The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Elizabeth Andrew: Helping Founders Scale Their Businesses with Sales Expertise

Episode Date: May 29, 2024

Elizabeth Andrew: Helping Founders Scale Their Businesses with Sales Expertise Elizabethandrew.com About the Guest(s): Elizabeth Andrew is a top-producing technology sales executive, startup consultant, and advisor. She is the founder and CEO of her own tech startup, and has been recognized as a five-time sales leader. Elizabeth is also a fractional CRO, TEDx speaker, and author. She has established herself as a leader, motivator, and role model, breaking barriers into the San Francisco technology space at nearly 50 years old after a 17-year career break as a stay-at-home mom. Elizabeth empowers startup leaders, founders, entrepreneurs, and small to midsize business owners to achieve their revenue goals, scale their businesses, and create sustainable growth through her proven strategic framework. Episode Summary: In this episode, host Chris Voss interviews Elizabeth Andrew, a top-producing technology sales executive and startup consultant. Elizabeth shares her inspiring journey of reentering the tech industry after a 17-year career break as a stay-at-home mom. She discusses the challenges she faced and the lessons she learned along the way. Elizabeth also highlights the importance of compassionate leadership and the value that experienced professionals bring to the table. She provides insights into scaling sales operations and offers practical advice for founders and CEOs looking to grow their businesses. Key topics discussed in this episode include the challenges of reentering the workforce after a career break, the importance of life experience and resilience in leadership, the need for compassionate leadership in the tech industry, and strategies for scaling sales operations. Key Takeaways: Elizabeth Andrew's inspiring journey of reentering the tech industry after a 17-year career break as a stay-at-home mom highlights the value of life experience and resilience in leadership. Compassionate leadership is crucial for motivating and getting the best performance out of employees. Understanding what motivates individuals and creating a supportive work environment leads to higher productivity and growth. Founders and CEOs often struggle with scaling sales operations. Hiring the right people and developing a strategic sales playbook are essential for sustainable growth. Experienced professionals bring a wealth of knowledge and skills to the table. Their ability to adapt, problem-solve, and handle failure makes them valuable assets to any organization. The entrepreneurial journey requires dedication, hard work, and a willingness to adapt. It is a constant learning process that requires being on 24/7 and embracing the challenges that come with it. Notable Quotes: "You can learn the tech tools in six to 12 months, but you can't teach 20 years of experience and leadership." - Elizabeth Andrew "Compassionate leadership is about understanding what motivates your teammates and creating an environment where they can thrive." - Elizabeth Andrew "Resilience is built through overcoming challenges and embracing post-traumatic growth." - Elizabeth Andrew "The most expensive thing a company can do is make a bad hire. Hiring the right people is crucial for success." - Elizabeth Andrew "If nothing happens, nothing happens. It's all about your mental attitude and the drive to succeed." - Elizabeth Andrew

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast. The hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show. The preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready. Get ready. Strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. It's Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com.

There you go. Welcome to the big show. We certainly appreciate you guys coming by thanks for tuning in as always a little bit of delay there on the intro but as always we certainly appreciate you guys the chris mosh shows the family loves you but doesn't judge you for 16 years and 2000 episodes we bring you the smartest people the most brilliant minds all the people who write the most amazing books the thought leaders the ceos the presidential advisors the you name it.

The billionaires have been on the show too. And then just some idiot with a mic is on this show like every episode too. We bring these people to you. They share with you their cathartic moments, their lessons of life, the things that can make you smarter, make you more money. I'm not sure if they can make you better looking because I've seen some of you people out there. No, I'm just kidding. I'm sure there's surgery that you can do. Anyway, we have an amazing young lady on the show.

We have Elizabeth Andrew. She is the founder and CEO of her company, five-time sales leader, top sales leader in 2024. Her accolades are just astounding. She's a fractional CRO, TEDx speaker, and she's working on a new book series we'll talk about as well so we're talking about her insights and her journey and you're gonna learn stuff or else elizabeth andrew is

a top producing technology sales executive startup consultant and advisor fractional cro tedx speaker and author who has established herself as a leader motivator and role model with her aspiring inspiring and aspiring what what the hell just use both words of career re-entry by breaking barriers into the san francisco technology space at nearly 50 years old wait what no and after a 17-year career break elizabeth is a visionary sales leader who empowers startup leaders founders entrepreneurs and small to mid-sized business owners to achieve their revenue goals, scale their businesses, and create sustainable growth. By utilizing a proven strategic framework, she lays the groundwork for driving sales and scaling operations, and companies trust her to provide the foundation you need to scale your business with confidence.

There you go. Welcome to the show, Elizabeth. How are you? I am fantastic, Chris. Thank you so much for having me. Thanks for coming. We really appreciate having you as well. Give us your dot coms.

Where can people find you on the interwebs? Elizabethandrew.com. No S. Elizabethandrew.com. There you go. So give us a 30,000 overview of who you are and what you do. Yeah, it's great to be here. As you mentioned, I'm a technology sales leader. I've been a five-time sales leader and CEO and founder of a tech startup that I recently sold, actually. But what really makes my story Again. When I was very young and starting out my professional career, I started out in the investment industry and helped build a mutual fund company for Wells Fargo Asset Management. We took it from zero to a billion dollars in assets. And the last region we went into as an investment company was the Northeast

because that's the investment capital of the world, the way the Bay Area is tech. And so I took that region from zero to 70 million. So I learned how to build from the ground up early on. And I've been doing that my entire life. There you go. And so you work on this. Now, you have an interesting story. Tell us about your story. Evidently, you took some time off from business or there was some 17-year thing. Tell us about what that journey was. Yeah. As I shared with you, I was transferred to the East Coast. And this was in my late 20s. I was tasked with opening up the New England region for a bank, calling on stockbrokers, which was super interesting at the time because this was decades ago. And I was the only woman in the room. They were all white men that looked like my dad, as you can imagine in the Northeast. And when I moved east, my family said,

go for two years, have a great time, don't fall in love. After taking that region from zero to 70 million, I did not listen to my parents like most of us on the planet in our 20s and early 30s. And I ended up getting married to a New Yorker and moving down to New York. And I took 17 years as a stay-at-home mom during that. Yeah. Yeah. It was great. Although you're Californian and it was quite interesting. I moved to Boston in January, sight unseen and had kind of a shocking experience with sub-zero weather and tried to drive around with all the crazy Boston drivers. You're like, where's this sun?

Exactly. Boston, Massachusetts. Yeah, as you can see behind me, now that I'm in Southern California, shells and beach, and so I'm back in a sunny state. There you go. And how did Boston go do you end up moving back to California there? I spent a couple years in Boston I took that region again from zero to 70 million and then ended up you know meeting a New Yorker getting married and left left my career moved down to New York and between New and Connecticut, ended up 17 years raising my kids. I did a ton of nonprofit work, which was super interesting because a lot of those things

that I did in those years were harder than anything I've done professionally. But you're dealing with volunteers. You can't fire them if they don't do their job. But it wasn't until I took all of that off my resume that I was able to get back to work. So it was quite an experience. In 2011, I moved back to the San Francisco Bay Area. My oldest son was starting high school. I felt like it was time to get back to work.

And so I found that I was absolutely unemployable. Nobody would even, nobody would talk to me. You know, after 17 years as a mom and being on the East Coast, I ended up finding my very first job back at Putnam Investments, and I found the job through Craigslist. Yes. Working for the West Region Director of Sales. That was really great.

I got back into the city. I was working. At that point, I just felt like there's no fun to be had in financial services anymore. And here I am in San Francisco and so much going on in tech. And I laugh, Chris, actually, oftentimes because I told you I was the only woman in the room in the investment industry. I went from that to being the oldest person in the room in tech in San Francisco. In your 40s and 50s that sounds about right yeah yeah yeah really ages something over there oh yeah yes I

watched I watched so many 20 year olds run companies in the ground and I've told VCS I'm like why do you keep doing this I could have run that company and made a profit in my sleep like they you know I'll see ones that have potentials the unicorns or they're thought to be unicorns and they'll just ram right in the ground and one of my friends did the book i can't remember what it is but there's a unicorn on the cover and it's a book about all the all the oh about all the silliness in the tech business the drinking carts the alcohol carts the you know the the parties the i don't know the cocaine the drugs

the rock and roll you know all the just debauchery that was going on at some of these places that you're just like don't you guys have a sexual harassment drug policy like what's going on you know and just the waste of money i think we work is probably we work during its original ceo who's trying to buy it back now. The kind of, you know, that debauchery got like really out of hand with that company. It's so funny you say that because, you know, I started on Wall Street. And when I got, when I was launching in tech between 2011 and 2017, you know, it was, Wall Street was demonized. You know, anybody that was the, you know,

that's just such a different place. I mean, and, you know, everybody has a perspective of Wall Street being the Wolf of Wall Street and drugs and all those things. And I'll tell you that there is just as much going on in tech or was before the pandemic. You know, I saw as many egregious things in tech than I ever did in finance, you know.

And I think like anything else, we'll probably look back in 10, 20 years and, you know, we'll see a lot of documentaries on Elizabeth Holmes and, you know, and WeWork and all that we already are. And, you know, everybody's going to think everything in tech was like that. Yeah. There you go. It's an interesting space. Now, part of your TED Talk encompasses, I think, part of your journey too. Tell us about your TED Talk. And I think it was talking about hiring people like yourself who'd been out of the business theater for a while and why it's important to still find those people. Yep, absolutely. So when I was moving,

so I was back in the East Coast during 07, 08, back when everything fell apart. I was a mom, so I wasn't working at the time, but started with Goldman Sachs, started a program called a returnship program. And I knew a lot of particularly women that had had great careers that came out of careers in New York that were living in the tri-state area that after that kind of great recession decided to go back to work and they went into this returnship program. And Morgan Stanley, it was really successful. A lot of other companies ended up doing that. I didn't get involved in that because we ended up moving to the West Coast. And of course, tech was, you know, as you mentioned

earlier, a lot of ageism. A lot of the tech companies haven't been around that long, right? It was very young, and there was nothing like that. And, you know, I had such a challenge getting back to work. It took me years. And, you know, and I'm definitely an outlier. I get people calling me all the time saying, how'd you, you know, how'd you get into tech at that age? And, you know, and have a successful career. And so I, you know, I started really, you know, not speaking to the people that were so I, you know, I started really, you know, not speaking to the people that were reaching out to me saying, how'd you get back in, but really speaking to the companies about letting them back in. And the title of my tech TEDx was let them back in. And, you know, there's a lot of there's a lot of, you know,

the big reason that companies would not hire people like me is they felt like they're just out of touch with the tech tools. And that's true. But I used to have my old day planner. I remember when my kids were in school and I was getting together with some friends, we were going to have lunch or something. And my three friends, we were standing on the school property and my three friends had their phones and we were trying to book time.

And I had my day planner and my son was mortified. He could see me through his classroom. But my point was with that whole TED Talk is you can learn the tools in six to 12 months. It doesn't take long, but you can't teach 20 years of experience. That's true. And leadership experience. And would you say that life experience is a factor as well in that in that valuation that

life experience you know 20 years of life experience versus 20 years of people who don't have you know i remember how one idiot i was at 20 and i'm still an idiot but and i'm not calling all 20 year olds idiots so don't get offended i'm just talking about me folks get over yourselves but i mean 20 years of life experience there's a lot you learn. You learn about people. You learn about interaction with people, evaluations of people. You learn patterns. You set up social patterns. Is that a factor? Absolutely. And it's interesting you bring that up because as a tech sales leader, I've worked for a company called HelloSign. We went through an acquisition with by Dropbox. I spent a year at Dropbox.

And I mean, that was such an interesting I mean, to your point, we could go down a rabbit hole on that. But, you know, we had a Michelin star chef, three meals a day and, you know, Peloton bikes. And I mean, it was all of the things you were talking about of, you know, spending a lot of money and super fun. But I'm a sales leader and I've worked for an AI company as VP of sales. I've worked for a handful of different companies and I'm always working for these genius CEOs

that come out of Harvard, MIT, Stanford, Cal, that I've been the only person on my leadership team that wasn't first generation Indian. I've been the only person on a leadership team that wasn't first generation Russian. You know, they typically the CEOs and I, you know, I respect them all and I have good relationship with them. But typically, they come from the engineering or product side. And as a whole, they just don't respect sales. And as a sales leader, you know, in all the other departments of a tech company, they're hiring

out of Stanford, they're hiring out of these schools. For me, I want the person that's had failure. I want the kid that went to San Francisco State and put themselves through school. I want the kid that didn't get in, you know, to the college of their choice that got cut from the team that, you know, that I've gotten great candidates out of chico san francisco state you know a lot of the state schools in california you know because they're comfortable with failure and life experiences and i think that's really important yeah learning from failure that's one thing you don't have when you're 20. you don't have you don't have the failures of life learning to overcome them learning to problem solve you know i. I started my first company at 18.

And in the interim before we started really successful companies at 22, I worked for some other people that kind of helped finish off the training I needed as CEOs. And so I've worked for myself all my life. I think there was a stint I did after the 2008 crisis where I helped somebody build a mortgage company for about a year That's an investor. They were investors and I was running it. But other than that, I pretty much always work for myself and so I So if I was ever decided to go get a job at like someplace or something like that Like I'd have the worst resume ever ever but i've started probably 30 different

companies i i survived we built an empire of companies in 2008 decided to come along and my biggest jewel was a mortgage company for 20 years and that ended badly actually wasn't bad it just ended but you know and so i i've been through so many reinventions and cathartic moments of myself two two or three, where I had to learn the life lessons of whatever, but I'm really good at people. I'm really good. I've had thousands of employees. I know people really well.

I know hiring really well. Right. Well, and evaluating people. And I'm of the sort of person that when I look at people people this is my fucking money i'm putting into them when i hire it's very different than when you're just some joe at a at a pr or i'm sorry at the hr division i'm not minimizing your job folks but it's not your money it's a whole lot different when you're looking across the desk at somebody going do i want to put my personal money into this person's employee or or a dinner date for that matter that's a joke people but it's true and so it's i you know my analyzation

of people is really harsh or it's not harsh it's it's very detailed because because it's always been my money and i'm like i and when i make really bad decisions hiring the wrong person it's very painful and it's my money that goes out the door. It's not some investor, corporation, stockholder balance sheet that's going to affect. Yeah. So I think I would have a lot to offer people if I came out of the woods and decided to work for other people like you've talked about in your TEDx. I think I would. I know, you know, I think maybe there's a large part of mothers that come out of, you know, they did the young years of motherhood and it certainly saves

a lot of child support these days. If you've seen the prices of child support, child support's like bigger than a house mortgage right now. But, you know, but these are people who've learned life lessons. They know things. They've been through failures. You know, I've been through so many cathartic things. I've proven that i'm a non-quitter i should probably should have quit everything a long time ago but but yeah i'll watch i i've seen companies and i'm just like they're doing everything wrong like we talk to their investors i did that with twitter i had i had my ear in fred wilson's fred wilson's ear and we cause fights on the board. And yeah, it's, you know, just because I haven't worked for the man for 35 years or however long it's been, doesn't mean I'm stupid.

Right. No, I cannot agree with you more. I like, you know, and I think that's one of the things we're seeing right now. I'm actually doing this entrepreneurial journey for the first time. You know, I'm now, since I sold my company a couple months ago, I'm now running my own company and consulting and a number of things. But I, you know, this is part of it you've seen, particularly in technology. Over the last year and a half, we've seen so many horrible layoffs, people being let go on the 23rd of December with no benefits and severance to the end of the year, people being laid off, you know, right before their wedding.

And, you know, there's just there's a certain number of these founders that lack EQ. And, you know, it's the most expensive thing that companies do, to your point, is have a bad hire. And, you know, you feel that a lot more as an entrepreneur than you do if you're, you know, a hiring manager or VP within a corporation, but it's still an extremely expensive thing. And I think one of the things that, aside from technology and sales, that I'm really passionate about, and I'm working with some companies on now is compassionate leadership. And, you know, it's amazing to me as, you know, somebody who's gone through a lot of challenges too, and I believe in post-traumatic growth. You know, I think that's a real thing, you know, after going through some really challenges, that's what makes

us better, stronger, and all the things, right? But, you know, a lot of these leaders don't realize that if you want to get the best performance out of your people, you've got to find out what motivates them and gets them excited and makes them feel good. And for for me in technology, when I was in, you know, just an individual contributor as a salesperson, I'm not interested in ping pong and karaoke night. You know, I want time with my kids. And if you can figure out what motivates your teammates, and it could be all something different, you're going to get a much higher performance out of them. Very true.

So you're not interested in the 16-man foosball things and the liquor carts pulled around on a red rider. Sake bombs. Sake bombs, yeah. Yeah. You wonder how anything gets done, really. I mean, I couldn't get employees to do their work when we didn't have alcohol in the office.

I don't know, maybe that was the problem. But Utah County has some laws about that. But you're right. I think we've changed into a mode of servant leadership now or what you call compassionate leadership, understanding what motivates people, learning to get the best of their human desires, what people want, how they want to feel fulfilled as a human being,

how they want to feel that they're growing, they're exercising their potential. Now, there's some people that don't give a shit. We've seen those people in office space. But I think most people want that, especially the newer generations. And you're probably talking about that as well, these newer generations, the millennials,

especially the Gen Zs. I imagine the Gen Alphas are going to want something more. Yeah. And I love that, too. And I think, you know, to your point earlier, we're don't mean to to judge anybody's leadership skills but one thing that i think is really a great asset to leadership is being a mom or a parent yeah you know and a parent of teenagers i have i have a gen z yeah exactly you can manage anything i understand millennials i understand gen z i you know I live with them. You've been changing their diapers.

Exactly. No, it's very true. If you can survive teenagers, you can do anything. It's true. I've stepped in that role a little bit for pseudo stepdaddy. Man, they eat the fridge as soon as you bring the groceries home. Yes, they do. You're like, where do those bags of food go?

And they're like, they're gone. You have more? And you're like, it didn't even make it to the fridge. Yeah. And then all their other challenges as they grow. And you know, everyone goes through it. But there's so many life lessons you learn and overcoming, you know, even if you're a mother or a marriage or raising children, you know, there's all sorts of crises and

resiliency. I think that's the word I've been looking for this whole half hour. Resiliency. And you want somebody who's going to show up for work. They're not going to quit the first day. They're not going to quit the first time it's going to happen. They're not going to quiet quit because they're just like, I'm not getting my way here.

That's a bad thing. And you want somebody who's resilient and who can do that. And sales is a great way to learn that resiliency or a great way to utilize that resiliency because you're going to get told no a lot. It's kind of like working with teenagers when you ask them to do the chores. Yeah. And that's it. I mean, it's hard. Going through a job search is hard.

But going through a job search after 17 years of not working is really hard. And I think, unfortunately, and I, you know, I empathize because so many people are, you know, in that situation today, right. But, you know, it's, it's challenging. And, you know, I think that, you know, the resiliency and not taking it, you know, when I coach people, friends, I have a lot of previous colleagues that are out of work. You just don't get attached to any specific role. You just have to not take it personally. You just never know.

Just put out your best foot forward and focus on the quality of your presentation and the number of people you talk to. Just remember, OnlyFans is always still an option. No, I'm just kidding. Don't do that, folks. Don't do that.

That'll permanently ruin your career for my understanding, unless you stay in it. That's why you can subscribe to Chris Voss' OnlyFans at don'tdothat.com. I don't know what that means. It sounded funny in my head at the time. But yeah, I mean, for me, I could never, I mean, I don't know that I would ever get anybody to hire me.

I mean, I can get hired by mean, I don't know that I would ever get anybody to hire me. I mean, I can get hired people as a consultant or, you know, advisor and coach. But when it came to a nine to five, I'm not even sure I can do a nine to five job actually come to think of it. Yeah. Everyone does remote now. So as long as I can show up in the office in my underwear and flip flops, is that still permitted? Oh, in tech, absolutely. In fact, I remember it was funny because when I was, this part of my book starting all over again, then it should be out by end of the year. But when I started out in the investment industry, this was decades ago, and I was transferred to

Boston. And I remember going into a Merrill Lynch office in downtown Boston. And I mean, I'm wearing a business suit and pantyhose and heels, you know, and calling on, there were 500 people in the room and they were all white men that looked like my dad, you know, and, and, and then, you know, I was talking flash forward, you know, when I was at this company, Hello Sign, and I was employee number 40. We were a startup in a really cool startup space in San Francisco with the brick wall and the ping pong tables and the little name. And we were selling to engineers. We were selling APIs to engineers. And I was just an individual contributor at the time. And I was in the office talking to our CEO and I had a hoodie on. He said, have you always

worn hoodies and sneakers? You know, I'm a chameleon, you know, it's comfortable, but you know, you, you have to kind of adapt. I like, I like how there's kind of a, a sexist sort of thing. I showed up at a job interview one time in pantyhose and heels and boy, they were, I don't know what the hell's going on there. It seems, seems kind of some prejudice going on, but now you've, you've started the entrepreneur journey and I imagine, so tell us about what you're doing in your consulting work and, and how you help people. Yeah. So this is, you know, it's funny, you're talking about not being able to go back to, you know, working for a corporate role. This is my first attempt at, you know, being an entrepreneur. Now, having back to, you know, working for a corporate role. This is my first

attempt at, you know, being an entrepreneur. Now, having said that, I was CEO and founder of a tech company, but it was, you know, we, it was a little bit different, you know, so this is on my own and it's not for the faint of heart, but I'm having a great time. You know, really what I I'm working on is I'm working with some tech companies, but I'm actually finding quite a bit of business through like entrepreneurs who are, you know, maybe a little further along. What I'm really good at is helping founders and CEOs who are doing founder led sales. They're successful at it, but they don't know how to scale that. And, you know, one of the biggest challenges that a lot of founders have is that, you know, their first few sales hires are usually a disaster. You know, they either hire a VP at a very expensive price too early founders, but really for any founders who've been doing founder-led sales to find people who are going to be as passionate about it and have the knowledge that they do.

So what I do is I come in and I do either a three or six-month engagement with them. And I build out the whole sales playbook, the sales process, sales stages. I get down their pitches and presentations. And I evaluate their people, their processes, and their positioning and create a whole strategy for them to make it scalable. There you go. There you go. And so how do people onboard with you? How do they reach out?

How do they shake your hand over maybe a call or something like that to see if you're a fit? Yeah. So I'm launching my website. I take emails on there now. It's going to be rolling out really quickly, but it's a coming now page. But there's actually a free sales playbook template, which can really help people, you know, if they want to come down to really evaluating all this stuff, but it's pretty high level. You can reach me at Elizabeth at Elizabeth Andrew.com. And I'm also very active on LinkedIn. I'm Elizabeth A. Andrew on LinkedIn, you know, reach out to me and I'd be happy to take a discovery call and see if there's a way that I can help you, you know, grow your business to the next level. There you go.

And do you focus on certain types of business, technology, or are you open to all types of business? I really am. I really was focused on technology, and I've had a couple of really extraordinary experiences recently, Chris. I had a chance to go to Necker Island with 30 entrepreneurs and Richard Branson, which was really, really incredible. And, you know, I've done a couple of other sort of entrepreneurial events and had an opportunity to meet some people. There's one person who has a publishing company and helps authors. She does

retreats for authors. She's been extremely successful. And so I'm working with her to help, you know, again, she's the one who's been selling. She's up to seven-figure business now, but she needs to grow and pass off some of the sales efforts. I'm working with her. I'm working with a marketing company. So I really can work with anybody who wants to grow. I wonder if we had her on the show. We've had a number of publishers and advisors on the show. We've had the publishers, and we have publishers post people on the show that write books.

We're on in the publishing area. That's what we're into. But we had a lot of great gals in that that do it. So I wonder if, and they host like several retreats that are really nice. So there you go. Yeah, I will. I'll connect her with you if not. It's funny. Worth Books has been my publisher. I'm working on this book, and I love this publisher so much, Kira Britton at JOA Publishing, that I may be transferring over and working with her. We'll see.

There you go. We'll be excited to see the books. I think your story is really important one of the problems that my you know i'm 56 my friends that are around me on like facebook and you know the first 10 years of the show was nerd talk it was it was basically google and and silicon valley and city ceos from silicon valley it was pretty much that for the first 10 years and so i seem to have i seem to surround myself a lot of nerds you could sorry i was an 80s kid but revenge of the nerds but a lot of them you know 50 60 these guys are great they were in silicon valley at the beginnings like yep the beginning beginning back when it was all trees folks and you know one of my friends he one of one of my friends was kind of the first i think

he was the first employee of steve jobs and what's his face was and you know my other friend him his mother and him used to put the chips in the first sample to computers they were part of a garage garage assembly team but a lot of them have been in that we're in the early days of tech and and in silicon valley and they've hit they've hit this wall of ageism and it's a pretty ugly wall yeah even even their 40s and you know with the big turn of these young kids running the silicon valley stuff and i'm not saying that's bad at all. I kind of get why tech does that because they can live 24-7 on, I don't know, eight balls and what's that one? I'm trying to think of a caffeine drink.

Monster. Red Bull. Red Bulls and Monsters and eight balls, pretty much. I'm not sure what eight ball means. I just heard that from a story. You're an 80s kid you probably do so 80s people are looking at my references on the internet but you know they're they're having a lot of ages and problems and and they have resumes like they didn't take 17 years

off they have like really good resumes and i know they're smart because they talk about and i'm just like i don't know what they're saying, but it's clearly technical and smart. But it's sad to see them because they have so much experience and life experience and business experience. And, you know, you're right. There needs to be more evaluation in these folks. The advice I would give to them is that it's all in your attitude. And I'm older than you are. And so I've got a couple of years on you.

Wait, you're older than I am? I am 58. Yes. Get the hell out. You said you were 50 in your bio. No, I started a career at close to 50. Oh, close to 50. See, that's how much I remember you.

Okay. Yeah. So I'm 58 now. What are you eating and drinking, damn it? I didn't have the background that your buddies did. I look like this and I didn't have kids. Or teenagers. Well, it's the kids that keep you young.

Oh, is it? Yeah. And a good colorist. I'll have to run that by the attorneys and see if we can say that and a good colorist there you go i'm sorry i was interrupting you what were you saying they should do oh yeah no it's your you know it's all your mental attitude i mean i think that's the thing is they've got a lot to bring to the table and i also know some people that you know were successful early on you know one of my buddies was a college friend, was the biggest ex of 2010, and that was long before I was really involved.

And it's a mental game. You have a lot to bring to the table, and there's a lot that people need to learn from you. Maybe they just don't have that resilience. One of the successful things of people in Silicon Valley, those 20-year-olds don't get handed something. I shouldn't be dismissive about them or apply dismissive about them. You know, some of them went through 1,500 pitches. They worked their ass off to get stuff pitched. I think I heard the Dropbox CEO tell me a story of how hard it was to pitch his company and no one wanted it.

And then you look at what just a rocket ship of unicorn was when it first came out. And I remember when it came out, I was like, I was like, this is fucking amazing. And I probably was like a very early signup, but you know, so I mean,

there's a lot of, you've got to go through a lot of rigors and I don't know, maybe the problem is they're not shaving their old ass beards. And they're talking about the grateful dead too much. That seems to be the one. No, there's a lot. I mean, there, there are a lot of brilliant, brilliant CEOs and, you know, it's, it's, they can be, you know, I mean, obviously so many of them have been so successful. And I mean, it just, you know, my, my point is in particularly in sales and go to market, you know, is that, you know, I mean, you have to work hard to go to Harvard, unquestionably.

But by default, things have gone your way. You've been first string of your team. You've been first seed of the cello or, you know, you've been top of your class to get there. And, you know, there's different ways to work hard. And, you know, I think, there's, there's different ways to work hard. And, you know, I think probably be rich. Yeah. Yeah. And I think one of the differences maybe between, you know, your, your friend, whoever it was who worked with Steve Jobs early on and myself, I mean, there's a lot to be said for having your back against the wall. I walked out of a 21 year

marriage with nothing. I was left with absolutely nothing. And I had to support my three kids. And so I was a mama bear and, you know, I wasn't going to let them, you know, not have a good upbringing and, you know, and so I, it was a hundred percent custody of them. And so I worked really hard to make sure that I could provide for them. And, you know, I had that motivation that, you know, if you've already been successful and you're in your 50s, you might not have quite that drive. That's true. I don't know. I would like to see what it's like. No, but I mean, you go through, I mean, I think everybody by the time they're 50, they've been through so many cathartic moments. They've been through so many rewrites or reinventions of themselves. And if you're not, I hate but but you know we've

all we've all i don't think there's anybody who goes through life on a perfect run i mean i tell that i tell it to people all the time when they they think you know they have fomo or they see people on instagram they think that there's some people that they just you know you look at they'll do that the movie stars they'll be like oh his life is just so perfect from beginning to end you're like no they go through like cathartic moments all the time like one time one time in 1980 tom cruise got a hangnail and he suffered for like at least 24 hours and so there you go a funny story on that this is kind of a you know my my kids had gone when we were in the east coast my kids ended up going to greenwich country Day School, which is a great school, and they were younger. This is kind of before the wheels fell off the

bus. And I was, you know, I was doing a lot of volunteer work at the school as well as other nonprofits. And I remember coming out of this upper school parent meeting, and everybody looked, the mothers just looked tired, you know, and I went down, I was volunteering in the lower school where there's kindergartners. And I was sitting there with one of my friends who was on the faculty. And I was like, there's a different look that, you know, the, the mothers that mostly mothers and some fathers that are dropping off kids at school, there's just a different look. And the difference is nothing bad has happened to them yet. You know, they just haven't, they haven't, you know, they haven't had a high schooler kicked out of school for doing drugs

or a parent who's sick or a spouse who's lost a job. You don't hit 50 on skates. Basically, what you're saying is they didn't have teenagers yet. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I mean, I think everybody, even if you're born rich, even if you're born extremely beautiful like I was, or you have talent like sports or some sort of skill, I think there's things that fall into your path that challenge you in either your ego or your identity or your cathartic moment. I mean, who's that one Olympic young lady who was breaking all the charts in gymnastics? And then she just had a mental breakdown. And I think it was over some family issues. I think someone in her family died that had an effect on her, but she was like

winning all these, I mean, she was like spectacular on the courts and going viral on the gymnastics thing. Her name's on the edge of my piles. Her name's on the edge of my- Simone Biles. Yes- Simone Biles. Yes, Simone Biles, yeah. And you would think that, oh, she's someone who's, she's going to be a rocket ship, no problems, sail through the rest of your life. Yeah.

And I think someone died in her family and that had a tragedy, if I recall rightly, and then maybe some other cathartic moment. I think everyone gets challenged in life, whatever their kind of, I don't know if it's just necessarily your weakness, but, you know, life is a game of survival. The universe is a game of survival. Right. And hell, companies should look at you and be like, you made it to 50?

Right. The way you are? You're hired. Because anybody who can survive this far is going to be around for a long time you know i work all the time you know and you you're learning this as a you probably always knew this but you know as a entrepreneur you're on all the time i used to dream business i used to dream about who i'd fire the next day and how i would do it and whatever meetings i don't know what it was like every night i would dream about business what it was going on that might end the

next day. Like if I ever dreamed of a beautiful young lady on a beach, I'd be like, Oh my God, that was a miracle. Every night was business. Every night was business dreams and nightmares. And, and you're on 24 seven, you know, I mean, I'm not on, I don't work really an eight hour day per se, but I'm pretty much on 24 seven. I'm thinking about my dreams. I'm thinking about as I'm going to sleep, you know, you're, did I answer that

email? You know, that sort of thing. Did I send an email to that beautiful girl on the beach that I never dreamed about except once in a while. And so you're always, you're always on, you know, you have a client that pings you at 10 o'clock at night. Hey, I need to talk. I got some, you know, something's on fire over here and we got to fix it. You know, and you're like, okay, I guess I'm not going to watch the episode of The Bachelor. No, I don't want that crap, folks.

Don't do that. But, you know, you're like, I guess I'm going to do some work. But you're always in that state of mind. And so for me, me working for somebody would be a great thing because, you know,

I'm not one of those five o'clock punch out people, you know, as a mom, if you're a mom, you're not a five o'clock punch out people. He's on as a mom or family. Right. It's different. And I'm finding that, like I have a friend of mine in tech who's an influencer. And he said to me, he said, if nothing happens, nothing happens. It's true.

And that's the entrepreneurial life, you know, as opposed to corporate, you can leave it, whatever. Even if you leave it as opposed to corporate you can leave it whatever even if you leave it late at night you can turn it off there you go if nothing happens nothing happens i think that's my sex life anyway moving on the jokes people so elizabeth once again tell people how they can reach out to you handshake with you on board with you put calls into you they can of course download your custom sales playbook template as well. Yep. Yeah, absolutely. You can reach out to me through LinkedIn, Elizabeth Andrew. It's actually the URL is Elizabeth A. Andrew on LinkedIn. Elizabethandrew.com is my website. I'm taking emails and I won't even have to, you don't even have to get your inbox slammed because I don't

even have a newsletter yet, but I'm collecting emails, you don't even have to get your inbox slammed because I don't even have a newsletter yet. But I'm collecting emails. And, you know, you can certainly reach out to me at Elizabeth at ElizabethAndrew.com if you're interested in having a conversation about how I might be able to work with you. Do you know how I can get the email to the girl on the beach? Elizabeth at ElizabethAndrew.com. I'll find out. She's blonde. Anyway, that's a good callback.

I'm going to have to bring that back for later shows. Thank you very much, Elizabeth, for coming on. I'll find out. She's blonde. Anyway, that's a good callback. I'm going to have to bring that back for later shows. Thank you very much, Elizabeth, for coming on. And let's get more people to experience an older hire, damn it, or else. Damn it, let's do it. Yep. So there you go. I'll give you this.com one more time as we go out. www.elizabethandrew.com.

There you go. Thanks for tuning in, everyone. We certainlyabethandrew.com. There you go. Thanks for tuning in, everyone. We certainly appreciate you guys being here. Go to goodreads.com, 4Chest, Chris Voss, linkedin.com, 4Chest, Chris Voss, Chris Voss 1 on the TikTokity, and chrisfossfacebook.com, I think it is. I think, is it a Facebook, Chris Voss? I don't know what it is. I'm over on Facebook.

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