: So how do you want to trust your gut because a lot of people get different and basically look at the data you know look I’m sorry they’re right people want that right also the godson right so how did you measure it was there any is there anything that happened that got this moment that you reflect on that sort of taught you to trust in yourself more.

Stefania: One of the great advantages of growing up in a difficult situation is that you learn to read the tea leaves you learn to be very sensitive to nuance to understand what’s really motivating this person because in my family if you didn’t figure out what was motivating your parents. You were going to die, not literally but it certainly felt like it yeah and so you learned to be pretty attuned to and to nuances of situations of human beings. Harnessing that has been very helpful you harness to understand how you couldn’t treat a customer really well, you harness that to figure out how you can be hire people well, so see reading people as a life skill. Everybody can develop it but if you develop it under fear of death when you were little you probably developed greater probably got a faster you know I need to tell you that out and just look at your time.

Jason: so, what do you want also a building culture, like what does culture mean to you because I feel like that’s a lot of work for some people but I’m seeing a lot more and a lot more people are really putting a lot more emphasis on that now building process and in the D.N.A. of the company culture matters hugely I mean everybody has one I remember just recently I was at an event where somebody said you know we don’t think we had a culture we went offline for a couple days and we decided what our culture would be I said well you actually have a culture, you always have a culture you could go outside and decide what you want to change it to if you don’t like the one you have but you’ve got a culture ours is pretty intentional from the start. I have cared about and Briscoe my co-founder has completely supported has agreed with he cares about the same things I cared about transparency about. Try it you know fearlessness let’s just try stuff and honestly he’s more Felix than I to his He’s amazing you guys like how hard can it be and I’ve been through the more cautious voice and I think the combination has helped us and I’ve become more and more brave over time following this guy around the bike he still lived let’s keep trying more things so transparency, fearlessness and Being insanely helpful to each other to our customers, to our caterers were two sided marketplace and so we need to support both sides equally well you can’t be emotionally available to be that supportive to your customers and your business partners if you’re not being well treated so being insanely helpful to our employees and each of us to each other and I to each of them that’s of course tenet of our culture too. I didn’t wake up one morning saying these are the three things I just that’s the way I behave and every year as we brought in more employees we realized we had to articulate more clearly that these are the behaviors and we’ve kind of distilled it to those three. Because that’s genuinely who we are and because it helps to say it out loud.

Jason: Got it, what 3-things?

Stefania: Transparency, fearlessness insane helpfulness [OK[ if you put those together, you know insane helpfulness is another phrase for just really nice to each other. In a proactive in a thoughtful way, fearlessness is try it, try it and track it. Because if you track it then you figure out whether that was a good thing to try whether time to change it pivot just do more of it and tracking it also improves the sense of psychological safety, it is my idea, I don’t play the founder card very often it isn’t that I yell loudly it’s that the data said this was a good idea of the data said this was not a good idea and that doesn’t matter whose idea was let’s keep going to do something else. So, transparency fearlessness with data to back it up and, it was my third one here there’s transparency, fearlessness and helpfulness yeah, those are my three.

Jason: So, the other part about you meeting you in just wondering about your past, I can see that probably caring and empathy is a huge piece of who you are and so I wonder how that’s reflected in the culture because I find it so I can psychological safety that’s a key component of making that…

Stefania: It’s true, I heard of it so I think I can people I like people who think coming out of a difficult time I know you can’t tell you that you can’t kill things that people are born with I was born industrious, I was born liking people, I was born optimistic and you can’t kill that in people. I don’t think you could borrow it but you can’t eventually it comes back and I actually come back out I’ve spent my whole life trying to become more and more myself I think we’re all on a journey to being ourselves Yes and it turns out myself is industrious and caring and genuinely people and optimistic so everybody who works here. If the people who are successful here are people who are like that.

Jason: Everyone is also right themselves out there somewhere they don’t are they are they don’t want to join you can join every C.E.O. has their own their own culture, has their own personal style, their own personal sense and you either match with that or not. I remember a long time ago, the first time I inherited a group I realized, wow it’s a very good manager who could manage a group and Harrah’s as opposed to a group that they’ve built that have selected Yes and that they have selected for themselves so that’s a real skill.

Jason: So how do you know working with a co-founder because I know you’ve got a very close relationship how do you resolve conflicts with a lot of people who start a business together one of the things that implode them is the people that found the business end up either buying one or out or they just can’t work gather and the business sinks I know

Stefania: My job is that the company’s founder on the rocks of the founders are going with each other yes. We’ve been, we’ve done really well we are this is the third year we’ve been on together actually. I got involved he is the idea guy had helped found a company with a different co-founder and they were running into some trouble and they and one of their investors said you need to upgrade here I’m a little further along in my career the Briscoe was not that much further but further and so, I came in and tried to help with that one we didn’t manage to succeed in saving that company but we discovered that we have complimentary skill sets and we love the same values. We have different angles, and we solve the same problems from different angles and they get their complimentary we have nothing to do with each other outside of work and we joke about it if we ever talk politics or get into trouble but it turns out. I’ve known the guy longer than I’ve known my husband I mean yes, I’m on my second husband so I’ve known him longer than know my husband he’s known me longer than he’s known his wife. We are the lucky combination of sufficiently different that you have two brains working on things and sufficiently the same. That we don’t get into fatal fights, we’ve certainly had disagreements but we’re both Engineers we both go back to the data and the data has resulted a lot of issues it was a great day when we had enough volume going through the system that we could just test it we didn’t have to argue about like should the button be blue or should it be red and we could just test it and the market was said one of them was a better color and the breadth of the best thing was neither Briscoe or I could remember was the blue button your idea or bad idea; because neither of us cares either of us hold quite so easy go in as even you go to drain checking a good yeah we’re both pretty separated from our egos.

Jason: So, what do you think makes a great leader from a good leader where you think separates out as you look at yourself and other people I mean what is it that you would hold out there as well as a cleaner ships’ the key for getting this thing where you want to go yeah.

Stefania: I think there are two things I would say matter and that’s probably a fifty but I’ll pick two one is, leadership is being able to stand back and see the bigger picture, see I always use this phrase with my people I say look pull the lens back, now as your become a more senior manager pull the lens farther back the more senior you are the more you should pull the lens farther back with your manager leader pull the lens farther back so that you can see the bigger picture see more where we’re going think about the more strategic dimension that’s one thing. And that’s kind of more on the skills level. I guess on the there’s an emotional dimension too. I think leaders really care about people I think. The company isn’t what matters, the people that are and yet you have the people matter in order to build a company because the company is this enabler or for people to get to a better place the work is enabling and I think giving people better work to do giving people jobs they really want to have is a powerful, Powerful force it’s what I actually care about the most, I think all work done well is magnificent. It doesn’t matter if you’re flipping burgers if you do it well it’s magnificent and is terrifically interesting do whatever you’re doing well and it becomes terrifically interesting and so I think a leader embodies that with him in trying to  articulate what excellence looks like and helping people get to that excellence.

Jason: So, last question for you would something that you struggle when you’re trying to get better and you know as far as being a leader you know what are your views or are you now sort of learning or trying to figure out to take it to next level because obviously there’s a lot of things you’re doing excellent training but we’re always as you know pulling leaders that are doing that we’re now in a learning and grow and trying to get better or worse so we’re because people always want to know that they see the highlights but I was like I don’t know what they’re weeks but what are the I know well but I think more of just the things that you’re learning a lot about yourself and growing because it’s evolution is an important part of…

Stefania: fearlessness you know I talk about transparency I’m pretty good at that talked about insane helpfulness I’m pretty good at that the fearlessness I continually working on that, I find myself continually having to say no you stretch higher, go farther you can do bigger, bigger or pull my own lens back so that’s the one that I think of those three that I work on the most. I look very confident and I can talk very confidently but then it really, I’m like to go with. And that and then I pull yourself together well but then I go up there and I get I look really confident I do really big stuff and thinking oh my God do them figure that out yet how do you know I have imposter syndrome like everybody else does that every leader has it so what is it.

Jason: what do you do to help yourself make that leap of faith in order to be more fearless is there something that you think in your head or something that you do?

Stefania: There’s two things one is a use data I think. You have had a lot of success up to this moment yeah, I think you can you know it look at everybody else they’ve all fallen down a few times and they’ve done OK if you’ve gotten here and if they did that, why can’t you? So, use the data of other people’s experiences as well as my own life history. And the other thing is. This is something I get it from my co-founder. Briscoe Rogers has the opposite of he doesn’t think you deserve to live Briscoe has a core that the lighter uses you know that that clown that you got when you were a kid that you can whack it no matter what happened to bounce back up Briscoe’s like unshakable in his core and I thought I want to be like that so I watch, I watch him I think unshakable Core, you can do it and shakable core is not the only one of my life that I’ve seen like that but I see him every day, so it’s a good example to Reminder for a constant reminder.

Jason: Wonderful thank you for joining us today and it’s another new show of executive breakthroughs and we had a lot of insights, a lot of very excellent show today and thanks for coming.

Stefania: Thank you it’s great to be here thanks a lot.

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