PlanSource CEO: Mike Morini on Leadership, Emotional Intelligence, and Analyzing Losses to Win

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[00:01:26] Hey, this is William Tincup and Ryan Leary. You are listening, hopefully watching, Inside the C-Suite podcast. We're lucky to have Mike Marini on from Planned Source on the show today.

[00:01:37] We're going to be talking about his career journey, some of the things that he's learned along the way, etc. So, Mike, would you do us a favor and introduce yourself?

[00:01:47] Sure. Thanks for having me, guys. Really do appreciate it. Folks, I'm Mike Marini. I was just named the CEO of Planned Source out of Atlanta, Florida, where we do benefits administration.

[00:01:58] Just coming off of about an eight and a half year career at Workforce Software, where I moved to the board 1231 and retired for five months and 24 days before the guys talked me into coming back to build another team.

[00:02:11] And today is an exciting today because it was announced today that ADP bought Workforce.

[00:02:16] Yes.

[00:02:17] And that's part of the discussions that I started when I transitioned to the board and my number two guy, Jeff Moses, took over.

[00:02:23] So, a nice win for us and for the team at Workforce and for ADP and really excited about my new gig at Planned Source and the team at Vista that owns it and the team that I inherited there. Good folk.

[00:02:33] Yeah, that's a great add for ADP. That's an excellent add to what they do. Perfect add.

[00:02:39] Yeah, it really is a good fit and a good fit for Workforce for the team there.

[00:02:43] Yeah.

[00:02:43] Domain experts. Everybody gets to go in.

[00:02:45] Everyone wins.

[00:02:46] They've got jobs and they get a bigger footprint and more access to accounts, which is really exciting for the team.

[00:02:51] Love it.

[00:02:51] First off, Mike, congratulations on that wonderful win there.

[00:02:55] But the real question behind this is five months and how long? How long was your retirement?

[00:03:01] Five months and 24 days.

[00:03:03] Hey.

[00:03:04] See, we always talk, we joke about, we'll never retire.

[00:03:07] My father-in-law did this. He retired from one dental school, went to the next.

[00:03:12] I'm like, you retire, retire. What happened here?

[00:03:16] Well, what I like to tell people is I was a battered husband.

[00:03:20] No, just kidding.

[00:03:22] Truth of the matter is I got a lot of gas in the tank.

[00:03:25] I was looking at some private equity opportunities to sit on the board.

[00:03:29] We were renovating a home, doing a bunch of stuff.

[00:03:31] I got my golf index back down into the single digits, all that fun stuff.

[00:03:35] And then something was missing.

[00:03:37] And I just sat and I talked to my wife.

[00:03:39] My wife runs an entertainment company that she owns.

[00:03:41] And she's going to run hard for the next five or seven years.

[00:03:44] And I just said, listen, I'm not done.

[00:03:46] I love building teams.

[00:03:48] I want an opportunity.

[00:03:49] And so we framed together some of the things that I wanted for me to do it.

[00:03:53] I didn't want to do the Asia, Europe stuff anymore.

[00:03:56] I was doing that a lot.

[00:03:57] I lived in Europe.

[00:03:57] I lived in Asia.

[00:03:58] So I wanted something that was domestic.

[00:04:00] I wanted a certain size.

[00:04:02] I wanted the right ownership, profitability, and something where the technology was really

[00:04:08] cool and really solid.

[00:04:09] And they were struggling in the go-to-market because the go-to-market is how I was raised.

[00:04:13] It's not the fun part.

[00:04:14] While I'm a tech CEO, I'm not the technologist.

[00:04:18] I always have to have smarter people than me in the room.

[00:04:20] And this was one that kind of fell.

[00:04:21] I said no in February.

[00:04:23] I said no in March.

[00:04:24] And they kept talking to me.

[00:04:25] And I looked at it and I said, wow, it's in the HR space.

[00:04:28] Same thing I came out of, right?

[00:04:30] Part of that digital transformation there.

[00:04:32] And it was right in my wheelhouse.

[00:04:34] So we decided to jump in and do it.

[00:04:36] So now I get to go to Orlando, Florida, as well as where I live in California, New York City.

[00:04:42] But it's been fun.

[00:04:43] I love the team.

[00:04:43] It's a great group of folks.

[00:04:45] With the focus coming out of COVID on wellness and financial wellness, the Ben Admit space is

[00:04:50] really hot.

[00:04:52] It's strategic.

[00:04:52] And so it's been fun.

[00:04:54] And what I thought I found is what I found.

[00:04:57] It's really great technology.

[00:04:58] It's a good team.

[00:04:59] We got a little bit twisted on go to market and our partnerships.

[00:05:03] And we're going to get that right back in track.

[00:05:04] And I'm really excited.

[00:05:05] You've also got a great funding partner with Vista.

[00:05:08] I've seen them work with companies in our space class.

[00:05:13] Just really, really, they've got a playbook.

[00:05:16] But they're also willing to deviate from the playbook if it's warranted.

[00:05:21] Yeah, I'm really impressed.

[00:05:23] I had the pleasure to meet Robert Smith last year in Boulder, actually, at a Colorado game.

[00:05:27] Oh, wow.

[00:05:28] And doing that stuff.

[00:05:30] And then when this came up, the one thing about Vista is they know how to build them.

[00:05:34] But they also know how to get a deal done at the end of the runway for everybody.

[00:05:37] So people are well taken care of.

[00:05:39] And I just came out of, and they've been very active with me over the last three months.

[00:05:43] I just came out of, they run a CXO summit every year where they bring in, you know, the CEO sponsors, some of his C-level folks.

[00:05:50] And you come in and there's a CEO track.

[00:05:52] And then there's a track for your chief revenue officer, chief marketing officer.

[00:05:57] Dude, I got to tell you, I was really impressed.

[00:05:59] It's the first one.

[00:06:00] And for me, getting an opportunity new in to sit with my fellow CEOs, there was probably 50 of us there, in or in, with the board members from Vista talking about what's working, what's not working, how do we do it, what do we go?

[00:06:13] So I was blown away.

[00:06:15] And, you know, it further reinforced the decision I made to jump back in because even though I've been doing this for a long time, I'm learning.

[00:06:22] And it was a great week for me.

[00:06:24] And I actually got to reconnect with some folks that I've known through the years that I hadn't seen for a number of years.

[00:06:28] So, yeah, you're right.

[00:06:29] This is a great partner.

[00:06:31] And I'm excited to work with them.

[00:06:33] So, Mike, before we jump backwards, let's dig on that.

[00:06:36] You mentioned learning and having smarter people in the room.

[00:06:39] So before we go back and look at the career, per se, talk about learning.

[00:06:44] How has that been foundational for you in your?

[00:06:49] Yeah, man.

[00:06:50] You know, for me, I'm never the smartest guy at the table if I'm doing it right.

[00:06:58] You just got to stay focused.

[00:06:59] My dad would say to me, this guy, simple guy, swung a hammer, great guy, raised five kids, wonderful family left.

[00:07:05] Didn't know what we didn't have, you know, lower middle class, blue collar family.

[00:07:10] He said, listen, boy, when you get in this situation, keep your eyes and your ears open and mouth shut until you get a foundation.

[00:07:16] And when you get the foundation, be decisive, but be humble enough to know that if you find new information that should change your decision, change it and do the right thing.

[00:07:26] Simple thing from a guy who ran a small construction company.

[00:07:29] But that's kind of been the foundation of how I built my career.

[00:07:33] You got to listen to, you know, my son's a great sales VP and was a great sales rep.

[00:07:38] And my comment to him was, there's a reason why you got two ears and one mouth, kid.

[00:07:42] Right?

[00:07:42] So just listen first, because if you listen, they'll tell you where you want to go, where they want to go, and then you can go get it.

[00:07:49] And so for me, you know, the foundation element of listening and also making sure as an ex-athlete, the team concept that the team goes, you know, that's how you learn.

[00:07:58] And I've been blessed early on in my career to have some great mentors, and I try to pay that forward with people that I continue to mentor today.

[00:08:06] So it comes down to listening is how you learn and putting the work in.

[00:08:10] There's no shortcut.

[00:08:11] Well, that actually leads us back to, because you, well, pre-show, you were telling us that you had some football opportunities that you kind of worked through.

[00:08:20] He breezed through, he's like, yeah, it's some athletics, so let's be an athlete.

[00:08:24] For those who aren't watching, we can describe your background.

[00:08:28] You've got helmets from every team, every NFL team behind you.

[00:08:34] Autographed helmets.

[00:08:34] Autographed helmets.

[00:08:35] Different from just helmets, right?

[00:08:37] Yeah.

[00:08:37] I could buy a helmet.

[00:08:38] Yeah.

[00:08:39] I don't know if I can get Dan Marino to sign a helmet.

[00:08:42] Except for that one behind you with the star on it.

[00:08:45] Yeah.

[00:08:45] Yeah.

[00:08:46] That one's good, but the one above it.

[00:08:48] That's Roger Stolbeck.

[00:08:50] He's okay.

[00:08:50] Come on, get my Colgate Red Raiders here, though.

[00:08:53] That's the one my wife put up and token for me.

[00:08:55] I'm a Colgate guy, so.

[00:08:57] Are you really?

[00:08:58] Colgate University.

[00:08:58] One of my dear friends went to Colgate, and that's just a great school.

[00:09:04] And Fred Donlop, who is the AD and head coach, is one of the finest men you ever meet.

[00:09:08] He's 95 years old today and still cooking and going to the games, and he was a great role model for me.

[00:09:13] Oh, I love that.

[00:09:14] Well, let's go backwards.

[00:09:16] Tell us the kind of the high school journey and college, et cetera.

[00:09:21] Happy to do it.

[00:09:22] First and foremost, I need to qualify.

[00:09:23] These signed helmets, I didn't get them done.

[00:09:25] My wife still.

[00:09:25] She started at the NFL.

[00:09:28] She's the big one.

[00:09:29] I'm just the plus one.

[00:09:30] I want to make that known out there so all our community doesn't think.

[00:09:33] Fair statement.

[00:09:34] Fair statement.

[00:09:34] Listen, I went to a small high school in just north of New York City, and I wanted to go to a small school because that's what I knew.

[00:09:43] And I wound up picking Colgate.

[00:09:45] Picking Colgate, at the time, it was the smallest Division IA school in the country.

[00:09:49] And I had a great opportunity there.

[00:09:51] I played for a great man, continued to grow.

[00:09:54] They did the big NCAA realignment there my junior year.

[00:09:57] So we went from the smallest 1A school to one of the better 1AA school.

[00:10:01] And in fact, my senior year, we were picked up by Sports Illustrated to be number one in the country in 1AA.

[00:10:07] And we didn't get it done.

[00:10:08] We lost to Western Carolina in the playoffs after being up 23-7 in the half.

[00:10:13] We kind of folded a little bit, so it was a disappointing end.

[00:10:16] But, you know, I kept growing through my career, and I was blessed to have an opportunity.

[00:10:20] Back then is when the USFL started.

[00:10:22] So I got drafted in the USFL by the Generals mid-year, my senior year.

[00:10:28] But I only had a few classes left, so I decided to stay and try to give the NFL a go.

[00:10:32] And wound up signing as a free agent with the Buffalo Bills and made it to the 58-man cut and then got whacked there.

[00:10:40] So then came home.

[00:10:42] That's the last cut, right?

[00:10:43] Second to last.

[00:10:44] Second to last?

[00:10:45] Yeah, yeah.

[00:10:46] They brought in an experienced guy from Seattle, and they kept a lot of young backs, but got released.

[00:10:54] It was a good experience.

[00:10:56] Came home and signed with the Generals, which would be a January training camp,

[00:11:01] and wound up having a great experience.

[00:11:03] I went back to my high school, and I was the head JV coach and the O-line coach for the varsity.

[00:11:09] And could train with the kids, could run with the kids.

[00:11:11] And it was fun for me because it kept me conditioning.

[00:11:13] And I think it was cool for them because there was a guy that went there and played there that was trying to play at the next level.

[00:11:19] So it had a blast.

[00:11:21] And then wound up going down to the Generals where I was put on a practice squad and spent the season there before that league folded.

[00:11:30] And it was a great experience.

[00:11:31] I mean, I never played a regular season down.

[00:11:33] Played in a bunch of preseason games.

[00:11:35] And I was marginal.

[00:11:36] And then thanks to my education at Colgate, when the USFL went away, I got a call from Gordon Watson, who was a Colgate alumni, Wall Street guy.

[00:11:45] And he said, hey, what are you going to do?

[00:11:46] I said, I don't know.

[00:11:48] He said, well, why don't you get an interview at IBM?

[00:11:50] I know some people there.

[00:11:51] They're looking for athletes and sales reps.

[00:11:53] And so this kid just happened to fall into an opportunity at IBM in 1986 or 87 when the tech world was just starting to boom.

[00:12:02] And I went from hardware to software.

[00:12:06] And I've been in a technology career for the last, geez, 38 years, I guess.

[00:12:12] It's about 37 years.

[00:12:14] So I've been a blast.

[00:12:14] Fell right into it, thanks to some mentors and some people.

[00:12:17] And then thanks to the work ethic that my mom and dad put in me and just got going there.

[00:12:23] One after.

[00:12:25] Hey, it's Bob Pulver, host Q podcast.

[00:12:27] Human-centric AI, AI-driven transformation, hiring for skills and potential, dynamic workforce ecosystems, responsible innovation.

[00:12:36] These are some of the themes my expert guests and I chat about, and we certainly geek out on the details.

[00:12:41] Nothing too technical.

[00:12:43] I hope you check it out.

[00:12:45] I feel like he's accomplished more in that four-year span than I have in 40 seconds.

[00:12:56] I'm starting to look at my accomplishments differently now.

[00:13:00] I never expected to have an opportunity at the NFL.

[00:13:03] I came from a small ice.

[00:13:04] I just kept getting bigger and stronger and played on a team where a great running back, Richie Ehrenberg, who played the Steelers for four years.

[00:13:11] He won the kind of one-double-A Heisman, and I was a left tackle, and we ran that counter-tray play the Redskins did where the guard kicks out, the tackle turns upfield, and I just happened to be leading Richie upfield a bunch.

[00:13:21] And then was blessed to play on a good team and a good community, and I got a shot.

[00:13:26] And a lot of people say that I'm grateful for the shot.

[00:13:28] It was hard.

[00:13:29] It was disappointing when you're there, and then all of a sudden you're not, right?

[00:13:33] So I probably wasn't the happiest guy when that happened, but I just wasn't good enough.

[00:13:38] Right.

[00:13:40] How does that hit when you're cut from that 50?

[00:13:43] I mean, obviously, you're excited, right, to get to that 58-man roster, and then you get cut.

[00:13:49] How does that feel?

[00:13:51] I mean, I would feel like that's a pretty bad feeling.

[00:13:54] Worst feeling in the world.

[00:13:55] You're walking in, and this was not a normal cut time.

[00:13:58] It was like midweek, and we were going to play the Bears, I think, in the new dome in Indianapolis.

[00:14:04] Right.

[00:14:04] Brand new at the time.

[00:14:06] Right.

[00:14:06] Right.

[00:14:06] Bruce Nichols was the assistant GM at the Bills, a good guy.

[00:14:09] The guy who signed me and brought me and said, hey, Mike, he wants to see you bring your playbook.

[00:14:13] You know.

[00:14:13] Oh, right.

[00:14:16] Bring your playbook.

[00:14:17] Could you bring a box with it?

[00:14:19] Yeah, yeah, great.

[00:14:20] I think I said, Bruce, what the, you know, maybe they're adding plays for you.

[00:14:24] I thought I was going to get a chance.

[00:14:25] And they brought in an experienced guy, and they were going with a lot of young, skilled position.

[00:14:29] Right.

[00:14:30] Look, I just, you know, I just wasn't good enough.

[00:14:34] You know, I tried, gave it a go.

[00:14:36] I was blessed to be there.

[00:14:38] The only regret I have is that a bunch of the boys came to see me, and they wanted to take some pictures.

[00:14:42] I said, no pictures.

[00:14:43] Do I see if I make the team?

[00:14:44] And I didn't make the team.

[00:14:46] And I wish I had some of those pictures today, not just for me, but for my kids and my grandkids to see.

[00:14:50] I mean, they see the contracts and stuff.

[00:14:51] But, you know, you get tunnel vision, and you're like, don't jinx it.

[00:14:56] And I should have just let it be what it was.

[00:14:58] But I was too wired at the time.

[00:15:00] Well, you put it in the work.

[00:15:01] What's fascinating to me about athletes and successful people in business is, again, that concept of teamwork, the concept of, you know, there's no shortcuts here.

[00:15:13] You want to get bigger.

[00:15:14] In fact, I remember when Henry, my oldest, he came in my office one day.

[00:15:18] He's like, Dad, I want to get bigger.

[00:15:19] I'm like, well, that's easy.

[00:15:20] He goes, really?

[00:15:22] I said, oh, absolutely.

[00:15:23] You got to go to the gym.

[00:15:26] Got to eat right, go to the gym, and stay with it.

[00:15:28] Yeah.

[00:15:29] You just got to be consistent.

[00:15:30] You got to go.

[00:15:31] It's hours.

[00:15:32] You know, it's all those things that you just mentioned.

[00:15:34] But you got to go do it.

[00:15:35] If you go do it, you get bigger.

[00:15:37] And he did.

[00:15:38] But you put in the work, you know, that you got bigger.

[00:15:42] But, you know, again, you don't get just bigger overnight.

[00:15:45] It's a process.

[00:15:47] So how is some of the things that you learned from sports, how have you pulled that through in your career?

[00:15:54] Oh, my God.

[00:15:55] It's defined my career.

[00:15:56] I think the people that have worked very through the years rolled their eyes.

[00:15:59] I use so many sports analogies.

[00:16:00] But the biggest thing for me is, you know, the best CEOs that I've ever met have built the best teams.

[00:16:10] Period.

[00:16:11] And somebody just asked me this question.

[00:16:13] I'm not the best CEO in the world, I'm sure, and I'm not the smartest guy.

[00:16:17] But I try to put people around me that compliment me.

[00:16:20] I compliment them, and they can excel at what they do.

[00:16:23] And I think football teaches you that.

[00:16:24] I don't think there's any better sport in the game.

[00:16:27] You've got 11 guys on the field.

[00:16:29] You've got to have each other's backs.

[00:16:31] And if one out of the 11 doesn't do their role, you fail.

[00:16:34] All 11 fail.

[00:16:36] And I think that's the analogy that I keep bringing to my team.

[00:16:39] When they get territorial or they're worried about who has this, it's like, who cares?

[00:16:43] And that's what we're doing right now at PlantSource.

[00:16:46] We're building a team.

[00:16:46] And because they were without a CEO for a while and we've made some changes, people are picking up a lot of stuff, right?

[00:16:52] They're carrying some things for us as we go.

[00:16:54] And I just hired a great chief revenue officer.

[00:16:57] We're going to bring in a new CFO.

[00:16:59] We're doing a bunch of stuff here.

[00:17:01] And I keep telling them, don't worry.

[00:17:02] When we get the team in, we're going to sit at the table.

[00:17:04] And we're going to see who's got bandwidth and who doesn't.

[00:17:07] We're going to split everything up.

[00:17:08] Nothing is predetermined right now.

[00:17:09] If you think you have to own this and own that, you're on the wrong team.

[00:17:12] And the analogy that I'm using for them is some days you're going to be the bullpen catcher.

[00:17:17] Some days you're going to be the starting pitcher.

[00:17:19] But what I want is people who want to be on a winning team.

[00:17:21] One thing I'll guarantee you is we're going to make this a winning team.

[00:17:24] And if you can take that role because you want the championship ring, no matter what role you play in at the end of the day, then you're the right man or woman to be on this one with me.

[00:17:33] And, you know, it's been good.

[00:17:35] That and transparency, right?

[00:17:36] In football, you've got to be straight up.

[00:17:38] You've got to be honest.

[00:17:39] You've got to know where your strengths and weaknesses are and you've got to prepare.

[00:17:42] And it's one of the things that I do when I interview people, which is pretty fun.

[00:17:46] I've been using the same question for years.

[00:17:49] And it's, listen, do you love winning more than you hate losing?

[00:17:54] Or do you hate losing more than you love winning?

[00:17:58] And I like it because there's no right or wrong answer.

[00:18:01] I have a little bit of a bias on what I think.

[00:18:03] But men, women, it doesn't matter.

[00:18:06] Salespeople, executives.

[00:18:07] That's something that resonates with people.

[00:18:09] And for me, what I'm looking for is I think if you're the right person and you go about it in sports and business, you prepare to win.

[00:18:18] You pick your battles and you prepare to win.

[00:18:21] And if you prepare to win, then you should really hate losing.

[00:18:26] And that's me.

[00:18:27] Number one, you learn more from your losses than you do from your wins.

[00:18:30] But for me, you know, if I pick the opportunity and I prepare and I don't execute, that bothers me more than anything else.

[00:18:37] I love winning and we'll celebrate winning all you want.

[00:18:40] But I think if you prepare to win and you hate to lose, I think it gives you a little bit of an edge.

[00:18:45] And I think it really helped my career.

[00:18:48] Let me, Ryan, just real quick question.

[00:18:50] Do you view competition?

[00:18:53] A lot of folks in our world, they view competition as other software companies.

[00:18:58] And I've had this bit for years that I've told them that competition isn't other software companies by and large.

[00:19:04] It's the status quo.

[00:19:06] It's them doing things the same way that they've been doing them.

[00:19:10] Like, yeah, it's easy to look like a plan source case.

[00:19:13] It's easy to look at another software company that does similar things and then point to them and go, we're going to beat them.

[00:19:21] However, I feel, and, you know, please tear this apart, by the way.

[00:19:27] I feel like that's a waste of intellect.

[00:19:31] It's more how do we convert the people from doing things the way they post it notes and Excel and all this other stuff.

[00:19:39] How do we get them to stop doing it that way and move to some modern software?

[00:19:46] And that's the competition.

[00:19:47] Yeah, I think you're right.

[00:19:47] I think manual is your biggest competition out there, right, which is what you're describing.

[00:19:52] Right.

[00:19:52] And if you focus your energy on what you're – I mean, you want to be educated on your competition.

[00:19:57] Yeah, yeah.

[00:19:57] But more importantly than that is you want to excel at what you're doing.

[00:20:00] And when you come in a new situation, like I mean at PlanSource, my comment to the team and the company meetings is don't think about what you're doing and what you need to do.

[00:20:09] Think about what you're doing that you shouldn't be doing anymore.

[00:20:12] That's the hardest thing.

[00:20:13] It's easy to determine, hey, we've got to do these things to the product.

[00:20:16] We've got to do these things to support, to make our business better and have a great reputation in the market.

[00:20:21] But if you just keep adding, you're going to choke, right, because the most expensive thing we have going on here is headcount.

[00:20:28] And we just can't keep adding headcount, can't keep adding headcount.

[00:20:31] Got to provide a return to our owners.

[00:20:33] That's part of a private equity-owned company, right?

[00:20:35] So that is don't say what you need to do.

[00:20:38] First off, assess it.

[00:20:39] What can you eliminate?

[00:20:40] If you're doing this report and you've been doing it for five years and it takes you a half a day a week to do it, don't do it for a week and see if anybody complains.

[00:20:48] If they don't complain, don't do it anymore.

[00:20:49] And we joke about it, right?

[00:20:52] But that's true.

[00:20:53] TPS is true.

[00:20:54] Yeah, man.

[00:20:55] So trying to get the folks to think about what are you doing that's going to have a positive impact and what are you doing that really doesn't matter in today's world?

[00:21:02] You've just been doing it forever and eliminate that because it'll give you the bandwidth and the energy to go focus on something new that can really have an impact.

[00:21:10] Yeah.

[00:21:10] Yeah.

[00:21:11] So, Mike, two things there.

[00:21:13] One is, so my original question was going to be how do you break apart?

[00:21:17] How do you unpack a loss, right?

[00:21:19] So you want to win, but you hate losing.

[00:21:22] How do you reflect on that?

[00:21:23] And then the second question, which we can answer now or later, it doesn't matter, is how do you understand or how do you look at what you're doing and know what you shouldn't be doing?

[00:21:36] So breaking apart a loss is, is, uh.

[00:21:40] Oh my goodness.

[00:21:42] Bad touching, harassment, sex, violence, fraud, threats, all things that could have been avoided if you had Fama.

[00:21:55] Stop hiring dangerous people.

[00:21:59] Fama.io

[00:22:26] Is an art form, right?

[00:22:28] Yeah.

[00:22:28] It really is, right?

[00:22:29] First and foremost, you want to have enough of a relationship to, with the organization that you lost to, where you can go back to them and do a loss review of them.

[00:22:38] Right.

[00:22:38] Hey, where, where didn't we execute?

[00:22:40] Where did we misread the situation?

[00:22:42] What didn't we cover it?

[00:22:43] Would you work with us?

[00:22:44] You know, we put a lot of effort in this.

[00:22:45] You tell us what we didn't do or where our product is missing something that our competitors have so we can learn going forward.

[00:22:51] And I tell you what, 90% of the market thinks that's really cool and respects it.

[00:22:56] And we'll give you the time of day if you put the effort in to do it.

[00:23:00] Once you get that information, then you look at internal, right?

[00:23:03] Hey, was it in our ICP?

[00:23:05] Was this an ideal customer profile opportunity?

[00:23:07] Should we have been competing for this business?

[00:23:09] And I think where you, where you have trouble is when companies are struggling a little bit to hit their goals, they may run after stuff that they really shouldn't run after.

[00:23:17] So the discipline in the effort, when you do the loss review, did we have the discipline in the effort to go after the right opportunity?

[00:23:23] Did we have the right team at the opportunity?

[00:23:25] Did we listen and execute to what they really wanted in the opportunity?

[00:23:29] Did we put our best foot forward?

[00:23:30] How was our correspondence with them?

[00:23:32] You know, all the things you want to do to, and I've been blessed to have the opportunity to run companies in this side, 100 to 200 million size companies, 700 to 1,000 people.

[00:23:41] And typically, you're competing against much bigger companies.

[00:23:45] At Workforce, when we won UPS, probably the largest workforce management in the deal, we were a 700 person company competing against 40, 50,000 employee companies.

[00:23:54] So you really need to be sharp and you need to position yourself so that you're bigger than people think in the market.

[00:24:00] Right on the shoulder of giants, right on your partner's shoulders with the big integrators so that this great solution gets out there.

[00:24:08] So when you look at that loss is, did we leverage our partners?

[00:24:11] Did we leverage the executive relationships we have?

[00:24:14] Did we leverage our board who may have inside relationships?

[00:24:17] All the things you want to do.

[00:24:18] So you're doing this 360 degree look and you're running the best selling process you can to give yourself the best chance to win.

[00:24:27] Will you always win?

[00:24:28] No.

[00:24:28] But if you pick the opportunity right and you put the right team on it and you do your homework, you should win 50, 60% of the time in this business.

[00:24:37] And if you can do that, that's higher than industry standards.

[00:24:40] And then you build a winning culture and a winning team.

[00:24:42] It's 25% is the industry norm.

[00:24:45] It's a one in four.

[00:24:47] Win-loss analysis is humbling.

[00:24:51] It's a humbling process.

[00:24:54] Because you make the call and you say, hey, listen, we're not selling you anything.

[00:24:59] And then it's just you and me, candid, nothing's being recorded.

[00:25:03] I just have to know.

[00:25:05] I have to know because I have to figure out how to fix it.

[00:25:08] And I had a client one time tell me it was a pretty large deal.

[00:25:13] And she goes, y'all were the front runner.

[00:25:15] You were going to win the deal.

[00:25:17] It was basically y'all.

[00:25:19] That was it.

[00:25:20] And I said, well, what happened?

[00:25:22] What did we do wrong?

[00:25:23] Like what just, I mean, it's okay.

[00:25:24] It's not personal.

[00:25:26] We're here now.

[00:25:27] She's like, your sales leader, just like every time we would be with him, he would curse.

[00:25:35] And, you know.

[00:25:36] On your audience.

[00:25:37] Yeah.

[00:25:38] Yeah.

[00:25:38] And, you know, like it's okay.

[00:25:40] Like occasionally this, that, and the other.

[00:25:42] Like that's okay.

[00:25:42] But like he was an overcaster.

[00:25:45] And it just turned off the executives.

[00:25:47] That's EQ, not IQ.

[00:25:49] That's true.

[00:25:50] No situational awareness, right?

[00:25:52] That's right.

[00:25:52] You got to listen and know your audience.

[00:25:54] And that's the big thing that's going on these days.

[00:25:57] And for lost reviews, it's hard, particularly because, you know, salespeople have egos, right?

[00:26:01] We all do, right?

[00:26:03] You're out there.

[00:26:03] You're competing.

[00:26:04] When you start zero every month, you got to have something driving you, right?

[00:26:36] Yeah.

[00:26:38] Come on, fire back at it.

[00:26:40] When you run the tape later, remember, let me know.

[00:26:42] Yeah, we'll run it back and let you know.

[00:26:45] So how long were you at I...

[00:26:47] Dieser komplexe Finanzierungstalk ist ganz schön anstrengend.

[00:26:50] Ob ich mein Depot jemals angelegt kriege?

[00:26:52] Aber du hast doch schon ein Depot.

[00:26:54] Äh, nee.

[00:26:55] Doch, du hast das Vodafone Gigadepot.

[00:26:57] Ha, stimmt.

[00:26:58] Und da habe ich ja selbst in der Hand, wie groß mein Depot ist.

[00:27:01] Jetzt mit dem Vodafone Gigadepot unverbrauchtes Datenvolumen in den nächsten Monat mitnehmen.

[00:27:05] Go on im zuverlässigen 5G-Netz von Vodafone.

[00:27:08] Vodafone.

[00:27:09] Together we can.

[00:27:12] Yeah.

[00:27:13] My first five years.

[00:27:14] It was an amazing...

[00:27:15] 590 Madison Avenue in New York City.

[00:27:17] I sold new business.

[00:27:19] Wow.

[00:27:20] Amazing training program.

[00:27:22] It was a full year.

[00:27:23] They sent you away for a month to the Atlanta training facility, then you're back in the

[00:27:27] field, then to Dallas.

[00:27:28] And it was...

[00:27:28] There were no PowerPoint then.

[00:27:29] You were doing flip charts.

[00:27:31] Oh, yeah.

[00:27:31] All the curmudgeon old IBM execs were putting you through the steps of the selling process.

[00:27:36] And, you know, why are you asking me about golf?

[00:27:38] Can't you see I have a fish on the board behind me?

[00:27:40] No fish.

[00:27:41] It's all...

[00:27:42] You know.

[00:27:42] So they would catch you.

[00:27:43] And it was an amazing experience.

[00:27:45] I was a back-to-back Eagle Award winner, which was top new business salespeople in the country.

[00:27:51] I won it two years in a row with the group, which was exciting.

[00:27:54] And for me, it was funny because, you know, I grew up in a blue-collar family.

[00:27:58] And a lot of the IBM guys were legacy IBM people, white-collar.

[00:28:02] Right.

[00:28:02] And I remember it vividly.

[00:28:03] It was August.

[00:28:04] And they were...

[00:28:05] Two reps that were next to me were bitching that they had to go hop on the subway.

[00:28:09] And it was hot.

[00:28:10] And boom, boom, boom.

[00:28:11] And I'm thinking, man, in August, I'm usually in a ditch with dirt under my fingers, digging in my dad's jobs or carrying blocks or carrying sheetrock, sweating my butt off.

[00:28:20] And I'm like, I can do this.

[00:28:21] I'm cool with this.

[00:28:22] And again, it goes back to having great parents that teach you chores or part of life.

[00:28:27] And, you know, you build a great work ethic.

[00:28:30] And so IBM was absolutely a tremendous experience.

[00:28:33] And it's something that today's generations miss out on because companies can't afford to do that.

[00:28:38] I mean, they probably spent a half a million dollars on me on training 40 years ago, right?

[00:28:43] 35 years ago.

[00:28:44] And that's what I see in some of the younger generations coming through.

[00:28:48] When they start a new job, they want their promotion, want to know what the next job is before we go to execute.

[00:28:52] And companies today at Pasteur are not doing that kind of training.

[00:28:56] They're not investing like they were back then.

[00:28:58] And so I feel bad for that generation, but there's a lot more tools online that people can do that I couldn't do.

[00:29:02] But it was the best sales and marketing foundation, integrity, sell with character, be professional that I could have ever asked for.

[00:29:12] And spent five years there.

[00:29:14] And back then, the hardware curve was doing this.

[00:29:17] Software curve was starting to do that.

[00:29:19] As an IBM salesperson, you sold with your partners.

[00:29:22] I sold with a company called J.D. Edwards back then.

[00:29:24] Yeah, of course.

[00:29:26] And I jumped out and went to J.D. Edwards.

[00:29:28] And interesting story though.

[00:29:30] You'll love this.

[00:29:30] And when I sat down with my dad to tell him I was leaving IBM.

[00:29:34] And remember, we grew up north of New York City.

[00:29:36] My dad did a lot of small renovations and things for a bunch of the IBM execs, quite frankly, that lived in the area.

[00:29:42] He looked at me and he just said, wait a minute.

[00:29:45] At IBM, you have a job for life.

[00:29:47] Yeah.

[00:29:47] Yeah, what do you?

[00:29:48] And I said, because the software curve is going.

[00:29:50] He goes, what does that mean?

[00:29:51] He said, well, put it this way, pal.

[00:29:53] I'm going to make more than my boss's boss's boss in my first year at this software company if I get my job done.

[00:29:59] And he said, well, good luck.

[00:30:00] Let me know what I can do to help.

[00:30:03] So, you know, I had kids really young.

[00:30:05] So it was me.

[00:30:05] I had my son and daughter before I was 25.

[00:30:09] And so, you know, as a blue collar family, what you give your kids is coming for you, right?

[00:30:14] So I was out there on a mission to go make it.

[00:30:16] And it was just the best training in the world and the best foundation and the best move I ever made was jumping into software after that.

[00:30:23] Were you there for the acquisition, the Oracle acquisition?

[00:30:26] Were you at J.D. Edwards during that period?

[00:30:28] No.

[00:30:29] No.

[00:30:30] Yeah.

[00:30:30] You had already left.

[00:30:31] I left before that.

[00:30:32] Yeah.

[00:30:32] I already left and moved on to other opportunities.

[00:30:34] Just for sure.

[00:30:34] Yeah, yeah.

[00:30:35] Yeah, yeah.

[00:30:38] What was after, J.D.?

[00:30:39] I remembered the question.

[00:30:40] Oh.

[00:30:41] It took a little bit, but I got it.

[00:30:43] I got it back.

[00:30:44] It was how do you look at what you're doing overall and know what to get rid of?

[00:30:50] Yeah, that's probably one of the hardest things in the business world is what not to do, right?

[00:30:54] It's a struggle.

[00:30:55] I think first off, you have to be intellectually honest with yourself on what you're capable of doing and not capable of doing, right?

[00:31:01] Number one.

[00:31:02] Which is difficult.

[00:31:04] Yeah.

[00:31:05] Self-reflection is probably one of the hardest things, right?

[00:31:07] Because, you know, you're either too hard on yourself or not hard enough on yourself.

[00:31:11] It's very tough to have the medium.

[00:31:14] And then it's almost, for me, it's trial by error.

[00:31:17] All right, I'm not going to do this meeting this week with the team.

[00:31:20] Let me see what I hear from them, right?

[00:31:23] Are we doing it just because we're doing it?

[00:31:25] Right.

[00:31:25] And then actually assessing, writing down, what am I going to do this week?

[00:31:32] And if I don't get it done, what's the impact?

[00:31:35] Is it really an impact?

[00:31:36] Or am I just going through the motions on some of this stuff?

[00:31:39] And I think just constantly reassessing, you know, the things that I'm doing in line with the priorities of the business, the role that I have, how I'm being measured, all those types of things.

[00:31:48] And it's just continuous iteration.

[00:31:51] It really is.

[00:31:52] It's nonstop.

[00:31:53] And you're never totally right and you're never totally wrong.

[00:31:57] But for me, it's been trial by error.

[00:31:59] If I don't do it, is anybody bitching at me?

[00:32:02] And if I do do it, is it having the impact that I want it to do?

[00:32:05] And so I think in transforming a company, right, this is the third or fourth one that I've come in and done it.

[00:32:12] That is more difficult.

[00:32:14] You can set the strategy.

[00:32:15] You can build the rallying cry.

[00:32:16] You can do all those things.

[00:32:17] But it's what can we stop doing to free up the bandwidth so that we can really redirect them on these things?

[00:32:22] And that's the toughest part of this job, I think.

[00:32:26] Do you see AI or Gen AI stepping in and helping with some of that?

[00:32:32] Yeah.

[00:32:32] Absolutely.

[00:32:33] And some of the things that are repeatable, that are foundational.

[00:32:36] And look, if you're a Vista company, I just came out of that conference.

[00:32:41] The AI, Gen AI is a big thing.

[00:32:42] What can we do to help support our customers better?

[00:32:44] What can we do to help manage our pipeline better?

[00:32:47] All the things that we can take bodies away from and redirect them to more interactive areas where they have to be interactive.

[00:32:54] And some of the rope things can start to be done for us and inform us and create that knowledge base that could be responded to and all those types of things.

[00:33:03] Any enterprise software company that's going to be worth its salt is going to have some type of Gen AI helping drive efficiencies, not just in the product, but also in the building of the product.

[00:33:13] We're doing it with our engineering organization.

[00:33:16] And 60% of our engineers are offshore in an entity we own in India, and 40% are onshore here.

[00:33:22] And we're seeing a 15% to 20% improvement in coding with rolling Gen AI into it.

[00:33:29] That's huge for us, right?

[00:33:30] Oh, yeah.

[00:33:31] Huge.

[00:33:32] And it's in the infancy.

[00:33:34] So we're really excited about it.

[00:33:36] Look, you've got to be careful.

[00:33:37] Do I see any pure Gen AI business apps that are doing it all on it?

[00:33:40] No, I don't see that yet.

[00:33:41] But I do see it being a complement and a driver of efficiency and acceleration in certain areas of the bid.

[00:33:49] So let's stay on this topic for a moment because I want to ask a question here.

[00:33:55] We have a lot of conversations.

[00:33:57] William and I have a lot of conversations with people around AI, Gen AI replacing the workforce, right?

[00:34:03] We don't believe that, obviously, right?

[00:34:05] And most of the world doesn't believe that.

[00:34:07] Clearly, you don't because you've already said that.

[00:34:09] But for the 18-year-old who's graduating high school and going into college now and their parents are walking through that journey with them, what do they need to learn?

[00:34:22] What are the majors they need to consider?

[00:34:24] Because it's different from when you came up as it is today.

[00:34:27] I was a petroleum geologist major at a liberal arts school.

[00:34:31] So, yeah, I was going to be a land man.

[00:34:33] So, yeah.

[00:34:34] I don't even know what that does.

[00:34:36] That's a great question.

[00:34:37] I got to get ready for guiding my grandkids, right, that are seven, six, and five, and three months now.

[00:34:45] Wow.

[00:34:46] I'm a believer in a liberal arts education.

[00:34:49] Me too.

[00:34:50] I'm a believer that you want to touch a lot of different things because my belief is that at 18 years old, you don't really know what you want to do.

[00:34:56] There's very few of you that know what they want to do that are that focused, right?

[00:35:00] There are the exceptions.

[00:35:01] Don't get me wrong.

[00:35:02] I got one.

[00:35:03] I think if you're forced to sample, something will click.

[00:35:08] Right.

[00:35:08] So, I like that, number one.

[00:35:09] I do think anybody that's not doing some type of education on technology and the future technology is going to be left behind.

[00:35:16] But I think today's kids are so technology driven that they all want to do something to do with it.

[00:35:21] So, I think the Ted Lasso line when he's playing darts is the best thing I've ever seen, which is be curious, not judgmental.

[00:35:35] And I think if the kids can go into it and not judge what they should or shouldn't be doing day one or what other people doing that they don't think is right.

[00:35:43] And just be curious to why are they doing it and should I explore that and could that click?

[00:35:47] I think curiosity is the key for the young kids coming in today because what I can tell you right now is going to change in five years.

[00:35:54] Maybe two years, right?

[00:35:56] So, but if you remain nonjudgmental and you remain continuously curious, you'll be out there experiencing what's going on and something's going to click that you're going to want to run out.

[00:36:06] That's how I would mentor my kids, you know, my nieces and nephews, all that stuff.

[00:36:11] It's stay open-minded, explore.

[00:36:13] Yeah.

[00:36:13] It's not a life or death decision if you change your major.

[00:36:17] Not at all.

[00:36:17] Give it a go.

[00:36:18] Give it a try.

[00:36:19] And then just change if you don't like it.

[00:36:21] Yeah.

[00:36:21] Maybe a little extra work.

[00:36:22] But if you really don't like it, don't fake it.

[00:36:25] That was a little self-serving because I've got – I know Williams got one already gone.

[00:36:30] I've got one looking at colleges now.

[00:36:32] So I'm going to use this episode here, this segment, and I'm going to show it to her.

[00:36:37] Yeah.

[00:36:37] Thank you.

[00:36:38] That's the highest form of compliment.

[00:36:40] I appreciate that.

[00:36:41] I mean, look, I got no silver bullets.

[00:36:42] It's one man's opinion, but that's what I've seen.

[00:36:45] Liberal arts and the humanities, for me, I have an art history degree as an undergrad.

[00:36:49] It teaches you criticism.

[00:36:53] It teaches you critical thought.

[00:36:54] It teaches you the ability to ask questions.

[00:36:57] Right.

[00:36:57] Which I believe right now, so much of AI, you've just got to understand how to ask questions and figure out what you want as the output.

[00:37:08] And I think that's where some of the hard sciences folks are struggling a bit is they don't have that skill.

[00:37:16] They have other skills.

[00:37:17] They have massive other skills, but they don't have that skill.

[00:37:21] Listen, and that's coming from a guy – I'm a numbers guy.

[00:37:24] Yeah.

[00:37:24] I'm a math and science.

[00:37:25] Look, I'm a twin.

[00:37:26] I have a twin sister.

[00:37:28] Oh, cool.

[00:37:28] And she got all the creative and art capabilities.

[00:37:31] She speaks the languages.

[00:37:32] She plays multiple instruments.

[00:37:34] She's an arts therapist.

[00:37:35] Yeah.

[00:37:36] And I'm a capitalist, right?

[00:37:37] So this is coming from a guy that's a math guy who's saying to you, you have to be curious and spreading it out and experiencing different things.

[00:37:45] I mean, one of my buddies was an English major, and he's one of the best salespeople in the world that's ever happened.

[00:37:50] He's an English major at the time.

[00:37:51] That's going to be focused on my roommate in college.

[00:37:53] Right?

[00:37:53] And so he's a top-level sales exec for years and a wildly successful career.

[00:37:58] So you just don't know.

[00:38:00] So just be curious.

[00:38:01] I love that.

[00:38:02] I love that.

[00:38:03] So what did you do after J.D. Edwards, real quick?

[00:38:07] Oh, my God.

[00:38:08] I knew J.D.

[00:38:08] I went to a couple other companies.

[00:38:11] The one that's most relevant probably is Advent Software.

[00:38:14] Yeah.

[00:38:15] We took them public in 1997.

[00:38:16] I got to work for Stephanie DeMarco, who was one of the original ladies of the Valley out there when Silicon Valley was building.

[00:38:22] And everybody has something to look back at and say, ooch or ouch.

[00:38:27] That's mine.

[00:38:28] Because I left at the time.

[00:38:30] I was commuting a lot to San Francisco.

[00:38:32] My then wife didn't really want to consider moving there because all family's back east.

[00:38:35] And so I left Advent before I should have because it was really a cool experience.

[00:38:41] And we did well.

[00:38:42] We took it public.

[00:38:43] Yeah.

[00:38:44] Came from my house and did all that kind of fun stuff in 97.

[00:38:47] But I would have liked because the culture there was so good and the people were so cool.

[00:38:51] And it was like before DE&I was big, they were DE&I big time.

[00:38:55] And it was really broad.

[00:38:58] And it was a great experience.

[00:38:59] That's an amazing company.

[00:39:01] And it's funny.

[00:39:01] One of the kids we hired, Peter Hess, as a tele-sales guy, wound up going on to be the CEO of it.

[00:39:07] So it was nice to see that transition.

[00:39:09] So I went from Advent to SS&C, which was a competitor.

[00:39:14] Didn't like the culture there and moved on.

[00:39:15] And then I had a great run at Outlook Soft, which was a Hyperion Solutions competitor funded by the old Pequot Capital and GE Equity, where I was the president.

[00:39:26] And we sold that to SAP in 2007.

[00:39:29] And I had the privilege to work for Mr. McDermott, Bill McDermott.

[00:39:33] Oh, my God.

[00:39:34] SAP for two years.

[00:39:36] And it's great.

[00:39:37] We're on a chain with a bunch of guys that are ex-Bill disciples that are all CEOs.

[00:39:41] And Bill came in, said, listen, here's what we want you to do.

[00:39:47] I said, Bill, I don't know if I'm a big company guy.

[00:39:49] He said, do it with me for two years.

[00:39:51] If you don't like it, you'll move on.

[00:39:53] And I didn't want to be at a big company.

[00:39:56] He gave me an opportunity to run my group.

[00:39:59] I got to live in Singapore for him because we did an acquisition of business objects that was struggling in Asia.

[00:40:05] And he said, would you go run it out of Singapore?

[00:40:07] And I got to live in Asia for two years or almost two years.

[00:40:11] Learned a ton from him.

[00:40:13] He's a consummate sales executive.

[00:40:15] And I learned a ton.

[00:40:17] And we left on great terms.

[00:40:18] And for the fact where I actually went back for a little while to help them with the cloud and then left again to go do other things.

[00:40:25] And so, yeah, I've been blessed, man.

[00:40:27] I've had so many.

[00:40:28] There's a guy named Larry McTavish who passed away a few years ago, was one of my amazing mentors.

[00:40:32] Whereas I've had so many guys and gals in the business world that would take time that I try to do that as well.

[00:40:39] So, Workforce, last question for me.

[00:40:42] How did you get pulled into the HR tech, work tech space?

[00:40:45] Workforce, yeah.

[00:40:47] How did that happen?

[00:40:48] It was interesting.

[00:40:50] I was introduced to Peter Soboloff and Ryan Hinkle at Insight Partners.

[00:40:54] Insight's a great private equity firm.

[00:40:57] And Workforce was competing to be the reseller solution for SAP against Kronos at the time.

[00:41:05] And Kronos was the 10,000-pound gorilla.

[00:41:07] And they won.

[00:41:08] They won.

[00:41:09] But they were having a hard time getting the contract done.

[00:41:12] And so Insight said, hey, we want to hire you.

[00:41:15] So you need to hire me.

[00:41:16] We want you to take a look and help the founder on what can we do to get this thing over the end line, get it started and jump started.

[00:41:23] So I spent some time with him, Kevin Chosky at the time, and got it going.

[00:41:27] And, of course, the next was, you know, we're going to replace the founder.

[00:41:30] And he knows it.

[00:41:31] And would you consider?

[00:41:32] And we're talking to this other SAP exec who you know.

[00:41:35] And so they got me into a four-year deal.

[00:41:39] It was supposed to be a four-year deal.

[00:41:41] So we found some challenges in the beginning with some technology stuff that we had to do.

[00:41:46] So we recapitalized the business after four years.

[00:41:49] So the team that we built was able to take a little bit of money off the table.

[00:41:53] They were very generously re-upped everybody.

[00:41:55] And we took it from this mom-and-pop shop to where, you know, we won Procter & Gamble and Ford and Stellantis.

[00:42:02] And we won Microsoft when we were an Oracle-hosted company.

[00:42:06] So when you win Microsoft and you're on Oracle Cloud, you know you have a great differentiated solution.

[00:42:13] And that's what it was.

[00:42:13] The founder, they built a product that was differentiated with this amazing engine.

[00:42:18] And it let us go into the most complex situations and succeed.

[00:42:22] And, you know, our tipping point there really was when I brought in the new chief technology officer who's now the COO, Nicole Newmarker.

[00:42:29] She got it organized.

[00:42:30] She got us offshore.

[00:42:32] She got it scaled.

[00:42:33] And now I think it's the top workforce management and scheduling solution in the market today.

[00:42:39] And by the winds that they're doing, they're demonstrating that it used to be.

[00:42:43] I did a briefing with Kevin and Howard Tarnoff 100 years ago at HR Tech.

[00:42:50] And I believe, were they based in Detroit at the time?

[00:42:53] LaVonia, Michigan, my man.

[00:42:54] LaVonia, Michigan.

[00:42:56] Yes.

[00:42:57] Wow.

[00:42:58] That is crazy.

[00:42:59] Halfway between Ann Arbor and the Detroit airport.

[00:43:01] Yeah.

[00:43:02] Yeah.

[00:43:02] So I got the pleasure of going to, instead of Orlando, I was going to LaVonia.

[00:43:07] Oh, it's funny.

[00:43:08] Sounds fun.

[00:43:08] Summertime, that's great.

[00:43:10] Winter, not so much.

[00:43:12] It's funny.

[00:43:12] When I ran Aria and I was doing kiddies and they got me apartments, apartment in San Francisco and apartment in Miami.

[00:43:18] And when I took a workforce, I was with my wife at the time.

[00:43:22] And I said, should we?

[00:43:23] And she goes, no, I'm not going to go to LaVonia.

[00:43:25] You're good.

[00:43:26] Just stay at the Marriott.

[00:43:30] Hard to go from Southern Cal in New York City to LaVonia.

[00:43:33] But nothing against my friends in LaVonia.

[00:43:35] I loved you folks.

[00:43:36] No, no.

[00:43:36] You're a great experience and a great team.

[00:43:38] But yeah, we like the water.

[00:43:40] We want to be on one coast or the other.

[00:43:42] Right.

[00:43:43] Ocean, I should say, because there's plenty of beautiful lakes in Michigan.

[00:43:46] But you can only swim in them a month a year, though.

[00:43:48] It's so cold up there.

[00:43:49] Yeah, no, stay on the coast.

[00:43:52] Mike, one final question for me.

[00:43:56] Throughout the career, you've had a lot of people work for you.

[00:43:59] And you've mentioned a couple that have gone on to be CEOs, COOs, and done really well.

[00:44:05] How much of your drive has been building other people around you to flourish, allow them to flourish?

[00:44:12] It's a great question.

[00:44:13] I love it.

[00:44:14] I probably would be more wealthier than I am today if I wasn't so generous with people who were with me and made sure they were taken care of.

[00:44:21] But look, I'm fine.

[00:44:23] My wife and I live a glorious life.

[00:44:24] We're totally blessed.

[00:44:25] Yeah.

[00:44:26] You know, when you're a team player and when you're the coach and as the CEO, you're the coach, you want nothing more than your people to succeed.

[00:44:34] And I would always give them all the accolades.

[00:44:37] Accolades to me were when the company's doing well and we're paying out big bonuses and everybody's thriving and you got the MPS scores.

[00:44:44] I was blessed to comparably to get picked as one of the top CEOs.

[00:44:48] And that comes from my people that were given feedback.

[00:44:51] And I think the best testament for me was the folks that followed me from company to company.

[00:44:56] And when you come in as a new CEO or a new leader, it's really important because they know your cadence.

[00:45:02] And sometimes after a meeting, you know, the guys that I brought into workforce when I would leave, they would say, this is what he, I know what he's telling you, but this is what he put me.

[00:45:10] I mean, it's pretty clear.

[00:45:12] But when he says that, that means you better move quick.

[00:45:14] There's urgency to this thing.

[00:45:16] Yeah.

[00:45:16] Get it going.

[00:45:16] And so, yeah, I think that's a big part of it.

[00:45:21] Seeing those folks succeed, seeing, you know, Jeff, who was my number two at workforce, take the number one seat and I moved to the board and then have a successful exit with ADP, which was announced this morning for him.

[00:45:31] I think it was a great learning experience for him.

[00:45:33] He did a great job.

[00:45:34] He's very gracious to me and thanking me for the support I've given him.

[00:45:38] Those things mean the world to you, you know, if you're a team player.

[00:45:40] And, you know, that's, I had so many guys take the time and give me time growing up to teach me because, you know, I was young in this world with kids right away and I had to go get it.

[00:45:51] And I ran hard to go get it.

[00:45:52] And I'm blessed that it all paid off because I got surrounded by really good people.

[00:45:56] Jobs, Mike walks off stage.

[00:46:00] You guys are the best.

[00:46:01] Thanks for giving me the forum.

[00:46:02] It was fun to talk to y'all.

[00:46:03] Mike, thank you so much for your time.

[00:46:05] Know how busy you are.

[00:46:06] We appreciate it.

[00:46:07] Happy to do it, guys.