WorkFusion CEO Adam Famularo: His story. Building a Career with Intent and Digital Workers.

[00:00:00] Go to work at a large company, learn anything and everything you can about running a business.

[00:00:06] And then from there, you can kind of spin out if you ever wanted to and take over.

[00:00:10] So that's what I did. So right out of school, I had a friend who was working at a company called Computer Associates,

[00:00:17] which was a very large software company on Long Island. I lived on Long Island.

[00:00:23] And the role was a telesales rat in their Islandia headquarters.

[00:00:30] And for me, I went through the technology. I was like, I love this, right? So they pay you to do this. I'm in.

[00:00:37] All right. I want to talk to you for a moment about retaining and developing your workforce.

[00:00:42] It's hard. Recruiting is hard. Retaining top employees is hard.

[00:00:46] Then you've got onboarding, payroll, benefits, time and labor management.

[00:00:50] You need to take care of your workforce and you can only do this successfully if you commit to transforming your employee experience.

[00:00:58] This is where ISoft comes in. They empower you to be successful.

[00:01:02] We've seen it with a number of companies that we've worked with, and this is why we partner with them here at WRKdefined.

[00:01:09] We trust them and you should too. Check them out at isofthcm.com

[00:01:22] We are speaking with Adam Famularo today. Adam is the CEO of WorkFusion.

[00:01:30] Adam, welcome. How are you today?

[00:01:33] Yeah. Great to see you again.

[00:01:35] As you. Where are you in the world today?

[00:01:39] Today I'm in our New York City headquarters right on the corner of Broadway and 41st Street.

[00:01:46] So nice to meet Bryant Park and Times Square.

[00:01:50] Oh, that's beautiful. There's a new experience thing in Times Square.

[00:01:55] It's like Rise New York NY, Rise NY. Have you heard about this?

[00:02:00] I have not. I have not.

[00:02:02] So in Times Square.

[00:02:04] Are you dreaming this up?

[00:02:05] No, no. You've got to talk to someone from Texas to explain shit that happens in New York City.

[00:02:10] In Times Square, it's Rise, I-Z-E, NY.

[00:02:15] And it's experiential. You know, they all these new kind of experiential museum type stuff.

[00:02:20] So they take you through the history of New York City.

[00:02:23] I got a chuggy. That sounds like cool.

[00:02:25] It looks dope.

[00:02:26] I'll tell you that the big thing that's throwing New Yorkers off right now is have you heard of the portal?

[00:02:31] Yeah.

[00:02:32] So there's a portal connection which is really just like a live FaceTime between downtown New York City and Dublin.

[00:02:41] Right.

[00:02:42] And it's people all day long looking through the screen and doing things to each other through this screen.

[00:02:49] Yeah.

[00:02:50] And seeing the people in Dublin and they're seeing you.

[00:02:53] That's actually pretty cool.

[00:02:55] There's people trying to run through the screen.

[00:02:57] There's people flashing people just like New Yorkers in Dublin.

[00:03:01] I can see back in the old days where this would be really not a good idea.

[00:03:06] Times Square back then was not a safe place for children.

[00:03:11] Is it safe now?

[00:03:12] Yeah.

[00:03:13] It's a good environment.

[00:03:14] Yeah, it's pretty terse.

[00:03:15] It's kind of gotten back to the pre-pandemic days.

[00:03:18] Yeah.

[00:03:19] We don't have good relations with people in New York.

[00:03:22] We look at New York people as just completely negative in bad.

[00:03:26] Really?

[00:03:27] Filly people.

[00:03:28] Filly.

[00:03:29] Yeah.

[00:03:30] I get it.

[00:03:31] Although I will say what you know, I do if you're a basketball fan.

[00:03:34] I am a fan of Brunson and I was hoping you guys would actually take it.

[00:03:39] You've got the Villanova connection.

[00:03:41] They became our adopted team after you put aside for a mission.

[00:03:46] There you go.

[00:03:47] My daughter goes to Penn State so I have a lot of club and football being in me too.

[00:03:51] There we go.

[00:03:52] We can get together.

[00:03:54] Mutual.

[00:03:55] We all just get along.

[00:03:58] And I pronounced his name correct.

[00:04:00] I could even say Farmularo.

[00:04:02] Very nice.

[00:04:03] There you go.

[00:04:04] Nice.

[00:04:05] Well done.

[00:04:06] You're hanging out with your Italian friends.

[00:04:08] Yeah.

[00:04:09] So what do you do now?

[00:04:10] Tell us a little bit about the gig right now that you have.

[00:04:13] So my latest challenge, I took over a company called Work Fusion about two and a half,

[00:04:19] three years ago.

[00:04:21] The company had some brilliant technology focused on when I get too technical something

[00:04:28] called IDP or intelligent document processing.

[00:04:31] Right.

[00:04:32] And AI machine learning technology out of MIT labs.

[00:04:35] And really what they were doing at that point in time was they were selling this platform

[00:04:39] that can do anything for anybody.

[00:04:41] Right.

[00:04:42] And after going out and studying the customers, understanding what was working and not working,

[00:04:47] we focused in on financial crimes where we had a specific use case, specific problem

[00:04:54] that we can solve for our customers and really packaged up our technology as what

[00:04:59] we call digital workers, which is what we believe is the new age of technology where

[00:05:05] AI working alongside of humans.

[00:05:08] And we're the first to do that.

[00:05:09] We actually named and packaged our software personas of people.

[00:05:14] So Tara who's doing transaction screening and Evelyn who's doing entity transactions

[00:05:19] and adverse media.

[00:05:21] And we have about seven different digital workers that you can hire to come to

[00:05:25] work for your company to help you stop the bad guys and fight financial crimes.

[00:05:30] Did I dream this that you did that y'all had one that was going through actual

[00:05:35] tables and then finding finding irregularities and then kicking them to humans and humans

[00:05:42] basically saying yes, no.

[00:05:44] And until the Tara or Ginny or James or whomever would then learn from that

[00:05:49] to then see get smarter.

[00:05:51] You are dead on.

[00:05:53] Absolutely right.

[00:05:54] Yeah.

[00:05:55] So the notion is that these are digital workers that are doing the jobs of these L one

[00:06:00] analysts really like go by working alongside of those workers and doing the test

[00:06:06] that people don't want to do is that remedial work.

[00:06:10] And then they pull in their co worker when they're either stuck on something

[00:06:14] or they want something double check and then based upon those learnings is

[00:06:18] called human in the loop.

[00:06:19] It trains itself to get smarter and better at the time.

[00:06:22] So usually like when a company hires Tara to come to work out of the box

[00:06:27] she'll be like 50% trained and automated.

[00:06:30] And then over the course of time she'll go to 60, 70, 80 even up to 90%

[00:06:35] automation that's coming out of Tara from the work that she's doing.

[00:06:38] And is it sold like in a SAS model or is it a staffing model?

[00:06:43] Like what's the way that it's purchased?

[00:06:46] I would actually say it's kind of like a blend of the two.

[00:06:48] So the one component of it being like a staffing model is you actually

[00:06:53] you pay for the work that Tara does and only the work that she does.

[00:06:57] So the notion is as you save money we make along those lines.

[00:07:02] And then we do view it as though you hire Tara to come to work.

[00:07:07] So there's a whole onboarding Tara getting her implemented trained in

[00:07:11] the environment and really get the humans to understand their role

[00:07:15] working with Tara going forward.

[00:07:18] This is fascinating. Absolutely.

[00:07:21] You know, in listening Adam to you talk about Tara it's almost as if she's sitting next to you.

[00:07:27] That's right.

[00:07:28] Like she has grown on you. She is your friend.

[00:07:33] And for our customers that's how they feel.

[00:07:36] They literally feel like they have brought her into their company

[00:07:41] and that she is part of their team.

[00:07:44] That's the most important part.

[00:07:46] That's why we gave her a name and a face and an identity.

[00:07:50] And we're going even further on that in the future giving her a back story

[00:07:54] and you can really understand who she is and what she's doing

[00:07:58] and really have her as part of your team.

[00:08:01] Because that's the way that she grows and gets smarter and smarter

[00:08:04] and becomes an even better contributor as part of an organization function.

[00:08:10] Now, can Tara or Evelyn, I know this isn't use case.

[00:08:15] We'll jump into you in a moment, but can Tara or Evelyn or any other personas,

[00:08:22] can they sit inside of a meeting, take part in the meeting

[00:08:27] and actually give recommendations?

[00:08:29] Yeah, they're not there yet.

[00:08:31] What they are doing is they're actually physically doing the work

[00:08:36] whether it's when or if you're even in the office.

[00:08:38] So like you might be home at night and Tara is still going through.

[00:08:43] There's no breaks, there's no union, there's no employment laws for Tara.

[00:08:47] Exactly right.

[00:08:48] And then the next day when you would log in, Ryan,

[00:08:51] you would go, okay Tara what'd you do?

[00:08:53] And you would seal the work effort that Tara did over the night

[00:08:56] and there might be some approvals in there.

[00:08:58] There might be some things that Tara is asking you for questions

[00:09:01] that you're answering so you're improving her model.

[00:09:04] And now that's all almost like you were communicating via like text message, right?

[00:09:09] Right.

[00:09:10] You would read, decipher and go.

[00:09:12] What we're trying to do is make that experience even closer

[00:09:15] and get into a point where Tara would set up a meeting on your calendar.

[00:09:20] Tara would call you, Tara would talk to you.

[00:09:23] So we're trying to get it to that kind of level next.

[00:09:27] Last thing before we go backwards.

[00:09:29] Human in the loop.

[00:09:31] I think that's a couple weeks ago where we were talking a little bit about this

[00:09:34] and we've been talking about FOBO fear of being obsolete.

[00:09:38] So these two are in obviously a concert with one another

[00:09:43] because a lot of people I can see them

[00:09:45] and we can see them kind of fearing that they will or would

[00:09:48] or some of what their job is or is becoming obsolete.

[00:09:53] Human in the loop is actually taking that by putting maybe a Xanax on that

[00:09:59] and saying, okay, first of all, chill out.

[00:10:01] There's a bunch of work that you don't want to do.

[00:10:04] But you don't really need to be doing.

[00:10:06] You don't want to be going through these really extensive Excel spreadsheets or whatever else.

[00:10:10] And oh by the way, you might make errors that they're not going to make.

[00:10:14] So there's other places for you that like the humanization or human

[00:10:19] you get to place a human in a different place and in a much better place.

[00:10:23] So if I've got any of that wrong.

[00:10:26] Will that was dead on.

[00:10:28] I don't say it any better than you just described it.

[00:10:31] Okay, for our customers we have not seen anybody go in and go, okay,

[00:10:36] we're removing staff now that we have.

[00:10:38] We have not seen what we have been seeing and hearing is the other side of that.

[00:10:44] The first are like the smaller to midsize companies that are like, look,

[00:10:50] we can't afford to increase our employee population just because

[00:10:54] our sanctions are growing in the marketplace.

[00:10:56] We need these digital workers to augment our workforce.

[00:11:00] Right and they're looking to grow using our digital workers as kind of like that

[00:11:06] that variable work nature, right?

[00:11:08] So let me let me ramp up my work effort by using digital workers.

[00:11:12] So that's the first part.

[00:11:14] And then the second part, the larger banks and financial services institutions,

[00:11:18] they just want to be able to do more work process or work and show the orders

[00:11:22] that they're actually touching more and doing more.

[00:11:25] So that's where they're coming at it.

[00:11:27] So I have not seen any, any yet that have been doing it as purely a cost cutting measure in any way shape.

[00:11:35] Yeah, I look at this is interesting because I, you know, as we talk to a lot of people about this,

[00:11:41] I look at this as re invigorating the work for a portion of the working population at a company.

[00:11:50] Someone who doesn't want to do these 25 different things is now able to have a digital employee partnering with them to get this done.

[00:12:00] It reinvigorates them to do their job better, allows them to take on a different role.

[00:12:04] And we know that most of the workforce needs to be trained on this stuff moving forward and this allows them to be trained

[00:12:12] and grow along with the, with the employee.

[00:12:15] And maybe at some point they manage 10 of them.

[00:12:17] Well, imagine when cruise control was first introduced in cars.

[00:12:21] So there's a bunch of car heads out there that were like, no, I want to drive the car.

[00:12:26] Yeah, you know, I'm going from here to Toronto and I want to drive the entire way.

[00:12:30] It's flat and it's straight and boring.

[00:12:33] But I want my hands on the wheel.

[00:12:35] And all of a sudden someone invents cruise control that says, yeah, you know what just kind of hit a button set of speed and just kind of,

[00:12:43] you know, kind of sit back and, you know, ease back and let the car do the car thing.

[00:12:48] And you can kind of do other stuff.

[00:12:51] You know, there's going to be people that at first are going to be against that just because it's a technology shift just because of the adoption curve.

[00:12:59] And then there's other people that are going to see and go see it for what it is and go, wait a minute, I can do all of these things, consume more data,

[00:13:06] get more things done and have the human actually fact checking or double checking to make sure the math's right.

[00:13:13] Why? Why, why, why, why can we start tomorrow?

[00:13:16] Right on.

[00:13:17] Makes sense to me.

[00:13:18] I can see when you talk to prospects, they either get it immediately or they don't.

[00:13:23] And if they don't, it's like, you know what, good call.

[00:13:25] Talk to you later.

[00:13:26] We'll be back.

[00:13:27] We'll be back.

[00:13:28] You'll get it in the future, but we'll be back.

[00:13:30] Yep.

[00:13:31] You guys write on it.

[00:13:33] And that's exactly what it's like today.

[00:13:36] Well, let's go backwards.

[00:13:37] Let's learn a little bit about his journey, Sergeant.

[00:13:41] Yeah, let's do it.

[00:13:44] Yeah, let's let's go back.

[00:13:46] I mean, little Adam, right?

[00:13:48] I mean, so, so we have to go that far back up.

[00:13:52] Oh boy.

[00:13:53] That's creepy, right?

[00:13:55] Little Adam.

[00:13:56] Just had a talladega night's moment in my life.

[00:13:58] Exactly.

[00:13:59] Yeah.

[00:14:00] He's got some sweat beads coming down his head.

[00:14:04] Maybe Jesus.

[00:14:05] Yeah.

[00:14:06] So, so, okay.

[00:14:07] So why don't you let's maybe start to walk through not everybody can rise to the level of CEO

[00:14:14] of any company, let alone a company like work fusion that's kind of bleeding edge.

[00:14:18] How did we get here?

[00:14:19] What was the driving factor behind you in motivating you to go this direction?

[00:14:26] So, I guess we'll go back a little bit in time here to the starting point.

[00:14:32] You know, I grew up, you know, the son of an entrepreneur and the son of an educated.

[00:14:38] So it was my mother in law.

[00:14:41] So I was always surrounded by either one side, which was the value of education and then the other side of building and developing businesses.

[00:14:51] Right.

[00:14:52] So that was kind of what I grew up with in and I definitely experimented more on building and developing businesses, even as a kid through like so one of the businesses that my father built during his free time on the weekends was something called ice flows or you go to like a 711 and you get a slurpee before that even existed.

[00:15:13] It was they were called ice flows.

[00:15:15] And he sold them exclusively these ice skating rinks or say roller skating.

[00:15:21] And that was like a big business boom back in the I'm going back to the 80s now.

[00:15:28] And so the mid 80s into the early 90s and and he built this big business on it.

[00:15:34] It was one of those like original, you know, I'll rent you the machine you buy the syrup.

[00:15:39] I keep selling you the serum on an ongoing basis.

[00:15:41] And that was one of his businesses.

[00:15:44] And that's why I bring up that business was because for him to be able to do that he always had to have machines in the garage.

[00:15:51] Right. So, for me as a kid, these machines in the garage that were hooked up to a couple of things to actually get it working.

[00:15:58] And I was started selling ice flows to kids and on the block.

[00:16:02] You know, so until my mother caught a box of like a couple hundred dollars in singles under my bed and yelled at me for doing this and took the money away and said you got to give this back and she felt like that wrong.

[00:16:13] I should have been giving that away free.

[00:16:15] But that was my first entrance into kind of entrepreneurialist wife for free.

[00:16:21] She felt like an educator had right so we can give it to others you shouldn't be charging me looking at it going shoot, I can I can make some money on this and more more baseball cards.

[00:16:35] Yeah, so that's that's the notion of kind of where I started.

[00:16:39] Did you keep in your baseball cards?

[00:16:42] I actually still do have them.

[00:16:44] Me too.

[00:16:45] You have them in my attic all the way in the back.

[00:16:48] Oh yeah.

[00:16:49] I have three daughters at home so that they nobody has any interest in them.

[00:16:53] No, no.

[00:16:54] Someday maybe their kids will like it.

[00:16:57] Maybe yeah, maybe there's a grandson in the works at one point.

[00:17:00] Some of them.

[00:17:01] You can say these things that you'll never know about existed and here's Hank Aaron's that signed.

[00:17:07] Anyhow, just put it in a safe deposit box.

[00:17:10] They're buried up there.

[00:17:12] That's too funny.

[00:17:13] What did you want to be?

[00:17:15] So would you're growing up?

[00:17:16] What was the dream?

[00:17:17] Look, I always, you know, when I was growing up watching my father, you know, build and run these businesses, I always thought I would take over kind of one of those businesses.

[00:17:26] When it was my turn and I finished, I focused on business economics was my master's.

[00:17:34] I always love computers.

[00:17:35] So I always had my father always made sure we had the most latest technology in the household.

[00:17:40] Oh, I was playing with the Commodore 64 as I was writing code back then.

[00:17:45] You had to actually run the applications.

[00:17:47] But it was that was always what surrounded me.

[00:17:51] So I was I was like a couple of classes away from having a minor in computer science.

[00:17:56] And I even was tinkering with going to law school.

[00:17:59] I actually took the LSATs and was thinking of that.

[00:18:02] But the more I kind of talked through it, the number of lawyers that were out there really didn't satisfy where I was trying to do.

[00:18:09] When I went through the thing with my father, he's like, listen, go to work at a large company, learn anything and everything you can about running a business.

[00:18:18] And then from there, you can kind of spin out if you ever wanted to and take over.

[00:18:22] So that's what I did.

[00:18:24] So right out of school, I had a friend who was working at a company called Computer Associates, which was a very large software company on Long Island.

[00:18:33] I lived on Long Island and the role was a telesales rat in their Islandia headquarters.

[00:18:42] And for me, I went through the technology.

[00:18:45] I was like, I love this, right?

[00:18:46] So they pay you to do this.

[00:18:48] I'm in and I can talk to people and work with people and try to solve problems and most importantly, learn.

[00:18:55] And that's what I did.

[00:18:56] So I was like literally one week out of school, I started at CA and that was really my kind of growing ground.

[00:19:05] Right?

[00:19:06] So I really grew up learning how to sell software and I did it over the phone selling a million dollar product called Unicenter TNG, which to me was mind numbing.

[00:19:16] It was literally a CD-ROM that we would sell.

[00:19:19] That was the TNG framework and we would create this construct of how we can manage real world devices.

[00:19:26] And I wound up doing really well in that sales environment and I wound up growing up and through the sales organization at CA.

[00:19:37] They had a big presence in Dallas.

[00:19:39] I remember them.

[00:19:40] There was a building outside of downtown Dallas, but it was a big headquarters.

[00:19:46] It was a big office space.

[00:19:49] Yeah, no we definitely did.

[00:19:50] I think that was actually one of the ones we acquired through Platinum was Sterling.

[00:19:54] But yeah, it was such a fast paced, great growth environment.

[00:20:00] And for me, education was always still a big important thing for me.

[00:20:04] Yeah, you were just a sponge.

[00:20:06] Yeah, and everybody actually used that advice as well was be a sponge.

[00:20:10] Just be a sponge.

[00:20:11] Take it all in.

[00:20:12] Learn as much as you can.

[00:20:13] Put it into practice.

[00:20:15] And really that's what I did for my first series of years is I kind of went through the chain.

[00:20:20] I always felt like so there was my first fork in the road was do you go direct sales or channel sales?

[00:20:27] CA was predominantly a direct sales company.

[00:20:30] That's how most of the company was built and formed.

[00:20:33] But I always love channels because it was around building businesses and building partnerships and bringing different products with services together.

[00:20:40] So it was more akin to who I was my one of my father's businesses was a big goods route where he was like a wholesaler and he brought together all different kinds of big goods and then deliver them to retail businesses in Brooklyn.

[00:20:53] So that really kind of pulled me in.

[00:20:56] So my my inkling was to go into this notion of channels and building and developing businesses.

[00:21:02] And that that's kind of where my first road for in my career.

[00:21:07] All right, I want to talk to you for a moment about retaining and developing your workforce is hard recruiting is hard retaining top employees is hard.

[00:21:16] Then you've got onboarding payroll benefits time and labor management.

[00:21:20] You need to take care of your workforce and you can only do this successfully if you commit to transforming your employee experience.

[00:21:28] This is where I solve comes in.

[00:21:30] They empower you to be successful.

[00:21:32] We've seen it with a number of companies that we've worked with.

[00:21:35] And this is why we partner with them here at work to find we trust them and you should too.

[00:21:41] Check them out at I solved H C M dot com.

[00:21:45] And then from there my second big road was when my father actually had a heart attack.

[00:21:51] Thankfully he survived it.

[00:21:53] Right.

[00:21:54] But when he had that heart attack, it was a point of kind of no return.

[00:21:58] See, I was great.

[00:22:00] I left C A for a couple of weeks.

[00:22:02] I helped run the business.

[00:22:03] I also helped them package up the company and ultimately sell it.

[00:22:07] But for me that was the do I want to take this over and run it?

[00:22:11] Or do I want to continue on my path at C A and I should tell I chose to see a very clearly was like, look, I just got into management.

[00:22:21] I saw the path forward there.

[00:22:23] I truly love what I was doing.

[00:22:25] And once I did that, that was it man.

[00:22:27] The bridge, the bridge was burnt.

[00:22:29] There's only one way forward and it's going to be in technology for the rest of my career.

[00:22:34] That was that was the next big move for me.

[00:22:37] Do you regret not taking over family business?

[00:22:42] You know, it's a good question.

[00:22:44] It is.

[00:22:45] I'm sure I could have done something big and special with that as well.

[00:22:51] But the end of the day, look, I saw how my father worked and he worked like a dog.

[00:22:57] I mean, you're talking about a person who, you know, he probably worked 16 to 18 hours a day every day through weekends.

[00:23:05] Right.

[00:23:06] He wasn't able to really travel with us have vacations.

[00:23:10] You know, his vacations with us was when he would drive us to Mount Dairy Lodge on a on a Saturday.

[00:23:16] We drop us off there and then we'll come pick us up the next Saturday.

[00:23:19] Right.

[00:23:20] Or drive us out to the Hamptons where they rented a house some summers and then we'll come pick us up the week later.

[00:23:27] And I really the more I thought about that, I said to myself, I know I can do more with my family and my kids.

[00:23:34] Right.

[00:23:35] It was it was a hard decision.

[00:23:37] But actually, I think my father helped me make that decision and kind of pushed me on to doing really what you love and what you have a passion for.

[00:23:44] And it was the right move for me.

[00:23:47] Right.

[00:23:48] So what it was after CA?

[00:23:50] What did we do after CA?

[00:23:52] So the finish it, the journey CA that I guess the other important point just I'll touch on is I jumped.

[00:23:59] I was always the youngest.

[00:24:00] I was the youngest VP in CA's history.

[00:24:02] I was the youngest SVP general manager.

[00:24:05] One of the important lessons I learned there for anybody that that's looking to climb, especially a large company.

[00:24:11] I always used education as kind of the piece that set me apart.

[00:24:15] So like the first time I went back for my MBA was early 2000s and I got an MBA in management.

[00:24:22] And by time I finished that program, I was then able to get promoted into a management role and a VP role.

[00:24:28] And not that I didn't have confidence in myself that I could do it, but it gave the other people that were promoting me confidence to give me a chance.

[00:24:36] And then my next big, big move I was iron on this from the beginning.

[00:24:41] My goal was always to be the CEO of a software company.

[00:24:44] If anybody ever asked me, I always said that I want to be a CEO of a software company.

[00:24:48] And I wasn't afraid to say it because I kind of felt like, you know, it drove me that that was my driving factor.

[00:24:54] So in doing that, I spoke to a lot of other people that became CEOs of software company.

[00:24:59] And one of the pieces that I learned from a couple of them were an MBA is good, but an MBA from a top tier school is a different level.

[00:25:08] And you almost need that to give other people bigger confidence in you.

[00:25:13] So I pushed really hard my CEO and COO to sponsor me to go through this HBS program, which was like their version of their executive MBA.

[00:25:24] Right.

[00:25:25] And I applied for it.

[00:25:27] I got in.

[00:25:28] I was the youngest actually in the program at 31.

[00:25:30] The average age was 45.

[00:25:33] I left my wife home with a three year old and a three month old, and she still won't let me forget that to this day.

[00:25:39] First statement.

[00:25:40] First it moved in my in-laws to live with them.

[00:25:43] And I went back to school and it was two months on site at HBS and it went literally seven days a week.

[00:25:52] It was six days of classes a day of reading and preparing for the next week so you couldn't come home.

[00:25:57] So you were there.

[00:25:59] It was like it was a month prep work and and classes and stuff then a month on site and a month back doing case studies and then a month back to graduate until you graduate.

[00:26:10] And that was that was the program.

[00:26:12] I did that I graduated in November of 2007.

[00:26:17] And that was my other big break at CAs when I came back from that program after I literally had to leave work for four months.

[00:26:25] CAs paid me CAs paid for the program.

[00:26:28] They were fantastic.

[00:26:29] They made me sign an agreement that if I left within the two year period, I would pay it back but that was worth the weight in gold.

[00:26:36] And and that like the program I mean my professors were like they're like historians like Michael Porter who does competitive advantage and Christian sin with an innovative dilemma.

[00:26:50] John Cotter was one of my favorites who you know wrote about change and change management.

[00:26:55] He was like look he was the youngest professor at HBS and he's like I'm studying change because any CEO that's going to take over a company needs to know how to change.

[00:27:03] You're not coming into a perfect situation.

[00:27:06] So so he was great little George who teaches leadership using these were my professors.

[00:27:12] And then the people in my program were all C level executives from around the world.

[00:27:17] So I got this amazing network of people that I got close to as well as these amazing professors, which kind of set me up for the next stage in my career.

[00:27:25] When I came back to CA my CEO of course then sponsored me to take over a business.

[00:27:31] So I was there's first time that I moved into general manager role and now I'm running sales marketing development support.

[00:27:37] I find this is where I crossed over into running development teams product management marketing and I wasn't just a go to market expert.

[00:27:45] Now I did you have all you had PNL so you had PNL I ran it as a CEO of the business.

[00:27:52] The only thing I didn't have I had like financial I had my own kind of CFO that was a dotted line.

[00:27:58] I had my own head of HR that was like a dotted line but I ran the rest of the business as the CEO of the business.

[00:28:04] And that was awesome. That was really setting me up for my own CEO role.

[00:28:10] So Adam question about the education piece.

[00:28:14] A lot of people may feel like they want to be on the same path as you.

[00:28:19] They want to lead just any company.

[00:28:22] They just want to lead a company at some point in their career and they're teetering.

[00:28:26] Do I go back for education or do I just go get real world practical experience and work my way out?

[00:28:33] Up the ladder. They're getting information from all areas of people and things and not a lot of that makes sense to me.

[00:28:43] It sounds like you stand on the side of education but maybe what advice would you give those people who are listening that have that dilemma going back?

[00:28:53] Yeah, look to me I think you need both.

[00:28:56] I really truly do believe you need both the real world experience.

[00:28:59] Look I used to this day, right? Every CEO that you have is a CEO with a background.

[00:29:06] You could have a CFO CEO. You could have a CMO CEO.

[00:29:09] I am a go-to-market and a product CEO.

[00:29:13] I can define and develop and establish products as well as then align the go-to-market behind them.

[00:29:21] That's my strength but I'm not a CFO or a COO or a CMO CEO.

[00:29:27] I'm a specialty niche CEO doing this specific thing that I do really well.

[00:29:32] So I couldn't do that without that real world experience.

[00:29:35] That's 20 years of experience of 10 on the sales side, another 10 on the development and product marketing, product management side.

[00:29:45] That notion is really kind of core to who I am as a being and as a leader.

[00:29:51] But for me to then package that up as a real CEO having that education to go along with it that you might know half of it

[00:30:01] but it kind of levels you off and you ground it on all of the material

[00:30:05] and truly knowing and understanding the organizational principles and how it works.

[00:30:10] Not that I need to know my CFO's job, but I need to understand the backdrop behind his construct of how he makes decisions.

[00:30:18] So working alongside him as a partner.

[00:30:21] So you do need to know and understand that part. Does that make sense?

[00:30:26] 100%

[00:30:27] Yeah, it does.

[00:30:28] And so just one more question about that, about the education piece I think could be important and helpful for people.

[00:30:34] How did your conversation go when you approach CA and convince them to sponsor your program?

[00:30:44] Brian, he started in sales.

[00:30:47] I don't know where he started, but there's still a conversation.

[00:30:52] There's still a conversation that has to happen, right?

[00:30:55] Dude, he sold it.

[00:30:56] Because a lot of people they won't do that because of all the student loan debt and things like that.

[00:31:03] Brian, it's a good question.

[00:31:04] And it does come with the confidence and I think that's where Will was coming from.

[00:31:10] Look, I did package it up, but I didn't have to be a seller to package it up.

[00:31:16] But to me, you need to have a clear vision.

[00:31:21] Where do I want to get it?

[00:31:22] My clear vision was I want to be a CEO of a software company.

[00:31:26] So for me, I met with the CEO multiple times.

[00:31:29] He's still a good friend of mine named John Stringston.

[00:31:32] And I say, John, my goal is to be you.

[00:31:35] I want your job.

[00:31:36] How did you get there?

[00:31:38] What can I do better and more to get there?

[00:31:41] And since I had a track record of success in my prior roles, I was able to show, look, you know what?

[00:31:47] I've been the youngest VP and sales side.

[00:31:50] I was a VP for every type of sales.

[00:31:52] I've done OEM sales, channel sales, direct sales, inside sales, outside sales.

[00:31:57] I've studied every part of sales.

[00:32:00] I know the selling side inside and out.

[00:32:03] I want to cross over.

[00:32:04] I want to become a more product-grounded person before I take a CEO base role.

[00:32:11] There is this program when I've spoken to other CEOs that have highly recommended it.

[00:32:16] For me to get it, this is what I'm going to need.

[00:32:19] I'm going to need to, you know, escape CA for four months.

[00:32:22] I'm going to put somebody in there that's going to be able to do my role, my number two,

[00:32:26] and coach him and get him.

[00:32:27] It'll be a chance for him to be groomed into that role.

[00:32:30] And I have worked out an arrangement with my wife where I'll be able to leave her home with the kids.

[00:32:36] She's going to ward it over you for the rest of your existence?

[00:32:39] She's still, but she gets it now.

[00:32:41] Now she could see why I did it.

[00:32:43] Back then, it was a little bit more gray.

[00:32:46] But I painted that picture for him and I made him part of that journey.

[00:32:51] Right?

[00:32:52] He was part of that ride.

[00:32:53] So he was an enabler of it.

[00:32:55] So he came up with an idea of how to get it done internally and help me fund it and everything else.

[00:33:02] But you really need the desire and you can't be afraid to ask.

[00:33:06] Right?

[00:33:07] You can't be afraid to ask.

[00:33:08] That was one of the other lessons in life, right?

[00:33:10] So all the different roles that I did get along the journey, nobody just came knocking and said,

[00:33:15] Hey, Adam, you're doing a great job.

[00:33:16] Here's this new role I asked for.

[00:33:18] Yeah, no one's thinking about it.

[00:33:20] I'm ready for this next role.

[00:33:22] And if they were to tell me I'm not ready, well then tell me why.

[00:33:24] And what do I need to work on so that I can be ready for it when it is the time.

[00:33:29] But being open to having those dialogues of kind of being in that kind of self-aware point of where you are in your journey and being able to ask others around you,

[00:33:38] What do I need to improve to get to that next level of my career?

[00:33:42] You have to do that.

[00:33:43] You have to push yourself.

[00:33:45] Even if you're not extroverted but you're introverted, you still be able to do those things to be able to drive yourself to that next time.

[00:33:54] Do you get frustrated with salespeople?

[00:33:56] Either people selling you?

[00:34:00] I definitely have a little bit more.

[00:34:03] And my wife says it all the time.

[00:34:04] She's like, that's the person to sell to because anybody that calls me, I'll pick it up and go, oh, hit me.

[00:34:11] So I will give anybody a chance from a sales standpoint.

[00:34:16] And I always appreciate that because I grew up selling.

[00:34:19] Yeah.

[00:34:20] You know, it's kind of part of who I am.

[00:34:23] So I do have an appreciation for it.

[00:34:26] And as my wife says, I'm probably the best person for a salesperson to try to sell to because I'll give them a chance.

[00:34:32] Yeah.

[00:34:33] You'll pick up the phone because people picked up the phone for you.

[00:34:36] Yeah.

[00:34:37] And you know what the trick to that?

[00:34:38] I always did this and people still get me with it today is you've got to get the executives early.

[00:34:44] Oh, yeah.

[00:34:45] Any good executive is usually in the office early anywhere from 7, 730, 8 o'clock is usually the latest.

[00:34:52] They'll be in the office and what they're doing at the beginning of that day is they're planning their day.

[00:34:56] They're going through their calendar.

[00:34:58] They're understanding the people that they're meeting with.

[00:35:00] They're playing out any talking points.

[00:35:02] They're reading and catching up on email.

[00:35:05] That's the time when they'll have that extra minute or two to listen to something.

[00:35:09] And then when you do call, if you want to make it easy for yourself, get to what it means for them right away.

[00:35:15] Right away.

[00:35:16] Listen, Will, I'm calling because I have something that I think you will make your life easy.

[00:35:23] And here's what it is.

[00:35:25] And immediately it'll pull you in.

[00:35:27] You'll want to know what that is.

[00:35:29] Just give me two minutes after two minutes.

[00:35:31] You're good.

[00:35:32] We'll hang up part ways, but two minutes.

[00:35:34] I think you'll be interested.

[00:35:36] I just had a flashback to like the Wolf of Wall Street.

[00:35:40] I have a pen for you.

[00:35:44] Sell me this pen.

[00:35:46] That's a great seat.

[00:35:48] There's actually a guy in our industry, Adam, who was one of the partners in that firm.

[00:35:56] Not the top, but not the...

[00:35:59] He runs a company called 60 million jobs.

[00:36:03] It's a staff firm.

[00:36:05] 70 million jobs.

[00:36:06] It's four people that have been previously incarcerated.

[00:36:10] And it's a staffing play.

[00:36:12] What a great way to get back.

[00:36:14] I'm talking to him one day and I'm like, I read the book.

[00:36:17] Saw the movie and he stops me right before I'm about to ask questions.

[00:36:21] Dude, the stuff that they portrayed in the movie, you think that was once.

[00:36:27] We did that stuff every day.

[00:36:30] We threw midgets against the wall every day.

[00:36:35] This is where we get canceling.

[00:36:37] They watered it down.

[00:36:39] They watered it down to where it's like it wasn't even watchable for me because they portrayed it as like this only happened occasionally.

[00:36:48] No.

[00:36:49] He goes, everybody had massive amounts of cocaine on their desk and you could just go by anybody's desk.

[00:36:56] You get a cocaine.

[00:36:58] Hookers are coming in all the time.

[00:37:00] They had an office next to their office that was for hookers.

[00:37:04] I'm like, he's just blowing me away.

[00:37:06] I'm telling him, hey, off top.

[00:37:09] However, it's important.

[00:37:10] Run businesses like that anymore?

[00:37:12] No, you cannot.

[00:37:13] No, you cannot.

[00:37:14] Turns out what did you do after you built the company?

[00:37:18] It is a culture.

[00:37:19] It's just maybe not the culture you want to be in.

[00:37:22] So what after CA gave you after you run a P&L?

[00:37:26] What'd you do after that?

[00:37:28] After CA, I had to.

[00:37:30] So when I left CA, we left the amicably.

[00:37:34] So I did sign a non-compete.

[00:37:36] So I wouldn't compete against them for a year, which was definitely a tough thing because CA sells everywhere.

[00:37:43] So I actually wound up joining another friend that was over at Verizon that needed help building their global channels and bringing their global channels together.

[00:37:55] Something at a completely different scale than I've ever done before.

[00:37:59] And this is a big scale.

[00:38:01] I think I started it was like a $500 million business.

[00:38:04] By the time I finished over a two-year period, we were on a run rate to get to over a billion.

[00:38:09] Wow.

[00:38:10] And it was this massive kind of global channels role, which was fun for me because it kind of got back to a little bit of my roots,

[00:38:18] but also just learning something completely new and different, which was Verizon Enterprise Assistant.

[00:38:25] So it was a fun kind of time, but really what it did for me was a couple things.

[00:38:30] Outside of doing that gave me time to also I got into investing in technology companies.

[00:38:36] So I started one track of building, developing and nurturing new companies from the ground up through personal investment as well as expertise.

[00:38:46] And I have to this date about a dozen companies that I work with from that time and experience.

[00:38:51] And then the second thing was it gave me time to see like CA was trying to divest this asset called Irwin, which was a data modeling tool.

[00:39:00] I of course was at Verizon.

[00:39:02] So I saw with their IoT devices the sheer amounts of data that was being created.

[00:39:07] So I created a bigger thesis statement around data and data governance and how if we took these data modeling assets, we could use it as a foundation toward building a very large data governance software company.

[00:39:20] I pitched it to a private equity firm and they bought it.

[00:39:24] And then me with them ran the cycle and we bought the assets from CA.

[00:39:30] I then stepped down from Verizon and I took over full time to found and run company that we called Irwin Inc, which became a large data governance software company.

[00:39:43] We bought four other companies to kind of round out my vision.

[00:39:48] And, you know, we grew this thing to about 5560 million in size.

[00:39:54] And then we sold to Quest software on the last day of December 2021.

[00:40:01] Wow.

[00:40:03] My goodness.

[00:40:05] You've used the words division four times.

[00:40:10] And no, first of all, it's great.

[00:40:12] It's not a bad thing.

[00:40:14] And I won't take us into a Wolf of Wall Street story.

[00:40:16] No, no, it's okay.

[00:40:17] So when I hear vision, I don't hear it a lot quite frankly from folks.

[00:40:26] Some people will talk about values or other types of things, but they don't talk about their vision enough.

[00:40:33] And one of the question that I want to get to is do you think there was something that was taught to you or that you learned in terms of having a vision?

[00:40:45] Because I see in my own life, I see a lot of people we interact with a lot of people and vision doesn't come out.

[00:40:52] Boy, boy well so it's a nature versus nurture question.

[00:40:56] Yeah, this is a big one for me.

[00:40:59] And this is kind of deep rooted in me.

[00:41:02] So this is something that started with me when I wrestled.

[00:41:06] So I wrestled high school and college.

[00:41:10] And I'll never forget it went to a wrestling camp.

[00:41:13] It was probably the summer after 9th grade or 10th grade.

[00:41:20] And I went to this wrestling camp who's in the middle of Pennsylvania.

[00:41:24] Brian, I'm back to Pennsylvania.

[00:41:26] And I walked in there, I'm this young kid and I've got my wrestling gear on.

[00:41:32] I'm kind of ready to go.

[00:41:34] And they took us and they said, no, we're actually not going to wrestle right now.

[00:41:39] And they put us in a classroom.

[00:41:42] What's going on?

[00:41:44] I didn't want you to wrestle.

[00:41:46] I didn't pay you good money to sit in the classroom.

[00:41:48] I do that there in the school year and I don't like that.

[00:41:50] They said, listen, going out here and just wrestling without a purpose, without a vision is inconsequential.

[00:41:58] You're just wrestling to wrestle.

[00:42:00] You need to understand what the big picture is that you're trying to get to.

[00:42:04] You need to vision where you're going to be in five years from now and 10 years from now.

[00:42:09] And then you back into that and you build your plan, you build your goals, your objectives and everything off of that bigger vision.

[00:42:16] And that's what they had us do.

[00:42:18] So we sat there, young kids in a classroom.

[00:42:21] I still have these notes from 25 year, 10 year, 5 year, 1 year vision and then your goals and objectives that you need to accomplish to get to your one year plan.

[00:42:32] So now when you go into that wrestling room, you know you're wrestling with a purpose.

[00:42:36] There's a reason.

[00:42:38] So when you have a fallback, when you might lose to this person or you might get an injury, you overcome those things because your mindset is on the bigger vision and you work through all of the challenges that you're going to have.

[00:42:52] I took that lesson and I've applied that straight through life.

[00:42:55] And that absolutely is fundamental to who I am.

[00:42:59] As a person, as a person, I have a personal vision and goals.

[00:43:03] I've got an executive coach I meet with, you know, on a monthly basis and we go through my yearly goals and then we break that down to monthly and how I'm doing performing against those both personal as well as professional.

[00:43:15] And it's something that I would highly recommend anybody do especially as a company.

[00:43:20] So from a company standpoint, you know, you build the big vision for what you're trying to get to as a business.

[00:43:26] But then that vision then ties to the people that you hire and the people that you motivate to be aligned to that vision you want.

[00:43:34] So you talk about core values and all of those other things that you put in place, it all ties back to the vision.

[00:43:40] If people aren't brought into the vision, the bigger goals for the organization, then they won't come with any ability to sacrifice.

[00:43:47] Right?

[00:43:48] They won't understand that well, yeah, I might have to put in this time and effort today and I don't like doing it, but it's going to help us get to this bigger vision.

[00:43:55] We all have to be aligned to that.

[00:43:57] And then importantly for those individuals, I really believe in this strongly is for me to motivate those individuals, I need to understand their goals, what are their objectives and do they align to that vision?

[00:44:08] Right.

[00:44:09] And if they do, then that's great and purposeful and I can work with them to get to those goals because those goals are aligned to the vision.

[00:44:16] If they're not, then I should help them go somewhere else where they're more properly aligned to the vision.

[00:44:22] Ryan, if the audience listens to nothing other than that segment, it's gold.

[00:44:28] That's just gold.

[00:44:29] I don't have anything else.

[00:44:31] What do you have?

[00:44:33] I can add on why I can ask you a bunch of questions.

[00:44:36] I think you've got plenty to do today and we're probably at the time, but this has been fantastic.

[00:44:42] It has been fantastic.

[00:44:44] This has actually been a very good conversation.

[00:44:46] We have some not so good conversations.

[00:44:49] Thank you so much for carving out the time for us.

[00:44:51] You're welcome, Bill.

[00:44:52] It's always a pleasure spending time with you.

[00:44:54] Ryan, pleasure meeting you as well.

[00:44:56] And look, these are great for me too because it makes me reflect.

[00:44:59] This is part of reflection as a leader.