Noob School - Episode 78: Innovations in Retail with Ray Essex

Episode Date: June 16, 2023

Today on Noob School, John is joined by Ray Essex. Topics range from the inner workings and new innovations in the retail business, to his time at some prominent companies, like Apple and IBM. 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. Today I've got a good friend and the first guest that's taller than me, Ray Essex. We can go back to back. What? We should have gone back to back. Maybe at the end we can go back to back, but I think you got me by an inch. Maybe.

You're 6-8, right? Yeah. Okay. Well, Ray, I love to say Ray played basketball at Duke and worked at Apple, so Newby go on. Got a follow-up. All right. So, yeah, Ray did those two things, but also a lot more and lives here in Greenville. And currently, he's running a company called Exo and previously worked for a company called Stark. And I think there's some kind of partnership there.

But we want to hear, we'll start with Exo, Ray, and then we'll back up to the beginning. And what's kind of we hear about what you're doing now. Okay. So tell us about Exo. What's going on with that? Yeah, EXO, we started a couple years ago. We formed it, birthed it out of Stark. Yeah.

It's a similar market space and that we focused on sports and entertainment initially. But we have an expedited, accelerated checkout product using RFID technology. So essentially what we do is remove the need to barcode scan at checkout. So whether you're using cashiers or self-service checkout, you can just take the items that have been tagged with RFID which is quite prevalent in retail you wouldn't realize it but a lot of the items you buy today whether it's at Target or Dick's sporting goods or Lulu have RFID tags on it already you can read those passively without line a site and you can read them all in a fraction of a second and so you can take

items that you've collected in the store come to our checkout solution whether they're in a bag or loose we like to put them in a bag before you get there it accelerates things even more you place it in the Exo Station, which looks somewhat like a sink. We hit it with RF and interrogate all the items. They pop up instantly on either a self-service checkout or to the cashier. And so you can take, you know, half a minute, a minute or more out of the transaction. We just used it or they used it at the Masters at two of their stores.

We're running at TD Garden, the home of the Celtics and Bruins, the New York Islanders, and the Miami Heat, as well as an NFL store in Las Vegas. Las Vegas and we're gearing up for, you know, quite a bit of implementations this spring, summer for next season. And at the same time, trying to take the technology into general retail. You know, we've all waited in line at a Coles or something like that. And it's your least favorite thing to do. And so if you can eliminate those lines, the retailers can sell more.

They have happier customers. They're all looking at self-service solutions because staffing is so difficult. So that's the space we're going after. Yeah. Interesting. So, like at the Masters or at the Miami Heat, like the gift store or whatever, you put, team store. You put all your stuff into a plastic bag. Yep. And you drop it in the bucket or the sink. Yep.

And I guess you'd scan your credit card. Yeah, I mean, it's going to come up just like you had barcode scan. At that point, the checkout's the same. You just kind of over it up. You're going to tap your credit card. You're going to confirm, tap, you know, your phone, Apple Pay, whatever that, you know, payment terminal is going to be just like what you're used to see. Instead of like, tunk, tink, tink, all that stuff. Yeah.

Why uncollect and then recollect your items at checkout? You've collected them, scan them. Yeah. It can read a bag of 30 items and a fraction of a second. Great. You can put multiple bags in there. You keep processing it through. And how did it work at the test at the Masters this year?

It worked great. It ran it in Berkman's Place, which is sort of their high-end hospitality area. They ran it in their member shop. People loved it. Staff loved it. You know, the people used it. it on both ends. And they did a lot of business with it.

And it helped them chew through the, you know, everybody wants to get something at the masters and they want to get a lot. Right. And so eliminating the need to barcode scan saves everyone a lot of time. So people were amazed. That's great. They had a few beers, but they were still amazed. That's great.

That's great. So I understand what Exo is and you're kind of on the front end of this new way to check out faster. Yeah. Let's back up and figure out what Stark was for the people watching. Tell us about Stark. Stark, this company has been around 20 years, founded by a good friend of mine, Lance Burnett, you know him. And they've used RFID technology in a number of industry segments over the years, consumer goods, industrial products.

I mean, at one point, they started off tagging bricks. Yeah. And but around 2010, an opportunity came the way to put RFID tags on people, on visitors or patrons or attendees. And that's where the business pivoted to. And for the last decade plus, Stark has been helping sports events, iconic kind of events or venues, as well as attractions, what Kennedy Space Center is one of our customers. The U.S. Olympic Museum is one of our customers. customers that you wear an RFID credential and that can control everything from getting in and out where you get access to to To tailoring or personalizing experiences. If you've been to the college football Hall of Fame in Atlanta that uses our technology where you pick your favorite team

You wear in a credential and it tailors digital content to you throughout the experience Based on reading that RFID tag. You know again RFID tags can be read from 10 or 15 feet away and you can trigger things based on that read or you can just more and more people are using it to collect data to understand how people are using the space okay so we have a venue intelligence product at stark which gives you a view of your event or venue at any time and where people are what they've done how long they stay you know data that you can use either operationally right now to you know manage the experience or if you're people like augusta national you pour through that data in preparation for the next tournament right interesting so

So walk us through like a sales cycle, because you're a sales professional, obviously, a sales cycle for one of those events or one of those company customers you mentioned, the Hall of Fame or the Masters or whoever. Yeah. More and more, the beginning of the sales cycle is actually becoming a consulting agreement, which is for a long time, we did a lot of work in the sales process from, you know, that discovery process would be quite long, and we'd be working with multiple partners. There would be a design firm that was maybe responsible for some new venue experience.

There would be other content or experience providers. And then we would be bringing in the RFID infrastructure that would kind of stitch a lot of it together. And, you know, you'd spend, you'd make several trips and put together pretty extensive proposals. And at some point we realized everyone else was getting paid for that process. And so they brought us into that. So there a lot of times could be a paid consulting engagement to figure out what that looks like, but not always and probably not the majority of the time. But it can be a pretty long sales cycle in that space as people are, you know, figuring out these complex experiences. We just did a Harry Potter experience that's moving around the U.S.

It opened in Europe. It's now in Paris. It's just moved to New York in the U.S. and they're going to be putting one in Latin America and in Asia PAC. And so there's a lot of work on the front end, working with multiple constituencies. I mean, part of our job is just figuring out how to play well in the sandbox with other partners. It's just, it's never just us or rarely just us. We have to partner with other people, other providers to deliver the solution.

Give me an example of that. Because, I mean, my understanding is, like at the Masters that you would wear a, a special badge with an RFID tag on it that would let them know I was able to go in this place and not in this place and all that kind of stuff. Well, I think this is talk about the U.S. Olympic Museum. Who would the partners be? The partners would be to a design firm again who the U.S. Olympic Committee would contract with to sort of figure out what's this museum going to be and what's that experience going to be, right? And then they would have several other technology providers. I mean, there's a company that would be responsible for all the AV and technology in there.

There'd be another company that might be responsible for all the digital content that would be shown and utilized throughout the experience. You know, infrastructure providers like us with the RFID infrastructure. So it would be people like that. Okay. But there'd be kind of one supercontractor and a lot of subcontractors delivering on that experience. And so, again, this is a broader subject, but particularly new salespeople, like you can remember when you were new and when I was new, man, we would chase everything. We would do whatever they wanted. Yeah.

Fly to Cincinnati 14 times. Do whatever it needed. And then we finally understand the value of our work and that a lot of what we do is helping them whether they buy something or not. And so one of the things I've seen a lot of success with and what I do and also is that. and companies I work with, is to have something we can sell them as like a starter. Like, we'll come do a two-day assessment. 100%. Yeah.

So something, and it also makes it much more likely that you've got a buyer if they, if you're, we always say, if you can get in the payable system. Right. You know, if you're in there as a line item, it's going to be easier for them to buy something. So in your case, do you call it something different like XO consulting and this? is exo product? I mean, do so that's how we do a number of pilots. Okay. You know, proof of concepts. So, you know, they want to come in and run the solution, you know, for 30 to 60 days. And so we try to make that something that they can easily get approved from a

cost perspective, but you don't want to do it for free. To your point, you want to become a partner. Yeah. You want to get in their systems. And I found long ago back in my IBM days, when you give things away for free, the customer doesn't take them as seriously. You know, you can end up on the end of a never-ending pilot when they're not paying for it because you don't get their attention. Yeah. You know, if they're paying for it, they're going to assign someone to it. Someone has accountability on their side.

Even just the smallest amount of money turns the tables on that. Otherwise, it's an extended sales process. Right. I agree. And I agree about the money part, too. It's not the amount of money. It's that it's some money. Some money and there's clear cut measurable objectives associated with it.

Everybody agrees to a half the time. Like if we do this, then you're going to buy, right? Like, what are those things? Right. And if they're not achievable, then don't do it. Right. But generally they're very achievable because you shape them. Right.

And, you know, kind of just thinking about what you're saying and putting yourself in the customer's mindset. One of the kind of thought transitions I had, you know, as I went into being more of a sales manager than an individual contributor, was that, you know, you're trained so much around the sales process. But what often gets overlooked is the buyer has a process. And what is that buying process? And, you know, your sales process should be kind of your science. And, you know, it's like shooting or your golf swing. You shouldn't have to think about it.

Yeah. What you need to think about and the art is understanding their buying process. And so early on, finding out, like, what is that process? Right. How is a decision made? Yeah. You know, who's making that decision? And if you do this, what benefits do you expect?

Yeah. You know, they're not going to tell you that late in the sales process when you're trying to close. But they will tell you that during an introductory meeting or an early in discovery. Yeah. Because they're not in that mode yet. Otherwise, you're kind of shooting blind later in the sales process because you're like, well, how does, when will they decide? Yeah. You know, and so we always felt like if you didn't have, you know, discrete decision maker, timetable, clear objectives, you know, you just, at the end, you were guessing.

Right. And if they won't give it to you, you're kind of just hoping. You were hoping. You were just hoping. I had a sales manager once that had a book behind his desk. Hope is not a strategy. Yeah. Yeah.

I think it was very strategically placed when you were sitting there looking at him. Yeah. I can remember, and you've been a VPSLs like I have before, but I can remember a deal on the board. They were saying, this deal is going to close, and I would ask those kind of questions, and they would say, well, you know, we don't know. I'd say, well, I'm going to call them, like right now, and I'm going to ask them. And they're like, oh, no, no, no, no, no. And the reason they want me to call them, because they did not want to know the answer,

because it might have been a bad answer. Right. Because in their mind, they were still hoping for that thing. And I was just going to call them just be a matter of fact. Is this happening this quarter? Is it happening next quarter? Wouldn't you rather know? Yeah, let's just find out.

Let's find out. Yeah. We can spend our time on something else. Yeah. So that's cool. What a cool thing you're at the forefront on. There's just nothing more frustrating than morning. I think we've gotten so frustrated, or not frustrated, we've gotten so spoiled with Amazon.

You know, like I can just like think of something, bink, boom, blink, blink, done. It's like, and it'll be there tomorrow. Yeah. And so when I go occasionally, you know, I go to the grocery store and I'll, you know, get all my stuff. And all of a sudden there's five people in every line. Right. I'm like, oh, man. So.

No one like standing in online. No. No. So that's cool. I'm glad you're doing that. Yeah. And it's perfect to have a stark as a partner because they have so much time invested in figuring all that stuff out. Yeah, we had the RFID family. You know, we knew the technology. Yeah.

We were just applying it in a new way. That's good. Now, are you selling that direct through XO or are you telling it through partners or how are you doing it? A little bit of both. We're selling it direct through XO, but in the space we're in, there's a lot of aggregation points. Okay. So, you know, some teams or events do their own retail, but a lot of them outsource that. Okay. And so, you know, we've all used like Delaware North in an airport. other venue. Like there's companies like that that will run those operations. And so we spend a lot of time with those aggregators, you know, building those relationships because then they'll bring us in to their customers. At the same time, we go directly to the customers to create pull with those

aggregators. Right? If you're trying to get to a fanatics or someone like that, it really helps if their customers are asking them for the technology. Now, would it work for a grocery store? I don't think a grocery store is a great fit. I mean, could we, maybe? But you do get with the price of the items and the cost of the tag. And then RF, RF is impacted by metal and water. Okay. So grocery store would not be my initial.

So higher end apparel? General merchandise, retail, things like that. Great. You can use it in concessions, in packaged items. We've done some of that. But a grocery store, you know, there's a lot of challenges there. We may get there. I can't believe, this is a segue a little bit, but I rarely use those self-checkout things at the grocery store.

But when I do, it's just amazing. I just can't believe that the grocery store allows it because it seems like there's a lot of stuff just flowing through there without getting scanned. Right. So why do it? Well, I mean, there's most of you, I think when retail, look at theft, they're worried more about systemic theft. Yeah. The onesie Tuesdays, you know, most customers are trying to do the right thing.

And they have people there engaging you, which is really works to keep people in line. Yeah, that's good. You know, so that, but one of the reasons they do it is because it's staffing right now. Right. Everybody has a hard time hiring enough people. Right. And so if you can deploy people in revenue generating or customer, you know, experience, having someone tied up the time of cash register is not a good job.

not a great use of your money as a retailer. Yeah, good point. Well, it's really cool what you're doing now. I want to back up and talk about kind of how we got there and the different companies you worked for along the way. And we're not going to go all the way back. But it is interesting that you spent your high school years in London or in England and you played basketball over there and went to an American school. And so what do you think changed with you? You you having that experience versus experience here in the States? Just independence. I mean, you know, and when I was going to high school in London, you know, we took the two

public transportation. We played basketball tournaments in Europe. We stayed with host families. You know, volleyball as well. I did volleyball. But the level of independence that was thrust upon you as a ninth grader or tenth grader to, you know, succeed or fall flat on your. face. Yeah. And you would be in, you know, Paris for the first time in your life and, you know,

be able to just go out with friends and explore the city and got to figure out how to get around just about anywhere in Europe. Yeah. When you, you know, it wasn't multilingual or anything. But having that confidence, just any situation, just becoming an explorer. Yeah. Just eating it up. Yeah. Like to, to me, the worst thing to do was to get on public transportation when you could walk somewhere because it was all the things you would see on the way to the what you were going to see it ended up being the things you remembered the most right those explorations with friends you know those were the times you never forget so just that level of independence and confidence and you know when I went to college at Duke I didn't know a soul you know it never phased me

you know I was like let's go next adventure right let's dig in yeah and so that that's kind of what And I've taken that same attitude. I don't know. I kind of, I love change. Probably too much. I'm always trying to change things. My wife was like, we're just trying to get from A to B. We're not trying to fix all the processes along the way.

But I love thinking about how things can change. Yeah. And how do we make them better? That's cool. So would you take the train mostly? Yeah. Was the channel back then? There was no channel.

There was a ferry. A ferry. Yeah. which had, you know, pubs on the ferry. So we enjoyed the fairies. And there was no, I don't know, I don't know IDing back then either. I don't think. Oh, no. There was no such thing.

Not in Europe, no. No. No, I, you know, I mean, what changed when I went to Europe? I was like, I had no interest in drinking. Yeah. When I came back, I had a lot of interest in drinking because that's what my friends all did. You know, I'm like, what are we doing? They're like, we're going to the pub.

What else would we do? Yeah. Oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah. Obviously, that wasn't the only place you got accepted to or applied to. So what were some of the other places you considered? Texas, because that's where we had come from.

Vanderbilt, Yale, Stanford, Duke. There may have been a couple of others. Those are the ones I remember. And I wanted to go to Stanford. I wanted to go to Stanford and play volleyball. Yeah. And what happened? Stanford didn't want me.

Sons of bitches. Turned out to be a great, you know, who knows what would have happened if I had gone there but I mean I loved to Duke yeah I applied early to Duke and the only place I would have gone had I got in was Stanford had a classmate the year before me that went there to play volleyball so he was trying to get me to come out there but evidently didn't have enough of the other stuff yeah and so you must have had really good grades in high school in high school I did high school okay and so you picked a great school obviously and Coach K was the basketball

coach and you played basketball there. I walked on for a year. Nice. And played would have been a, that's a strong verb for what I did. Participated on the team, got a jersey. Well listen. Listen. Listen. Rebounded a lot. Played for Duke. That's all you got to say. Participated. That's right. So give us a Coach K story. Coach K was probably one of the most intense individuals I've ever known. Yeah. I mean even back then, And he wasn't that far out of coaching at West Point. He'd been a West Point guy. He was probably, I don't know, 6-2, 6-1.

I mean, he's not a, he's a big guy. He has this presence. And, I mean, you were scared of him. You know, like, everyone was like, oh, my gosh, this is one tough guy. But he was the ultimate competitor. And, I mean, he just hated to lose. And I remember one time we were at NC State and they were just rolling. And a meter is just going.

They have a noise meter in there and getting dunked on. And the bad things are happening. I mean, I'm just watching. You know, he came in and I'll save you the theatrics in the locker room, but I'll never forget. He's like, they're having fun playing us. No one has fun playing us. You know, we may not win. You know, it's things like that or another time after a loss he came in and he could just tell the team hadn't put enough into that game because they weren't hurting enough after.

He's like, when you put everything into a challenge and you get beat, and he's like, you'll get beat. Yeah. But then it needs to hurt. Yeah. You know, things like that. I mean, he is interesting. His persona mellowed a lot in recent, you know, in the next couple of decades. and stuff. But I think he was still the same intense guy, you know, now that he's retired

and guys like Jason Tatum and stuff like that, start talking. I'm like, oh, he's the same guy. You know, Tatum was telling a story on ESPN about how he challenged him in a UVA game. And I'm like, he's the same guy. Like, he's that competitor and he's a psychologist. Yeah. You know, he was much more concerned about what you were thinking than what the next play was. Yeah. He was always trying to just get people to kind of, he felt like, coaching was about getting someone to do something they didn't think they were capable of doing. Yeah.

Not telling them what, like, how do I inspire you to go make decisions and make winning plays? Yeah. That's the stuff I picked up on. Interesting. Yeah. Particularly, I mean, as a VP of sales, you can always jump in there and call the prospect, but a coach can't go play. No. You know, it's interesting.

Well, I'm glad you got that exposure to him. Yeah, he's an interesting guy. Amazing. I guess the winningest coach ever. It's pretty strong. Yeah. And then the other thing I noticed about you when I was doing my homework is that you measured in electrical engineering. Yeah.

What the? Well, hey, you're good in math. You should be an engineer. What self-respecting sales guys measures in EE? Come on, now. Yeah. That was an, you know, again, like I did, math came really easy to me. Yeah.

You know, people are like, you should do engineering. I'm like, that sounds good. Yeah. I mean, it does sound interesting. It's not nearly, electrical engineering wasn't nearly as cool then as it is now. Like you just, there weren't as many amazing things you could do with it as you can now. I think if I had had done that now, I would have stayed in engineering. But at the time when I was way too late, when I was interviewing for engineering jobs my senior year,

I kind of came to the realization that this is not for me. You know, these are not interesting problems to me. Yeah. And someone kind of said, you know, you really should be more on the people side, the sales side. And so I was able to, fortunately, took a while, got a job with IBM as a sales engineer. Yeah. So I could kind of leverage my technical background and, you know, my abrasiveness of technology, but also get out there in a sales world, you know, and deal with clients.

And my first job was on the CSX account team. Literally IBM had 25 people combination of sales engineers and what they call customer engineers which were more like technicians. All we did was go to CSX, the railroad, every day. That was our job. And the company probably did, I don't know, anywhere from 25 to 50 million in revenue a year depending on where they were in an upgrade cycle that supported that team. That was before Gershner came in and turned IBM into a services business.

I was there when that kind of went down. That was interesting to see that change of mindset and who fought it and who embraced it and how that went. Yeah. That's interesting. So those just for the sake of the listeners, 25 people going to one company every day. Of course, it's a big company. We had offices. Yeah.

So what were they doing if they were going to see how things were working or what kind of stuff are you thinking for the future or gathering info? What was going on? Yeah. I mean, there was a lot of that. And, you know, they were using all of our, you know, PCs. They had, you know, five mainframes. They had a host of network equipment. You know, the company had thousands of employees.

In many ways, you were kind of like their IT department. Okay. You know, so you could get calls at any day talking about this or that. But people would bring you into their office to just tell you what their ideas were and try to envision it with technology. We got a new project, you know, we got a new idea. How could we use your technology? for this and that's where we would get our next leads from got it got it and that was the relationship

that you I mean that's the that's the and the pyramid of relationships that's the top you are the trusted advisor yeah I mean we had a we had a CSX badge yeah you know so they looked at us as part of the team brainstorm with you about what we want to see in the future not I want to buy so many printers you know they're this fast you know that was they just expected that yeah but what they really wanted was you know, the people who understood it, the technology. Yeah. And so then when you got that job, that was probably one of the best jobs you could get out of college in sales, I would say. It's IBM sales.

And I guess our listeners. Our listeners don't know this, but I mean, that was the best place to get sales training. Yeah, they would send us to Atlanta. Yeah. And we would be in these sales classes with 100 people. Yeah. And they would take us through the C-T. The CESC, the customer-tailored sales call.

And it was basically a sales methodology that was very similar to what I still use today and have taught to many sales teams, adapted over time with new learns. But I remember one of the things they taught us was how to write and draw upside down. Because at the time, you'd be in a sales call and you'd take a pad of paper and you might have to diagram a solution. And so you literally practice drawing and writing. that picture for the client upside down. Like it was that level of detail.

And you did mock sales calls and they would bring, you know, current salespeople from the Atlanta area in and conduct these mock sales calls. And you'd get a grade and he would go back to your manager how you did and all that kind of stuff. And you would be there for, I think the longest I was ever there was three weeks. Yeah. And there were several stages. And my overall training lasted nine months. Yeah.

It wasn't until after nine months that they assigned me to. the account team. So I think in terms of your journey, that part of it is something that is, our listeners can duplicate in that when they're looking for that first job, if they don't have like the perfect spot, like the place they would just love to work the rest of their lives, they don't have that, where can they go and really get some great training? Right. You know, and IBM back then would do that nowadays.

It was IBM Anderson consulting or bank. Yeah. Nowadays, I would say it's Salesforce, Oracle, some of those big tech companies, man, if you get on there as a salesperson, they're going to train you hard and work you hard, just like IBM did, I'm sure. Yep. Interesting. Okay. So, IBM for how long? 11 years.

Wow. I was still the new guy. You're still the new guy. I was still the new. In a room. Rookie. We had lots of meetings. We had a room and a meeting of a sales team.

I guarantee I was still in the, you know, bottom 5% of tenure. Right. You know, and that's when I said, I could be here for life, which isn't a, I mean, I know plenty of friends who were there, their whole career did very well. Yeah. Had a great career, saw the world. I mean, not, I just knew that wasn't for me. Yeah.

You know, and so I started kind of sniffing around. Yeah. And then I found hot, which was a 80 to 100 person. software company in Raleigh. I was in Raleigh at the time. And they had a job doing alliances. And I started with technology alliances and actually spun away from the customer for a bit and helped them onboard technology that they would OEM or otherwise use or even acquire into their solution. And sort of that was that was an interesting job because I had to put in place, you know, processes, you know, and kind of take

something that was very disjointed and just opportunistic and kind of put a structure to it from contracts to how we do business, how we onboard, you know, how we work together. And then I took that and helped them build their channels. So there are systems integrators and other reseller type partners. And again, it was more about putting like structure in place and then hiring some people to then go and deliver within that structure on the channel side. And ultimately became head of the sales team there. You know, kind of back to where I was. Yeah.

But it was a different entree. It was a new challenge and, you know, kind of worked out great. Yeah. Well, yeah, again, this is a good lesson for the listeners, but, you know, you paid your dues and you learned how to sell, you learned how to manage the sales team at a company that was teach you how to do that. Yep. Then levered that into becoming a VP of sales at a smaller company.

that, you know, you had more success, and that eventually got sold to another company, right? Yeah, to a GXS, which was a GE spinoff in the EDI space. And you stayed there for a while and only left because you had this Apple opportunity pop up. Well, I went to Merrill, went to SAS a couple of years. Okay, okay, okay. Yep. I wanted, GSX was headquartered Maryland. I was making all these trips up there.

I had young kids. And so a friend of mine was at SaaS with a small division of SaaS called DataFlux. And I went over there and ran DataFlux's channels. Again, building up an SI and reseller network. And I was doing that for a couple of years. And it was fun. It wasn't the most challenging job. I mean, SaaS is a really big company.

Interesting company. I mean, kind of was a cool experience at Raw. but a good friend from one of my initial sales jobs at IBM had gone to Apple on a secret project. And all I knew is he was there on a secret project. And a couple years before that, he said, you know, this secret project is the Apple retail stores. Yeah. And so he was essentially the VP of operations for the retail stores. and they were looking to add a B-to-B element to what they were doing in retail because people would come into the stores and say, well, I have a school, I have a small business, I have a law firm, we want to buy Apple products.

And, you know, will you take a P.O? And they're like, well, you know, what's a P.O? Yeah. You know, the folks in the store, the store manager. And so what we ended up, they brought me over to do that after much a much of figuring to kind of work out the opportunity, which is its own story. We built a B2B sales organization that worked and operated within the retail structure of Apple. And when I got there, we kind of hired our first couple hundred people.

We had about 125 stores at that point. And when I left six years later, we had a few thousand people just doing B2B in 13 countries. And we did several billion dollars in revenue. B to B through the stores. And then how would the store alert your group that somebody was interested? Yeah, that was it. It was like you didn't have to do lead gen. Right.

Because you had this incredible traffic in the store. You know, you'd have 20, 30, 50,000 people a year coming through your store. Yeah. And guess what? They all had jobs. Yeah. And so really literally what we did early on was trained that associates to in their normal process just to ask them, you know, what do you do? Do you use Apple technology at work? Would you like

to use Apple technology at work? Did you know we could help you with that? No, I didn't know that. We've got a business manager. Would you like to meet her? You know, and things like that. So you try to have like one person there each store? Yeah, well, it started off with one person. But depending on the store, like the San Francisco down the Union Square store, had 20 plus people. Wow. And their clients were these really cool start. startups called Twitter, you know, things like that, right? Uber. Yeah.

They had the San Francisco store had the coolest clients. So all names you know now, yeah. Yeah. Literally bought their first Macs. So I was just thinking that somebody would, would mention they had a business interest, but you're saying the associates would, some would walk in. But they would just say, hey, what do you do? Right.

It's just such a, such a soft, easy question. Right. And they would answer it and say, oh, really? Did you, you know, oh, that's so. beautiful man. Right. It's very non-threatening. Yeah, and who can say no to do you. People in the store wanted to tell you everything. Yeah. They're in a great mood. I mean, yeah, and they want to, I mean, the more they can talk to these Apple people, the better. It was. So exciting. Exactly. People, and we even kind of wrestled with, are we going to have to go to them?

And so many of the customers, like, no, I love coming to the store. It gives me an excuse to come to the store. Yeah. No, we would support them over the phone. Yeah. And we got to, we'd take POs, we could offer financing, we could direct ship to them, you know, all of those things they would expect. But if they wanted to come to the store to talk about what they were doing or to get trained or for support, they could do that. So when you took that job with Apple, did you move out there? Mm-hmm. Cooper, well, the headquarters Cooper Tito, right? Yep. Yep. So where did you live? San Jose. San Jose, okay. Just south of. Yeah, that's not too far. That's great. Oh, the one-on-one, right? Mm-hmm. Yeah. So how long were you with them?

Six years. Six years. And you roll that business retail. Right. The business business. It's called Apple Retail business. And then. And still cooking.

Yeah, absolutely. Did you go to the main headquarters every day? I mean, was that part of your job? We did. But the Apple retail was just, I mean, there's so many Apple buildings. 50 plus. Yeah. And our retail buildings were on Bub Road.

which was just down Stevens Creek from the main, back to the old campus before they had the spaceship. And we kind of figured that it was retail. They didn't want us too close to the, you know, we were the odd ducks. We were the different ones. And then they ended up moving more people over there. The iTunes group ended up over there and all of that. So, yeah, we were, it was just, there was so many different buildings. Yeah.

So, okay. So they were just, there wasn't one headquarters, really. There was. Infinite Loop was the famous. the famous headquarters with, you know, the buildings and all there. But we weren't in there. Okay. Now, and wasn't the whole retail thing and other jobs innovation?

Was that hit him? Yeah, everyone told them that it wouldn't work. Yeah. You know, they just like, they predicted that Apple would be in and out of it within a couple of years. Right. And then why do you think it did work? Because they put the customer first.

They really looked at. So the team that put the Apple Retail. stores in place looked at certain models and decided what do they want to be and they wanted to be an elite kind of luxury service environment and so one of the things they modeled their whole credo around was the Ritz Carlton. Okay yeah. Creating that exceptional experience and so you know the customer experience was at the top of the pyramid for everything in an Apple retail store and so they have

a measure of customer experience called net promoter. I don't know if you've ever studied net promoter. But your net promoter score as a store was your proudest element, even above sales. You know, it's like how well did you, basically net promoter measured the likeliness of a customer to recommend Apple to someone else. And so if that's kind of how they looked at the stores. The stores were brand ambassadors, you know, and they had a saying, you know, five down, 95 to go. Five percent of the people use a Mac. There's 95 percent out there to basically they considered

it in another one of the credos was enriching lives. Like the people in the store, especially back in the early 2000s and early 2010s, they felt like they were doing a service to you to convert you from a Windows world to a Mac world. Like you weren't living a full life because you didn't use a Mac. And they felt that passionately, and they felt like every conversion was really what it was all about. And so whatever it took to get you to convert, that's what they tried to figure out how to do. That's so cool. That's so cool. Do you have any Steve Jobs stories?

Not really. You know, unfortunately, his health had declined by the time I got there. So he was very limited in his interactions. But they did tell you in the employee training, if you're seeing him, and you're getting on an elevator, do not get on the elevator with them. And they're like, well, why not? And they're like, because you might not have a job. Oh.

When you get off the elevator. Oh, my gosh. Because he's going to ask you, what do you do? Why are you here? Yeah. Well, that's stupid. Yeah. You know, kind of thing.

Yeah. And so, yeah, but he was very, very hands-on for obviously a long time. Yeah. You know, you spent a lot of time on retail. Yeah. Directly in the stores. And you'd get, you'd get emails. He would answer customers' emails.

Like, they would show up. up and they would go to my boss, but I would get them. If somebody had a bad experience with the business team anywhere in the world, I would get a Ford from my boss from Steve because they might have emailed him and he, like, some explicit of his going on. Yeah. And you're like, well, okay. And, you know, we'd have to go triage that.

But he would, and that was not someone doing it for him. Right. It was coming from him. He was doing it. Yeah. So, you've been out for a little while, but I'm sure you still follow the company closely. how do you think they're going to handle the artificial intelligence transition? What do you think they're going to offer?

Generally, you know, I don't know what they're going to offer. I mean, you do see it in the products, you know, you're starting to get all these suggestions around your calendar and, you know, follow-ups and things like that that that are popping up. But, you know, Apple has always been, you know, rarely the first to integrate the technology. Yeah. But they try to be the smartest to integrate it. and they try not to get distracted in the noise. And they try to deliver something like really unique that gets everybody to grab onto it.

You know, when you look at like rolling out Apple pay. Right? Like they avoided a lot of distractions to just say, you know, we want to be able to provide a really simple payment environment. And they put off a lot of things until, you know, one of the credos that they taught you at Apple was you have to say no to a lot of good ideas to do something great. Yeah.

You know, and so they try to zero in on that one thing they can do great. Right. At least that was the culture. Is it, you know, I mean, obviously a lot has changed in that company over the last, you know, decade. Yeah. But it was like, let's do something great. Yeah. And say no to a lot of other things.

Yeah. You know, Jobs' whole goal at one point was to get all the products they sell on one table. Mm. He's like, everything we sell, you can fit on this table. Yeah. Interesting. You know, he felt that was a victory. Yeah.

Everything on this table we're exceptionally proud of. Yeah, yeah. I don't know when he came back after being, you know, gone or kicked out or whatever, he was like, we got 80 product lines, you know, and he narrowed it down to, I think, seven or six or something. And everything makes sense. Yeah, he sort of had that attitude. And I think it can even more personal to me is that my friend Jerry, who brought me to Apple. When he first got to Apple on that retail project, he talked about structurally.

and he almost just packed up and went home. And I think it's the same thing when you talk about Steve coming back. At some point he realized, what's the worst they can do? Fire me? Yeah. And then I get to go home because he was from New York. And so he stopped being afraid of messing up. He stopped being afraid of being fired.

He's like, once you're not afraid of that, then you do your best work. Yeah. Interesting. Right. And he said that unleashed him. And from then on, he loved it. Good. He kind of was able to turn that corner by eliminating the fear.

We did a great job, that's for sure. A couple more questions, Roman. Do you have like a biggest sale you could walk us through, like a big sale you were involved in or made? You know, a couple of examples. One funny one early on was a sale that didn't happen. And we were working on a deal, our business team in Las Vegas on Cesar's wanted to buy

I don't know, $20 million worth of iPads to give to their top customers. Oh, okay. You know, kind of as incentive. Yeah. And Word got up to the executive team and we were told you can't do the deal. Oh. We're like, but we've been working on this a long time and this is just the tip of the iceberg. And then the other casinos will want to do it.

And they're like, that's not how we want to position the product. Oh. He has a reward for people gambling. like this was a you know Apple had some very strict what they considered you know what where they wanted the brand to be and where they didn't want to be the brand to be and they didn't care how big the deal was or that it could be a hundred million dollar deal yeah it was not in line with what they wanted to do as a brand and the deal was done wow yeah so that was a hard lesson but you're like man you talk about principles yeah that's putting your money where your mouth is

yeah right and the there was nothing more important to them at the time or sense than the brand This was a time when you couldn't even put the Apple logo in a commercial with another logo. You know, they've since allowed that, like AT&T or at the time, you know, they would not allow that at all. They wanted it to stand singular. It was that same kind of thinking. Another deal that popped to mind was we were doing a deal with Back at Hot with Royal Ahold, which is a big Dutch grocer. And so it kind of came down to a process. proof of concept week long, and they gave us and some other folks like IBM the same opportunity.

And you came in and they had a week long set of things that they wanted you to prove out with your software. And so I brought two systems engineers up there, and we spent the week there going through this proof of concept, long days, 12, 14 hours. And I quickly realized that my job was to keep the two SEs functioning. You know, because they were doing, they were the ones doing the work. And while I could help a little bit with what they were doing, what I could really do was keep them at their best. And so, you know, I sort of became like, all right, we're going to rotate schedules.

You're not both going to be here for 14 hours. You know, this is when you're going to sleep. This is when you're going to get some rest. And thinking about things like, what are we going to do for dinner, you know? And then just getting ahead of the questions, you know, talking to the team about what's tomorrow going to be about while they're working on today. And then thinking of things that could help. them make tomorrow easier. Right.

And just surviving that week. And we've won the deal. And I'll never forget, we're doing a big demo at the end of the week and showing a lot of what had been done. And John, our software was melting down in front of our eyes. Like things just had been working all week. We're not working. And our SE, who was pretty tired, but not tired enough to dance.

I knew it was happening. He knew what was happening. The people in the room did not know what was happening. And so he was able to kind of walk through what was happening. Because, you know, it's like when you do public speaking, you get really caught up in saying what you want to say until you realize that the people out there don't know what you're about to say. So only you know if you mess up. Same thing with that. Only we knew that the software wasn't, we weren't able to show some things that we wanted to show.

Yeah. But we got out of there and I think if the demo had lasted an hour more, I'm not sure if anything would have worked, you know. Yeah. But we survived and we got the deal. And I really think we got the deal because of those two people. Right. Because of their willingness to just sort of take on the problems that they were throwing at

them. And also the willingness to say, we don't do that. Yeah. This is what we do. And I remember the director on their side. saying that we don't do honesty, that helps me budget for those things. Because no one does everything. We know coming in. If anybody checked 100% of this stuff, our meter would go up and say they're not being honest. Like IBM wanted to say they do everything. With you guys, I know I got to

find an answer for these things and it's going to cost me money. Right? But I also know the things you told me you can do and showed me you can do. I can count on you to do that. And that's kind of we got the deal. Well, I would position your role there in terms of winning a big deal if you're the quarterback. It's just to figure out how we're going to win the deal. If I got to go pick up dinner, I'll do it. Whatever it takes, we're going to win this deal and it doesn't have to be by the book or normal or whatever. Just what are the ingredients we need to provide to make this thing happen? That's right. And it's different every time. Totally. For the leader. Well, that's good. Okay. Tell about just generic advice, your advice for a young salesperson.

I was thinking, you know, this is one of the things I was thinking about ahead of time. And I remember kind of thinking about like now being more of a hireer. And, you know, I look for people who while their experiences are valuable, are not overly attached to those is the only way to do something. You know, I think that your ability to show your willingness to unlearn and relearn is what makes you successful. Because each new opportunity is a chance to get better. Yeah. Like just because you're really successful in the role you're in now or we're in, that play may not work.

Now, those experiences are super valuable, but how do you look at the next opportunity a little differently? Yeah. Whether it's a new company or even maybe a new role. Yeah. And try not to just drag a play with you. Try to look at each new opportunity uniquely and go, well, how do I take what I've learned and let's create something new? Right.

maybe we can do something a little better this time. Right. And I think that willingness of people who are really successful to be willing to let go of what made them successful and embrace the new opportunity, ultimately is the people you want on your team. great. And I would add to that, one of the things that we don't like to hear from new employees or even interviewees is like, well, back at so-and-so company. No one wants to hear that. I don't want to hear it. You know, we want to talk about what's working here and ideas for things to make it work better.

I really try to not say, I mean, you've asked me about this, but I try not to say at Apple. Yeah. I'd be in them, yeah. People would just get tired of it. Yeah. You know. Like that's the answer for everything. Well, and certainly what we're there is not going to work here. We're so different. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, different problems to solve, too, than what you're doing now. Right.

100%. Interesting. Okay. And then a couple of Rapid Fire's favorite movie? You know, I was always a huge fan of Gladiator as a movie. I love it. I love that movie. Obviously, Hoosiers.

Yes. You can just watch that over and over. Ferris Bueller's Day Off. That's good. Who doesn't watch that in segments? That's a good one. You know, these days, it's all about series, though. Yeah.

And I love Last Kingdom. I've watched it on Netflix. No, what's it about? It's set in kind of 9th century England, and it's about kind of the various kings and the Danes in England. And they use this fictitious character, Utre Dragnison. Okay. And he's kind of the glue that puts all this. But it's, I thought it was all made up.

And then I started kind of looking at the history behind it. And it's actually, the people around Utrutriot are all very real. Yeah, they change a little bit. Yeah. But it's kind of an action, you know, it's got a bit of a gladiator feel, but the characters in it are just priceless. And it's great. And they just came out with a, it has five seasons, and they just came out with a movie that kind of culminates everything. So, I mean, that's a great show.

I see if I put it in the rotation. That's a good one. Yeah, that's good one. And then a favorite book? You know, not a huge. huge reader like I mean I go through spurts I remember like I loved reading with my kids yeah you know and getting into the young adult I was thinking about you know you've mentioned this before is like you really need to talk to my daughter my daughter works in publishing in New York yeah she creates

audiobooks yeah um and her room looks like a library ah and I can just go to her room and put but it's a lot of young adult yeah but she's literally like a bookshelves all over her room yeah she's just a A reader. She's a big reader. She was an English major at Georgia. Yeah. Loves it, works in publishing. So, she produces audio books for people? She does. Interesting.

She's in production. Very good. Yeah. I don't know if you ever, I was thinking, though, like, did you ever read, like, the Shara books, like Rise to Rebellion, glorious cause? No. No. He did some Civil War stuff and some American Revolution stuff.

And it was really interesting because he takes kind of a first-person point of view to tell the historical fiction. Okay. I've always liked the historical fiction. Yeah. You know, it kind of gives you a way to connect with, and I guess maybe Last Kingdom is kind of that same thing, right? It's based in history, so you learn a lot.

Yeah. At the same time, it's written like fiction or portrayed like fiction so that you get that entertainment that keeps you from, you know, falling asleep when you're reading it and that kind of thing. Yeah. Okay. And then favorite word? I don't know.

I say things like amazing and excellent. a lot. I tend to just, you know, tend to be really impressed with things people do. So I think a lot of my favorite words are ones that are just encouraging and excited about what I see other folks doing. Yeah. And try to be that positive affirmation. So things like that. Yeah. Well, I think, you know, one lesson learned from your career thus far is that people who do excellent things typically keep doing excellent things. And, you know, I can't tell everyone just, hey, go to Duke, you know, to start things. That's not the easy thing to do.

But, you know, as you have success at IBM and at Duke and at Apple and the other places you've been, you know, I think you expect and the people that you know, like the person who brought you into Apple, they expect great things from you. So I just think it's a I'm not trying to build you up too much but just as an example you know the more people accomplish kind of the easier it is to some degree

to accomplish that next thing. Right. You feel more confident. You're willing to take chances. Yeah, and you're willing to make chance because you think you can do it and the people that you know feel the same way about you. Right. Well we would talk a lot

about willing things to success. Yeah. You know, there's great ideas but a good plan executed and having everybody willing it to success, you're going to figure it out. Love it. Well, thanks for being on the Noobcast today. I appreciate you inviting me.

I appreciate it so much. I know it's just a tall thing. It's a tall guy thing. That's right. But we'll have you back in six months or so and hear how your new venture is going. That'd be great. But we really appreciate it.

Thank you. Thank you, Ray. Okay.