Hello friends. Welcome to the C3 podcast. I'm your host and co -creator, Myron Isaiah Bryant. Thank you for taking the time to listen and being a part of our community. At its core, C3 exists to create a safe space for us all to be humans first, learn from each other's professional and life experiences, and choose to co -create a healthy community of betterment. I'm excited for today's conversation with our guest. And with that, let's dive into the episode.

Hey, welcome to the C3 Podcast. This is our very first episode with Coach Dave, as I call him, David Brown. I can't say how excited I am for today, really. This has been a dream come true. I know we've known each other for what, almost five or six years now, Coach.

And to have you as the first guest on the C3 podcast is just an amazing blessing that I couldn't have even dreamed about coming through here. So we're going to spend a little bit of time today talking about your journey, how many you bring to success, leadership and lessons you've picked up along the way. But first, just want to say thank you. What are your thoughts in kicking off to today here, coach?

Oh wow, well thank you very much. I am honored to be the first guest. I think it's fantastic what you're doing. I think you have unbelievable talents, incredible gifts, and I love that you're choosing to share it. You're not bottling it up, but you're sharing it with everyone else. So kudos to you for being willing to do that. This is a great platform to do it, so I'm excited.

Thank you. Thank you.

Happy to share a little bit, maybe some of our stories that we've had over the years, some of our customers. Happy to share any of those stories that are of interest to you.

You

I'm sure there's going to be a ton of stories. And if anyone ever guess why I call you coach, they got that within seconds. The empowerment, the belief, the challenging to do more and be more and be your best self comes out within seconds of the podcast. And I can't, couldn't have planned that any

So in terms of, you know, Coach Dave, David Brown, obviously, again, we've known each other for about five or six years now. We have many of these stories that come up naturally through today's conversation, but you're new to some people that are gonna be listening in here today. So at a nutshell, who's David Brown as a person?

Yeah, yeah. Happy, happy to share. So I tell people all the time, there's a, there's a Detroit Dave and there's a Houston Dave, uh, very similar. The Detroit Dave might be a little more aggressive, kind of, kind of punch you in the face coaching style. And there's Houston Dave. I'm going to put a little sweet tea on it. I'm going to share very similar recommendations, but there'll be a little more bless your heart. And, uh, yeah. But you know, for me,

I'm

um,

very much passionate person about leadership. I grew up in a large family and it was very much kind of a survival of the fittest and my father was not around and so for me it is a kind of a mission of love and paying it forward. Love my father but he just, he worked all the time very much that blue collar.

lifestyle that you might imagine Detroit would be. And as a result, we kind of raised ourselves and I always wanted to have that professional mentor. And so for me, a lot of what I try to do is, you know, fill that gap for others. I think God allows you to go through some things so that you can be a little more empathetic down the road. And so for me, that's where my heartbeat is. That's where my passion is.

You and I know I've talked about Maslow's hierarchy numerous times. It's very real, but really at that tip there, the self -actualization where you're doing things and trying to make a difference because it's something that you want to do and getting value out of that. But yeah, I happen to jump into from a leadership standpoint. When I went back to Brown to pursue a master's in leadership, I had an incredible professor, Robert

Elio.

And one of the first exercises that he had us go through is, what's your leadership persona? And I really had to just kind of step back and say, what does that even mean? What is your leadership persona? And I just, one, I thought, well, this is gonna be a great program. But two, I really tried to wrap my head around, well, yeah, what do I want my leadership persona to be? Do I wanna be a dictator?

Do I want to be a general? Do I, you know, do I want to be the great orator? What do I want to be? And kind of where I landed is really that servant leader. And I like to say often, I'm what you might call a pragmatic servant leader. So outside of doing something illegal, I'm going to do whatever I can to position my team and my customers for success. And for me, it's not about.

Yeah.

getting credit or getting the praise, but I get tremendous satisfaction when my team gets the credit, when my customers get the win. And I learned from COVID, I think we all learned a lot from COVID, I learned from COVID the importance of agility, right? There's a funny friends episode. I'm not a diehard friends fan, but I think a lot of people are familiar with the pivot.

episode where they're moving the couch up the stairs and they just yell out, pivot, pivot. They're going on the stairwell. And I think a lot of times that's what leadership is. It's just a constant pivot, pivot. Anyway, but yeah, a little bit about me from a background standpoint. I am currently here in Houston, Texas. I've been here long enough that I can call myself.

Ha ha ha.

Ha ha ha.

a Texan and it not feel weird. I adopted y 'all early on and that's what I was happy with but still die hard and all things Detroit go

Yes.

Y 'all is a major key as someone born in Texas myself there that is that is definitely something that you have to adopt and appreciate and Another thing I appreciate is what you mentioned there, right? You kind of got to your why pretty quickly in a natural way Which I think is natural to all leaders there right is you talked about? Wanting to see that positive impact within others not taking the credit yourself But want to see within your mentees your customers everyone around you and looking to see that a positive impact Which I think shows in everything that you do

And as we talk about the different things that you've done there, you've had a diverse career, right? And it's been filled with leadership, whether it's been the title or whether it's just been your impact that we've talked about. You've been everything from being a program director, success leader, success director, executive titles as well there. What really was your path at a high level to help catch up those who are just now getting to know Dave?

Yeah, I think for me, I didn't pursue titles, but really just problem solving and applying that anywhere. In fact, I had a really great mentor early on in my career at Salesforce. And one of the things that he really tried to drive home with me was just...

Go find solutions to problems. There's no shortage of problems that customers are facing. Go find the solutions. Anyone can find the problems, but it's the person that just plows through that ambiguity, whether it's on the product side, the tech side, whatever it is, the relationship side, find the solutions to problems. Everything else is gravy from that point.

Yeah.

But...

not so much the political mantra that you hear over and over, but really just talking about overall leadership. There was a lot of emphasis like, wow, you're the first this and you're the first that. And I love what she says. She said, you don't need permission to lead. You don't need permission to lead. And I think that to me really resonates in so many areas. Oftentimes you get folks that want a title,

Love that.

but...

And you can lead without, you know, an organizational hierarchy underneath you. You can have, you know, John Maxwell always talks about leadership as influence. All you need is influence. So use that influence. You don't have to have a title. You don't have to have a team underneath you. That will come naturally along with everything else. But you don't need permission to lead. That really resonated with me, I'd say probably in the last, you know,

four or five years. And even before that, my goal was really just, where are the gaps? How can I use the gifts, the talents that I have to plug those gaps and to make a difference? And then once you start doing that, people notice.

Yeah. I love that perspective again is it's just this skill and practice of finding those problems and then finding solutions. And much of what we talk about here at C3 is that how, no matter what role or title you have, we're all kind of doing the same things. You know, one of the reasons I started this, I know I've taught, shared this with you there, coach, is that, um, you know, I've been in sales or success or engineering and these different titles and people ask for the time, how'd you transition? And a lot of the ways I mentioned,

I did the same things. I solved problems. I helped people that wanted to be helped. And we guided and co -created that path together there. So when you talk about just solving those problems, that's just such a human thing that I think everyone resonates with. And as you talk about how you'd mention leadership, right? It's not all these technical terms. It's, hey, we're helping others be their best selves. And you don't ever need permission to be able to help someone else be their best selves. You'll need a title to be able to do that.

In terms of the values you heard hold true, right? I kind of mentioned some of the values that I've held true throughout my career and why I started this podcast to simplify that for a lot of people. C3 standing for clarity, connection and co -creation. Were there values that you've experienced along the way that just no matter what role you were in, you know this is what you're going to do and this is what's gonna help you to be successful?

Yeah.

Yeah, for me, my anchor is integrity. Because if you if whether it's a customer relationship, whether it is a personal relationship, professional, if you don't have integrity, if you don't, if people can't trust you for your word, what you say you're going to do that, that you're going to do things the right thing the right way

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

It's a waste of everybody's time and energy. I've always tried to anchor on integrity. Even, I was talking to somebody the other day, we love to tell...

superhero stories about how we come in and we save the day with the product or the service. But it's those scary stories, oftentimes, that are the most impactful because they're authentic, they're real, and you're building trust very quickly when you come in. For me, vulnerability is an absolute superpower that I think too many leaders are afraid to tap into. And I get it. I get it. It is.

It can be a little scary for sure. But for me at all, all of that really ties back to the integrity, doing what you say you're gonna do, when you say you're gonna do it, and that comes from my

father, hands down. My first time away from home, and I'll never forget when I came back to visit,

My dad had parked his old work truck out at the front of the driveway and he wrote for sale and he put the price, I think the price was like $1 Wasn't a whole lot of money, you know, the old shoe polish on the windshield. But he wrote, he wrote, bad brakes, bad brakes. I started laughing so hard. I'm like, what on earth, dad? Like you...

Yep.

you need a little help in the marketing department, dad. And he went straight, you know, like, who was it? Richard Nixon, that's who it was. I'm not a crook. And I'm like, well, dad, when he said you're a crook, you don't have to lead with bad brakes. You could lead with, you know, brand new tires or cold AC, you know, stuff a little more, a little better tagline than bad brakes. Yeah.

Hahaha.

You

get them on the hook somehow, right?

like, there's a little something, dad, but he was so adamant that he wanted people to know right out of the gate that, you know, Doug Brown is going to treat you right. I'm going let you know, no surprises here. This has got bad breaks. And we kind of went back and forth. I still tease him about him like that. I mean, if somebody doesn't know that this is not a perfect vehicle. I mean, he was like 30 years old. It was crazy old. But anyway, you know, the point being he really drove that home.

um you know your word your name your brand before it was cool to talk about brand and all of that i mean that was that definitely was instilled by my dad like yeah you're you're brown right like that that name means something and people should be able to trust you when you say you're going to do something when you have a business transaction etc so yeah for me everything revolves around integrity.

Even today, right?

Yeah. Yeah.

who you are, who the other person is, and what you're offering. And there's so much respect, as I think you mentioned the word trust, there's so much trust that's built off of approaching life like that. You know, we'll dive into a little bit more of the sales talk here in a bit, but it's amazing for me, so how often people think that what sales is, is someone trying to convince another person to buy something that they don't need or they don't want using these manipulative techniques. And we've all seen that that only,

is a myth, right? That's absolutely not true. And it's also not productive, right? The best salespeople are consistently those that provide clarity, that have trust, that have integrity, that are able to do that from day one in that initial meeting, riding no brakes on the truck and building that trust and that relationship.

Yeah. Well, you know, it's funny you say that because even in that transaction, like, people knew they were not getting a luxury vehicle, right? They knew they were not getting a brand new vehicle. And that customer base, that demographic was what? It was the person that needed something to go from point A to point B. Right. You know what you're getting into, you know what the costs are, et cetera. Like, this is not, you know, we're not taking a prom date.

in my dad's truck. This is not going to happen. Right? So no, it's the old, you know, you get what you pay for. And I think as long as you're upfront and you're like, this is what this is for. Right. And that comes through discovery. Well, what are you trying to purchase? Oh, well, this is not the right vehicle for you. Because I can't even, I can't like this, this would not be cool to roll up at the prom. Right. But if you're trying to, you know, throw some firewood in here, if you're trying to haul a few loads of

Ha ha ha ha ha

Heheheheh

you know, dirt or whatever, this is the perfect truck for you, right? Doesn't matter if it gets a little bit dinged up, you know. So I think that, you know, those clear expectations and the relationship element there is everything.

Yeah. And I know we've met, uh, obviously in the tech world here, uh, and the past couple of years have been very different in tech, right? Uh, you know, a couple of years ago, there was a huge influx of, of, uh, people coming to tech. Sadly, the past couple of years has been very different. Um, but people were always interested in how someone navigates into tech. It's still kind of mystified at this point. How did you find yourself in tech coach?

Well, God first and foremost, I mean, I can't believe it took me what, 18 minutes to even say God, but it's always, you know, he orders my steps. For me, I really kind of wrapped my head around the power of technology.

Yeah.

Heheheheh

Yeah.

when I was at a call center and this was a call center. It wasn't a contact center. This was a call center. I mean, we were the old smile and dial call center and we were probably one of the last companies to step into the e -commerce space. It was a stage stores and we had about a thousand stores nationwide under various logos.

But we stepped into this e -commerce space and we were coming over from old school mail order catalogs. Like you open the catalog and you say, hey, I wanna buy what's on page four and I'd like a size medium and you take their number, their credit card number.

over the phone. So we were going from that world into the e -commerce world. Huge shift for our customers, everything. And we had a partner, an implementation partner that guided us through, but I won't say who it was, but they gave us some not so good advice to go live.

a week before Black Friday. So this is retail, we're going live a week before Black Friday. And then the other thing I failed to mention, my leadership was like, hey, Dave, you're going to be the project manager on this, because the project manager had quit like right before kickoff. And I said, well, I don't even know what a project manager is. One, like...

to I'm non -technical person, this is you got the wrong guy, but it was very much kind of baptism by fire that whole time. So we go all the way through and it was, we had Oracle, we had InContact, which has since been acquired by Nice, and we had Salesforce. So these were like all three platforms that we went live with. And it was very much sensory overload for my team. As a leader, I felt like a failure, like we didn't have the appropriate training.

Trailhead didn't exist back then. This was pre -Trailhead. We didn't pay for the hands -on training that you could have bought. Our implementation partner didn't provide anything beyond just basic, here's how you log in type stuff. But this role that I identified at all three companies called a customer success manager.

I found out about this and this role was like my lifeline. I kept going back to my respective CSMs and I'm like, hey, can you help me with this? Hey, can you? They were so incredibly resourceful and helpful. And I said, that's what I want to do with my career. That was like my moment for me where I thought that's the perfect combination of.

Yeah.

of getting to help people and kind of do all of these things that I really enjoyed doing in a totally different space. And I was offered an opportunity to join in contact, jumped at it, joined in contact as an associate success manager. And that was my first toe dip into the tech space and have a look back, have had an absolute.

blast from the from the moment that I stepped into this space.

I love it from everyone I've spoken with in tech. I think the perception is that people always get into tech by choice. And even from myself to some degree, I didn't completely land there, but it wasn't completely thought out and strategic for myself. There are some people who land there, but there are many that maybe like us, we kind of find our way into it. And that's just a huge blessing within itself. One of the things you mentioned was just how important this success.

impact was for you, right? As someone who was a customer, had the pains, had the goals, but needed someone to help them get there. That's where success kind of really shines there. But as you just talk about that word, particularly within the tech space, people still don't always know what success is. Sometimes it means something different at one company than the other. And even sometimes even within an existing organization.

Success means something different. So from your perspective as someone who's been in the space for years and is a leader in the space, what is success really?

Yeah, I'll answer your question with a story. Big surprise. Middle of COVID, very large customer in the energy space here in Houston. And we met Downtown. It was their leadership, their C -suite, and started the lunch conversation with, I'm not getting

the

of Salesforce. And it was, and we've heard that before, right? And it was kind of an aha moment for me because at Salesforce, we prided ourselves on value and making sure, you know, from a solution standpoint, we knew we had best in breed, et cetera, but it hit me, we weren't proactively providing that.

It's super normal in so many other areas. Like you get notifications on your energy consumption. You get notifications on, hey, this is how much you used. Hey, this is how much you saved, right? All of that is super duper normal, but we weren't doing anything like that. And the other element for me is we also have this thing called...

Mm -hmm.

safety moments and you know it's very dangerous the industry the the process manufacturing all of these plants down here in Houston if you don't follow procedure someone's going to get hurt and so safety moments are very real you can't move forward in a meeting unless you have a safety moment just so you know the exit doors are over here and the stairwell is over here and

Oh, by the way, if you're driving, make sure your hand's free, those types of things. And so I thought, why don't we just start doing value moments, value moments, before we even start any of this stuff, let's talk about how you're getting value. And so long story to kind of come back to, but like...

For me, value and success go hand in hand, and it has to be quantifiable, measurable, not subjective, not ambiguous, and it comes by way of asking the customer as well. You co -create that, to use one of your Cs. You're co -creating that.

with the customer, how do you quantify value? Bringing a lens that says, hey, because of, you know, service cloud, because of sales cloud, we think you're getting X amount in savings or value realization. And they're going to say one or two things. They're going to say, yes, I agree with that number, in which case, great. Now let's go from value realization to value expansion. Let's talk about other areas of growth and opportunity.

And if they disagree with your number, okay, that's another follow up. Well, how do you quantify value? Because we want to make sure we have the right number that we're associating with your relationship with us. We think it's this, you think it's that, great, let's settle on what it is. And why that's important, again, is you're co -creating that together. And then you've got that sponsorship and buy -in, and you're marching toward that same goal.

in terms of the value growth from there. So for me, when you talk about success, you're always going to rebrand roles like a salesperson has been an account executive or account manager and it's almost par for the course, right? Don't think too much about it.

Yeah.

But at the end of the day, there's an exchange of goods or service that happens within that sales environment. With success, it's about the value realization, or as we used to call it, return on investment back in the day, right? The new buzz is business value. And so I think when you really anchor on that, am I getting what I paid for? I'll go all the way back to my dad's truck. Am I getting?

what I paid for. Yep, you're going from point A to point B, which is what you wanted to do. And you paid $1 for it. If you want to upgrade, I got a brand new Chevy with a lift kit. So we can help you off, but you tell me what you want to do. Right? And then it's a different conversation.

amazing. And I love the way the conversation matured and your experience matured with that, right? Is your first interaction with success was in some ways, maybe that superhero conversation we're talking about, hey, these people helped me with this pain, with this goal I was trying to achieve. But as you matured, you saw that it wasn't just, and this is what I kind of realized about, you know, the perception of success, it's touchy feely, right?

It's just responsive to what the needs are. And that can be a place, but it really is about that value. And that's what it always comes down to at the end of the day is what is the value providing for customers? Are they getting what they're paying for and how much more value can we help them achieve there?

Yeah. And I think, you know, early, early on, um, Mark Benioff likes to say that he was the original customer success manager. And I can't dispute that. I mean, he, he definitely created Salesforce, definitely created the role and it's kind of evolved over the years. And even during my time at Salesforce, like, you know, I pioneered the engagement model and what we do there and coming in from almost like a fractional.

Of course, all of this stuff from a digital standpoint. And so for me, when you think about the big push for scale and operational efficiency, love it, it's great, it's fantastic. The genesis behind all of that, to oversimplify, is really the right resource or service.

Yeah.

at the right time. And the early days of customer success, it was very much a, hey, here's a customer success manager and you're going to get, you know, five, six accounts and these are going to be your accounts. And that's great. That sounds good on paper. And, you know, I think again, early days, it's okay. But as you evolve,

I don't really need to like have this full on conversation. Like I'm good with digital. Just show me where I go. Okay, great. I got what I need. Right. And that goes back to the right resource at the right time. Because if I'm on vacation or I've got a conflicting meeting or whatever, then I'm delaying the customer getting value from, from our product or our services. If I'm the single source, right. If I'm a superhero, well, sorry, the superhero is not available right now. Well, that's not a good model.

Let's pivot that. Like you can't be everywhere at all times. And it's really just taking more of a customer first lens. If I was a customer, what would I want? I wouldn't want to be able to have access to DIY and self -help resources that will give me the insights that I need on this particular customer or this particular product, et cetera.

Yeah. So value oriented and then that value at the right time on the right channels there.

Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah, it's the what do we say, you know, do it, do it with me or show me, do it with me and do it for me. Right.

Do it for me. Yep.

That's that arc

And one thing that you've hit on quite a bit is this theme of moving people within success, right? And this is something that we've talked about a little bit so far is, hey, success can sometimes feel like touchy -feely, responsive. Sometimes it can be value oriented. And at least on the sales side, we have these great books, right? The Challenger Sale or the Challenger Customer about how to execute these types of

Frankly, coach, you're one of the best challenges I've met. And one of the best at moving people that I've met, right? I think that's been told to you, not just by me, but many people have told you that and mentioned that in rooms about you, just how well you are at moving people, right? And that's such a human thing from, you know, another book I quote all the time is, To Sell as Human by Daniel Pink. What is the role of moving people within success?

I appreciate that. I appreciate that.

Yeah, I think for me what it kind of comes down to

You know, we are, I'll go back to God. We all have gifts and talents. Everyone is a 10 in something and it's helping, you know, that self -awareness, that emotional intelligence, helping people understand the areas in which they excel, allowing them to excel in those areas, but also simultaneously challenging them.

Yeah, yeah.

in the areas where they need to improve, right? It's really about a culture of next steps. You don't want a culture of complacency. There's always a next step. It's very normal in education, you think about it. I mean, we go all the way. Now we started like, you know, what is it pre -3K and pre -4K and everybody's graduating and, you know, from pre -K and then...

Hmm.

it's kinder and all of this is very normal. There's always a next step. And even after, you know, we got our, our, our bachelors and masters and now there's a certification for this and go get a trailhead badge for that and go get this newest certification. There's no shortage. It was a very much a next steps culture. And so really embracing that, um, and, and really trying to help people understand.

You're never gonna feel fulfilled unless you're doing what you were created to do. So the faster you find out what you were created to do, the more rewarding your life is going to be. I tell people all the time, don't do that, bro. I love to ask people, do you love what you're doing? Do you enjoy it? And the ones that tell me, do I have to enjoy it? I'm like, why wouldn't you?

It's not a matter do I have to, but why wouldn't you? Why wouldn't you want to be in a career that you absolutely love that excites you? You know, those Sunday scaries. Why would you want to deal with that? Like life's too short. Go do something that you love doing that brings excitement, that brings joy. I was excited that I'm off today. You know, I was excited to talk to you today because I get, you know, I can get on a soapbox real fast because it's meaningful and it's impactful. I mean, I never forget.

Ha

When I first, when we interviewed you for, this is, you can cut this if you want, but I'm gonna tell you. But when we interviewed you, I was blown away by one, the smile, which is always there, but two, the just hunger, the curiosity, the desire to just learn and do more. You were kicking butt. You were like, if I'm not mistaken, like, I think you were top.

Hahaha!

Yeah.

top ECS rep. So why would the top want to take a lateral or potentially what might be perceived as a step back? Well, I would say, well, that's a next step. Regardless, sometimes the next step is a step back or it's a lateral in order to go higher.

And that gave you a more holistic view of how everything worked. You were an amazing portfolio success manager. And then what? Well, then you stepped into the solution space and you learned the product even deeper. Well, how did that help you to where you are right now? Right? Like nobody knows inside and out from A to Z, the process, the people, the technology better than you do.

because you took those next steps throughout your career, sometimes forward, sometimes sideways, sometimes a little bit back, and then over and then up, right? That little frogger is like what puts you to where you are right now, that you're in a position of leadership, you're in a position that others strive to be in now.

because you adopted that culture. So I had that same conversation with everybody else. What do you want to do? How can we help you do it? Anyway, I'll get off the soapbox, but yeah, I mean, it's that, it's the culture of net steps. I think the faster you embrace that...

and hey.

The same is so for customers, too. Customers we love in the SaaS world, it's all about adoption and immediate, great, OK, helping them understand what their next step is. Well, here's OK, what we have this amazing, amazing product, but.

Yeah.

before we show you everything that the Ferrari can do, let's treat it like a Camry first and learn how to drive, let's not wreck it, and then let's open it up. And so, you know, taking that same lens from a career standpoint, I think is very, very important.

Again, coach, thank you first and foremost. Because you get it and that means a lot coming from you and the guidance you've had in my career to be to make some of those steps. And everyone got some of the moves I made,

And I appreciate your guidance and being able to do some of those things. And I think some of the things you mentioned is just what I would kind of quantify as priorities or just another word for clarity, right? It's like, why are you doing? What are you doing? Right? Where are you looking to go?

Yes. Let's go on.

What's your why, right? One of the most important sales books are just people books. We make this podcast just human and people oriented. Why are you doing what you're doing? What are you looking to learn? Where are you looking to get better at? And once you get there, what do you do? Are you gonna learn more or is that just the end goal there? You just go to the island and retake, what are you trying to do? So working with you as I talk about the empowerment you've had for me and challenging, and this is what you've done with customers as well, just as we make that connection that this isn't just sales or success is human.

is you allow people to continue to be better themselves, allow people to continue to learn. I think people who are on that track are hopefully our listeners, who kind of get what we're doing with that next step culture as you're coining it here. And hopefully more and more of the people around us and customers that we're spending most of our time with, understanding their why, understanding why we're doing what we're doing and connecting and co -creating ways to do that and doing it all over again. Understanding we'll never be there, but it's the journey to get there.

Well, even for you, you know, that next step for you is leadership. Um, from just from a, a people standpoint, you've, you've always had, and, and, know, the metrics and influence, um, but really having your own team and your own opportunity to grow that, that to me is, is a very obvious next step for you. Um, you know, uh, there's, there's, um, no shortage of books up that we talk about.

Yeah.

Absolutely.

Um, but one for me, and I think you've embraced it from day one is extreme ownership, Jocko Willick, and it's so good. It is so good. And I think because you have the background that you've had in all the different areas and the experience that you've had with the respective leaders, I think you are so incredibly well positioned and you were focused on, well, this is what I ultimately want to do. And I think this will help me get there. Yeah, I could have probably got there faster.

Yeah.

this will when I do get there this will make me a better leader this will make me that much more equipped so that I can position my team for success because I've had the individual success that I've had in these respective areas so I think that's powerful.

Yeah. No, I love that. And, you know, that's the last thing I'll kind of put a cap on that for as well as like, it wasn't about getting there fast. It was about getting once I was there, I wanted to be able to do well, right? In every role I took throughout my career, right? Is wanting to make sure I was equipped to be to be successful. And then if I am leading others, understanding where they're at, you know, having the empathy, having the perspective on where they need to be to make the best play for themselves, if you like.

sports analogies or if you like movies, hey, being a director, right? Everyone has their scene, everyone needs to be there to just spot, right? What is it like to actually be in that spot and be able to lead from that perspective? As we've seen so much in this conversation, your ability to empower others to transform is amazing, right? So this kind of goes a little bit more to that challenger, sale or challenger customer conversation, but how do you go about providing that transformation, empowering others to transform?

Whether they're mentees like myself, whether they're customers. As you start off with, not many people have the gumption to go for it. Challenging a CEO or a CXO, right? It's all the same way of empowering. What do you think about and how do you kind of orient on

There's definitely discovery. You have to have some self -discovery. There's a lot of different things that you can do from a 360 standpoint. Get feedback from others, from anonymous blind feedback, I think is a great way to really understand who you are. I say often perception is reality.

You know, if a customer is mad at you, doesn't matter what you think. They're mad at us. So we have to change that reality. You have to change that reality. And so you might come across or you might think, man, I'm great. I'm killing it. But if your peers think he's a jerk, well, then guess what? You're a jerk. And to, you know, you're not. So you have to change that in getting awareness. Um, and.

It's the reality. Yep.

being fully knowledgeable of your biases, as much as I come with that positive lens, I know that I have a positive bias. And some of that comes from like, I've been here, done that before, it's gonna work out, right? To an extent, that's great, but it doesn't help solve problems in the real time. It's great from a, okay, let me just...

kind of be calm and not freak out, but it doesn't necessarily translate. And you can't just tell everybody like, oh, let's all be calm. Okay, well, that's a little bit relative. So I think for me, it's really the discovery, understanding who you are, where your strengths are, and putting, we do this all the time. Everybody does this. We'll call it a maturity curve.

Hehehehehe

Where do you think you are right on this transformational journey? Salesforce was really big early on about, you know, the fourth industrial revolution and the digital transformation. And where are you on this transformational journey, getting customers to recognize where they are? Am I, am I at the beginning? Am I basic? Am I emerging? Am I leading? Am I practicing? Where am I on this scale?

And I think once you know where you are, then you can take the appropriate next steps to kind of move forward from a career standpoint. That's one of the things that everybody loves about sports, right? The metrics that are involved in it, because it's very easy to quantify, right? OK, you struck out. You scored a touchdown, right? Your completion percentage was 65%, right? Metrics are everywhere. And I love to see the emphasis on it.

Now with IBM Watson and AWS, I love the technology aspect. If nothing else, it's great for my fantasy football team. But putting quantifiable metrics around your career is just as important. Like, okay, in order for me to go to this next level, what do I need to do? You can use a very simple analogy that is often associated with sales. Okay.

If I want to close this amount, then how many leads do I need? How many opportunities do I need? How many calls do I need to make? How many meetings do I need to host? And you can associate all of that with those leading and lagging measures. And over time, the averages kind of bear out. But really taking the same lens from a career standpoint. OK, if you want to be a better communicator in your career, what? Communicate more.

Write more, speak more, right? Get out there and do it. You're doing it right now, so kudos to you. You're out there in public speaking, you're challenging yourself, great. Episode 100 is gonna be a whole lot better than episode one. Why? Because you're gonna learn little tricks along the way and you're gonna be a seasoned pro before you know it. And yeah, anyway, you get it.

Do it.

Thank you.

I can't wait for episode 100. That's going to be a special episode. I don't know what it's going to look like, but it's going to be amazing.

Yeah, it's gonna be awesome.

Well, I know we're kind of getting towards the back half of this here and wrapping things up. Something I like to do is just talk about the three Cs, right? So a quick question for each one. One, having to do with clarity, right? A lot of what we've talked about, I think maybe two questions ago was about providing clarity on someone's priorities and where you put attention to. And that's when one of the biggest things I've learned in the past, it's really one or two years here working with yourself

and...

other coaches that I may have on the podcast or as well as you got to be very focused on your why, what your priority is and spending as much time as you can on the things that move the needle towards those things. And sometimes frankly saying notice some good, even great things that just aren't aligned with that. And that's a hard thing to do with so much going on in the world. So for you, right, for a success leader, right, what are the things that you pay specific attention to?

based off of your priorities. And day to day, what are you looking for, what are you listening to, to ensure that you're putting your attention towards what's gonna move the needle forward.

Yeah, I love the word clarity, by the way. So kudos. That's actually my word for the year. So each year I do the word. I started kind of doing the theme word several years ago versus doing the New Year's resolutions. I love the principle behind it, kind of that anchor, if you will, for all things throughout the year.

And so for me, I bring that clarity lens into everything. Every conversation that I have with a customer throughout the day, every conversation that I have, whether it's a one -on -one meeting.

whether it's a team meeting, what are we hoping to accomplish? Why are we having this meeting? I'm talking to a customer, what are your goals? What are your objectives for the year? Are you trying to increase market share? Are you trying to reduce operational costs? Are you trying to improve your CSAT or your net promoter score? What are your goals? And try to anchor on two or three at most. And then you're right, everything else does become a little

bit of white noise and you have to de -prioritize those things. If it's not, you know, in sales you like to talk about RGA revenue generating activity. So if it's not, if it's not revenue generating activity then then get kind of maniacally focused on what is.

Yep.

And for me, I think that really resonates with customers for sure. And it takes a lot of the, when they understand, I like to tell make the customer think that you're so much a part of the company that they're offering to give you a company polo that they're asking for. All right. What size polo do you need? Right. So, so you're rolling up to the next company event with their branded logo.

Ha ha ha.

Polo, you want them to like you're an extension of their team. And the only way to do that is to understand their business. Denise Dresser used to say, know the app, know the customer and tell stories. Know the app, learn Salesforce, know the customer and tell stories. People love to hear stories, good, bad.

Yeah.

doesn't matter, they love to hear what other customers have gone through. And so I think, you know, putting a clarity lens over that has really been everything for me.

Right in step there, coach. The next question was regards to storytelling, right? Once you have that clarity on what's important, what do we focus on? What do we prioritize versus de -apportize? And that's great, but not right now. Storytelling is so important and that's been important within sales, obviously, but it's incredibly important within success and sales or solution engineering as well. From your perspective, what's the impact of being able to tell those stories from a success perspective?

You're humanizing the experience. At the end of the day, the technology and the process and the people involved, it's, you know, all three are to try to help you to have a better relationship with a customer. It's literally all about relationships.

Yeah.

And so if I can leverage technology to have a better relationship with my customer because of the insights that I have, because the access to the data that I can have, I can understand, oh, they're struggling with adoption this year versus last year. Oh, looks like we've seen an uptick in deal size is great. Understanding that data because of the benefit of the technology and then...

how can I help them from a process standpoint, maybe things that I've seen happen in the industry, maybe something that we have developed internally, kind of sharing how I could help them save operational cost, et cetera, and then really putting that all into a story. I think that is everything. When...

you advertise, when you market, there's always a story behind it. I think we are in the early days it was very much PLG, it was very much a product -led growth culture and I think those days are kind of

It's not that we're not innovating. Everyone's innovating. Everybody's coming out with new things. That's great. We're not going to stop from an innovation standpoint, but the ability to tell the story of how this customer over in HLS was able to leverage the power of the platform in order to save lives, in order to...

improve mental health, telling those stories. And what I also love is telling the stories from one industry to the other and sharing some of those stories from, hey, this is what we saw happen in retail. What if we tried doing that?

Yeah.

in FinServe. Like can you imagine if we did that in HLS, what would it look like if we did that in the energy space? I think that's when you really start kind of coming up with some creative things and that is all because of the power of storytelling. If you just fixate on...

the product capabilities, that is such a small subset of the potential and the success because you're missing the people element in that whole story.

I always remember we've gone through a number of enablements and storytelling. And just as you mentioned that people element, that's what we make decisions off of as much as we want to say we make it only off of data and maybe some few people can write what you walk away remembering as a story and how someone make you feel made you feel right. And the data backs it up. It's to help support that. But you're always going to remember the story in what you felt with that interaction.

In terms of co -creation, one thing that we talk a lot about is mutual project plans and creating project plans, success plans. People have their own words for it, but it's all just this way of providing a path from A to B. And it's co -created alongside the customer. That's best done in an inclusive environment. And sometimes that can be complex. And you've seen it there, Coach. Sometimes it could be the person with their hands on the keyboard.

that person's leader, the leader of leaders, even all the way up to the executive. How do you best facilitate, excuse me, that inclusive buy -in and co -creation for a plan, especially when you have all these different levels across the organization there?

Yeah, it starts to me with executive leadership and sponsorship. Once you align on what the mission is, once you align on, okay, we're going to the moon, how you get there doesn't really matter that much. The mission is much more important.

than the method. And I think too often people kind of get fixated on, well, this is what we've always done. If you've ever seen the movie Hidden Figures, it's one of my favorite movies. It's an awesome movie, true story. And it talks about people that weren't necessarily at the forefront that would have been, oh, these are the smartest people in the room and they're gonna make the decision.

Are they though? Right? And it's including everybody else into that conversation and it's getting different perspectives because the mission at that point was to get the astronauts home. It didn't matter how they did it. It didn't matter who contributed. One of my favorite things, I'll use a quick sports is I love Andy Reid. I think he's an incredible coach.

Yeah.

Can you tell me who caught the winning touchdown from the Super Bowl? Do you remember who that was? Of course not, because that's Andy Reed. It wasn't Taylor Swift's boyfriend. It wasn't Travis Kelsey. I mean, I know who it was, but most people don't remember that because Andy Reed cares more about the mission. He cares more about winning the Super Bowl than he does catering to.

I don't remember who it was.

superstar athletes and making sure that everybody gets their stat. So for me, it's really mission over method, always mission over method.

Yeah. Well, I know we're wrapping up towards the end of today's podcast. First and foremost, I can't thank you enough just for stopping by here, coach. It's been an amazing time. It's episode one, I couldn't be more excited that we have this conversation together. So thank you. Any final thoughts you leave with our listeners? And then after that, how can listeners give back? You spent quite a bit of time sharing your experience, your journey, your lessons with us. What?

thoughts do you have for them and how can they maybe give back to you?

Yeah. Ownership. Take ownership of your career. It is your career. It is your life. Take ownership. Nobody will be a bigger advocate for you than you. Don't blame. That's a loser mentality. Don't point fingers. Deal with whatever comes your way. Take ownership. Pivot where you need to pivot and adapt. Be very agile.

Hehehehe

Yeah. Yeah.

Hahaha.

The last thing I would say is follow follow Myron listen to see three Gold every single week I do not I do not have any doubts about that Embrace it lean lean in to Being coachable which you are? Lean in to being curious what you are?

Yes, please.

And I'll use one of your three Cs, collaborative, like lean into that. And I think you'll be in good shape.

Yeah. Yeah.

Thank you so much, coach. It's been a dream come true. This isn't the last episode you'll be on. Maybe it's episode 100, we don't know, but thank you for sharing the keys and some times with us. Anniversary episode coming All right, thank you and we'll talk soon.

Anniversary episode.

love it. Thank you.

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