Noob School - Scaling Success: Leadership, Sales, and Growth with Scott Thomas

Episode Date: February 8, 2025

In this episode of Noob School, I sit down with Scott Thomas, a man who has built an impressive career at the intersection of leadership, strategy, and growth. From leading high-stakes missions as a Captain in the U.S. Air Force to serving as Group CEO at Constellation Software, Scott has spent decades perfecting the art of building and scaling businesses. Now, as a as an advisor and guide to CEOs, he helps executives and entrepreneurs set a clear vision, align the right people, and implement repeatable systems to achieve transformative success (@Next Level Growth). Scott shares incredible insights from his time in the technology sector, including his approach to hiring and managing salespeople, the importance of strategic execution, and what it takes to drive long-term profitability. We also dive into how AI is already reshaping industries—and what sales and business leaders should be doing to stay ahead of the curve. Whether you’re a founder looking for a playbook on scaling, a sales leader refining your hiring process, or just someone eager to learn from a proven leader, this episode is packed with valuable lessons. If you'd like to learn more about Scott and where he’s affecting change; www.nextlevelgrowth.com https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottthomasu/ Don’t miss this conversation with Scott Thomas—tune in now! 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#salestrends

New School. All right, welcome back to Noob School. Episode, believe it or not, 141. 141. Today I've got a good friend, Scott Thomas. Scott, welcome. Thank you. Thanks, thank you.

We haven't known Scott that long, but I feel like I have. We've gotten to be fast friends, I would say. That's fair. Yeah, absolutely. Has it been like six months? Or maybe just a few days. Maybe a few days. Well, I like him.

Anyway, Scott has got a fascinating background, and I would say Scott is a part, really good kind of operational manager and also a very good salesperson. So it's a good combination to be hanging around. And today lives in Greenville and runs his own company, helping mostly tech CEOs, but CEOs in general, kind of just manage their life better, manage things better, solve problems. and obviously you help with acquisitions and things like that. Correct. So that's pretty cool. And so let's just get a little bit about your background and then we'll kind of catch up to where we are today and talk sales.

So where did you grow up? I'm originally from Oregon. And I would say my journey has been pretty diverse. I went to school in Los Angeles at Loyola-Marimau-Maramount University. Did ROTC, went into the Air Force, had the opportunity to serve in Afghanistan as a captain, civil engineer actually. Got out of the Air Force. Hold on now. There's a lot there. I want to hear more about this. So why did you decide to do ROTC?

That's not really a California, Oregon kind of thing. You're spot on. What's funny is growing up, because the West Coast doesn't have the same, you know, awareness of maybe really what that means to. join the military. I didn't even know there's a difference between officers and enlisted. I was, just didn't want to go work in a cubicle out of college. So I said, hey, you know what, if I go do ROTC, I could travel the world, I can serve my country and was inspired to do so. This was before 9-11. It was right before 9-11, actually. And so I had the opportunity to travel the world and get those experiences that way and learned that, oh, I'm going into being an officer, great. So it was a very

awesome opportunity. So you decided to do that. That makes perfectly good. good sense. And you must have studied engineering in college. Yes. Yep. Is that hard? It is. You know, the first day of classes in engineering school, they say, you see those kids out there playing Frisbee and the quad, that'll never be you. For every hour in the classroom, you're going to spend three hours studying. And so I set out to make a point that I could get my studies done in an hour so I could still enjoy what college had to offer and not be stuck in books the whole time. I feel fairly good that I accomplished that. And Loyola, Marymont, Marymount.

Marymount. What would that school be known for? A lot of people know them for the running and gun and basketball style of Vo Kimball, Hank Gathers, a long time ago. Yeah. And good engineering school, good science technology school, obviously being in Los Angeles. Angeles, there's the actor and the theater aspect of it as well. But a well-rounded, good liberal art school. And why did you pick that school? Growing up in Oregon, there's a lot of rain, and I said, you know what, I need to go south. I got to get someplace drier with more sunshine.

And so explored all my different options for schools and universities, really in California and a little bit in Arizona in the West. Okay. And last college question, almost last one. Why would you major in civil engineering? I always loved math. I always loved building things. Loved understanding how to put things together and kind of just naturally lean towards that. My brother is older than me by five years.

He's an engineer as well. He actually went into the Air Force, kind of inspired me and opened that door, that awareness of what it means to serve your country while also being able to kind of go down the engineering track. Cool. Yeah. I mean, I got no problem with it other than the fact that it was very difficult. I could never have done it. But I know a lot of entrepreneur engineers in business, and they all kind of just have that ability

to break things down, you know, look at all the details, not just kind of broad brush it. So I think that's a good beginning. Absolutely. Fantastic foundation to have that understanding of that. So you graduated, and they gave you your bars, right? You get bars? Better bars. Butter bars.

And you're a captain? I got out as a captain, but yeah, I started as a second lieutenant. Second lieutenant in the Air Force. Correct. And so you're a civil engineer, and then where did they send you? I was stationed in Phoenix, Arizona at Luke Air Force Base. So F-16 training base at the time. So now they're F-35 training base, but just moved a little bit east to the Phoenix area.

Okay, okay. And so what does the civil engineer do in that kind of job? So stateside, your primary focus is maintaining base infrastructure. infrastructure, everything from runways to buildings to new construction projects. When you deploy, it's usually, I had the opportunity to deploy after Katrina, so there was reconstruction efforts that we were working in kind of recovery efforts. And then when you deploy overseas, I deployed to a remote operating base in Afghanistan or Ford operating base.

And basically, you're working with local government leaders on building everything from bridges to microhydro power plants to police data. to schools, really doing project management, construction management, in a combat zone while getting shot at. Right. Do they get close? We had gotten in a couple ticks. And so with your rank over there, were you typically project managing several of those projects at the same time? We would usually be in charge of reconstruction efforts with one or two other civil engineer equivalents. So Army Corps of Engineers, Navy CBs, they were on site with us as well. There's a couple of us.

And then we would manage all projects or all construction projects in a province within Afghanistan. Okay. Wow. That's some amazing kind of, I would say, engineering, project management experience. And perspective giving. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So one deployment over there and then back? Correct, yes.

Okay. But you're glad to. be out of harm's way. That's just a way. I can't even, I certainly can't imagine what it's like wondering anytime you're inside or outside of a building that bullets could start whizzing by.

Correct. Or worse. And then the stress that comes along for family and everything else is right. Right, right. Okay. So how long did you stay in the Air Force? I got out as a captain, so four years.

Four years. And then while you were in the Air Force, I think you got your MBA. That's correct, yes. How did you do that? I did it at night because I had some spare time and I said, hey, you know what, it's more efficient to get this done while I'm in the Air Force. And if I separate as a captain, I already have that alcalate or that learning already accomplished

so that diversifies where I can take my career from there. Okay. Well, that was a good move. I mean, gosh, you're getting out of, you've been a captain in the Air Force. You went to a good engineering school, got a good degree. you've been deployed, and you've got your MBA and you're, what, 26 years old? Right now? I mean, at the time you got out?

Yeah, right about that. That's a pretty strong 26-year-old, I would say. Yeah, it had some good momentum. Yeah. And so at that moment, is that when you went to work for Harris? No, no, I actually was recruited by a fellow Air Force officer and mentor now. he was running a very forward-thinking technology-based utility company, and he hired me to help run water utilities in the fastest-growing water utility in America at the time in Maricopa, Arizona. Okay, okay. So that was just a, I guess, happenstance to some degree. You knew this person. I did not know him, but he knew of the skill sets that an officer coming out of the Air Force possesses.

and so saw the value in investing in that kind of talent. Okay. And so you went to work managing those kinds of things? Essentially a director of public works for a private utility. The DPW. Yep. And how did that go? Great.

It was fun, high-paced, high growth. So you can imagine with any high-growth organization, there's a lot of challenges, but you're never a dull day. A lot of chance for experimentation and kind of refining processes and procedures. and systems and checklists. But it was a good experience. And, you know, another one where it's humble. You're not going to be the smartest person in the room because you're running the operation

and really trusting those on the front lines on how to be better, how to iterate and how to continue to kind of evolve the organization. That's wild. I never would have predicted that part of it. Yep. So you used your engineering, your project management, and your leadership, right? You used all that stuff to manage that.

think. Correct. And then what about fluoride? Do I have fluoride in your water? What's that? Chlorine was the primary additive that we had. Chlorine. Chlorine, what kills bugs and stuff? Yeah, you need a residual in the lines to basically keep the water safe for drinking. And you feel like that was some pretty safe water you had? Absolutely. It was groundwater. Groundwater. Yep. So clean groundwater that you pump up into a holding station or something. Correct. And then put the chlorine in. and then shoot it back out. Yep.

Maintain pressure. No fluoride? Maintained chlorine levels throughout the system. No fluoride? Not for us, no. Okay. Do you think, like, you know a lot about water, should people have filters on their water?

I would say absolutely for taste. Okay. Because everybody needs to hydrate, and a lot of places don't have the best tasting water. We're very blessed here in Greenville. Yeah. That the tap water tastes so good, but most people are not so blessed.

So. filter the green will tab water? We have one built in, but we don't need to. Okay, okay. Always curious, because, you know, maybe they're just selling advertising, but whenever, you know, television or they're always giving me news that the water, you have a double and triple filter. That's coming from the filter people.

Maybe they're the ones promoting this. Absolutely. Yeah, and if you're, I mean, if you've been to Los Angeles or Las Vegas or even Phoenix, like you pour a glass of water out of the tap, it's pretty bad. So, you know, you need the filtration, otherwise you're not going to drink your water. Or something out of a bottle, maybe. Exactly. So how long did that gig last?

Well, that gig evolved. So being that we were a very forward-thinking utility operations company, we also had a lot of our own technologies. And so those technologies was part of the startup that I, about halfway through my tenure there, jumped over to help start running the technology operations of the business. And again, it carried that same kind of momentum and excitement of a start. But after you lay off about a third of the company a couple times over, the kegator

in the break room starts to lose its luster. It's not as cool anymore. And you realize, you know what? The foosball table. Maybe I need to be thinking differently about my next chapter. No one's playing foosball anymore. Exactly. So that's when I made a shift to jump over to Harris computer systems at the time.

So, golly. Okay. So managed public works, private works, I suppose. and then took the technology, ran it as a startup, under this same private umbrella, I'd say. Correct, yes. And then decided you didn't want to do that, or the opportunity wasn't good enough or whatever. And he went to Harris, which is, I think, a great company, great sales training and all that stuff, right? Absolutely, yeah.

Part of Constellation Software, not sure if you're familiar, but Constellation Software, founded in 1995 by the humble and genius Mark Leonard. and has really grown to a bohemoth. The premier acquireer of software companies in the world. So hold on. Constellation Software, it's Canadian-based, right? Correct, yes. Started 95? Correct. Okay.

And you went to work for them in what year? At the time, it was 2014. Okay, 14. And this guy, Mark Leonard, has acquired to date, how many companies? Oh, my gosh. You'd have to ask me that I would push up to 300. I think you're right. If not, way more than that.

I mean, honestly, the pace has been exponentially more each year. So I've got two now, and I wonder if he knows what I'm up to. Watch out for Sterling. I can guarantee the Army of Business Development Resources within Constellation are already combing every technology company that you own and are aware of its current state, and they will be calling you when ready. All of them, right? All of them.

Yeah, yeah. So he buys, how would you characterize the type of companies that Constellation buys? So the term is vertical market software. And really what that means is mission critical software. When you think of a police station, they need software to run their operation. A library needs software to run their operation to keep track of books or whatever it is, you know, within that unique operation. School districts, hospitals. can go down the line and very quickly, vertical market software is all around us.

Who manufactures furniture? There's furniture manufacturing software out there to track supply, demand, you know, sales, CRM, all built into some kind of platform, likely just for furniture manufacturers. And so finding companies that are in vertical markets, there's a level of stickiness there and there's a level of playbooks and systems that can be repeated to drive success and sustainability for those organizations as well. Okay. That makes sense because kind of what we all see all the time is Microsoft and Oracle and SAP

and the household names of software. But you're saying every niche, you know, has its own software. Correct. And they're trying to amass all those. They are amassing hundreds of them. And they run them in a, I said, a very organization. organized way. Yep. And there's hundreds of thousands of them in the world and say, you know, to get a fraction of them and run them efficiently for the people and for the products and for the customers is

a win. Yeah. Nice. So you went to work for Harris, which is a company that is owned by Constellation. Correct. And you ended up running, as I recall, it was like a group of, a multiple group of companies or divisions that you ran as CEO under Constellation. Yeah, I mean, I mean, Obviously, there was an evolution there. Started out with the government sector software companies helping run those. Then started running a cardiology-based EHR. Electronic Health Record was the first company that I kind of ran standalone. And then really from there, just evolved the scale of responsibility before you know it, managing a portfolio of software companies in the healthcare space still, primarily ambulatory clinical electronic health record.

billing solutions for the healthcare space. And, you know, I had a chance to do that multiple times over. I think, you know, a blessing and a rare opportunity is the at-bats that I was able to get. Like when you think about the more at-bats you get, the more hits you're going to get. And the more you learn how to refine your swing, I've had the experience to run 17 different technology companies in various stages and scales and, you know, levels of opportunities. which gives you a lot of chance to see a lot of different things and figure out what doesn't work and then what does work. Right.

Yeah. So what were the general, you know, basic metrics required of every constellation company? Well, you know, so much of that's proprietary. You know, it really comes down to understanding profitability. And regardless of industry, whether you're in the software space or lumber manufacturing or construction. It's really about understanding, you know, what drives your bottom line. And do you have absolute clarity to that? Do you have absolute clarity to what your profit is per spend or whatever it is for your respective industry? So we had various metrics tied to that, whether it be on

recurring or maintenance and support or whether it be tied to implementations and, you know, one-time revenue or consulting. And really big the big thing about metrics, is it's less about the exact number and more about how do you drive incremental change. So if I know this is where we're at, how do I get to here? And then how do I get to here? And then what are the things that you do to measure to see that you're getting there or not? Because sometimes things don't work and that's understood, but then you can dial it in, you can experiment, you can try again.

But if you're not measuring that, if you're not tracking what's going to take you to get from here to here, you're not going to learn anything. You're not going to know what did or didn't work. And likely you're just going to get stuck here or you're going to start going backwards. Right, right. I think without measuring the metrics or, you know, without measuring metrics or what you're doing to affect them, you're kind of flailing. Correct. Right. What we need is we need a webinar. What we need is we got to go to the trade, you know, just kind of flailing away with these ideas that may or may not help metrics, we don't even know what they are.

Correct. I've done it. I've flailed. Yep. But not anymore when we're flailing. So I talked to someone from a competitor company to Constellation, and I don't know whether they were just being flippant with me, but they said our job is pretty easy. We have to keep our profitability at each company at this rate or lower. And, you know, number two is we'd like revenue to go up a little bit. that'd be fine, but just don't miss your profitability. That means we always know how much money we're going to make. And I wondered, could it be that simple with that many companies? You know, everyone's shooting for the same margin.

None of them are doing R&D and none of them are trying to grow sales next year. You know? You know, I could definitive say it's not easy, especially when you're balancing how do you invest in tomorrow. I think one thing that Constellation does that's different is buy and hold companies forever. Forever. So there's not this, we're going to flip this business within five years and get a higher return on our investment that way. So because of that, there's this perpetual investment in the people and the product that you don't get with some other entities or portfolio companies.

And so that means you have to be mindful of balancing that investment while still, like you said, maintaining your earnings. I understand what are the earnings that we need to generate so that we can invest in that tomorrow and not losing on that. And with all the forces around us and all of our different markets, competitors, attrition, you know, there's a lot of older product lines out there that aren't shiny, you know, really exciting things. Yeah. But there's a commitment to those customers still and those team members. And so that's challenging to figure out how you balance that. Right. Yeah.

Interesting. So when you were running your divisions as multiple 17 different companies, tell us what you learned about hiring and managing salespeople in the tech space. I find that managing and hiring salespeople, especially sales leaders, is a priority on discipline and structure. because, you know, one thing I learned early in my career is that sales individuals, sales professionals are very good at selling, which means they're going to sell you. They're going to tell you all the right things that they're doing and why that deal didn't close this month. And what is it that, you know, that you're not seeing that they're having to deal with?

And then before you know it, like, you realize that there's a pattern there and like there's always a reason. And being able to cut through that and have sales leader. and individuals that embrace the discipline, embrace the process, embrace the numbers, and understand that that's where you get your results. It compounds. And like anything in life, do we always want to go to the gym? Do we always want to work out?

No, but we know it's good for us. Do we always want to do those cold calls? No, but we know that that feeds the funnel. We know that following up with these leads is critical. And if we're not doing it at the cadence that we need, then they're likely going to drop off. They're going to fall out, you know. And so making sure that the leads matriculate through the process all the way to the pipeline and we're doing the things we need to do, looking for individuals that have a history of embracing that and aren't just talk. And that's not easy, especially when you're chatting with people that are good at selling you.

Right, right. Yeah. So how do you overcome that? What are some of the tricks to overcome? Well, you know, that's a pattern here, but it's, again, about implementing systems within the organization. that ensure that there's lanes there that the teams fall into, ensuring that there's clear accountability for the different players on the team. They know exactly what they're responsible for.

Are they responsible for deals closed? Yeah. dollars booking or revenue realized? Because each one of those is going to drive different behaviors. So as leaders, you want to be cognizant of what you're setting as your waypoints for the individuals on your team and how they're going to get there. Yeah. I think that's a great point. I mean, to the people listening, you have got to be crystal clear with your sales leader and your salespeople. Here's what your goal is. Here's how the comp works.

You know, here's how we calculate things. Because if you leave anything to interpretation, they will exploit it in their favor. Right? You can say, no, no, no. I thought we were going to count it this way. And, you know. Like commission plans. Commission plans.

This gives them 3%, but this gives them 4%. well, you know that they're going to put more time into whatever selling delivers 4%. And so you'll very quickly learn where maybe you had holes in your structure because you're getting, you know, the system's going to generate results based on, you know, what the system is. Absolutely. Yeah, I mean, yeah, their salespeople are super nice people, but they're not going to do anything to your benefit, right? They're going to do it for their benefit because that's what they're, they're, it's a commission driven thing. Charlie was a munger

He said, I'll tell you the result If you'll show me the incentive plan Yeah He says, I don't have to look any further than that So very good I mean, there's a lot of things that we do As business leaders Where we're trying to get people to do something

Like we're going to get him to make the calls And get him to make the number We're going to help them and we're going to do all these things And then sometimes you've just got to say Listen, we're just going to to give you the target and you've got to make the target or you're going to have to go try somewhere else. You know, here's the prize we're going to give you if you make it and then let them figure

it out. Yep. Because some will and some won't, right? But you can't make people do what they're not going to do. Absolutely. No, you also want them to understand the why. Like, why are we doing this? And for sure, is there a money factor that motivates individuals?

Absolutely. but understanding how that deal endures to the greater vision and mission of the organization and how that benefits the entire organization and makes a better tomorrow. And that really goes for any role, is making sure that, like, it's a trickle down. What are we trying to achieve as an organization and then a department and then a team and then an individual contributor? How do you understand the incremental things that you do day to day that change the narrative for the business?

Do you know that? And if you don't, you should. Right. Do you have a big deal you can walk us through that you did? I'd say there's a handful. I actually think how I like to think about that is more like campaigns or programs that we put in place that generated results from a sales perspective. Okay.

It goes to just maybe a singular deal. And I think that's where as organizations where I learned was there's usually a neglect for certain types of of avenues for sales. And where I've seen the most success is a reinvestment in existing customers back-to-base opportunities, B-to-B, or, you know, well, but that's built. I'll sell back to business. But really, it's selling back into the base and understanding success factors for your current customers.

What are add-ons? What are other things? What are other services? What are additional hooks that you can get in the existing customers? A lot of times organizations overlook that. They're constantly looking at the next big deal. and overlooking the fact that you can drive 20% more revenue for the organization just by making the customers you serve now more successful. Because that's what you're doing.

You're making them more successful in their roles by delivering more ways to deliver success. Absolutely. I think you're right. And I suppose I understand where people are coming from when they say, we need net new deals out of you. You know, net new, net new, net new. I'm like, oh, you just need revenue, right? How about just revenue? Let's give you revenue.

And so we used to track, in another company, we would track the top, just the top 10 opportunities for the quarter, every quarter. What are the top biggest deals? Inevitably, 9 out of 10 were always with a customer. Yep. They bought something little, they were looking at something big, you know? So it's, we had one customer go from a $10,000 deal, $25 million deal. Yep.

But, you know, it took 10 years. But, you know, the ability to, I wouldn't even call it just, an existing customer, it's almost an expansion. Yes, and that's recurring revenue? No. Okay. You're just selling more things to them. Yeah, selling more things to them.

It's just more license and maintenance. Yep. Okay. What are your thoughts on AI, chat GPT, and all that, how that's going to affect business life as we know it? Well, first off, it's not if. It's going to affect every single business, organizational, human at a scale that I don't think most truly appreciate yet.

Another venture is I'm actually the CEO of an AI data infrastructure company, so accelerating that currently as well. So a lot of perspective on that space and passionately. What does that company do? We provide basically an overarching solution that sits on top of a complex ecosystem for a business or organization. And so really enterprise level organizations or health care is where we kind of have our footprint started, bringing a unified clarity and ability to action off of data from

disparate systems, disparate teams, different roles, understanding interdependencies and workflows and feedback loops between an organization. Very quickly, you can start to see the complexity between, you know, a typical business. So it uses AI to figure out the whole business? to bring in the data, normalize the data, provide that data back to the end user, as well as bringing in data points as it relates to the organization and learning the organization structure process and then identifying in the billing process, where do things get hung up? Well, you know what? This approval has to go back and forth, you know, three different times between Bob and Amanda. Oh, and, you know, why?

And being able to kind of start to ask the whys and being able to address. It maps everything and then starts to point out, check this one out, check this one out. Correct. Okay. Cool. Is this like a little mini-Pallantir? A what? A mini-palenteer?

I am not familiar with that. Palantir kind of does the same thing, but for big, big companies and governments and stuff. We'll have to look at it. Well, that's cool. That's very cool. What about, do you ever use AI for like calling old prospects and trying to, you know, to yeah I mean I think that the the list of ways to use AI almost like in a transactional state is plenty to draft you know correspondence or communications and then you can

refine it I think that there's automation as it relates to outreach there's automation and reminders like there's there's so many different kind of different you know those those spot places hey draft an RFP for me okay cool and I think where where the real benefit is is when you start to think of the second dimension or even the third dimension where instead of just automating a singular process or singular transactional component of your operation or you as a person, it starts to automate an entire kind of workflow or where the vision for our organization with Awali, the AI company, is, hey, can we start to automate the multiple layers and connectivity and dependencies? And I think the majority of organizations, I think the statistic is, it's something.

like 82% of companies right now are either using or experimenting with AI. But the vast majority of those is really in the example that you just gave is just, can you draft this for me? Can you look at this for me? Can you analyze this data set for me? And then they're done. And really where it's going to differentiate organizations and your business is when you start to get to that second and third dimension.

And then the fourth dimension is predictive stuff that, like, as humans we can't even do. I was talking to a buddy the other day. And there's an organization that predicts the impact of explosives on different types of materials. And they were doing it for like humbys. And they were actually predicting it down to the size and shapes of shrapnel that would come off of it. And then after they did it, they actually found pieces that mirrored what they had predicted. And so those are things that, like, as humans, we can't even wrap our minds around. And so that's the next frontier.

And I think that's scary and exciting at the same time. Yeah. Yeah. It's wild. Certainly always recommend to our viewers that they spend a little time with one of the AI tools every day. Yep. The more you use it, the better you understand. Yeah, use it.

I use it for more stuff all the time. So let me ask you a couple of rapid fire questions, because this is kind of wrapping things up here. So what's your favorite all-time book? Ooh, since it's Rapid Fire, I don't know favorite book, but I would say the book I give people the most is the last lecture by Randy Posh. Oh. I don't know if you've read it. What's about? Great book written by an individual that was diagnosed with terminal cancer, had a year to live.

He was a college professor. And basically over the course of that year, he wrote a book at the same time while giving lectures to his students about the things that met in the most in life. So, wow. Great book on perspective and gratitude and how to reflect. Wow. That's good. That's a good one. I'll have to read that one. And then a favorite band? Shoot. I think you even told me you're going to ask me this. I love a lot of different music. I'm boring on this because I don't really probably have a unique favorite band. Angels and Airwaves is a band I like, I guess. Angels and Airwaves. Dave Matthews is always great.

Okay. I don't know the first one, but I know David Matthews. That's a fun band. How about favorite word? Passion? Passion. If you don't love what you're doing, then why are you doing it? Yeah, you would only answer that by saying because I have to, right? If I have to dig digits to make money, I'll dig a ditch. But I certainly want to do something that I like.

Yep. And we always tell people, you know, one of the mistakes people make is they say, well, I just love, love, love, play the guitar and sing. I just love it, do it all the time. And then I say, but I can't make my living doing it. So I'm just going to put it aside and I'm going to go, you know, be a farmer or something, whatever. You know, an accountant, right? Well, you don't have to be Edwin McCain to be a professional guitar player the rest of your life. But you can be in the guitar business.

You can book tours and you can sell guitars. You can sell strings. You can, there's a lot of stuff you can do in that ecosystem. You can sell guitar software. I mean, and so I encourage people to get close to kind of the people they want to hang out with. Yep. So that's, we agree on that. So is there anything that you want to promote as we finish up here today?

Yeah, you know, I'm passionate about helping other CEOs and leaders really realize a better return on life. I'm a partner in a firm called Next Level Growth, and that's a business. our passion is working with CEOs and helping them get unstuck and helping work with their organizations to put in systems and patterns and cadence and the right people that change their tomorrow. I think a lot of times as leaders of organizations, especially CEOs, it gets lonely at the top. And I think a lot of people have a misperception that like, oh, wow, they've got it all figured out. There's a lot of questions there. And it's always great to have that individual or that coach to kind of work with to figure out that's been there. They've been in the training.

trenches. And so, yeah, I'm passionate about working with other leaders in varying capacities to help change their tomorrow. That's wonderful. And I've certainly seen that and participated in that before where, you know, the leadership in the company just kind of grounded out every day. And it was just like almost a right of passage to kind of work 10 hours a day and be semi-miserable and kind of working in the business all day versus just backing up a little bit saying, you know, let's think about the decisions we're going to make for the business

and let other people do the grind. So anyway, I'm sure you'll be helpful with that and I hope you can figure out how to help me continue to improve that also. I love the phrase return on life, the ROL. Yes. Michael E.rath actually coined that phrase. That's very good. That's very good.

Well, we're definitely, oh, well, last, How do we get so lucky to get you in Greenville? I don't know. I relocated here for the original opportunity with Harris, and then shortly thereafter was managing teams and businesses all over and no longer had a team here locally. But like so many of us, you know, you find Greenville, you fall in love, and you say, well, I'm not going to change the geography.

The opportunities may change or where I'm affecting change, but I'm going to keep living here because it's awesome. Well, we're really glad you're here. We're glad you're involved in the, in the tech community. We're glad that you're involved in the veteran community at the Rupert Center, Rupert Murdoch. No, Rupert, Murp, Rupert Hughes.

Rupert Hughes, yeah. So we're glad you're here. And thanks for being on the podcast. Well, thank you, sir. Thank you, sir. Thank you, man.