Noob School - Episode 74: Salesforce All-Star TJ Pomian

Episode Date: June 7, 2023

Today on Noob School, John is joined by a long time friend - TJ Pomian of Salesforce. Join them for a bit of insight into his life, from his rise to success in the business world and what it's like to lead an elite sales team, to stories of his time serving in the US Army, with great tips for all the noobs out there along the way. Check out what Noob School has to offer here: https://www.schoolfornoobs.com/ 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 #noobschool #salestraining #sales #training #entrepreneur #salestips #salesadvice

New School. All right, welcome back to Noob School. Got one of my long-time friends and colleagues here today, T.J. Pomey and welcome, T.J. Thanks, John. Great to see you. Man, so glad you're here. Yeah, it's great to be here. We've been working on this for a while. I know you have. You've been really blowing my phone up. I know. I'm glad to be here, fine. You're one of the out-of-towners. I mean, you live in Atlanta now, but you travel pretty good a bit.

All the time. How many countries have you traveled? too. Oh gosh, I think I'm up to 90 now. 90. Trying to get to 100. You told me I need to get to 100. Century Club. That's unreal. That's unreal. Well, we'll get to that in a minute. Let's start at the end and then go back to the beginning and then cover everything in between. But now, this isn't the end, but this is where you are now. You're an executive with Salesforce. That's correct. Out of Atlanta. That's right. And what kind of team? What kind of

What kind of operation do you have now? So I lead a team of about 30 sellers across North America. And they're primarily focused on enterprise-sized companies. So multi-billion dollar revenue companies, both public and private. And a couple different vertical industries. So I have commercial real estate, engineering and construction companies, as well as a couple financial companies like credit union and credit companies. So your 30 reps are calling on these monster companies.

Yes, at the C level typically, too. Okay. Nice. And are any of them resellers? Are they all direct? They're all direct. Okay. Yeah.

Yeah, we've got a reselling component, but it's mostly in emerging markets like we used to do at the industry. Right. You cover emerging markets because it's a lower cost to serve. Okay. And what are some of those markets you have? I don't have any today. Okay. Okay.

All right. Cool. And do you have any of those big companies around here? I think floral. floor? Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

They're a big architectural firm. Yeah. That's really it. Okay. Okay. Okay. So it's important for you to live near a big airport where you can just hop on a plane and go anywhere.

It's the craziest reason to live in a city. Yeah. But living in Atlanta, it's a direct flight on Delta anywhere in the world. How long does it take you to get to, like, inside the airport from your house? So I've got it down to a science now. So it's like 41 minutes without traffic. Okay. And an old friend taught me a trick that there's a VIP parking.

No one knows about it at an airport. And that cut 30 minutes off on each end. Wow. Yeah. And then just simple tricks, John, like knowing which train car to get into so that when it pulls up to the next concourse, you get off of that train, and you're right there at the stairs. Yeah.

So you know how to do it. It's just efficient. That's good. That's good. Well, I'd like you to live here. So I'll throw this pitch in there. So 41 minutes to get to. the Atlanta airport. From here, you know, if you do the car drop off at Charlotte, it's about an hour

in 10 minutes. Right, right. That's not that different. No, it's not. You know, and I like the Charlotte Airport. You've been trying to get me back here for a while. At least you're here today. That's right. All right. So you did grow up around here. You grew up in Anderson, so outskirts of Greenville. That's right. Yeah. And what were your sports? So I played soccer. Okay. I ran cross-country and track. And I did a little wrestling, mainly just to get my confidence up when I was a scrawny teenager. Right. But it kept me busy year-round.

Yeah. And I think that's a good thing to be healthy and stay active. A sport every season? Every season. Yeah. That's right. That's good. Every now and then when I wouldn't play a sport, I was just horrible.

Yeah. That just didn't do anything and got in trouble. Yeah, get in trouble. You find things to get in trouble with. You doesn't clear your mind. You know, you need that activity to get the endorphins going and think straight. So you had to decide where to go to college, and you chose the Citadel like I did. Why did you choose it, and what else were you looking at?

Yeah, so I wasn't really crazy about going to college initially. I don't know why, and I don't know where it came from and my family, but I had this drive to serve our country, and I thought I was going to go into the Marine Corps. Yeah. And my mother panicked because she didn't want her son getting killed in combat. So she had a friend of the family say, hey, you're smart enough to go to college. Why don't you look at this college called the Citadel in Charleston, South Carolina? And you can take ROTC while you're there and then be a Marine officer. Yeah.

So as soon as I saw it in the pre-Nob weekend, I was, I'm like, this is the place for me. It was a structure I needed that. And, you know, you're just enamored by the cadets and the marching and rifles. Yeah. But the best decision I've ever made in my entire life. Nice. Yeah. Nice. Yeah. It's interesting how people make that decision differently. Mine was mostly intuitive

based on the graduates I saw. My dad went there and so I knew a lot of his friends. They just all looked like, you know, good, good people, the kind of people I wanted to be. Of course, I'm still striving to get there. But I mean, I didn't know how it worked. But I figured those people went there. They're pretty squared away. They own businesses. You know, they're doing good things. Yeah, it's kind of like an added benefit, John, that you don't even realize until after you finish. Yeah. The network and the context that you can have and how we take care of each other in the brotherhood. Right.

Cool. What did you do in the summers? So I worked out second shift maintenance at Kiowa Island one summer. Every summer I really worked. I worked back in a factory that my dad worked at in Seneca called Jacobschuk. they made the hand-tight drill chucks for DeWalt tools, drill tools. And always, you know, worked my way up from, you know, midnight shift to, you know, day shift to morning shift. Yeah.

And slowly increased my hourly pay. But, again, always working each summer to save money to then have spending money throughout the year. Yeah. Very good. And actually, it's the only time in my life when you actually get an income tax refund when you're that age. Yeah. You had enough money to go over there to Mark Clark Hall and get a Bulldog Burger. Yeah, if you're lucky.

Fries. Right. Yeah. Man. So you thought you were going to go in the Marine Corps as an officer. I did. And I forgot. I don't even told me,

but I forgot what happened to change that. Yeah. So it was, you know, all four years, did Marine Corps RTC. It was great. I was all in thinking I was going to have a full career as a Marine officer.

Unfortunately, you know, you can't predict the times. And we had an administration that was cutting back on the number of servicemen. And Marine Corps being the smallest branch of the service, they were reducing their commitments for new recruits. So the officer recruiting officer didn't tell me this until like February of my spring semester of senior year. Yeah, so three months away. Three months left.

Yeah, you're about to be shipped off to Quantica. Yeah, I was ready to go out the door. And I went into a deep panic. I'm like, I have no job. I'm graduating college. So, wait a second. They didn't ask you to pay for college at that point, didn't they? They did not.

No. So they said, we're going to honor our commitment to pay for a college, but we don't need you as an officer? Yeah. That's our government, right? It happens that way sometimes. Jeez. That's crazy. So you had three months to figure it out.

Yes. Okay. All right. Three months to figure it out. And I'm telling us, there's a lot of people who are in that circumstance, but not because of what happened to you. They just hadn't thought about it. Right. That's kind of where I was.

I was kind of like, well, I better get on it now, you know. What am I going to do? That's what the books for is to help people figure that out. Okay, so tell us about that process, because this is exactly, this is the main, one of the main things we're trying to solve is these kids, college kids that are about to get out, they're not sure what they want to do, they think they might be going to sales, how do they do it? Yeah, it's interesting, John. I think, you know, when you have that panic sitting, it's almost like cramming for a final exam,

you start getting serious about what you're going to do. But you start thinking. about what do you enjoy doing, right? And what gets you excited? Are you the type of person that could sit behind a desk all day or do you need to be out moving around and traveling? And I wasn't quite sure what I wanted to do, to be honest. I knew I had a business degree or about to. Yeah. But I just, I just had, you know, started talking to friends and asking them what they're going to do and getting advice, right? You start asking a lot of folks. And then I met a good, great friend of mine, Gene Hyman. Yeah, Gene. And Gene said, hey, you need to talk to this guy.

John Sterling. He's recruiting for a software company. And I said, what is he recruiting for? He said, salespeople. And I said, I'm not a salesperson. I don't know how to sell. And you think Icky sometimes, like use car initially about sales. Absolutely. But yeah, I said, all right, I don't have any other options right now. So I'll go meet this guy. And then I met you. Do we meet on campus or did I come to Green? We did. We met at the Career Center through Brent. Okay. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. So we met, do we make you an offer? You did. Yeah. Not on the spot. Okay. Not on the spot.

I took the test. I played hard to get. You did. Yeah, you were playing hard to get for me. But the side story is, and I think I told you this a couple times throughout my career, I was panicked. So my mom worked at Clemson, and she knew about an internship abroad. Mm-hmm. And she said, you should apply for this internship because it'll help build your resume.

Because you don't have anything on your resume coming out of college. You have no experience. Yeah. So I applied and interviewed and I got the internship. Yeah. And the next day was when Diane called to make the offer for DataStream. Yeah. And you know what happened.

Yeah. Yeah. I rejected the offer. They tried to. You tried to. Yeah. Only because I'd already committed to this internship. I respect that.

Yeah. Yeah. But it was the funniest conversation I think I ever had, which was, hold on a second. She put the phone down. You came back on the phone. You said, hey, what's going on here? You got this internship? I said, yes, John.

I got an internship through Clemson. Oh, that's great. That's great. What's the internship? I said, oh, it's in London. I'll be living in London. Oh, that's great. That's awesome.

So how long is it? And I said, it's about four months. You're right, okay, so August, September. What are you going to do come October? I said, gosh, John, I don't know. He said, how about this? We're opening our first international office in Reading, outside of London. You go do your great little internship, finish, and then come back to work for us in October.

How's that sound? And I didn't even think to ask you that. And it was great. It was great. Worked out perfectly, and I was so excited to come back. I think that's a good story and a good example. When we talk about in the book and on the noob school.org site, is people very often, they're not thinking big enough.

They're thinking, you know, I just need to get a job. Like my, you know, I had someone in my network when I was, you know, 21 that says, John, you just need a job. You know, kind of, and it just made me ill to even hear that. It's like, I don't just need a job. Right. I want something interesting, something, an opportunity, something I can grow with, you know. And I think that if people think, like, I really, how can I figure out a way to get what I really want?

Yeah. And you have to ask people, you have to get help, you know. That's right. For me, solving that problem for you was quite easy. But I was, you know, eight years older than you. Right. He had experience. Yeah, I kind of knew how to do it.

I wouldn't have known how to do it at your age. No, I had no clue. Yeah. So, TJ, you did your internship, and you started hanging out with our team over there. A couple of them were Citadel guys. Yeah, Rob Greer. Yeah. And you came back and started working for us and did great.

And then we offered you an international job. You did. Yeah. But the funny part of that story, John, you didn't offer me the job. You said, hey. Mystery job. It's a mystery job. Yeah.

We're not going to tell you where. Yeah. You have to accept the job first. Yeah, we wouldn't tell, I don't know why we didn't, maybe we were trying to trick you, but we, we, the, the job was in like Africa. It was Africa in the Middle East. Yeah. Yes.

So we didn't want to like show that, show our hand. Right. Just want to make sure you really wanted the international job. Yeah, because I was thinking like Italy or someplace romantic, you know, right. And it was Africa in the Middle East. And I'm like, I don't know the first thing about Africa. But you did great over there. I know you did particularly well in South Africa.

I did. Yeah. We signed up three more resellers down there. And Johannesburg, Port Harkhor, it was great. Yeah. They were good. But that started your interest in doing business and traveling to so many countries. It really did. Yeah. Yeah, for me, it was so intriguing because, you know, there's different types of selling, even in North America. New Englanders are different from Southerners or different from the Midwesterners and California. But once you go internationally, the way you interact with them and the cultures and their mannerisms is so different than just, you know, the United States. Yeah. Yeah. And they're all different. They are. Yeah. They're all different. I found it makes selling here a lot easier.

It does because it's very good planned. And because we're Americans, we know how to deal with Americans. When I did selling down in Bogota, Columbia, I made four trips before we even talked about business. My first trip, I came back, I was scared to talk to my boss because I knew who was going to ask me, how did the trip go? But he had already been, but he still asked me. And I said, gosh, Andy, we haven't talked about business at all. He just laughed. He said, it's going to take you a couple trips before they trust you. Wow.

So you have to build that trust first. Wow. Huh. Yeah. Some of those places I couldn't take it. I mean, just all that delayed discussion. I mean, I would like to get down to business a little quicker. But anyway, it is different.

And I thought Japan was the hardest place to deal with. They take the longest. They do. Very indecisive. But they also exchange gifts. And it's very formal and rigid. Yeah. I gave up.

Gave up with Japan. But you like sushi. Yeah, I do like sushi. I do like sushi. It's a beautiful country. Right. Clean. So you started down the international path with us, and how long did you do that job?

I think I did it for almost three years, over two years. And, you know, I was traveling back and forth. It was a journey to get there. I mean, you know that. We didn't have direct flights back then from, because I was living in Greenville. It'd have to fly Greenville to Atlanta, Atlanta to Zurich, or, you know, Charles de Gaulle and Paris all day layover and then an overnight flight down to Johannesburg. And it just took so much time. So I had to really plan out what I was going to do and where I was going to be.

And that created a lot of time in between. But I also worked off hours. So I would come into the office there at like three in the morning. Thank God we didn't have windows in our offices. And I just turned the lights on, had a cup of coffee. And I'm on their time zone talking to them. And they were so impressed by that, especially when they knew I was calling from the United States. Well, I'll say, you know, for the new school listeners, I mean, this is a great example of someone who'll say, when they hear your story, they're like, God, I'd love to be doing what T's doing. International travel and sales force leader. And it's like, you've got to understand. You know, he would take six flights to get there sometimes and being, you know, kind of a dangerous. place sometimes. Sometimes, yeah. And then he would, his hours were three in the morning. Yeah.

Was eight in the morning over there. And yeah, that's right. You're working, you're adjusting to them. Right. So you, you did some things that other people were unlikely to do to allow you to be in this position. Correct. Yeah, I think you make sacrifices on certain things. And like you said, the travel would take you two days to get there, except for the time you talked me into taking around the world trip. That's right. So I left Cairo instead of coming. West. I went east. But, you know, silver lining out of every trip, I met Mark Vanamere who had of Microsoft there for the Middle East, and we're lifelong friends now. He's back in South Africa. Yeah. Met Lorbach, Todd Lorbach in Singapore on the way home. But that was

exhausting, John. I know. But I recommend, I actually talk about that in the book too. I think everyone needs to find a way to take it around the world trip. They do. I mean, you can buy a ticket, a one-way ticket, it just takes you one, you have to keep going in the same direction. That's right. And you can take really as long as you want and you can zigzag. You just have to keep going in the same direction. Yeah. That's right.

And so you can hit all these countries. You could probably stop in 15 countries if you wanted to. Yeah, you really could. And you get to see different cultures, different how people operate and even how people sell. Yeah. You know, street vendors and your negotiation skills get really brushed up, especially in the Middle East. Yes. Yeah.

I'm sure you're better at than I am. So you did that, and then what did you do next? So after that, I got out of the risky software business, and John Hillman convinced David Corey and I to go to this little company called Enron. I did that. I set you guys up. I remember that. Yes.

Oh, my gosh. So Enron was a Fortune 7 company. It was with the best of intentions. You know that. The fastest nine months I've ever had in a job. I mean, I'm not sure everyone watching will remember. The Enron was the best company in the world. It was.

I mean, according to Fortune magazine. And, you know, they were partners of ours. They were. They were. They were customers of ours. And one of their big muckety mucks was rolling up some new division. They asked me, said, Chalk, can you get me some salespeople? I'm like, yes, sir.

I'll give you my three best, you know. Yeah, you and Corey and Hillman. Yes. You don't move to Houston? We didn't have to. Okay. We worked remote. It was kind of when remote was just starting off.

We were traveling. We were covering territory, so it didn't matter really where you lived. I think we went to the Houston headquarters like three times before they eventually did go out of business. Yeah. Yeah. It was impressive. Well, what an interesting time in the business world. Yes.

So that was unexpected, too. So it was just like, poof. right? Nine months. Like, just like that. But I mean, when you, when everything blew up, it was like the day before everything was fine? Yes.

Yeah. Yeah. Everything was fine. Yeah. Everything's fine. You were making flight reservation. Yeah. You're still operating.

And then all of a sudden, like, no one's answering at corporate. It's just gone. This phone has been disconnected. It's literally disconnected. Oh my gosh. I mean, the people we were dealing with, you know, we just never heard from them again. Yeah. It's like gone.

Yeah. Yeah. We tried to, Kerry tried to send the laptop back to Houston. and it got rejected because there was no one there to receive it. So I still have this paperweight of an Enron laptop. Oh, my gosh. Well, that was a crazy time. Now, what did you learn from that?

It was definitely more corporate. You know, you learned that, you know, I think one thing I did learn was some large companies, they just spent money that they didn't really need to spend. I think our onboarding, like John Hillman was like, our onboarding is going to be like a whole week. Like, this seems inefficient. Like, we're ready to get out and start selling. And instead, we spend a week. in corporate housing doing HR stuff.

And it just seemed inefficient. I also learned that some of these large corporations didn't know how to really sell. They didn't have that process that we learned. Yeah. And, you know, I think we were pretty successful in the small division that we were in in terms of, you know, getting leads

and working customers and developing a sales pipeline. Interesting. Yeah, that was a wild place. It was. A wild place. And so then what? Then what happened? Yeah, that was a big turning point in my life. So that was August 2001.

And I was pretty active, John. I was running, doing marathons and trathlons, but I didn't feel fulfilled yet. And I was still regretting my decision to not serve our country. And I was out running one morning with Kerry. And I said, I think I'm going to look at doing the National Guard. Because that way I can, you know, serve our country, but all. also keep my corporate career going at the same time. And we thought we do what we were signing up for, but then 9-11 happened.

And I was instantly in the recruiter's office with my hand up, ready to go. And it really did change our world, not just 9-11, but my world specifically because I had to go to wait, the basic training. I was 28 years old, and it was a big sacrifice. You know, Kerry was working at another high-tech company. They went out of business. And Enron went out of business. And we went from two corporate salaries down to private pay, which you can look up on the

internet. It's like it's $18,000 a year. So that was a huge setback, both financially and mentally. Yeah. But I was thinking more long term at this point, like you were saying earlier, I really thought, okay, this is going to be something that I feel like I want to do is serve our country and then also keep my career going. the same time. Yeah. And so you joined the National Guard. I did. How long did that take to kind of get

everything going? Yeah. So because I enlisted and I didn't go officer right away, I had to go to basic training at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, and then I came back as a private, and then I went through my next phase of training, which was Officer Candidate School, and that lasted almost a year. And then I finally commissioned a second lieutenant in 2003. That must have been rough being 28 and being a private and having these second lieutenants there at like 22. Yes. You yelling at you. It was definitely rough because you're not, you know, you think you're, that's for another thing in life.

You think you deserve something that doesn't always match your age. Yeah. So, you know, sometimes you have to take a step back to take two steps forward. Yeah. Right. True. Well, that career, you know, I know that career, that's, let's see, that would be 20 years, 21 years so far. Right, 21 years. And you're a major now?

Lieutenant Colonel. Lieutenant Colonel. Excuse me. Well, congratulations. Thank you. That is awesome. That's awesome. And what your unit, what is it that they're trained up to do? So at the time, we were infantry. So we're the ones in the front line. We did deploy to Iraq in 2004, 2005. And I was a, I was a lieutenant. I had a platoon of soldiers. And we were patrolling and back. for 12 hours on 12 hours off you know looking for weapons cachets and IED making materials and bad guys yeah and it was grueling it was really hot stressful you got two radios going and you're you know commanding and controlling the battle so to speak you know it's very stressful and it takes a lot out of you but we came back came back yeah luckily brought all my soldiers back alive and went back to my

corporate job so it's literally like you've taken one hat off and putting your corporate hat back on. What was that corporate job at the time? So I did come back to data stream. You went to aviation. Yeah. Okay. Because we told you, right?

I mean, you'd come back. You did. Yeah. You did. Yeah, that's right. And it was great. Best decision coming back. And you guys were fantastic.

You know, there's a minimum amount of support that a company should do for military members, especially National Guard and Reserve. But you guys went above and beyond. You and Larry and the whole crew. We were so great. Well, you deserved it. You deserved it. We are very proud of you for what you've done.

I was going to say, I wish I still had that picture of you, though, that you sent me when you were like in your little hut in Afghanistan when you had that big old mustache. Yes, yes. And you look so, so angry. You're like, I'm so ready to get out of here. I was ready to come home. Yeah. Yeah. It was time.

Enough's enough's enough. Right. So two radios. What are you hearing out of the different radios? So one radio is. for hire. So it's for your headquarters back on the base. Okay. And you're communicating to them where you're at

all the five Ws. You know, what's going on, where you're at, what are you doing, it's with you. And there's an expectation that you're giving these updates at a certain period of time. The other radio is internal to your troops that you're controlling. So some of them are not within shouting distance, so you have to communicate

over the radio today. They're all wearing something. They're wearing headsets too. Yeah. Wow. One experience. Yeah. And so you got right back in the data stream thing and you had to deploy again, didn't you? I did. So they have this thing called the, it's very long, but the Arphigen model. And it was meant to go in five-year cycles. Yeah.

And we got back in 2005 and within two years or three years, they said, hey, you're going to be in Tap to go again, this time, Afghanistan. So I was, you know, okay. I was a captain. I was a company commander at that point in time. I just didn't, you know, I wasn't as excited to go do my job as, you know, combat in combat. But we trained up really well, and it was more remote and it was more serious this time, I should say. I mean, it's always serious, but the intelligence we were getting were that the bad guys, the Taliban, they weren't just, they weren't just shooting at you and then leaving.

They would shoot at you and close with. they didn't care if they died, essentially. So you knew if you were going to get a firefight with the bad guys, it was going to be a legit firefight. So I tried to instill, especially the young soldiers, the new ones who just got out of basic training, ready to get in the fight, and said, don't wish that to get in the fight.

It'll come to you eventually. You know, don't rush it. And it was definitely a more serious deployment. My kids were a little older at this point. You know, the twins, Chloe and Sophie, were five or six. and Thomas was upworn he was two or three. And it was harder to leave the family and DataStream again. Yeah, yeah.

But we came back. Yes, you did. Yes, you did. And you came right back to Data Stream. I did. Yeah, of course. Same welcome. It was.

Yeah. It was great. Yeah. It was great. That's awesome. And then did you stay until we sold the company or did you leave it? Yes. You did.

I did. Actually, I stayed quite a bit more afterwards. So when we sold DataStream to In4, I ended up staying for another five or six years. Okay, so we sold in 2006. You stayed until 11? Yeah, around 11. And then you went to Oracle?

Oracle. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. So you made the jump to a much higher level or bigger anyway software company. And Oracle, I think, is, I mean, I think there's probably no more well thought of or more aggressive Salesforce than Oracle. Correct.

Yeah. That's exactly why I wanted to go there. I wanted to experience it and see I was always intrigued. It's like the Marine Corps of corporate selling. It's the Marine Corps of corporate, right. Yeah, they were definitely, when we talked earlier about having a sales process, they had a sales process. And it was winning.

Yeah, you were going to win at Oracle. Take no prisoners. Take no prisoners. Right. Yeah, that's amazing. I think it's also amazing, again, for the readers and the listeners that, you know, here's T. T.J. from Anderson, you know, went to Citadel, worked at our little company in Greenville,

And he's out there kicking ass with Oracle. Yeah. You know, and now Salesforce. And so there's, you know, all the people that are in these, these glamour positions that we see, they came from somewhere. They did. You know? They put their shoes on just like we do. Right.

They come from somewhere. So don't ever sell yourself short. You can do it. That's right. That's the starting point is you've got to believe. Yeah. You can do it. That's right.

And you're certainly doing it. So give us some things that you learned at Oracle. Yeah. Definitely sales structure, the sales process. You know, I think when, like you said, when you think about Oracle, you think about an excellent excellence in selling. And, you know, we had to structure territories and look at the proper number of accounts per rep that you can drive the right amount of revenue to meet a quota and setting the proper quotas. And then just the, you know, the inspiration, like that winning mentality. Like you're, you know, you do all your preparation prior to your meetings, of course, but

the confidence in having that swagger when you go into a meeting. And then not cockiness, but just confidence. And I think that, you know, customers want to invest in companies that are confident of what they're bringing to them investing in. Yeah. I had an Oracle guy call on me once at one of my companies along the way. And we were very small for Oracle. and I really had no need for it.

We didn't need Oracle. But I kind of wanted to be like him. Right. I almost bought some Oracle just because. I just kind of thought I would become Oracle. Right. You know, because he guy was so good. Yeah.

He was smooth. He was thoughtful. He was a good listener. You know, he got me. He did. He got me. But anyway, I didn't end up doing it. But I know what you're saying.

I mean, he was, you know, they picked the right people and they train him the right way, give him the playbook. It was good. So you did that for a while. Do you talk about your biggest deal with Oracle that you worked on? Yeah. So it's a large shipping company. One of the big three here in the U.S.

And, you know, it was interesting because they didn't, we were selling SaaS software. So software as a service. And it's with a term, right? So a typical SaaS contract. could be three years, could be five. Yeah. They wanted seven. They wanted seven.

So it was a large, large, I guess nine figure deal. So they wanted to lock in the price for 70 years. And this is for general, all the Oracle suite, the ERP, the everything. We did. Okay. So we bundled it all together and gave them predictability in their expenses. Yeah. And then we put a clause in there that said, if you grow by.

more than 10% if they have an acquisition, then this is your price that you're going to have to increase to pay. But we're not going to put a reduction of 10% if you sell off a division. So it was predictability for them and it was predictability for Oracle. And I think that, you know, looking back on it, it was fair. And both companies felt like, you know, they got what they needed out of the deal. And so I came to do it in my head, nine figures is how much? I think it was like 20 million or something.

No, it was $250 million. $250 million. Well, you win the prize, man. Yeah. I mean, Nate Barr had the previous prize. He was like at $30 million. Yeah. $250.

Yeah. So $250 divided by $10, that's $25,7. So it's like $35 million a year or something like that. Roughly. How many, would that be divided by like number of users? It's basically an employee account at that point. The whole company is all going to have to use it at some point. Right.

Okay. So number of employees. employees is the thing you times into the numbers. Right. So it's X amount per employee per year. Correct. Time seven. Wow.

Yeah. And then what were they switching from? They had a bunch of systems. Okay. A mismatch. Yeah. Some of it's homegrown. Some of it's, you know, our competitor.

I think we find a lot of companies these days as they grew. Yeah. If it's not centralized through a centralized IT department, then they have pockets of systems. And we used to love that at Datastream. We'd make its manager in this location. We'd take a pocket. And then you go back and try to centralize it.

So, yeah, they just had a bunch of different systems that they needed to consolidate and put it all into one. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's hell of a deal. 250. Yeah. Wow.

Do you know anyone who's done a billion-dollar deal? I don't. Well? I don't. I want you to do it. I'd love to. Okay. I'd love to.

Okay. So you went from that. to Salesforce. I did. Yeah. And Salesforce, if I'm not mistaken, one of Oracle's top people, Mark Benioff, left to start Salesforce. And he kind of started the whole SaaS revolution, right? Yes. Yeah, he had a great idea. He had an amazing idea. I mean, it was, they had these stickers that would say software and a circle and a line through it. Yeah. Did. No, you're not buying a CD or a disc. You're not installing anything. It's all just through a browser. Right. And it really revolutionized. it's how we operate today.

You go on Amazon, you go on the Internet. Everything's through a browser, nothing local. Right. Yeah. Yeah. And the other thing is just that, you know, instead of paying you, Oracle, you know, $250 million to, so now I own the license and then another,

I can't imagine how much to install it all. And I don't know if I have any return or not for what three years, you know. That's what makes people all weird. But you're saying, no, no, it's just this much of months. Yep. You know, if you hate us, you know, you don't have to pay us in. That's right. You can end that contract.

Yeah. It's just on a term. And a lot of companies realize that that's a better way to do business because, you know, it gives, it de-risks things in terms of their tolerance for risk. If it, if it doesn't go well, there's an end to it. Right. Right. It's not like you own that software indefinitely. Right.

Right. Keeps everyone kind of on their toes. Right. That's cool. So you liked, I remember talking to you about this, you liked the way Salesforce was going to market and the way they did things. I loved it. I loved it and still do today. It's an amazing company.

It's one of those companies that because Mark Benihov was able to start his own company, he actually took a sabbatical. I think he went to Bali or somewhere just to kind of like clear his mind after Oracle. And he got a lot of great advice from a lot of advisors, having great mentors. and guidance. And he said, we're going to establish this company on core values. So trust was one of them. Customer success was another one. And customer innovation.

So he knew he needed to build great software, but he also needed the customers to trust them because it's a SaaS agreement. And to this day, we're over 80,000 employees globally, and we still feel like those are the core values and we're living and breathing them. That's correct. Yeah, it feels really.

really, really good. Yeah, that's good. That's good. Well, I'm glad you're enjoying it, and it sounds like you have a great team. I wanted, well, one more question on you, and then we're going to get some specific questions, but, so where do you go from here? Where do you want to see your, you know, career go? Yeah, it's an interesting question at this point in my life, John, and we talked about this the other day. You know, you kind of start, you don't think you're as old as you really are, you know, you know,

you're like, I'm still 26 in my mind, but you're not. You have to think about where you want to go next. You know, in the short term, I'm really enjoying what I'm doing at Salesforce. I definitely would like to continue, you know, bringing in great big deals and having a successful team and watching them grow. I get a lot more fulfillment now at this point in my career to help others and see them achieve what they want to do. And that just makes you feel good.

You know, I think if you, if you're a leader that is invested in your people and take care of your people, then that's, it's such a fulfilling feeling. And then they know that you have their back and they can trust you. Yeah. Yeah. So just continue and doing what you're doing. Hopefully, doing more of it. Right. For the short term.

Yeah. That's cool. So let's talk about interviewing. One of the things the Loeb School folks always ask about is like getting that first job and interviewing. And I'm sure not only have you interviewed yourself, including with me, but you've interviewed a lot of people. So just give us just some highlights of some of the good things people do when they're interviewing that gives them a chance to get the job. And then some of the goofball things they might do. Yeah.

And some of you don't even realize you do. Yeah. Right. I think right off the bat when you ask that question, the first thing that comes to mind is being timely, right? You know, that's like the number one thing. I know others have talked about it too. And, you know, you can't stress that enough. Be early. In the military, we have a saying if you're five minutes before, you're late, right? You need to be 10 minutes before. So being on time, how you present yourself and being a good listener and providing short, concise answers is always important. and not going on and on. Yeah. And then the eye contact that we talk about all the time. It's so critical. Then you know that that person's engaged in the conversation.

Yeah. Yeah. All right. What about some of the things somebody might do or have done that you just instantly are just like not going to happen? Yeah, I think definitely like if they're too inquisitive or if they're digging too down deep into me, the interviewer, in terms of what I'm doing, or if they don't like say, you know, appreciate the time at the end or maybe even try to close.

It's not a necessary step, but I certainly like when they say, you know, how do we do? Right. And then asking for the interviewer's contact information to follow up. A follow-up thank you email is critical. Like that, you know, that step has to happen. If you don't, if they don't thank me,

then I feel like they didn't value that time that we had together. Yeah, plus, I mean, we tell them that this is your first sales job. Right. And if you just interview with T.J., he's a prospect now. Right. He needs to be in your follow-up system, right? Calling, following up, send them a gift, send them with this, send them a little hat, you know.

Yeah. Yeah, it's, I think people don't understand that it's not out of their hands. Right. Well, I interviewed, and I hadn't heard back yet. Right. No, no, that's not good enough. Yeah, you have to follow up. You've got to sell.

You've got to sell. That's good. That's good. We talked also about the not being pressed. Like if you're wrinkled or, you know, shoes are all scuffy, you know. Maybe we can get away with that, you know, once we're higher a little bit if you're kind of sloppy like I am. But I can guarantee you it wouldn't be that way if I was interviewing with you. That's right.

I would be all, you know, square to light. Locked, locked in. Yeah. Yeah, I think I told you, too, I went through 12 different interviews for Salesforce. Wow. And every interview I wore a suit. And that's really not the Salesforce thing. Yeah.

But I just knew, like, better to dress up than to be undressed to get down too low. And I'll never forget. Like, I think that, you know, being on time, being early and presenting yourself, right? Definitely establish yourself as a serious person. Correct. And someone, you know, if you're hiring for a salesperson, you're thinking, am I comfortable sending this person to see this $250 million opportunity? You know, someone who was late, no, wrinkled, no, you know, slumped, no, no, no eye contact, no. You know, so, yeah.

Yeah, those are just the basics, like 101. Right. It's the basics. You know, to like if I was interviewing with you, I would like figure out who you knew and find somebody like, Gene. I know Gene Heineman. I'd say, Gene, would you call TJ and just put him a good word for me? Yes. So when I sit down, the first thing you're going to say is, hey, before we get started, Gene called me.

Right. You know, how do you know that rascal? Right. And it's a different conversation. It's 100% different, John. And you have to realize that the technology is all of your hands today. Right. It used to be you'd have to really do some research.

Yeah. But now just go on LinkedIn and see what that person. interests are. Yeah. And you just have to make that one or two connections, which creates natural conversation flow. Yeah. Well, you're the one who told me, because this question came up, we have a Q&A portal on our website. And the question was, you know, this prospect has ghosted me.

Right. It won't come through. And TJ has someone who said, find out where they went to college and order it online, like a hat or a t-shirt or something, the name of that college on it and send it to them and just say, hey, I see you went to Vanderbilt, enjoy the hat. Let's just buy me 10 minutes. Right. You know, I mean, just come out and say it.

And it works like a charm. It does. Like if they played baseball at Vanderbilt, get a baseball with their name engraved on it from Vanderbilt and send it to them, they'll remember you. Yeah. And they'll ask you back. Yeah. There's lots of stuff you can do.

There's lots of stuff you can do just to mess things up, and they're so easy not to, but there's also a bunch of stuff you can do to make yourself even more hireable. Hireable, yeah. Yeah. Okay. That's good on interviewing. Let's talk just real quickly.

We talked about this the other day when we were kind of doing our prep conversation. Yes. But when someone walks in the room and you don't know them, that first 10 seconds, when very often you make that yes or no decision. Right. What's a no decision look like when you see the person? Somebody who doesn't look excited. Just kind of doesn't want to be there.

Or scared? Yeah. Yeah. It's, I mean, naturally as humans, there's a lot of that nonverbal communication. It's like 90% nonverbal. Yeah. It's just how you appear. A smile.

Yeah, smile. You know, interest, leaning in. Those are so critical when you're walking up to someone. Yeah. It makes, it kind of takes the ice off a little bit. And then just having natural conversation, you know, trying to find some commonality. Right. Where are you from?

Oh, yeah. I've traveled there before. Yeah. Just little things that can help start the conversation. Yeah, and like you said, not too much. Not too much. You say, I see you went to St. Thomas one time, yeah. I went there, I spent a summer and just blah off to the races.

Right. No, no. Too much. Too much. The fine line. Yeah, interesting. So let's talk about maybe back to Enron or something else. But, I mean, you had, like you said, you had two great corporate incomes going, and you

were working for the best company in the world, Enron. Right. And, you know, you probably had an unlimited travel budget and just could do anything you wanted. Right. And then it was just a snap of the fingers over. Yes. So talk about the mindset that makes you stay positive and work through that to get back

on the horse and get where you've gotten to today. Yeah, I think you have to have some humbleness, humility, and, you know, and realize that, you know, there's, and you can recover from this, right? The best part is having that experience to fall back on and getting back to your roots. So the simplicity of, okay, you know, there's economic headwinds sometimes, there's natural disasters, there's terrorist attacks, there's things that happen outside of our control, but you have your brain and your mentality to control how you're reacting to the situation. and then just going back to your roots.

I knew when Enron was going out of business, I did have the military to start going through training, but when that was over, I didn't have a job. And Kerry didn't have a job. So there was that concern of how are we going to make money? How are we going to do the things that we enjoy to do or pay for that? But then just going back to your network, I think I called you, I called a lot of folks,

and just didn't ask for a job per se, But you say, hey, I'm in the market. Do you know anybody? Or can you send me up with a contact or two? Yeah. And that process came naturally with experience. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I would add, you know,

having been through one or two down cycles myself, that, you know, the first thing you have to, even though you might feel horrible. Yeah. You might just feel horrible. I'm like, why? I should have done this or not fair or whatever. You have to remember this longer time horizon that surely it's going to be okay by here.

That's right. You know, we don't know how yet. Right. Are you kidding? I'm not going to be here forever. And then the other is, again, with humbleness, reach out to your friends and your contacts. Don't say, hey, can I borrow $500? Just say, here's the situation I'm in.

I need your feedback. Correct. What would you do? Right. What leads can you think of? And they're not all going to help you. Right. But one might.

One might. That's all you need, right? It's volume. Yeah. But they'll tell you something. They're not coming by finding you. Right. They can't find you unless you tell them.

Unless you raise your hand. You've got to raise your hand. Right. You got to tell them. And it's, you know, it's hard to do because you're not feeling so good at that time. But that's the answer. Is to reach out to your friends. Tell them the situation.

What would you do? What leads do you have? And the other thing, Warren Buffett, You know, has so many great pieces of advice. One that I heard just the other days, like the best advice I can give you is, whatever it is you're into, get really good at it. Right. something. It's selling software, you know, teaching salespeople something, being a lawyer, whatever it is. Because if you're really good at it, it doesn't matter what's going on. Yeah, it comes naturally. Someone is going to hire you to help them with that. 100%. Yeah. Whether you have a lot of money or a little money, someone's always going to hire you to do that.

So, you know, whatever you're doing. and get into it. And again, I think you should be doing something that you like. Yeah. Yeah. And throughout these interviews, something I learned, I think you and I have talked about this too, John. I always tell people it's really three things. It's, you know, be passionate about the company that you represent. Do you believe in that company? Do you believe in their products enough to represent them? Yeah. Because in this day and age, if you're sitting in a boardroom with C-level executives, they've seen it all. Yeah. So if you're not, sincere with the way you're presenting that solution or that company, they can see right through that.

The second thing is making sure that you have a good relationship. You don't have to be best friends with your direct manager, but people leave managers. They don't leave companies necessarily. I think a lot of people have seen that on the social channels. And I believe that. I think you need to have a healthy working relationship. If you can have more, that's great. But it should be a two-way relationship with your manager. So that's the second thing. The third thing is it's got to be financially viable for you and you should be earning what you're worth, right? So if there's a trajectory for a career path at that company, whether it's a couple years or 20 years, those three components really need to be there in order to have a successful job at that company. Yeah, that's great advice. that relationship with the manager again I've I've only had like one manager I think

Larry was a great he was a great partner and a great great manager too but you know the having the skill and the courage to bring things up and not let little things become big things

to have that conflict resolution mentality it's good and the other thing I'll tell people, I don't know how you feel about it, but you got to physically try to be around those people. Yes. Because if you move to Timbuktu, they're going to forget about you. Out of sight out of mind.

Yeah. They'll be like, what about TJ? Well, he's making his number, but I don't know how. I haven't seen him in six months. I don't know what he's doing over there. I mean, you've got to keep the physical contact. Yeah, 100% John. I think that was hard during COVID, right?

Yeah. So we had a period of time where we're just in this 2D. screen environment. Yeah. But as soon as we started getting back out there, you're absolutely right. And bring your manager or your manager's manager into deal cycles. Having them, having a vested interest in that deal and that customer is critical. Executive mapping, we do it all the time.

And trying to find that natural fit between one of our executives and one of their executives. And that takes research too. You spend time on LinkedIn and see who might be a good fit. You're playing. Match me. or really. Right. But you have to have that in-person presence.

Yeah, I agree. And I think it's, I think it's for the brand new salespeople, you know, I think it's so smart to get either your VP of sales or your owner involved in some of these deals. You know, it's not, certainly these companies I'm talking about aren't Salesforce, but they can still, you can say, hey, Charlie, you know, do you know the guy who owns fairway forward over here. Right. Because yeah, I said, could you come with me and come, bring him into the meeting and talk

and just make sure, you know, first of all, you get some attention from your boss. Right. And he's not going to fire you for losing that deal because he was in on it. He was in on it. Yeah, that's right. He was in on it. All right. T.J, two more questions.

What's your favorite word? Gosh, you know, I had to think about that one, John. Yeah. I think right now it's humility. humility. Yeah. Okay. Tell us why.

I think, you know, if you bring a sense of humbleness to the conversation, you know, people understand that you're genuinely interested in that conversation. And, you know, I think I always, as a leader, especially in the military, you want to prop up those who work around you for you with you and their successes and put the shining light on them. And they'll appreciate you more, work harder. for you and they're kind of in the foxhole, so to speak, as I say. Same applies in the corporate world, having a level of humility, especially in deal cycles where, you know, you may not win every deal, but at least you're professional in the way

you carry yourself. Got it. It's a great word. And lastly, TJ, is there anything that you want to promote today? You know, I think, yeah, obviously the Noob School psych is awesome. Yeah. And, you know, we didn't have that, right? That's right.

We had to learn. And, you know, you were a great teacher and a mentor and still are to me and all the data streamers out there. I would say, you know, make sure that, you know, you're looking at the Noob School. And, you know, I like Simon Sinek. I think he's great. He puts a perspective in a lot of his, you know, quotes and speeches. So I like him a lot, too. Good, good.

Well, maybe one day you'll have your own channel. We'll see. I appreciate it. Maybe it's a sub-channel under yours. A sub-channel. Well, we'll be partners. That's right. Well, T.J., thanks for being with us today.

You've got a great career and thankful to calling my friend. Thank you, John. It's so great to see you. Thank you. Yes, sir.