Ep.146- Business Blueprints: Lessons From Leaders with Jerry Goldman
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Welcome to the podcast designed to fuel your success in selling technology solutions. I’m your host, Josh Lupresto, SVP of Sales Engineering at Telarus, and this is Next Level BizTech.
Everybody, welcome back. We are back on with business blueprints, lessons from leaders today on actually one of the original guests of the podcast. Episode three, if you go back to 2022, Mr. Jerry Goldman, president and CEO of Select. Jerry, welcome on, man.
Thanks for having me, Josh. And the podcast is still rolling, even though I was early on, so I’m impressed.
I think you might be the reason where people listen to me. Oh, no. Oh, okay. Yeah, a little impressive guy. He’s not that bad. All right. Jerry, I’ll listen.
Yes, yes, I hear you.
Lots of good stuff to get into, Jerry. Let’s start this off with a little bit more about your personal journey, kind of what led you into this space, any twists, anything crazy along the way.
Sure. So I probably have one of the most unique journeys I’d say. So I started out, I didn’t go to college and didn’t have any real managerial experience or entrepreneur experience at all. I was an EMT running 911 calls on an ambulance when I decided that, you know, I think I want to do something different. So the funny story, I’ll date myself a little. This is quite a while back, but back in the day, I went to a Barnes and Noble bookstore to figure out what I wanted to do for a career. And I went on a Sunday and I got the Sunday newspapers from like 10 major cities. I used to do that because there was still dial up internet. And so you can kind of get an idea of what time of the time of how old I am. But I went there and I started looking at like just job fairs or job openings. And what looked interesting, I decided that I wanted to go into learn more about sales. So I thought, okay, what can I do in sales? So I saw went through a whole bunch of different options. And I saw that there was a job fair in San Diego, California.
And one of the companies there was hiring for a major account executive to sell cell phones to the county and the San Diego Padres and all the big local government out there. I thought I’m going to do that. So I got on a plane from Northern California. I flew out to Southern California. I went and entered into a job fair, bought myself a suit and went out there and landed and went to the shit fair. I had no idea there’d be thousands of people there. And you’re really kind of running through. They run you through like, you know, just get five minute interviews. So I got my resume with my EMT at the very top of it. And I sit down in front of the hiring. That was Dave Zimkin, real nice guy. And he said, he said, so what are you applying for? I told him, I said, he said, he looked at my resume and he goes, you know, this is a sales job, right? This is like a major accounts role. I said, yeah, I understand. He said, well, you’re not qualified. It requires a college degree. It requires two years of sales experience. And you work on an ambulance, right? I said, yeah. So I talked to him for 10 minutes and in 10 minutes he said, I really like you. I can’t hire you. I said, well, who can? And he said, well, our VP of sales back at our corporate, he’s the only one who can make a decision like that. I said, great. I said, what’s his name? And he told me, he said, I’m going to drive over there. And he said, well, hang on, hang on. So, you know, we don’t do business that way. I said, I flew here on my own. I’m just sit down in front of you, Dave. So I really want this job. So I drove my car to that building. And I sat in outside of his office with his assistant for three hours until it was dark out and he was leaving. And I literally walked him to his car. That’s all I had time he gave me. And by the time we got to his car, it was going to be a 50 minute conversation. He sent me an offer letter a week later. That’s what I studied.
I love it. I love it.
Yeah. So that was that was kind of how it started. So I got this job. I had never sent an email in my life. I had never used a word Excel, but nothing. So I went in. I was there for six months. I was there. I was there. They’re number one sales rep for six months selling cell phones and learned a ton. And then I never forget. I was making 22,000 years in EMT and I got a raise, Josh, to 60,000 a year. Yeah. I thought I was ready to retire. I think it was it was time. So I did that. And I thought, you know, what’s the next thing I could do in sales? And so a friend of mine was at a startup called WebEx. And so he said, yeah, we got there paying us six figures to do inside sales. So I got back on a plane, blew back, flew back to Northern California. And it was almost a repeat. I sat in front of the sales manager’s mint. His name’s Mitch Terica. He was an end up being a mentor of mine and wasn’t qualified, had no degree, had no software sales experience. Long story short, he said, you know, you’re not you’re not qualified. And I talked to my other job. And on this one, I got myself in hot water because I told him, yeah, I can use Excel and Word and PowerPoint, all the things that you require. I can do demos. No, no problem at all. And so he gave me the job. And I realized that I told him I could do all these things I couldn’t. So I talked to a buddy of mine into I bought him lunch every week if he would stay after work and teach me how to use Mitch sends sends the first day. So send me a recurring meeting invite for every Wednesday at noon for our one on ones. I he might speak in Chinese. I know what he’s saying. So anyways, I was there for about five years. I got introduced to the channel through that because we had some channel folks who worked with us. I was I did I did really well there. And I started getting curious about the channel because I closed a couple of deals with some channel folks. I thought, this is better than cold calling.
So I thought, OK, I learned I just kind of did some research that I’m going to go start my own company. I’m going to resell WebEx. So I did. I took it took every penny of savings I had and started a company. And I burned through every cent of that and did it by myself. And and it was just me for the first six and a half, seven years. And we sold I sold conferencing products. I sold audio and Web conferencing services. That’s what I did. And and my wife was kind enough to be patient with me. I think through six months, I had made thirty nine dollars. So she was going, hey, is this really going to work?
Trust. It’s going to work. It’s going to work.
I promise it’s coming. So anyway, so so yeah. And then after that, it grew pretty rapidly. And then we we stopped some conferencing because the industry completely changed. And about five years ago, we started selling more traditional telecom services. I’m the least qualified person for you to interview just so you know, as a senior.
Well, great. This is going to go real well.
So this this podcast is now over and we’ve we’ve we’ve got all we need. So anyway, that’s my story. And really, the gist of it is I was sharing it because I am anybody can do this work if you’re willing to follow some key principles. And I know we’ll talk about that later in the podcast. But it’s truly an opportunity to channel such an just an incredible place because people like myself can come in and create a million dollar businesses and learn on the go. So it’s really it’s an amazing opportunity.
So so you bring up there was a there was a lot there, a lot of good stuff to unpack. But one of the things that I think is awesome to hear that everybody needs to not forget, you know, the way that you interviewed the way that you wanted that job, the way that you stood apart and made yourself differentiate.
I would argue that a very, very, very small portion of people even today go through that effort to do it. And you know, you get to a spot where you just want people that want to be here. Right. You know what you want. You believe in the business. You believe in the future. And sometimes the hardest part is finding good people. And I would almost bet you can tell maybe know this, maybe don’t of how many other people got on a plane and how many other people waited for that guy and how many other people maybe even after that in the 10 years, whatever, after that did anything like that. Probably none next to none. I would assume I agree.
I know I talked to the Iron Man after the fact. And he said, that’s why they hired me. He said that I was just relentless. And, you know, I think if you can realize in life that we’re here for a fleeting moment, right? Like you can make a choice to be mediocre or you can decide to really get the hell after things. And I always thought, you know, just because I’m an agree doesn’t mean I’m not as smart as the next guy or I don’t have experience. I’ll figure it out. And if people can realize that, especially in our business, like I’ll tell, I’ll share some things during this podcast that we were blind going in. I had no clue about things, but we figured them out and anybody can do it. You just have to have that. I always call it that piece of grit where you say I’m not going to lose. I’m going to better myself.
Yeah, you just got to want it. You got to want it more.
That’s it.
All right. Let’s talk a little bit about Select here, right? You guys are a fantastic partner of ours. You lean in, you leverage, you know all of the people that are here to help. And help us understand a little bit, you know, for you, for the audience. What’s that Select a part in the industry and kind of how do you believe you stand out?
That’s a good question. Our people is the short answer. I mean, I’ve been very blessed to have unbelievable team around me.
You should be interviewing Steve Hoffman and Jason Price and the gang, right? The people that really helped shape the company and, you know, Keith Bork and Morgan Nelson and the people that do the work every day that really moves the needle. They love our customers. They care deeply. One of our most important things we push out is, you know, people first. That’s one of our philosophies and we live by that. And, you know, I try every day to make sure before I leave the office that every, I tell every employee, I appreciate them. It can be an instant message or a voicemail or face-to-face, whatever. But then I appreciate what they do. Having good people, you know, we’ve been around long enough. We brought people in, it wasn’t a good fit and they move on. But the ones that stick, man, they’re just incredible people. So that is the key. And it’s the hardest part of the business is finding good people. But when you find them, I’ll tell you what, it is such a huge difference maker for companies like ours. You know, I’d say that’s the first part. There’s a second part to this that I think we’re different than a lot of companies in that. And then, you know, operationally, we’ve built some things that give us analytics and data into our customers and our marketing. And I can go back to a supplier and say, hey, I like MDF funds and here’s what I can show you, analytics that will give you the ROI in your investment. That makes a big difference as well. We’ve done that through Zoho, through our CRM. So if anyone’s interested, I’m happy to always talk about that. And then finally, we use, I think one of the other CEOs talked about EOS, that entrepreneur operation system. We use that as well. We have for about eight years. It helps align our company to its complete transparency. You can see our financial goals for the next three, five and 10 years, our short term goals, our long term goals. Everybody’s brought in every other week because my team’s completely dispersed all over the U.S. So we have a lot of people everywhere, but it enables us to communicate really clearly and address issues that kind of get something to rug sometimes. But I would say it’s a winded answer to your question about what makes us a little bit different. I think those three things are what makes us different.
Good. Love it.
All right. Let’s shift into philosophies. So leadership philosophies, some of the core principles that define your leadership style and how do you feel those have helped shape the growth and culture?
So the big one for me is connecting to my team and understanding them as individuals. I think everybody, you manage a large group of people too, and everybody’s a little different. And if you can understand and discover where people’s strengths are and lean into those, I can’t treat every sales rep exactly the same. They have very different skill sets, different views, different strengths. They’re all successful, but man, they’re different. Some are great at selling SMB and making 50 calls a day. Others are more strategic and say, “I want to go after up market a little bit.” Or, “I have one that’s great in healthcare.” And he crushes it there. And others that sell in finance. Or some that are more introverted. I have to talk to them differently. But if you can understand your people and make them feel, like I said earlier, appreciated, I think that’s a great starting point. I think when you don’t do that, people don’t feel heard. And sometimes you can lose really good people by not acknowledging and recognizing what their strengths are and then managing to those. Because with that said, once I understand their strengths, that’s the first step. But then how can I challenge them? How can I try to make them better? And it has to become from a place of being selfless. So you have to say, “Okay, can I make them better?” Not for the company, but for themselves. “Can I help this rep make an extra 30% in income this year?” That’s on me to figure out. And so to challenge, here’s a good example. I have a rep to bail me for 15 years. He’s a top performer. This guy’s 150% every year. Two years ago, I said, “Hey, let’s get you to 200% because I know you want to take the next step income-wise.” I have some ideas.
And last year, he did it. And so you look at ways to help them along the way. I think if you can be selfless, though, and really, really care about the people, it makes a huge difference. We do things like,
so every birthday, they get a gift card, but so do their kids.
So we send a gift card to their kids, too. I don’t care. I’ll be 25. We do them to everybody. So that makes them feel appreciated, right? And makes them know that we’re not just here for a transaction between a company and an employee.
And then just making sure people are included. Like, when we evaluate new suppliers, I don’t do that. I’m not the smartest guy in the room, but I have some people that are really good. And I’ll call your team, and I’ll go grab my team, and I’ll say, “Hey, what do you guys think about? We need to find somebody new for contacts. We got to learn about AI. We got to learn about colocation. Where do we go? Who do we talk to?” So I think if you truly care about people and have an open mind around accepting the fact that you can’t have all the answers yourself as a CEO, you need great people around you. If you can do those things, I think it makes all the difference in the world.
Any mentors along the way for you that have played a part?
I’ve had some amazing mentors. A couple of people, Tularis actually. Dan Foster has been an amazing mentor. Very humbling experience for me. I bring my financials to Dan every year, usually a couple of times a year. And he reps through them and reminds me that I’m not a finance major.
But it’s great because they’ll go through and say, “Here’s some areas you can be better. Here’s some areas that you’re doing great. Here’s some areas that I haven’t thought about yet.” But to be humble and go to people like Dan, it’s an absolute blessing.
Adam and I are close, and I’ll call Adam off the cuff and say, “How do I handle this vendor situation?” or “How do I handle an employee situation?” There are people who, like I said earlier, they care. I feel like they care about me as a person. So the advice is well-received and appreciated.
It makes a big difference. I mentioned earlier, when I worked at WebEx, a guy named Mitch Tureka, I worked for him. And it was really funny. My cubicle was outside of his office. He didn’t know, but I could hear all the conversations pretty clearly. So as he navigated through, and he was a newer manager when I was there because it was a startup, but I will listen to him for years, how he navigated hard situations. I’ll never forget he had to let go of a sales rep who had been there a long time, like one of the first, like one of the real successful ones, who just wasn’t performing. And man, he was torn up, Josh, just emotional and really upset that he had to do it. And I remember watching him go through that process. That’s such a wonderful quality because you care. And even though it wasn’t what the rep wanted to hear, the separation was still a really healthy one. And the rep walked out like, “Okay, you know, he’s right.” And I can’t really think about it. But watching situations like that, Mitch never really knew I was listening. I talked about this on LinkedIn. I was interviewed once about this.
But man, what an impact it had on me to just hear how he hired, interviewed, and fired people sometimes. So it was just really interesting.
Yeah, taught you, but didn’t know he was even teaching you.
Yes, yes. It was really very interesting to hear.
That’s awesome.
Yeah.
All right. Let’s talk about the hard challenges, speaking of some of that challenges. Maybe a challenge that you faced and what innovative or what strategies did you figure out to overcome it?
I can do it for you. So we started the company. We sold audio and web conferencing products. And they did that for the first, I think, I want to say eight or nine years.
And we quickly realized once UC came out, once people were buying UCAS, that the stuff we were selling was already included with these UCAS licenses. So I kind of saw the writing on the wall that, “Hey, we’re in trouble.” We built a really, really profitable company at that point.
And so I went to a couple of my employees and said, “We’re not going to sell conferencing anymore. We can’t. It’s going to go away.” And they were like, “Well, wait a minute. What are we doing then? Are you thinking like solar or are you thinking like roofing? We’re going to do.” So I had one of my team members do some research. And we thought, okay, UCAS was a fit, but we had to pivot completely from selling conferencing service and learn about network and SD-WAN and learn what the hell cloud meant and learn about the back end wasn’t really very prevalent, contact center and co-location and cybersecurity. We knew nothing. It’s so bad that I remember looking up definitions of terms I heard online because I had no idea, but we were going to sell it. So we made a complete pivot about five and a half years ago is when we actually finished it and stopped selling conferencing altogether. And that first year, I’ll tell you right now, talk about pretending. We had no clue what we were doing. From a vendor standpoint, from helping customers, we knew nothing. And so we really had to learn. And so I brought some really good people in that did have experience. Our customers would still be serviced in the way they needed to, but it was a learning process. So we had to start over. So we really built two separate companies.
And I’m happy to say after five years, I think our overall customers with Teleris are building more than a million a month. So we kind of crossed the chasm there and figured some things out. But I’ll tell you, the engineers at Teleris helped with that. You help with that. Adam,
Dan, everybody had a play in it. And I always kept myself humble, realizing I needed to talk to people who had done this already. And so we’ve always been humble that way and leaned in that way. But yeah, that was a major bivoupling. We had to start a separate new company. And I didn’t lay off anybody, which was great. So we were really, I was really proud of that to make sure that we took care of our people during the process. But Josh, I’ll tell you what, it was a humbling experience to go into something new.
Scary and exciting at the same time.
That’s the best way to describe it, actually. I woke up many nights going, what am I doing? It
goes into this idea of innovation. I mean, how do we…
You have this innovation that’s happening and you take the Moore’s Law thought we always think about. And how do we help our teams be successful selling the things that they need to sell to the end customers, but also pay attention to innovation? Because to your point, if we don’t pay attention to innovation at all, then all of a sudden, nobody wants to buy the things that we’re trying to sell. And I think that’s the… And we’re now going down this road with AI and all the productization around that. 7,500 new products coming into the market every day and paying attention to that. How do you take that balance of, I guess, here’s what we’ve done. Here’s how we’ve adapted. Here are some of the struggles. Keep doing the things that we need to do, but also pay attention to innovation. How do you blend those two together?
So critical because our industry does change so quickly, right?
AI 10 years ago, no one knew what it was in our space for the most part. We attack this as a team.
So what I encourage and I really push my team for is, I want you at events. I want you at channel partners. I want you going to talk to suppliers. I want you asking questions of engineers. I want you asking questions of other executives, salespeople, what’s coming?
Because if we live in our bubble and I’m really good at selling X, Y, and D, that’s all I’m going to do. And you put your head in the sand, you’re in big trouble like you alluded to, right? So we really push our team. I challenge myself to go out and learn something new, talk to new suppliers. AI is baked into contact center. Great. What else is it going to be baked into? What are other opportunities present themselves? How are things changing? How about the marketing we’re doing? What’s changing there? We’ve made major pivots in our marketing and we’re pretty good at lead gen, but we’re not doing the same things we were five years ago because the technologies, the opportunities have changed. So it’s not just the vendors. It’s not just the products. It’s the tools we use every day. You’ve got to be evolving and you’ve got to go to things like we go to Zoho as our CRM, that we manage our company through. We go to their event every year to say, okay, what can we learn? So I think if you’re a lifelong learner and you make it a priority to be proactive to go learn, that can be reading, that can Jason Price runs our operations. He watches more podcasts than anyone on the planet earth and he constantly learning. He’ll come in. So did you know it? Have you thought about her? And it’s so important for us because he’s an innovator. He’s that guy that says, I want to learn more things. You have to have those people. And I think if you as a leader, if you put yourself in a situation where you’re in a bubble just alone trying to figure it out, you’re in big trouble. You need a team of people to help.
Good. All right. So let’s think about the other partners listening here, right? We might have somebody that’s a one person shop. We might have a hundred person shop and kind of everything in between. What’s the as the leader, right? As the CEO, what’s the advice for these aspiring entrepreneurs here? And I think you’ve, you’ve alluded to, you got to have the right team around you, but what else or what, what would you advise on that?
Yeah. So I have something really funny. I do.
I think if you’re going to be first established, you’re going to be gooder if you want to be exceptional, going to be exceptional or something. There’s some, there’s some blueprints that people long before us sat down. And that is the first one is you have to have work with everybody else. You’ve got to do. I have a picture on my phone. It’s funny. It’s a picture of my truck and it’s in the parking lot at night by itself.
And the reason I love that picture, excuse me, that picture is because that tells me that for that day, I don’t work everybody else. The building’s empty.
So, and it’s, I’ll do it every day because I have kids and I have family, you know, that I have to balance through all that. But now I’ll tell you, if you grab 20 CEOs that do what we do, I bet I work, I work all of them. And that’s, I love the work. It’s fun. I still love coming to work every day, but you’ve got to be willing to do that. You’ve got to be willing to do things other people want to do. I’d say that you mentioned mentors earlier, learn from everybody. Like, don’t try to figure it out yourself. Like, talk to people who have done this. I’ve had more lunches and dinners and meetings with people just to say,
and I’m a big believer in this, just can I, can we meet and just talk openly about, I have some things I’m going to try or I’d love to learn. What was your, what was the best lesson you learned in business?
You know, Jesse, I’m a big fan of Jesse Itzler. He’s, he’s, he’s, he’s a, he’s a, he’s a great speaker and he’s written some great books. And he has one called Living with the Seal. He, he, David Goggins moved into his house for 31 days, really cool book. But one of the things he talks a lot about is personal connections and learning from other people. And he’s a big believer in handwritten notes and DMs to people you don’t know to, hey, can we talk, can we meet? Cause there’s so much knowledge out there. So I think if you can connect to other people, that’s also a really big one. Don’t be shy. Don’t be prideful. Just, you know, get it out there. I’m also a big believer. I’m a goal setter and I love setting quarterly goals. I don’t believe in annual goals. Quarterly goals are really critical for me. There’s a couple of tools I use motion.com and monday.com. They’re both great. If any of your listeners want to use those, those are, those are great tools. I’ve used both at different junctures of my career, but I, at the end of every quarter, I write down, okay, what am I accomplish next quarter? And how am I going to get there and who can, who can help me? Who can, who can I help to get there? Right? So that’s really important too.
And I have a saying that I love to use. It’s called find a mirror, find a mirror. And when you want to be critical of other people or be mad at your staff or mad at somebody, go find a mirror. Cause most of the time, if you slow down and own your part of different situations, you’ll get much further in this business. And just accept the blame. Maybe even sometimes when you, maybe you shouldn’t, it’s okay.
So that’s a big one. And I think finally, I think the last thing is I demand a lot of myself personally, but I also demand a lot of the people that I work with.
And it’s interesting. High achieving people that are on my team, when I bring someone in who’s not high achieving, they’re exposed immediately. Not by anything I’m saying or doing, but by the team. And they’ll usually tell me, Hey, they’re not keeping up. So I think that’s the fact. We do that with our staff and with our suppliers. Some of the suppliers love us, some not so much. That’s okay. Because I want excellence from everybody. And I’ll help you get your quote about myself. Our company will buy itself, but you have to keep up with us. You have to pace us. So I’d say that’s the last piece is really making sure that you demand excellence of yourself and the folks you work with.
Love it. Heard it put also every hire should make you better. I love that. Right. You get better and better A’s, higher A’s. When you hire B’s, they start hiring C’s and then okay. Don’t do that.
Yeah, no, don’t do that. I’ve done that more than once.
Yeah, fair.
Let’s talk about, let’s talk about, you know, kind of process around decision making. So you got a critical decision that happens a lot in this space. High stakes, uncertain. Maybe you don’t know enough. What’s your process around that?
Phone a friend. I call, I call mentors. That’s what I do. You know, I got a hard decision to make. Have you ever made this decision? Something like it. And gosh, Josh, nine times, I didn’t go. I did that in 2020. Here’s what I did. Don’t do this. They’ll tell you don’t do this. I’ve learned more from watching people do things wrong. Yeah. So I appreciate the good advice. So I was throwing a friend. I always do that. I think the mentors can really help you. I whiteboard things. I’m a whiteboard guy. Best case, worst case. We’re going to happen with this decision. I’m a visual person. So I can see that. I like doing that. That helps me really kind of get my, my brain around things. And then I have a 72 hour rule. I don’t make a big decision until I have 72 hours because 72 hours is going to be time to talk to mentors, to digest things, to whiteboard things. And then I’ll now once the decision is made, I’m sprinting. Yeah, that’s it. Once it’s made, we’re going, we’re all in. We’re going to go for it, but that process, there’s no rush and talk to people who’ve gone through it. I think there’s, you know, one great thing about the channel is there’s a lot of people that want to help their needs. There needs to be an abundance mentality. We can all do this and be extremely successful. All of us do it a little different.
You know, I know I have some, some, some friends that built businesses that do it exactly opposite and they’re more successful than we are. And you go, wow, that’s fantastic. But if you can, if you can accept that there are great people to plug into, it makes all the difference in the world. And I really believe that because I think it’s not, it’s not just, it’s not just the part of I’m going to figure this out, but there’s some people have already done it and you need to lean into them for sure.
I love that. You know, I think if you don’t know this industry and you don’t know this space, you would see on paper, looks like a lot of competitors against a lot of competitors. But as you dive into these relationships, it’s, it’s, it’s been really amazing to see how willing everybody is to help everybody else out because it’s not, you know, there’s, there’s enough to go around. The world has a lot of businesses that need a lot of help. There’s, you know, I’ve me not helping you is not going to help my business any better. Right. If I help you in the end, that helps me.
Adam talks about the goodness of the channel a lot, right? You heard me use that term. And you know, one of my goals is once we’ve built our business and I, and I’ve done what I want to do, I want to stay in the channel to help other companies and not to turn a profit, but to help other companies, tell them, other people. And there’s so much value in that for all of us, because really the goal needs to be let’s, let’s help the next generation that comes into the channel to not make the mistakes we made, to utilize the tools, to build the relationships, to continue to have people like myself or someone who maybe has a college degree and an MBA come in and start a company, but let’s leave them a really great situation. That’s 10 X better than what we started with. Yeah. Oh, that’s awesome.
Let’s, let’s shift this year as we get to the kind of final, final couple thoughts.
Personal growth. Is it books? Is it, you know, we’ve talked experiences. What’s the, where do you, where do you feel that you learned the most?
I’d say events, books and, and my peers, those three. So I’ve gone to events like Entre Leadership or World Business Farm out in New York, just to hear from successful entrepreneurs, and I think that’s a really good thing.
I love that. Books, you know, I mentioned living with a sealer with Jesse. It’s really one of my favorites. You know, he talks about seeking out people to, to help you do hard things. He has a great story in his books about David Goggins comes to his home to live with him for a month. David Goggins was like an elite Navy seal, like the toughest man in the world kind of thing, right? So he invites him into his home. And the thing that I love about him is that he’s a great
person. He’s like, Oh, I want to see, it was physically like, I can challenge myself. Can I get out of my own head when I can accomplish in life? And he, he tells this story, right? I want to, we’re going to do some pull-ups. So I’ll get on the bar. And so it’s sort of four or five pull-ups and drops and goes, because that’s the starting point is great. So, so this, and this, or said to him, he said, is this like, are we trying to figure out like, what I’m an actor to do now? I’m going to make it a little bit of a change for the job. figure out like, well, I’m gonna do now and I would all do in 31 days. He goes, Oh, no, no, no, get your ass back on the pull up bar. We’re not leaving here to do 100.
He was a failure five. So he stood there and he made him do one and rest 30 seconds one and read his and he got to 100. But the whole point of the story really is just to limitations are self imposed. So great story. It’s one of my favorite books. If you haven’t already good. I’m also a fantasy even cubby. It’s old school. Seven habits, highly effective people, one of my absolute favorites. One of the habits is first things first, you know, I think I’m a big believer in that my reps do as well. What’s most important in life, you know, take care of those it kind of brings me back to I have the I have this running narrative in my head and your dad’s he’ll appreciate this of I have all these cups that are supposed to be full of water and each cup represents like a like my career is one my fitness is one my spiritual health is one of my family’s is one. They’re all different. And I learned over the years that I want to keep all the cups full. Right? I want to I want to make sure that you know, I’m a great dad all the time. I’m a great friend all the time. I’m you know, all these things. I’m a great CEO all the time. And what I learned over the years is you can’t be it’s not humanly possible. So you have to be okay with understanding what needs you right now. What’s the first thing you need to take care of and sometimes your job is, but sometimes your kids are. So you have to be okay with pouring water from cup to cup and realize that this one has to be full right now. I’ll get back to this other one as long as you’re always aware of them and what needs to be addressed. Because you don’t want to be the guy who builds a business and is left with no family. You don’t want to be the guy who can’t build a business because of his family. So you want to make sure that you that you have some balance there. And I think that’s a great book to kind of illustrate that. And I mentioned the peer group earlier. I’m a big believer. I have some guys that I talked to that are just man, they’re smart. They are just incredibly bright. Dan Vidal is one of them already cast a boom is another one. They’re just guys I can call and I’ll call off often. But when I do I’m like, I’m stuck guys. What do you think of this? So that helps with my personal development from the lens of a CEO, but I use all three. I pick an event every year to go to. I read several books a year I set out, you know, and fine. I’m always asking success will be what your favorite books and then I’ll call my peers as I need them.
I like that you brought up one there in the beginning, a lot of good ones there.
The the only limits we have on ourself. They’re self imposed, right?
And I think that becomes our job as as leaders and managers of people as well, because others may feel that they know where their limits are. And I think you you find and see no, there’s a lot of goodness there. There’s a lot of greatness there. And sometimes, you know, you think you have to have a difficult conversation with somebody. Surely, they’ve, they’ve worked on this, or they’ve tried to have it or tried to figure it out before. And you kind of plan how’s this gonna go? And sure, I’ve gone and I’ve had those conversations and where I thought maybe there would be a fight, or just some kind of resistance or defensiveness. It was, wow, thanks for telling me that nobody’s no managers actually ever talked to me about that before. And so there’s you have these little aha moments where you realize,
you know, really seeing what your teams are capable of, it’s, it’s, they will always wow you. I think that’s been a cool thing to see, I think, as the teams have grown.
I could agree more that they can accomplish so much more than they believe sometimes. And then same with us, so we can accomplish much more. As the question is, are you wanting to take the lid off the thing and say, Okay, let’s see what we can do.
All right. Next last thought here, any, you know, think about a personal success, personal failure, you know, when they kind of started out as a failure, maybe and then turned into this great lesson learned stepping stone kind of thought.
So I have one that’s personal, but I’ll share it. It’s, you know, when I started the company, I it was me. So I was the one to do all the things. And, and, and I got to a point where I was really good at it. But you know, you can’t scale that way.
So, so I really learned to kind of a couple employees, you know, a few people that I really liked. And I was early on, but about 10 years ago, I was diagnosed with that cancer.
You can I had stage four non-hijans and thomas. So I couldn’t work for eight months, I had radiation and surgeries and chemotherapy and all that stuff. So literally, I didn’t respond to an email in eight months. And, and so I had a couple people I’m like, that was very, the company was, you know, five years old, whatever wasn’t established. And so I was afraid about, you know, gosh, this company gonna make it through, first of all, am I gonna make it? And then is the company gonna make it right? But something really interesting happened, you know, as I went through my treatment, everything else, the people that I that were on the team stepped up. And the company actually grew by 21% while I was out. So the running joke is, do they really need me anymore? I don’t know. But, but it was really interesting, because their lesson there was really had a big impact on me, because you have to learn to really, I think the best way is to trust people and learn that, you know, hey, you need to lean into your into your team. And even in times when you don’t think they can do it, they will shock you.
Yeah.
So it’s awesome. It’s a great point. It’s a great point. And I think if you’ve if you’ve, if you’ve done all the things up to this point about, you know, fostering innovation, promoting failure, fail fast, fail often, let’s figure it out. Let’s innovate. You’ve kind of you’ve built that so you’ve, you’ve unknowingly done all these things to enable them. Yeah, and then they blow it out of the water, right? And it’s kudos to you just to to go, Oh, wow, like, I, these are really amazing people that are capable of really amazing things. My role changes over time. It does.
And what you said, Josh, is so true, because if I did of those other bricks are laid first, doesn’t work. So and you know, it’s interesting, like, really fantastic people want to work with really fantastic people and the and they and the water rises for everyone. And like three of those people are still with me today, you know, and they’re and they’re incredible people. And but they understand those principles. And you know, we just hired a new stealth rep. And I think she’ll be one of the leaders in our in the channel one day, she’s extremely bright. And it’s interesting how all the all the the high achievers have kind of held around her and say, Okay, here’s what you need to learn. And we can already see her like in a few weeks, just already like growing and those principles are on play. But what you talked about during the podcast and the pieces of this, you’ve got to get those in stone first. Because I’ll tell you, if you’re bringing the people in before the rest is built, you’re going to fail. And so whether people will have a poor experience. And I think as leaders, we owe our people the best of ourselves and also the end to lead them to the best of what they can bring as well.
Love it. All right. Final thought, Jerry. Let’s let’s call this fast forward looking back. So we’re 10 years plus, how I don’t know 1050 whatever. Yeah, we’re out there. All right, you look back at the impact that you’ve made either in the industry as the as the founder, however you want to frame it up, what do you what do you want that to be?
I would say this, it’s not about me at all. It’s how many people can we help? That’s that’s the most important part of this, I’d say is that, you know, can you can you help your team can help your people be the best they can be? You know, I think we owe it to this industry, to the channel to to leave it better than we found it. And and part of that’s going to be, you know, investing time mentoring other people that are coming into it. I try to do that now. And to answer your question 10 years from now, I envision myself doing that full time, like to, to tell people, hey, this is an amazing opportunity. And I don’t think there’s a better time to build a business than right now. In the channel, there’s not a better time. Anybody listening thinking about it, jump, do it.
But yeah, I’d say that all of us that are successful right now need to step back and it’s time to give back to the to what was so good to us. Like Adam says, the goodness of what’s been built. Like we have an obligation, in my opinion, to go out and, you know, say, Hey, you know what, I did some things, right? Let me let me help you. Let me teach you. Let me tell you things I did wrong. I want them by the way, the list of long as much long. So I did it wrong as much longer. But but yeah, so I think that’s I think that that that if it’s a legacy, I don’t know, but it’s, that’s an obligation, I think we have. And then, you know, I would say, you know, if you can help five people, 10 people, 50 people, 100 people to to learn and build, I think that’s way more important than what I leave behind.
Good.
So we wrapped Jerry. Awesome stuff.
Right, Josh.
Like, lots of lots of beautiful nuggets in there. We’re gonna have to go back and listen to this a couple times, unpack them all. But hey, I know we’ve been talking about this for a while. I’m glad we could get it knocked out. Thanks for being patient with me and coming on and doing it.
Thank you for all you and Telera Stu Farfon. We appreciate you guys more, you know.
Appreciate you. All right, everybody, that wraps us up for today. I’m your host, Josh Lupresto, SVP of Sales Engineering, Jerry Goldman, the President and CEO of Select. This has been Business Blueprints, Lessons from Leaders. Until next time.
Next Level BizTech has been a production of Telera Studio 19. Please visit Teleras.com for more information.