Noob School - Knocking on the Right Doors with David Hudson

Episode Date: December 29, 2023

Today on Noob School we're joined by David Hudson - a founding member of the NEXT Founders Investment Fund in Greenville South Carolina. David recounts his career path, from his time at the Citadel, to where he is now and everything in between. This episode provides a great example of how to structure your sales career - knocking on the all the right doors, and the importance of staying humble along the way. Check out what the Noob School website has to offer: https://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. John Sterling here. I've got a great friend and an old friend, a friend that goes back to high school, Mr. David Hudson. Welcome aboard, David. Well, thank you for having me, John.

Yeah. Always a pleasure. David is one of the few people who's been on the show who's beat me in basketball, I think back in 1977 or something like that. I never beat you in basketball. You weren't on that team? Our team beat you in basketball.

You're too tall to me to beat you. basketball. Well, you had a stack team. We had a great team. Yeah, David went to J.L. Mann High School in Greenville and I went to Christchurch, and we did, in fact, play his great team twice and almost won once. Sure did. Yeah. Great memory. David has been a friend a long time. We were friends in high school. We were friends where we went to college together at the Citadel. And then we've both been in Greenville, kind of in the selling entrepreneurial space ever since.

And so it's past due time that we had David on the podcast. The last thing David accomplished was Performance HCM, which was a payroll processing and HR company that you built for, how many years? About 15 years. 15 years and then sold it. And now David is, as a young man, he's pretty much managing his investment fund and like coaching and training and some of that stuff with some of the young companies in town. Is that right?

Yeah, that's exactly right. Could you be lured into another venture? You know, that's a good question, John. I've been asked that. You know, and now in my early 60s, having flexibility has been the greatest thing about where I am in this season of life, you know. And now that I've tasted that flexibility, to go do down. daily operating every single day with that grind. I just don't know that I have the itch to do that.

I'm ready to help others and mentor some and that kind of thing. So that's kind of where I'm going right now. Yeah, I think we're in the same boat. I want to coach and help people, but I don't want to fool myself into thinking I'm going to go, you know, 12 hours a day. Yes, like we used to. It's hard to believe. Like we used to. And, you know, the sales grind that both you and I went through for.

close to 40 years for us. You know, it takes a toll, man. You know, it's tough out there. And if we can do anything to help young people coming up in that profession and people that are in their mid-years in the profession to be even better than we were, I think that's great. That's why I love your book. I love Sales for News.

I think it's outstanding. Well, thank you. You need to write one. I love to read your book. So, David, we want to be able to be able to be able to be. We want to back up to the beginning, almost the beginning, and kind of walk through your career. And along the way, talk about this was a good move, this was not a good move, I could have done this, I could have sold this different, and just talk about some of the sales things along your career that could be helpful. But I know you went from jailman, where you were a good basketball player and very popular, to the Citadel.

And my first question is, why did you choose to go to a military school? Why'd you be so silly like me to do something like that? Yeah. Listen, I get asked that question a lot. I was a guy that enjoyed social life and a people person in high school. Yeah. You would think I would have gone to the big school and maybe gotten into fraternity life. Yeah.

My uncle went to the signal, John, and when my father went to Clemson, it was a military school. Yeah, okay. My father was a rat at Clemson. Okay. Shaved the head and everything. Yeah. Okay. And my uncle, who was very influential on me, especially during those years of life, was an influence.

And a gentleman in Greenville, Mr. Jimmy Jones, was a great influence as well. He had children that were my peers. Bentley, right? And Bradley. Yeah. But, you know, I was very intrigued by the Citadel, my senior year in high school. I began to kind of take notice of Citadel graduates that were friends of my father, friends of my family. I saw the professionalism, the integrity, the discipline, and the success.

I think the good Lord just kind of spoke to me. You know, you need this. You're a young man. You're a person in this life that needs what the Citadel has to offer. I went down to visit. I was really intrigued by it. Didn't know what I wanted to really do in life. The Air Force folks down there in ROTC talked to me about possibly being, you know, a pilot.

That was sexy. I mean, so I, you know, but I felt a calling of needing that environment. I just felt like I needed structure and discipline. And thank the good Lord it worked out. I mean, none of us loved the Citadel when we're there. I mean, there's no doubt about it. If you did, there's something wrong with you. Something wrong with you, right, yeah.

So, you know, but I look back on the days and the years there and the shaping and the molding of, you know, of the man I became, right? I mean, so it's a, I don't know. I really was intrigued and I kind of went to a visit down there and I came home and I said, I think that's where I'm going. Yeah. And, you know, I knew you, I knew other folks from our community that were down there They were having success.

They'd made it through the plebe system, the knob year. Yeah. We call it there. And I'm like, I know these guys. I grew up with these guys. Man, if they can do this, I can do this. And so, man, I'm so thankful I went there. Yeah.

I've been fortunate. I've had four children. My two oldest children went to Clemson, and they had great success in careers there. But my two youngest sons went to the Citadel. So that's been fun. Yeah. You know. That's great.

Well, it's interesting you say that, that's the exact reason that I went there. My dad was a graduate and I knew a lot of his friends who were graduates and I just saw them that they were professional, they were all so tough and they developed, they're building nice lives. And I was like, I think I'll do that. Yes. You know, that was good to me. Absolutely.

Yeah. That was a huge influence. And then I complained about it for four years. Well, that's kind of what we do down there. So when you were in school, did you do anything, what did you do interesting in the summers? You know, mostly worked in my family's business here in Greenville. You know, it's kind of interesting. Back in those days, not many people did anything like go abroad or anything.

You just didn't see that. You know, that's a regret, right? If you say, what's a regret from those days is that I didn't go take a summer and maybe go abroad and do some things a little more worldly? Yeah. But, you know, I needed to make money. And my father and grandfather had a family business, and they gave me an opportunity to be there in the summers. And so I did.

I did spend one summer in Charleston, and that was great, you know, and took some classes and did a little part-time gig here and there. But I love Charleston, and I still love it today. My wife and I, Carrie, spend lots of time there. But, you know, I really, I look back and I didn't do a ton of things. I spent a lot of time working those numbers. I mean, that's a lot. Resupplying the bank account, right, to get through the next year of college.

You're making money, the value of hard work. Yes, you know. I mean, that's wonderful. That's cool. And then when you were getting out, when you were in the famed D company, you're in Delta Company, right? I was in Delta Company. Yeah.

Great company at the Suddle. The closest thing to, like, the K.A. House is the Delta Company. I would agree. It was called the Delta Frat. The Delta Frat, yeah. Yeah. But when you got out of school, I think you went right to CTG. Is that right? No. Actually, telecommunications management, which was a startup company that was born out of a great company you and I know,

but knew here in Greenville, Buildermarts of America. So that was before CTCG? That was before CTG, yeah, which stands for corporate telemaging. So how did you pick telecom? Well, it's interesting. When I was a senior at the United States. the Citadel, I did a paper in business school about the building materials industry. And Buildermarts was my main resource. And I went spring break, spent time with them, and was really excited about it. My family had friendships of some people working there. And I thought I was going to go into their forest products and building materials area. I was kind of teed up to do that after college.

And I went up kind of one of the last times I went up there to talk. with them, Mr. Bud Stoner, a wonderful gentleman, said, David, we want to talk to you about something new that we're doing. And John, this was 1984 and AT&T was being deregulated in our country. It was a very interesting time, divestiture of monopoly was taking place. And they had figured out an opportunity to get into the telecommunications business and compete. And the reason they did it is because they were the largest user in the state of South Carolina with long distance calling like we used to call them Watts lines they were either one or two maybe maybe Milliken and Spartanburg was a little bigger I don't know but

they were one of the largest customers and they said we have got to find ways to cut costs and get this huge expense down yeah and they decided to get in the business bought a switch just like Bell and AT&T without downtown yeah and started switching their own calls. Okay. Realized it worked and started going to the Greenville community and saying, hey, we can compete. Yeah.

We have an opportunity to save you money, give you better service, and it was born. And the company was called Telecommunications Management. And Bud Stoner and then a gentleman by the name of Layton Coveitch, and many of us in this community, you know, great entrepreneur. We'll talk about Leighton more in a minute, one of my great mentors that helped me. they said, David, we'd like you to come over and do this. And if it doesn't work, we'll go back to forest products and you can get in building materials or whatever.

And so I kind of went from there. They later had me meet with Mr. Charlie Houser, who was a long time builder Mark exec, who was going to go over and run the telecommunications division. And between Charlie and Layton and Mr. Bud Stoner, they convinced me to do it. And I'm so glad I did. It was a great thing to do it.

It was so unique and new and interesting. And I assume you were going out calling on people trying to get them a switch? Correct. It was true B-to-B sales. So it was my first job out of school. They moved me to Augusta, Georgia. And one of our great friends, Ted Hassel and I went to work at the same time. We were in the same training class.

And Ted had graduated from University of South Carolina at the same time I'd finished at the Sudden. They shipped us down to Augusta, Georgia. their first satellite office out of Greenville and trained us in Greenville and then moved us. And it was just pure tea. Hey, here's your Rolodex. Here's a bunch of D&B done in Bradstreet, cards. And your job is to come in every day, get on the phones, call, call, call, get appointments, go out in the street, knock on doors. And I'm like, holy mozy, okay.

I'm in Augusta, Georgia. I don't have a network of people. I'm from Greenville, South Carolina. Yeah. But it turns out, you know, knew some people in Augusta, that was helpful. And I had a little bit of family connection. And so that started to get some momentum going with networking. Yeah.

And, oh, networking. Yeah. Oh, it's a whole other topic. Yeah. But they threw me to the wolves. Yeah. You know, I got some training, and they said, here's your roll of decks. Here's your D&B cards.

These are your prospects. We do them by letters. You've got A through H. Hassel's got, you know, I through whatever. And another lady's got, you know, O through Z or whatever. And so go get them. And, boy, it was knocking on doors. Knocking on doors.

You know, going out, going into office buildings, knocking on doors, getting potentially run out of a building that said non-solicitation. We learned to ignore that sign, right, John. But, yeah, great, great experience. Right. I mean, your first sales job out of school, you've got a cold call by phone, you've got to get out there in the street, knock doors. Obviously, we're talking pre-internet, right?

So it was old-fashioned, old-school get after it. And so how did that company morph in the, or how did the CTG come about? Well, the telecommunications management, we called it Tellman, ended up being acquired and went through a couple of roll-ups. And eventually our group of Greenville people, you know, exited one by one. And Layton Cubbage and Charlie Houser stayed connected. People went different ways for a short period of time. Some people stayed with the company that had ultimately become, what had ultimately become the company we were with.

And Layton had an idea. He had moved to Nashville and he came back to see Charlie and he said, I think we can do another telecom venture. I think we can sell our products through distributing channels, specifically companies that sell phone equipment. hardware, and that is how CTG, which we called the corporate telemanagement group. So Tellman had already been successful for everybody. It had been successful.

It had been successful. It had done a public and it had been acquired. And Tellman was an ESOP company, so an employee stock ownership company. And a lot of us younger guys had been able to get a little bit of that and taste a little bit of equity, you know, and be a part of a company going public. And you were never a part of a company that you didn't have equity? Not after that, that's correct. That was my first taste of it. It's hard to give it up.

And I grew up in a family business where the family owned the company. But I didn't really understand it, right, until after school. And my dad was helping educate me through the years. But just, wow, it was a great taste to tell man to have it. How did Layton hook up with Tellman in the first place? Somebody knew of Layton or introduced Bud Stoner and Charlie to Layton. He was working for a large telecom company up in New York. And he was from Sumter and went to Clemson, played football there, and had connections still here.

But I don't remember who it was that knew Layton and connected him with Charlie and Bud. Okay. But Layton was in New York and had learned this, you know, hard charging coal calls in Manhattan. He worked for ITT. That's what it was, yeah. International telephone and telegraph, yeah. But that's how he connected back to them and brought him back to Greenville

when they were starting to tell me. Well, when you're busting down doors in person, what could you pass on is a very good working way to get in the door and have a conversation? Well, let me first say this about that, and then I'll answer you. In today's high-tech world,

I think you still have to have a balance of how you prospect. And in most business, businesses, products, coal-calling physically can still be successful. You know, I've got children that sell. I've got friends, children that sell. They're all very high-tech, LinkedIn, social media, using all these cool softwares. But, yeah, I really think that cold calling still helps you,

further further develop your craft. You need to understand how to go knock a door and how to get over the butterflies and the fear and the anxiety of God, I'm about to walk in here. What if they throw me out? What if they say no?

And so I loved the learning process of that. And I would coach any young person today. Get out of the office if you can. COVID was a weird deal, right? For those of us in the sales world, right? It pushed everybody remote. We had to become more experts at how to do remote.

But I really would always still teach, even in our company, my most recent company, you've got to go knock doors, you've got to get out of the office, you know, schedule time during the week to be able to do it. And then, you know, perfect your craft. If you get in, you really got to make a friend with the receptionist or whoever's up front. You've got to get to know them. I mean, you've got to talk to them. You can ask questions that will lead you to learn about that company.

Yeah. I mean, it's just amazing to me how you can just sit there and talk to somebody up front. Tell me about what you guys do. How long have you been here? Yeah. You know? Yeah. Versus just, hi, I'd like to speak to Frank Brown, please.

Is he available? No, he's not. I mean, that's what you're going to get every time, right? That's it. Yeah. Or, well, hang on just a minute. and we'll try to, I'll try to call him and you go sit down in the lobby and start flipping through a magazine. I mean, you know what I mean?

You got to, you got to be using the time wisely and building a relationship with that person who's sitting right there. Yeah. One little story. Yeah, sure. One of my most successful wins ever was in Greensboro, North Carolina, and the receptionist at a large furniture company. happened to be the daughter of the owner. Never knew it. She was married, different last name, had no idea.

She didn't tell me. She told me later that of all the vendors that came in and spoke to her because I engaged her and followed up and talked to her and was always kind to her and, you know, questioned her. And she said, I recommended to my dad that he go with you. Wow. And, you know, that's an example. Yeah.

And that's one of my favorite wins of all time. I mean, it just, you know, it wasn't the largest win for me, but it was a big win, you know, in those days. So I just think you got to, I think you got to have that in your balance, in your mix. It's one of the errors in the prospecting quiver that I think you still can do. Yeah. That reminds me, I don't know what I should call it, like the reception syndrome, but we would have our receptionists have the authority to tell us.

she wants to disqualify somebody. Yeah. She was, I would call her, as the person was coming up the elevator, she would call me. And I'd say, so what do you think? She goes, oh, he seemed like a nice guy. Yeah. Or she would say, no.

That's it. No, he's a jerk. Absolutely. Same with people trying to sell us stuff. Same thing. I say, is this something like a nice guy? Super nice guy. Or jerk, jerk.

I'm like, well, if he's a jerk, then the answer's no. That's it. That's right. agree. So I just, you asked me about the cold call. And I think that was, you know, that was a great learning experience and one that, that I've tried to teach and coach and, you know, it's starting with my own internal kids who got in sales and then their friend groups and now, now companies and all that. What goes to the thing I was talking to you about yesterday is, you know, you, if you have one leading characteristic, it's a positive attitude and

enthusiasm, and that can take you a long way, you know, because that was not a secret what you just said. That's just showing up a lot, following up, being kind, being nice, and you're the number one pick. Yes, it. There is no trick. No trick. No trick.

It's what Layton used to say. That's what a great mentor. Oh, my God. All right, so I got sidetrack. So you went, had a good run at 10th,000. man got a taste when you sold it. And then when you reconnected CTG or when the people got back together, the band got back together, it was pretty much Ted and you and Layton and Charlie.

That was it initially. Yeah, that was it. Right. I mean, it was really, I was in Greenville. Yeah. And so I think Layton called me right out of the gate. He said, you know, hey, you know, we want to talk to you. Yeah.

About coming to do this thing. We'd love you to come be in sales and help get the sales side going. and, you know, we've got a good track record together. And, you know, just hearing from Layton and he's a master sales guy, right? I couldn't say no. It was exciting. It was a great opportunity. Yeah.

And so we got Ted involved, and then shortly thereafter, we got Eddie Terrell involved, who's very close to you, as you know. Very close. Well, I would say just as a coaching point here, you know, if you look at your career so far that we've described, he'd say, well, God, that was a lucky break that he got to work for that tellman company instead of being in the lumbered thing. And I'd say, well, I don't know about that.

You know, he'd earned his right to be there for the lumbered thing. He'd done his internship and he worked his channels and he's there. But I'll guarantee you, if there's a few people there, you were the most enthusiastic person there. And they said, if we've got to pick one guy to go bust down doors and sell stuff, it's David. Right? I mean...

You know, I mean, I... I learned how important attitude is. Yeah. And it started with the high school years and trying to be a leader in a basketball program that was a successful program in our state. And then the Citadel, you know, you had to have a great attitude, right? And then, and then the people who just made a bunch of money on this first company are starting a second company, and you're the first sales guy they call because they knew what you could do. So it was not lucky.

It wasn't like they just accidentally dialed your number. So the point is, you know, you earn these breaks along the way. You might get lucky every now and then. But for the people listening, you can hustle your way and think your way to the right spot. Yes, you can. And, you know, and thank you for saying that. It's, you know, I know that I was called by Layton and Charlie because of the tell man days. And I always will be appreciative of that.

But they had trained me well, and they knew how they had trained me, right? And so between my father's sales influence and then Layton, really, in those early years, the combination of those two, you know, help me understand how to have that right attitude, that right positive mentality, positive mental attitude, EMA, we used to say. And so how long was that run? The CTG run? Gosh, now you're going to get me on that one. I think it was from, I think it went about seven years.

Okay. And my brother joined you somewhere. Yeah, Dan. Yes, sir. Your brother came in with the next group. We had Dan and Russell Powell, Doug Hamer, John Hogue. We had some great young men come in, kind of the next generation. They came into our sales support and helped support what David, Ted, and Eddie were doing.

And we were able to mentor them. And, oh, they were wonderful additions. They started as our sales support team, and we just all built it together. And it was a great culture, great family. We had many other people involved in the company. We're all still on techs change today. We just had a love for each other. It was a special environment.

And Leighton and Charlie created that, right? And then others carried it forward. I think people create those kind of cultures by careful selection of people. Yeah. Like you can't take, you know, a jackleg and turn them into a David Hudson. You just got to go find more David Hudson's if you want those people to coalesce and you love each other. So it's wonderful. Well, those gentlemen that started the business and invited us into it were absolute winners, right?

And you want to be around winners. Yeah. I mean, I've guided my own family members to get with winners. Yeah. You know, winners win. Yeah. And so, you know, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we're were able to build a culture of winners.

And I know you did the same thing, Data Stream and your great career. That's so important, you know, because you spend so much time in that environment in your life. It's just critical. It is. And then you guys, seven-year run, you sold that company to Windstream? We sold it to LCI International. LCI. Yeah, big public company out of Dublin, Ohio.

Okay. Big national company. And I stayed on with them. I stayed a year there. They moved me into one of their regional vice president jobs. And that's great. I mean, I learned a lot. I spent time up in Dublin and go up there in the winter and the snow.

You know, they were a very bright management team. But, yeah, they paid us a lot of money for that. Our little company, it was a – and I had been fortunate enough. I had been offered some stock opportunities. at CTG early on and then kept trying to find ways to get more and get more. And so I was very fortunate and blessed. I was able to get equity in that opportunity. The first deal you and I talked about gave me the taste.

And so I did all I could to get more equity in CTG. Good Lord will, and it paid off. The industry was hot. Our industry, that industry later went through some serious downturn. Yeah. Yeah. CTG had an amazing return, the multiples, the purchase agreement. The whole thing was a great situation.

Yeah. You know, many of the people involved had stock options and had equity and were rewarded well. Yeah, that's great. It was a great lesson in what equity can mean. Yeah, it was wonderful. And then then I think you started another company called New South. We did.

Right. South is another telecom company. That is correct. Okay. What's different about New South and CTG? A little bit different niche. So I mentioned that AT&T had been deregulated and in the telecom industry when that happened in the 80s, that was like long-distance calling.

When you would call another city or another state or international or whatever, there were fees, right? Young people today don't even know what I'm talking about. It's all free. That's right. But the part of the telecom world. in our country that had not been deregulated was the local connection, the local line to your home or your business, which was provided by Bell South. And so in the mid-2000s, or the early 2000s, that last piece, that local piece was deregulated.

And so we met a gentleman from Louisiana at some of our telecom conferences, a gentleman by the name of Michael LaFrance. I think you may remember his name. Michael. Yeah, I mean him. Michael was very successful early on in the deregulation of local. And Michael was interested in doing a startup in the southeast. He was originally from Louisiana. And he had heard a lot about Greenville, and he knew Charlie Houser.

And Charlie introduced Eddie Terrell and myself to Michael. And so we started talking, and long story short, put a business model, business plan, together, got some capital, raised some money, and off we went. And we started New South. And so it was a local competitor to Bell that also provided the long distance piece and at that time started to provide some data connected. So the data world was beginning. And we wanted to capitalize on that as well. So we started easing into that and of course that took off more later. But you know, yeah, it was a great thing. And we could

put together a partnership. We had two other gentlemen come in and join us and started a partnership of New South and off we went. Yeah. And grew it quite a large company. And, you know, that company did survive. The industry went through some serious challenges about five, six years into that business. There were downturns in telecom. And so we went through some serious challenges. But we had a CFO. that never did let us go out and get high-yield debt, John. Still today, all of our competitors were getting high-yield debt. I mean, they were just loading it up. And I just remember Ron, our CFO, who just absolutely refused.

We're not going to do it. We don't need to do it. It's too risky. And so our company was able to make it through a very challenging time. We saw a lot of companies going down. And then we stayed in touch. brother and a couple others had started a different type of business, heavy residential. We were commercial.

And that business became New Box. And so we merged New Box and New South like 0405 and put together a really nice company and then windstream communications out of Little Rock, Arkansas, bought the whole thing. Not really a grand slam. We'd had to survive. obviously a lot of dilution took place. We did some multiple rounds of financing and capital. KKR, the famous venture capital group out of New York, was a partner.

Wells Fargo Capital was a partner. And, you know, they would keep putting a little bit in to keep everything rolling. So dilutions occurred. But, you know, we made something out of it. And it didn't all end up negative. And, boy, was it a great learning experience. I opened up a lot of sales offices around the southeast from scratch. and hired people.

It was a great experience for me. I was the executive VP of sales and marketing for the company. A win's a win, David. A win's a win. We got out of it. We were able to make it through. Whether you win by one or win by 20, we won. Yeah.

Great lesson in there on the finance side, though, that I try to talk to entrepreneurs about. To be careful. Be careful. Be careful. You can get caught up and think that whatever you're doing is going to work. I saw some wonderful companies that had just taken too much high-yield debt and couldn't make it. It was heartbreaking. Yeah, that's great because I always try to think like Buffett and Munger.

They would tell you the same thing. That it's, you know, what goes up must come down and all that kind of stuff. I'll tell you what, I never forget when we sold CTG and we had success and there was financial success. and financial reward. I'll never forget Charlie Houser saying, you know, your bank account just got a little bit bigger

and a lot of people are going to think you're some kind of real genius, smart guy. But don't ever forget, your IQ hadn't changed a big. So I love that. I mean, I still use that today, right?

Well, you just got to, you got to hustle. Everyone's got to hustle. Absolutely. Everyone's got to hustle. Keep you humble, too. Keeps you humble. So let's cover the, you had two more businesses since then, right? Just to have one more since then.

One more, okay. Yeah, one more since then. So performance. So tell us why, after all that telecom success, every one of them was successful, just in different degrees, why switch over to HR and billing? It's really interesting. So one of my great teammates at New South New Box,

worked with him probably almost 10 years, was a guy by the name of Penn Gap. And Penn is from Greenville. He's a little younger than we are, but it's also a subtle guy and a South Carolina NBA, real bright guy. Great operator. Penn and I had talked about trying to do something together after Windstream bought the company. We both were from Greenville. Our families were here. And we sat down one day and started making a list of kind of what we wanted to do. And what we knew, John, was B2B, business to be. Business to business, small to medium business to business, service industry sales, okay, with residual revenue. Yeah. And we knew that residual revenue valuations a lot of times are done on revenue, not EBITDA. Yeah. And we wanted to be in something similar to what we knew. Our telecom services were go out, sell somebody, hook them up, and they pay you every month. And we had lunch with a gentleman here in Greenville, who was in the staffing business. John New Pritchard, his company's called Fine

Great People Here, be a great guy to have on your podcast sometime, really bright, bright guy. I did a wonderful job there. But we were talking to John, and he said, have you guys ever looked into like payroll and HR? It's residual revenue. You provide a service. They pay you every month to do the service. There's no inventory to keep. There wasn't in telecom. There's a not a lot of overhead. There wasn't. And you just out-service the big boys. That's what you guys had done.

You've competed against Bell and AT&T and you've won. I don't think there's anybody else out there in our state except the big boys, ADP, paychecks, Ceridian. And so, boy, I remember that night I went home and I couldn't sleep, John. I just think this is what we should do. So does you tell him the word thing we're trying to figure out what business to go? Yes. Okay. Yeah.

And we had a list of all those things. You know, residual revenue, service business, B-to-B, small to medium customers. So let's say. Do it in our state. You're competing with ADP. If you were coming to call on me and I had ADP, I would say, well, they're paying me 3%. Everything works fine. What can you do different?

Right. So number one, I want to look and see if we can cut your cost. Okay. You got a lot of overhead. I'm still listening. Yep, you're listening. Number two. I think we can give you service that you've never seen before if you give us an opportunity.

Number three, I think we can give you some additional ancillary stuff to go with it on the HR side of things that will help you. And give you accuracy. I think we can do your tax work, very accurate. And if you have problems with it, you can reach us immediately. Yeah. You know, we'll give you live people to work with. And in the payroll world, tax is a real issue. there can be a lot of issues there for companies that they're not careful.

And so long story short, I started going around the state and talking to friends and family and just doing some survey stuff. You know, who do you use for your payroll? Do you use for HR? Do you do it in-house? Do you use an accountant? And I kept hearing ADP or, you know, we try to do it in-house on QuickBooks, but we've messed up our taxes.

I'd love to outsource it if I could trust somebody. and I looked at a lot of these friends and family and said, if I prove to you we can execute it, would you give us a shot? Are you married to the big boy? They said, of course I'm not married to the big boy. I'd love to give you a shot. And so Penn and I started talking. I said, Penn, I can sell it if you can get it installed and make it work.

And I said, I think we got a partnership. And so that's what we did. And it was so similar. to our telecommunications days. Really similar to that first company, yeah, and in a lot of ways, New South. CTG was more of a national distribution model, and we did bring that into play and performance in different ways later,

and it helped us scale faster. But we opened up Greenville, we opened up Columbia, we opened up Charlotte, we started going to Asheville, we started going to Charleston, Savannah, Georgia, and all of a sudden it just took off. I mean, we were passionate about service, attitude and enthusiasm and a mission statement with Corvades that everybody understood, John. And I was ready to do this. I think you and I talked about that.

I had been trained and had been prepped by the Latens of the world and the Charlies of the world, and it was time to do it. And I felt ready to lead and ready to go. Yeah. And Penn was an unbelievable co-pilot to have right there in the cockpit with me. So you were about 40 then? Yeah, I was 40. Let's see. We did it 15 years.

And so I was in my early 40s. Yeah. So I like that because we kind of, that's a theme that we keep coming back to is that people, so many people that we talk to are like, I want to own my own business. And I want to do my own thing. I'm like, okay, you get prepared. You know, learn your craft, understand how. the different parts of the business work and maybe by the time you're 35 or 40 or 45 or whatever,

you'll be ready. So ready that people like Layton will put money into what you're doing because they know you so well. Not that he did, but I mean, you'll be prepared for that. So I think, you know, something like that happens. Other thing I like about what you said, this is great for the Noob Schoolers is, you know, we all think we have great ideas. Boy, I got a whole file folder of a war chest of it. Yeah.

But when you have the courage to go ask 20 or 25 people face to face, tell me the truth. What do you think about this idea? Would you buy it or use the money for it? You really find out what the answer is. And you felt like it was like 80% in your favor. Yeah, good. And it's foolish not to do that type of research and surveying. Yeah.

If you're trying to start something, you know, you learn. I mean, you and I, we got the gray hair now. We know. And I was prepped for the entrepreneur role and to start the business. And, you know, I look back on it, great teammates. Couldn't have done it by myself, I don't think. You got to have an outstanding group around you. It's all about we.

It's not my or I. And, you know, I learned a strong vision and mission statement that everybody understands. Why do we come in every day? Right? This is why. And we had it up everywhere. What was the mission? The mission was to provide the best customer service in the payroll and HR business in the country.

And there's a little more to it. And then how do you do it? You do it through your core values. Right? So we wrote eight core values out. And we had everybody memorize them. I want you to know why you come in every day. And then I want you to know how we're going to accomplish.

that, right? And so you had the core values there all in writing. Everybody knew them. And then how do you achieve these core values is through attitude and enthusiasm. You and I talk, that sounds so simple, but it's real, man. And, you know, Charles Windall's attitude is everything. One of the greatest things ever written, right? I mean, 10% what happens and 90% how I respond to it. And then Ralph Waldo Emerson's enthusiasm. Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm. I just remember we had those up everywhere, and we built it all around that.

And Layton and Charlie and those mentors of mine are who helped me get ready to present that and lead that way. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it seems simple, but it's amazing how many business leaders don't tell the people exactly what they want. They just kind of hire them, and they kind of get angry when they're not doing what they want.

But to tell them exactly what they want, there was a girl, a lady I worked with, years ago and when you walked into her office it was kind of like the old CTG days it was just electric with happy, energetic, high attitude people.

Hey, how are you? Where are you from? They just couldn't have been nicer and I said to her I said, how do you do it? They're all so damn nice and excited and she goes, oh, we try to hire people that are kind of like that already and then when we hire and we say you have to stay this way or we're going to let you go.

And if somebody starts being an old grump, they get rid of them. They're gone. Like, holy cow, that seems pretty simple. I love it. The little things when guests would come into any of our offices around the southeast, in your training, you were taught in our company, you stand up. If you're not on the phone or you pop up and you speak to that.

Right. No matter who they are. Customer, vendor, treat the vendors the same as the customer. Treat the vendor the same as the employee. Treat the employee the same. Those are your three big groups, right? my employees, my customers, my vendors. And we tried to have our core values treat all three of those buckets equally.

Can't do it without your vendors. I was never the guy to try to beat up my vendors. I needed my vendors. So it's just, I don't know, I really am trying to help like you've done with your book. I'm trying to help these young entrepreneur groups, the ones I've been helping here in the next accelerator program and with our founders fund, really get that. These are young, entrepreneur, great minds, brilliant people,

but I don't want them to lose the simplicity of how you and I built our companies. Does that make sense? Yeah, absolutely. Even my own children who have started successfully in their careers, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Well, congratulations. All of your businesses have been successful,

and I'm glad you're going to spend more time giving back now, you have time to do that. I met the head of the Charleston Business Accelerator about a month ago. Have you met him before? I had not. I loved it. Amazing. I'll introduce you to them. But they're doing, they have 60, they have 60 entrepreneurial businesses who have offices in their building. And I've heard about them. I've heard about the building. It's in Mount Pleasant. Mount Pleasant, yeah. Yeah. Very, very cool. So we're doing the same thing here in Greenville, just slightly different scale at the moment. Right.

Let's go through a few more things. What's your favorite book? Stephen Covey. Seven habits. Highly effective people. I mean, no doubt about it. Now, Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People, huge, huge influence on me.

And then Zig Zigler C at the top. I mean, that's one of the greatest ever read. But the seven habits, the reason I say that, I went through the Covey program as well after I read the book. And the seven habits, you can do everything in life in your balance following the guide of the seven habits in Covey Road. And one of my big weaknesses was listening. I have a problem of loving to hear my favorite speaker speak.

So seek first to understand, then be understood, is one of the habits. And it was my favorite one, and one I needed. to learn how to be an excellent listener as a salesperson. Yeah. And so I think that book had more influence on me in my career than any book I ever read. Yeah. Yeah, I love it. I love it.

I love it. I follow habits one and two. I mean, I think about them every day. Proactive. And first things first and then. Be proactive. Yeah. Yeah, a book changed my life.

And we, I think, was it? Gosh, it was like 25 years ago when we read that? Yeah, I think 30. 30. Almost 30 years ago. Yeah. Wow, that's a great book. All right. Favorite movie?

Favorite movie? Oh, gosh. I don't know about that one. That's a tough one for me. You know, this is corny, man. You'll find this funny. But I've got some old South in me, and I still think Gone with the Wind is one of the greatest movies I've ever watched.

I mean, that sounds so corny. My wife will die laughing. But I loved Brett Butler. Yeah. I thought he was just a stud. You know, I remember being a young guy watching it. I just thought the whole thing. I was intrigued by the whole southern history.

Yeah. I think it's a, I mean, it's definitely a top 100 movie of all time. Classic. Yeah. And I really, really think about it at times when I think about, you know, where our country is today and what our country went through. And I don't know. That just, that just comes to mind.

That's a good one. How about, I know you like music. How about favorite band? Oh, more local, regional. You know who the Blue Dogs are? Yeah. Love them. You like Blue Dogs.

Blue Dogs. You know, I've heard them multiple times. Good South Carolina band that is, you know, they've done a lot of big gigs. I've seen them open up for Hootie before. I love them. That's my kind of music. Yeah. I would say if I was going local, you know, band like that, I would go Killer Wales.

Yeah, great band. That was our day. That was our day. I know. I remember them in Charleston. They were fantastic. They were very similar, right? Yeah, yeah, they were great.

I still listened to some of their music from time to time. Oh, I love it. Marlene. Marlene, yeah. Great song. And then favorite word? Attitude. Attitude, I knew it.

No, there's no doubt. I mean, you know, attitude is everything. Yeah. And I've got a little thing. I brought this. I'll show you. Yeah. Let me just show you this real quick.

This was up in my children's bathrooms and, You know, on the mirror. Yeah. This is Charles Swindoll's attitude, you know, and it is, to me, the reason it's my favorite word, I wanted my kids at young age as kindergarten to start reading that and let that seep in. We can overcome anything in life with the right attitude, right? Yeah. I mean, it does sound kind of corny, but boy, if you don't understand it and have it,

Life's hard enough without it. It's a great thing to be a believer in, right? Life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I respond to it. Well, you can do anything with that type of mentality. And so I just think, Laten, you know, Napoleon Hill, think and grow rich, what the mind can believe and what the mind can conceive

and believe you can achieve. And Laten taught us that a lot, and we read that book back in the day, But it really is true. And with the right attitude, you can do anything. Yeah. And you can make it through anything. Yeah.

So I just think that's why I saw something that you sent out about that favorite word. And I was thinking I could come up with all kind of stuff. But I really believe that's at the heart of my favorite word. Yeah. Yeah. You know, people ask me sometimes, what does that mean, attitude? And part of it's just, you know, your energy, that's part of it. It's just having the positive energy.

But the other part is, like, specifically when something comes out, you are you going to find a positive thing about this situation or are you going to dwell on something negative you know perfect example would be someone who says well here's your your ten thousand dollar bonus like god that's gonna be six thousand after tax that's a negative first thought right first thought versus like man that's fantastic I wasn't expecting that you know this is wonderful thank you so or someone you know another example someone like the job goes away like oh my god this isn't fair, you know, they're always picking on me and it's a bad job market and the interest

rates are high versus like, I wonder what I can find now. There you go. The whole world is wide open now. I'm not stuck in this job anymore. So I think that's what people, if we're trying to have a good attitude, part of it is just having that literal mindset, mathematical mindset, of which way am I going to respond to each situation? A positive way or a negative way? They're both available.

Both available. They're both available. They're both available. And you know, it's funny because we were talking about for the young salespeople out there and we're trying to do this to help obviously these, the next generation come along. The two things, if you've got the right attitude and you've got enthusiasm, it's unbelievable how far you can go. People want to work with people like that, right?

You and I, we've talked about people we know. someone with the right attitude who's enthusiastic, you want to be around those people. And so that leads to winning. And then winners recruit winners. And that just turns into gold. And it's culture. But anyway, that's kind of fun.

You and I can talk about that all day. That's something we both love. Well, one last question. Is there anything that you want to promote? It's something like you've sold all your business. Do you have anything else? I've got some, yeah. So my partner, Penn Gaines, that was our last business venture performance, started a new company.

Okay. About two years ago. And I'm involved on the board. I'm an investor. I love the company. It's in the HR software space. Okay. And the name of the company's Pay Fluence, H-CM.

Okay. They're headquartered over off of South Pleasantburg here in Greenville. They're off to a great start. Good. It's a great company. They've got a lot of this culture. in their company. And then my number one

nonprofit thing I'm doing is called Best Buddies International. My oldest son is autistic. He is a graduate of the Clemson Life program. And so my wife, Carrie, and I have been passionate about the IDD community

intellectually and developmentally disabled young people. And Best Buddies did not have a South Carolina chapter. And our daughter got involved in best buddies in North Carolina. It's a national organization. It was started by the Shriver, the Kennedy Shriver family, same people that started Special

Olympics. And we have been able to bring it to South Carolina. And we just had a big gala fundraiser this past fall. We've got an executive director. We've got a programming manager. I'm the chairman of the advisory board. And we've got a group of 12 people in our stake. A lot of them, you know who they are.

are, they're connected and networked, and man, we're often running. It puts traditional people with those that have IDD and buddies them up together, helps them mentor and gives them job opportunities and just helps them with the independent living. It's really cool. That's very cool. So that, I'm really, I've really got a passion for that right now. We're doing some cool things with that. Good.

Well, congratulations. Yeah, thank you. It's fun. Well, David, we could go on for hours. about sales and attitude and everything else. But I think our time is up. So thank you for being here. You're a four-time winner so far.

So we're glad you're able to come on the show. It's great to be here. I appreciate you having me today. Thank you, buddy. Great to be with you. All right, thanks for what you're doing. All right.