Revenue Without Relationships Is Dead: AI Can't Replace Trust, with Mike Reardon

Is AI helping businesses grow, or is it quietly destroying the relationships that drive revenue?

In this episode of Unapologetic Leadership, Cory Dunham sits down with Mike Reardon, Founder of Be Effective and Fractional CRO, to explore the intersection of leadership, sales, AI, trust, and human connection. Mike shares why relationships, communication, culture, and genuine human intelligence remain the true drivers of business success, even as organizations race toward automation and artificial intelligence.

Drawing from decades of sales, business development, and revenue growth experience, Mike explains why most companies don't have a sales problem. They have a revenue operating system problem. He reveals how inefficient systems, poor communication, lack of alignment, and weak leadership can quietly cost businesses hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost revenue.

The conversation explores leadership, employee engagement, sales performance, organizational growth, AI adoption, customer relationships, business strategy, and why trust remains the most valuable asset in today's marketplace. Mike also shares practical insights on building scalable systems, improving team performance, and creating sustainable growth without sacrificing the human element that drives long-term success.

About Mike Reardon

Mike is currently transforming into a Fractional CRO focused on helping businesses achieve breakthrough growth and scale. His career foundation is rooted in contrarian sales professionalism, successfully selling without conventional industry experience, formal credentials, or extensive business support. His unique perspective has helped organizations uncover hidden revenue leaks and build more effective revenue operating systems.

If you're a leader, entrepreneur, consultant, sales professional, or business owner navigating the AI revolution, this episode will challenge how you think about growth, trust, leadership, and the future of business.

Connect with Mike here

Website: https://beffective.ca/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikepcreardon/
Phone: +1 (514) 213-5947

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome to Unapologetic Leadership. If you felt stressed, overwhelmed, wrestling with the imposter syndrome, wondering if you're just not good enough, then this podcast is for you. So here's your host, Corey Dunham.

SPEAKER_02 0:22

Welcome to this episode of Unapologetic Leadership, where I have Mike Reardon, who's founder of Be Effective, and he's also a fractional CRO. Welcome, Mike.

SPEAKER_01 0:34

Well, thank you for having me. This should be fun.

SPEAKER_02 0:37

Yeah, yeah. I'm looking forward to this conversation. I appreciate you being here. So tell us what you do in the world, how you impact people, and especially what's a fractional CRO?

SPEAKER_01 0:48

Fractional CRO, I've come to that definition from being a consultant and then being told you didn't give us results. And I said, But I'm a consultant, I only guide. So fractional is essentially a short-term type of tenure to come in and essentially fix what they're having issues with on the revenue perspective.

SPEAKER_03 1:12

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:13

And to do that transition to fractional, I have a revenue operating system to pivot off of that will help me do that regardless of what an organization may have in place and basically get at the outcomes that they're looking for. So it's a professional services that productizes what we do. And that's based on my background, as we had talked before.

SPEAKER_02 1:40

But if you could share that again a little bit, if you don't mind.

SPEAKER_01 1:43

Well, the the foundations and sales, it mixes in uh initially a lot of individual contributions. I learned early on how to you know get up into seven figures for a lot of small, medium-sized businesses. And many a times I inherited the sales team, I had to help. So I had to do a bit of what we've seen, let's say, in the NFL, which is deconstruct the old culture and put in a new one, and in two years Seattle wins its first, you know, or at least one for a long time. Yep. That's the premise of my business originally, which is you have at least three pillars. One strategy, and that is a purpose that you define for your culture, your organization, set by the leader. However, it has to be agreed upon by the team. And sometimes some leaders have forgotten that, given your own title. Second is operations. I'm amazed over decades now how people don't really know what's underneath their various systems of their business. And I don't remember the quote quite exactly, but I love the quote from Calvin Coolidge about persistence because it has nothing to do with your talent, your genius, or your experience, but just persistence. And to be persistent in a nice way in sales is to be consistent in your follow-ups, is be consistent in what your message is. So what you say is the same thing as what the receptionists and the CEO say as an example.

SPEAKER_02 3:20

Yeah, no, I think that's great because I've seen that in a lot of different areas where that can we think, and I've done that too, where I'm like, oh, they understood me because they shook their head because they nodded in agreement. Or not yeah, shook their heads or nodded in agreement, rather, is what I meant to say. But also too, right?

SPEAKER_01 3:37

Yeah, yeah, even if they are in agreement, they still shake their head because and you still want their feedback on what that strategy and that operations are. And effectively, strategy does drive process. So if you're trying to figure out how come I didn't achieve my strategy goal or my New Year's Eve goal, well, first place to look at is your systems. Your what did you put in place to get there, whether it's losing weight, whether it's to beef up, whether it's to go on your bucket list and whatnot. The third pillar is performance, which is essentially people. And I guess my view there really succinctly is they're your number one asset. However, what we see out in the world is that they're not, because apparently you can lay off 15,000 like Microsoft did, to be replaced by AI. And I've done a ton of work around AI, and okay, there's not an I yet. So you're gonna replace people that have an eye.

SPEAKER_02 4:40

Okay. So we're talking about intelligence. There's no intelligence there. So this is what we're talking about. Just for some of the people like, well, what are we talking about, or who weren't listening quite well to you? So yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:51

Yeah. Yeah, that's interesting. Thank you for that clarification. But yeah.

SPEAKER_02 4:55

Yeah, no. No, I think that's an important factor, and I don't hear this kind of talk all the time, and especially since you're saying that a lot of companies pretty much aren't heading toward AI, reducing the workforce of human beings. And do you have any reasons for saying human beings are the most important or people are the more most important aspect of this? I know you said there isn't much intelligence going toward the AI or artificial intelligence. But but do you have any other yeah, go ahead.

SPEAKER_01 5:24

Yeah, from what you've seen already in what you might search on AI, they've done a lot of their work, as they're called, the ones that we're knowing, right? ChatGPT, Gemini, and those guys, on what's out there on the internet in terms of what's writing. So years ago, I met, I think it's Torremont is the name, one of the distributors for Caterpillar. And one of their issues was back in I think it was 2017, they already knew that they were going to lose 30% of their workforce to you know retirement. Right? They were aging. Gotcha. And I was in there to see what we could do to capture their knowledge long before AI surfaced as far as uh an option. And he pulled out a book that's like two inches thick of the heavy equipment that's outside the window, and he said, My guys know that on page 216, you don't cut the green wire, you cut the blue wire. And I said, Okay, so did you tell you know Caterpillar and did you ask them to update the you know the book and stuff like that? Sure. But all of that takes time, it's been a couple of years. So I need to keep that in some kind of a database of knowledge. So when I talk about intelligence, those mechanics that figured out from a problem solving what it was the issue and what worked and didn't work according to the manual. That's hard to replace. So that's the value I see in people. If you take my own profession as far as sales, sure, a lot of it that I have to do is a process that you can document and lay out, and you and I could probably agree to almost a hundred percent of that, what that is. Okay, so what's the problem, Mike? Well, it's the 20% because now I'm gonna talk to Corey. That is the art of sales, so right. And communication, if I've figured out anything over decades, it's an art. I remember listening to you know a guy that came up on the theater platform and said, uh, yeah, they labeled me as a communication expert, but I'm not. Neither are you. But I have a framework, and so he put a grid up. He said, Today Mike is talking to Corey and it's working fantastic. Tomorrow he talks to Corey or next week or whatever, and the call just the conversation, the meeting just didn't go at all as planned. What happened, ladies and gentlemen? There's so many things that happened. The boss gave him heck, or he lost a family member, and you have no idea, he's in no shape to talk to you. So does AI figure that out? No, it's working on a preset thing that it found on the internet that this is how we talk to each other. But that's basically an error for them. A device that you can use. I'm not saying that there's not been advances here and there, yeah, but they're still reporting that the adoption rate for overall is less than 10%. Well, why?

SPEAKER_02 8:37

Because yeah, and I was gonna say that's crazy because I've heard that from you and somebody else say that who's more into AI and the adoption rate, but I just thought just from kind of an outsider in terms of just using them like, oh, everybody must be using AI, and the organizations must be using AI, but you're saying it's that low.

SPEAKER_01 8:55

Well, just look at it in terms of organizations. Small-sized businesses represent 50% of employees that are out there, yeah. And they represent 50% of the GDP. Well, who's the other 50%? Well, certainly the large corporations with hundreds of thousands of employees have them. So who's putting it in right now? Who's putting millions, if not billions, into AI?

SPEAKER_03 9:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 9:23

Salesforce, Amazon, Microsoft, all of which have a significant amount of employees, but they are a small percentage of all the employees. Right, right. So Salesforce just came out, they're losing 53% of their market share. They're having a discussion, you know, with team. Their AI is not working quite as expected. Really? They laid off the 4,000 people that could have, you know, covered the gap. Yes. Wow, that's huge. Some people may have noticed that count lead was off as an app because the AI doesn't know how to do a simple change of DNS.

SPEAKER_02 10:16

Oh, yeah. And can you explain what DNS is?

SPEAKER_01 10:19

DNS is essentially a fairly straightforward function in the networking and routing of where your information, where you're directed to go to.

SPEAKER_02 10:30

Like a server, uh web server.

SPEAKER_01 10:32

Yeah. And that's typically part of the role of the networking people that they had laid off, but to be replaced by AI.

SPEAKER_03 10:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:41

But I guess the nuances in doing that, similar to the other one I mentioned, it wasn't clear to AI, and therefore the server went down.

SPEAKER_02 10:50

Yes. And I actually did experience that if that was in the last week here or so. That Calendly wasn't working. I'm like, what do you mean you've got issues with this? This is something I use all the time, and it affects people who are setting up meetings and you need reminders and calendar invites. Yeah, that was huge for a couple of days or whatever it was.

SPEAKER_01 11:10

So to come back full circle to your question, my view of AI is that I've been around it in some of its infant forms since 2015. So rules-based processes, business process management, and these are essentially very stage bullet point here what you gotta do, this task here. But a key part of mapping out your workflow for what you do in your business is to include when you make a decision on something, not just map out the different tasks that you gotta do. Right, right. So the biggest challenge a founder has is how do I take what's in my brain and put it in a flow so I can delegate it to somebody and then therefore grow. So the number one limitations for founders is not being able to delegate properly. That's huge. As this evolved, they were able to figure out how they can prompt it, program it, add some elements to you know get it to find some information. But in the field of legal, they depended on so much because they do so much research before a case. Yeah, no one bothered to double check the source. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 12:33

But I thought everything you read online was true, everything the AI spit out was true. I'm just kidding, but yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:41

Yeah. So the judge would say, I didn't find the source that you're referring to as far as you know dismissing my judgment, and basically it said, go back and do your actual work. So there is some element to double checking that. And MIT has reported last fall that 95% of them don't work. So it's not to throw it out, it's just to okay, guys, we just have to be smarter in using it. So when it comes to performance, I implore people to look for those that those types of AIs that actually help you and I. Yes. So you gotta set up some content. Okay, where can I source information that I don't have time to go in the library to look at somebody who's done leadership really well 200 years ago, maybe Socrates. But Socrates technically doesn't show up under leadership, but a lot of the things he and other sources say are relevant. That's where AI can save you weeks, if not months, of research in that narrow area. Yeah, accounting field, you know, your eyes are getting small because you're looking at tons of numbers, and you know, you just what is it that I'm missing in these numbers? Can you look at this number and tell me where I should look at for issues for this company? Because when I worked with Haas way back when, back in 05, he had the fanciest Excel pivot table sheet for a billion-dollar company and put all their data in there, and he said they have a problem in HR, they have a problem over in production, blah blah blah. How did you do that? Well, one, it's my baby. Okay, okay, I'm not gonna look into copy, but what are you identifying? Businesses are run on uh hours, numbers, math. Yes, and this is why this is relevant to all three pillars that I mentioned. Strategic planning is not strategy because you're basing it on math that happened in the past, it's about choices of the future you want. Your bucket list, for example. I want to do this in my personal life, this is what I want to do in business. This will represent two million. Okay, I'm only a hundred thousand today. That means to get to two million, I need what? Well, the mass says five people, you know, different departments that you don't have right now because you're just one. Yeah, how do you go make the choices to get to five people? How do you get the revenue to get to that level of cash flow? All of this is nothing coming from me, it's stuff that's out there in terms of social research, yeah, uh in terms of what people have already produced that we are not necessarily using, to the point that how we connected is a piece that a post that I did a while back, which is I took the visual of my son sitting in a back seat with you know the black pointer dog on one side and the small white chihuahua on the other side, and I said, What's the difference between 20th century and 21st century in terms of selling? So today it's a lot of mosquitoes, everybody wants your business, they want you to spend with them, and you're just going completely no. And guess what the studies, reviews say? What do they say? They're low on tolerance and high on distress, your customers, your potential customers. Reddit and HubSpot got together and did a report on the clients, and guess what? 70% buy without ever talking to you and I. Hello? It's time for us to take a bit of 20th century. What was the one thing I found we don't do? We don't build relationships.

SPEAKER_03 17:00

Ooh, that's big.

SPEAKER_01 17:02

Which is big to also you know what you're promoting in terms of you know the type of leadership that we want. Which is hey, I'm here for you. I'm not your best friend, but I'm here for you. What do we need to put in place today that is not out there right now? And each business in every country has different answers to those types of questions. Whether your number one asset is a single mom and just would like to have some help taking care of the kids or flexible hours. Your smartest person is actually handicapped. Could the smartest person could be a from a different culture, whether it's be Hispanic or Indian? How do you address you know those different things? Well, I point you to a teacher, because boy, they have 30 kids, each of them are different colors, different religions, different upbringings, even if they are the same color or religion. Yeah, different values, different values, and she or he have to come up with Corey, math is fun. You know, thank you for your service because that's a phenomenal job to do. Well, that's what we got to do today in leadership in sales, and basically talk about outcomes that we want to achieve because nobody really cares about how we do it, what's the outcome I'm gonna achieve. I want a better future going forward.

SPEAKER_02 18:37

Yeah, and pretty much what you're saying too is everybody has a need, but we need to, as you say, get clear, communicate, exchange information, and find out what the outcomes are of both parties. Yes, and see if we can match those two things up and create the impact.

SPEAKER_01 18:57

Yeah, and it's funny, the more I talk uh cross-country, in some ways we're forced to do that all of a sudden in our neck of the woods. And it's funny how the more you talk worldwide, the more you find out we have more simulators than differences. What I mean by that in talking to somebody, you know, in Asia, they also have that uncle that nobody wants to talk to that drinks too much in the corner. Yes, yes. It's funny how family dynamics, regardless of the differences, is a lot of times very similar. So if that's the case, then what does let's say science suggests? Well, you know, a lot of people smarter than me have looked at this for years. Human beings are built, we got this far helping one another. Yes. Today's leaders need to know that because they're not acting like that. Businesses don't act like that. They may have in the past, it's just the feeling that's out there across different countries is it's not representative of what we all want.

SPEAKER_02 20:13

Yeah, and you think that's just like a culture shift similar to we didn't have AI, I think, of back early 70s and 80s. You know, we had one home phone, one phone number, and now we're going to everybody has their own individual phone. And I don't even actually personally know at this point in time. I know my wife's phone number, but I don't know my three kids' phone number, so I just have to look for their name and the contact and click the button in order to connect with them. So I've gotten weak in terms of remembering phone numbers because of technology. So do you feel it's a culture shift and then people are just shifting that ways because it makes sense financially, or just this is what we do?

SPEAKER_01 20:54

It's a question of time. Like we both saw that the internet showed up, you know, I think roughly around the 90s. And you could access a ton of stuff. Now suddenly you can find out stuff that you don't need to actually go to the library, but that you used to do.

SPEAKER_03 21:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:14

Yep. Then you got social media that comes into the picture. I don't think that helped us, but it just added a lot of information from other people that probably don't know nothing about the topic that they're talking about.

SPEAKER_02 21:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:31

And they're hidden behind an avatar, so there's nothing you can do to you know contest that source of information. So you think stuff that should be safe for you is not really in real life. And of course, we've heard we've heard the term enter our language called alternative facts. No, there's only one fact. Where is it? Where do you find it? In my case, I cut the you know, the cable cord a lot. Time ago, so I was already in the mode before the rest of the internet social media to go look for my stuff in arguably the right places. And I was looking at the integrity, the transparency of the sources to do that. So now we have social media, and then boom, we're hit by the pandemic, and then boom, we're hit by the AI. We haven't had time to take a breath.

SPEAKER_02 22:28

Yeah, no, I totally agree with you. And process and integrate rather than just oh, we're off to the next thing before we say, hey, does it make logical sense or is it fact-checked?

SPEAKER_01 22:38

Yeah. So the notion of meditating is now arising in different stuff. Mental health has come to the forefront as a result, which is a good thing. It's a bad thing, and realizing lots of places don't actually take care of it or think it's a serious issue still to this day.

SPEAKER_03 22:58

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 22:59

But when we talk about mental health, and to back to your question, it's just so much information. We're still trying to figure out how to make sense of it all.

SPEAKER_02 23:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:11

So what's happened is we don't make a decision. Which in and of itself is a decision. Correct. Yeah. It's not a good decision, but it is what it is. So, how do we get people to make a decision on stuff? And in terms of the third pillar, in terms of people, Gallup reported late last year that 79% are disengaged across industries, not just one industry, across industries. They've previously reported the manager has 70% impact on them, and one of the solutions for them is just recognize their work, which sounds insanely simple. Yes. But it goes to the premise that you know we help each other and we would like to know that we're recognized for what we're helping with, as an example. Yeah. And valued. And valued, exactly. Yes. So to me, these are different dots we've talked about, but that's how I see them in my case align to go towards a solution that helps. And in terms of businesses, I say yes, you can use AI to do leads. Yes, it can answer your phone. Yes, it can do all of these things. But they are one, two, three tasks. What's your system to bring them all together? And how are you going to put that in into play when today your employees employees on average work with 10 applications a day? Wow. How can they be productive with 10 applications a day?

SPEAKER_02 25:02

And not just productive, but efficient, deep enough to get the value out of each one of those applications rather than okay, I know how to open this up and it has common menus as the other ones.

SPEAKER_01 25:14

So to me, it requires a lot of thought, and technically that's anti-entrepreneurial, because uh entrepreneurial is action, scope, let's do it. What do you mean I gotta pause? No, you gotta pause. No, I can't pause other, otherwise, I can't pay anybody's paycheck. There has to be some kind of a medium in between there to slow it down, and it's an opportunity for the younger generation, like every year now. Why? Because I believe in Canada it's 127,000, it's close to a million five hundred thousand of businesses led by boomers and people with gray hair that are deciding whether they're gonna close the business altogether or sell it. And when they do, that impacts, as you can just imagine by the numbers, hundreds of millions of employees. So we've got to make a decision, guys. Sell, not sell, and you know who you're gonna put in place in there. Yeah, there's a lot of opportunities in this. That I wanted to represent that as much as it's chaotic, it's also an opportunity, and a lot of the stuff that's out there, there's an opportunity in that chaos.

SPEAKER_02 26:37

Yeah, yeah. No, that's interesting that you said that, you know, it's typically not entrepreneurial, which is also why I am in both spaces of executive leaders coaching them along with the entrepreneurial area, and of just as you're saying, slowing down a little bit and being more thoughtful, being more proactive rather than reactive, and being intentional, focusing on your purpose and, as you said, your outcomes. What are you trying to do here? And how can we do it in a way that's either as I've heard other people use ethical AI along with keeping people in the picture? Because we're here. And so I hear a lot of it in terms of the soft skills that leaders need to understand and know, whether that's listening, whether that's having some empathy. And as you said earlier in your example of understanding when you're looking at that person and realizing, okay, they're a little bit off, something's different. Did they not get enough sleep? Did somebody pass away? What's going on here? And you can at least ask some deeper questions as to, you know, this person is not a machine and they're not just showing up 100% every day, the exact same way every day. So yeah, I can appreciate you mentioning just the whole idea of people slowing down and asking the question, okay, what are we trying to do here? We do have decisions to make and we have maybe more breadth of decisions that we can make. We're not in this little box, you know, but sometimes I feel in culture, social media, and how we do things is how we do things. That many times we, as I've heard some other people say, we're in a cookie jar, but it's hard to read the label on the outside when we're inside that cookie jar. We have a blind spot, we have blind spots, even though we feel this day and age or my age or whatever, my experience, I pretty much know what's going on here. Kind of like a teenager thinks. I know pretty much everything that's going on here. I've seen just about everything. But we can't see those blind spots. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But we can't see those blind spots. And like I said, you feel so good about yourself sometimes and feel so confident, but you've got blind spots.

SPEAKER_01 28:49

There's two books that I find underrated that I came across. Underrated because I I didn't really know about him from you know promotions and stuff like that. But Eric Bowden wrote a book called Creative Execution. And one of the stories in there is about Napoleon. And I thought, now that's interesting. He's going all the way back to the 13th century when Admiral Nelson had to go up against him with a much smaller fleet. And so having worked for a lot of small and medium businesses, I get the whole Goliath and you know type of scenario and whatnot. And he said, What's notable about Admiral Nelson is he's blue blood. Let me explain what that means. He doesn't have to talk to his captains, okay? They just listen and they do, and that's it. Get out of the way. Wow, that sounds like a lot of management today. So let's go look and see what he uses as an example. And basically, before they went after Napoleon and the Spanish allies with much bigger ships and way more resources, how could they beat them with their 20 little puny ships, which they did? Well, he laid out a plan and had his captains go back to each of their ships and have them show their members, their key members. So there must have been a hundred eyes on this plan. Everybody knew what they had to do without ever being told what to do. Wow. Now that is cool, and this is 13th century. Okay, can we learn from that? Well, Chuck Kuhnrad wrote a book called The Game of Work, and some people feel he's at you know at the heart of gamification because his book started out with the game of work, and he uses sports analogy. Ah Corey, I know you know nothing about hockey, but come on, we're gonna go on with I would agree with you on that.

SPEAKER_02 30:44

Continue, continue.

SPEAKER_01 30:45

I'm gonna show you it's more lethal than NFL. Come on, Mike. The guys are 500 pounds. How can it be more lethal than NFL? Okay, well, come on. So we enter the arena. What's the first thing you notice? You know the score. Do you know that in your business? Now we're going the game starts, and you know, you see the similarities to NFL. If you use the elbow, you get a penalty, you know. If you cross-check in terms of hockey and or if you hit somebody from behind in terms of football, you know, you might be out of the game because that's just a no-no. That's the first one is equivalent to effing off a customer, and the second one is more like in Besmore. So do you know the rules of play? Okay, so you know that. So they're going one side and then to the other side. Well, they do that in both sports. So when they're going to that side, they want to score, and when they go that side, they want to defend, or vice versa, depending on the opponent. And here's the tactics they do. So the quarterback has to throw it to the receiver, the left wing has to pass the puck to the right wing. What if they don't? Well, you gotta explain. I know you hate Joanne, but you need to pass the information of the order so that she can put it in the system, it's part of the game.

SPEAKER_03 32:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 32:07

How often do you know internal politics play? So now you're getting into uh you know a bit of the you know the guts of it. But one of the things he ends up saying at the end is you know, in business, when a company doesn't do well, they let go of the manager, the CEO, the VP. They don't let go of the whole team. Right. So if you're running into 53% reduction in stocks, I don't know. Laying off the team doesn't seem to be the answer. Yeah. So it was just the notion of what he was talking about, and in both cases, they said if you come up with a plan with your team where they agree with the strategy, it inspires them, they believe in the company, and sales a lot of times is a belief in the product that you're selling. Same idea. Man, nothing will stop you. Yeah, I'll take General Patton. Okay, guys, this is what we have to do. And that he's paraphrased on this quote. He said, I told him what I wanted to do, and I stood back and stand amazed. And they brought 200 tanks over the Italian mountains that nobody could do before we took over. But this is what I want.

SPEAKER_02 33:25

Yep, which is pretty impressive.

SPEAKER_01 33:27

Which is similar to outcomes, it's similar to what you had said before.

SPEAKER_02 33:31

Yeah. Yeah, no, I think that's great. And even I was gonna say this earlier that even back 30 plus years ago when looking at some studies and what people needed in the workforce and their careers, and money was not the top need. They didn't want to be paid more. That wasn't a couple of them that stood out above money, which were being praised, being recognized for all the time they spent, and that they had purpose leaving their homes to work in this career most of their day, and also to having the equipment and resources to be able to accomplish their job. And so what you're talking about with Patton, in a sense, is they somehow knew what to do, but also too, they had the resources, the training, the appropriate community and education and skill sets that they learned. So I and like I said, that was 30, 40 years ago, let alone some of these examples you're setting of, like you said, in the 13th century. It's like, oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_01 34:33

Eric Bowden basically said is uh to paraphrase what you just said, if you set that up properly with the team, you're practically guaranteed to success.

unknown 34:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 34:46

Because he knows there's all kinds of permutations to get there, because when you have an inspiring purpose and message, there's always somebody that is not following. So you unfortunately have to let them go, but it's not this 50-60 percent that we're seeing, it's just like less than one percent, typically.

SPEAKER_03 35:08

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 35:09

And there's probably five to six that kind of you know, they have to see it to believe it before they go full on. But most of them, you know, carry the load. Yeah. And Dan Pink is another author I like that wrote the book The Drive, and it really hammers out intrinsic motivation. Practically prove that commission sales is actually not workable because it doesn't answer the intrinsic value. And if I look back to some of the top salespeople I got a chance to work with, yeah, money didn't seem to be what was motivating them, but they certainly like the hunt. And they certainly believed in what they were selling. So I take away from those different books uh perspective on those three pillars and sitting on the systems as a way to get there.

SPEAKER_02 36:03

Yeah. And really what you're talking about, which I love to talk about, is that inner conviction, not so much the external factors that whether it's how much money you make or whatever it is, or filling the ego because you're the top one or two salespeople in the company and you've been recognized. But that inner conviction, which is what sustains and gives you the whether it's motivation or just the dedication and persistence, keeps you going through that because it's the inner drive and not outer perspective, which can change it has to change even with all the different generations.

SPEAKER_01 36:39

So in in one case, I found this 1980s article talking about the prior generation and how they're lazy and you know they're not gonna amount to much and all this kind of stuff. And I put forth that in 2000 in one of the presentations for engagement. And they said, Well, that's exactly the millennials, man. Okay, so do you want to know who they were talking about in this article? Well, it must have been written in one of the main papers most recently. No, it was written in the 1980s. Never gonna amount to much. So they wow, each generation looks back and says, Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 37:26

They're worse than we were, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 37:29

So I have hope in the future in terms of the potential that is out there in not only on this continent, but also you know, around the world, just looking at the kids that are coming out. And I just remember following my son with some of his video games and looking at the video games, and he was watching the world tournament, which had people pitting groups from different countries. So Algerian over here, Japanese over there, American over there, Canadian over here, they were the representative of their country, and they were you know, it's a video game and it's a million-dollar prize. I'm going, okay, I guess I better pay attention. Yeah, when you look at the detail that was put into that software, it really forces them to think. So when my son goes to work at a pharma with his dingling earrings and a tattoo showing, and maybe not quite the pants I'd want him to wear, and and make a comment on it. So they accept that at your office? Yes, that because they focus on me as a human being, was his retort. I said, You took a lot of time to think about that, didn't you? He said, Yes, because I love that.

SPEAKER_02 38:53

You got a smart son there.

SPEAKER_01 38:56

So I'm learning how to cross the different generations in that particular story, and because I've done that, I can feel their pain and concerns as far as going forward. For example, many of them can't afford housing as well as we many of them are having a tough time getting that first you know 10 years of experience to propel their career because an internship and all that kind of stuff has really kind of fallen away. The training dollars have kind of fallen away. So, having said that, that's the chaos. I see opportunity coming out. He's figuring it out on his own. He's doing so many side hustles, I don't know how he keeps track of it, and he's starting to make more money. Yeah, so you know, way to go.

SPEAKER_02 39:43

Yep. No, I think that's really good. And yeah, that's I was just had that same conversation earlier in a call. Just how so many people with side hustles and multiple side hustles before they quit their employee relationship with corporate, that they're doing a lot more things, they're either self-learning or seeking training themselves and having to pay for it and invest in themselves. So, in some ways, I see that as a positive, just that people are taking more into their hands and realizing if they want something, once again, what's the impact I'm looking for, what's the outcome, then I need to be the one that self-leadership skill to seek out and find that solution. It's not anybody else's responsibility, just like we train our kids as we talk about being parents. We want them to learn that autonomy, independence, and also interdependence in the community, but definitely not to rely on the community to provide everything for them, which is just a handout, and eventually that's not going to work out long term. So yeah, I appreciate it.

SPEAKER_01 40:45

Some of that's got to do with financial education. In my case, it wasn't as rounded as I would have liked and the hard lessons along the way.

SPEAKER_03 40:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 40:54

But I'm glad to say that he's kept his discipline in terms of savings and investment, so he has way more at this time than I did back when I was 18. I moved out at 18, my wife, so you know, we're going to 25. Like we thought your room's gonna be Asana or whatever, you know. But it would be a disservice to him to send him out there with arguably a lot of people that would want to take advantage of people in a lesser situation. They're you know, just talking about scammers and stuff like that that are more prevalent today than they ever were in the past, and right. So I believe in my case, anyway, from an upbringing, and not everybody agrees with it, it it's better for him uh to have the solid foundation at home before he actually takes that next step.

SPEAKER_02 41:51

Yeah. Yeah. No, that's amazing. So uh before we close out here, let me ask this question. What's one of the big moves that you've made when you felt uncertain and then what did you learn from that making that move?

SPEAKER_01 42:13

Well, recently, before the pandemic, four months of interviews for a VP job and getting ghosted.

SPEAKER_02 42:22

No response at all?

SPEAKER_01 42:24

None. I had to follow up with the people, and they were embarrassed to be answering and saying the boss decided not to talk to you, even though I was one of two shortlisted. He didn't talk to the other candidate either. Oh my goodness. So all of your not just the two of us, but uh all of the people that contributed in that process, basically, and from listening or reading on TikTok and Reddit and not all the other platforms, apparently this is normal. That kind of behavior. So I said, Do I go and apply for another 300 places or not? Or go back to what I've been doing in the past as far as contract sales, freelance, and whatnot. So this time I said I'm gonna make it more formal and started my practice called be effective. During pandemic.

SPEAKER_02 43:16

So yeah.

SPEAKER_01 43:17

Thank God for Zoom.

SPEAKER_02 43:19

Oh my goodness. Yeah, it's amazing how many companies were started out of the pandemic, and some of them haven't succeeded, but many of them have been wildly successful, or put many of us in a new position of opportunity, if you want to call it that, and of learning some new and different things. Because I know before that and before all the Zoom stuff, I was doing Zoom before the pandemic, but not like it's done today, where it's a lot of people aren't traveling as much and expenses, blah, blah, blah. But just the whole idea of wow, there's new opportunities when you have the right mindset. And what else did you learn from that by starting your business during the pandemic? And not being communicated or responded to.

SPEAKER_01 44:04

I would say prior to that, my strength in terms of what's behind confidence, which is self-esteem, very high. During that first year, I now know what imposter syndrome is all about. Because I was exactly thinking, how do I compact you know decades of experience into something that is of value to somebody? And the first real negativity I got was because I just finished applying for essentially a high six-figure job. So I made a proposal to this company that I'm gonna help the owner and their three people to each get a million a piece over 12 months for 50k. That was my fee at the time. And the response was so what's your skin in the game? And I said, Well, salary.com says somebody like me with my experience is six figures. So my skin in the game is I didn't charge you six figures. I charge you 50k.

SPEAKER_02 45:09

Right. You're taking the risk, Mike. You're taking the risk, and not just them. It's uh yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 45:15

And spending a whole year at it to make it work. So I would have to put systems in place that I was paid for big dollars to put in place, let alone you know, the whole nine yards. So the second question was well, how do I know you're that good? Well, I'm told I have lots of testimonials on my LinkedIn profile, around two dozen. Is that not enough? Or do you need the 12 case studies I put on my website? Or do you want to actually talk to somebody? Because I've got a CEO in one hand and uh you know an existing VP at Salesforce that could talk, and another one on my former staff that is leading a you know a marketing company. Yeah, so I at that point I finally realized okay, it's not me. Yeah, everybody is having a tough time, so they're just arguably being mean, but you know, they're not recognizing what necessarily value is, but it's because of what we talked about before. There's so much info. How do they decide? And most recently, one owner that of a five million dollar company said it's a five million dollar company, but he said, I can't spend another 5k, a 10k, a 25k, and whatnot. Why? Because I actually spent 25k here, 15k there, 5k there, and I got nothing out of it. And my first question wasn't, oh, those bad vendors. My first question was, so what did you do not to get full value? Oh after five years, that's where I came at it, because I sit clients aren't perfect, and if they're not giving you the info for you to do your stuff, it might be the client that's the issue, not you. Right. It's allowed me a certain level of freedom to better qualify, better understand what where you're coming from as an individual, let alone for your business. And it's you know, it's for me, it's obviously driven a good amount of success as a result.

SPEAKER_02 47:23

No, that's fantastic. That's really good. Yeah, and that's one of the things I also just told somebody recently, too, that it's an interview. When somebody hires me or wants to hire me as their executive leadership coach, it's a two-way street in terms of interviewing and that. Yeah, they're looking at me for what value I can provide, but I'm also looking at them. Are they the person who's going to invest in their own outcomes because we're co-creating this together, and I cannot guarantee anybody's outcomes. So I'll provide as much value as I can, and it's a matter of them coming to the table also and meeting me there. And we have this collaboration and partnership. So I appreciate that. So thank you so much, Mike, for everything you've shared, your perspectives, and just being here today. I really appreciate that.

SPEAKER_01 48:14

Uh, listen, you and I represent 45% of employees that are in the category, freelance consultant, individual contributors, that kind of stuff, fractions. And I believe for us to be in that category long term will involve collaboration, interviewing, as you just said, who works best with what, especially when we get into bigger projects, we want to count on people that we've met over the course of our interactions. And I gotta say, that's certainly something I came away with over the last four or five years, including yourself. There's been there's a lot of interesting people out there, and I only began to are only beginning to you know meet them all. So to me, the future looks bright in that sense.

SPEAKER_02 48:57

That's awesome. I love your attitude and your mindset. That's great. So let everybody know what's the best way to get in touch with you or connect with you.

SPEAKER_01 49:06

Well, the quick way is called dot beffective. So it's the letter B, if I'm not pronouncing it correctly, the word effective all in one dot CA. There you can book a time with me. The website itself is obviously shorter. It's beffective.ca. And then you can see how I crafted it based on what we talked about.

SPEAKER_02 49:28

Awesome.

SPEAKER_01 49:29

Do I publish or say the phone number? Or it's up to you. That's on you, yeah. Well, they'll see it on the website on the footer. Okay, but it's 514 error code 2135947.

SPEAKER_02 49:42

And then what's the like in the US it's plus one? What is that? Like the country identifier?

SPEAKER_01 49:49

What's that? Yeah, CA is Canada and and uh.com is pretty much everybody else, but it's the world. But now every country has their own little you know two-letter code.

SPEAKER_02 50:02

Yeah, do you well, I mean, I'm sorry, and the phone number, on your phone number. Oh, 512.

SPEAKER_01 50:07

Yes, sorry, it's in Montreal.

SPEAKER_02 50:09

Okay, Montreal. Okay, that sounds great. So, all right. Well, thank you very much. I appreciate it, Mike. And yeah, you're welcome. And I just want to thank you, the listener, for listening to this episode with Mike. And unapologetic leadership is about strategy, processes, and people. And if you're gonna get one thing right, ask the question what is the impact I'm looking for, or what is the outcome? So thanks for listening, and we'll see you in the next episode.

SPEAKER_00 50:44

So that's it for today's episode of Unapologetic Leadership. Head on over to wherever you listen to podcasts and subscribe to the show. One lucky listener every single week that posts a review on Apple Podcasts or iTunes will win a chance the grand prize drawing to win a twenty-five thousand dollar private VIP day with Corey Dunham himself. So head on over to Unapologetic Leadership Podcast dot com and pick up a free copy of Corey's gift. And join us on the next episode.