Noob School - Episode 41: You Have To Do What You Love with Donald Corry

Episode Date: September 5, 2022

SHOW SUMMARYBy every stretch of the imagination, Donald Corry has had an interesting career. After graduating from The Citadel, he served as a military intelligence officer and upon completion of active duty, began to carve himself a career in enterprise sales with Blackbaud. After a few years, Donald decided to work as a financial advisor with Edward Jones. In this episode of the Noob School, Donald and John talk about key lessons learned during his sales career, and why after so many years, he’s still working on doing what he truly loves to do.  HIGHLIGHTS From military intelligence to software sales and financial servicesIf they're not ready for your product, just walk awayThe intricacies of selling to the federal governmentHow to overcome the worst sales objection You need to do something you love  QUOTESDonald on why he doesn't do that many follow up calls anymore: "What I started to realize — I call it the ketchup call: 'Hey, just calling to catch up, see how you we're doing.' I realize that all it does is to elongate the process, I don't need to be their friend. If they got a problem, I can help."Donald on the importance of knowing when to walk away: "That was the 'aha moment' for me in inside sales. It's your ability to say no. Because you're saving your time, you're saving a false forecast. There's another opportunity out there, you just got to go and find it."  Connect to Donald in the link below: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/donald-corry-7a973bb/ Connect with Noob School and John by visiting the following links:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnsterling1/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/johnsterlingsalesInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/johnsterling_/Twitter: https://twitter.com/johnsterling_TikTok: https://twitter.com/johnsterling_Website: http://salestrainingfornoobs.com/

I showed up the first day to go through training, and somebody turned around the corner and spilled coffee all over my shirt. I had one, you know, I was still moving down, so I had stuff in my car. So I went out and, you know, got it and changed. And it just so happened that the VP saw it happen. When he saw me later that day with that clean shirt, he goes, what happened? And I said, well, I had one in the car. He goes, that's a good idea.

Keep a spare shirt in the car. That was just sheer luck. How did that group do? I did really well. And I say, this is the first time now. It's a team effort. I felt like the training was simple. I think they were good sales reps.

They just didn't know how to sell. Welcome back to Noob School. This is where we interview successful business owners, and we dial it back to the beginning and figure out what they did to make their revenue grow. All right, Donald, welcome aboard. Thanks, John. Donald Corey, my man.

Donald and I go back to 1993. Well, Sierra graduated. It's about 1995. But we knew each other. Yeah. We met each other in 193. And Donald was at the Citadel, and he was, I'd say, one of the most squared away, top-ranking people I'd ever met down there. And what company were you in?

Delta Company. Delta Company. And what was, do you, the Company Commander? I was a company commander. They didn't experiment on me because, you know, normally when you get a leadership position, they move you out. Yeah. Right. And they kept me in Delta Company all four years.

And, you know, part of it is I've got the best classmates anyone could ever ask for, including John Harrison. Yeah. But it was easy because, you know, senior privates are normally the ones that you have a hard time with. Well, our class, Delta 93 was the Bravo Company Commander, Charlotte Company Commander, Delta Company Commander, Echo Company Commander, Wow. Fourth Battalion Commander, regimental academic, regimental ops.

I had one senior private. You didn't have any privates left, yeah. So in Delta Company, you know, the frat, we actually won President's Cup that year. Wow. Good job, man. That's awesome. Well, I was a senior private, you know, but I could spot the winners, you know. And I knew you were a great winner.

And I had recruited your brother. He's got an identical twin named David. and I'd recruited him and he joined, he joined our company. But I also met Donald, but unfortunately for me, Donald was going in the Army. Yeah. You had a contract going to the Army as a lieutenant, second lieutenant, and you spent your first two years after school in the military. Correct.

Yeah. And some kind of intelligence, right? Yeah. So I was an intelligence officer. the brigade that I was sent to, we had two, what it called, Signal Intelligence Battalions and one human intelligence battalion, you meant. And we weren't in like the 101st or the 82nd or the first, you know, Big Red One.

We reported directly up to the White House and the Pentagon. And it was funny, you know, we would have formation. and nobody would show up, nobody'd be there because they didn't want to burn their identities. So it was really interesting. I had one day that was like a war game day. It was unfortunately it was the bombing of the Oklahoma building. And I happened to be in the SCIF,

the secret compartment information facility when it happened. And all of a sudden all these screens go up. And all you'd see is like a monument, you know, say the Seattle needle, right? And you hear somebody say, this is, you know, in a given code name, and I have eyes on and it would go off. And so what we were doing that day was not trying to identify who did it, but making sure we knew who didn't do it. And that way we could kind of tighten the circle. And so we had a good idea. It was domestic pretty quick.

Yeah. But, you know, the way that they handle it, we actually were able to get the VIN number off of the axle. Wow. Now, that was just a van full of, like, fertilizer and gunpowder or something? Fertilizer and diesel. Diesel. Jeez, and that was bad. Yeah, it was hundreds killed, right?

Yeah, really unfortunate. Yeah. I remember that. So, okay, so you did a couple years of that and then got out, and you were, wanted to be in the financial advising financial services business, and you went to work for American Express financial advisors. Yeah. Okay. And tell us about that. Well, originally it was all the planned to get it to give me to law school. Right. So I wanted to be the corporate securities guy in a law firm. And I thought, you know, I was, I felt like I was a good intelligence officer

because two years during college, I was in the National Guard infantry. And plus all the infantry training we do at the Citadel. So I felt like, you know, I could see, you know, a plan and understand it a little bit better by saying, you know, you're not going to get these guys from here to here in, you know, six hours. They've got to go eight kilometers over a mountain. And so I felt the same thing. I was like, if I'm going to be in the securities industry, maybe I had to learn it. Yeah. That's a really good point.

It must, you know, people, we talk about that with the noobs a lot, is you're trying to figure out what you want to do and you want to surround it and get, you know, understand how to sell it, how to buy it, how to source it, you know, everything you can think of versus just saying, hey, I want to be a securities lawyer. Yeah. So I like that. It's a good idea. So I spent two years doing that and said, okay, I needed, I actually needed,

something on my resume for, you know, to hopefully, you know, kind of kick it up. And so I went to work for the South Carolina Attorney General's office in the Securities Division. And so I was there. That was when, you know, the whole Jordan Belford, Wolf of Wall Street was going on. And so, you know, I spent a lot of my time just listening to tapes. And I would, you know, I'd side two, ten minutes in, you know, he's puffed. He's turning. He's leading the tape. I'd take it to the attorneys.

They'd listen, and they'd either issue a cease and desist or put it in the criminal complaint. And that's what I did until one fortunate day, I got a phone call from you. Me? Yeah, that was you. Man. Well, you knew I was going to circle back on you.

I did. I mean, I wanted you, when you graduated, and then your brother did great for us. And I think the discussion we had was around, do you want to go down the attorney path or do you want to go down the kind of enterprise sales business path? Yeah. And I basically talked to you into trying my way. You did.

It was funny. You know, the enterprise side of it was what I wanted to do. And I got to your office the first day. And it's like, all right, enterprise sales, where's my territory? He goes. And that's when you said, no, no, no, no. You got to learn. You put me inside sales.

I was prospecting. But we did negotiate a deal. One year? It was March when I got there. And I got you to agree that if I hit the number by the end of the year, that you'd give me an outside territory. And we did that. I was fortunate.

I think his name was Mike Hollingsworth. John Hollingsworth. I was fortunate. He was in the office when that happened because on December 31st, when I marched into your office and said, words my territory, he's like, what are you talking about? And John just started laughing.

Yeah. He goes, oh, I remember that. You got a witness, yeah. So. Well, that's good, though. It's a good, that's a good point there is you can negotiate with your company. You know, you don't have to come out in a way where if you don't do what I say, I'm walking out of here.

It's just like, hey, how about if I make my number? That was it. And you'll do this for me. Yeah. I see, I don't know if you realize. it because while I was working and inside sales, I've lived in Columbia. I forgot about that.

Yeah, every morning. You had to drive. Mm-hmm. Okay. Well, what did you listen to? You know, it's funny. I listened to a lot of NPR because at the end of the day, it was soothing.

Yeah. You know, it didn't necessarily mean I didn't need to hear the content. It's almost like, you know, a drone. It is kind of a drone music. Yeah. That's true. That's true. So what year was that when we finally got together when you started working with us? 97.

97. Okay. And who was your manager then? John Byram. Byram. J.B. Okay. Very good. Very good. So tell us about, you know, about selling back then and what you learned is an inside rep. So, you know, I was kind of thrown at it the first day. Just, you know, here's your territory. Here's how you work, onyx. Yeah.

And get at it. And I was fortunate because, you know, the military forces maintenance on everything. So I understood the process of the maintenance side of it, understanding, you know, the procurement side for inventory or, you know, like a work order request. I still was a little fuzzy on it. So I was, John Hillman came in one day and just drew this big circle, MP2, and then had all the modules come off of it. And all of a sudden it just kind of clicked. And so once I could understand what my solution was,

then it could guide my questions. But during those days, it was a lot of dialing and talking to, you know, floor managers or senior engineering. engineer or stuff like that. And we were selling $5,000, $6,000 worth the software to pop. You got lucky. But what I started to realize is it, I think, you know, it's kind of, I call the catch up call.

Hey, you just call them to catch up. See, how you're doing? It was, I realized, all that does is elongate the process. I don't need to be their friend. If they've got a problem, I can help it. And so my outside rep is John Ellison, one of the best out there. Yeah. And I kind of put those two together when I heard John Ellison say, you know, we're not the right software company for you and walk away.

And of course, it's an inside rep. I'm like, what did you just do? And John called me back and said, look, they're not ready. They don't have a sales process in place. They don't have a team in place. We can't even get up the lab. And so he walked away from it. And it was, that was the aha moment for me in Inside Sales is your ability to say no, because you're saving your time and you're saving a false forecast.

Yeah. And there's another opportunity out there. You just got to go find it. Yeah. That's good. So you learned from other people with the company like Hillman and then from your outside rep, you learned what do you learn what? you want to walk away from? I did.

Okay. And so how long were you, obviously you moved to outside sales? So tell us about that. So we actually had tried to, we were trying to experiment. You love experiments. Another experiment.

Yeah, we started in the federal vertical. Okay. And so I moved up to Washington, D.C. to sell to the federal government. That's right, because we said, well, you're in the Army. That's exactly. You clearly will know everyone in the Pentagon by now.

It was interesting, you know, the hard thing about that entire space is that they don't really buy a lot during the year. Now, their fiscal years starts October in September. And so I would describe it as 11 months of sitting on the beach and one month of sheer terror. It's just phone call after phone call, but, you know, it's interesting. they have a budget and they have an allocated amount of money. And if you know that, beginning of September,

if they haven't spent it in next year's budget, they lose it. So, you know, I would make half to 75% of my year quota in September. But at that time, the company wasn't set up for that because my comp plan wasn't aligned with that.

And so, you know, it's three quarters of, you know, scavenging, and then one quarter of King of the Hill, you know? What kind of people, what kind of agencies were buying the software? See, we did TARs, the Tethered Aerial Reconnaissance Mission or System. And when you say, what I found out worked best was becoming a subcontractor to a deal. Okay. Because to sell to the government, you know, you've got to be on, you know, in the FAR, you've got all of these

little conditions that have to be met. Well, the big guys, the Booz Allen's of the world, the Lockheed Martins, the Raytheons, they've already gone through all of that. And so when they bring you on as a subcontractor, are you doing it selling to them? And so, you know, I started making my contacts with those guys.

The other side of it's because everything was always public. You know, there's a couple of websites you have to monitor to see when a big one would come out. But the, you know, the other side of it's, that is you guys never liked work in RFPs. True. Because somebody's already baked it. Yeah.

Right. So you got to make sure you pick the right contractor. Yeah. Well, it's just, you know, it's just good, good for you for having the, you know, the courage to just move on up there and try sell on federal. I mean, we did. We were, we were successful. I got to go to some really cool places, the White House Communications Agency.

That's right. You sold them, didn't you? I did. Yeah. So it was all the, like, stuff they used to. So, yeah, when the president travels, there, there's, you know, Air Force One, and a lot of times they have another Air Force One trail it, but they've got planes that, you know, you figure if he's going from Miami to New York,

to Chicago, to Seattle, to L.A., there's a plane that's ahead of him, right? And they get everything ready. So when he's on the ground, they can do everything, he or she, they can do everything. Well, a fax machine, you know, is not working. Right? They don't order another one. Somebody goes out and buys one, they just throw that one away. Right?

And so they had no way of tracking all of that stuff. But those planes with leapfrog. Yes, our software, for the people who don't know, our software gave companies a way to track the maintenance and spare parts and all that stuff needed for all their equipment. Yeah. And so for the White House, it was like walkie-talkies and fax machines and guns, Who knows what all they have.

Those were on there. I went to the White, or excuse, what is it, Mount Weather? We weren't supposed to talk about it either. I think it's been so long. We hadn't on disclosure for a while. Mount Weather, that's the president's bunker. It's out in that, it's like in the, I won't say Blackford. It's not Blacksburg, but it's out in the hills of West Virginia.

West Virginia. Yeah. Or Virginia. It's still in Virginia, I think. I pulled up the first day I got it. there. And of course, you know, I had to send my social security like three weeks in advance and blah, blah, blah. I got there and they gave my car an inspection. They inspected me. And I went and drove and I parked and an MP comes up because you can't park there. That's a vent for the

underground city. A little bit. So, funny story. I wish I could remember who this engineer was. we sold the FBI. And we had been in the J. Edgar Hoover building earlier that day. And, you know, I left and he left and we got on separate planes. And later that afternoon, I get a phone call. And he goes, Donald, I still have the schematics of the JFK or the Jager Hoover building on my laptop. I don't know who this is. Click, click, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's great. Yeah, you had some great sales. I remember that. I remember going up there and went about to see the FBI people, and they wouldn't see me. I remember I went to the gift shop. That was my big trip to Washington. Well, that's cool.

Now, beyond that, did we do anything else? Did you switch into another role or just stay in federal the whole time? Stayed in federal the whole time. Okay. And then eventually you switched to varying technologies up in Charlotte. Yeah. And tell us about that. Tell us what you learned there. So it was Rob Greer and I. Okay.

And we were brought on to just build the entire sales platform. And so the first thing we realized is we just simply needed to get some prospects. So, you know, he and I took the BMW clothes, you know, put it in a box. And we wrote it out. And, you know, I knew, I had that script memorized, you know. But we got some traction, got some things going. And we got, what was it, 8 million in venture capital funding. Right.

After, you know, they came in and interviewed all of us and saw that, yeah, we, in fact, do have, you know, a sales process now. And so that was, you know, that was interesting because a lot of the, objections that I would get would be things about our burn rate, about the company's viability of, are you going to be here in a year? And so it wasn't necessarily the product. It was, you know, and I learned, that kind of expanded my mind on the evaluation process. How would anyone know what the burn rate was for variance? If we get to that level, they're asking for financials. Okay. Yeah. Oh.

Interesting. Okay. And so what else did you learn there? I wouldn't say necessarily I learned it. I implemented what you taught me. And there's always another phone call to make. Yeah. Right?

And at this point, in the infancy of the company, in the infancy of prospects, we needed to build a solid pipeline. We needed to get some logos. And so Rob and I did that tirelessly. but I learned that I liked having a position where, you know, I could see behind the curtains, right? It was the first time I got that chance. Through the whole company? Yeah.

Yeah. And so it really started expanding my understanding of really how things worked rather than just, you know, come to work, have a quota, hit it, go home. Yeah. That's cool. That's cool. And then, did we go to BlackBod? BlackBaud next. Okay, we got the best for last.

Okay, not quite last. So you went to BlackBaud, which is one of the top software companies in South Carolina based in Charleston, and they sell human resources stuff? Nonprofit, nonprofit, yeah. That's a great company. Yeah. They're doing really well. They hired me on. There's really two main product lines.

one for the fundraising, and then there's one for the accounting. And I was asked to come on as the manager for the, at the time, failing financial edge account team. And so I remember I showed up the first day to go through training, and somebody turned around the corner and spilled coffee all over my shirt. And I had one, you know, I was still moving. down. So I had some stuff in my car. So I went out and, you know, got it and changed. And it just so happened that the VP saw it happen. And when he saw me later that day with that clean shirt, he goes, what happened? I said, well, I had one in the car. He goes, that's a good idea.

So I don't know if he implemented or not. Always keep a spare shirt in the car. That was just sheer look. Yeah. That's cool. So how did that group do? How did you do with that? I did really well. And I say, this is the first time now. It's a team effort. Yeah. And it was, I felt like the training was simple because, you know, I'd had it ingrained in my head. I didn't deviate from what you taught me. And so I think they were good sales reps. They just

didn't know how to sell. And so we spent a lot of time where I I would just go from cube to cube and listen to them. And after they got off the call, I'd say, hey, is there another way we could handle this? Or why didn't you ask this, you know, go deeper on this side, you know, get something out of the phone call. You know, I think the biggest thing that I taught them was making phone calls was not work. Right. Just calling someone up and how's it going? Yeah.

Yeah. And so I learned a very valuable lesson out of that, and I do it to this day. Yeah. Is it every month, based upon revenue, based upon expenses, I track my gross and my net hourly rate, see what I'm worth. And when I started looking at that for them and said, you know, you're sitting here for $50 every day. something's not right, right? And so the phone call, you had to have a point. You had to get, you didn't have to get the PO,

but you did have to get up the ladder. Yeah, move it. You had to move the process. And so the team was, you know, I got really fortunate with some of the people that I was able to bring on immediately. And we hit our number the first month, and the VP was amazed.

he was like, I don't understand how you did it, but keep doing it. And so we hit our number for the next nine months. Nice. And that was a lot of fun. That's great. It was a lot of fun. That's great. I think one of the common obstacles salespeople get is I haven't looked at it yet, right?

Or I haven't had time to review it yet or something. And I mean, I'll tell you the way I tell people to combat that. Then you can tell me if there's something else you use, but just to say, well, Well, you do want to look at it, right? You mean, they're like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Why don't we set up a time? Let's do it together. That way it'll save you time because I'll be here to answer questions.

How about Tuesday at 9 o'clock or Thursday at whatever? And so all of a sudden you've got something on the calendar and you force it to happen. And it is more convenient for them to have someone kind of holding their hand. Yeah, sure. What do you think? Does that work for you? It does. You know, being the virtual chauffeur helps out.

And depending upon what type of deal you're talking about, at this point, well, I haven't had a time to look at it. Well, John, you know, when we sat down and we agreed to this process, we set out a timeline. I'm simply following what you told me. If you're not going to live up to your obligations, I can't do it with mine because, you know, I'm spending money on resources to give you demos. You know, we've flown out there twice. So, well, depending on, you know, where we are on the... Sure. But you say, hey, we agreed on this.

So if you're not going to do it, just let me know. Yeah. Because I've got other things I can do. A little more aggressive than my approach. You know, I've heard that before. That's all right. There's more than one way to do it. Well, and here's a tribute to John Hillman, right?

You beat him to death with a feather. Yeah. Right? It's not, you know, I don't, I don't intend to come off aggressive. I intend to come off as we agreed. Yeah. Do you have a responsibility? And so do I.

I'm living up to mine. I would simply like you to live up to yours. You know, we can, we can close this loop on this one. But I'll just say this. I think people need to be themselves. And I have my way of doing it. You have a more aggressive way. You're a more aggressive person.

And Hillman has an even more of a different approach. And so I would probably botch your approach. But the way you do it from yourself works. You know what I'm saying? So, I mean, I think people should listen to a lot of things and then kind of go with whoever they are. But just don't call and say, how's it going? I'll call you back in two weeks.

Yeah, I just called to catch up. Catch up. All right. So from BlackBod, I helped you get a job at the number one company in the world. Well, thank you for that. Maybe of all time. You do.

and Hillman and T.J. Yes. The guy tells me, my partner out there tells me, I need three great salespeople. I'm like, I got them right here, Donald, T.J. and Hillman. And what was that company? It was Enron. It was Enron.

Yeah. We were still friends. We were still friends. So you were there to help them with which product group was it? So it was called phaser. Faser. And that was energy. It was.

Yes. Energy management. Okay. Okay. So energy management software, because I remember that company, they were at a state college, Pennsylvania, right? Yeah. Okay. And so y'all went out there as the software, all three of you, all great software experience to work for them, and you were there for, what, nine months? And tell us about what you learned while you were there that you can speak of. Well, at this point, I guess the biggest thing that I learned is that companies need to keep following.

finding different revenue, ways of creating revenue. And what they were doing with this software line was creating a commodities exchange to trade futures and contracts down in Houston. And so the interesting thing about Faser was that it was a hosted product by Enron, which means, yeah, they're monitoring their energy, but this never happened that I'm aware of. we can see it too. Sure. So when, you know, Del Monte decides that they're going to canned green beans for three months during, you know, the harvest period out in California, their energy is going to spike.

Yeah. Right. So they've got three months on, nine months off. Well, if I know that in advance, I know to hike up the contract. Yeah. Right. But it never got that far because the exchange was never created. Right.

That was another one of the things that was kind of promised or on the drawing board. Now, in theory, it was, you know, I think it was an awesome idea for them to create the exchange. I didn't necessarily understand where they were all going with it. But, you know, I think it's fair to say that it would have been an interesting time. I mean, the part I was dealing with them was the maintenance exchange. It was using our software as kind of the middle of it, and they were going to put the spare parts and the information and all that stuff around it and create this exchange.

And, again, very interesting, but probably, you know, Enron probably was like Icarus a little bit. Just flew a little too high too quickly. But it was the best intentions that I sent you out there. No, no, I understand. And, you know, I think for a little bit they were simply just a, you know, they become a product of the entire economy, right? Because they blow it out and have one good year and doing it, you know, the right way. Well, you know, stockholders, you know, CEOs, board of directors all expect it next year you'll do better.

Yeah. And when that doesn't happen, you know, they weren't ready for the fall of the stock price is what I think. Well, the funny thing, of course that ended abruptly. Abruptly. You had plenty of notice. You had like, what, an hour's notice when it was all over? I simply woke up and was watching the news and Enron had collapsed. The doors were locked.

Yeah, literally. No, I mean, you know, I had stuff that I had procured on behalf of the company. You know, I was living in Charlotte. And I was like, what do you want me to do with this stuff? You can keep it. Keep it. Yeah, whatever. They got bigger fish to fry.

So you pivoted, and I think, is that when you went to Edward Jones, Edward R. Jones? No, no, no. I actually went, let's see, after that, I went back to Datastream. Oh, you did? It's an individual contributor. As an N4? Yep. Wow.

Yeah. You were on the other side. Mm-hmm. How was that? Confusing. Yeah. Simply because at this point, you know, I didn't, we thought something was in the works. I had never heard of In-4 at this point.

And to me, the business model that they had was confusing. And so, you know, at an enterprise level, when I'm, you know, I'm going to meet with somebody and I need resources. I need people. And I need an executive sponsor and stuff like that. it was very, very difficult to wrangle. Yeah, you had to build your own team and hope that, you know, they're available. Yeah.

So I ended up, it created, you know, it was an interesting time there because that's right when those three hurricanes came across Florida. Yeah. And so I went in and I knew that they'd all gotten FEMA money. That's some of my federal stuff. And I went in and created a work order. for a hurricane. So if it was a 25% probability, 50% probability,

you know, 24 hours out, or 48 hours out, 24 hours out, it created all the elements of what needed to happen. Yeah. Right. So somebody could come in at the city level and say, you know, print out this work order. And they would know at this point, you know, we've got to evacuate here.

We've got to call in the American Red Cross. You know, whatever it was with the evacuation and stuff like. And I went down and within 45 days, I sold it to all three of them. Wow. Good job. That's awesome. That was. So then, but you transitioned eventually to Edward Jones.

Yeah. So this was, you know, I'd actually gone back to Blackbaud. For a little while. Yeah. Yeah. And so at this point, it's 20 years since I, it. joined the military. Yeah.

So all my buddies that were in start giving me a call, say, hey, I'm getting out. I want to do what you do. Yeah. And I was like, well, you know, you've got the capability. You just don't have the ability right now. It's going to take some time. And I said, but you're, I actually said, you're looking at this the wrong way. You need to go find something you love.

Because if you go do that, people will see it and the money will follow. And so this was about third time. It was 7.30, 7.45 in the morning. And I'm talking to a buddy of mine. He was attached to the SF union over in Germany. And he called me from Germany. And I'd given him that speech. And I said, you know, you got to go do something you love.

About that time, I hung up the phone. I pulled into the parking lot. And I was like, I got to go to work. And I just didn't love it. Yeah. Right? Yeah. And so I literally left the car running.

I went and got a white sheet of paper down at Human Resources, wrote out my resignation. Got back in my car, went home, and told my daughters to pack. We're going to Disney for a week. Oh, nice. And then I started back into the financial. Yeah. And I absolutely love what I did. It's just so interesting that you started with that, with the American Express Advisors,

and then all these cool things in the software world, now you're back to kind of what you wanted to start with in the first place. Exactly. Yeah. It's crazy. Well, it's good, though. Yeah, well, and I wouldn't trade the experiences. Yeah. You know, I've traveled to literally every state, you know, I've had interest.

You know, I was at NASA one day when the shuttle launched, and we were as close as we could get to the shuttle, and it was amazing. Yeah. Right. I've seen some really cool things. Gosh, walking on the floor of the BMW plant while it's running. Yeah. learning how to make toothpaste, you know, all these different places, how to make seals, B.F. Goodrich, you know. And so I wouldn't, I wouldn't trade those experiences for anything.

But I think it's also back to learning about how companies work that you will then turn around and recommend to your clients. Yeah. You kind of understand business. And, you know, you're, you run the office down there for Edward Jones in Pauley's Island. Yes. Right, Polly's Island. So I'd say anyone, you can't promote yourself, but I can certainly promote you as a rock-solid person who would have, you know, everyone's best interest at heart, particularly, I mean, everyone, everyone. But doggone it, how can you reach these young people and teach them that if you'll just automatically put in like 250 bucks a month into a fund?

Yeah. You'll be a millionaire by the time you're 40. Well, that's actually, that's the discussion I give them. I say, you know, I'm going to give you an opportunity to make a choice that most people don't have. And the discussion starts with how they pay their expenses. Tell me what's your first expense of the month. And it's usually rent, mortgage. What's the second one?

Car. What's the second one? Clothing. Blah, blah, blah. Go down. So you've got some money left over. So that's what you want to invest, right? And so I tell them, you're looking at the wrong way.

Yeah. You should be number one on that pecking list. Yeah. Right. Forget the mortgage, rent, car. Yeah. You pay yourself first because you're going to start taking a checkout of your own corporation at the age of 65. Mm-hmm.

How big do you want it to be? Yeah. And it's up to you now. And so I think the idea of showing them compounding interest, they just don't put it together. Because, you know, it's 65. That's forever. You know? I know.

I certainly didn't understand it at that age, but no one really explained it to me either. No one really explained to me in a good way. So I'd like to think I would understand it. And as soon as I was able to have an easy way to do like 401K saving stuff like that and make it automatic, I just went down there and to fill the thing out and signed it. And then for the rest of my life, it's just, It's just accumulating somewhere. Yeah. That's the ease. That's the way to do it.

That it pays yourself. Well, and it's also the most efficient because there's tax benefits to it. Yeah. But I mean, the other way of like, I wonder what Apple's going to do today. Maybe I should, you know, that's, you know, it doesn't work. Well, it's, that becomes a choice, you know. Do you want to do it or do you want to pay someone else to do it? Yeah. If that's what you want to do. That's not my bag, but anyway, anyone who needs.

some help in that area as you talk to Donald. Donald. Now, last question. Well, two more questions. Okay. Favorite word? Discipline. Discipline. Perfect. You know, I had this painted outside of my door as company commander. And it's Hebrews 12-11. No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a peace and righteousness for those who have been trained by it.

Very nice. And then I heard a good one not too long ago. Discipline is painful now. Regret is painful forever. Yeah. That really stuck with me. That's good. Well, that's a perfect way for us to close, I think.

Discipline and what it can get you. And it weaves right into what you're doing for a living now. Financial discipline can give you the lifetime of peace. Yeah, it's your choice. All right. Thank you, man. Oh, enjoy. Thanks for being here.

I appreciate you. Yes, sir. All right.