The Future Of The Future

Sales is hard. You fail, just because of the nature of the profession, 99% of the time.It takes a special someone to succeed in sales, and to do it for a sustained period of time.You have to enjoy the process.You have to become addicted to the process.And you have to be ambitious enough to continue raising your game and the stakes as you keep evolving.I’ve been doing sales for a while and I’ve gained a new respect for the profession. And I have been following sales leaders that continue to elevate the game and show the way for others.Scott Leese is one of them.Or, let’s be more clear about it. Scott Leese is a HERO amongst them.Why? Because he is good at what he does and he shares so much valuable content.But also, and most importantly, because he is so original and creative about it.Do yourself a favor: follow him on Linkedin. His CV is too big for me to do a snippet here. Let’s just say he has consistently crushed sales targets at every company he ever worked at, helping them grow and eventually nail successful exits, and he is now a Leading Voice and Thought Leader in Sales Consulting. Oh, and, by the way, he is running the best micro conferences out there, mixing work and personal life like very few people in the world.I mean, SURF & SALES??? Taking people to Costa Rica for a week of Sales Coaching and Networking and Surf Lessons in arguably one of the best places to surf in Central America?Do you get it now? Yes, Hero is the word we want to use.So… Scott and I talked about Sales, how to succeed in sales, the future of sales, and the future of networking, and why EVERYBODY should pay more attention to networking, now, and forever. We talked about his personal story and how he got to where he is, and how everyone has a story to tell, if you create the right environment for them to share it.Go ahead, enjoy, you can thank me later.

Flow in positive psychology, also known colloquially as being in the zone, is the mental state in which a person performing some activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process of the activity. In essence, flow is characterized by the complete absorption in what one does, and a resulting transformation in one's sense of time.Finding your Flow is hard. It requires a perfect balance between challenge and skills, and a certain mental state. Professional Athletes are seeking this state constantly. And, while some efforts can become gruesome and challenging for the body and mind, maintaining a clear mind in these moments, a certain level of focus, is key to success.There are lots of lessons we can take from sports and apply to business. The resilience, dedication, discipline and determination. But one thing is different for sure. In sports, you get immediate feedback from your actions. In business, especially in technology and in product, you have to be patient and wait for feedback. And so staying in the flow requires a different type of discipline and mental stability.These are some of the super interesting topics I discussed with my friend Mitch DeForest, in episode 50 of The Future Of The Future podcast.Mitch is a Cofounder and Product Head at Ramped, a platform designed to simplify the job search, breaking barriers of bias in the job market and helping individuals get their dream jobs. Mitch was also a semi-professional Athlete during his youth, as a swimmer, and he would spend as much as 40 hours a week training in the water. He is still a waterman and he enjoys surfing and traveling all across the world. He doesn’t train as hard nowadays, but there are many lessons he applies on a daily basis to his business. Especially when it comes to perspective on hard work, input and output, resilience and determination.I  had an amazing conversation with Mitch. We talked about entrepreneurship, life, and flow... Lots and lots about flow and how and where to find it. Every time I listen to this episode I feel like picking up the conversation again.Enjoy!!!

They say being a product manager is like being a “mini” CEO.Being a Pastor is like being a CEO, only it’s harder. There are budgets. Websites. Receivables and Payables.There are no Sunday’s off. There is hiring and firing… and the people you fire? chances are they are part of your congregation, and you get to see them, and their families, every Sunday.In this episode, I interviewed my friend B.J. Hillabush,  to learn the story of his incredible jump from Pastor to Product Leader. BJ is an accomplished product and career coach, and his journey is a testament to the power of vision, versatility, and the deep impact of nurturing both innovation and storytelling.Listen to this episode and learn more about what it really means to be a pastor, and how we can learn more about how to deal with challenges in the IT industry, from BJ’s hard learned and earned lessons in life.

At age 10, he was already an entrepreneur. From self cleaning and sterilizing toilets, to shoes with interchangeable spikes, he was always looking for problems to solve, to invent and create solutions that could become a business.His big brother, who eventually became a software developer and his partner, was always challenging him to build stuff, to solve problems.Fast forward, just a few years, to the pandemic, and we meet the problem he is currently solving with his fast growing startup Blast Off Tutoring.The Problem? Matching tutors with students. How would students requiring tutoring credits find candidates in times of stay at home mandates? How would students get help by older tutors?So at age 16, Mitchell Meyer set out to reshape and elevate the education landscape. Blast Off Tutoring became a leading district-wide peer tutoring platform across the U.S., democratizing access to quality education and fostering community-driven learning experiences. Mitchell is in College now. He is a Founder and CEO, yet he still finds time to advance as a student and learn from peers and professors alike. And he likes it that way. In this episode, we talked about what it means to be an entrepreneur so early in life, how younger generations approach work and entrepreneurship, the educational system and the value of tutoring, and many other topics.I enjoyed our conversation and I got inspired by his energy and drive. I know you will enjoy this as well. 

She went from being the only woman in the room, to the oldest person in the room.She was a California Girl in an Old Guys Club world of mutual funds and investments, and she conquered the North East with record inside sales for her team at Wells Fargo.Then she got married and moved to New York, and became a stay at home mom for 17 years.But suddenly, things changed, and she needed to go back to the job market. Tough job for a single Mom with a 17 years work hiatus trying to make her way back to the Bay area, to get a leadership sales job at a tech company.Oh yeah, she definitely found success. She excelled at various leadership roles in sales in top tech companies in the bay area, and eventually became a founder and CEO. But if you want to hear the full story, just hit play and listen to it.It’s the challenges that make us stronger. And it’s the sales profession where survivors thrive and excel. Because they are resilient, they can adapt, and they know how to ignite their inner passion to achieve objectives, whatever they might be.I am very thankful to Elizabeth Andrew, for being a guest at my show, and sharing so much about her story.  Go for it!

Labor arbitrage, alone, is not enough reason to outsource, not anymore.With the rise of AI and automation possibilities, companies are thinking twice about outsourcing business or support functions offshore.Lift and shift is out of fashion, and out of touch with the current tech scenario.So how do you add value to outsourcing? How do you become an innovation partner to your customers? In the specific world of BPO and customer service support, how do you leverage agents in the best place and way possible?I interviewed Craig Crisler, founder and CEO of Support Ninja, to find out the answers to these questions.Craig has over 20 years of experience in operational excellence and modern people management. He founded his first company at age 15, and he went on to become a serial entrepreneur founding 12 more companies with 4 successful exits. He is obsessed about leveraging technology to assist, enable and empower agents to do more meaningful tasks that provide more value to their customers. He will recommend ways to do work that might seem counterintuitive, because he might be automating work previously completed by his agents. But he is not concerned about the number of seats he is filling for each client, he wants to provide value, for customers and for his agents.Craig is a proud parent, loving husband, and trusted business leader. He leaves and breathes an empathy-informed mindset, and I savored every bit of our conversation. Enjoy!

We, as consumers of services and products, continue absorbing steps that used to be completed by humans working for the companies that sell us services and products.Think about it. The Check In Process for your flight. Getting tags on your bags. Ordering your food through an Ipad. Filling information online for various processes.Human interaction continues to get reduced. But, when that human interaction exists, we want it to be the best interaction possible. We might get it or not, but that is our expectation.This is true as well for Real Estate and Proptech. Most of the process can happen online and various steps are automated. Real Estate Agents will continue changing the way they operate; what fees are transferred to buyers and sellers will continue changing; but the profession is not really going away. We still need some sort of human interaction, especially when we are completing the most important transactions of our lives.How can we elevate the human interaction step of services and products? Is everyone aware of the importance consumers place on these moments? How can we differentiate ourselves in an era of so much access to technology and tools to build technology into our processes?These are some of the questions I asked to Phil Huff as I interviewed him for this episode. Phil is a good friend of mine. We worked together for a few years, and he has become a Mentor, answering many questions as I continue to grow in my career, and opening many doors. So I am very glad and thankful that we got together to talk about these questions and so many other topics. Phil has over 25 years of experience in the real estate, property, and mortgage technology sectors. He is an accomplished Sales, Marketing and Business Development leader. He has constructed and guided high-performing sales and service teams, in prominent entities like Rocket and Altisource, as well as smaller yet impactful organizations such as eLynx and Platinum Data.Surrounding yourself with people you can trust is key to any endeavor. I loved hearing my friend talk about his story, and why this is so important.I hope you can listen to this episode, and I trust you will enjoy it as much as I did.

In the technology world, Product and Sales are very much intertwined. Feedback needs to flow between the two. Product needs to be enabled to talk to customers in a direct way, to have a different type of conversation that sales would. Sales needs to trust the Product team, and what they are building, and understand it, to be able to communicate this to prospect customers.But things can get ugly very quickly. Why did you promise this thing we don’t really have? Why are you so late on delivering this thing you told me was almost ready so long ago? And so on…I happen to know two guys that have an amazing career in Product and Sales respectively, who are also Cousins, and first generation Americans from Afghan descendancy.They are not only great at what they do, but most importantly, they have a duo dynamic going on that should have earned them a sitcom a long time ago.The Sekander Cousins, Nake and Yosef, carry a name that means Alexander the Great in Persian. And that’s more or less how they feel about each other and themselves, their heritage and their family.I’ve known Nake for a while now, we worked together in the past, I work with him now, and I enjoy his friendship. And I met his cousin Yosef, when we all got together for dinner in San Francisco, a city Yosef has called home for the last 10 years of his life. We got together to enjoy a superb chinese food dinner. A few hours (and various green shots) later, it was clear, 100% clear to me, that I wanted to get them together for a podcast episode, and just talk about life.So that’s really what we did. The excuse? talk about what it means to build a career in tech in the US as a first generation American. The result? A fun, honest, informal and real conversation abound random topics ranging from tech, to moving around in the US and in the world, to the best way to cook Afghan rice, to the ideal all time soccer team, and much more.It’s a very random conversation, but those are the ones I enjoy the most.Listen, have fun, and enjoy.

A lot of people have a desire to do good, but they don’t even know how to start. So many non profits out there. Where do I start? Who can I trust? How can I keep it simple and still make the most impact out of it?I interviewed my friend Andy Choi, to learn more about the non-profit industry. What’s working and what’s not working well? How can we bridge the gap between nonprofits and individuals seeking to make a difference in the world?.Andy  is the Founder and CEO of Do Good Points, a digital platform that’s working to do just that. Bridging the gap between non profits, and individuals that want to be as efficient as possible at doing good.An entrepreneur at heart, Andy started his first business at 14 painting address numbers on sidewalk curbs for homeowners across the Bay Area. Within the first two years, the business was operating in three cities, with 21 employees. Since then, he’s led multiple ventures including two separate retail food & beverage businesses, an international eco-manufacturing company, multiple e-commerce lines, and an international business development consultancy.Before starting Do Good Points, he worked at a global market research company, partnering with top blue-chip brands in travel, retail, and digital marketing industries on customer loyalty, affiliate marketing, market research, programmatic marketing, and monetization.Andy is an optimizer. He wants to improve the way non-profits go about their business, to maximize their impact, and solve big problems that affect our world like hunger, homelessness and education.He has a passionate and clear message, and he got ME thinking. What am I doing today? Am I doing any good? How can I get started? How can I make giving an aspect of my daily life?Listen to this episode, and you’ll learn it’s easier than you think. You can thank me afterwards.Enjoy!

The best product leaders are a bit like time travelers. They can pick up trends and feedback from users, but they also have a sixth sense that allows them to tune in into what's coming next.My guest for this episode is a hyper energetic, New York based (and raised) Product Leader that is so dialed in that he can never stop channeling thoughts into paper.Post-it notes, emails, Word, Google, Notion, and any sort of physical or digital way you can think of to put ideas into writing, are only the start for him. Then comes design, drawing. And through that design, choosing the best ideas and executing on them.  Rob Petrozzo has 15 years of experience as a digital designer, experience lead, creative director, and product specialist. He has worked with a broad spectrum of content in a variety of industries including music, publishing, and bio-technology. His most recent position allowed him to contribute hands-on to the growth of an industry leading hardware/software startup, and was the precursor to the founding of his newest venture, Rally Rd.His mind is always on, and you can notice that just by the way he talks and connects concepts and experiences, with unparalleled energy and passion.How do you stay dialed in as a Product Leader? How can you predict what’s coming next? How do you execute on ideas? When and how do you listen to user feedback? How do you navigate back and forth from analog to digital and how do you know when to choose each one? How do you get insights from younger generations? What role does your city play into how you are able to stay dialed in?These are just some of the questions Rob answered during our 40 minute conversation.Listen to this episode, you’ll get more energy and ideas from it than you can imagine.Enjoy!