Noob School - David Peeples on Building a Legacy: Sales, Culture, and Perseverance

Episode Date: January 3, 2025

In this episode of Noob School, we sit down with David Peeples, a seasoned entrepreneur who has spent over two decades building a successful business in the airport security and access control industry. David shares his journey from the early days of his career, where he honed his skills and learned the importance of customer relationships, to founding his own company and growing it into a leader in the field. David takes us through some of the key milestones in his career, including landing major clients like the Pentagon and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which includes JFK, LaGuardia, Newark, and Stewart Airports. He discusses the challenges of competing against much larger players in the industry and the strategies that helped him win these high-profile contracts. Throughout the conversation, David emphasizes the importance of building a strong company culture and reputation, which he believes are the foundation for long-term success. He also shares the lessons he’s learned about sales, leadership, and the importance of adaptability in a rapidly changing business landscape. As the conversation shifts toward the future, David talks about the evolving sales models, from perpetual licenses to the potential shift toward SaaS, and the impact of tools like AI on communication and business practices. He also reflects on the value of mentorship and how having the right team and partners can make all the difference in achieving your goals. David’s story is one of perseverance, strategic thinking, and learning from every experience. Whether you're a young salesperson or an entrepreneur looking for inspiration, this episode is packed with valuable insights and advice that can help you navigate your own career path. Get your sales in rhythm with The Sterling Method: https://SterlingSales.co I'm going to be sharing my secrets on all my social channels, but if you want them all at your fingertips, start with my book, Sales for Noobs: https://amzn.to/3tiaxsL Subscribe to our newsletter today: https://bit.ly/3Ned5kL #SalesTraining #B2BSales #SalesExcellence #SalesStrategy #BusinessGrowth #SalesLeadership #SalesSuccess #SalesCoaching #SalesSkills #SalesInnovation #SalesTips #SalesPerformance #SalesTransformation #SalesTeamDevelopment #SalesMotivation #SalesEnablement #SalesGoals #SalesExpertise #SalesInsights #SalesTrends

All right, welcome back to Noob School. Episode 136, 136. Got a good friend, but a relatively new friend, only a, what, a couple years? Yeah. A couple years? Dave Peebles. I've known about you for a lot longer than that. Well, thank you.

I've known about you for over almost 30 years. Well, you know, at the Citadel, I did average four points of game, so I'm sure you probably familiar with my basketball. I did not know about your basketball prize. I was. I was a banger. I was a banger. Yeah.

Well, we're both, that's the funny thing. We've both been in the tech business for a while, me a little bit longer than you, it's by age, but, you know, we've got 89 mutual contacts, and we just met each other. Yeah. That weird? It is. We met, we thought that was weird. Yeah.

That we hadn't met yet. Well, I'd heard about you. I had heard about all the stuff you were doing at Datastream, and I heard, you know, one of the things that made me immediately love you is I heard that every salesperson at Datastream, had to watch Tommy Boy. That's true. That's true. And also used cars.

It's another one of my favorite. Yeah. Favorite salesman. Glenn Gary, Glenn Ross. Yeah. Coffees for closures. Yeah. I mean, half my training references those movies,

so they got to watch the movie. Absolutely. In their first month, they had to read the entire Atlas Shrugged book. Okay. And Rand's book, which is like a thousand pages of small print. It's way too much for me. Well, it's a lot.

It's one of my favorite book. books, it is very hard to read. But it was, A, I wanted them to read that book. But B, I wanted them to do something hard. I got you. And some of them couldn't do it. And I said, if you don't do it, this is your, you're not here anymore. Right. And so we lost some. Yeah. But that's okay. You know, it's just pretty simple. This is what we want you to do. This is before Audible, too. So you couldn't just listen to. Or just get like a six-minute summary on YouTube. Yeah. But anyway, David's company in Telasoft is, I would say, you know, if not the leader, one of the leaders in identification management. In airports.

In airports. We are the leader. Okay. So the identification management is, you know, obviously, there's lots of places that need that. But you focus on airports. And this is the badge that an airport worker would wear. that signifies that they're supposed to be there. They've had their background check.

Whether they can drive around the airport, whether they have escort privileges at the airport. So different, the badge means different things. That's right. Okay. And the privileges. Reading it or different colors? Both.

Okay. So it's the colors. Can they get into a secure area? Yeah. And they just get into the public areas. You know, there are going to be different colors, but they're going to be all sorts of little designations. Are they allowed to, and it varies from airport to airport,

but are they allowed to carry you? weapon at the airport? Are they allowed to get into customs areas? And there are all sorts of business rules and government regulations that go behind whether or not they can do those things. Have they had the proper background checks? Have they had the proper training? You know, what type of organization do they work for? What were they sponsored for by that organization? Right. And it's, you know, there's a lot of systems that are involved in managing all that.

But in the end, we consolidate all that stuff. bring all their data into one repository and make sure that those rules are applied so that they don't get fined by these government agencies for noncompliance. And make things a lot smoother, more efficient, make customer service better. You've got like a little DMV at every airport.

You want to make sure that people don't dread going in there. We just picked up Atlanta Airport, biggest airport in the world. We're proud of it. Wow. And right now, you know, you go into their, their office where they do these things and you've never seen a DMV imagine a any of the biggest greenville DMV and multiply at times four at least i mean it's just a massive operation so streamlining

that process is our uh goal it's not just a goal it's what we do so the DMV at heartsfield heartsville international whatever is that a DMV for the employees with their badges you're talking about it's not it's it's it's everybody who goes to that airport so whether it's an air you know somebody who works for delta somebody works for macdonalds somebody anybody who's working at that airport has to have an ID badge okay now their ID badge may not give them any access at all right but uh that's everybody has to have one and all of those at Atlanta are going to be created by our system okay okay so yeah it's like a DMV who are you and you know what what badge that's right and yeah Well, cool. So how many airports do you have now?

25. 25. So we have 50% of the large hub airports, and by the end of next year, we're going to have seven of the top 10 airports in the country. Nothing international yet, but we're working on it. Do you have any that you're talking to, like in the pipeline? Yeah. I started last year. I went to a conference in Frankfurt, Germany called the Passenger Terminal Expo. It's an amazing conference. But what's great is I've also now got a trip slated in to go to Europe every year on the company.

Sure. And I get to go over there and just make friends and speak on panels, you know, do this kind of thing over there and talk about the stuff that I've learned because I've been around so long. Yeah. That's great. And this is under the kind of heading of cybersecurity, right? Well, I mean, we don't sell cybersecurity products or services, but we use an extraordinary number of them. We go through, you know, our company's ISO-27001 certified, and we go through SOC2 type 2 audits. We go through everybody goes through monthly training, and then we test the heck out of our people and try to try to fish them, try to smish them, vish them.

You know, we hire outside companies to come in and help test that stuff. I fell for one of those one time. Did you? Yeah, the Amazon one. Oh, yeah? Yeah. You bought some gift cards? Yeah, it was like two years ago, and it was like, you know, and they said, you know, Amazon's giving you a free gift card.

You're a good customer or something like. Don't take that. 50 bucks. And then all of a sudden, all hell broke loose. Yeah. Yeah, I fell for it. But so the reason you have to be so cyber aware and tested is because of what you're providing. That's right.

Right. We don't want to be a third-party risk for our clients, right? Because our systems are connected to a lot of other systems. And, you know, we've seen, you know, airports are, you know, critical infrastructure. And we work with, you know, other sensitive clients, too. So it's really important to us that if they get hacked, it's not because of us. Is Greenville-Spartenburg too small? I mean, I love, it's my favorite airport in the country. I love GSP. And so we've talked to them. I'm sure that they would love to have our stuff. But our stuff's expensive.

Right. It's real expensive. So, you know, maybe one day. Yeah. That's a good airport. I'm probably going to see, I saw Dave Edwards who runs the airport. I saw him. Well, he was in Germany.

He was in Germany, but I've seen him twice this year. I saw him in Hawaii last year on the Big Island. And I'm probably going to see him again in January. Just a couple weeks. I'm going back. This is my life now. Well, I love it. I'm going to Hawaii in January for work.

That's right. It's a hard-knock's life, man. We were talking earlier, and you were saying, you know, that the way in this business, because it's relatively small, right? There's not that many airports. They all go to these conferences around the world to learn and network and all that stuff. You just show up and get to know everyone. Tell them some dad jokes and, you know, be a little bit vulnerable with them.

That's it. South Carolina humor. That's right. easy to pick on. Well, that's so cool. And your revenue, is it tracking up? Is it growing? Yeah.

Yeah. We're, you know, revenue grows every year. Our costs grow every year significantly. You know, we like to take care of our people and make sure that we're not losing any. Starry people. It's so expensive. They are. Well, I mean, they're everything, man.

That's true. That's all we have. Right. Right. Yeah. But yeah, revenue's good. You told me it's going to grow pretty well next year? Yeah, yeah.

We're probably going to, you know, grow by about 50% revenue next year. So. When you get a sale, it's such a big deal for an airport to make this change. You know, you get an order today. You might do it eight months from now or six months from now. Yeah, I mean, typically it would take, now we just finished Phoenix Airport, which is a big one. Yeah. It's the top 10.

We finished them two weeks ago. We started on that project. I was having conference calls when I was in Hawaii in January. We didn't have a contract signed, but I'm trying to work all that stuff out. We signed with them at the end of February, and they had a requirement that we finish it by the end of the year. They had a system that they had to replace that was end of life. Okay. That, you know, we had to be in there.

And so we committed to doing that. We finished that project up in about 10 months from contract to close. Yeah. Do you remember, I don't know where you were in your technology journey for Y2K? Oh, yeah, man. That was the cold mine. I was doing, I was sent out on missions to make money. This is back when I was on the technical side of things. But Atlanta Airport was one of the clients that I went to and Y2K proofed their ID office.

Yeah. It was a gold mine. Yeah. It was the ultimate deadline. That's right. That's right. We need to get it done before, you know. We'll see what we can do.

It was a big money grab. It was. Yeah. It was. It was fun. So you're growing, and probably your next move is, obviously there's more to get in North America, but you will either go to other markets that aren't airports, or you'll go international airports or maybe try both. Yeah.

We know that there are a lot of, you know, our, our. big goal, though, is to work in a market where it's really small. Yeah. We like the small market. Small is good because they talk to each other. Right. And so, you know, our wholesale and marketing plan is treat our customers right, make sure that they love us, they become evangelists for us.

That way, you know, I have to do less work. Yeah. And I'm all about doing less work. Yeah, I don't know about that. I mean, you don't know why and all that stuff. That's work. Well, it's a I like the idea of a small market you can you can dominate. Yeah. Energy is one of those that, you know, there aren't a ton of massive energy companies in the world.

And they have the same type of prerequisites for getting into buildings and going into certain areas. And so, you know, we've had some talks with, you know, some of the big players, you know, southern companies and Pacific Gas and Electric and some of those companies to make sure that, you know, you know, if we decide to make that move. They're trying to get us to do it because they're aware of our reputation in the aviation space, and they want us to take that leap. Well, you probably have it covered, but I'll say this story. You know, we used to sell software to run maintenance departments. That was kind of our thing.

And we got a call from a southern company. It was nuclear power company. And we were like, no thanks. you know, that's not what we do. We don't want to get involved in all that stuff. And they just wouldn't stop calling. And finally we said, we'll meet with you if you pay us 20 grand for our time. Because we're just trying to run them off, really.

They were like, sure. They don't care, right? Well, I mean, they're better funded than airports. Yes. And so then, so we met with them and we heard all they wanted to do. And we're like, we just thought it would just crush our company because they wanted to do so much work not related to kind of our job. general. We had 10,000 customers already. They want to do something totally different. So we said, no again. And they said, well, give us a price. We said, well, for three million bucks,

you know, we'll do a pilot for you. And they said, sure. Yeah. I mean, they have so much money. I know. It's crazy. It is crazy. Yeah, and it ended up not working. We knew we knew we're going to work. Yeah. We didn't think it would work. But it is interesting how much money they have of those big power companies. Yeah. So one of those, I know you have some customers outside of airports and one of them is quite large. So I usually ask the question, tell me about your biggest sale. And I think the biggest sale so far is a little company called the Pentagon.

The Pentagon. So tell us, take your time and tell us about that deal. Well, I made a friendship with a guy named Roger Roar at the time. He was a consultant with Bering Point. and we were talking about, you know, the government post-9-11 released a standard called Phipps 201 that talked about identification standards and how all that stuff worked.

You know, at the time I was working for a company called Goddard Technology here in Greenville. But I built a relationship with him, proved that I had read that thing inside and out. You know, it wasn't Atlas shrugged, but, you know, it was probably harder read. You know, and I knew my stuff. And we had started developing products for what we thought was going to be the market for that.

Well, he loved us so much that he had an opportunity. He moved to the Pentagon because he's a genius and was helping them and said, you know, what these guys do in airports, you ought to look at doing here. And he brought me in for a meeting. I happened to be in D.C. Because all the airports, they are clients, Dallas National BWI. he brought me into the Pentagon and I just showed them, it was that day. And I said, well, I got a presentation I can do, but it's geared toward airports.

He said, we don't care. They saw that. They said, okay, we want it. We want to do a pilot. This is, you know, any salesperson's dream. And I said, okay, well, let's do it. And we ended up doing a pilot. It was extremely successful.

He said, okay, we're not going to put this at the Pentagon originally. initially we're going to put it into a building called the Mark Center, which they call the sixth wedge of the Pentagon. It's in Alexandria, Virginia. And we did some cool things for us, and we've been doing it ever since. And it's the Pentagon Force Protection Agency, so it's not just the Pentagon. It's several other defense facilities in the national capital region, as they call it. That's pretty cool. Well, that can look and lead to all kinds of stuff. They're a phenomenal research and development partner. We're doing a project for them right now that's that's just basically eliminating you know how the government is they love their paper

forms and we've eliminated that at airports and so there's sometimes that the airport market and the things that we're doing there help influence what the Pentagon does next and there's some things at the Pentagon they have ideas of doing things and we do them too yeah it's rare that we do something like the the data stream pilot for for southern companies that gets left on the shelf we have we did one of those were parking. We didn't want to do it, but, you know. Yeah. And that's the only thing that we've ever developed for them,

that they're not actively using and enhancing. And they've got great ideas. So the airports, by the way. Yeah. We don't have to research and development. It comes from our clients. That's wonderful. How do they get the information to you, their ideas?

How do they submit? We have conversations most of the time. You talk. The old-fashioned way? Yeah, the old-fashioned way. We have conversations. Well, so let's break this down a little bit because what the people that are watching this to learn want to know is how do you sell the Pentagon? Everyone wants to sell the Pentagon or sell something monstrous like that.

Yeah. A big multi-million dollar deal, long-term deal. So we want to do that. But, you know, it was not luck. It was not luck that you got called that day. you had developed a relationship with that person, I suppose, over many years. Yeah, a couple of years for sure. He knew each other.

He knew what you knew how to do. He's seen your stuff in action. And you had done the work to learn all this stuff and how it works. So if someone can just call you up out of the blue and say, come talk to the Pentagon. You're like, sure, I'll be there in 45 minutes, right? Right. Yeah. So that is called time in the saddle.

Yeah. in preparation. And, you know, one of the things that happened to me when I was, like, you know, 21 or 22 is I wrote my dad, who was a venture capitalist. I wrote him a letter or called him or something, and I said, you know, I want to be real successful. Yeah, I kind of want to do it in a hurry. And would you tell me, of all the people you've seen be successful in your life, you know, give me some how-toes and best practices? So he wrote me a damn letter. That's where I wish I could find it.

It was a yellow legal pad. Yeah. And he listed 12 guys that he knew that all become, you know, multi-millionaire, successful people like in their, you know, 40s and 50s. And every single one of them, the average length of time in the saddle was 20 years. Yeah. And most of them were right, like within a year or two of 20. Yeah.

Because something happens at 20 years. You have made those relationships. relationships with this consultant guy you're talking about. Yeah, sure. Right? And you've learned what you're doing, and you have all this, this web gets, it's more complicated, and all of a sudden, you're ready to sell the Pentagon. That's right.

You could have done it in year one. No. Yeah. So that's why I tell people, pick your thing that you're good at, that you like, that, you know, people will pay for it, so you've picked a good industry, and then just give it some time. Absolutely. Isn't that cool? Yeah.

So how long from the time that you start? started in the business to the sale of the Pentagon. How many years was that? Gosh, it was close to 20. It was close to 20. We do not rehearse this. Yeah. Yeah. So let's go back now. Let's take it all the way back. So where did you, where did you grow up? I grew up here. You grew up here? I was born here. Yeah, I grew up here. School. I went to Southside Christian school. Southside Christian. I went to Christ Church. Yeah. Big competitors. Right. Yeah. Rivals. Rivals. Shannon Forest. That's right. And then college? I went to Greenville Tech. Nice. And ended up dropping out because I was making more money than my dad was.

We'll see you and you and Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg. I mean... I think Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg started off at Harvard, though. That's a little bit different of a story. That's all right. That's all right. No, but I think that's funny. It's kind of a head of your time.

It used to be such a big deal. Yeah, my dad had a master's degree. And he was a teacher. It was a big deal. Yeah. And so it was something that I always, I loved going to school. Yeah. But I never really enjoyed the, I like the social aspect of it.

You know, I was like the kid in Rushmore. I was in every single club and I was in the band. And I was, you know, I did all the stuff. But, you know, academics were not my thing. Well, a lot of entrepreneurs like you and like me feel the same way. I just can't believe I spend any time sitting in a classroom. And now you own a school? You run a school?

I do own a school. It's a noob school. Well, it's something that's going to help people immediately start. Short snippets. Watch what you want. You do not need the 1,000-page book to learn how to sign. I can't even read it. But, I mean, to think about sitting in a little classroom quietly,

listening to someone pretty much just read you the highlights of a book, and you're taking notes of that. Yeah. I mean, it's the dumbest thing in the world. Yeah. Anyway, you're ahead of your time. And so you were doing, I think I remember this when we talked one time, you were doing IT consulting or computer consulting or something.

Yeah, I started, I love computers, always did. You know, my parents were broke, and so I was going out and getting job so that I could buy a computer and this is back in the day when you, if you walked into a restaurant and you heard somebody else talking about computers, boom, now you're in a club together, right? Yeah, I have DOS 3.32. So that's, that is, that's something that I loved and I ended up going to work for a company getting a job. I was so excited about it, selling software when I was 16 at the mall for Babbage's, which became GameStop. Yes, yes, yeah, Babbage's.

So that was the first job where I had to wear a tie. I was excited. I'm professional. Yeah. I'd walk around with Babbage's business cards. They didn't have my name on them. Uh-huh. You know, I was proud of it.

Yeah, that's right. Yeah. And so you were selling computers, doing computers when you were a teenager. Yeah. Yeah, I got lucky enough. I ended up running a, When I dropped out of school, I was working for a company called People's Computers. Yes.

That's right. I remember them. Right? Wasn't there one on 291? It was on Haywood Road. Hayward Road. Back by Farmore Pharmacy. Farmore. I remember that.

You remember that? Of course. Chick-fil-A is there now. But back in the day, they were there. They had about 12 locations. Yeah, I remember. We actually bought our first computers at Datastream from Peoples. That's wild.

Yeah. That's great. And, of course, they weren't connected to anything. Yeah. Like, you know, you would just, we set up our CRM system. Sure. And we thought, this is it. Yeah.

Now that we got in the computer, we're going to sell my hell out of these people. Yeah. And it really did help to know who to call next. It was great. Yeah. And we had them in a shoebox before that, our leads. And we kind of got to roll through. We call this one.

I called him last week, you know, roll through there. It's crazy. Peebles, man. So, Babbage's and then Peebles. People's. There was a stop at Sears. I sold at Sears. And that's where I kind of got my first sales training, which was good.

They taught me how to sell service and maintenance agreements on stuff. This is all computer stuff you're selling? Well, no, at Sears. I had to sell, I sold computers, but I also had to sell cell phones and TVs and VCRs. I say had to. It was a great job. That's back when you could make a living working at a department store. You know, with the first job I ever had a commission.

You're a commission. Right. And it was great. What did they pay commission? How much did they pay? I remember there was a time and I was in high school and I made $900 in a week and I was elated. Did you go buy like a transam or something? No. No, I was not a car guy. Okay. I always, you know, and it's one of my problems to this day, I'm not a car guy.

I don't really have, you know, big, I love to travel. And I've got a decent house, you know, but. I like spending money on experiences. Yeah. And so I was throwing parties all the time. Okay. You know. Party man. I love it. Yeah. I love it. So, so those are, this is a great story. So you did all that. And then when did you roll in, was it Goddard? Was it Goddard? Yeah. That was great. It was, it was a guy who worked at peoples. He went to Goddard. He said, man, this is the best job I've ever had. I got to travel all over the place. I get paid for travel. I thought it was amazing.

And so I did one interview, didn't get the job. Three months later, he calls me, he says, hey man, you need to come back in again. There's another opportunity. I came in, I got the job. Now I had to take a little bit of a pay cut, but I wanted this. It sounded exciting to me. I'm going to prove my worth, I'll eventually. And so I did that.

And like the first two weeks that I was there, they had an installer that was up in New York. at Columbia University, he was supposed to be going on vacation and the project was in total disarray. He didn't say anything. He just left. And so I get a phone call and they said, hey, Dave, or I didn't get a phone call, Lance Hendricks, the guy's name walked into my cubicle and he said, Dave, how'd you like to go to New York City? I was like, I'd love to go to New York City. And he said, good, I need you go pack a bag and get on a plane tonight. And I was like, I'm honored that you trust me. What I learned is he didn't trust me. It was just I'm a warm body to throw in front of a client.

Someone's got to go. But I was able to show up and be empathetic and say, hey, we're on this. I didn't know what the hell I was doing. I was brand new with the company. But I'm talking to people back here that did. And they helped me walk through. This is on like a Novell network. You know, and it's an Oracle database.

I didn't know anything about any of this stuff. It may have been like informants in database. It was old stuff. I had no experience with. But I was able to get that done, and they basically started sending me around places as kind of a firefighter. Then send me to places that everybody else who'd been with a company long enough refused to go. And I'd go and, you know, be the young kid who's eager and enthusiastic,

and I'm going to do whatever it takes to help you. And so I started, you know, making friends not only with those clients, but also internally, they started to look at me as somebody, hey, we can use this guy. So you had experience. You loved computers, been a lot of time with them, experience selling at different places. Then you got this job at Goddard where you became, you know,

the consultant who goes out and fixes things. That's right. And you did that for how long? Well, I was there about six years off and on. I left four times. I quit the company four times. because I got better offers. You know, I'm meeting integration.

I'm going on the road. Yeah. And I'm meeting all these companies. And they're like, wow, man, we'd love to have you come to work for us. Right. And I'd say, what do you guys pay in? And so I'd leave. And I missed what I did and I missed the team.

You know, and so a little bit of time would go by and that, you know, would still stay in touch. And I'd say, hey, we've got a project coming up with, okay. Well, you know, I'm making this much money now. How much, you know, are you going to be able to pony up? And I loved working. I loved working for those guys, great bosses. It was just, you know, I also like making money. Yeah, I get it.

And you were, you definitely, you were, you're unlike a college degree in political science, which I have. Yeah. You were actually learning how things work, how to fix systems, how Oracle works within Formex and all that stuff. Yeah. Your skill stack was growing. And so you've got to be getting close now to when you left and started your own company? I did. And it wasn't just one.

I started a couple of them. I started them both with one of the developers at Goddard. One was called New Paradigm Software, and that was a massive failure. Learning experience. Yeah. Right. It was a learning experience. But we had the idea that it would be really cool for, for,

for body shops who it's not like a repair shop where you bring your car and it's repaired that day and goes back out body shops they need that car's going to be there for a month it's going to have to go through different insurance adjustments it's going to have to have to go through they need a better way of tracking this than yellow legal pad and so we we got a uh you remember the old i packs the handheld devices it was it was before the blackberries came out i don't think i remember the i I remember the Newton, but not the IPP. It may not have been, it may not have even been called the IPAC. Whatever, you know, it was a handheld device from Compact.

Okay. And the thing that was cool about that is you could actually mount a camera to it. And so you could carry this thing around. You could take pictures of the cars and put them in a database. And so we had a really cool front end for the phone. Well, it wasn't a phone, but at the time, you know, that's closest thing to it. We were doing mobile software development. And we had a really cool app so that they could keep track of everything

and make sure they weren't missing deadlines. We could sell it. We sold it to Toyota of Greenville. But the people who were running the body shop didn't want to use it. They didn't want to use it. So we just never gained any traction with that. We did end up signing a small contract with the state of South Carolina to do some stuff.

And then we sold basically that contract and our company back to Goddard. And that time that I came back, basically, well, now I'm doing well. Now I'm a VP. And I'm part of the company. And, you know. Well, that's not a failure. That's, you know, that's right. It was an experiment.

Yeah, I had a reasonably good conclusion. you learn something. I mean, the user acceptance thing is real. We put in software in a big, the biggest, it's like a 10,000 bus, a city of Montreal, the Bus Depot. Yeah. And actually, software worked pretty well.

But what I learned when I was up there, because it's so cold up there, that when they issue the buses, When your shift starts, if you have seniority and they don't give you a really good bus, the guy will use the windshield wipers to break the front window to crack it. And he'll just say, hey, this thing's cracked, you know, and put it better. Yeah. And so it kind of has this thing where, you know, if you don't play the game, you know,

you're going to have a crack windows all day long. It's weird, isn't it? So now to the big one, though, now you did Telesoft. Is that the next? Yeah. Okay. So how old were you at that time? 30, 32, maybe 32.

Yeah, right, okay. And you thought you're ready and you had this idea, you have a client? Got a, got a little bit of money, have a client, have one small client, wasn't even an airport. We didn't even think that, you know, we knew that's where we wanted to go. And we were actually subcontracting back to Goddard. So, you know, we had been, I had been the one who was doing, you know, making sure all these projects happen. Yeah.

You know, as we're negotiating our exit, they were like, we could use some help. Yeah. And, you know. So you had Goddard as a built-in client to provide some money. Yeah. And you had a client who promised you, if you do this, we're going to buy your stuff from you. Yeah. Okay.

Well, I would just say to the people listening, how important that is. I mean, you've learned what you've learned kind of your trade. Right. Made some good contacts. you've got not one but two different places that are already going to give you money when you start on day one. Yeah. This isn't like, let's raise a bunch of money and... Yeah, we thought we had three because that consultant who introduced us to the Pentagon.

He was also willing to take us in front of any government agency that we wanted to get in front of. Right. And what we found was, you know, he worked for Bering Point and we would go in and get him real excited about what we could do. and then they'd get a contract and they'd say yeah he came to me finally and said Dave I feel terrible about this but it's not my decision and and you know they've decided they can do this in-house and they don't need you yeah and I'm like well glad we helped you sell the project but yeah it was it was an incredibly valuable experience and we had a little bit of, you know, known revenue that was coming down before we jumped into it.

That's important. Yeah. That's good. And so for the last 18, 19, 20 years, you've been building the company, making it better and better. Yeah. And now it seems like, I don't know what point you felt like, you know, you really had a tiger by the tail. So five years ago? It was probably when we were able to get the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

So we sold JFK, it's JFK, LaGuardia, Newark, and Stewart Airport's all in one sale. And I would say that that's my biggest sale next to the Pentagon, but I cannot take full credit for that because we brought in one of your old disciples, Russ Compton. Okay. From DataStream back in the day. So he was helping you then? Yeah. He was helping me out with sales. But when we got that, it was like, you know, we're competing with companies.

You know, H-I-D was our biggest competitor. And they're owned by Asa Abloy. They're, you know, it's, I don't know, Fortune 50 company, maybe. And so we went up against the big guys, and we were able to get that project. That's probably, well, Pentagon happened before that, though. So Pentagon's when I kind of arrived, I guess. Yeah. Yeah.

And are you selling your product now on a SaaS basis? No. Really? No, I know. We've had this conversation. We're, we are doing it the old fashioned way. And a lot of that's due to, you know, procurement and the way that procurement is structured with airports. And that's changing.

It's shifting. But, you know, we do have an annual recurring revenue model based on our support. But, no, it's, we're selling perpetual licenses, man. Well. You know, I'm glad this is being recorded. Every time we talk, I wish I had a recording of our conversation. But we definitely need to talk more. Because the last time we talked about this, there were words of wisdom.

And I'm just too dumb. You know, I probably need to see if I could buy some of your time to help me with that transition. Well, I'll be happy to help you any time. But I can tell you, haven't gone through it myself, it's easier said than done. Meaning it's easier for me to say it. Because I kind of know what's going to happen. Right. But this is your company and your money and your customers,

and you're just worried what's going to happen when you say it. Well, you know, the two, and this is something that we've been, every year in January, we'll have an executive retreat. We'll get together and we'll talk about what we're going to do this year. But the most important thing is above any strategic goals is we've got to protect two things. our reputation and our company culture. We have to protect those two things. They're very interrelated.

And if we can protect those two things, we're going to be great. As long as we can make sure those things stay the same. So switching to that SaaS model. I'll help you with it, but I'll tell you the story that happened to us. We had, you know, after 20 years or let's say 19 years of building the company, we were at about $100 million a year. 35 was recurring from maintenance contracts. Right.

That's great. Let's say 35 was services, and the other 35 was new license sales. Yeah. Which meant every quarter we had to find, you know, you're feeding the beast. Essentially $10 million in new license sales every quarter, just keep on that 100 pace. Yeah.

Which is, that's hard. You know, it's hard to do. And we would have this conversation about going to SaaS and you switch into a recurring model. and we do well what are the customers going to say they're going to get mad when we switch them and they've been this way for eight years

all these things would just be rolling around our heads and we'd end up just not doing it yeah and so we sold the company and the new company came and they were much bigger than us they could withstand pretty much anything so they didn't care and they told the salespeople you can sell recurring or you can sell the old way

but we're not paying any commission on the old way it's up to you right So that immediately starts selling recurring only. Yeah. Easy, peasy. And for the old customers, they just put a thing in place. They did like a series of messages. Yeah.

You know, we're planning on doing this. We're going to add this thing. You're going to get this thing. And then we're going to, and it took like, you know, maybe a year and a half to kind of get everyone switched over in a nice, nice way. Yeah. To where everyone's now paying just this much money. And it was a lot more money than what they were paying before.

in renewals. Yeah. They've taken the company to 300 million. Yeah. Pretty much a lot of that is just that one change. Yeah. Crazy, isn't it? It is. Anyway, we'll talk more about that. Let me ask you this, since we're running out of time, I know how valuable your time is is going to sell another Pentagon. Is the A, the Chet GPT and GROC and that kind of stuff, is that affecting your business at all? It's helping me a lot. Tell me how. Well, you know, writer's block doesn't exist anymore. Right. You have a draft in like 30 seconds.

Well, my biggest problem is I would write stuff and I could vomit out all the details. That's not a problem. But then it's, okay, now I need to figure out what the outline of this is so that I can take all this information and put in something that's cohesive and concise. I don't have that problem anymore. I can put all that stuff in and boom, it gives me a draft that is, oh, that's fantastic. That's not really accurate. Now I'm editing and I'm teaching it to help me in different ways.

And so that's a game changer. But from a communication perspective, I think that one of the things that people hate doing is writing reports. And reports and documentation. are incredibly important, but that's not a strength of everybody. I've got a VP of engineering who is amazing in his job. He's great. But I found out within a couple months of hiring this guy when we had a big RFP come out that we were interested in responding to. I was like, hey, man, can you write something up on how we do this?

It was bad. He couldn't do it. But now he can. Okay, yeah, yeah. Now we can. And so everybody inside of our organization, Claude, you can go with Claude. Yeah. My goodness.

Is that the better one? You like that one better? Claude's better at a lot of stuff. It's PhD level writing. You know, the pros that comes out of Claude's a lot better than comes out of chat GPT, even though one. But I've also had it do things and take documents and turn them into multiple choice tests. Try to do it with ChatGPT, it's going to make some stuff up. I'm hoping that Eve McCall with Microsoft doesn't see this.

But she'll be upset that I'm talking smack about ChatGPT. Well, how about Grock? Do you use that one? I don't. Okay, that's the one I use mainly, the one on X. Yeah. I'm not on social media at all. No?

Not at all. Well, I have a LinkedIn account. Okay. But it's got an auto-responder. If you send me a message on it, it'll tell you that I don't check my LinkedIn messages very often. Well, we could talk all day about social, because I can argue both sides of it. There's a guy coming later to, who just looks like you, does no social media. And I'm like, but man, you know, people can find you and bring you business opportunities and blah, blah, blah.

He goes, yeah. He goes, but it also would cost me, you know, two hours a day. Right? To be focusing on my business or my family or exercising or whatever. So I understand both sides. I had a brother-in-law tell me in the early days of Facebook that I had to get on Facebook. It's amazing. It's the best thing I've ever seen.

It's so cool. He said, I'm addicted to it. I spend four or five hours a day on it now. And I said, you just unsold me. Yeah. I don't want it. Unsold. Yeah.

All right. What's your favorite book? Man, I read a lot. Most of the stuff I read is junk, right? You know, I read all the lead child Jack Reacher books. I'm reading Lucas Davenport novel right now. So if you want like sales and business books. No, just an all-time favorite book.

There was a, the guy who released the Pentagon Papers, Daniel Ellsberg. He wrote a book called Secrets. It's about the release of the Pentagon Papers and his, you know, involvement in working for the Rand Corporation. He basically answered Robert McNamara. Yeah. So it spans the whole thing. and they ended up, it was a true story, but it read like a novel. You know, this guy starts off, and he's in, you know, Cambodia and Vietnam,

and he's, you know, it's just an amazing book about everything leading up to Watergate. Love that book. I want to have to read that. That sounds good. Yeah, that's one of the books that if I'm going to give away a book. That's the one. I like that book. I'm a huge fan of The Infinite Game.

by Simon Seneck. Love that guy. Start with Wise, also a great book. I mentioned, I don't know if I did it before we started recording, but there's a book called Purple Cowell from Seth Godin. And that's, I love that guy's podcast too. A Kimbo, very low energy, but man, he's smart. Yeah.

My dad was a voracious reader, and he loved things like the Jack Reacher and those kind of those things. But so what he did, he's very disciplined, man, unlike myself. But he would say, I'm going to read one mystery novel or one spy novel, and then one like Shakespeare or something good for me. Right. And he did that. He was just one and then one, and one. I find that my audible, I do the same thing. I'll buy a mind-handy book, and then I'll buy something that's going to be good for me.

And then I have a lot of all my unread books, or those books that are good for me. I've got a ton of them piled up. I've got so many. Yeah. I have so many. I wish there's some way to just like instantly get it in your brain. Yeah, Matrix style. Yeah, metric style.

How about favorite band? Man, the Beatles. The Beatles, it's an easy answer. There's a new documentary on Disney Plus of what happened in 64 and the craziness around Beatlemania. But the one that they released a couple years ago when they were in the studio and performing for what ended up becoming the Abbey Road and the rooftop sessions. You know, I watched that and cried a couple times. I mean, it was great documentaries. Love their music.

You know, they were. just around for a very brief period of time. Yeah, and just amazing work. Well, that's an interesting point to what we're talking about earlier, the 20-year thing. I don't know if it was 20 years, but they started when they were young, and they spent, what, 10 years in Hamburg?

Yeah. Just playing like four sets. Yeah, put it four sets a day or something like that. Malcolm Gladwell wrote about it. And was it breaking point? So he mentioned, he talked about them at tipping point. Tipping point. That's right.

There was once, this is a while back because there was a radio station, but there was a radio station that was switching formats. And for the switch, for like three days, they only played Beatles with no commercials. So this is before, this was at Hendersonville. Okay. And so it was before streaming because this was so, so cool. Yeah. But I just kept thinking, oh, my God, there's another. It's a banger and a banger.

Yeah. All of them are great. One after another. Yeah. Yeah, okay, I'm with you on that. And then favorite word? Love. Love.

Love. Love will keep us together. I love that word. Love. That's all you need. Love is all you need. Love will keep us together. That's right.

Yes, yes. Well, um. Oh, Captain and Neil. That should have been my, uh, yeah. That should have been my favorite band. Love will keep that. I love. Is that loving?

Well, I like, I like the English Bulldog. And I like the hat. Yeah. I like the music. everything about that band I like Was it a brother and sister? I don't know I'm not 100% sure

Okay, all right Now Is there anything you'd like to promote today? Nothing I want to promote your book Let's promote your book Sales for News And you know

Your services You're one of the best salespeople One of the best sales coaches I've ever heard I've known about you for Decades because you're You're a legend.

The way that you helped your team and helped mentor your team is an example of the way that I want to, you know, mentor my people. You know, you guys are a special person, John. Well, thank you. I appreciate that. I do like helping people. But it's delightful to have you here today. Yeah. And it was a great discussion.

I think people learned a lot from your journey. And again, I mean, you started early. You pick something you loved, which was computers. You learned how to do it. Found your opportunity. Took a customer with you. And here you are, you know, 20 years later with an overnight success. Yes, exactly right.

Congratulations. Thanks, buddy.