What can two wildly different exits teach us about leadership? In this episode, David Politis talks with Tom Buiocchi, a tech industry veteran with a 40-year career that spans iconic companies like IBM and HP, as well as leadership roles at high-growth startups.
Tom reflects on his unique journey as a CEO, including selling ServiceChannel for $1.2 billion and handing another company back to its founder for $1. He shares lessons on building resilient teams, over-communicating during crises, and making transformative hiring decisions. This conversation is packed with insights for leaders at any stage.
Takeaways:
Executive Coaching as a Catalyst: Tom shares how hiring an executive coach early in his ServiceChannel tenure helped him navigate challenges, think more clearly, and ultimately become a better leader.
Uncomfortable Hiring Decisions: At ServiceChannel, Tom prioritized hiring experts who challenged his thinking, leading to innovative strategies and significant growth, even though it was uncomfortable at times.
Segment Until It Hurts: Tom emphasizes the importance of narrowing target markets to identify ideal customers. By meticulously defining criteria, ServiceChannel created a focused pipeline of less than 700 target companies, improving conversion rates and customer engagement.
The Growth Roadmap: Beyond the product roadmap, Tom implemented a "growth roadmap" focused on pricing strategies, new revenue streams, and bundling options that directly drove business growth.
Over-Communication During COVID-19: Navigating the challenges of the pandemic, Tom adopted a strategy of daily updates and regular all-hands meetings to keep his distributed team aligned and motivated.
Resilience, Grit, and Luck: Reflecting on his career, Tom credits his success to a combination of skill, resilience, and timing, sharing his belief that luck often comes to those who stay in the game long enough.
Chapters
00:00 Intro
01:33 What You’d Do Again As CEO
05:15 Tom’s First CEO Experience
09:05 Lessons Learned & Hiring Strategies
15:08 Dealing With Competition
20:13 The Importance of Target Market Segmentation
26:20 Metrics and KPIs
31:40 Navigating Investor Relationships
34:08 The Growth Roadmap
42:16 Tom’s Biggest Challenge
48:20 Tom’s Background
50:56 Biggest Career Impact?
52:13 What Motivates You?
54:28 One Piece Of Advice
57:53 Outro
Quote of the Show:
“Fish in a pond where you know the names of all the fish.” - Tom Buiocchi
Links:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tombuiocchi/
Website: https://servicechannel.com/
Ways to Tune In:
Spotify:
Apple Podcasts:
Amazon Music: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/7c6328f0-9b42-41db-8fe2-d263b4fbb261
Transistor: https://podcast.notanotherceo.com/
Episode Transcript
[00:00:25] David: Today's guest has had an impressive 40 year career in technology. He spent time early in his career at some of the biggest and most iconic tech companies like IBM and HP. also been part of leadership teams at a number of startups. That includes being the CEO of two growth stage companies. He led his last company, which was the leader in facilities and maintenance management, from 10 million. To a hundred million in annual recurring revenue. Ultimately, he sold that company in 2021 for 1. 2 billion to Fortiv. [00:01:00] he's involved with 10 companies as an investor and an advisor. Please welcome former CEO at Service Channel, Tom Biocchi.
[00:01:09] Tom: Hey David, good morning. How you doing?
[00:01:11] David: Great. It is great to have you. I've been very excited for this
[00:01:15] Tom: Thanks for mentioning 40 year career. That means old and maybe listeners will remember when IBM and HP were relevant in the tech industry. That's when I was there.
[00:01:25] David: Well, you were there in the
[00:01:26] Tom: Back in the day. Back in the day. Many, many decades ago.
[00:01:30] David: All right, let's jump right into it. So what is the one thing you did at Service Channel, big or small, that had the biggest impact, and you'll absolutely do again if you're CEO of another company in the future, and you've told me you're not going to be, but if you were,
[00:01:43] Tom: You're starting with the toughest question. There's a million things, right? So I'm going to give you something that It's probably unconventional, maybe no one else has answered this way, but it was something that we sought out for my own personal help. Uh, this is my second CEO gig and, uh, as you know, a [00:02:00] CEO gig is kind of like, uh, a rollercoaster has a love child with the New York Marathon.
[00:02:05] It's ups and downs and it's craziness and all kinds of things and you can't really talk to everybody about everything. So I hired, uh, An executive CEO coach. An independent professional who do nothing about our business, who I spoke with once a week, almost in a therapy session, right, to talk about what's going on at the business, what's going on with the team, what our challenges were.
[00:02:27] Sometimes we made no decisions. Sometimes he just helped me think things through clearly. Sometimes he challenged me. Uh, sometimes he kind of, um, made me rethink the way things went. But I, I found that having someone to talk to at that level where I could share literally everything, I mean, you've got employees you can talk to.
[00:02:46] You've got the board you can talk to. You've got your spouse you can talk to, but you can't talk to everybody about everything. And a lot of stuff happened. So I, I personally thought that that helped me become a better CEO. And eventually helped our team become a better team and [00:03:00] execute better. So I would definitely do that again.
[00:03:03] David: And, and how did you find that
[00:03:05] Tom: So there was a guy that was referred to me, uh, let's call him Jeff cause that's his name, uh, in the Bay area who had done, um, executive coaching for some pretty high profile CEOs and had done a similar executive coaching for high profile professional athletes. He'd done a bunch of players on the 49ers.
[00:03:23] Uh, he'd done a bunch of players on pro baseball teams. I got to know the guy a little bit and he said. All these problems you go through, they're common, right? It's people problems, it's organizational problems, it's how do you think things clearly, how do you take a deep breath and step back from the situation you're in.
[00:03:40] He was fantastic, right? We were very, very lucky.
[00:03:42] David: How many years did you work
[00:03:44] Tom: I worked about three years with him, and eventually we brought him in and his associate to do mini sessions with our executive leadership team. Uh, same thing, a little teamwork, a little culture thing, and he had a perspective [00:04:00] that I couldn't have because I was in the mix all the time, um, and he helped us think things through clearly, and he was a terrific catalyst in the whole game plan.
[00:04:08] David: Wow. You know, I, I, one of the CEOs that I talked to, he said, He said, every professional athlete has a
[00:04:16] Tom: Yep.
[00:04:17] David: So why shouldn't every
[00:04:19] Tom: Yeah, yeah. It's a, it's, as you know, it's a lonely gig, it's, it's a lot of ups and downs, it's a lot of sleepless nights, and when you're in the moment, sometimes you're reacting, and uh, I found that Jeff, you know. Help you step back from things and figure things out and talk things through with somebody else who wasn't so in the weeds.
[00:04:39] It was great.
[00:04:39] David: Wow. I love that. Um, so, you know, you had. Amazing success with Service Channel, both in the scale of the business, the outcome of the business. I mean, everything that I've read about it, that we've talked about, you've had amazing success and, and that exit 1. 2 billion, like not many people get to that, to that kind of an [00:05:00] exit, but that wasn't your first CEO job.
[00:05:03] Um, and I'm curious if you could maybe give a little bit more context of the first CEO job, what was it? And what was
[00:05:14] Tom: Speaking of highs and lows, uh, thanks for bringing that one up. So, so, Service Channel was my second CEO gig. The first one was about, I think it was 2010. I had been a Chief Marketing Officer at a public company. I wanted to go do a CEO thing, so I left and tried to go find one. And I ended up with a really cool company, uh, called Data Robotics at the time, which we renamed Drobo.
[00:05:37] We made kind of a storage device that either directly connected to your laptop or computer or to your home network that's helped you to more easily store and manage the At that time the the exploding number of digital photographs and videos you were starting to take this again It's 2010 to 2000 probably 13 kind of thing and I [00:06:00] I replaced A very, um, smart, very charismatic, and very popular founder who had gotten sideways with the board.
[00:06:11] And I went into a bit of a hornet's nest because the gentleman I replaced was, you know, he was the technical linchpin behind the whole company, he was the emotional linchpin behind the company, and he hired most of the team himself, friends of his and colleagues of his. So went into that, um, we were able to take the business from about 20 million when I joined to about 40 million, about two years later.
[00:06:34] So great growth. We did really, really well. And then in one of my great, um, You know, execution segments of my life. We were able to take it from 40 back to 20. Um, it was one of those situations where we missed a product cycle badly. Um, we were oblivious, you know, looking backward now, oblivious to this thing called the cloud showing up and being able to store for, ah, it'll never do.
[00:06:57] We able to do what we can do with our, [00:07:00] and so, uh, we kind of got, um, we kind of got run over. So we took it from 20 to 40. 40 back to 20. During that period of time, we had an offer to sell the company for 250 million, which we turned down because we thought, Oh no, we're going to keep going, right? It's going to keep going one way.
[00:07:15] It's going to get better than this. And uh, as it turns out at the end of the story, the investors decided to sell the company. We literally couldn't find a buyer, zero, nada, nothing. And at the end of the day, Um, the board decided to gift the company back to the original founder that I replaced. So, uh, one day, and I'll, I'll take this as my career not best moment, I stood in front of the company, uh, I fired myself, um, we handed the company back to the guy I had replaced three years earlier, and I think because of the nature of the transaction, we had to take a dollar for it.
[00:07:53] So I think we sold the company for a dollar. So I have a dollar, a one dollar exit and a 1. 2 billion dollar exit. [00:08:00] And, uh, a lot of stories between those two. And things I do differently.
[00:08:05] David: Wow. I, I knew the story, the end of the story. I actually did not realize it was back to the original
[00:08:11] Tom: original guy. It was like Steve Jobs returning to Apple, except at a different scale. Yeah.
[00:08:16] David: Wow. Um, all right. So now we have the two ends of the spectrum that you've experienced. And I'd be honest. You are the first. First CEO that I've talked to that has had those, the two end, I've talked to people who have shut down their
[00:08:28] Tom: Yeah.
[00:08:28] David: I've talked to people with the huge exits, but to have the same person who's done both is, is amazing because you have this, you actually have seen the same human being running two companies with two opposite
[00:08:44] Tom: I think I was the same guy. I think I was the same guy. But I have to say, there's a lot of, um, first time mistakes you make that no one tells you about, right? And you make those mistakes, and then you learn about it. And maybe under reflection you do things differently the second time. So, uh Yeah, [00:09:00] it was it was amazing, but it Circumstance sometimes and you know learning along the way.
[00:09:06] David: so as we were, as we were talking about doing this, and I appreciate you this with me, we were talking about it. You sent me a document that you wrote, that's a quite a long document that essentially outlines all the things that you did differently At Service Channel, then Drobo. Um, is that something that you've shared with the world?
[00:09:30] Tom: haven't yet. You know, it's funny I I sat down after being so fortunate at service channel for the exit that we had Um, and thought about things for a while, had a little bit of time to think, and I drew up this little document, A Tale of Two Exits, you know, it was kind of like a play on the old novel, right?
[00:09:47] It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, right? And I think I, you know, we kind of lived through both, right? And so I tried to reflect on, what did I do differently? What did I learn? What did I do the same? And just, luck mattered, or something [00:10:00] like that. So I've got this thing, it's kind of a top ten list, a la, you know, David Letterman thing.
[00:10:03] I have a top ten list of things I did differently. I'd like to put it into a presentation or maybe another podcast we do someday. But, uh, there's a few that, you know, they come to mind that, you know, you just learn after the first time.
[00:10:15] David: We have to find a way to get that
[00:10:17] Tom: Yeah.
[00:10:18] David: I, I mean, I read it and I was taking all these notes as I was going through it with these things that you, you, to your point, you don't, um, those first time mistakes, you know, there's, there's a lot. So like my goal for today, actually, I had a lot of different plans.
[00:10:35] And then I read that document. I said, let's just
[00:10:36] Tom: Yeah.
[00:10:37] David: go through. We're not going to get through everything, but there's a couple key
[00:10:40] Tom: Yeah.
[00:10:41] David: that I want to talk to you about. Um, maybe we can start with hiring since everything really at some level comes down to the
[00:10:49] Tom: Yeah.
[00:10:49] David: So maybe we can start with, with hiring and maybe you can give me that side by side, drove
[00:10:54] Tom: Yeah.
[00:10:55] David: channel and, and
[00:10:56] Tom: Well, maybe as a, as a, how about this as a teaser to my [00:11:00] upcoming document that I haven't released yet. There's a couple that, that stood out to me and there was some, some very, um, Yeah. Uncanny similarity. So I went into service channel and lo and behold I replaced a genius founder again Because that founder At the time was was promoted to the board so to speak, right?
[00:11:25] And so the whole handling of that situation We handled it very differently at Service Channel. We did much more embracing of the founder at this time. We made sure the founder was active on the board. And for six years, Uh, the founder was tethered to the company through a board relationship. So we got the benefit of all the, um, founder goodness, so to speak.
[00:11:49] I had to manage that founder goodness, which was not necessarily the easiest thing at times, because the founder obviously has very strong opinions about the business, but it was much more of a, [00:12:00] uh, overtly collaborative effort. Um, or an attempt at collaboration to keep the founder close. And ultimately that paid paid up dividends for us because we got the good bits and I had to manage the bad bits.
[00:12:12] But that's, that was better than avoiding it. So that's, that was number one thing we did. The second thing was, um, the first time around, uh, and this was some feedback I got, I acted more like a manager than an owner. I would do the right things that I thought the board wanted to be done. They were fairly.
[00:12:31] Tactical, conservative things and didn't take a lot of the steps you'd take if you were the owner of the company. So I thought I was managing the company on behalf of somebody else. Second time through, I had the mindset, this is my company. I didn't own the whole company, right? I owned a small fraction of the company.
[00:12:47] But I took on a different mindset of, this is my company. I'm going to make the decisions I need to make to make this company successful, and I will tell the board what I'm doing, right? Now, it wasn't that [00:13:00] easy, obviously, much more collaborative, but I took a very different mindset. The third thing, I'll get to the hiring in a second, David, sorry.
[00:13:06] The third thing, and I'll take this lesson, give full credit to my investors from Excel, who used to come into the early service channel meetings and say, Tom, everything's on track. It's really nice. It's extremely boring. You're running, you're running all running plays. Um, maybe you forgot, we're venture capitalists.
[00:13:25] We'd like to see a couple passing plays in here, once in a while. Run a trick play, run a flea flicker. It's not always the most logical, risk free conclusion that you should execute on. Take a shot, do some things. We don't want to win the game 5 to 3. We want to win the game 41 to nothing, right? And so they stretched our thinking, and which really led to, um, new revenue streams, new ideas, new people, and uh, kind of a broadening of the business.
[00:13:55] Now, getting to the hires. I think this is probably the biggest, um, [00:14:00] lesson I learned. At Drobo, I went immediately back to my old network of who are the guys I used to work with, who I really liked working with. It'd be fun to work with them again. I know how to manage them. It'd be easy to manage them. It's convenient.
[00:14:15] I'll just call them. We don't have to go through much vetting process because I know them already. It's comfortable for me. I'll sleep better at night. They know exactly what I want. They read my, they know my language and it's probably better for Team Harmony. That was great. Except it led to kind of, um, mediocre execution.
[00:14:34] We never really pushed ourselves. We never really executed, um, sharply. And I found that convenient hires weren't always the best hires, right, given the situation. Some of them came because. I was familiar with them, not because they were experts in a certain area. It was, it was more to make me feel, you know, good.
[00:14:55] David: hmm.
[00:14:55] Tom: Service Channel, we went way out on some [00:15:00] unconventional hires that, um, quite frankly challenged me, In a managerial way, challenged me in a partnership way, challenged me with ideas that I knew nothing about. We hired some marketplace experts. I knew nothing about marketplaces. And they came in and basically told me on day one that our business model was all screwed up.
[00:15:20] And we needed to change it. And okay, this is going to be great at the staff meeting, right? And it led to a lot of debate and a lot of conflict and a lot of arguments. And it was a lot harder for me to manage the team. Ultimately, it led to a very comfortable outcome by being uncomfortable during that process.
[00:15:39] So I learned a lot about hiring. Um, so much so that at one point in time, my partner, uh, Brent, who was our president and CFO, put his arms on my shoulder and said, Tom, you've hired the last two CROs and we've had to get rid of them both. I'll hire the next one. Okay. So hiring is a big deal. Hiring is a big deal.
[00:15:59] And team building [00:16:00] is a big deal.
[00:16:00] David: that is so, that is so. think for a lot of people that is actually so counterintuitive because you talk to so many people who say, Oh, we'll bring in the CEO, we'll bring in the CRO, we'll bring in whatever leader and they'll bring in their
[00:16:13] Tom: Right.
[00:16:14] David: in the people that they know they'll do.
[00:16:16] And it'll be really fast and it'll be, they'll, they'll be up and running working. And by the way, even me, when I think about my company, I think to myself, shouldn't I bring my band
[00:16:25] Tom: Yeah.
[00:16:26] David: But, but I, but when I read that and when you're talking about it now, like it's so, it is comfortable. And actually the comfortable thing is the PR is actually the
[00:16:40] Tom: Right, right, right. Comfortable, comfortable hires led to an uncomfortable exit for me. That last day at Drobo wasn't that comfortable, but, uh, you know, paradoxically, uncomfortable hires led to a very comfortable exit, uh, at Service Channel. And it's not just a one to one course, but, you know, it does sometimes when you're cooking, I have a lot of food [00:17:00] analogies.
[00:17:00] When you're making soup, sometimes you need to add a little spice to it, right?
[00:17:04] David: Right.
[00:17:04] Tom: we added some spice. It was, uh, risky to some people. But it turned out to be the best thing we ever did.
[00:17:12] David: Wow. I, when let, uh, I want to talk about the, the uncomfortable hiring, given that you didn't know those
[00:17:20] Tom: Mm hmm.
[00:17:21] David: what was the primary source of that? Was that internal recruiting? Was that a search firm? Was that the board? Like,
[00:17:28] Tom: No, it was, um, it was interestingly enough, uh, a venture firm that chose not to invest in, chose to pass on our fundraising round. We got to know some of the team, and I won't name them, we got to know some of the team. And they were experts in building online marketplaces. They had worked for online marketplaces in the past.
[00:17:54] Some of them were executives at eBay and other places. And they had, um, espoused to us [00:18:00] during our fundraising process, you need to be a marketplace. We weren't. We were a SaaS company at the time. And we argued about it. And they, they basically told us during our pitch rounds all the things we were doing wrong.
[00:18:13] And And when we got to a point where we needed some more juice in the business, um, we went back to those guys and said, look, you didn't. You liked our business, but you thought we had the wrong model, and you thought we had the wrong skill set, and you would have done things differently. Why don't you come join us and teach us how to do that?
[00:18:34] And it led to probably a, I don't know, three or four month courtship with a couple of these guys, in which we were feeling each other out. Do I want to leave this comfortable cush job at a venture firm and go back in the weeds kind of thing? And then, we decided to jump off a bridge together. And I remember at the time, you know, my executive team and my board saying, Careful what you wish for.
[00:18:59] This is going to be a [00:19:00] ride, baby. It's going to be, things are going to change. And so, we had to inject change, and we did it. And it wasn't comfortable at the time. Um, but we worked our way through it.
[00:19:11] David: Wow. I love that. I love, I will say the thing you said, I wrote down like conflict, the conflict when my reflection on my own operating
[00:19:21] Tom: Mm hmm.
[00:19:21] David: the thing I did the
[00:19:24] Tom: Oh,
[00:19:24] David: was, was drive
[00:19:26] Tom: yeah,
[00:19:27] David: drive enough conflict or let's say allow enough
[00:19:31] Tom: right. I, I wanted, when debates started and staff meetings, I would like try to, We all agree on this, don't we? Kind of thing. Instead of letting it run for a while, because it's uncomfortable to do that. And we were doing this, by the way, um, this team building and this team enhancement came, uh, just before and then during COVID, right?
[00:19:54] So, a lot of the times you're in a room where the magic happens together and the teams bond because [00:20:00] they live together, essentially. We were all on Zoom together. The teams, you know With the addition of new folks on the team, you didn't get to know each other intimately like you did when you were in an office, you know, 15 hours a day.
[00:20:13] You got to know each other because you're on one hour Zooms all day. And so, uh, that bonding took longer, and it was a little more complicated, um, as you know.
[00:20:22] David: Well, um, well, the other, another topic, something I'm very passionate about is identifying the right customer,
[00:20:31] the right buyer to go after. I think it's something that a lot of first time, even
[00:20:35] multi time early stage, late stage make mistakes. And, you know, um, that's one of the things that you talk about in the document is, is understanding that buyer, understanding the
[00:20:46] TAM, talk a little bit about
[00:20:48] Tom: Yeah, I, one of the things I, I, um, really am, uh, uh, try to emphasize is, uh, that, uh, Kind of segment until it hurts, kind of thing. And I'll give you an [00:21:00] example of what we had at Service Channel, which is an indication. So we had, and we went through a couple marketing departments and a couple sales organizations along the way, right?
[00:21:09] And we had a mantra that our target market was retail. Right? And that was it, retail. So, in the pipeline process and in the lead generation process, we'd get Walmart, we'd get two bakeries on the Upper West Side, right? A guy that owns a bagel shop on 79th Street. We'd get, um, a small restaurant in Belgium, right?
[00:21:40] Because that's retail kind of thing. We'd get, um, McDonald's, which is largely franchised, right? We'd get all kinds of stuff. We'd spend a tremendous amount of time vetting it, having sales calls. Etc, etc, only to find out our close rate was terrible. And we were letting a lot [00:22:00] of things in the funnel that didn't really fit what our target market really It wasn't really retail.
[00:22:06] And so we went out and tried to refine it. We ended up with something, and I'll I'll do this from memory, right? That our target market wasn't retail. It was retail, uh, if you Retail something related to food or fashion. Food or apparel. Those two things, right? It had to be a hundred locations or more in North America only.
[00:22:31] Primarily in the U. S. because that's where we had coverage. It had to be geographically distributed. We didn't want a hundred locations in the same town because it wouldn't It wouldn't adhere to our value proposition. We wanted it multi state, multi region, nati the more national the better. Had to be geographically widely distributed.
[00:22:51] That's where our value proposition really kicked in. It had to be company owned. We didn't want franchises. Because company owned means centralized [00:23:00] decision making. We could call on somebody who could make a decision. Franchises, I'm not calling on every guy that owns three subways. Right, or three, you know, Jimmy Johns.
[00:23:09] I can't do that, right? It had to have centralized facilities management. A great example is Costco. You think Costco would be a great customer. Well, they have different facilities managers at every Costco that operate independently. It's not centrally, so you could never get someone to make a decision there, right?
[00:23:26] So that falls out. And we wanted to call on people where consistency of brand mattered. So if you think about um An Apple store retail and the consistency of brand they have. And I'll just make a contrast here, not to be disparaging dollar general, right? It's a different level of brand, um, awareness kind of thing.
[00:23:50] And so we had all those filters and it turns out we did a, we did an analysis and there were 600, I'm getting close to like [00:24:00] 682 companies in the United States that fit that description. 682. And we knew the names of all 682. So, long story to say, my, my, uh, my pitch to folks these days, what I'm trying to give advice is, don't fish in an ocean.
[00:24:16] Fish in a pond. And fish in a pond where you know the names of all the fish. Right? So segment it down to a level of detail where you can literally name the fish in the pond. Because if I had said, we're going after retail, We're gonna get a, you know, three location church, uh, in the Netherlands, right?
[00:24:37] Versus, uh, what we really wanted, which is a Walmart, or a CVS, or an Apple Store, or a Chipotle, or a Panda Express, right? Very different.
[00:24:46] David: that is that is literal goal. I mean, segment until it hurts is such a good way to describe the, I think you just listed, I think it was 10 or 11 attributes
[00:24:58] that you use to [00:25:00] segment 10 or 11. Most people are using two or three. And that, that is, that is gold. I think if people can hear one thing
[00:25:09] and take something away from a go to market perspective, we
[00:25:12] have another one that we want
[00:25:13] to talk about later, but, but, but this is such, this is such gold because when you understand, when you're fishing in that pond and you know who every person is, like you said, You can also tailor that, like, Oh. the
[00:25:27] message is going to resonate with all of them.
[00:25:29] The go to market motion is going to resonate. The pricing, the product, everything, you
[00:25:34] Tom: I'll never forget our head of sales, the guy I didn't hire, who ended up being the greatest head of sales ever. He came in, we went through this exercise with him helping to drive it tremendously. And when we got done, he basically went to his BDRs and his sales organization and said, here's the 682 names.
[00:25:51] Here's, here's 25 for you by name. If you call anybody else on this list, then on this list, I'll kill you. I'll [00:26:00] fire you, right? Here's 25 for you. When you get all those 25, I'll give you 25 more, right? Here's your 25 and it made people focus like heck and build relationships at these 20. We didn't get all 25.
[00:26:14] But everybody we engaged with was right in the sweet spot, right? And the feedback was pure, and, you know, we didn't get cluttered chasing things we didn't want to chase, right? It was great. It was great.
[00:26:28] David: that is, that is gold. Um, let, when we talk about focus, another area, um, that I, that I saw there about focus was around metrics
[00:26:39] and
[00:26:39] KPIs. Um, and. Really focusing on the right, the right metrics. Can you give me that example, the Drobo for service channel of KPI and what you
[00:26:51] Tom: God, I had, again, it's almost paradoxical, at, um, at, uh, draw ball. I think I had a [00:27:00] Metric sheet, you know, in two fonts with about 400 lines on it, right? I could, we could measure everything, right? Uh, bottom line is we were doing a lot of reporting and not a lot of results building, right? We had a lot of issues and I thought, oh, give a lot of metrics, maybe that'll, that'll supersede the results.
[00:27:19] No, it doesn't work that way, right? Usually when you try to bury someone in metrics, you're trying to hide something, right? And we just didn't, we just didn't. have the results. And um, we spent a lot of time tracking things, right? Things that probably didn't matter, right? Just because we could. At, at Service Channel, again, the lesson I learned from some of the folks we had hired was, um, no more than three objectives per year.
[00:27:44] That's it. What are your top three things that are going to move the needle? So we had literally one, two, and three, and we measured very different things. We, we tried not to measure the results. Sometimes you're in a SaaS business, for example. You know, you get the venture capital, you know, churn, and [00:28:00] net retention, and gross retention, and magic number, and all that kind of stuff.
[00:28:04] Well, those are all results, right? But what's causing those results? So we tried to, um, we still kept track of those, but we tried to measure some of the causal effects of what was driving the business. Some things that were Maybe a little bit out of the ordinary. I have two in particular that I thought were, um, very helpful to us that most companies wouldn't track.
[00:28:26] One is, um, we tracked product usage in a different way. Our product helped, um, facilities managers issue work orders. And if you think about it, if they're active with the product and they're issuing a lot of work orders to clean things up and fix things across their properties, the frequency by which they do that is an indicator of certain things.
[00:28:48] So we would watch work order frequency and when it was cranking up, we'd go in and raise price because guess what? [00:29:00] They're really on the drug and they're getting more and more on the drug all the time. So we'd, we'd, we'd structure price increases. We weren't just kind of trying to take money. We're doing it at a time when we thought they were so addicted to the product that there was some inelasticity there.
[00:29:17] So we, we'd structure things that we give things away for free too, but don't get me wrong, but that was a good time. And I'll never forget, we watched one of our largest customers work orders declining over time and they churned. And then we put on a watch with every customer success manager on, you need to report when work orders decline more than five percent month on month, because that means they're getting ready to churn.
[00:29:42] It was the greatest indicator for us. We were able to put a helicopter in. and uh, kind of stop the, stop the bleeding many times and save the account because that
[00:29:51] was a big thing. And if you looked at the data on how they were using the product, we could tell what trades that they were using more or less [00:30:00] of or having problems.
[00:30:00] Was it plumbing? Was it HVAC? And then make suggestions to them on how to improve that particular Behavior, which led to some, some new products for us where they could go find and source better contractors, which is a big deal for us. Um, and use the data in the platform to do that. So we use, we, the usage data turned out to be gold for us.
[00:30:21] Um, and we love that. The other thing, which was, is kind of non intuitive is, um, we sold to directors and VPs of facility management. And their half life at a company is about two to three years. And we found that when they went to another company, they often brought Service Channel with them. So we had a job board.
[00:30:42] We knew where everybody was. We knew when they got fired or when they left. And we would, we would, the first call they would get when they left their job was from us. How can we help? How can we find you would help you get a different job? And so it turns out our lead generation had a lot to do with the [00:31:00] turnover in the segment, which was great.
[00:31:02] David: that,
[00:31:02] Tom: great.
[00:31:03] David: that. so is it fair to say, basically from the metrics you measured, you were looking at inputs a little bit more than
[00:31:12] Tom: Yeah,
[00:31:13] David: leading indicators more than
[00:31:15] Tom: yeah, actually you just said it a lot more succinctly than I
[00:31:17] David: I
[00:31:21] Tom: exactly what it was. And, and they were all, um, they were all metrics that were directly correlated with growth. Um, there are a lot of metrics you can measure that are correlated with, um, just reporting and data and interest and curiosity.
[00:31:39] But if they weren't directly correlated with growth, they weren't on our top three.
[00:31:44] David: want to go back to something you said before about Excel and them talking to you about the running plays versus the passing plays and swinging for the fences, going bigger. [00:32:00] Was that, they weren't your only investor, right? That you had other
[00:32:06] Tom: They were our only venture investor. Um, we had some private equity, um, money from earlier, an earlier round that I was part of with, with a few folks I got together with. Yeah,
[00:32:16] David: But otherwise it was,
[00:32:18] Tom: yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:32:21] David: how did you manage that? You know, when, when you were getting that push, you
[00:32:26] Tom: hmm.
[00:32:26] David: I'm curious because obviously Excel was,
[00:32:29] Tom: Mm hmm. Mm
[00:32:30] David: I think that one of the things they're very good at is they've seen so many
[00:32:34] Tom: hmm.
[00:32:35] David: that have just taken it to
[00:32:40] Tom: Right.
[00:32:41] David: zero, like
[00:32:41] Tom: Right.
[00:32:42] David: 200 to
[00:32:42] Tom: Right.
[00:32:43] David: seen it so many times. The challenge is for me, it's like, how do you, how do you balance the, the, the, the passing plays with the running
[00:32:51] Tom: Yeah.
[00:32:52] David: when you have. Who's seen a full pass often,
[00:32:55] Tom: Right.
[00:32:55] David: I'm just trying, I'm curious from your perspective and [00:33:00] cause you tied that with the not being a manager, being the owner, which I liked that concept as well.
[00:33:05] Like, how do you think about how you manage that relationship where
[00:33:09] Tom: Yeah.
[00:33:10] David: input? Did that testing.
[00:33:12] Tom: I have to say that the, the two board members are really, really good. Rich Wong and Arun Mathew from Excel who were on our board. Um, they always brought feedback that was not, um, couldn't be, wasn't ever considered punitive or forceful or, uh, kind of rude. Right? It was always, here's how we think about things.
[00:33:34] Here's how some of our other companies have thought about things. Have you thought about this? Have you thought about that? They would, they would lead you on a path that wouldn't cause you to be defensive at all. It wouldn't cause you to rationalize at all. It would cause you to think. And then fortunately, like, as you said, they've got a hundred CEOs in their portfolio who have hit the ball out of the park.
[00:33:57] They can, Hey, talk to this guy, [00:34:00] talk to that guy, see what they did when they were at this inflection point. So they, they really educated you and guided you as opposed to forcing. And that. You know, we didn't always get it the first time, right? Sometimes it took us a while to get it, but um, they were very collaborative in, in, in how they guided us along the way.
[00:34:22] David: Yeah. I wish I listened to some of that advice
[00:34:25] Tom: I wish I'd listened to it sooner. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:34:27] David: than I did. Um, so, um, okay, let me, there's one concept that. In there, that, that document you wrote, which has been, and when we had coffee, like, I have been thinking about it since that, which is the, the concept of the growth roadmap. Um, can you talk about
[00:34:48] Tom: Yeah,
[00:34:48] David: bit?
[00:34:49] Tom: and you know, it didn't really put that term on it until after the fact, but, um, in fact, that's kind of what we did. So everybody knows about your product roadmap. Every company has a product roadmap. [00:35:00] They obsess over it countless hours arguing over, you know, when will this be done? Is this feature in or out of this release?
[00:35:07] Um, you know, this customer asked for this priority. You know, it's a massive amount of time and energy. into prioritizing things, some of which, by the way, don't matter. You know, shocker, right? Turning the red button to green on, on, you know, which so and so customer wanted you to do, or else they're going to churn, it's something you'll, it's not going to matter to your growth, right?
[00:35:34] But you get those arguments all the time, and the company is completely mesmerized by the product roadmap. Every product, every company pitch, so here's my product roadmap. Here's my this, here's my that. Well, some of that stuff directly impacts growth and some of it doesn't, right? And we argued, uh, internally that pricing, [00:36:00] new product or module introductions, uh, discounting strategies, um, bundling or re bundling strategies, um, adding new revenue streams where one didn't exist before, all the things that had impacts on the top line.
[00:36:17] We're the most direct drivers of growth. So we had a pricing roadmap. When are we raising prices and by how much? Uh, and we'd have it, you know, by every quarter. When are we going to do it? Um, when are we changing our discount policy? You know? Let's talk about that. Um, when are we introducing this new, um, idea that we had on selling our data and benchmarking things?
[00:36:43] When we, because that's, we can charge for that. Okay, great. Um, when are we going to, you know, do this or that kind of thing? When are we going to rebundle things so we can change price in a way that doesn't change price for everybody kind of thing? We hired pricing [00:37:00] experts from Simon Kuchar. They came in and they helped us build this whole thing out.
[00:37:04] And, um, we talked about this a lot and it turns out sometimes when you talk about that, you don't always do it, right? But it leads you to things like, why am I doing these product features? Has nothing to do with my growth, right? I spent 700 hours. deciding if the button should be green or blue or whatever, it's not affecting my growth.
[00:37:27] So we had a growth roadmap too. We didn't call it that at the time, but it was about pricing, bundling, introduction of new products, discount strategies, uh, new revenue streams that we had invented that we're going to try out, all that kind of stuff. And I think companies would do well to spend more time on that.
[00:37:47] As opposed to just small features.
[00:37:49] David: who owned that? Like, the head of product owns the product roadmap. Who owns
[00:37:54] Tom: had a little, we had a little group, right? It was a product, it was our product guy, uh, we had a business development team and our sales guy. [00:38:00] Right? We talked about, and our CFO I should say. Because, you know, the financials and the pricing had to do with it.
[00:38:05] David: right.
[00:38:05] Tom: we had, we had uh, You know, wrestling matches over that kind of stuff to figure out when and how we would do types of things.
[00:38:12] There'd be all kinds of pushback. Oh, you can't do that. They're going to churn, right? If you raise price at this time, they're going to leave us. So a lot of debates, but it was, it was the kind of debate that, um, had a direct impact, right?
[00:38:27] David: Did, did you, when you talk about all the things that were on that growth roadmap, was there also marketing types of things? Or was it mostly pricing, packaging, bundling?
[00:38:37] Tom: It was, it was, um, marketing in support of those things. Um, so, uh, how would we communicate? Um, what would we introduce to, um, to kind of package things the right way, et cetera, et cetera. It wasn't really outbound lead generation kind of marketing stuff. It was more of how do we communicate that we're going to go do this thing.
[00:38:56] David: I'm gonna, I'm gonna add to this concept because I, I've taken that [00:39:00] and I've actually been, the companies I've been working with adding the marketing
[00:39:03] Tom: Yeah.
[00:39:04] David: and sales kind of roadmap, if you
[00:39:06] Tom: Yep.
[00:39:07] David: that we don't have the resources to do.
[00:39:08] Tom: Right. Right.
[00:39:10] David: We know. That if we do this, it's going to move the needle. And has been just saying growth roadmap, like using that term, people's brains to, there starts to be all kinds of conversations like, no, no, I know what we could do, I don't have the budget, this
[00:39:26] Tom: Yeah.
[00:39:27] David: this, let's put that for Q1
[00:39:29] Tom: Yeah.
[00:39:29] David: And when you start piling them up, almost the opportunities are
[00:39:34] Tom: Yes.
[00:39:35] David: that you didn't even look at before, just like a product roadmap.
[00:39:39] No one's product is feature complete. Most roadmaps go out
[00:39:42] Tom: forever, forever, right.
[00:39:44] David: exactly.
[00:39:45] Tom: it's amazing the, uh, and you know this, right? The level of emotion that, uh, presents itself during product roadmap discussions. My customer asked for that feature. We can't do that feature because we're going to do this feature for that customer, or [00:40:00] we can't do all these features that the customer has asked for because we need to build something we can charge for, right?
[00:40:06] And we're not going to do all this free stuff. So all that emotion goes in there. But if you step back and put a different lens on it, which is what's going to drive the growth, it will help you prioritize your product features. And obviously you do product features for a lot of reasons, right? Retention and customer satisfaction.
[00:40:24] But it's just a different lens I think you got to put on things.
[00:40:27] David: I love that. Um, one of the topics that's very big these days is a conversation about founder mode. Um, getting in the weeds and micromanaging and doing all that stuff. And, you know, different
[00:40:39] Tom: Yeah.
[00:40:40] David: opinions. You've experienced, it seems like, different approaches to Let's say founder
[00:40:45] Tom: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:40:47] David: micromanager.
[00:40:47] Can talk a little bit about, about that?
[00:40:50] Tom: Yeah, I think it's probably one of those things on the, uh, you know, top 10 things I did differently, right? Um, I was very involved at [00:41:00] Drobo in, you know, I'd go to the product meetings, I'd go to the sales meetings, I'd go to the marketing meetings, right? I wanted to make sure things were getting done the right way or my way, or, you know, in line with the way I was thinking about them.
[00:41:11] And I was much too involved in things that, um, I should have delegated or quite frankly, that didn't turn the big knobs, right? And at Service Channel, um, As uncomfortable as it was for me, we'll go back to that term again, there were, there were things I was dismissed from doing. Hey Tom, you can't go on any more early sales calls.
[00:41:40] Not happening. I'm not inviting you. You talk too much, you pitch the company's story for 45 minutes, you don't ask any questions. Stay home. We'll bring you in when we need you. Hey Tom, we're negotiating the terms of a deal. You can't be involved because you're going to give away everything, right? Uh, [00:42:00] you stay back here, we'll tell you how it's going, right?
[00:42:02] Uh, so there were a lot of things that, that I was, um, you know, politely dismissed from doing, which gave me time to think more about bigger ideas and broader vision maybe, and I was probably a lot less annoying, right? To be frank, right? And the team just did great. So, uh, big lesson learned there. I think you, you get involved with the things that make a big difference, um, that help chart the course of the company.
[00:42:34] But there's a lot of weeds that I found not to be helpful, be involved in.
[00:42:40] David: Hmm. Hmm. what is the biggest challenge you ever faced at Service Channel how did you overcome that challenge?
[00:42:51] Tom: Like, I think, um, it's all tied up, right? It's, uh, we rebuilt the team [00:43:00] and changed the course of the company during COVID. Um, and I found that, um, communication. across the company and keeping people aligned was remarkably, uh, unique in that situation and almost unprecedented and very difficult. Nothing I had learned up to that point in time taught me how to do that.
[00:43:23] So I, I went to a, uh, an over communication strategy, which may have annoyed people, but whatever. So I sent out a company email every day or a slack every day, every day. Here's what happened today. I mean, you, we had 200 employees living at, working from home. How do they know what happened that day? Right?
[00:43:42] They weren't in the office yet. Here's some things that happened today. Here's some good news. Here's a deal we want. Here's a deal we lost. Here's a milestone. We hit in product ev, whole company. Everybody got that. And I did it for probably a year until people told me to slow it down, right? , we, we went there like twice a week or something.[00:44:00]
[00:44:00] Uh, we went to, um, uh, monthly, all hands meetings. Everybody in the company, all hands meetings, right? We had, um, functional all hands meetings where the head of sales would come on and say, let me just tell you what's going on in sales for the whole company. So I, I found that, um, and, and again, in the midst of this, we had hired new executives who nobody knew, right?
[00:44:25] So the over communication, uh, portfolio, so to speak, during COVID, while we were trying to change the direction of the company, I think was the toughest thing. We had to get through. If we hadn't gelled during that period of time, we'd never got out.
[00:44:40] David: Yeah. Well, when you said unprecedented, I think the one theme across however many interviews I've done now for this podcast is COVID was really an unprecedented moment for whatever the business was as being a CEO, like there's not much more complicated
[00:44:59] Tom: It [00:45:00] was weird. Yeah. Yeah. It, it, the
[00:45:01] David: through, you know, between people's actual health, you know, and risk fear and the uncertainty and the markets and Company dynamics and work and customer dynamics.
[00:45:13] Like it was, um, I think CEOs who went through it, it will be, it's like scarred in everyone's mind forever. But I think that a lot of other people, it's, it's kind of like they lived through it, but they didn't, they didn't. It was a different, it was different. I believe it was for the people, the CEOs who were responsible for all the employees and their families and everything,
[00:45:38] Tom: level of, the level of, uh, accountability and responsibility in that period of time, ratcheted up like 10 X. Right. You just felt like you had a lot more, um, uh, uh, responsibility for, for the team. Right? I mean, they had to, they had to, They had to be, uh, the communication had to increase, [00:46:00] right? You had to care about their families, what was going on.
[00:46:02] You had to care about people getting sick. You had to care about all kinds of things. It wasn't just, kind of, coming to work. It was much more complicated, as I think everybody knows by now.
[00:46:11] David: So you had tail of two exits. Um, Super successful with, with Service Channel. Um, when you reflect on this and your career in general, and you've seen a lot of successful companies and, um, is it luck? Is it skill?
[00:46:31] Tom: Yeah, I wish I could put that formula in a bottle. I'll add one more word, though. Another word is, like, grit or resilience, right? Because, so, I think gone are the days, at least in tech, gone are the days where you can just be smart and be successful, right? Because things change and if you don't have resilience and grit and you're not there to win, right, it's no good, right?
[00:46:56] Um, and there were a lot of smart people [00:47:00] who didn't, their timing wasn't right or they didn't get lucky at some point in time and let's face it, luck had a lot to do with it, right? Um, I think it's It's mostly a combination of smarts and resilience. Um, and if you're, if you're doing this, the skill and resilient thing and you're in the game long enough, luck will come your way.
[00:47:23] Um, luck doesn't always show up when you want it to. Um, we, you know, the pandemic, um, accounted for a surge in our business. Because close, you know, retailers are closing down and opening up and closing down and opening up. And sanitizing more than they ever had to, and cleaning more than they had to, and revamping their stores to have a drive thru lane now.
[00:47:47] And so now all of a sudden, our work exploded. That was lucky, right? We didn't plan that kind of thing. And, um, you know, we, we sold the company, uh, a couple of [00:48:00] months before, uh, inflation and interest rates went berserk. And before, a couple of months before, uh, the invasion of Ukraine and the world changed, right?
[00:48:10] So there's a lot of macro things that happened that, call it luck or not, we had nothing to do with, right? And we were fortunate in our timing. So I think it's a lot of, a lot of skill and a lot of resilience. And you play the game for a long time and luck shows up every now and then. Um, and you can't plan for it.
[00:48:32] I wish I could predict the luck thing, right? That'd be, it'd be a lot easier.
[00:48:36] David: That is good advice, though, and I've heard that advice from a lot of, a lot of people who've been this for a while at many companies. Like, if you stay in long enough. And you put yourself in the right position. Again, luck will come at varying degrees, but, but if you stay in long enough, you know, and you're, and you're
[00:48:54] Tom: And you do the right things, right? Yeah. Yeah.
[00:48:57] David: the way.
[00:48:57] Um, so how [00:49:00] about just your background? Did you always know you wanted to be a CEO? Was that, you know, did you kind of build your career be a CEO?
[00:49:07] Tom: Not really. Not really. I was, so it's funny, um, you know, my dad worked for IBM for 40 years. He had one job. One job. IBM. That's it. Hometown. IBM. Went to work every day. Never knew the concept of having multiple jobs. So I got out of school, and I started as an engineer at IBM, and then I, you know, You know, I left the company business, so to speak, the family business and went to work for HP for a while.
[00:49:33] And only after about 11 or 12 years of my career did I think, maybe I'll try this smaller company thing, this startup thing, because I was very risk averse at the time. And so I jumped into it probably in my early to mid 30s and have been going to other companies since then. So I worked for seven companies.
[00:49:53] Since I left HP, I worked for seven companies. Uh, five of which had exits,
[00:49:58] David: Wow.
[00:49:59] Tom: [00:50:00] we've talked about, some were better than others, right?
[00:50:02] David: But you were, so like you were, you know, you were in these various roles and you became executive at these companies and, um, that shift from being an exec to being the
[00:50:14] Tom: Yeah, yeah,
[00:50:16] David: when, what
[00:50:17] Tom: oh yeah,
[00:50:17] David: people coming to you saying, Hey, Tom,
[00:50:19] Tom: no.
[00:50:20] David: like you'd be a CEO
[00:50:21] Tom: It was one of those situations where I started as a product manager, I moved into marketing, I became a CMO at a couple places, and um, including a couple large public companies, and I remember vividly, I turned 50, and I thought to myself, I think I can be a CEO. I mean, I've done all these jobs, right?
[00:50:41] I've, I've worked around the world. I've worked for big companies. I've worked for small companies. I've seen CEOs. I've seen good ones. I've seen bad ones. Um, I should probably give this thing a shot, right? And so, um, I don't say unexpectedly, I planned it. I, I quit on my 50th birthday. I didn't have a [00:51:00] deal, right?
[00:51:01] I left and I thought, okay, I'm. I know enough people, I'll meander around, I'll find a CEO gig somewhere. It took a long time, it turns out.
[00:51:11] David: Wow.
[00:51:11] Tom: and so I left on that venture. And it probably took nine months to find the Drobo gig. And I was very lucky that I did, I learned a lot, and I probably wouldn't have done service channel unless I had done the Drobo thing.
[00:51:24] So, um, it's part of the journey. But I, I decided at age 50, I gotta do this thing, right? And so, that was it.
[00:51:30] David: Wow.
[00:51:31] Tom: Little late, little late in the game, right?
[00:51:33] David: yeah, no, it's great. Um, it's a great, and, and do you like, who do you think has had the biggest impact? On your career throughout this career, like it was there. Did you have a mentor, a, a person, an investor, or was, you know,
[00:51:52] Tom: I didn't actually, I mean, I was thinking about this, um, there's probably no one person, you know, sometimes you, you go under [00:52:00] someone's wing and that happens and so forth. I, I, it's probably a collection of folks. I was able to work for, you know, a number of different CEOs from different places. Uh, I was able to work alongside investors from, you know, Excel and Greylock and RRE here in New York and, uh, uh, and NEA and a few others.
[00:52:21] So you get to see a lot of folks and I think it's a little bit of a cocktail of that stuff, right? You pick up the good stuff, you try to say, I would never do that, and you kind of build your own path. But no, I don't think I can name one, one person. I guess, you know, you go back to like Your parents taught you, you're right from wrong and how to do the right things.
[00:52:43] That's kind of been the guiding light, right, for me, is you kind of, kind of do right by other people and do right by the team and, you know, that all helps. But other than that in the professional world, probably not.
[00:52:56] David: what, what do you, what is it like deep down that drives [00:53:00] you, you know, that, that has driven you through all these different roles? Like I always tell people, my mind is like when people tell me I can't do something, it's the only thing.
[00:53:09] Tom: I have to do that.
[00:53:11] David: literally the only thing to motivate me is to tell me I can't do something. Like, what is it that, that, that drives you?
[00:53:17] Tom: I like, um, I tell you, I get the best feeling When I can help somebody. Like, I meet somebody, we talk about stuff, we do things, and I say, Hey, I know a guy who could help you get another job, because I know a guy at this company. Or I know someone who's doing that kind of thing, you should give him a call and figure it out.
[00:53:36] Or, um, I like that form of collaboration. I love, I was, played team sports quite a bit. I love the teamwork aspect of it. Um, I love the winning as a team kind of thing, but more so I like the competing as a team kind of thing. It's just kind of that, you know, maybe it's not politically correct, but it's kind of that locker room feel of you're collaborating with folks to get something [00:54:00] done.
[00:54:00] I enjoy that process and, you know, in all of our careers you win some, you lose some, but you play, right?
[00:54:06] David: Yeah. I love, you know, one, one of the sessions we did with my executive team at one point, um, at an offsite, we went around and the moderator said, what is the best team you've ever been a part of? And asked everyone on the
[00:54:19] Tom: Hmm,
[00:54:19] David: team. everyone, he said, okay, everyone, think about it. Okay, now share. And as everyone went through, without fail, every person, it had to do with some sports team that they
[00:54:31] Tom: yeah, yeah, yeah,
[00:54:33] David: like the volleyball
[00:54:34] Tom: yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
[00:54:35] David: team when I was 10,
[00:54:36] Tom: yeah,
[00:54:37] David: one, and literally, Every person's answer had to do with some kind of team
[00:54:44] Tom: yeah, yeah.
[00:54:44] David: was for me so interesting. And then he said, and why was that the best team? And everyone's answers came back to something about trust and like the other people, and for me, it was the most interesting experience because no one said [00:55:00] speed, skill, strength, this. It had, it literally had
[00:55:03] Tom: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:55:04] David: with
[00:55:05] Tom: Right. Right.
[00:55:06] David: point, it wasn't the undefeated teams. It was just the fact that. played the game
[00:55:11] Tom: Yeah.
[00:55:12] David: and enjoyed playing that
[00:55:13] Tom: Yeah.
[00:55:15] David: What is one piece of advice, knowing everything you know today, if you go back to the very beginning of your
[00:55:21] Tom: Yeah.
[00:55:21] David: you started at IBM, what is one piece of advice you would give yourself?
[00:55:25] Tom: Uh, let's see. Okay. There's so, again, so much of advice I can provide. Uh, you know, uh, a couple words come to mind. So, authenticity comes to mind. There have been parts of my career where I tried to be someone I wasn't, kind of thing, right? Either to be, better part of the team that I was with or get out of my comfort zone.
[00:55:52] I never was really good at that, right? Um, uh, I think the resilient thing is important. You're going to play [00:56:00] this game for a long time, right? You got to be able to handle it, right? The ups and downs. The one thing I, I think I tell myself that I, again, looking back now is, I thought there, there were points in times in my career where I thought I needed to be the hero.
[00:56:18] I'm going to go into Drobo, I'm going to fix that company. I'm going to be the guy, I'm going to get involved in every level of detail. I'm going to make it successful with my will. And I'm going to get in there and do it. Well, it turns out that annoys the crap out of everybody. And, um, it always, it's not the best way to build a team kind of thing.
[00:56:36] And I think at, um, Service Channel, I was by no means the hero. Right? It was great. I I may have helped a team of heroes, you know, come together as a team and give some direction and so forth and enable them to be heroes, but I, I felt much better. With that approach, [00:57:00] then I got to carry it on my back and I'm going to get the ball over the goal line myself.
[00:57:04] So I, I, I think that's again, personal styles are different, but, um, there's no need to be the hero, right? Uh, and I think a lot of people need to tell themselves that.
[00:57:15] David: That's great advice. Um, so now you've in, in the, in, you know, you're, you're working with a bunch of different companies and, and helping the next
[00:57:25] Tom: Hmm.
[00:57:25] David: Um, Can you just share a little bit about that? You know, are you advising?
[00:57:32] Tom: Yeah. They're mostly, they're mostly early stage companies, um, with first time founders or first time CEOs. Uh, folks in their maybe mid to late 20s to, to mid 30s. And, um, you know, it's kind of interesting. Some, some founders in that category don't want help from an old guy. It's been around for 40 years, and some do.
[00:57:56] Uh, but what I've found really encouraging is that, [00:58:00] and you know this, right, 99 percent of the issues that they face, they We'll have seen before. Hey, I got a really bad, uh, uh, head of engineering who doesn't listen to what I say. What should I do? Well, I think I know what to do. I, I made that mistake. Or, um, you know, my sales guy, he's a really nice guy, but he hasn't made his number in four quarters, right?
[00:58:21] What should I do? Or I'm negotiating a partnership agreement with this big company. And here are the terms, you know, what do you think? Oh, gee, they're, they're trying to screw you. Okay. So it's a lot of stuff. Through pattern recognition we've seen before. Um, I enjoy it because I think I can add some value.
[00:58:41] Um, and I, I hope, you know, and it, quite frankly, it's interesting for me. There's a lot of new technologies out there. There's a lot of new, interesting things. Um, keeps me a little bit off the street, right?
[00:58:52] David: I love it. Um, Tom, really sincerely thank you for doing this with [00:59:00] me and I, I hope that we find a way, you find a way, and maybe I can help you publish
[00:59:05] Tom: Oh yeah,
[00:59:06] David: document. Because people will, there's so much in there, um, to your point, things that other people are going through, mistakes other people are making, that if, they can read that, you know, um, it'll, it'll save them, um, you know, those mistakes.
[00:59:23] So I hope we get that published some, some way, but in the meantime, we'll get this out there and in front of people.
[00:59:29] Tom: let's do that.
[00:59:30] David: you for doing
[00:59:31] Tom: Hey, I appreciate it. It's, it's fun. Thanks for, thanks for thinking of me.
[00:59:34] David: Awesome. Awesome. Well, for everyone listening, hope you enjoyed. I'm sure you took away a lot from this conversation and, and, uh, please share with your networks, like it, subscribe, all of that. And we'll see you for the next episode of Not Another CEO Podcast.
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