Noob School - The Power of Perspective with Greg Jackson

Episode Date: January 26, 2024

Today on Noob School we're joined by none other than Greg Jackson - COO of SmartSights, a global leader in industrial data-driven analytics, reports, and notifications based in Austin Texas. Greg takes us on a deep dive recollection of his high-functioning career, from his time working with Datastream, to what led him to SmartSights and everything in between. Tune in for a lesson in the best practices that will lead you to a long and prosperous career. 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 and I have a truly, truly good friend. We've been friends for, how long, Greg? I did the math on this, 25 years. 25 years. Wow. Okay, 25 years, me and Mr. Greg Jackson have been friends.

We've worked together. We've started projects together and sold stuff together and gotten in a little trouble together. I don't remember that part. Maybe we should have gotten in trouble. We got away with that. I don't know. But Greg, Greg is obviously an old friend,

and Greg currently is the C-O at Smart Sites. And he's based in Austin, Texas. And I remember when you went to Smart Sites to run it for a guy, I think I was the reference call, the guy called me. That's right. And I told him you would do a really good job for him, and you probably would find things for the company to do that he hadn't thought of yet because you got a good brain on you.

But now you've successfully built it up. You've essentially brought in a partner or sold it to private equity. That's right. And you're going to work there for some period of time. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So we're moving into the next phase of kind of growth and acceleration.

So it's a challenging but a fun time just the same. It's different in it. It is. Yeah. Yeah. It's different. And you've been through that several times in your career. I think one of the things I've always admired about you, among many,

is your ability to kind of roll with the punches. You know, this is happening. Okay. We'll just see how this works. You know, we'll make this work this way. And I think a lot of other people, just in business and in life in general, you know, if something happens, I'm like, gosh, this is ridiculous. And, you know, why is it happening to me?

And it's not fair. And I'm going to sue these people. and I think you're a good example to people of just like, it's life, move on, might turn out to be a good thing. Yeah. Well, thank you. Yeah. It's awesome.

So you're doing that now, but what we like to do on this show is to back up and kind of learn more about you in your formative years and kind of things, the experiences you had, education, et cetera. It led you to the point where you could do this job. And the reason I say it that way is many people, particularly in the Noob School, that are just starting out, they think, I want to do what Greg's doing. Sure. You want to be COO with smart sites. Like, well, do you know how to do that? You know, probably not.

You know, you really don't want a job you don't know how to do. Yeah. So let's back up. I know you grew up in Canada. That's right. What part? I grew up in a little town called Radium Hot Springs. It's in British Columbia.

Wow. So it's about an hour from the. Alberta, BC border. Okay. Now, give us more information than that. Where is that, Alberta? The western part. The western part?

Yeah, the western rockies. So it's a valley that divides the Rockies from the Purcells. It's also the valley where the Columbia River starts. Anywhere near the Calgary Stampede? Yeah, it's like three hours from there. Do you go to the rodeo over there? Yeah, yeah. Love it.

It's fantastic. I need to get up there. Check that out. You do. And you ski a lot up there, right? You do. Yeah, a couple of great ski resorts. Helly skiing is a big deal, right, if you can get up on some of the glaciers.

Right. It's a beautiful, beautiful spot. And so you grew up up there, and then was it a good high school you went to? Well, apparently. Okay. It was good. Do you have to call it in Canada as a high school? Yeah, you call it something else.

Yeah, yeah. And then college. Where did you go? University of Calgary. In Calgary. Yeah. Okay. And what'd you study?

I studied economics and political science. Okay. Okay. So business-businessy stuff. Yeah. I had no idea what I wanted to do. Yeah. But in general, I did the same thing.

Yeah. Someone I mentioned political science, I promise you, I did not know what that term meant. Yeah. How would you know? Science and political... But they said, why did you take political science? Political Science, it had the most electives. But you know, what's interesting now is when you think about like geopolitics, for example.

Like I'm a big fan of a guy named Peter Zion. I don't know if you follow him, but he's written a couple of interesting books. And he talks about, you know, how geography and politics shape regions. They shape decisions, all these types of things, really timely in terms of what's going on in terms of the world. I didn't, you know, you don't necessarily get any exposure to anything like that in high school. Yeah. You know, when I was in university, I enjoyed those courses. Yeah.

And it was one of those things where there's two or three professors that I had. Yeah. And I found that those were the ones that I was most engaged in. Right. And then on the business side, the economic side of it was, that's also, you know, really fascinating to me in terms of, you know, since I was a kid, I always been fascinating how businesses grow and thrive and prosper and fall apart in some cases. And so I had a keen eye on those two things and, you know, turned out, worked out okay. Yeah.

And it ended up being a good foundation. That's good. That's good. Yeah, that's good. I'm glad you enjoyed that geopolitical discussion. Probably, you probably got more of it in Canada than we got in the United States. We kind of think of all of our political discussions right here, you know. Well, it's hard not to notice, right?

Yeah. When you think of just the mass of the U.S. in terms of the size, number of people, all those types of things. And so you end up being a keen observer of things that are going on beside you because there's a lot that is happening that is incredibly impactful, you know, from an economic standpoint, right? So those types of things. So it's, you know, it's one of those things where the U.S. is admired in so many ways, right?

And over the years, you know, there's things, there's tranches that, you know, things might not be going so great. But when you think about what's happened here in terms of the evolution of it and how it continues to grow and prosper and get better and make mistakes and learn from those things, as a Canadian seeing that, it's impressive, right? Your news channels are inundated with it, right? So it's, you can't ignore it. Yeah. But I would say for me, that was an enticing thing. Right. And now I'm, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're Jane and I are pretty much at the point now where we're going to have been in the U.S. longer than we've been in Canada.

Wow. And so we're within a year or two of that. And so that's pretty cool. And you think you'll stay? Yeah. Love it. We'll have to go back and visit. Go back and see family and all that kind of stuff.

But from, you know, the places that we've been kind of privileged to live here for, you know, almost a decade. And then in Austin almost for two decades now. The people make it, obviously. Right? It's been terrific for us, you know, as we've raised our kids down here. And also, it's been great, you know, from a professional development in a learning standpoint. So it's all good. You like Austin? I do. Yeah.

I hope to come visit. It's hard not to. Yeah, I'm sure. There's a lot of good things going for it. It's young. It's vibrant. Yeah. It's, I was commenting to a number of people over the last couple of days about when you go through down, you know, we left Greenville almost 20 years. ago. Yeah. And you go to, when I first moved here, downtown was not that great a place to go. There's a few places down here. And now it's vibrant, it's full. There's people moving around.

There's new buildings. There's new logos. And you can see why it's become, you know, a hub for, you know, many, many people that want to come and migrate to, which I think is, that's neat to see those success stories, right? And, and it, you know, it begets more business and other things kind of grow and thrive. And it's, to me, that's, that's, that's, that's, fascinating to see those cycles. Well, maybe you and Jay moved back to Greenville one day. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. That'd be good. Good for us. Okay, so you obviously went to a good college, and you got a good basic understanding of geopolitics and also economics. And then how did you get started in the business world? My first job was actually working for the university. So I got a job there, and that's what got me into the whole technology center. And so it was things were old manual processes, and it was doing some change management and systems and implementation work on major processes that needed to be automated.

It made no sense to have card systems and those types of things and some disaster recovery stuff. And it was something I applied for. You know, I needed a job when I was done, and I was fortunate enough to get it. And that kind of got me into being able to do, you know, project management and got me my toes in the water with respect to different technologies and how it gets applied. Did you apply for that job while you were still in school? Yeah. Okay.

Did you start before your school was out? No. Okay. No. So it was a full-time job? Yep. Yep. Okay.

Interesting. And then how long did that last? I think it was there for like two or three years. Okay. Then what happened? And then I went to work for Fleur Daniel, the big engineering firm. Okay. Had a group of companies.

They called them the diversified services companies. And so there were things that were complementary to their business. Yeah. And I had a number of college friends that actually worked for Floor. And they said, hey, there's a sales job that's available with this group. It was called TRS at the time. It was a staffing company. And so their primary purpose, you know, is you do large engineering projects,

you staff up and you staff down. And they wanted to, and that was very cyclical. Either one a big project or you didn't. And so they wanted to grow the business outside a floor. And so they hired me as a salesperson to go to the other, you know, firms in town. So they had a database of, you know, engineers and computer scientists and drafts people. construction folks and the job was to kind of use that portfolio of people and say, hey, if you need people for, you know, short periods of time or the project might be only for

a year. And so as a salesperson literally selling, selling, you know, bodies and expertise on a part-time basis. And so that got me into the floor universe of companies. And then... You're about 25 then? Yeah, 25, 28 kind of in that range. And then they had this other company and a good friend of mine, Peter Grace, you should have them on this show, great sales track record here. You've met him a number of times. He went and he was at Floor in one group and they had this idea to start do a similar type of thing because they have the, you know, large companies develop expertise and so what I give the floor a lot of credit for is they had an incubator before they were known as incubators. And so they, they said, they said,

said, hey, we do a lot of procurement services, and so there's expertise that we have around, you know, buying stuff on a global basis. And there are systems that were put in place in terms of managing that process, right? So again, going from paper to computerization, which isn't really that long ago when you think about it. And they said, we're going to start this company, and it's going to be around procurement services and electronic procurement. And that happened to be in lovely Greenville, South Carolina. So people, Peter went down, you know, I had a lot of chats about this and, you know, he was at that point in his life and he's like, hey, I'm going to take a chance on this thing and I'm like,

I think that's great. And then six months later he says, they need somebody else. What do you think? And so I came down, never been here before and interviewed for the job. There was, I think I was a 10th employee, you know, that was coming on to this company and loved the team. And then before I could leave the president of the division at the time, he's like, So he's going to take this job.

And he kind of, you know, he was a good closer, John. It was a lot like you. And so he put me on the spot. And I said yes. I was like, sure, I'm in. And then he literally turned around at his desk. And because, you know, the internal network, he knew that I was with his sister company and stuff like that.

And he goes, I'll tell your boss. So he sent him an email. And he says, hey, great job working with Greg. I got a number of things. We're excited to get them on his team. And that's, you know, came down here. We didn't know if that was going to work, right, in terms of a company or their concept in terms of doing this.

And so we got to start building an electronic procurement business. So you, Fleur must have had a big presence up in Calgary. Okay. Yep. So some of your friends worked there. You end up going to work there. Yep. And then, you know, you obviously did something in your sales job there to impress,

you know, Peter Grace and some other people to think you're the guy they wanted to bring to do this. Yeah. Because there had to be thousands of other people, you know, that worked for the company. There was, but I think there's something to, if it's a new thing. Yeah.

Because there's a concept, you know, it's a, hey, how do you bring a concept to reality? And there's a certain kind of headset where you people, like entrepreneurs kind of love it or they find that niche and they go do it. But sometimes when you see it inside of this big, you know, knowing quantity in terms of what you're doing, And we didn't know it was going to work, right?

It was a risk, right, in terms of that. So some, a number of people were just, you know, that turned them off, right? Even though they might have had a skill set and a resume that was much better than mine. But, you know, I was keen on the technology. I thought it was disruptive in terms of things that were going on. And, you know, as important as all those things is there's a team of people there that you could see, we're going to figure this stuff out. And they had that confidence.

So what was that company called, the division? It's called Aquion. Equion. So Harbinger was another one. Right. So we ended up, so this was interesting. So we started this company, we started to get, you know, building electronic catalogs, which nobody had heard of at the time and those types of things, and build a business to make the process

better. We realized that the technology was more important than the services surrounding it. And so we built out that. out that technology and then the Fluor leadership team at the time, I give them a lot of credit. They're looking at these different businesses that they had under this umbrella. And they came to the conclusion with the president, a guy named Carl Falk, who was a good mentor of mine and I'd learned a ton of things from. He in conjunction with the Flore leadership said this isn't a good home for this technology, so let's sell it. And so let's spin it out and get it into a home where it makes a lot more sense.

and the company that we ended up, or one of the, there's two or three different companies that we were in discussions with, and the company that we ended up, you know, selling Acreon to was Harbinger. So, okay. I think that's what I always thought it was Harbinger, but I skipped one. Yeah, that's how I got to Harbinger.

And so Harbinger was invested in our partially owned by Floor at that time. No, they sold the whole thing to them. And they were looking, you know, they were an EDI company, And so they were looking to, hey, how do we have other value-added things that can consume traffic that we make money on every transaction on, right? And these private networks, so it made sense for them to have these other capabilities. So they took a chance on that. And that's how, and I don't know the specifics, if it came through Scott Millwood or not, because he was there at Harbinger for a period of time. But that's how I got introduced to Alex and Courtney.

And so we were looking at a joint venture of taking, you know, this capability and hooking it up to MP2 and the data stream systems to make that procurement piece better. And so I got to know Alex and Courtney through a series of meetings. And so we explored in Larry and you briefly, not that much, you weren't that involved in that point. And we had a series of discussions who were going down on this path. We were going to say, hey, let's do this joint venture. you know, we'll take this technology, we'll marry it up to these things. And those things are tricky, right, in terms of trying to figure out, hey, the right structure and those types of things.

And I think mutually both Larry and then the folks at Harbinger said, you know, this probably isn't going to work. And I was disappointed because we had put in so much time and energy and effort to try to do it. And at the time, Jane had just taken a new job and we were about to get married. And she took a new job in Toronto, and I'm like, well, I'll find something to do. I'll move back to Toronto, right? I'll go, there's lots of stuff that I can figure out there.

And then, like literally on a, like a Thursday evening, Alex calls me up and he says, hey, do you want to have lunch tomorrow? And so we met downtown for lunch, and he said, you know, it's unfortunate that has happened, but why don't you come to data stream and we're going to do it ourselves? and we need somebody to kind of help us get this thing off the ground. So that's how I met you. Yeah. Well, that's interesting story for lower reasons.

But one is it shows, you know, the nobs out there that are watching. You know, you went through this process representing Harbinger trying to get this partnership done. And for whatever reason, the plug got pulled on it. Yep. but not because of you. You did a really good job. I'm sure you were like all the people really liked you and they thought, this guy can probably help us

to make this thing happen. So once again, you know, I think it's taking what easily could have been a bad thing, but it's a good thing. Yeah. You know? Yeah. So I think that's wonderful.

You have a way of doing that. But I did wonder on the procurement thing, was there a company at the time that was able to do the procurement that we were trying so hard to do ourselves, the electronic procurement? Was there somebody doing it? There's two. There's a couple, the ones that come to mine are Commerce One and Arriva. Okay. But they were so, you know, both incubated and started in the Bay Area.

And they were focused in a very different space. And actually I remember you and I meeting going out and we were meeting with the ERIBA leadership team and we're seeing if we could do things together. And they're incredibly open about, you know, why they focused where they did. And we thought, hey, we bring this industrial piece to the table. And with it, it had a complexity that others didn't necessarily appreciate in terms of the, you know, parts and all those types of things. And they did office supplies and some routers and some computer programs. products and we're able to scale that much quicker because it was easier.

There's a more finite list of stuff that you can get into an electronic catalog and make money with. But I remember we had tremendous admiration in terms of what they were able to do and scale it. And then the trick for us was the fact that we were working with industrial distributors that were selling parts and pieces and their whole commercial model was not supportive of e-commerce, right? It was the antithesis of it. It was like, guy shows up, takes orders, check. of stockrooms in some cases if they had they'd manage the stockroom for it we wanted to put that in in electronic format and make the transactions go away so that that window of time

that we figured a lot of those things out you know I kind of cherish that from a learning perspective because there is a sales process in terms of trying to get people to adopt this technology right in terms of the the first ones that are going to step into the fray on this thing and then equally important of it is we had to bring the suppliers along, right? So we had to go and convince them that this big, thick catalog that they had and these, you know, boatloads of people and trucks that would show up every day at the plant, that there could be some efficiencies gained there. And one of the things that I took away from that, and it gets to this notion of being a good

lifelong learner and looking for, you know, ways to improve your organization, one of the really key things was when we went to the time, top industrial distributors at the time, we got meetings with the CEO and the C-O-O and the head of sales. Fortune 500 companies. So I look back on that now and I think that's pretty cool that they gave us the time. But at the same time, they were trying to figure out how's our business going to change. And so the fact that we were able to kind of sell them on the concept and then they had to make some pretty big strategic decisions to be able to support this and dedicate teams of people to it. And, you know, it was one of those things. It wasn't a true startup. It was

incubated inside of what we did at Datastream, but it was, it was phenomenal. I loved every, every single minute of it. It was great. It was great learning experience. Wonderful. It was wonderful. It was very difficult to do, you know, and now the technology is different. Yeah. You know, wouldn't be as difficult today. Yeah. There's inflection points there. Have chat GPT do it for you. It's true. So after working with DataStream and Iron Procure in Greenville for a good chunk of time, how many years was it?

Six or eight years, I think. Eight years? I think did you get head hunted? Yeah. You got head hunted to go take over this company in Austin. No, no, there's another step in there. So I went and I went and worked with Ralph Carter at a company called Pavilion Technologies, which was a model-based control and optimization company that uses artificial neural networks, interestingly enough.

All the rage now. But that was awesome. So that was a company that was a venture-funded company and needed to get its footing around, hey, it's not just the cool technology, it's the application of it and certain key industries. And that was, I went there in a sales and business development capacity. and the goal essentially was to get that. The investors had been in it a long time. And the goal was Ralph built out a leadership team

to kind of get it in a state that it could be sold and find a home for it. And then did that. So that was a fascinating process in terms of being able to kind of work through that. And so we ended up selling the company to Rockwell Automation. And Rockwell, you know, I ended up

staying on for about five years in terms of being the head of that division and running it and leading the sales team globally and getting to know the guts of an inside multi-billion dollar company you know i certainly learned a lot of that you know a lot of ralph did ralph move on he did you sold it and you took over and ran the division i got you yeah okay yeah so that was fun and then uh and then i went i left rockwell and i did a total um somebody recommended i talked to this of this company in Cleveland, Ohio that was doing another type of control algorithm that they were trying to license. And so we went and had a just ended up being a couple years.

So we raised a couple rounds of venture money, got a couple of key customers on board that were starting to use it. Then, you know, it ended up selling to one of the major deals that we put together. We got some investment money fund. So a good home for that. And through the end of that process, I got a call from a headhunter, or an executive recruiter, I guess, is the appropriate term. So I got a call from a head hunter, and he said, I've talked to three people,

and they all said that I should talk to you about this job. And so it was back in Austin, and so, you know, we didn't necessarily want to be moving the kids all around the country all the time, but we knew Austin well, and it was the right time and the right opportunity. so I got a chance to be the CEO of that company. And that's where you were my reference there, actually. Yes, yes. And so did that. So we were able to grow that business.

You know, really interesting niche products. So that company was called Win 9-1-1. And then through that, you know, we were approached by, you know, different firms along the way. And we ended up selling it to the Cap Street Group, which is a private equity firm in 2021. So that was an interesting process in terms of working through all of that. And then spent the last several years really working on, hey, how do we get this company?

How do we accelerate growth? How do we build out additional capabilities around it? So they're masters at that. And that's been really both a challenging and a learning process for me in terms of getting it to the next state. And we made our first acquisition late last year. So that's the reporting and the analytics piece, and then we had the notification piece. And so just earlier this month, we've been working for a year in terms of putting capabilities together that makes both of the products better, higher value, things that we can do.

So we're excited about how that's going to fit in the market. And through that process, we rebranded it under the banner of smart sites, and we've just been rolling that out. So it's probably longer and more information than you wanted, John, but that's the path. And it's it's been a series of kind of, you know, fortuitous opportunities that took a chance on and they worked out okay. Yeah, it seems to me that, you know, there's a lot of baseline work in your life, but that first big opportunity was moving to Greenville. Yeah. And going after that, because that was, that's a little scary. Yeah.

And, you know, from that experience, it led to the next one with Datastream. And then that actually led to the next one because the next one was an old data streamer. Yep. You know, so kind of once, it's kind of one of those things. If you're advising the people just starting out, you know, once you kind of get in the game, you're in the game. You're in it, yeah. And after a period of time, you were, you know, you were a number two guy, then you were number one guy. Yep.

Then you were number one guy, you know, you were a guy. Yeah. So it's very interesting. Now, the things you were working on seem to be either like electronic procurement or some type of AI messaging alert kind of thing. They've all been in the kind of, I'll call it the industrial software space. So around manufacturing, infrastructure, those types of things. Yeah.

Something. Yeah. Okay. Is there more industrial stuff going on now or less? No, there's more. More. I think there's a couple interesting things that are. happening. One is kind of the reshoring of manufacturing. There's a lot of stuff that is just coming back.

And then the other piece, it's a real challenge in the space, is automation. There's fewer people that are available that want to work in, you know, plants. And so you have to rely more and more and more on technology. And so that's why I'm excited about what we're doing today in terms of being able to say, hey, if there's fewer people, if something's going, hey, why are you got to know about it right away and you've got to arm that person right with the right information right so it's kind of like hey there's an alarm that's going on on this particular piece of equipment and then you know what we've been able to tie in with you know the company is called Excel Reporter that we bought out of Boston they have capabilities around industrial reporting and analytics and so they're they're

crunching numbers in behind the scenes that's be able to say okay you might want to look at this or here's a here's a graph that shows the what's happened to the last 30 minutes So if somebody's got to go fix this piece of equipment, you've got to arm them with, is it, is it critical in terms of the nature of what I have to fix? What's kind of been going on and what, you know, what's the next step in the action? So that's what we've been able to build out. And it's exciting. And all the while, people have fewer people to be able to do this. And so you've got to do it in a complex environment in terms of multiple systems. So you've got to make it easy to integrate into those things. And then you've got to make it really super easy for, you know, the operator or the maintenance person or, or, you know, whoever's responsible to go kind of fix that asset. And at the same time, you know, the folks that are making some of the decisions around looking at the analytics, you know, when the reporting pieces into plants, you know, there's bits of data that you've got to get from here, here, and here. And we've been able to automate that with the reporting piece of it and, you know, take work off of somebody trying to build a custom spreadsheet, do that form and then present it in such a way that says, hey, here it is. you know, make a good decision, analyze it, drill in deeper as you need to. So it's fun.

I love you mentioned that they're more onshoreing of manufacturing and more manufacturing jobs. I love when the politicians say, we've got 30,000 shovel-ready jobs. I'm like, who wants to work with a shovel? And what are they talking about? Nobody wants to do that. So it's interesting. Like semiconductors is the one that gets a lot of headlines, right? When you look at, there's a ton of stuff that went to, you know, China in particular and in Taiwan.

but those whole efforts and it's amazing when you think about like you know what you know Texas instruments and and Intel and these other firms they're spending billions of dollars like Ohio is a good place Columbus Ohio they've done a good job of recruitment some of those firms Austin's benefited from that in the surrounding area you know Dell and they're building new plants they are building new plants there you know Samsung's there and these things are massive incredibly sophisticated in terms of the precision it has to happen.

And, you know, all the while you still need a whole bunch of people, but you got to do it, you know, as efficiently as possible. And so that space, well, it doesn't necessarily sound that intriguing in terms of, you know, there's other, hey, I want to go work on an app or whatever the case may be. There's real value there in terms of the stuff that we deliver. And if you like, if you're lifelong learning, you like to understand how stuff's put together and how it works and how sophisticated it is, the blend of equipment and software is, incredibly fascinating. And I'm excited about, you know, some of, you know, we need to look at some

of the machine learning type things to be able to make it even better. It's not just data or report. It's what other type of analysis can you apply to make this process more efficient or troubleshoot or whatever the case may be. So it's, it's, it's, it's, there's a lot going on. Yeah. In terms of the, the synthesis of those activities is pretty cool. So your stuff, your specialty has become helping industrial situations get better. Machinery, talk to each other

to buy parts electronically just to make everything work better within a factory or industrial setting, which is probably far more valuable than exchanging recipes on Instagram or something. I don't know.

Marketplace hasn't caught up with that yet. But it's interesting. And, you know, for the noobs, right, in terms of why would you want to go into this space? And I'd encourage people to go to a conference or go have a look. And there's something that will jump out at you, which is striking. And that's the age of the people in the industry. Right? There's a lot of white hair like you and I have.

Right. And those people are going away. Yeah. And there's going to be opportunity, right? And it's not boring stuff. It's pretty fascinating in terms of what the impact that you can have and that you get to sell real value. which is great. Well, let's talk a little bit about sales in general. You have been in sales, but you've been more of a leader of salespeople. What would you say are some of the top traits

of the best salespeople that you've worked with? I think there's a number of things. One is just day in and day out attitude is incredibly important, you know, bringing a positive attitude to the table. I'd say another key one is a discipline and process, right, so that you have a plan, you want to execute that plan, and then you have to be a lifelong learner, right, in terms of these things, and you have to be willing to take risks. And I've been, you know, that's, you know, full credit to, you know, the work that you've done and the things that I've been able to glean and observe you do in terms of building out sales teams.

and more importantly, building out people to execute, right? Because everybody can't report to one guy as you get bigger. You know, we were fortunate just a year ago this month, actually, to add Michael Pace to our team, right? And I called, we were at that stage and we were talking with the board and the private equity folks, and we said we really need to build out a sales, discipline, sales organization.

And they're like, do you have anybody in mind? and I said, well, I have one person in particular in mind, and I don't know if we can get him, but he might have somebody that's coming along that might be stuck and maybe something is not. So I called Michael and had a discussion with him and was pecking his brains, and he says, well, you know, tell me a little bit more, tell me a little bit more. And I was like, well, so he said, give me some time to think about it. So we had two or three other conversations. I called him back.

And I said, Michael, you got a name for me. And he goes, what about me? And I said, well, I want you to understand 100% in terms of the state of where we're currently at and what we're working towards. And he said, okay, I'll come there. So he came on a weekend and we literally sat in our back deck and I had the big screen TV out. And I took him through the strategy and the plan and kind of our strengths and our weaknesses. And he took a couple of days or a week or so.

And he says, you know, I think I think this could be this could be. good. That's great. And so when you talk about those characteristics in terms of what makes a good sales leader or a salesperson, there's one guy that embodies in terms of all of those things. And on top of that, he's just a

terrific person to work with. So I've had the luxury of getting to see him come in and do these things really systematically. And it's what's awesome is the attitude that he brings to the table

and it's not a straight path, right? Like you say, hey, we've got to get this done and then something pops up. And when you're a smaller organization and building out a team, there's a lot of stuff that isn't there. And he just does it, right? And you're better for it.

You don't have to ask him. He just figures it out. He's solved three things that I hadn't even thought about by the following Monday, and it's a pleasure, right, you know, in terms of that. He's the best. He's the best. You know, at one time, Greg, I think it was after you had gone, I think.

But we were trying to slim down our head count in sales because we were about to sell. You know, so we were trying to, you know, slim everything down. So we, I decided to move the managers into sales and just have less managers. So we had, we had Pace was like the main guy working directly from me. And then four managers. So we got rid of one manager and split everybody up. Yep. Nothing changed.

So we got rid of another manager. It's put everything up nothing. We got rid of all of them. It was just pace and 45 salespeople. Yeah, that's a little much. And he kept the number. That's a testament to him. I don't know if that's a replica.

It didn't change my workload, yeah. Yeah, he's great. Did you know that I sent him to Mexico when he was young? Did you get about that story? Yeah, yeah. I told him we had to have someone to move to Mexico. And he goes, why me? Like, it said on your resume that you knew how to speak Spanish.

It was a minor. So I didn't, I remember that story, and I didn't know if he actually could speak Spanish. Oh. Well, he can, no. Oh, you mean now? Yes. I think he can now. So it was funny because we ended up having our first board meeting of the year down in Mexico.

We got an opportunity through Robert, who was the guy that hired me at 9-1-1. He had some connections, and it's a great story. But we ended up doing our board meeting at Vicente, Fox's presidential library. Wow. Never even knew this thing existed. And Robert said, hey, we have an opportunity to go down there, should we do it? So they talked to their private equity partner and the key partner on the deal, and he says,

sure, why not? And he talks to me, and I'm like, yeah, sure, why not? We didn't know what we were getting into. So we go down there. This was in January. And then it was like, okay, would you like to have dinner with, you know, ex-president Fox and his wife? And we're like, absolutely. Yeah.

And he's 80 years old. She's 70. And so we ended up doing our board meeting in her conference room at the center that they've built. And it's not like it is here. So it's said to be that, you know, one of the, you had to raise all the money himself. And he's started this foundation. And he spent two to three hours with us over dinner. And, you know, so we got a chance to pick his brain and hear his story.

And if you want to read a book that is. inspirational on all levels read that it's it's terrific it's it's I think it's just called the Vicente Fox story it's like my life and you know he was in sales he was running Coca-Cola and he went back and and what he did so what was really neat was so we spend these three or four hours which was great over dinner and then he said I'll come back tomorrow and I'll give you a tour of my library and so he came back the next morning and he took us through it and he shared stories about, you know, the different world leaders that he'd met

at these different points and his thoughts on the current state of affairs and things that are going on. And he couldn't have been more humble, more terrific. And then you look at what he's done, you know, to get to where he is. And then he didn't just, you know, pack up and leave. He actually said, there's other things that I can do in my private life. And he's been giving back in terms of the foundation that he's built and the things that he do. And so that's a long story that is a bit of a tangent, but back to Michael Pace knowing Spanish, so we go out for dinner and, you know, they're giving us the instructions and all those types of things when evening, well, sure enough, Michael's like, well, this is what I said, this is what I said. And then, you know, I see him talk Spanish.

And I was like, oh, so he does actually know Spanish. Yeah, yeah, he didn't, when I seen him down there, but he certainly learned over the course of a few years. But that was a real, it's kind of like your move to Greenville from Canada when he was like 23, 24. Yeah. And just gotten married. And I'm like, I need you to move to Mexico. And he's like, where? I'm like, you figure it out. I don't know. We need an office down there. And he's like, all right, you know. And I think that really put him in a different place in his career, you know, to take to be in a foreign country. It's a cutesy thing to do. Be a leader. There's no infrastructure there. You have to go figure it all of himself. And that's not the easiest thing to do. So again, another example like yours where you take on something a little risky,

a little different, a little far from home. Yeah. And it completely changes your nature for the rest of your career. Yeah. What's that old saying? The only thing that really makes you change is when you're uncomfortable. Yeah. And there's some truth to that. And sometimes when you take on additional responsibilities, can I do this? There's always going to be a certain amount of doubt you have in your head. And if it's a little uncomfortable and a little awkward, that's probably a good thing because you're going to learn because your senses, your sensitivities go up around stuff. So what are the biggest mistakes you see salespeople make? Not doing their homework? Not doing their homework. Yeah. You know, you get inundated with,

you know, I can increase your sales 50% or 90% or, you know, or, you know, you get, if you have a discussion and they clearly don't understand anything about your business right? Like that's a big turn off. Right? In terms of that because it takes effort and discipline and those types of things but you can do some research.

You can find some things out. It's right? It's so transparent. So that's probably the biggest one. Yeah. Right? And then I would say the talk listen ratio, right? You know, I've, you know, one of the things that I've, you know, had the pleasure of all the trips that we went on together at different times.

And your technique is unique because you ask a lot of questions, right? And you listen more. And then, you know, when it's time to actually, you know, come back and position something, you're a lot wiser in terms of one how to do it. But it also shows interest in the company. And I've seen that work when I've, I was at Pavilion where I remember we did a series of meetings with some major European companies. And if you have a title, it's easier for the sales guy to get meetings higher up.

And so we're meeting with, you know, VPs of manufacturing at, you know, major chemical and dairy companies around Europe. And the guy that was running our European operation at the time, he's like, okay, you know, we're going to spend a week. We're going to do two meetings a day. And we can, you know, can you come over for this thing? And I'm like, yes. And so they get this series of meetings come up and you have to have the agenda, right? And so my agenda was always the same, right? And it was like, hey, can you help us understand some of the key things that you're trying to accomplish, you know, in the next year, right?

Because big companies always have a plan and certain initiatives and stuff like that. And about half of the cases that we went to, the response was, tell us what you have or, you know, that type of. So you do that. Yeah, exactly. And it's not the easiest stuff to demo, but there's aspects to it. So it's more of a discussion. But the other half where it was really interesting, the response was that, and I learned this from you, asked them about their business, there's half of them that actually had

a presentation for us. And so they said, okay, here's the things that are important over the course of the next year to us. And they were, you know, in the industrial world, there's usually always something. around safety. There's always something around quality, there's always something around efficiency. And in half of the cases, we got presented to, and we never had to show a slide. And those were my favorite, right? Those were the, because you learned about the business. And some of them, you'd hear from the, you know, typically the VP of, you know, the technology

or manufacturing is a, you know, a chemical engineer of some sort or some engineering background, very technical in nature. And also very candid, right? And they'd say to you, this is a, you know, this isn't what we expected. We expected you to tell us everything that you had. And the response is, look, we don't know if we can help you or not, right? We think you can. We work with some of your competitors in certain cases, but are there things that you're doing? And it draws to the surface, do they have budget around certain initiatives, right? Because if it's one of these other things that's over here, it might be a really good idea, it might be a terrific ROI. They might make a justification for it. But guess what? You've got to run that through the budget gauntlet of what's

going to get funded in a particular year. And so people that don't do their homework, right, and try to understand what some of those needs are. And, you know, the transparency today is huge. If you're selling into a Fortune 500 company, their initiatives are known. Go read the annual report. They'll tell you.

How do you attach yourself to one of those things? Does it make sense, right? Well, I mean, just think about it. And, you know, just like you, I'm in charge of business and people will try to get an appointment to come show me, show me what they have. Yeah. Or come, you know, show me how their stuff can help me or whatever.

And so I'm just sitting here. I don't want to be shown anything. But they say, we like to come by and hear more about your business and find out if there's anything you're working on we can help you with. Yeah. Everything changes. Yeah. I'm like, yeah.

I got a whole list of things. If anybody can take any of these things and do them, I'll swap you money for it. Yeah. I mean, all day long. Yep. Fair trade. If you just want to come, let me look at your software. you know so yeah that's a that's a to me and you that's an easy one but I think sales

people if they get trained the wrong way they spend all their time learning everything about the product and how everything works and they just can't wait to show somebody you know let me show you how our thing works like I think you need to be technically competent though I'm a big believer in that because when you are selling something if you know how your product works you should take the time to invest in it should you be the first person to show off, not necessarily. But I think in terms of building credibility and bringing value to the organization, you've got to understand the business aspects of it, how it can be implemented, the potential impact. I agree with you. Reluctantly, I agree with you. I wasn't particularly good

at that, but I agree with you that that's ideal is that you know how to put the customer first and let them talk. But you do understand the business application, the technical act, you understand everything so when it comes up you're prepared yep but I have found if I had to pick one of the other and maybe you don't have to pick one of the other but if I had to pick someone who was going to be all great with the product but didn't want to talk to the customer about what they need or someone who's just as all about the customer and we'll figure out the details later I would take the second guy but I agree with you that ideally it should be both in those

scenarios I understand that in those scenarios I think the value of a really good sales engineer or technical salesperson they're gold right right in terms of being able to buddy them up and again it depends on the complexity of your product but if you have a good sales engineer that loves the technology has credibility that's a team selling approach and and that's also very beneficial depends again it depends on on what you're selling but But the other aspect of that oftentimes is you get an extra set of years. Yeah.

Right. And so you've got somebody else that's listening for some subtle cues on. You might think, hey, this is the most important thing that we have to tell you about our product. And it's key capability. But there's this other capability that's over here that's actually what the customer needs. And if you can flush that out of it, right, it makes it a heck a lot easier in terms of the justification. Well, Greg, let me ask you a few quick hitters here. We can talk sales.

all day. We could. I think we're going to get to your favorite book later on the panel, weren't we? And was your favorite book, the Bill Campbell book? It's one of my favorites. It depends on the subject area. I love to read. I read a ton like you do. Like hockey? A lot of hockeysters are good. So can I cover on the book thing?

So in business books, I love the book about Bill Campbell. You do. A trillion-dollar cup. It's terrific. We're going to talk about that one later. We'll talk about that one later. There's other areas. I think there's a travel writer, a guy named Bill Bryson. Mm-hmm.

Yeah. He wrote a walk in the woods and he made that into a movie, but he's written other ones like in a sunburn country. Yeah. And he's laugh out loud funny. Yeah. Right. In terms of reading it.

And he gives a slant to, you know, whether it's exploring Europe or Australia or the universe. Yeah. It's fantastic. We saw he came to Greenville. Did you? His book at the Peace Center. Did you go see him?

Yeah. And he was talking about his book about the universe. Was he? Yeah. And it's just, I can't believe one person can understand so much. Yeah. But anyway, I agree with you on him. Yeah.

Okay. Favorite band. See, that's tough. You got to pick one, man. You can't be Canadian now. Are there any Canadian bands? I guess Rush. You got Drake?

He's not a band. Rush is good. Rush is good. Trooper. Trooper. So I love bands that could perform. Okay. And so if you're limiting me to one, I would have to probably say you too.

You too. Okay. Well, you need to get out there and watch them in the orb there in Vegas. A friend of mine went the other night. He sent me just some snippet videos. It was just awesome. Yeah. Favorite word?

Perspective. Perspective. Tell me why. One is I think I value different opinions on things and always have. And I think whatever role that you have, that it's important to understand the different perspectives on stuff. And if you have a big problem that you need to solve and everybody thinks the same way, it's usually the might be the oddball opinion on something or perspective or some slant that you get. that makes the discovery process that much. Gotcha.

So you're always listening for different perspectives. Yeah. Like that. Yeah. The opposite of the bubble, everyone seems to be in these bubbles. Yeah, it's true. Understanding. Yeah.

All right, now, is there anything that you want to promote today? I want to promote this, right? I think the fact that, you know, when I think about the accomplishments that you had and the things that you did to build a sales order. organization and then the people that have gone on to do lead other sales organizations or what they've done, the genesis of that is really incredible. And I think you should be very proud of that. I'm a huge beneficiary of the opportunity to work with you and others around you. And so I think if I was to say promote something, it's, hey, make sure you stay connected

to people, right? Because it's meaningful and it makes a difference. and you get another perspective. Right. And I think that's valuable as you've got to learn and grow. And so the opportunity to work with others and gain from them, I think that's pretty incredible. Well, thank you.

And I appreciate that. I really do. And, you know, people say that, you know, from time to time, which I appreciate. But the message for the people, the noobs and the business owners that watch this show is, that wasn't because I was some kind of magic person. Like, you know, I'm going to magically turn these people into great leaders. It was a careful selection process. And we were very careful about what we were looking for, you know,

what their personality profiles were, what they did in college, were they leaders? Yep. How did we feel about them? It was the look and feel, what kind of experience they had. So we did, you know, we would do, you know, a hundred, 100 interviews, you know, to pick four people. Yep. And then those four people, you know,

eventually that became over 100 people in the sales department, but they were all carefully selected. So, you know, when we picked it Michael Pace, we knew he was going to be a winner. There's no question about it. Todd Lorbach, Dustin Cordell. I mean, get on the list. Greg Jackson.

So anyway, that's part of my business now is helping business owners figure that out. that if what what I figured out with help is you if you take the time to get the right people up front yeah you're not going to be stuck with the sales force that's driving you crazy yeah like trying to get them to do things they're not going to do so you got to get the right people so yeah I appreciate that thank you yeah yeah all right well thank you very much mr. Greg we will we will conclude and hopefully we'll next time you're here from Austin we'll do a follow-up that would

be terrific thank you Thank you, man. Take care. All right.