Eagles and Opportunities: Navigating Career and Leadership Transitions"

Join host Chris Whitaker in another exciting episode of 'The Wireless Way' as he sits down with Rich Brown, the founder of Eagle Content. Dive into Rich's journey from leading top-performing sales teams to launching his own business that fills the gaps in business education. Learn about Rich’s goal-setting workshops, career development programs, and actionable insights to help professionals soar in their careers. Plus, get amazing tips for nailing interviews, and crafting effective career goals. Don't miss this insightful conversation that blends leadership lessons, strategic advice, and personal anecdotes to inspire your professional journey.

00:00 Introduction and Guest Overview

02:58 Rich Brown's Career Journey

05:35 Challenges and Growth in Business

07:18 Starting Eagle Content

15:38 Goal Setting and Career Advice

25:03 Navigating Job Market Challenges

25:46 The Importance of Networking

26:57 Effective Interview Strategies

28:09 Understanding Company Culture

28:32 Evaluating Job Requirements

29:25 Assessing Your Future Manager

32:02 Leadership Advice for Aspiring Leaders

32:54 Sales Management Insights

35:22 The Role of Continuous Training

35:59 The Basics of Effective Coaching

39:22 Upcoming Initiatives and Goals

44:58 Final Thoughts and Contact Information

Learn more- https://eaglecontentllc.com/

Complimentary Interview prep virtual course- https://courses.eaglecontentllc.com/offers/LQZ3kw4Z/checkout?coupon_code=COMMUNITY

Transcript

Chris: 0:00

Hey, welcome to another episode of The Wireless Way. I'm your host, Chris Whitaker, and I'm grateful that you're here today. I'm grateful for my guest, Rich Brown. He's our guest today. And before I bring him on, just a little bit about him. He's the founder of Eagle Content, a company dedicated to empowering business professionals with tools, strategies, and systems. Got have them all to achieve lasting success. A lifelong student and seasoned leader, Rich launched Eagle Content to address gaps in business education and share their proven methodologies that led to his remarkable career achievements. Again, all those, addressing the gaps, guys, that's, that is. I call those blind spots. I mean, I can't wait to get Rich's take on this. A little more about Rich with a track record leading top performing sales teams. So he's not just a podium speaker. He's actually been in the field including driving a Nashville, Tennessee team at XO to rate number one in the country. Not once, not twice, but three times big, big a feat there for a big company like that reach his reputation for turning challenges and opportunities. Again, I got to pause here. That's another, you know, hashtag I've ever saw one turning challenges and opportunities. He, he further demonstrated his expertise By a sales team with a sales team, I should say at level three, in addition to a sales acumen which has spent over two decades leading goal setting workshops. And did you hear that goal setting workshops? So many of us could benefit from that. That transformed countless careers and lives passionate about recruitment and career development. So many folks in the industry are in that. That pivoting or transition to stage. We're going to hit on that a little bit in between jobs and looking for a job and trying to find the right home, you know, helps professionals refine their interviewing techniques to identify the right companies, managers and roles for their future. Wow. We could have a whole session on that. I feel personally through Eagle content, rich, inspired and equips professionals with actionable insights. And adaptable strategy, foster success across industry. So anywhere where you're in business and you're trying to influence people and lead people, it sounds like rich has an answer for it. So rich again, I'm grateful for you being here. Thanks for joining the show today.

Rich: 2:15

Chris, thank you for having me.

Chris: 2:18

Yeah, no, it's a pleasure here. Everything you are doing hits home with everything that I believe in what the wireless way believes in like, you know, it's a reminder. You probably have heard it before. The wireless ways of double and Condra wireless technology, of course, but the wireless part, no strings attached and no judgment and the ways of path, the journey, the adventure. And we're going to hit on all that today. Not so much in the wireless technology, which is fine. I'm actually more passionate about the topics we are going to talk about. So as always, you know, we read your bio. And there's always more to a person than what we put out there, you know, in the LinkedIn world, what's not in the bio, how did you get here?

Rich: 2:58

Well, so what's not in the bio is after my time at level three some business partners and I bought an agency in Nashville, Tennessee called RCG, a resource communications group. That's actually where you and I met. That's right. And we had the opportunity to not just be salespeople that were. selling more carriers, but we actually built a product set that allowed us to outsource the telecom department from larger organizations to us, the experts, to take that off of them. And it really took some of the decision lock up that people go through in telecom because I. T. really doesn't like telecom. They don't like wireless. R. C. G. was a big wireless company. Also, we did multiple pieces of the wireless industry and the I. T. component didn't want to deal with that. They had inherited it. So we just said, look, we're the experts. Give us the decision making power. And it really helped them get out of their own way is what it really did. So our company built an outsourcing service model to take that on. And then you never want to think of yourself as a sellout until you see the number that comes across and then you go sold. So my business partners and I sold the company and I took, I took a gap year just to kind of figure out what I wanted to do next and what kept coming back over and over. Was what you talked about. I grew up in an academic household. My dad was a coach and a teacher, and so it's always been something. Anybody who's ever worked for me will tell you, you can't come to work with me and not learn something. I'm going to be teaching or getting you to learn from different avenues, different resources all the time. And to fill those gaps like you talked about, those are so important. They make a difference in people becoming incrementally better, which will be a theme throughout. I have a feeling throughout the questions we talk about people get incrementally better, and sometimes they don't realize when they've really improved over time. And so we'll talk about some of that in the questions that are that are coming up, but it's a theme that comes up in all the things that I'm offering in Eagle content now.

Chris: 5:08

You know something that you said that we didn't talk a lot about, but I've seen it before, you know, being in the channel for some time, you know, you have a lot of very seasoned tenure, you know, I'll call them corporate sales leaders get out of corporate America and go and start their own agency. Is that hard? I mean, it sounds like you had the fortune of partners. So, you know, strength in numbers, but was that a big transition or was it a natural flow for you? Is that first year? Like they say, always the hardest or how'd that go?

Rich: 5:35

Yeah. So surprising to us. So we had, we had a couple of benefits. First of all, you're right. Having a group of partners help share the load because when you're doing it by yourself and I can tell you on Eagle content. It's, it's hard by yourself. You don't have anybody to bounce ideas off of all the time. And you, you, you look in for your network to kind of feel through some things. And it's nice when you've got a partnership that kind of helps, but we, we also purchased a company that already had a run rate that was gone. So while the first year had its challenges, we found. To my surprise, because I had never run a business before like that where we were actually running the entire company growth was actually our most difficult thing to deal with. I thought growth was just, if we're growing, things are great. And you're like, this, this must be wonderful. We're growing. We're growing. We're growing. And I found out as a business owner growth is, is great. It's better than the alternative when things are shrinking so bad, but yeah. We had so much growth that it was hard to keep up with. It was hard to maintain the labor levels we needed it. You know, we were constantly trying to plug holes that were popping up and that's what made it, those were the challenges in running that and running that business more than anything else. We had great people, we had great employees, we had a great business model. And it was it was just we really didn't know as a as the three of us that there were, we really didn't know how to grow it the best way and the fastest way. We just knew deal with the next emergency that was coming in. And no matter how hard we tried to get ahead of it, there was always something new coming up tomorrow. So you couldn't foresee. No, that's, that's, that sounds exciting. Um, love having those conversations. You kind of hit on it just a little bit already, but I'd like to dig in a little more on what inspired you to start and go content and You know, how are you leveraging your past to launch this, this new endeavor? Yeah. So a couple of things as, as a longtime sales manager I embraced early on dealing with a behavioral interview process. And so one of the things I wanted to share out to people, and I'll be releasing this module shortly, it's a virtual learning module that I'm going to make. Free to my linked in user, my linked in community, and it's how to nail the interview. It's just how to show up and be prepared to run the behavioral interview from your side. People just show up and think it's a game show where it's like, I sit here, you ask me questions, I answer them. And it's, it's gotta be a two way conversation. And I teach you how to build the questions that matter to you. To be able to ask the questions so that you make sure you're a fit for the company and organization. I think we would, if we're all being honest at one time or another in our careers, we've shown up to a job that we're brand new to and we walk in and six months, eight months, two years later, we're going. Man, I really wish I would have known what it was like to work here before I worked here. And you can't. You just have to be able to ask the right questions for you because other people might be able to sit in your chair and love it. And we're all different in that way. That's great. That diversity is wonderful. But if we're not asking those questions up front, so what inspired was That was one of the pieces was to be able to help people that I see jumping around in on I'm on LinkedIn a lot and I see people jumping around and sometimes I don't always, I don't always have all the information, but sometimes I'm going, how does that move make sense for that person? And maybe it does. Maybe it does. But I think sometimes it's. It doesn't. And so anyway so a lot of it was around sales management betterment. There's not a lot of sales manager resources out there. There's, there's two people actively really working hard on sales management training out there that I've found. There's hundreds of sales trainings bettering the salespeople. And that's wonderful. I embrace all of those methodologies. But for for sales leadership there, it's very limited. And I want to give some of my processes and some of my processes. Some of our things I've learned from others along the way. And I want to package them in a way that says here's the processes that I used for recruiting for who teaches you how to fire a sales rep. That's the hardest pill to swallow. You know, the first time you had to do that. Yeah, no, I, it's funny you say that. I remember my first time firing someone. I was at Comcast and and I'd come from the residential side and the residential side or the lead in the sales team, everybody had their numbers. Everybody needs cable, especially this was. 15, 20 years ago. But on the commercial side, that was a different story. You know, I, I was one of the first channel I actually direct sells Manager for Comcast business in Atlanta back in 07. Yeah. Geez. So yeah, you know, it was tough at going and, and I had to terminate this sales professional and, and there were a single parent I mean, I didn't sleep a wink that night, but work with HR and, and, you know, we did it right, we did it right. You know, three months of notice, whole performance plan. I love going in the field with salespeople, you know, but I like, please get me out of the office and let's knock doors together. So yeah, but, but nonetheless, yeah, it was gut wrenching me. I was like, no one prepared me for that. To your point, I didn't, you know, there was no resources and even HR was like, Well, you got to do it. Just follow this process. But there was like no coaching or encouragement. And and then here's the good, here's the silver lining bumped into this former employee, three months later and they, they're like, Chris, thank you. I was miserable. You were miserable. I was in the wrong job. And I didn't know it until you, you, you showed me the way and they were thriving in a new job. Yeah, terminating someone is not always in the world for everybody. It could be a beginning of a better thing for everybody as well. So that's that's so funny. You bring that up, I totally forgot about all that drama. Yeah. Well, and I, I find that I've seen managers that disconnect from the process and make it bad because they just, it's so emotional and they want to keep their emotions out, so they just disconnect. Like the person's not even there. And I don't think they're having that same conversation that you're having when they run into him. It's uncomfortable when you run into him after that. And you're right. It's not, it feels at the moment, like it's the worst day of their life. It's really not, it's going to be almost all cases of termination. We're always. This is what's really best for not only you, but for me and the company, everybody's going to sleep and the team, the team. Absolutely. You can't, if you keep some, I didn't say dead weight, but you keep someone on the team. So underperforming that's making that, you know, that's creates a bad culture. You know, you can't condone that behavior. And, you know, yeah, that's, that's awesome. Yeah. You know, one of the fault too, you talked about people jumping around and, and I, and I'm with you. I mean, that's sometimes things happen in telecom and technology, you know, positions are eliminated or, you know, riffs downsizing, whatever. But isn't there, you know, there's some degree if you are a, you know, if you are a a, the bread earner for the family or whatever, you need a job, you know? And sometimes I, I I, I've been having this conversation with some other folks that are looking and, and we've talked about, you know, hey, you know, take it from me. Don't take a job. Just cause it pays the most, that, that might be a red flag. they're paying you a lot of money. They're gonna own you, man. If you go into something knowing that maybe it's a short term thing, it's like a, you know, I'm going to recall that stepping stone to another job, but you got to pay the bills. Not everyone is going to have the benefit of a nice big, you know, nest egg, right? I think that's fair and I've got another learning virtual learning course coming out called career path and it builds on the goal setting and it's goal setting around your career and there's nothing wrong with stepping stones. There's nothing wrong with taking the, what you need to do in the moment to pay the bills. I, I agree with all those things, but I see people that. go to Pay the bills and that becomes a. A six year adventure. Okay. That makes sense. Yeah. I also see people making jumps that, to me, and I don't have all the information, I'm not trying to judge, but I see people that it almost looks like they're just chasing dollars. Now, if that's your career, if that's your career motivation. Chase it. Go do, go do BU. But the career path training that I put together was really to evaluate after each step along the way. Are you stepping back and re evaluating the playing field? Like you said, sometimes things change. Maybe one day you want to be president of the company, and the next day you're the president. I'm really good at a GM position and that's all I, I don't want any more responsibility than that. Good. But you made an intentional effort versus, well, I'm just kind of floating around and that, that's where I land. Those are, those are very different and, and I wish more people were intentional with what they're doing out there. And the people I talk to, I don't, I don't always get the feel that that's the case. So I'm trying to give them some intentionality behind it. Well, you know, self awareness is so important and having resource like you will helps my tap into that self awareness because I think you're right. Some people may not realize that. And when you're right out of college or young in your career, maybe you can afford to have those, you know, jumping job, the job without really thinking about it. At some point, you gotta have a plan. And yeah, longevity. That's, you know, it's so it's so crazy. I do bump into someone is there, you know, there may be with a large company like an 18 T. I know one guy's been 18 T for 25 years, went to retirement ceremony at Verizon wire 32 years. You just don't see that kind of longevity anymore. But that's interesting. Well, those are those are some great workshops. You know, the virtual you said. And, and the interviewing one it's gonna be a complimentary kind of a, it's gonna be, I'm gonna give it away, man. That is fantastic. So many folks will benefit from that. Yeah, I hope so. I really do. Yeah. Well I look forward to doing anything I can to help promote that. Of course, we'll have check the show notes at this podcast and we'll have some links there to your website. And and, you know, any other info information, I went through your website. It's a great website. And of course your LinkedIn profile has a lot of good information too. so over the 20 years of leading goal setting workshops, we've been talking about that a little bit. What kind of mistakes have you observed professionals make in studying and achieving their goals? So I break this into three areas that people struggle with. The first is there's a common belief that setting the goal itself is the easy part. And it, it really shouldn't be. And let me give you an example. If, if I say, what do you want to accomplish this year in, in your career? As a goal, do you really think your first pass at that's going to be the best one? Or do you think you need to really work on it and sleep on it and wrestle with it in order to get what's really for you? And I follow that up with not only what do you want, but why do you want it? I I think you've got a lot of salespeople that listen to your podcast. And so I would ask them, is your goal, let's say your goal is President's Club. That's a, that's a fabulous goal, right? For a lot of people. But why is that important to you? Why does that matter? Is it, is it that you crave recognition? And by the way, all these are really good things if the, if the answer's yes. But a lot of people chase it just because, well, everybody else is chasing it, and they're not thinking for themselves, what do I want and why do I want that? And you really need to own who you are. And that takes some wrestling sometimes. We don't, we don't sometimes know ourselves well enough to know what it is, what we want and why do we want that? What is it that makes us crave that? And so that's the first thing I'd ask, or that where people get stuck is the what and the why on, on setting the actual goal. The second, the second area people get hung up is not taking the time to get it on the calendar. If, if you're going to make this big commitment this is why New Year's resolutions fail so often is you're. You're at New Year's Eve and you're going, I'm going to lose 20 pounds. There's no plan. There's no, you don't get it on your calendar. You don't start making it make sense. You don't, you don't do anything with it. And then it falls apart very quickly. And you know why, because it just, there was no intention or attention given to it. So the next thing is you've got to get it on your calendar. And the goal setting workshop we run is about a process. It's about. Setting the goal, breaking that goal down and then having a way, having it's not really tips and tricks. It's really a process that you're going to push everything into that allows it to work. And then the last thing that everybody, I myself, I've been doing this 25 years. I still struggle. I set my goals in December. I come into January and I'm struggling with new habits. New habits are the worst. We are not human beings are just not good at setting new habits. Now people like James Clear made habit stacking. It's been around a long time, but he made it very popular. There's new environments you can do. I give you a lot of ways to kind of create that. But the one thing the one that like last Friday was National Quitters Day. I don't know if you saw that on the yeah. So for those of you who don't know, National Quitters Day is just a made up day of it's. It's the 7th, the 1st Friday, 2nd Friday, something like that after New Year's, where people typically give up on their New Year's resolution. And one thing I caution is I'll give an example of myself. I had a new habit this year that required 5 days a week of me doing something. And I just looked at it, I just, and I, I had done it on average once a week. So, do I just crumple it up and throw it away, or do I say how do I incrementally get that to 5? And that's that's the strategy all uses to incrementally. I'll try to do better every week and because some is better than none in almost every case, and so you're going to want to figure out what can I do? Can I change my environment? Can I can I have it stack in a different way? I'd already have it stacked at once and it wasn't working more than once. So I've got to find new new strategies to make that work better. And then I've got a question. Do I really want that goal if I'm still struggling to make the time for but habits habits are hard. And then when you're trying to track them, it's double. It's a double barrel because you're creating a new habit. And then you got to create a habit to track it. And so that's a double whammy right there. You're trying to create two habits for one new goal, and that can sometimes be cumbersome for people. So those are, over, over the time of teaching this, those are the areas where people usually struggle the most. And I like how you started that whole thought. Of you know, why do you want it? What's important because as you were talking to Kurt, it's like, man, you know, if you get some emotion and passion behind this change in habits, that's the force you're going to ride. If you're just doing it because you wrote it down or you said it, you don't even know why you want to do it. It's easy to quit, but yeah, if you start off with. Why is this important to me? I mean, what's this going to do for me personally, my soul? You know, what's the benefits of it? And you understand it. That, that makes a lot of sense. Yeah. There's a, there's a book called start with why by Simon Sinek. And for those that are strategic minded, which in my opinion, this is all anecdotal, my opinion, about 5 percent of the population is strategic. All the rest of us, like me, we're tactical people. Yeah, we're winging it. We, we get up and we've got our routines and, and we can be strategic. We've all built plans and thought things through before, but most of the time we're so tactical in everything that we do because we know what we're doing that when it's time to do something different, we forget to go back to the planning stage and be strategic about what it is we're trying to do and what we're thinking about. So. Rather than trying to be Simon Sinek, who's awesome and his book is great, but if you can't, starting with why means you're a strategic thinker, and that's hard to do for most of us. So I say start with what do you want? And then move to why do you want it to go to why second list out all the what's list them all out there. They're all important. Get them all out there and then go to why do you want it? And then you'll figure out who you are and you'll be able to self assess, in my opinion, a little bit easier. So in your sessions, you, you, you coach people through that process. You're, you're kind of their sharp other guide and you, you have exercises. I imagine that helped them outline all this. Yes, because we don't just cover career. We cover every role in your life. We cover if you're, if you're a parent, we cover if you're a son or a daughter, if your parents are still living with your siblings or family. We talk about hobbies. We talk about pets and we build goals around all those and people get stuck on goal setting less in career and a lot more in relationships. Relationships are hard and especially there's always that yeah. That crazy uncle or or an aunt you haven't talked to or you've got a parental rub the wrong way. Yeah. And those are the things that kind of lead to a little bit of a therapy session in the goal setting because people are struggling all of a sudden, you know, if you're trying to do this by yourself, all of a sudden, the dishes have never wanted to be washed more in that moment because it gets you away from thinking about this troubled relationship. And I've dealt with it myself. Anywhere where you've got pain and trauma. In your life. Here's the here's the counter to that. If you don't focus on it and try to build a goal to make it better, it's going to haunt you. It's going to just continue to be bad. That relationship is going to continue to be strained. And so how do we make it a little bit better this year? This is the way we try to go about that. Wow, that's fantastic. You're I can only imagine, you know, people's filters and the baggage they have, you know, we way off the process. That's what was doing better that that than others. Man, that's fantastic. I can't wait to see that evolve as well. And I'll do anything I can to help promote that. Cause I think that's a big part of, you know, I love talking about leadership a lot, you know, of course, being a leader, you have to set goals, being a team member, you have to set your own goals. And so, so goal setting is relevant for everybody in the, in the org chart, regardless of your title. So so moving on just a little bit advice, you know, so what advice would you give? Professionals that are transitioning between industries or roles when crafting their interview strategies and of course we did some pre show discussions, we talked a little bit about that and you have, you're gonna have some resources for that. But man, you know, LinkedIn, you just see so many folks that are transitioning, you know, they're a victim of either layoffs or, or just changing, pivoting a career or whatnot. Before you answer that though, a question I wanted to ask you, why do you, what's the, there's a debate on LinkedIn? How do you Did you put the open to work banner on or off? You know, does it I, I've heard both sides and I, I've got on the fence with it. I think it just, does it depend or what are your thoughts on turning that, that banner on open to work? Well, I don't know that I have a great opinion on this. I, I, I don't see the problem with having it on there. I think if nothing else, it, it. It opens you up to new contacts. If somebody that is looking and understands who you are, that if your network is strong and they see you're open to work, I think you're going to get somebody at least inquiring. What are you looking for? Are you willing to do the things you've done in the past? I think if you've got a strong network, there's nothing wrong with it. I, I'm, I understand the reasons that it, You know, it's going to come up in the interview anyway, so I don't, I don't know why you think that would eliminate you, but I sometimes, I'm sometimes a little too black and white on things, and I'm not always the best for opinions. Well, you know what, though, that sometimes the hard truth is what we really need, so I think that's a gift you have. And it's helped you in your success in your career, you know, cause yeah, sometimes the black and white spot really matters, you know, gray ain't going to get it done. Yeah, no, I like, I think, I think that you helped me with my opinion on it. Cause you know, if your network doesn't know you're on the market, they can't help you. So, you know, and I've actually seen some people go as far as put a major post going attention. LinkedIn friends just got laid off. I have my wife's pregnant. I got two kids. Please, anyone with anything in these industries, please, you know, keep me in mind and I mean, that's really putting yourself out there and I've seen, I've followed those and they get, they, they find a job eventually because they, they leverage different people and not in their network probably see that and you can't help but have empathy for that. So For me, it helps because I'm, I try to be hyper aware. I'm not always great at it, but I do try to be hyper aware of who's looking and who's available so that if I come across something in my network or, you know, well, that's not for me, but I know, I know a guy or I know a gal who right now is looking for that position. I want to connect those, those folks. It helps the company that I'm talking to, which is great. And it helps the person that is in my network, which is. Is even greater. And so if I don't see an open to work, sometimes I could, I could browse right by it. Not even know you're in the hunt. Yeah back to the, you know, asking the questions. You know, I was reading something recently. In fact, I've seen a lot of other flurry of just nice tips and advice on LinkedIn and this area of you know, at the end of the interview, and they say, do you have any questions? You know, the last thing you should really say is no, I'm good. Yeah. Have a nice day. I mean, so. What other kind of nuggets can you share with this might be some good tips and tricks if someone's listening right now, and they're preparing for an interview, say tomorrow, maybe after this podcast, you know, any other advice or tips you see that have been very helpful for preparing and having a I like that you call it an interview strategy. I don't think everyone goes into an interview with a strategy there. They're just thinking they're going to No, they're, they're, they're in the audience. You ask me questions. I don't have to do any prep work. Yeah. And I, and I don't, I don't like that. And I can tell you hundreds of interviews I've done where that's been the case where they think it's a game show and it's just me asking behavioral interview questions and they answer and then they leave. And I would encourage everybody out there to build your own behavioral interview. And look, that sounds way more complex than I'm intending it. What I'm talking about here is there's. There's the company you work for that you're going to work for. What do you want to know about that company? What is it that you can't see on the website? What is it you can't hear from friends? What is it? What is the day to day feel like? What's the culture? Culture is hard to ask around, but it's not impossible. You've got to form the questions that really matter to you about the place you work. The second one is the job itself. I encourage people print out the job requirements, the job hosting that gives the detail of what's required. The person you're talking to is very busy, may not have even seen it. It might have been generated by HR and it may say you can work from home. And then you get to the interview and you get the job and they go, no, that should have never said that you have to be in the office every day. Well, that becomes an argument that should have worked itself out way in the beginning. So take the, take the job description with you and make sure that they're on page with what that everybody's singing from the same piece of paper because. A great example is a project manager is not a project manager is not a project manager. Every company considers project manager something basically different. I mean, yes, there's some general things that are the same, but there's a lot that the requirements and asks that are very different. And then probably the most important. is the manager you're going to be reporting to. I'll, if, if everybody will close their eyes and imagine working at your dream company in the dream role and job that you could ever have. Maybe you're the, maybe you're an executive at, at IBM. I don't know, whatever your dream is. I want you to close your eyes and imagine that. And then imagine that the person you report to is the worst manager you've ever worked for in your life. That dream crumbles in a hurry. For anybody who's ever worked for a bad manager, that's, that's terrible. And it's very important that you understand who you're going to be reporting to before you take that job, and who they are. Things can always change, I get that. But going in, eyes wide open, who am I reporting to? And look, I've lived that. I made that mistake once back in my I. T. Days, I went to work and thought I'm basically reporting to the C. I. O. This is wonderful. I was not a fan of the C. I. O. And that relationship was strained from the day I walked in the door. And so it's very important that you understand who you're going to be reporting to. What is their style? That guy got along with a lot of people, but him and I clashed and our personalities were just way different. And so I really encourage people build the questions that matter about that person you're going to report to. What are the things you need from them and that and understand what they're going to need from you. If they want a daily report of every single thing you did. You may be in a micromanagement situation, but I know people that love working in a micromanaged situation. So it's not for me, but it could be for the person. So that I would encourage you to make sure you're, you're building a behavioral interview for what you're walking into. And that's a great advice. And I, I, I even think something that I had another conversation recently around expectations. Not only, you know, what are your expectations as an employee, but hey, who you're interviewing with. And what, what are your expectations? And I think I might have read in one of your posts or something, but what does success look like? You know, what do you want? What, you know, for me, get a a great rating at the end of the year. What are you expecting of this role? I mean, what do you, is it just a quota? Is it just being a good team player? I mean, is there anything more specific you can tell me? I mean, I think that's all important. I love how you said, you know, eyes wide open. Don't, don't let your first day in the job get blindsided by some things. You're like, Whoa, did not see this coming. That could be awkward. So, you know, distill if you could distill your experience into one key piece of advice for aspiring leaders. It be well so well, for aspiring leaders I, I would say lead don't, don't be afraid to lead. Don't be afraid to listen to feedback. But, you know, you don't wanna what do you call it? You, you don't want to get a vote every time you wanna make a decision, right? And, and have a democracy in your, on your team, if you're gonna be a lead or lead. And. You're going to make some mistakes and you need to address them that when you do make the mistake you you own them and say, Hey, that was that was the wrong choice right there and back it up and fix it. And then and then lead again with a band, you know, just all in. You're all in on the leader as leader. You need to lead your people and take them where they want to go. Now I'm going to shift that word a little bit to if you're a manager, I would encourage you get out from behind your desk. But specifically to sales managers, the, the, the, the one that drives me the most crazy, that hurts my feelings as a, as a former sales manager is the person that just sits in their office all day sending emails. I know that there's a lot of admin work as a sales manager. I get it. And you feel like you're constantly behind on it, but you got to get out and support your people. There's nothing that they'll respond to better. Then you rolling up your sleeves, being by their side, helping them solve the problems they have in their day. You don't have to go close the deal for them. I encourage you not to close the deal for them and learn how to close it for themselves. But I do encourage you get out and figure out what obstacles are in their way that you can help with. And it can be simple stuff. It doesn't, it doesn't have to be the most complicated things out there. Sometimes, let me go buy you lunch because you're stuck on a meeting that's gone over. You're on a team and being their manager, being their leader is about being a part of that team and knowing your role. And sometimes, just like in the military, somebody goes down, somebody's got to fill that hole. You got to plug that spot. And, and that's the same way. And this is your role as leader. You got to be able to plug for the people that need to be plugged in those moments. And I just, I, I, I dislike the managers that just sit in their office and send emails all day and then go, we need more, more, more, more, more. But what they call that whack and track, right? That's right. Track and whack or whatever. Yeah, no, that I've seen those types too. And, and I had a boss one time told me to go, Chris how, how were you compensated? I said, well, what do you mean? He goes, well, you know, how do you earn your commission? I go, well, I had to hit my quote, I guess. So you don't get extra money for solving billing issues or, or filling out reports for finance or working on marketing. And I go, no. I'm like, Oh, niggas. They stick to what you get paid on and you'll be okay. And I just thought, wow, I said, man, I really kind of clarify it. It simplified it for me. Cause I thought as a young manager, you know, I just had to solve every problem that came at me. And that's just, you know, obviously there's nothing wrong with if you, if you had the ability, the time and the resources and the situation permits, sure. You should be collaborative and be a good teammate with other departments. Your responsibility is to make sure you and your team are gainfully employed. And you do that by accomplishing your, your objectives, you know, and and identifying those roadblocks and clearing the roadblocks and, and no training, you know, again, this is, this kind of popped in my head too. It's like I think it's a good leader. You have to realize. You and your team, you know, need training. You can't just, a lot of companies hire hotshot managers or team there's those people thinking, Hey, I just hired this, you know, right. This purebred race horse. We're good. But even, even top talent needs refreshing training, right? Just not, I don't care how good you think you're at your role. There's probably some, you know, what's the saying, you know, you're always learning, you should always be learning. Yes. And you'll find that those individuals are not your. typically not your prima donnas that think they're too good for that. They embrace it. They want to get better. And I always encourage, my dad was a coach. So I learned a long time ago, the mistake a lot of us make when we first come into the role is we try to coach the weaknesses. We see a weakness and we go, Hey, we need to get that up to, up to speed. And the reason it's a weakness is they're not very good at it. They're not, they're not motivated by it. Coach the strengths. Make them, if they're a good qualifier, make them a better qualifier. You can always shore up the weaknesses. Either with them in some smaller settings after they get bigger gains in other areas. But I always equate stuff back to sports. You don't take a seven foot center and say, Let's start working your ball handling all day long, all night long. We're just going to work on ball handling out front and your dribbling's got to improve. Does it? Seven feet. It needs to improve a little. It probably, I probably don't need to be worrying about running the offense from the front. And so those are the kind of things that I've learned is work on their strengths. They'll embrace it because they're already good at it and nobody wants to practice what they're terrible at. They want to practice what they're really good at and they want to show off. Let them show off. Let them show you how good they are and then say, I bet we can make that even better and they will jump on that. That's right. That's right. I heard one guy put it, feed the eagles. Yeah. Yeah, even the eagles need to be fed. I mean, they're eagles, but they need to eat too, you know are you familiar with allenstein jr? Have you heard that name? I am not. Yeah. No. Well, you'll thank me later. You should. He's a, he's a performance coach turned keynote speaker and author. He's got a book called Raise Your Game and Maintain Your Game. And he, and he, he, he was a basketball performance coach, so he, all of his analogies are basketball related. So we've talked about that. I was like, you must know Allenstein Jr.'s work. Check him out. I've actually interviewed him. There's a previous episode you can go back and listen to. We'll go back and listen to it. Yeah. But one thing he, you know, he talked about that you kind of hit on too is, you know, just because it's basic doesn't mean it's easy. And it doesn't mean that that should be practiced, you know, even the basic stuff you should rehearse or practice. And he talked about that, how some of the greatest, some of the giants in basketball he would get to the gym at four 30 in the morning and they would be practicing the basic stuff you learn in high school basketball, you know? And he said I think it was Kobe Bryant. He said, I might get that wrong. But, early in his coaching career, he saw him doing some basic drills that, you know, anybody would do. And he went up to him and said, Hey man, you're, you're one of the best players in the world, arguably. Why are you doing that? And and he just looked at me and says, why do you think I'm the best player in the world? Because I do that, you know, so I thought that was pretty, yeah, yeah. It's like you don't, don't lose sight of the basics and asking good discovery questions, you know, good follow up questions, not something I also, another previous guest, Bill Stinnett he had a module about asking good diagnostic questions. His belief was so many people don't know how to ask good questions. And the question can't be, Hey, you want to buy my stuff? I mean, that's not the question. It's like, Hey, what kind of problems are you are you dealing with in your, in your business that does cause you to lose revenue or what part of your operational budget would you like to have more visibility into, you know, asking deep questions that actually makes a prospect go in a minute. That's actually a good question. And I don't know if I like my answer. What, you know, what can you do to help me? And so so no, this is great stuff, man. So what's, what's what's next for. Wait, what's coming up for you? Anything any any other big initiatives coming up or anything you want to share with us? Well, right now, just trying to get the content out. I'm trying to pace it because I feel like I'm absolutely swamping LinkedIn and I don't want to do that. I don't want to be the guy that's just hitting you every five minutes with here's another thing. And here's another thing. So I'm trying to pace it out carefully. I'm trying to get some articles and videos done that will, that will feed off each other. One of them will be the difference between smart goals and fast goals. Those there's a, there's a goal setting people. There's a debate on which one's the best. And I, I feed into that argument a little bit as to why I think there's probably a place for both of them. And, and I'll, I'll discuss those things. And then other than that, it's rolling up my sleeves and trying to find opportunities within sales management improvement. I'm really trying to go in and consult. For either H. R. or C. R. O. S. on making their sales management teams better as well as well as helping them recruit sales management and sales talent in and just try to give them a better assessment of you're looking at your people. And most of my think. I shouldn't say that too many of them are looking at lag measures where it's just like, here's our performance. These reps were at 100 or 60 or 20 percent of quota. But why are they there? And the assessment will tell you what are the lead measures that are missing that are causing 20 percent of quota rather than just go over 20%. We need more go make more calls. That's that's not the right measurement. So And look, VPs anybody that's over sales management and over sales people, they're busy. They've got so many things on them. They don't, one of the things I talked about my sales management training is I associate it to a coach of a sports team. High school coaches have assistants. High school coaches have assistants. What sales manager do you know that has an assistant coach? I don't know one. I've never known one. So they, they get weighted down with all this stuff that they have to handle. And I'm trying to give them some efficiencies. I'm trying to bring them some different ways to attack it so that they, they've got a process to go through and they can get to everything that they need to get to and get back to the emails that they need to send from their office. Wow. So while coaching and reinforcing training with their teams. Those are all very important things. So right now I'm going to be out rolling up my sleeves and doing my sales gig to try to get more and more business going for Eagle content. That's that's what's next on the docket for for us. Wow, that's great news. And if you're listening and you're interested in anything we've talked about today, please check the show notes will be more information and links there for you. Highly encourage you to do that. Remember, you know Self development and career development, professional development, all those things, you know, you need a coach. You can't, you can't go with that alone. And as you were talking, I'm reminded of Tim bossa another channel icon he had, as you were talking about how often do you promote stuff and he goes, look in our business, we're not managing a Broadway production. We're managing a parade, every block that that parade goes by. That's the first time I've seen it. You know, just because you said something in your training session last month doesn't mean you can't say it this month or the following month, you know, because you got a different audience audiences change and repetition is important. You know, I think I read somewhere, you know, oftentimes it takes the adult learner, like, you know, five to six times of hearing something before it actually becomes a part of their psyche. You know, just tell us my once or twice. It just kind of goes in one ear out the other, you know, so, so I don't know, I would encourage you, man. I mean I mean, I know that is it the shotgun approach or throwing out the big net approach or is it that, you know, being a military guy, the sniper approach of, you know, just one, one shot, one opportunity, we'll call it. But either way you're on the right track, obviously you, you got the background, you don't want me to tell you that I loved, I love the name of the company, even, you know, you know, Eagle content, by the way, it was there, is there a backstory on the name of the company or is it just someone recommended it? Well, so my wife and I were actually batting around names. We were like, we got to come up with a name. And we were looking at a couple of things. And one was my son was at a young age was recognized. There's a mayor's art show in Nashville, Tennessee, that each each elementary school gets a selection for a grade. And they, and they put them up in the museum. They put their artwork up in the museum. And he had. He had drawn an eagle. My, I mentioned my dad's a coach. His, his first big stint as a coach was a boys varsity coach for the Eagles. And so Eagles have been an, a big part of, they've been a part of our lives and we just thought it was good. It, it, it, it had some flow with soaring, which is what we want to talk about. We want you to soar. We don't want you to be down here grounded with all the. All the nonsense that's coming at you. to get up above and look from a higher level at things. And so Eagle content just seemed to, it just seemed to fit when we tried out a few different names in the company. I love it. It reminds me of that, of that funny joke. It's hard to shore with the Eagles when you hang out with a bunch of turkeys. That's right. That's right. You know what? And, and every organization's got some turkeys, and which also reminds me, Ben Franklin wanted the turkey to be the national bird, as you remember, because he thought it was a smart, you know, it had a lot of good traits, and he thought, well, he liked eagles for some reason, but I love eagles. I'd be surprised if you didn't hear that the, the chickens and the eagles story from Alan, because that's, I used to hear that in basketball growing up all the time. You can't sort out the eagles if you play with the chickens. That's right. Play. Okay. Yeah, I've heard that version as well. That's right. A level up man. So, okay, let's land the plane here. Is there anything we haven't talked about or any last words you want to share with us as we wrap up? I don't think so. I really appreciate the opportunity to, to be able to tell my story on this, on this this media and get it out there to people to hear it, that it's hard to see stuff in my videos or in screen prints or. to say I want to sign up and take one of the classes and see what this is about. I did the virtual learning just so people could get an idea of what some of the other topics were about. And to see that there's something there. Yeah, the virtual virtual learning was never supposed to be the main thing. I'd prefer to be live and in person. I'm a lot more animated and and right there than I am in the videos. But no, I really appreciate the opportunity just to get to talk to your group and and If they have any questions they can reach out to me. It's Eagle content, LLC dot com, which you're going to post. Thank you for that. And they can reach me on the email address that's on the website. I will respond right now. I don't have enough going on. So I'll respond. I'll be that sales manager in the office responding very quickly trying to get to your needs. But no, we, the goal is growth. And I want to get the message. I want to get this, this training and education out to as many people that want it and think they need it. That's fantastic. And you're so welcome. And thank you for agreeing to be here. I think everything you're doing aligns with what I believe in and what I want my show to kind of support. So again, if you're listening, be sure to check the show notes, check out the website and reach out. And by the way, the the interviewing virtual module that is that launched already? Or is there a date on that to be launched? It's done. I'll get you the link. Today so that you can post it. Good. Yeah. So check out that if you're on the market, if you know a friend that's on the market or something, then, you know, again, then these are skills that you just got to, you know, keep sharp, keep sharp in the saw. So you're rich, man. It's been a great time. I went by fast. Once again, thank you so much. Thank you, Chris. Good talking to you. Yeah, you bet. You bet. There you go folks. That's another episode of The Wireless Way. And as always, if you like what you heard which I, I, I tell you, if you were listening at all, I'm sure you did share with a friend be sure to, to go to the wireless way.net. There's a contact us button there. You can send any feedback, recommendations, suggestions love to hear from you. And if you have any questions about Rich or any of my guests, I'd love to make those connections as well. So there you have it. Have a great remainder of your day and we'll see you next time on the wireless way.