Noob School - Law & Sales with Burton Vance

Episode Date: April 19, 2024

Today on Noob School, we're joined by Burton Vance - managing director at D.A. Davidson. We discuss his time at Davidson College, his time attaining his JD at the University of North Carolina School of Law, and why he chose to work in the field that he does today. Tune in to learn more about the parallels between law and sales, and for invaluable career advice to take yours to the next level. 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 #SalesTraining #B2BSales #SalesExcellence #SalesStrategy #BusinessGrowth #SalesLeadership #SalesSuccess #SalesCoaching #SalesSkills #SalesInnovation #SalesTips #SalesPerformance #SalesTransformation #SalesTeamDevelopment #SalesMotivation #SalesEnablement #SalesGoals #SalesExpertise #SalesInsights #SalesTrends

New School. All right, welcome back to Noob School. John Sterling here. I've got an old friend, dear friend, Burton, Vance. Burton, welcome to the podcast. It's great to be here, John. Great to be here. Man, guys, great to see you. We've been trying to get you here really since we started the podcast.

Yeah, and I appreciate that. Today's the day. Yeah? Once I saw Sam out and on it, I thought, okay. Right. I can certainly do that. Sam was on it. And, of course, he wore his son.

suit with the red tie. He's ready for court. Yeah, he's ready for court. So I met Burton, I won't say how many years ago, but it was maybe 30 years ago. And Burton went to Davidson with my good friend from Greenville. You mentioned Sam Alton. And so I started to get to know some of Sam's good friends from Davidson. And it always made me wish I had to go to Davidson because I really love meeting you and Tom

young and of course love Sam and some of the other people but it's kind of a good to me it's a good opening to the idea for the for the new school folks that if you hang around good people or bad people who you aspire to be like you can't help but start to move in that direction it's certainly helpful and vice versa that's right if you're hanging around the near to wells then you're kind of going to move in that direction. So hanging out with you and Tom and Sam was good for me back then. It got me thinking differently. So I'm glad we've stayed friends all through these years.

And you've had a great career, and I'd just like to kind of go through it for the benefit of the new schoolers. And also talk about along the way, you know, little sales events that happen to things you learn that they might be able to learn from. Okay. So starting out, you're from Winston-Salem. Winston-Salem. Winston-Salem. Just up the highway there. Yeah.

A town, I think, has a lot of similar attributes to Greenville. Okay. And very livable. About the same size? About the same size. And you recently moved back? Right. So I grew up in Winston-Salem, went to Davidson.

Your comment about intentionally hanging out with some people you think that might be a little better influences than not. That was part of my decision-making and where to go to college. Right. because a lot of back in the day it's certainly not like this now but back in my day you could just about default to go to chapel hill and i was a huge north carolina chapel hill basketball fan sports fan but i just didn't trust myself to go to that big school environment at 18 years old and so i intentionally was trying to pick a smaller school where i would have um kind of forced on me

better mentors and, you know, a better environment for me to focus and do as well as I could. Yeah. So that was part of it. So growing up in Winston-Salem went to Davidson College and then went to law school at Chapel. Got my Chapel Hill experience for three years of law school. Did you go hog wild when you went to law school? Well, it was funny. Yeah. My father was an attorney and he said, you know, those are not your three years to go to Chapel Hill and have fun. Those would have been your first four years. But I had enough fun and had some very good friends there.

And also was lucky that my three years of law school were Michael Jordan's three years at Chapel Hill. So I was pretty lucky in that regard. Wow. But I enjoyed it. I enjoyed Davidson a lot. Yeah. Learned a lot and enjoyed Chapel Hill a lot. Well, I don't know what Davidson is like today, but I remember back then talking to Sam about it and he would just study, study, study, and read, read.

And I was a senator, though, and, you know, I wouldn't study. I wouldn't study that much. I can tell you. I was like, Sam, why are you doing all that? And he's like, he goes, well, you kind of have to. He goes, in our fraternity, you know, if you don't make an A or B average, then you kind of look down upon. Yeah, there was that, and the environment was very conducive to it. Now, you were playing sports.

You were playing basketball at Citadel, so you had your, and it was Citadel, so you had your forms of discipline as well, serious forms of it. Ours was studying, and there really, one, it was nice, there wasn't that much else. to do. But it was also just what everyone was doing. You had that one little tiny bar on campus. Yeah, there was one little tiny bar which didn't really qualify as a bar. But they served beer. But that was what was good for me. I think it was good for my friends like Sam as Sunday night to Thursday. It was just a migration after dinner to the library. And that became the social scene, but you actually got some work done.

And then you had your fun on the weekends. Yeah. Well, I just think it's a great thing. I don't want to gloss over it that, you know, you made that decision because you wanted to your life, you wanted to have more options, I would think, you know, to take different kinds of jobs or maybe you've met different kind of people you can network with later. And you said, I'm going to go to a harder place that's less fun in order to have a better life later. Right. Right. And trying to look yourself in the mirror and say, you know, how much, you know, I had to be honest with myself, how much discipline.

as a high school senior do I think I have on my own. Yeah. And I didn't have a very high confidence level in that. I mean, I was the same way, and that's a decision I made for the same reason. I don't think I could have trusted myself with Davidson either. I mean, I really, I knew I'd worked hard to play basketball, and I thought if I go to something other than the Citadel, how can I keep that up?

Because you're going to want to go and have all the fun. That's right, and it's a challenge. And people, those larger schools provide a great education, but it's just you have to search for it and have to work a little harder on your own. And a lot of people do it, and I've had my children have done it. But I love the Davidson experience. Yeah. So this is the part where I think I pick up, our friendship picks up, is after law school, I think, when we met, we started playing golf. That's right.

You went to work for a big firm, as I recall, in Atlanta. It was about a medium-sized firm. But what I liked about it was it was growing quickly and it was managed by younger partners. So younger at the time would have been in their 40s. And they were growing the firm and it was pretty big. It got to be over 100 lawyers. But when I joined it, it was much smaller, but it was entrepreneurial. And everyone worked hard, but also they played pretty hard too.

So it was a great environment for young attorneys. And I enjoy that aspect of it. it but ultimately and I made partner there I worked there for eight years wow but ultimately I was a litigator as Sam is and ultimately you get to that kind of end of the you kind of do the grunt work and you go through the associate work and get to that point where well this is going to be the rest of my life doing this every day and I at that point kind of looked at myself in the mirror again and said I just this is not really my personality to be a litigator and that leads to

the sales topic is I found myself, and I find myself to be a lot more conciliatory than most litigators are on a daily basis. And so I enjoyed the competitive part of it. I enjoyed getting into a courtroom or an arbitration whenever you did get there, but I didn't enjoy the everyday fighting over minutia and for the sake of the fight. I don't mind fighting or arguing about something that I thought was, and what I thought, it was worthwhile and it was just not how I viewed myself living every day. And when you say litigator, that means you're arguing the case on behalf of a business

against someone that's suing them? Well, it's a court, you're doing trial work. Trial work. For businesses? Ours was for businesses. Okay. But I mean, litigation is basically going into a courtroom. Okay.

Arguing, you know, filing suit against each other or depending, you know. Okay. It's basically courtroom work, trial work. And so our firm did mostly business litigation. And that's partly how I morphed into the role that I eventually took was we did some work for brokerage firms, investment brokerage firms. So you Davidson, UNC Law School, and then worked for a up-and-coming good law firm in Atlanta for businesses. Right. And then I remember, you might not remember, but I remember talking to you when you started to think about

switching and you were like basically saying you know that you were kind of getting frustrated with some of the the details as you mentioned uh of the litigation work right and also that you you really liked what tom young was doing that's right that's right so that i would not be in this i would not have the career that i've had um however you want to characterize it had it had it not been for tom young our mutual friend yeah so when i graduated from law school Tom Young happens to be a cousin and he was graduating from Darden Business School at the same time and moving coincidentally to Atlanta. So we found out about that. Tom had been at Davidson also and proposed we be roommates for the first few years in Atlanta and we did that. So my first few years

in Atlanta as a young attorney, I was doing my job and he was a salesperson for what is now first Boston or Credit Suisse, or was Credit Suisse, it was called First Boston. And he was an equity salesperson. And I had no idea what it, basically called it institutional sales. I thought he was selling janitorial supplies. I think I told you, but I had no idea what that was. Right. And equity sales selling research, investment research to money managers, professional money manager.

So the institution was the professional money manager. That was the institution, not a janitorial supply. But he started that in Atlanta. in Atlanta, and his clients were money managers and foundations and such in the southeast. And I got a court-side view of his job, and he got a court-side view of my job, and he wasn't really trying. I don't think he saw anything in what I was doing to make him think about going to law school, but I sure enjoyed seeing what he was doing and how much he enjoyed it, the relationship part of it, the flexibility of schedule that he had, but mostly was his pure enjoyment of it and the relationships.

And coincidentally, John, I've thought about this a lot, but to this day, there's several very good friends of mine in Atlanta that I only know because they were clients of Tom's. And Tom would pull me along every once in a while for a golf game or for a dinner. and I would go and meet these guys and girls, and some of those people are still close friends of mine. It just reinforced how much I enjoyed that relationship part of what his job was versus what I was doing. Yeah, everyone's working together. There was a lot more of a constructive view of things, right? Yeah, yeah. And so you eventually found your way into that business.

I did. I got very lucky and that's one message I would that I have for anyone is timing is everything. You know, it's a little harder when you're in the heart in the in the in the throes of trying to get a job or, you know, trying to rescue yourself from being laid off. And, you know, it sounds easy to say, well, just be patient. Timing is everything you never know when something will come along. But timing really is everything. And so I was trying to interview into that industry. And most of the jobs were in New York.

And I had, you know, wife and two small children in Atlanta, a wife from Atlanta. And none of us were very interested in moving to New York on a maybe this will work, maybe it won't work on an experiment. So I really couldn't interview for New York jobs, which is where most of them are. And so I got very fortunate that the Atlanta brokerage from Robinson Humphrey, which was the regional firm in Atlanta at the time, had a business, has had an institutional equity business. And I was able to get an interview. And my quick story on timing is that I went in

and Tom helped me with that as well. Tom helped knew who the manager was of that office and gave me a little pep talk about it. And I walked in and he thought I was an interesting candidate as an attorney. He did understand that litigation at sales, as Sam will tell you. Yeah.

You know, I didn't have pure. computer sales or pharmaceutical sales experience research sales, but I sure had learned how to sell as a litigator or tried to. And so he understood that. But when we finished talking, he said, well, if you'll talk to a few more people, I just got a call from New York because Robinson Humphrey was owned by Smith Barney at the time. And I've just been told this morning to grow our business. All right, so I liked that. I talked to a few more people. They took mercy on me and hired me.

About a month after that or two months after that, in Atlanta at a cocktail party, and one of my very good friends walked up to me. He was a commercial real estate person who was not that happy in his job. He said, I heard you've left the law and you're going to work for Robinson Humphrey. And I said, yes, that's right. I'm excited about it. He said, how did you get that job?

And I said, well, he said, did so-and-so hire you? you. I said, yes, he did. I'm going to work in his department. I interviewed with them three, four months ago, and there wasn't a job. He didn't have a job. And I just kind of laughed. I said, well, that's right. There wasn't a job three months ago. I was lucky. And this friend of mine would have made a very good equity research salesperson. He probably would have gotten that job, but I happened to be in there the day that the guy had gotten the call to grow the business. And I told my friend, I said, unfortunately, you were there on the wrong day. Yeah.

But that's just, that happens a lot. Yeah. It does. So, you know, timing is everything. Luck can really come into play a lot of times. Yeah. Yeah, and we tell people, you know, that person that hired you, what happened from 90 days before is something changed.

That's exactly right. Like he was telling the truth here and something changed. So we tell people, at the very least, every 90 days, if there's something you want, keep trying. Just keep trying because, you know, the world can change. The world can definitely change. Yeah. And we also tell them, pretend like the first conversation never happened.

Just pop back in like, hey, Burton, let's just give me a call. You know. No, absolutely. Not like I called you. I called you 90 days ago, you know, don't remind them. That's right. We're in a new world now. In a new world.

And remember whoever you're approaching in a sale, they're very busy. Yeah. It's all, you know, they have a lot. on their plate sometimes it's hard to remind yourself that you're not the most important thing on their mind every day so more reason to go back in and um you know until they tell you know stop never that's right yeah never yeah no you very very rarely do you get that that's right but you're right i think most people more often john you get thank you for coming back in yeah thank you thank you for calling me again appreciate it appreciate it yeah i agree most people

give up too quickly and they think they have ESP that Burton's never going to buy for me. That's right. I saw a funny look on his face. So going from partner at this law firm to brand new sales guy. How was that transition? It was not as daunting as it sounded to other people and as it is to me as I look back on it or risky or why the heck did I do. But other people saw that took a little lot of nerve. You gave up a law partnership to do this that you've never done before.

I had so, one, I really was not thrilled with what I was doing. I could have kept doing it and I would have been okay. I think I would have been okay. I probably wouldn't have been very good because I just didn't really enjoy it. So I probably wouldn't have been a very good attorney over time, but I might have been okay. but I had so much confidence probably in watching Tom and how much he enjoyed it that I thought I would enjoy this. That it, and I worked around some very good people. And so it was not as I wasn't nervous about it.

But it motivated me. I'll say that. It was appropriate motivation in making this switch and people say, are you sure you know what you're doing? It was good motivation to work really hard. Yeah. So I had, as an example, I had to take, we all have to be licensed, so I had to take a series seven exam and we study as a training program. We went to New York under Smith Barney and all the new hires took the series seven.

And if you didn't, the word was if you didn't pass it, they didn't think very much of you and you might lose your job. And so the motivation was I wasn't going to flunk a CISC. Series 7 and having given up a law partnership and wife and two small children and all of that. So I studied pretty hard for that and everyone, when we passed and you got a score and everyone, they were like, well, you overstudied, but I wasn't going to not pass it. So along the way, that's been motivation. I think part of the highlight from your story so far is you had a model for what you wanted.

I did. I did. You know, your cousin, you knew him, roommate, the whole thing, you got to see from the inside, like, how it was, what that job was like and what the rewards were and all that kind of thing. And so then you figured out a way to get it. And I think most of the time, let's just say there's a large swath of people that are generally unhappy in their work, they don't really know what would make them happy. Right.

And that's really, that should be their number one goal. That's right. What can I do that will make me happy? Well, and if you're happy and you enjoy, it's clichéish, but you will be successful. Yes. But you can't force something to, you have to force certain things, and no one likes getting up at five in the morning if that's part of it. But, you know, you basically have to really enjoy it. And you'll be happy.

And on that Tom Young, as I think about it, the Tom Young influence, it can be someone within your company as well. The importance of having a mentor, having someone that you watch. So, you know, I was thinking about some of the things that I think are very important in sales is I could take, Tom Young was extremely successful. I'm no Tom Young, but I have certain attributes that I try to do that are different. And I try to tell young salespeople, you know, watch other people ask for help. Not enough people ask for help. I wish I'd ask for more help. It's really hard to ask for help, but really ask for help.

But watch other salespeople around you that are successful. And you don't have to copy them because you're going to find there's certain aspects of their routine that you don't like. But just try to pick what you think are the best parts and then incorporate your own personality and be yourself. But take those best parts, best practices and create a hybrid and say, you know, I really love what they do about that, that, that. and then use your own personality and be yourself and be true to yourself. And to me, that can be very successful. Yeah, I agree. Find yourself a mentor.

And by asking questions, I'll tell you this, I've got so many sales reps that I've worked with in the past. You know, people I just love that I recruited from school that are doing their own thing now. And the people that are most likely to often call me and ask me a question, like I've got a compensation question, or I've got to sell my business question or whatever. They're the ones that are doing the best. You would think that's the last person who'd think they've got to call me to get an answer. But they're the ones most likely to call and say, he might be calling seven people to get this free feedback

that then they can process and make a decision. That's why they're doing the best. Yeah. And, you know, Ted Lassow is a great TV show. I don't know if you watch it. I've seen it, yeah. It's a fabulous show. and one of the most popular episodes, and it's all over Instagram all the time now,

is a scene where he's throwing darts in a bar. And he quotes Walt Whitman. And the quote is basically, be curious, not judgmental. And the whole point is, ask questions. Don't just immediately judge someone. Don't judge a situation. Ask questions about it. Find out more before you make up your mind.

And if you do, you're going to be, more prepared you're going to be more you know you'll be more enlightened and you're not going to step into it and in that scene it's so strong but it relates to sales and you know ask questions you know don't just like you mentioned the conclusion you know they're not if they have ESP he's not going to buy them ask questions be inquisitive find out about what the needs are if they're are of the client you know what do they need what do they want and and like you said and as a salesperson ask questions of mentors and other people like the people that are calling you yeah so but I love that phrase about you know be curious not

judgmental yeah yeah I know I was watching one of the specials on Kobe Bryant and or maybe it was Michael Jordan specials one of them but you know my Michael became a mentor to Kobe when he was like 17 right right and and and said, hey, you know, anything you want, just let me know. You know, kind of opened the door, gave his cell phone number, and he said he would get questions every day, five, six questions a day. How do you do this? Why'd you do that?

How do you guard this guy, you know? Right. And he just picked his brain clean. And within a couple years, you know, he was like, he was right there. Right. And that was not from raw talent. Right. He learned.

Amazing. Well, you heard that a lot in golf. people ask in Nicholas how he plays Augusta, and now people ask Tiger. And, you know, some of those people don't give advice to everyone, but you hear the biggest disappointment is, and this is something I think for young people, if someone's offering, take them up on it.

Yeah. You know. And you don't have to do what they say. No. You don't have to do it. Take that input and filter it and put that into your own, you know, process. I always, when I was coaching my kids when they were younger, I was always preface it by just hear me out.

You don't have to do this. This is just my feedback for you. Right. Do what you want. That's good that you do. Okay. Maybe I'll listen. Yeah, okay.

Go ahead. Right. But if I was trying to tell them what to do, you know what happened. Oh, yeah. They wouldn't deal with that. That's right. That's right. So you obviously made the transition and then you had a long, successful career with

Robinson Humphrey, which became SunTrust, which became truest, right? That's exactly right. Robinson Humphrey was owned by Smith Barney, and we were the regional firm, you know, like a Raymond James or Alex Brown, someone like that. And then SunTrust bought us in 2000, which was a very good fit. It wasn't smooth like this, but it was, you know, different. And the financial crisis actually helped our business because the bank, as all the banks found, they couldn't make easy money or the easier money off spread, you know, interest rate spreads tightened.

They looked for fee business, the income business. And so that was our business. So they really invested starting in 2010 in our business. And so SunTrust has grown a very good capital markets business. And then just before COVID, SunTrust and DB&T merged to form, you know, they had to come up with a new headquarters Charlotte and come up with a new name. So it was kind of like a Verizon or something. like Accenture. So truest is the back.

Trueest. Right. And what was your, so you retired from that business after how many years? 29 years, yeah. And what was your role at that time? At that time I was a title managing director, but I was covering, so my sales territory, we do it regionally, and it was Boston and money managers in Boston, which is a tremendous region with a lot of very smart and large money managers. So I was able to.

not purely commute, but I was able to live. And a lot of outsiders in our industry, but outside of SunTrust, they thought I had the best job in the country that I could live in Atlanta with my family, a very livable, sane, humane way to live. But then I could just fly out of Boston very easily on Delta and cover the best, to me, the best investment market in the country. Wow. And then get back on the plane a couple of days later and fly home and be a little cross game and have the weekend. So, and I would not do that every week, but do it once or twice a month. Yeah.

And so when I left, I had 29 years covering Boston Money Managers. And the nice thing is you start covering whoever you can cover it at a large account. And there might be some young people that you are young too. And then as you grow in your career, they're growing in their career. Yeah. And so even 29 years later, some of the, you know, my best friends are at the top of their game at those accounts. And they manage a lot of money.

So it's a really interesting, rewarding relationship business. That's great. That's great. And then the people that are coming into the firm, what kind of general sales training do they get? It depends on what the role is. And, you know, if they're going to be a salesperson like me, they'll get training internally with us, might have some outside sales influence.

Mostly it's just almost apprenticeship, you know, on the ground. You're going to work with Burton kind of thing. Right, and you shadow and you watch and learn and don't get too involved with clients for a while. I'll get to know the reason. So our job, John, is to understand our research of public companies, which at SunTrustle is about 800, 900. I'm now at D.A. Davidson, it's about 500 public companies. And my job is to understand that research enough to filter it and relay it to the client.

Understand the client well enough to know what of that research they'd be most interested in in their process of managing money, which stocks would be appropriate for their style. And then if they really get interested, get our research analyst who produces the research, and they're the experts. So I'm a bit of a filter liaison, so to speak, between the research and the client. And so the young person kind of, the young person would come in and really dig in and get to know the research the best they can. Yeah. Start to get to know their client base. We'd laugh a little bit, cut their teeth on a smaller client that they can't hurt themselves too bad, something like that.

Which I've done plenty of times. Yeah, yeah. And then just so I understand, these money managers in Boston would decide they wanted to pay your firm a fee to get this. research, like a subscription fee kind of thing? It's kind of like that. Well, what they really do, the main way they pay is if a large money manager is going to buy a position in a stock, they're buying a lot of stock. They have to trade that stock through a brokerage firm, broker-dealer.

They can't just go directly to the company and get the stock. So they buy the stock through a broker-dealer like truest. Okay. And so if it's a large money manager, if they're buying NVIDI, if they're buying NVIDI My largest client owns 150 million shares of NVIDA. Whoa. And so they have to buy that through a brokerage firm. So they will buy, and they'll pay a commission as they trade.

So that's the first way they pay is they just trade with our trading desk. And they may trade with the Goldman Sachs trading desk. And so we hope they trade with our desk and that's partially how they pay for my service and the research. Okay. Or my expertise, so to speak. But then the other way, another firm may say, we'll just write you a check. We think it's worth X and we'll write you a check for it. And then we'll trade wherever we want to trade.

We'll trade wherever we get best execution or whatever. But the trading is kind of an interesting aspect of it. And we like that part of the business. But one thing I like about this role as well when you think about sales is, and, you know, different industries. in this role, I'm fighting over a piece of a pie. Okay, so our client has a pie of business. They're going to give to Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, D.A. Davidson, Truest, Raymond James. It's not an all or nothing.

As in, like, the attorney role, like when we think about our friend Sam Outton, he's trying to get a piece of litigation from a client to the exclusion of all the other litigators out there. But I'm fighting over market share. and that's fun because it's very competitive. You know, I want my piece of the pie to grow and be bigger than my friend over at Raymond James, but we can still be friendly competitors. And there's not an incentive for me because it's a relationship business where our clients have a relationship with me. They have one with the Raymond James person, with the Goldman Sachs salesperson. I want to be better.

I want them to like me more. But it does me no good to bad mouth. the Raymond James salesperson, even if it was my personality, which hopefully it wouldn't be. The last thing a client that does business with both of us wants to hear, has me say something bad about that. So it's an interesting, there are a lot of sales roles like that where you're fighting for some market share, and it's important to remember, you know, the client, you know, just fight for yourself. Yeah.

And fight for your product and represent your product well. Yeah. You don't have to get down and, you know, people will do it. Yeah. I've never seen that work. you know, where you point out how bad your competitor is. And even in Sam's world, and Sam would never do it. But you have more incentive, and I've seen it in the city of Atlanta where, you know,

you're just incentive because it's an all or nothing sale. And so I've seen where if someone says, oh, well, what about that attorney? You know, he seems like a good guy. Well, the first reaction is no, no, no, because you just don't let them running over there, you know, to that firm. So I've seen that in action. But in this business, I've enjoyed this industry where you're fighting for share. Yeah, that's cool. That's great. It's a little different.

Now, has like artificial intelligence changed your job at all? It's not changing my job. It sure is a hot topic and has been for a while. Now these stocks are on these huge, anything with AI attached to them. In the actual production of the research and researching the companies, there's a lot of discussion on how that might enhance it or facilitate it or make it a little more efficient. for a research analyst, you know, in crunching numbers and research models and things like that. I can see where there's a role for it, but not where it's helping me understand how a client thinks.

Yeah. What about social media? Yeah, social media on a firm-wide basis, not on an individual basis. I think the wealth managers, which is not what I do, I think they use that pretty effectively. And I think on a firm basis, our firm uses it, D.A. Davidson, and they put out press releases on hires. And I know Truist uses it effectively, but not on an individual basis, right. Okay. All right.

Do you have any specific sales people that you follow or any training that you've gotten? It's been particularly interesting. Yeah, I, again, I think what has helped me is the, the just trying to adopt best practices from different people. Okay. Not one person that I would say. I mean, Tom was a huge influence, funny. And he's a mentor.

And in a lot of respects, if I have an ability to interact with a stranger, I've learned a lot of it from him. He's amazing. He is. And some of that's just innate and some of it is learned and some of it is in you. I would say that to young people. you know, sales to me can be a misnomer. When I was in college, I didn't want to be a salesperson.

When I got out of college, I didn't want to be a salesperson. I didn't realize as a litigator I was a salesperson. And so I think I would, I would encourage young people that are thinking about don't get spooked or put off by the word sales. It's not all, you know, used car to use a bad cliche, use car sales or whatever, pushy selling something, somebody. at night on the phone. It's an engagement. And it's a relation, you know, sales can mean a lot of different things

depending on what you're selling, what the product is, who the client base is. And it's a relationship, and it's very clichéish, but it's, if you enjoy relationships and enjoy getting to know people and networking a little bit,

that's what it is. I agree with you. I've been thinking about trying to come up with a better word than sales because it does immediately you think, Tommy Boy, use car sales, and you're like, I don't want to do that.

I tell young people, if you want to go into business, this is a good way to enter. Absolutely. You don't have to be a career salesperson or a career salesman. You can do anything you want, but you can enter this way. That's right. And what do the businesses do, they sell stuff to people. Right. So you might as well get in there.

Well, it's an important part of every, the other thing I like to think about is within an organization, and I talk to my children about this, within an organization, what is important within that organization? Some things are more important than others. Some areas are necessary. They're cost centers or they're necessary, and that might be very important, you know, human resources, maybe one of the most important areas of an organization. But then there may be another one that as you're there, you're evaluating and you look and you're like, that group doesn't seem to be very important or very viewed as very important.

might want to shy away from that unless I really love it. But sales is important to every organization. You're bringing in revenue. So revenues generally important. You need the money. Yeah, I need the money. But on that thought about is there any salesperson, I would say I have learned this and I wasn't very good at it, but I think it's important to look for mentors but also look around an organization at different areas and take an interest in different areas within an organization. not just be, you know, tunnel vision in your sales role, in your sales department, with your sales product, because you never know when you might want to move within the organization, and it's sure helpful. It makes you a better salesperson to know more about the organization than just your narrow sales department. Internal selling. Yes, do some internal selling and networking. And from that, and I've had some personal experience where, um,

If you start in our sales role, you have a sales manager. You're going to have a sales manager. And that sales manager is going to have a manager, and that manager will have a manager. And try to get to know, and just as your personality, as it's appropriate, not too forced. But people enjoy getting to know the younger people or the different newer people in the organization. But start to build relationships over and above and around your manager, not going over their head, but just build relationships outside of the organization. manager because you never know when your manager, no matter who they are, invariably is going to find something wrong. And if you've built some support outside of that, I've seen it and seen

it and seen it. Invariably, there's someone else that steps up and says, well, I don't know. Because you never know. That one manager may have some issue that's not really, and you never know when someone else within the organization at a manager level or might say, well, that doesn't sound like, John that I've gotten to know. Yeah, let's give them a second chance. The John that I know works pretty hard, and maybe we're missing something here. Yeah. Burton, that's a great point. We've talked about it a couple times recently, particularly with so many people working remote

and using Zoom and all kinds of stuff. I've seen people just cripple their career by not going to headquarters. Right. And they're like, I can't go to headquarters. I'm too busy doing a good job. I'm like, I understand, but you don't go talk to Mr. Burton every now and then. He's going to wonder what the hell you're doing. Some visibility.

Yeah. And that was highly discussed during COVID in the financial industry, especially when, because it was all over C&BC, but J.P. Morgan, Jamie Diamond, who's very well regarded. They couldn't believe some of the young people that weren't coming into the office when they were allowed to. Yeah. And, you know, it was kind of funny. everyone's saying, well, nobody really wants to go to work. So why is anyone surprised? But the young people, I just say young people, but the newer employees that went into the office, got some FaceTime.

They didn't have to be politicians, but it sure made a difference. And I remember the Jamie Diamonds of the world saying, boy, some of our, this level with this level, they're really missing an interesting opportunity. So it's a very important thing. And you don't have to, like I said, you don't have to be the best politician. but internal selling is important. Yeah. And visibility.

Totally agree. Okay. Here's a couple of good ones. I know you're a big reader. What's your favorite book? I'm not a reader. Unfortunately, I read research and I read law. And so if you ask me some regrets, I would have read more early in my life.

I don't read enough of things that I'd like to read. I read a lot of research. used to read a lot of legal briefs and things like that. So at night, I really don't read a book. Do you have a favorite book? But I have a couple favorite books. The one that's popular movie now, but I love to the book was the Boys in the Boat. Oh, yeah.

I mean, from a standpoint of teamwork, understanding what you're good at that is maybe a little different than what your teammates good at. And understanding where is my spot because everyone's not the same. Yeah. Everyone's not as strong or smart. and it just brings a lot of that together, plus the entire Olympic thing. I haven't seen the movie yet, but the book is... I saw the movie. I hadn't read the book.

The book is great. It's got a lot of, like all books versus movies, it's got a lot more detail about the individuals and their respective skill sets. So it's a great team building book for a sales team. It's wonderful. But I love that book. That's a good one. Everyone should read that book.

I actually finished it. Yeah. I finished the movie. I've got a lot of books on a bedstand. I've got so many books. I've got the prolog read, but that's about it. I have stacks at my desk, and I just keep buying more. Yeah, but there's some great books out there.

That good to grade is a great quote. I did read that one. Jack Welch books and for investing any Warren Buffett, the Buffett way is a really good one. Yeah. Yeah. Buffett gives you exactly what to do. He does. Nobody wants to do it because it takes too long.

It takes some work and be select. You know, I'm not a great amount. investor. I turn it over to my clients, let professionals do it. But it is fun to invest in small companies that your friends might have an involvement in that you think they're doing, or you know something about it. But Buffett does tell you how to do it. Yeah, it takes too long. It does take time. Favorite band? Yeah. I love music, so it's really hard. I can narrow it down to people like, I like composers. I love composers slash performers.

I just have so much respect for that. So like a Todd Rundgren, very different, but was a big influence on me. I try to play the piano a little bit, so I'd count Billy Joel and Elton John in that camp of influencing me. But more contemporary, along that line of composer and performer, In the country realm, Miranda Lambert is one of my absolute favorites. Okay. Miranda Lambert. Miranda Lambert writes great music.

She performs great music. And most of the, a lot of musicians in that genre point to her and say she's like one of our best. I have to check that out. All right. And she's a little crazy, which is kind of fun. Favorite word? Awesome. Awesome.

I love that. That's great. I love that word, but I will, I'm going to give you credit for one that I passed along with, for probably 20 years I've passed this along. You had just had, you were at Datastream running sales, and we went on a golf truck. Yeah. And you just had an sales meeting. Yeah.

And you had given everyone a temporary, temporary tattoos with the absolute bottle. Yeah. And you'd had it altered to say absolutely. Absolutely. And they were little temporary tattoos. You gave all of those on the golf truck. Yeah. And I said, well, what the heck is this?

Johnny said, well, this is the one word that should come out of your mouth when a client asks you something. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. And so I love that word as well. That's certainly my favorite word. Yeah. I love it.

It just used to frustrate me so when people would say, well, I don't, we might be able to or we'll try or it'll be a couple of weeks. Absolutely, we'll do it. We're going to take care of you. Yeah. Period. Yeah. No matter what it takes. Well, if you don't mind me saying one thing I have learned that for young people all along those lines,

because I've got a funny story with you we can share later but but I learned this as an attorney and it's true now you know integrity is so important you know and it takes a long time to build and you lose it quickly honesty sincerity all of that but the real challenge or a real temptation sometimes is to say you know the answer to something when you really don't. And it happened a lot in the legal, you get asked a legal opinion on the phone and be put on the spot. And I have it in our industry where we're asked an opinion about a stock or, you know, and the only answer, if you don't know the answer, the only answer is I'm not sure, but I'll get back to you on it. And you have to get back to them. And it has to be, you know, service and

responsiveness that makes the difference. And so we try to kind of drill that into younger people that you're not going to know all the answers and no one expects you to, but if you don't know it, don't fake it. Just say, I don't, I'm not sure and I will get the answer and get it quickly. We also laugh that you can't say that too many times. But there will be a time where you'll be tempted to bluff your way through it and that is going to lead you down. a bad path. Yeah, I agree with that. I agree with that. Well, is there anything you want to promote today? I don't really have any. You ask me about that. I don't have anything to promote. I really don't. I just work hard. I won't promote any service or anything. I'll just promote yourself. I'll just,

I'll say, promote yourself. I'll tell people, promote yourself, have confidence in yourself. Yeah. Well, I'm so delighted we finally got you here. I am too. It's been great. It's great to see you. We'll talk a lot more tonight, I'm sure. Yeah, I'm looking forward to that.

But it was great to catch up professionally and been wonderful watching your career. And of course, I got to see you make that transition because I just love the fact. I've told so many people this, that we have this super successful guy, you know, he's done well, just figured out he's not completely happy. Right. And so you want to just chug out the rest of your life. and kind of not completely happy land, or do you want to make the hard choice and try to find something that's going to make you delighted?

And you took that choice, and it worked out. It worked out and have some confidence in yourself and listen to other, ask for help, listen to other people. My short anecdote on that was, I'd mentioned the person who walked up to me and said, you got that job I wanted. It was pure timing. But another person came up to me about the same timing.

He said, I want to let you know you're my first. favorite attorney in Atlanta. And I said, well, I'm not an attorney anymore. And he said, I know you're not, but you weren't happy and you did something about it. He said, I have so many of my friends who are in whatever careers they are. And they just want to complain about it all the time. And I say, and this person was just being very nice to me, but he said, you did something about it where all these friends of mine are complaining every night over a beer and they won't do something about it. Now, It's a lot easier said than done and all of that. But to your point, consider something that'll make you happy.

Yeah. And one last thing. You just mentioned the complainers. A great rule for the new school people to live by is under no circumstances the rest of your life ever complain about anything to anybody. Nobody really wants to hear it. They don't want to hear it. It doesn't do any good. Right.

If you've got a problem you're trying to solve, try to solve it. But complaining does no good. That's right. But I'm delighted you came. Thank you, John. Appreciate you being patient. It was a wonderful podcast. Better than Sam's.

Ah, I don't know. I wasn't dressed as well. Don't tell him. Don't tell him. Thank you, man. John, thank you so much.