Now the Chief Revenue Officer at FlavorCloud, Mike Sanchez has had 17 years of experience driving partner, sales, and customer success. At every company he’s been at he has delivered double- or triple-digit growth rates. In this episode, we talk to Mike about topics such as building diverse teams within organizations, and how important that is to the success and vision of a company. We also dive into common challenges amongst teams like imposter syndrome and ways leaders can preserve the psychological safety of their teams.
Now the Chief Revenue Officer at FlavorCloud, Mike Sanchez has had 17 years of experience driving partner, sales, and customer success. At every company he’s been at he has delivered double- or triple-digit growth rates. In this episode, we talk to Mike about topics such as building diverse teams within organizations, and how important that is to the success and vision of a company. We also dive into common challenges amongst teams like imposter syndrome and ways leaders can preserve the psychological safety of their teams.
DTC growth show Welcome to the DTC growth Show presented by banknotes minted by hashtag paid where we talk all things ecommerce and DTC. My name is Sophia and today I got to speak with Mike Sanchez, who is the Chief Revenue Officer at playbar. Cloud, which is a one stop shop for international shipping to help brands expand their sales on a global scale. Mike has quite the extensive experience working in leadership across different organizations, such as gold commerce, Rackspace, and WP engine. In today's episode, we dive into topics such as building diverse teams within organizations, and how important that is the success and vision of a company. We also dive into common challenges amongst teams like impostor syndrome, and ways leaders can preserve the psychological safety of their teams. Without further ado, let's dive right in. Okay, so let's start off with an introduction on yourself. Just give us and the listeners a little background on who you are. And how did you reach this point in your career? Sure, yeah. Mike Sanchez. Currently right now the Chief Revenue Officer at lever cloud, we're a cross border logistics, technology that helps kind of, you know, help all DTC brands ship anywhere and been in technology, I would say for man, 20 years, I guess you would say it's really starting to add up. But started off more on the on the technical side, though. So started off as a software engineer,
went and was going to school for Computer Science at the University of Texas, San Antonio.
You know, one of the things you know, we'll talk about later, which is imposter syndrome. And I think that pops up a ton is, you know, when, when going to school, I, you know, I was working three jobs. So grew up from very humble beginnings.
And back in the early 2000s, remote learning really wasn't a thing, or at least it wasn't in the senior level classes. So when it got to a point in my senior year, on 105 hours, I essentially had to make a decision because I couldn't reach my senior level classes. I
was working three jobs, because that's what I had to do. So I ended up having to leave school and my senior year and I ended up going to work at a technology company called Rackspace, which was out in San Antonio
joined Rackspace joined as a an account manager, that was probably my first foray into like, more of a business level type role versus, you know, doing like software development and system administration. So did that and, you know, when really well spent seven and a half years there,
tackled roles, individual contributor roles, from customer success to sales, SMB, and enterprise
all the way through, you know, multiple leadership positions and the reason how I got how I started into E commerce started there. So the big thing with Rackspace, we were a hosting company. So I helped build out our strategy to create a e commerce vertical working with back in the day, this would have been the E commerce platforms would have been like Magento and or WooCommerce. And you know, some of the old school ones that are now legacy, the digital agencies who would help build the sites for the brands and then dealing with the merchants itself. So this was like my first experience into like, really getting into like, what e commerce was the components of what it took to kind of launch a store and and I got man just obsessed with E commerce. I loved it. So So from there, I ended up taking a role at Big commerce, which is an E commerce platform out here in Austin. So I got hired there to go help build out their basically their their initial enterprise organization, that strategy. So spend some time there was really cool. I basically replaced a you know, I had about a team of about 70 people at Rackspace and then walked into my job at Big commerce and had a team of four people. And it was basically like, great, you know, go from a $2 billion company to a $25 million company and but that was the type of challenge I wanted to take on to do that. So it's been a couple of years there, building that piece out getting to work with all types of great brands from SMBs and mid market and enterprise and then made a move over to WP engine where
spent about four years there. So WP Engine another great success story out in Austin. They're a you know, work digital experience platform, leveraging WordPress and
WooCommerce is a big piece that we worked on as well. So so a lot of great stuff did there. From there was able to build a lot of things partner strategies, sales strategies.
built out an e commerce strategy there for them. And then my latest role that I helped there was I was leading our global partnerships, you know, so I had teams in Australia, the United Kingdom in London, all over the US. So got to spend a lot of time abroad, and doing some really fun stuff, meeting some great partners brands, and also getting a my first glimpse into seeing, you know, the differences of how we run commerce in business here domestically, versus how somebody would, you know, say run that outbound right out of the UK and in Australia, so it was really cool to kind of experience that. And then the most recently, I spent a couple of years as the Chief Revenue Officer at bolt commerce. So they were the,
like I said, based out of Winnipeg, Canada, so that's where I got to experience my lot of my trip multiple trips to Canada, which I absolutely love candidates, awesome, with the exception of the freezing cold. But
but we did some great stuff there. LED, you know, multiple organizations, but I would say the one thing I loved there was we worked with so many different brands from all different sizes, flavors, had industries, verticals that they worked in, you know, we had roughly, you know, 80,000 plus customers, because, you know, we were the largest Shopify app developer, right, so we had all types of customers leveraging things. So seeing these like really cool success stories, seeing these really awesome things, these brands, what they're doing, just thought that was just amazing. And then most recently been at flavor clouds since November. So if you're fairly recent, you know, halfway through my first year here, and in the reason I, you know, I worked with flavor cloud is, you know, I saw this massive goes back a little bit of my WP Engine experience, just massive opportunity for international for these brands, being able to enable brands to sell anywhere, to not just be limited, but how you know, being able to do that in such a simple and easy way on how to get it out the door. And that's one thing flavor cloud was doing. I just saw this, like, obviously massive tam amazing leadership and team like, I love my team and the people we work with here, but also solving a big problem, right? So instead of having this like massive brand, who gets to sell everywhere, you know, empowering a brand who's maybe not, doesn't have the the operational rigor or the finances or whatever to do that and say, like, Hey, let us help you sell to, you know, 10 different countries, let us help you get this out the door and do within, you know, weeks or days, you know, to go and do that. So, felt there's a bit of not only a great business opportunity, but also a passion piece to where it's like, helping all brands, you know, really get to to, you know, push there. So, yeah, that's a little bit of long winded about me and kind of how I got today. So, yeah, thanks. I love that. And I think one thing actually,
in your piece, when you were sharing was that you went from like a company where you're managing, like, over 70 people to then an organization or you manage four. So I was actually just curious, how, like, what were I guess the benefits of managing a bigger team versus a smaller team? What are the challenges when you're moving from like, a large team, to now managing a small team? Yeah, I would say, you know, in managing larger teams and larger organizations,
you know, I call it like, while you're growing the business, I almost consider it like maintenance, in a sense, you have, right, establish marketing resources that run like an engine, you have a big CX team sales teams. So really, what your opportunity is, is to be operationally excellent, right? And create this, you know, efficient engine, engage culture, you know, being able to kind of, you know, ensure that we're, you know, dialing in, right,
you know, on every single thing that we do, right, so I always say this, like, when you're an executive in a larger company, you're kind of like a, you know, you're focused on dashboards and metrics, and all these little things, and we're all these inefficiencies are, and you have so many resources at your disposal, going over to four people, right? And to do this.
Yeah, you don't really have that you have like, hey, there's a person, one or two people marketing you can kind of work with, but they're also doing like five other things in their job.
You know, same with my team. Same with some of the other folks I got to work with. So, but the benefit and what I really loved about that was I wanted to learn, you know, the reason that I made that move is I was actually just bored.
I wanted to be challenged. I wanted to like, you know, challenge myself, like could I go build what I saw get built at Rackspace. Granted I was you know, they're further along when I joined but like, but
Can I be a part of like, what the leaders there were to go help this company go do the same thing. So
I would say for there, you have to be resourceful. Your people have to be extremely resourceful. They have to be curious. You can't go in when you hire people on the team, you know, you look for what I say, like polymaths, right? People that can go do multiple things. And it not feel like you know, they're a one trick pony, in folks like that are completely great at larger companies, but you really need to do a lot of different things. So I would say that's probably the first experience is like, oh, so I don't have just this, you know, this organization is doing all this stuff. And he's like, Well, if I guess I got to become a Salesforce administrator now. And now I gotta go figure out how to go rent a mansion, which, you know, was taken care of, for me in another company. So I would say those are the big things that were honestly, they're absolutely fun. It's like the stuff that gets me so excited.
No, I totally agree. I think that like that's, that's kind of the same secret sauce that gets me excited about e commerce brands as well. Because like, as we know, it from like, the the founders that we've spoken to like E commerce brands, they're lean, and they're scrappy. And you really didn't need those polymaths at the beginning, is that they say what is it the common saying is start off with generalists and scale with like specialists. But I think that they we glaze over that really important piece of like, if you are trying to get your foot in the door and stuff, you need those people who can not only, you know, wear those multiple hats, but like, teach others to do the same to thrive with that uncertainty. And you need leadership and stuff who can really discover those secret talents that may not be totally developed, like as your, your company like, grows and expands? And so like, I have a question about hiring because, you know, I think that we see a lot of hiring in tech itself kind of coming in from like two, from click two directions. It's rather like the out right out the door out of school direction, where there is a co op, there is hand holding it hand holding us that there are brands and stuff who are are companies who have the established connections is in the institutions. And essentially, it's like a pipeline of people going through courses, and then they pop into the door into their first tech company, or you have those challenge seekers who are looking for that new challenge. They're looking for that new initiative that is unique, and they're hungry for it, and they go seek out the company. And of course, the first thing that they see in stuff is probably
a job posting, right. If they're searching for the opportunity to look into the company, they find that job posting, and it is like the intact, right, like classic, like looking for mission driven, you know, like, aligned with like these values, which are so important and stuff and like showcasing like what your company is about. But I think that that signposting often can
attract a very specific type of candidate that comes in that can unfortunately, sometimes lead to that monoculture. If you know, the relationship is ICU, black and white on a screen, and I have not met anybody I've not really interact with the product yet. So, you know, in order to avoid hiring a team with a monoculture? How do you build a process that really prioritizes that those may be diverse skill sets that will come with those, those polymaths that you talked about? Yeah, that's a great question. And oh, my gosh, I've seen this happen way too many times, or even been a part of it earlier in my career, right. Where, where that happens. So
process I've used in the past, I would say if you have resources, and you can do this is at Rackspace, we were big believers in leveraging like StrengthsFinder through Gallup, right, where you get your like, your top five strengths. I'm not sure if you guys have done that, or seen that before. But like, for example, like my, you know, my top five strengths are, you know, futuristic grit, relator, ideation, self assurance, analytical, right? So what we did at Rackspace was, this wasn't like a, hey, take this test and see if you like, it wasn't a test to get into Rackspace, it was actually to help us build diverse teams. So for example, if I'm a futurist, and I do this also so like, let's just like you said, right, seeking out jobs. So when I was seeking out my next role, the way how I work with our CEO, and our strengths, I want to make sure we complement and we're not identical. So for example, if we're both futurist, then we're going to be sitting around just thinking about the future the entire time. And but who's going to be executing who's going to be focused on like that day to day rigor of what needs to get done? So there's one there's areas that I always like to try to look at that so we would go everybody would take a test. And even if we found a great person, we would hire them but that would actually help us figure out like, what teams should they be on? Who should they go work with? How can they go complement another team, right?
Maybe you have a bunch of futurists, and you need an operator to be there, or you need somebody to be, you know, the more the cynical person because you have too many optimists on the team, and you needed checks and balances to make sure that things, you know, work that way in. So while I don't use that, currently,
I take that science, same type of, you know, idea and philosophy when I go build teams. So for me, I know exactly, so the first thing about being a leader in building great teams is you have to have great self, you have to have really good self awareness. You can't BS yourself, you really have to understand like, what are you good at? And what are you're not good at, because you're not good at everything. And in I've done a tremendous job of understanding and dissecting myself. So when I start to go build teams, I know that, yes, I'm a futurist, and also that I'm, you know, also ADHD. So I'm always you know, looking and doing stuff and, and I use of superpowers that that gives me to get where I'm at today. But guess what my first hire every single time is to go get a head of operations. And that is always the first thing I go and get, and, and I go get a top notch head of operations, not go hire a bunch of salespeople, or marketers or things like that, because that head of operations is gonna allow to kind of put my strategy and be able to help me organize and operate how we need to gotta get done, right, and push things through. And then you know, sometimes, you know, use then start to look at, okay, how do you go complement, right? Different roles, different people, because really, what you're doing is you're building a super team, you're building a team, that when we actually go in, work out there and roll out there, man, we have somebody who's an operator, we have somebody who can build culture, we have the motivator, we have the person who's going to challenge all of us to say, okay, Mike, you get really excited, because you're always excited about the future. Let me show you the risks and helped me bring you back down and show you like the, you know, the devil's advocate, right. And some people don't like that some people don't, you know, I love it. Like, that's what we need. So, I would say, being able to, like, understand it, put your ego aside and bring a team together that can challenge and motivate, do those things, you know, collectively. That's the key thing. And I would say I measure that every single time we make hires. So I went, before we make a hire, I look at all of our team, and I'm like, Who do we need? What do we need, and then we
interviewed for that for that as well. So like, we'll tailor interview questions to make sure we're nailing what we want there. That's interesting, because I,
I feel like it's almost like you're playing. Like you're playing 4d Chess, it's like, there's the problem at hand the the level that you're on and what you need to solve a problem, you need to fill a position to be able to operate and stuff for the next like 366 months. And then there's also that added level of a game of what we discussed earlier of like, what happens when you you create a super team, you groom a lot of great talent, and then you have these big tech guys coming in and coming in to poach. I feel like it sets you up very strategically to be able to identify what you're missing when when somebody does take that exit. Because if your operator if you know who your operator was, and your operator gets taken away, you know, you have a hole in in your team of who you don't no longer have an operator. So is that, I guess a follow up question to that is what in those cases when that happens,
is your first
is your next step, I guess to hire fill that operator hole? Or is there another tactic that you feel like moves the team forward?
Yeah, we always need like a, I'm a big believer, and we always need like a head of operations there.
For most CROs
that goes against the grain to other philosophies. I'm a bit different. I grew up more on the so as you say, you were thinking 40 Chess? Well, that goes back to like my software engineering background, right? So when you go build a piece of software, you got to think about every single single thing a user may go do and how they're using your app or using something else. Right. So it's the same type of same type of processor. So now the thing is, I will not settle for just any operator. So there is going to probably be a gap of, you know, months of, you know, how long is it going to take before you find that right person? So usually what we do in the short term,
you know, I will basically, you know, I can easily strengthen up my operator skill set, you know, I've been a great operator for a long time. So, it starts with basically understanding, okay, who what do we need to do? Who needs to take on what? So I'll look at the entire team and say, Okay, I will handle, you know, this piece of the business, and this will be the part that I own. And then usually I have some people on my team that also are good operators in their own right. And then I'll look also look for somebody who wants to enhance maybe a skill set they don't have. So you know, say for example,
We had actually, we had a situation like this in my last job where, you know, our head of operations, you know, had moved on. And
we had a Director of Sales who's, you know, strong executor. But you know, his execution was more focused on like, you know, running the day to day sales team running, you know, pipelines and all this other stuff. But I'm like, Hey, would you love to, in the interim, handle some of this stuff in Salesforce handle some of this stuff in here, you know, take on a little bit more. And, and that was somebody, he, he loved it, he got excited about it, because for him, it was like, Oh, great, I can go learn something. So you want to go find opportunities like that, like, even though it's a crappy situation. And so if you lose, like a top person, find ways to like, enhance and give experiences, somebody who's looking for it, give them a career opportunity, you know what I mean, to put something on their resume, and then find somebody who's gonna be passionate about it, the last thing you want to do is go delegate it to somebody who's like, oh, my gosh, I absolutely hate this, I don't want to do this, because then you're not going to get the good output out of it. Yeah, and I think like, That's interesting that you mentioned that because I think sometimes what brands do like in terms of mistakes is that maybe if you have, for example, like a top notch, salesperson, and maybe they want to move on to like a leadership role, for example, or it depends on whatever department that may be, sometimes, it's like a fear that you'll lose that person in that role and all the expertise. But then you can lose them altogether. And they can move on to a different company. And I think like a lot of just even noticing in the industry to, like, people are scared to, I guess, empower those individuals, but if you don't empower them to leave, so you're kind of like in that catch 22. Because you don't want to, you know, especially in sales, if you have a book of business, you don't want to have that person lose that book of business. But then if that person leaves, then it doesn't really matter. In the end, they left.
Oh, yeah, that is
sales leaders make that mistake so many times, and I just do not understand why. It's, I mean, there's two things. When a sales when a top notch individual contributor, salesperson wants to make that next step, there is some due diligence you want to do for that. So you know, running sales teams for years. A lot of times with sales folks.
They'll feel that that's just like an organic next step. Well, I guess I'll just go into leadership.
Man join in itself, leadership is a tough job. I mean, you go from one if you're truly a you know, the top salesperson on your team, you're likely making more money than your sales manager is immediately right, just with commissions and stuff like that. So immediately like it's like you're taking a pay cut, you probably don't realize er like Well, yes, you may get more a salary or whatever like that. You're not going to have the ability to control your own outcome right to go like, blow out your your numbers quarterly and things like that. I was like, so are you ready for that? are also Are you ready for like, you don't get the like celebrations that most salespeople get, like, every time you crush a quarter, and everybody's singing your praises, like, it's your job to sing the praises of your team now. And it's your job now to go in power in and train your team, not for you to go take over their deals, not for them to go close them for them. But how can you go create that? So first step in those situations, I'm always like, I go through this like process of like, are you ready? Do Is this why you want to go do this? And what you'll get is, if they say yes, and I'm still a little like iffy, I'll ease a man and give them like a team lead position where they're still like an IC but like, I'm like, look over these two sales folks that are new that just got hired, like train them up, do some one on ones with them, give them a little bit of a test run right to see if they this is something they enjoy. And what you end up finding out is like, half will be like, You know what, Mike, I'm good. Let me just keep cranking over here.
And I'll keep killing it and worried about myself. But then you have the others where man they just light up. They light up on grooming, helping people empowering them getting them to there. When you can nail that that's when you have to say like okay, well yes, I am losing my top sales rep to go into a leadership position. But now his goal if he's gonna go take over a team of say five or six people is he's gonna go make five or six more badasses or she's gonna go make five or six more badasses and in in be able to go and do that like that's where you have to go see the future part of that so I honestly think like,
too many leaders make too many mistakes I would say in holding people back from from from making those those plays. Yeah. And then I guess leading into my next question
in terms of making mistakes, are there mistakes brands make or leaders make while building the team that you notice throughout your experience? Like what are those mistakes and and how can they combat those mistakes? Yeah, the first one I would have is, excuse my French here, but you know, I haven't eaten
So it's the first one, the biggest mistakes I see is
a brand wants to go higher, say, you know, a top leader, right? Maybe somebody who can kind of, you know, lead plus, do the work, you know, help scale, great resume, great everything, everything looks good on paper.
But, you know, not not a fit, right? Not a not a culture fit. They weren't vetted for that, right? They were just looked upon, you know what that looks like, you know what I always call this as,
I'm a big sports fan, but there used to be this football player back in the day named Terrell Owens, and, and everybody wanted him, right. So he's the receiver. People pay a lot of money. First, here we go. Okay, he's producing, he's one of the best receivers in the league. By the second season. He's like fighting with his quarterback, the fighting in the locker room. And then basically, the whole team explodes. Right, and what we used to call this as like, the brilliant jerk, right? The the person who's just like, that's always like the first thing, right? It's like, you get enamored by the big ego, the you know what this looks like on paper. And that can set your company actually sometimes kill a small business, if you're if you're not careful early on. So I would say that's like one big thing to look out for. Second piece is we hit on this a little bit earlier about, like, generalists, versus finding somebody who's like one thing I see that happen too many times. So instead of finding, like those generalists, which you need to do at an early stage company, you go find someone who's like,
what I always say, it's like, you know, they're looking for what is step one through 10, for me to go do my job.
And what I looked at what like, the things I look for are, Curiosity is like one of the number one strengths you have to have, you have to be able to like, if there's a situation, your your natural abilities should be to ask more questions, ask why it's like that, ask why it's not working. Why is it working? Why do we do things that way? Like, I want so many questions. So on the interview process, you have to almost like set up scenarios like that in an interview, to see if their curiosity will take over. Right. And there's a lot of things you know, you can you can check for to make that up. resourcefulness is a big one as well.
You know, especially if you're a curling brand, you're not going to be this massive brand that just has this nice playbook and say, Here's exactly like how to do your job and our brand and all this other stuff and how you need to go and, you know, do the job that you have right now. And what I always do, like one interview question, it's never right or wrong. But one thing I always ask is, you know, somebody will come and say, Well, Mike, what's your training process look like? And what resources will I'll have? And I'll go through, you know, whatever we have, and talk them through that. And then I'll say, okay, scrap that. What if I just told you that and I just lied, and then you took the job, and you realize there's no training? There's nothing out there, you know, the job you have to go do? What do you do to get yourself prepared? What do you do to go, you know, get yourself up to speed. So you can go to your job. And you will be surprised on the answers that you get, you'll have somebody who will just be stuck, like, I don't even know how to like, where to even go with that. And then the folks who are very resourceful, it's crazy, the creativity that they come up with. They're like, okay, cool. Like, I remember there was somebody at WP engine when we did this. And he's like, Okay, well, the first thing I would do is, obviously, WordPress is open source. So everything's out in the open, so I'm gonna go learn about that. So I'm gonna go to these forums, I'm gonna go to these pages and do that, then I know that the engineers over here, so I'm going to take time validating what that looks like over on the engineering side. And it's like, yes, you're the person I want. Because guess what? I'm hiring you right now. To come in Yes, today where we have this situation set up. But in order for brands and businesses to succeed, you got to reinvent yourself every one to two years, which means you're going to have to be resourceful at some point, you're going to have to go and roll your sleeves up and figure problems out and get things done. So I would say, you know, what, I would tell brands, don't hire jerks. Find very curious and very resourceful people that have those work ethics, those polymaths that are really, you know, willing to do it, and don't get so consumed on the resume. Yes, your there has to be some relevant experience, obviously, you know, that that you need there in order to kind of do whatever job you're doing. But if there's somebody who's like a tenure person, but you have a person who has maybe done it for five years or four years, but they have these intangibles, I would go with that person every single time. Yeah. And I think what you're mentioning to even about the training, because is important because sometimes even just I've encountered in my career, just observing other people is that maybe sometimes you're promised a certain level of training or something of that sort, and then you get into the role. And then it just especially in startups, you just have to figure out certain
things and everything's constantly moving. So it's how do you become resourceful? And how do you essentially not only like pull your own way, but like prosper in your role? So I actually really liked that question that you mentioned that you asked candidates. Yeah, here's here's a good like, just to add one more to there, and I'll give her a shout out. But you know, one of our, one of my current people on my team right now named Candace, she's a sales development rep, right. And her whole, her whole job is to go open up opportunities with enterprise brands out there, right for us to connect in and hopefully, you know, when there, I've read so many SDR teams in the past, and that's like, where we always run into trouble. It's like, it's a it's a very sales and marketing kind of hybrid type role, and you have to kind of figure things out. But what you'll do is you'll just have SDRs go through and do the same thing, hundreds of times, definition of insanity, expecting a different outcome, they continue to fail, and they're wondering, like, I don't know what I'm doing. And then two weeks later, they're like, why try 500 times I'm like, Well, you haven't thought of trying a different way. Because they're looking for direction of like, you know, either from their leader or somebody else who tell them okay, what else should we go do different? And Candice running lean? And mean, she is our like, one SDR. I mean, the best I've ever seen. I mean, she will go in there, AB test something, try out different, you know, ICPs try out different ways, different messaging, how to personalize different channels on how to personalize. And like, she produces more than probably a team of five that I've had.
On quality what we do, I mean, complete Rockstar, and I can't even take credit. She was here before I got here. So it's like, I can't say like we but you know, our head of sales who hired her like, great job. And it's like that right there. Right is,
you know, the like,
the checking off all those boxes I just talked about, like, that's what it is, right? Someone who's not like, I don't want to look for somebody who needs approval, like so get done. Like go go make it happen, like, you know, be an entrepreneur, right? Be able to kind of, you know, pull your sleeves up in in, you know, try some things out.
No, I love that, especially with SDR teams as well. Because I mean, I actually was an SDR as well. So on the enterprise side. So
you know, like, it's definitely a role that you need a lot of like perseverance and, you know, motivation and self motivation, because it can be a very difficult role dealing with rejection a lot of the times. So having those like rocks, and they're the first point of contact, right, they're the ones that create those opportunities to close those deals. So it's extremely important function. How do you keep someone like a Candace motivated? And you know, not get poached by like another company, but keeping her happy and staying with you guys?
Yeah, I? Yeah, that's something that, you know, we continually actually, I would say, think about all the time, right. So it's
first things first is
understanding where she wants to be career wise. Alright, so she, she made a career change. She hadn't been in technology before she was, uh, you know, in a in a, in a different, different industry. So, what does she want to do? Is that next step, right? Is it leadership? Is it to become a soul, you know, go into become an AE? What that looks like. So I think first things first is like aligning out that career path for that. And also understanding that while I may have our goes back to our earlier point, while we might have the best SDR in the world that I've ever worked with,
we can't then limit her and her career path because of that. And so you know, what we're doing kind of in the interim is like, let's start documenting. What's your process? How are you succeeding? What are you doing here? How can we go then when we hire the next wave of SDRs? Right? How can we train find, identify these things and maybe even open up in a leadership position for her to, to kind of take over and go build that out. So that's what it's really all about in a lot of different roles. With high performers. It's like you don't rest on your laurels. Don't just assume that they're killing it. And they're just happy because guess what?
Anybody in the US or North America? Any business can poach your people. And we know that with how remote work is going now. So it's it's not like a Oh, yeah, well, you know what businesses are hiring Brenda, she lives in California. So that wouldn't even matter this time. But it's but still like, that's the that's the key for me. It's just we have to be out in front of these type of things.
And not and not wait. I think that
thing that drives me crazy about some businesses is that
wait to take care of your people when they're like about to leave. And I just always feel I forgot what report I read. But like, you know, when somebody takes an offer, and then you give them a counteroffer and they decide to stay, they end up leaving in nine months anyways. I mean, I'll be the first one to say that that happened to me. When I was at Rackspace. I was about to leave. I got a counteroffer. I stayed because the old loyalty and I been there for so long, they gave me my shot, literally to the dot, like nine to 10 months later, I love to Bigcommerce it's because even though like
you know, yes, maybe finances is always a part of it, you know, you don't want to get paid more or whatever like that. There's usually something deeper. And for me, like, Okay, I got a pay raise cool. Still didn't solve my boredom nine months later. It's tilted in like, you know, and that's where I think, you know, having to get out in front those things is always key. And so we've, we've gone to talk a lot about the these uncovering and discovering talents and stuff within your team building an excellent roster of team members, a machine, if you will, and stuff and you know, planning for, like, what does that mean, when that machine evolves, people believe in stuff or they're ready and set to take on more responsibilities. Which is amazing, because it sounds like from a leadership standpoint, it's like you're playing that 4d Chess, you're thinking of all these scenarios, I think the difficulty is, is identifying those sometimes like those internals, those internal conflicts in your IR team as well. You know, I think, as we all know, like, no one is immune to imposter syndrome, or the other kind of like internal conflicts that comes doing when you knock on the door of like, new opportunity, or in the kind of like uncharted territory that a lot of these entrepreneurs go into, you know, is there anything that you do from a coaching standpoint, to unpack that with your teams who might be facing something like imposter syndrome?
Yeah, that's a great question. So, look, to start off my answer. I've dealt with impostor syndrome held the majority of my career, right?
grew from humble beginnings. You know, dad was a mechanic and united mean, like, I didn't grow up in this, like tech, you know, type setup, you know, when, you know, growing up. So I've always felt this, like, inferiority complex, right, that I just didn't belong, dropped out of school. So that was always a big insecurity for me, you know, when, you know, everybody are going from promotions, and they're talking about the MBA program they're joining, and all this other stuff. And I'm like, Shit, I can't even attempt to do it, because I haven't got my degree yet. And, you know, so I dealt with this so many times in my career, right. And so I feel that. So I think how I got through that was, you know, great leadership who like, put that crap aside? Right? And, you know, they looked at me for what did I produce? What did I do? How to, you know, what type of outcomes that I that I created, right? So what I do for my team, and when I kind of think back to this is when people have impostor syndrome, I'm a big believer on leading with empathy, huge and vulnerability. So I think we're leaders make a ton of big mistakes. And we're impostor syndrome, you know creates is, people can sometimes feel like,
their leaders are gonna see them as failures, or their insecurities that may be causing these imposter syndromes is a sign of weakness. And what I do is I try to break down that wall. And I basically sit down with you one on one. And the thing is, when you've gone through it, I can see it so quickly, in people when they're kind of like, there's this wall and I'm in, I'll sit there and have a conversation with them. And actually, what I'll do is I'll lead with all of my insecurities, all of the issues, I got challenged as feeling as an imposter even today. Everybody feels that because honestly, if you're not challenging yourself in a role, you probably do. Everybody probably does feel an ounce of impostor syndrome somewhere of like, Okay, do I belong? Do I Do I Do I am I supposed to be here. And what I try to do first is to kind of break that down. And to say, like, it's okay. Like me, you and I are talking here. I've been through that exact same thing at your point of the career. And then what I'll do is try to build them up and then give them a challenge. And say, All I care about, I don't care if you fail, I don't care if you don't get this done. What I want you to do is go make this happen. I believe in you, I will give you all the resources that you want to get this done, I will work with you help you you know, do whatever you need to do. But I want you to go make this happen and I want you to own this and just know that regardless of the outcome, I got your back and you know in when you're able to empower somebody like that, you start to create a culture of you know, it's okay to fail. Fail fast. Learn from your
mistakes, iterate, try something differently. If you create a culture of this, like perfection, nothing gets done, nothing gets out the door.
If you create a culture of like, you don't want to go take risks, how are you going to grow? How are you going to go find new markets? If you're a brand? How are you going to go in? Like, if somebody stepped up and said, You know, I'm a brand and they're in, you know, fashion, they say, I think there's a massive opportunity to go sell into this country. And everyone's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, like, I think that's too big of a jump. But they go and own it. And it works. And that might be the difference of a brand, going from 10 million to $100 million.
But if you don't create that culture, because somebody is too scared to go and make that, that move, or feeling that they're gonna get judged, if they make a mess, you'll never grow, you'll never innovate, you'll never make that push. So
yeah, that's the way I approach it. You know, it's not very scientific, it's very emotional, it's very relationship based, you have to help people believe in themselves, and then realize that you're not perfect either. And don't put your put your ego aside, be okay, talking about your insecurities like I, I'll get in front of my entire organization and company, and tell them about the crap I suck at. And I have no problem doing that. And guess what? You are human. And the more that you can humanize an organization and realize that we're all human, and we've all gone through the same experiences, that opens it up, sky's the limit from there, and then people can go really see through what their potential is. Yeah, I really appreciate that. Because I think and something I've noticed is that sometimes, just like preserving psychological safety within an organization is so important. Because even when I first start certain jobs, especially being newer in your career, I just, you have this fear, like oh my gosh, I'm gonna get fired if I fail. And, and you just constantly think that I dealt with that for a long time.
And actually, something that helped me was my manager, I just moved into a new team and something that will hurt, I just have a close bond, but something that she would always tell me is that, you know, you're gonna mess up, and that's fine. And we're going to learn and this is going to be something we're going to do together. But like, I have your back and, and you know, I'm here and I really value your growth and just being not only a great
you know, manager, but just like a great friend and mentor and someone that I absolutely trust, because I find sometimes, especially when you're newer to leadership, you can because maybe you're nervous that you want to meet your goals, you can lead with like micromanaging and fear, rather than leading with humility and, and that you have someone's back and trust. Yeah. Great, great point, I think.
So to your point, those are good questions to ask when you're looking for a job. So when you're when you're going to go join in your organization, right is, you know, right, every interview, they say what questions you have for me, or ask them the questions of like, well, when things are going bad, like,
how do you go and motivate your team? How do you go and do these things? Because you, you have to, you know, always tell the stupid, it's tough, right? I mean, especially, or any career, you're, you're fighting to try to get jobs and stuff like that. But, you know, you also want to get yourself in a bad situation, and how those are the worst ones just give me bad memories, when he said that, like the when things get tough, you lead by fear. And that's just a quick way you're gonna lose your entire team won. Give it six months, we'll all be gone looking for other jobs. So it's, it's, you know, that person, it's, nothing's gonna happen there. But it's like, man, if you could just take a step back and just realize, like, we're human, understand the symptom. Understand why things are going that way, you know, because for me, the non negotiables for me is like hard work. My team is working hard. And they're putting the effort in and they're making it happen, and they're in there do now you know, it's my job to go figure out them why? Like, it's my job to go figure out like, that's what you do as a leader. Is it our if it's an SDR team? Is it our messaging? Is it something that you know, we're not nailing? Is it our product? Is it something that we're not doing here? Not go in push fear and say, you know, make more phone calls? And it's like, well, I can make 20 more phone calls with the same shitty message. It's not going to like,
anything better, you know? Yeah. Yeah. No, I really, really appreciate that. And I think that's something that a lot of leaders still need to learn, especially when you're newer. I mean, I'm not in leadership yet. But that's something that my manager and I always have conversations about, you know, she she told me, you know, you're gonna eventually be in a leadership role. We need to start thinking about how you want to lead people and she even said that there's, there's gonna be things that you don't like that I do and things that other past managers that you didn't like. So take those things and that you felt when you were in that position and make sure basically, that doesn't happen when you're leading somebody
But I really appreciated that and really, like made me think about
in terms of like, when I step up to be in a leadership position eventually.
Yeah, that's key. And because you every all of you are our future, you know, sales and marketing and revenue leaders, right. So you have to
change course, and I think it is happening, I do feel
I've seen less of that I feel like in this kind of new cohort of leaders, more operationally minded and more empathetic, more understanding the human emotion piece of of what it takes to run a successful business. So, you know, we have to continue to keep, you know, building that up. Now, Mike, this has been incredible. And I really hope that, you know, our listeners and stuff take a lot like deep stock of, of the the importance of Team buildings that that you've shared with us, and certainly in ways that essentially, you know, defending against a silent killer is like that risk of psychological safety and stuff of those.
Pardon, My French is of like those assholes who can, you know, make their way into a business and very much hurt things from the ground up. Because I think what we're seeing is this incredible new renaissance of GTC and like E commerce brands, and like, we want to see them six seed, but it really does start with your people first. So thank you so much for sharing your time with us. Where can our listeners follow you on your journey?
Yeah, sure. So yeah, look me up on LinkedIn, I'm there. I tend to post a ton about need to do it more, but tend to post a ton about leadership. And a lot of topics that we talk about is something I'm very passionate about. I will I usually do weekly mentor sessions for whoever. So I do Fridays at like, 10 o'clock, I need to post up my calendar link again, because I think I just ran through two months of these. So anybody who wants to do it doesn't matter what it is. All I always say is, don't try to call and sell me something or, you know, don't take the time slot right. I'm looking for people who generally want to grow and get some advice to do that. And then and yeah, please follow me on Twitter. I think it's Mike a Sanchez.
They're on Twitter and yeah, that's that's where I'm at. So yeah, definitely enjoyed the conversation. I love talking about this stuff. It's gets me really excited. And in honestly, it's one of the most, I would say,
one of the most areas of businesses that that sometimes aren't the first part of the focus in but also the most critical. Yeah, no, awesome. This is an amazing episode. Thank you so much. I love this as we didn't shed light onto a topic like this yet. So this was there's so much value that I think people can take away so I really, really appreciate you coming on.
Of course likewise,