Noob School - Leading with Purpose: Marty Osborn on Finding Significance in Leadership

Episode Date: November 25, 2024

In this episode of Noob School, we’re thrilled to welcome back Marty Osborn, author of Finding Significance: 5 Keys to Becoming the Leader People are Happy to See - available on Amazon now! After a 20-year corporate career marred by toxic leadership, Marty decided to take a bold step: leave the security of his job to build his own company and redefine leadership on his terms. Marty’s journey is one of both personal and professional transformation. In this episode, he shares powerful insights from his new book, blending his own leadership journey with practical advice for anyone looking to lead with purpose and create a lasting impact. Whether you're in sales, running a team, or aspiring to a leadership role, Marty’s lessons on authenticity, emotional intelligence, and self-awareness are invaluable. Tune in to learn how you can shift your mindset and leadership style to become someone your team—and your customers—will be proud to follow. Get your sales in rhythm with The Sterling Method: https://SterlingSales.co 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

All right, welcome back to Noob School. I've got my good friend and sometimes sidekick. Mario Osborne here. Hey-oh, Marty Osborne here. Marty has just put out this wonderful book, Finding Significance. And we're going to talk about the book today. Maybe a few other things. Sure.

All right. So you just had a kickoff book signing party. Was it last night? That was Monday night two nights ago. Monday night. I was there. It was very cool. You had a great turnout.

Yeah, it was fun. And, you know, what thing I found is I remember things people say, like little things that people say. And I remember what I was talking to you. And I said, any advice like on the book and so forth? And you remember, you're like, yeah, you should do a book launch, but you should really plan for it. Which you did. Which I did, which I took it to heart. And we had a great time of Table 301 catered.

We had Brooke Dixon. playing, amazing guitarist, if anybody's ever looking for a guitarist, he was great. And Andre Suttle did photography and did some interviews and just a, you know, just a really great night. That's great. So tell people, the book's called Finding Significance, tell people about the book. Yeah, so it's always interesting. I think when you write a book, like, you know, a lot of it is that we all have something to say, something we want to get out of us. And for me, over the years, I just got really frustrated with bad leaders, like bad leaders, bad behavior. And I saw it over and over again.

And it just kind of like pissed me off to, I always said that I got tired of working for assholes. And I built a company at Voco and I built a company that I wanted to work for. And that was sort of the genesis of it is that how can you build a company, be a leader, be a nice person and still win. And so that was sort of what was in my gut, what I had to get it out, and kind of started going on to it. And then, you know, it's funny how life sort of takes over, the flow of life. And that was my rallying cry. And I would go to meetings and I would tell people the book title and everybody would laugh. And they go, I know exactly great title.

But I was talking to my wife as we got closer to release. and my wife's funny because she'll usually say her peace and then just drop it. Yeah. Kind of say her piece and be done. She didn't drop this. She's like, you can't use this title. Was it the title with the first title? You don't have to be an asshole to be a leader.

Okay. And everybody's like, great title. I still have people said, you shouldn't have changed it. Yeah. But she wouldn't let it go. And her point was she said, that's just not who you are. And she kept saying it's a bad word. And she said, if somebody's going to Google asshole,

picture's going to come up. And she goes, is that the person you want to be? And in my gut, I knew that quite wasn't there. And then I had a beta reader of mine. And he was reading the book and he really liked it. And he said, I need to want to give this to my boss. But I like her. If I give her the book, am I calling her an asshole?

And I went, that's it. Like I had to change it. And so when I really dug back into it, it was really when it was all said and done, what I was writing. was how I was finding significance in my life. My why, and what I really wanted to do was share my story about leadership and my feeling. And I don't know, sometimes just things come out of you, but that word significance meant something to me. Because each and every one of us, whatever we do, are trying to find significance in our life.

And that's what this was, was me in my search for significance, leadership, and to prove that it could be done the right way. I was always curious because I know when you started in Voco, you had two partners, right? And both of those partners live in California? Yeah, it's correct. Yep. I always wondered about that. We never really talked about it, but I would have thought that would be hard, A, just to have two partners would be hard and then have those two partners be in California. Yeah.

And then for you to have this Marty vision of leadership, which is probably different. than what they had. Yeah. How did that work? How did you make that work? Yeah, it's a great question. Actually, there's more to that story. There was actually another leader.

So there was four. There was four of us. There was one gentleman who was leading it that don't have the company, a young guy who actually kind of, as I set out to start my first company, when I walked out the door, I said it was my Jerry McGuire moment. Like, I had enough of it. I packed my plan up. walked out the door and I wrote my manifesto. We were going to love our customers. We were going to do it.

And the name of my company was going to be extreme for X data stream. Okay. That nice. And Voco at the time was going to be a client of mine. Okay. And the closer we got, people were going to leave with me, didn't come. I was by myself. And so the guys that had Voco said, you know, kind of like Jerry McGuire, you know, come on, let's go. And I took my plant and my manifesto. Everybody's like, yeah, it's too risky. Yeah. My wife said no. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so, so I joined and the one was Ken and he turned out to be an asshole. And I was like, dang, I did it again. So when we first started, it was just constant

this battle and I think, you know, lying. And so I went and I quit. And my other part was like, you can't quit. And so at some point time, finally Ken decided this wasn't what he wanted to do. And so he left at our first meeting with the other two partners was called the meeting of peace and tranquility. And Paul and Steve are the best guys, both Brits, both California, but they were like brothers. And what happens is I think leadership is a lonely business. Entrepreneurship is lonely. And to actually have two partners that you can share with, you can learn from, actually is a really great combination. and what was great is they let me be me.

Like they knew who Marty was. And in my case, like Steve, I was like the disc profile. I talk about testing in the book about like having a disc profile like a high eye, which is very social. D is quick response. S is more a team player. But like C is cautious or detail. Well, I have very little of it.

I misspell words by PowerPoints wrong. but like Steve is high and so we really complimented each other and I joke about it in the book where I would write proposals and they'd be terrible and I would send it to Steve and I would go Steve

can you just like look at it just I need to check my grammar and he's like I know what you're doing to me and the minute he looked at it he'd just rewrite it it would be perfect he would call it the spit and polish and it just was the right team

and so with partners are the right team that's what makes it magical and so those guys were the best. And in terms of your leadership style and what you're talking about in the book, where they just, they turned it over to you to, because you had the big team here in Greenville. Yes, we had the big team in Greenville. One of the things we did, I think, was sort of the best thing was every Friday,

we would have a partner's call. And it was the three of us talking about the business, what was going on. I think sometimes when you think about a stool, and I talk about even like Davo in the book around a three-legged stool and how it changed Clemson football, when you look at partnerships, there were three of us, but we were the perfect stool. I was sales and marketing, so I was kind of the front person out in front of the customer. Steve was the op guy. He was the guy that delivered what I sold. And then Paul was the finance, accounting, HR. So we each had very defined. roles and it just worked perfectly. Perfect. Okay.

So you all represented different things. That's good. And the guy who left, what was his specialty? He was an asshole. All right. All right. No, Ken, yeah. Ken was a tough guy.

He, he sort of set the vision, but he just, he was, he just wasn't patient and just, it was really hard. And when you joined the company, how many people were in it? There was three. Three of us. Like literally just the three of you? Just the three of us. Wow.

And so was the intention like, okay, we're going to grow it. We're going to add because I mean, you did exactly what you thought you were going to do? Yeah. I mean, again, I think every company, every leadership and it's kind of back to significance. I think it's back to who we are and what we want. I knew at Datastream when we worked together, we built one of the greatest products and one of the greatest tools to help. companies. But people were always complaining because we'd go to implement it and they'd tell me like,

well, it doesn't do this and it doesn't do that. And I'm like, yes, it does. It does all those things. And so to me at the time was never this vision to build a company to sell a company. It was we saw a problem in the market that customers needed help, right? 60% of all implementations fail. And people struggle. And what they needed was somebody to care, to help them and to love them. And And so that was really the ultimate goal was that's how we started at Voco was that mission to really help customers win at the game of maintenance and build on the stuff that I think Datastream started on. And you eventually got it up to around 100 people?

We were almost 140. 140 people before you sold it. So from three to, that's pretty strong, man. That's pretty strong. So tell us about the cover. This is the statue of David, I believe. Yes. Tell us why you chose that instead of your smiling face.

Well, it's funny is you work through this book all the time. And the cover, it's really important part of the book. And so I was getting ready. The book was getting done. Everything was done. I didn't have a cover. And everybody's saying the most important part of the book is the cover. And I was like, crap.

And I was like, I don't know what to do. And so we were going back and forth. and this summer we went with our family to Italy, to Florence, Italy. And we were out in the square. And if you ever been in the square in Florence, they have the big statue of David. He's out with another statue. And everybody's looking at it. And I was like, this is boring.

Like no interest in it, didn't care. Why do people care about statues? And then my son said, him and his fiance, we're going to. going to go tour the David tomorrow. She wanted to go see it. I want to go with her. And I said, or go with them. And I said, sure.

And so we bought a ticket. We get in, you get those little earphones, you know, and you get the translator. And the guy tells the story. And we're standing back and he starts telling the story of David and Michelangelo. Like, I'm absolutely blown away. Like Michelangelo, you know, he was raised like his mom had an accident and she couldn't lactate so she couldn't feed him. So she actually gave him to another family to raise. And it turns out they were stone cutters.

That's how we learned the art of the joy of stone cutting. And they had this piece of stone that people were trying to carve to put on the doma. And they said it was a bad piece of rock, couldn't be done. And at 24, David looked at it and said it was, Michelangelo looked at it and said it was the perfect stone. And he literally carved the David out of this stone. at 24 years old. And so we're standing.

He's telling me the story. Now I'm like, I'm blown away. And the guy says, look at his eyes. Like, if you take the book and you look at those eyes, like you look at his eyes, he said, stand back. And as you walk around, you're going to see different looks. And when you look at him, here's a boy about ready to fight a giant. Like, it's leadership, right?

We're going into battle. We're fighting the big giant. And on one side, the look is this look of a child, like, timid. There's also this look of, you know, just determination and then a look of, okay, strategy. I'm going to take this guy down. And that's leadership, right? As leaders, we have to wear many faces. We have to be vulnerable.

We have to be strong at the same time. And we have to be tactical. And so when I thought about that and I stood there and watched it, I said, what else could be on the book? Whether David's been used or not, it has to go on my book because I think. think that's the I think those are the eyes of a leader. Nice. Okay. That's cool. So I do. Sorry, I share one other thing is the other part about the book, you always have to have a subtitle. And it's interesting because in the subtitle, I was always looking at like, how do you,

like five keys to be the leader of people. And I always thought about follow. And I hate that word follow. Hate it. Hate it. Hate it. Like, you know, on LinkedIn, I want you to follow. I won't hit it. I'll send a note. I'll connect with you. I won't follow you. I hate it. And so I got a chance to interview Lee Cockrell, who is the head of Disney at the end.

But early on in his career, he worked for Hilton and Marriott. And by his own admission, he was a big asshole. Like he was getting all the awards. He was doing all the right things, but he was a jerk. Yeah. And in one case, he had a bottle, literally an employee threw a bottle and hit him in the head he was because he took the side of a customer who was wrong and not defended him he then one time was with maria i went to one of his properties in omaha and he got there the guy he was visiting

was in the hospital and he's like what happened the guy had such anxiety that this guy was showing up his nickname was the doberman and had such anxiety fell off a chair hit his head and put himself in the hospital and finally lee is like is this the person i want to be and he didn't and so through coaching therapy, all kinds of stuff. He changed who he was. And I said, what's the one advice that you could give me? And Lee said, Marty, it's simple. How do you become the leader people are happy to see?

I was like, God, that's it. Like happy's the word. I mean, John, every time I see you, I'm happy to see you. Right? Can we be the salesperson? You know, back to Noob School. How can we be the salesperson? People are happy to see.

If you're always in there trying to get the order, if you're just a taker, not a giver, they're going to be like, get out. Yeah. But the great salespeople, people want to eat. So that's kind of, sorry to jump it, but that's to me the essence of the, the essence of the cover is then five keys to becoming the leader people are happy to see.

Okay. I got it. Yeah, well, how did you get to meet the head of Disney? That's a great idea. Yeah. By the way, I'm a big, I'm going to throw a book out. I think I may have said this to you, but I had a coach through Accenture. They had given me a coach.

And sort of towards the end of my coaching sessions, she says, you need to read this book. And it's called the Surrender Project by Michael Singer. And he's a yoga guy, spiritual guy. And really, it's just about allowing the flow of life to happen and not prejudge things. And it's just like kind of changed the way I've thought about it. So I got fortunate. I got to go to a writing class with Donald Miller. So if anybody doesn't know Donald Miller, he wrote the book Story Brand, top five books of all

time. Everybody, you know, needs to read Donald Miller. And so I got a chance to go to his house to do a writing class with 20 people, like a dream come true. And so we were going around the room and everybody's saying their title of their books comes to me. And I said, the title of my book is, you don't have to be an asset. soul to be a leader. And he kind of smirks and laughs. It goes, it's something people need to know.

He goes, have you ever heard of Lee Cockrell? And then Don was good at because he would lay a breadcrumb. I said, no, I hadn't heard of him. He goes, you should. And that was it, dropped it. So me, like I do, I go home that night and I listen to a podcast. I look at his book. I go to his website. I read half his book that night to learn all about this guy who's incredible. And the next day, I go back, Don Don, you're right. Lee Cockrell's amazing. He goes, if you want, I'll set up an interview with him. Oh. And so literally, he sent an email to his assistant and said, I'd like you to meet

Marty Osmore. He's writing a book about assholes. And Don has a great story on it. Yeah. And I met Don. His wife was driving. He was in Orlando and he's riding in the, in the, with his wife, you know, in the, in the, in the front seat and just had a delightful con.

Just a super nice guy. But just stuff that things you look back on. Just, Marty, how do you become the leader people are happy to see? So how many years it had been since he had converted when you talked to him? It's a while. So, I mean, if you look at Lee and if you look them up, he wrote a book called Creating Magic. I mean, he was over 40,000 people at Disney creating, I mean, the happiest place on Earth. Here is a guy nicknamed the Doverman, a bottle hits him in the head, yet now he's leading the happiest place on Earth.

And so one of the premises and parts of the book is, and this is an interesting question. I think, John, that you answered. The question we ask is, can a leader change? Can an asshole change? And there's mixed reviews, but when I did a survey on it, I found about 50% say yes. The other half say no. And there's a lot of reasons why we think people can change. There's other reasons why people think they can't.

And so in the book, I cover two people. I cover Lee Cockrell and his transformation to success, like reaching his true potential. And another gentleman I did writing with is a person named Tucker Max. And some people may, if you recognize him, he was a college phenom writer, wrote a book called, I hope they served beer at hell, and became a movie and all kinds of stuff.

But really, this guy was an asshole too. And he admitted his book even says, I'm an asshole. And he changed to be one of the most insightful guys I've ever met. And so he really changed the way I viewed writing and those things. And so both of those are in the book. And Tucker, he was in the class with you? Tucker actually taught the class. So my first venture into the book was Scribe. And he basically believed everybody has a story to tell. So he started a company called Scribe. Okay. And it was a self-guided author program. And he would teach the first two days of the class. So, yeah. Okay, I gotcha. Now he's like married, children and kind of

become completely like traditional. Traditional, yeah. He helps people write memoirs. And memoirs are, memoirs are tough because you have to get like deep inner truths and a lot of stuff comes out of you. Can't you sugarcoat it. Well, another thing that I found quite humorous, because I read half the book so far, as you got really big, as you were trying to become a better leader and let your people run whatever they're supposed to be doing, you would back off, right? You would back off and let them do it. And you would do these 360 reviews where they would review you.

All the people would say, let me tell you what I think about Marty, which is very brave of you, by the way. And one of them said, the comment was so funny, it's in the book. It said, it said, Marty, keep not doing anything. It's working. Keep doing less. It's working. During those times, I would see you, you know, and you'd be like walking or something.

I said, what are you up to? You go, not much. I got hardly anything to do. I'm trying to turn everything over to whatever. And before that, when I saw you, you'd be like, I got a flight of whatever. We got a big demo and I've got to be there. You know, I remember you saying, you know, if I don't go, then, you know, they want the owner there. Yeah.

Which I understand. Yeah, yeah. I understand both sides. Well, there's an. interesting saying is the student, the teacher, what if the teacher reveals themselves when the students ready to learn. And I remember a conversation we had 35 years ago. And I think in my previous company, you may have even said like Marty, you've got to back off. Like you cannot do everything. Like that's the secret. I was like, yeah, John, good stuff, you know. And I had that told to me

many times and I talk about in the book too as I met with Scott Millwood. Scott came out of data stream. He was running a similar service company and he was so great because I could go to him and ask him a million questions. I'd ask him like what furniture? What about leases? What about this? Stuff I didn't know about. And Scott was gracious. And one day I just kept asking him questions. And he finally just sort of stopped and said, you know what your problem is? And I said what? He goes, you. Like, how am I the problem? I'm the answer guide. He goes, you got to stop. You got to let your team solve as a leader. You're not the hero of the story. Right. You need to guide your people. And I was like, huh, right? Because as leaders, we want to be the hero. We want to be the answer person

and everything else. It's fun. It's fun. It's, you know, the ego just gets excited about it. But in the end, you have to let your team. If you're going to grow as a leader and grow your company, you have to back off. And so I tell the other thing, so when I took that to heart, I literally would go in, shut my daughter in the office, and I would sit for like eight hours doing nothing,

like twiddling my thumbs. And I wanted to pick that phone up, and I wanted to jump in that meeting. I said, don't do it. Don't do it because your team, your team wants to prove that they can do it. And when they did, I mean, our numbers took off. And you want to do that and let your people.

And so, yeah, They were like, just keep doing what you're doing. Yeah, that's funny. That's funny. That's so interesting because I think, you know, most entrepreneurs like the action, you know, they want to go close deals and make big things happen. And so if you were going to be the leader that's in this book, your responsibilities, I would think, would be more about the vision of the company, perhaps something to do with hiring. Well, I think as leaders, it depends on what you need at the time. And leadership, you know, it evolves.

You know, there's a famous saying, you hear it all the time, and I chuckle when people say it, but you got to work on the business, not in the business. And that's important to do. I think if you go back and really a part of the genesis of the book was what I defined as leadership brand. And what is it, remember Jeff Beazel, he came out and he made a statement that said, brand is what people say about it when they're not, when you're not in the room. And that kind of hit me like leadership brand. Like, what do people say about me when I'm not in the room?

And I kind of thought a lot about that. Like, that's important. And I'll ask leaders this question. And some people say, well, I'll give a shit. Well, that's a brand. And to me, one of the things that starts leadership off is, what are the words that you want said about you? And so the hardest thing is to sit down, again, I talk about it in the book, is to sit down and say,

what are the five words that you would like said about you when you're not in the room? And you write those down. And then I ask the question, what is it that you think they say? Right? And I think back to what you just said is if you really have guts, and I think the hardest thing as a leader is to be vulnerable to do it, but ask your team, what is it that I should be doing more of and what should I be doing less of? Like, what is my brand?

And your team, you know, we're scared about it because it's a hit to our ego. But at the end of the day, it's really, as a leader, shows you're vulnerable. It's a gift to them that just says they get to weigh in on who I and who they want their leader to be. And I got some incredible feedback. I mean, I got stuff that just said, yeah, I mean, you know, slow down. You're going too fast. You know, I read and read and read and read and I bring all these ideas. And they're like, stop.

So it was just incredible feedback. Yeah. That's wonderful. I've never done one of those. The last time I got a review, when I wasn't looking, the salespeople put a sign up on my door. It said, Captain Hazelwood, the captain of the Exxon Valdez. So I'm not sure I had the same grades you got, Marty, but maybe they loved me. John, here's what I would say.

We'll get the noob school people to send words into noob school how you would describe, John. Here's how you do it. And it's actually funny. This is a great story. So I heard this idea, and I can't remember Patrick Lynchoni, John Maxwell said it, is send an email out and say, And what's one thing I should be doing more of, one thing I should be doing less of. I thought it was great. So I did it.

I got a feedback. So I got my leadership team to do it. Well, one guy just like opened up like it just dumped on one other guy, like wrote paragraphs of it. Like, why I don't like about you? And the other guy was like, if he was in the room, I'd punch him out. And I was like, oh, dear God, what did I do? What did I open up? And it was just funny.

But at some point time, there was this tension between them. And when we really got to the bottom of it, one of my guys, he was an inventor. He was a creative guy. And he was throwing ideas out. The other guy was a doer. He was a tenacity. And so he kept trying to figure out what this other guy wanted. And they were budding heads.

And instead of budding heads, we sat down and talked about it, what we realized was they were the perfect match. And when we talked through what made him mad and what he was trying to do, they understood that. And actually turned out to be one of the best things. But, oh, yeah, send it out of 360s. It could get a little interesting. Well, one of the stories that I remember, I mean, not just from the book, but from just watching you operate was you, you know, we used to all go on Presidents Club, you know,

all the salespeople and managers that hit their number for the year. You know, we get to go to Key West or go skiing or whatever it is we were doing. and it was a great boondoggle, you know, for all the salespeople. And what you realized as a leader, you probably always thought this, was, you know, that the salespeople aren't the only ones who help, you know, the business do well. People write the product, people support the product, and all those things. And so I'll tell the beginning of it, you can tell the rest of the story, but you decided with your partners that everyone could go to President's Club,

even the interns, the receptionist, everyone, and their partner, as long as the company hit a certain target collectively. Collectively. Is that right? That is correct. So tell us how that went over. Well, again, as you said. Nobody believed it.

I'm probably the first year. They're like, well, it was funny. We used to be in my partner. We'd have these ideas. We'd have these sessions. And I kind of blurt out one thing. You know, we used to have epic Christmas parties, just epic blowouts. Usually we never got asked back to the same restaurant.

But we had to do something different. We're trying to figure out how to grow. And we always talk about the Tet Presidents Club. You know, I have to admit, I didn't get, I went on one out of seven years. So, you know, I thought it was unfair. Here I was, this great Marty Oswald. No, I mean, I just always thought about that, you know, how do we reward everything as a team? Like, how do we not just service certain people, but everyone?

And so we came up with this idea that just said, if we grow 20%, we shut the office down, we take the whole office to the Caribbean. We take interns, we take spouses, significant others, everybody, four days in the Caribbean. And you should have seen, like, we announced this, like, people were excited. And we had people, like, just hump in it. And I remember talking to one of the guy's wives that I was like, sorry, Josh has been really, you know, been really busy, he's been on the road. She goes, I don't care. We're going to the Caribbean.

Nice. And so what happened? was we had this collective thing. And every year we just blew through our numbers. Like just, and everybody like, where are we going? Where we going this year? Where are we going next year? If I had pictures, like we had phone parties and the whole company in the pool, dancing,

like, and it was just such a great bonding moment. And people would hear about this. And when we were up for South Carolina Business Year Award, the first year we applied, we only did it two years, one at two years. The guy's like reading down the stuff we do, and he's like, you know, we have a chief wine officer, a chief bourbon officer. We take the company to the Caribbean. He stops in the middle and goes, who does this? And he goes, I want to work for y'all.

And I think that was it. And, you know, we were just getting started with Clemsonpsy University in their intern program, co-op program. So we're competing against Michelin, BMW, bot, like all the big boys. And we struggled. Who's at Voco? and we had like three or four and it came to going on the trip and somebody said, well, what do we do with the interns? And I'm like, we take them.

Why would we not take them? So we take them. Well, think about it. They go back to Clemson coming out a four-day, all-expense trip to the Caribbean, have the best time of their life. They tell everybody, we became the number one requested co-op program at Clemson University. We could get any student we wanted. And as you're in an organization, people are like, well,

we can't hire, we can't find good people. We were like, we're beating them down. Right. We didn't, you know. Right. Right. Well, you're right. And we saw, I know we talked about your success with Clemson. We had the same type of thing with the Citadel.

And that we, we were, they were getting, we're making a lot of money right out of school. Right. So they would make high, decent salary, but high commission. And they would tell the people behind them, right, you can make this much money first, second year out of school. So, you know, people thought I was a great recruiter. They were calling me, right?

So I think you're right. And getting the young talent is priceless. I remember talking to you about how they just knew how to do stuff faster. Right? I mean, they get the software like better than any of us do. We just have to sort of teach them, you know, how to get a credit card, how to travel, how to, you know, get a rental. Like, it's easy stuff. Yeah.

But they were, they were phenomenal. And I think back, John, that story is, if you think about the heyday of DataStream, right, you could come to DataStream, have fun, make money, and do something that mattered. Like, that's what people want. Yeah. Like, if you look at employees, they want to know their work matters. Yeah. They want to know what winning looks like. Yeah.

And they want to know that they mattered. And Datastream was so good at, you were so good at that, that the people at the citizens. it'll just set, I want on that train. Because you, you know, you were the person that people were happy to see. And I think that's like, and that's why I'm kind of like, I'm so passionate about that word happy is, you know, in sales, if you're a doctor, if you're a lawyer, if you're anybody in life, the question is, are people happy to see you? Are you running a business that people are happy to see?

Or is it like the phone rings in your boss? You're like, right? I want to talk to this guy. Yeah. And so I think that word is we need to take that to heart and figure out our brand. And when we do, that's where the magic is. It's not hard. It's just being the person people are happy to see.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Again, we can talk all day about happiness and being that person. But, you know, I think it starts by showing up and being kind of showing up happy. Like if I show up and I've got a great. grump on, you know, you'd be like, I don't know if I want to hang around John, but he needs to start out happy.

And the second thing is to be interested in the other person. Like if I'm always interested in you, you're going to be like, I can't wait to see John again. He's fun to talk to, right? So those are some basics, I believe, but you're right. That's all important in a leader. And I was just thinking with your company, with 140 people, if Marty was out in front of that sled, And you're making all the calls and you're handling the tough customer service. You'd be pulling that sled so hard.

And you wouldn't have near as far. Even though you're the best person there and setting the rest of them loose. So y'all do it. And I'll help you. It's the power. I always say it's the power of leverage, right? As individuals, if you really want to be successful, it's, like, they always say dentistry is one of the hardest professions because they only make money. when their hands are in your mouth.

And they can have, you know, cleaners and flossers and stuff like that. But if he's not there, they can't be open. Right. And the hardest thing is they have no leverage. We're in sales. We're in running businesses. If we can leverage ourselves, like that's where, well, A, it's where the money is. But B, it's where the fun is.

Like watching these people succeed, watching them win. Like, that just brought me joy. Well, let me ask you, I don't want to get too far away from the book. It might be in there, I don't know. But one of the things you did with this business is you went back to the data stream customers that bought good software, got it installed, and got some training. But they never really got the value out of it. And you went back in there and you said, describe to me like, I think it was Wayne Farms,

or there was one, the big chicken company. Yeah. where you went in and figured out the real value that they could get if it was working properly and then gave them what looked like a really big number to get there. But compared to this number, it wasn't that big. And you made it happen. And I think this is a microcosm of what you did at Voco to make it so successful. So tell that story.

Well, I think we're, you know, again, as whether it's leadership or sales, right, We have to be always helping whoever we're dealing with and our customers to think a little differently. If I just keep showing up, like, how many seats do you need? You need some more seats. Services or whatever. They get all that, and I can pick up the phone. Like, no value. They're not happy to see me.

And what we had figured out is if we truly invested time inside our customers to learn their business, to understand what challenges they had. and we were always like challenging them to think new. And so we had one customer, right? And we used to kind of look at MRO parts. And we're like touring the plant. We're like stepping over parts. I'm taking pictures.

And I look at the guy and I just like randomly sales question was, well, how much do you spend in spare parts every year? And he goes, I don't know, 100 million? I was like. And then I have this thing called the rule of three. So I say, so over the next three years, you're going to spend $300 million in spare parts. And he went, yep. And I was like, you know, if there was a way that I learned, you know, to save you 10% on that,

would you want to know more about it? I was like, yeah. Because we had a program that could help them, because they didn't know where their parts were. They didn't know what they had, so they just kept overbuying. So if I could save you 10%, that was $30 billion. So I'm like, I could save you $30 million. The guy goes, I have no doubt. He goes, what's it going to cost me?

I was like, $7 million. I don't know. I just picked the number because it didn't matter. Like, if I could help them save money, and that's what we did, right? Because we found the need. And it's just like we saw it every day and customer after customer have this software. They weren't happy because nobody was talking to them about what could they truly do. Nobody was finding those angles that if I invested time and money.

And, you know, you mentioned Wayne Farms and we had just such fun with them and such a great client that we would even go and serve food. We would go and we got aprons made that said Wayne Farms, you know, pride and maintenance. And we'd have hats and we would go serve lunch to the maintenance guys. Like it was just fun to get them out and, you know, to see. see them and be there. Yeah. Well, it's a good lesson in leadership, but also just in the return on investment scenario where most software companies, including ours, had already sold software

and they were going back in there and trying to find out if they needed more seats, maybe some training or, you know, very surface-level stuff. Yep. But then you went and thought like a business owner, you know, how much you're spending on parts, how much we could save you 10%. That's $30 million. And then when they said, how much would it be? You didn't, that's where you really could have screwed it up because you could have said, well, we're going to look into that. We're going to do a study. We're going to have

to do a count. Right. And you just said, $7 million, you know, and you put some footnotes in there, I'm sure. Yeah. And guys like, okay. I mean. I mean, who wouldn't spend seven to get $30? Like, was it easy return on a Yeah, and I think you did a great job also of not thinking about money in your personal terms. You thought about money in terms of just numbers, like 37. That's a pretty good deal. But for me, I'd be like, oh, seven, oh, God, what about 200,000? You know, I mean, people would.

Well, a typical deal, like in that case would have been $2,000 to $400,000 if we didn't uncover that. And I think what was interesting was with that money. it was the potential that we could not only do that, but we could do so much more. Like how could we really help them transform it, transform their business into world class? And that's what they wanted, right? People are always like, how can I get there? And, you know, our job, and this is what I said, you know, from the book Donald Miller wrote like story brand. It is a marketing book, but it turned out, and again, I talk about this in my book is what hit me is as consultants,

the salespeople, we're not the hero of the story. If you think in sales, when you walk in that you're the hero, I'm the hero to save you, they'll throw you out every time. They're the hero. They're the hero. When you go in with your customers, they're the hero, our job is the guide. And if you think about just a simple movie, right? It's Star Wars.

Like every story is a hero has a problem. They seek a guide. A guide comes in with a plan. And that's what we are in sales, is our job. as individuals is to help the hero win. We're Yoda's. We're Yoda helping Luke fight Darth Vader. Could Yoda have fought Darth Vader?

Yes. Easily. Hey, he could have chopped them up. Yeah. But that's our goal. And I think that's the thing I always laugh when I see salespeople. And they consistently walk in thinking that they're like, I'm here to save you. And people are like, yeah, no.

I got a couple more questions. One is a remarkable story that begins in the book, but it's about how you were doing, I guess, right around COVID, you were doing a trade show or some kind of meeting or something, and you ended up not doing the show and you had a bunch of food. And you decided to try to make that into a positive. So tell us how that worked and what the ending was. Yeah. So one of the things I have this belief in the power of moments. Like we have opportunities in people's lives in transition and situations to create something magical, whatever it, whatever that could be. And for us, one of, you know, again, I'll go back.

So the Christmas party turned out to be a moment, right? It turned out to be this magical moment that just helped our company grow. When COVID hit, it was right around the end of March in 2020. that's 2020, 2020, 2019, 2020. And we were getting ready to do a conference. We get 400 people to come in. And we're like, we can't do this. Like, we can't do this thing.

And so as a leader, like we're stuck. Like, what do we do? How do we lead our team? And I said, we're going to have to cancel it. We can't do this. But let's go online. We had been doing webinars. We had been doing stuff.

So we kind of knew the online world. So we said, let's move it online. let's move it online people had already paid their fees they were comfortable with doing it you know graciously i went to the hotel the spring hill suites i mean they were wonderful they let us out of our contract the hues is we their space they said let's just roll the contract over another year i mean just an incredible outpouring of people understanding yeah the situation and so we had 15 000 of people's money that was going to breakfast lunch and and so forth.

And I felt bad because the other one was Table 301 was Carl Sivasinski and he, you know, he had a restaurant that were being shut down. And so I wanted to meet Carl and I said, how do we do something great with this money? And so we met outside of his office and I remember saying, can I do a thousand meals? I wanna just feed some people.

And Carl thought about it again. He goes, I really wanna be part of this mission. He goes, I could put a meal together, a box lunch, and so forth for $3 a meal. I did the math. I mean, it's 5,000 meals. And, you know, again, as a Christian, it's a very biblical number, like 5,000. And I was just take it back.

And so we started this program. And again, I laughed because we were going to, our first one was going to be Towers East on Main Street. There was a place there. And our church is next to it. And they don't let people get on their property. So we were going to line up on the side of the property and hand out 350 meals. And that night, Knox White came out and said, you know, with COVID, nobody can be outside. If you gather, we're going to arrest you.

Hit my pastor calls. And she said, Marty, we can't do this. Like, I don't want to get arrested. And I was like, Susan, think about the, like the prison ministry. Like I don't do prison. So I was like, okay. So I call, call. I go, we got canceled.

We can't do it. He goes, I've already made all the meals. I was like, what do I do? And I knew my neighbor worked at Prisma in the emergency. room and I said, I called her up and I said, hey, I have 350 meals. I would love to deliver to first responders. And she's like, yeah, that would be great. And so we went in and served meals to the nurses, to the doctors, to ambulance. Like, and I got pictures. And, you know, even under mask, you could see, like, it was just a gift that they matter. And this went on and people started giving us

more money. And I think we raised like $60,000. So that was another $20,000. meals and then all of a sudden there was something called the cares act which was a government program to help businesses do good in the community and there wasn't a lot of programs going on so we applied for that and we received over a million dollars and money and so at the end of the program was like $1.2 million and 400,000 meals like it was just it was an incredible program we met some incredible people and I think really touched the lives of all the people that are involved from Table 301 to Voco to Lisa Anderson from Peacock was so instrumental in helping us there. Yeah.

Well, that's a great story. I think it also, you know, talks about the power of the moment. And the moment was that the things were going bad and the thing was canceled and you had this money, didn't know what to do with it. And you said, what can I do really cool with it versus sit here and cry? over spilled milk, right? Yeah. So that's the power of the moment.

Most people think about the end of the story, which is we had a million dollars and we 100,000 people. No, no, it's the beginning. That's the important part. It is. You started something. And then where you started from, who knows where it's going to go? Who knows?

Yeah. Well, let's talk about one more thing. So we've launched this wonderful book and you sold your company. So you're free. Yeah, yeah. What are the services that you can provide companies, because relative to the book? Are you speaking? And what are the kind of things you're going to be doing?

Yeah, so a couple of things. And I'm glad you asked that question. I mean, ultimately, one of my goals, again, is I want to change leadership in the world in America. Like, I really believe we can do things differently. We can be great. We can become the leaders. people are happy to see. And so one of the things that I've done is I've done some mentoring programs. So I'm on the board at Next Gen, helping entrepreneurship. I work with the ATVL group

out of Spartanburg. What I really love to do is speak. Like I love to meet with sales teams and organizations and really kind of share the message of finding significance. And so if you go to my website, it's just Marty Osborne.com. You can get a hold of me if you'd like for me to speak, if you want to talk about the book, I'd love to do it. And we're also getting ready. Another big news flash, I can't sit still. I know.

Is getting ready with a couple friends to launch a new company called By Design Advisors and helping companies with getting unstuck. What we found is a lot of companies, you know, don't know what's next. And they always ask that question like, you know, John, what's next? You just ask me, Marty, what's next? And as organizations, they get stuck. They're not sure what's next. Do I sell my company?

Do I grow my company? What do I need to do? And so we're getting ready to launch a new company called Buy Design Advisors to basically help companies understand how to get unstuck or to what's next. And so that's going to be a lot of fun as well. Well, I would highly recommend any companies out there to consider Marty to come speak to their company, basically. or their leadership team or their sales team, but to come speak to them,

maybe a keynote or a sales meeting or something like that. And then when you launch a new company, we'll have you back. We'll talk about the new company and what you're doing. And the importance of using good sales consultants to help you help those companies. Well, I think, I mean, right, nothing happens, John,

until something gets sold. And I've always been a big believer in that. I'm a big believer in the new school community and, you know, leaders, right? like leaders are learners. And the people that if they really said, what's the number one key to success, it's what you teach,

what I teach, and how do we continue to do it? There it is. There it is. The book. Stocking stuffers, right? Yes, man. All right.

I appreciate it, John. Thank you, buddy. Thanks. Awesome. Congratulations.