127 - Driving Exceptional Team Performance and Employee Retention with Upgraded Technologies' John Metcalf

Welcome to Listening with Leaders. I'm Doug Noll, lawyer turned peacemaker. I teach executive leaders how to listen to emotions rather than words so that they can become the leaders everyone wants to follow. And I teach those same leaders how to be authentically present, available, and connected to their families despite being insanely busy. I have learned that we are 98% emotional, and only 2% rational. Learning how to listen to emotions is, in my experience, the foundational skill of life. Stick around to the end of the show and I'll reveal how you can be on our next guest in 15 to 20 minutes. So let's get started.

John Eric Metcalf, welcome to Listening with Leaders. You are the co-founder and CEO of getupgraded.com, which can obviously be found at get getupgraded.com. Welcome to the show.

Thanks, Doug. Thanks for having me.

Uh, why don't you give us a little bit about your backstory, and we'll talk a little bit about Get Upgraded. It sounds like a pretty fascinating project. Tell us a little bit about how you got there.

Yeah, um, well, I'll start really far back. I was born in a small town north of San Antonio. Um, my, my mother and father both run an automotive shop there, so I grew up in a single-wide mobile home here and a two-car garage over here. And I was at home a lot because I was homeschooled until high school. And I usually say that my parents were slightly hippie back then. If you ask my dad why they homeschooled me, he would say, "I wanted you to have positive self-talk." And he felt like a lot of his early childhood education, was hurting, was harmful to his psyche. And so when he throws a ball against the wall and asks, "Can I do this?" He would say it comes back, "No, you can't. You shouldn't try that." And he wanted to make sure that when I threw that ball, I would say, "Yeah, okay, I can do that.

No problem." I would say they did an amazing job. And by the way, as a native Texan, you don't have any accent at all. You sound like you're from California.

Ah, thank you. I— well, I've lived outside of the country for, um, for at least 10 years, so, uh, and I studied Mandarin in, uh, in Beijing for a year, lived with a Chinese family who couldn't count to 10 in English, so I was just speaking Chinese. And even over there, you know, in my— with my Chinese classmates, I wanted to speak the clearest English as possible. And that is California Hollywood English. It's, it's the English that you, that you hear on Friends and Seinfeld and, and that type of thing where everybody's learning English watching those sitcoms.

Wow.

So what got you— did you go to, did you go to China before or after college?

I, I went to the University of Texas. I studied advertising and computer science, and when I was in, in undergrad, I started freelancing. So I started doing freelance software development, and I had started a coworking space, the first one in Texas, the first one in Austin. This is in 2007. It's called Conjunctured. And running that coworking space, I had a panel. I put together a panel on international entrepreneurship at South by Southwest because I was curious in that about that topic, having grown up just in Texas and not been outside of Texas since up until that point. And a guy came over from Shanghai and we, shortening the story a bit, we had the, we used to host the WordPress barbecue, WordPress, the barbecuing soft, the, I mean, the, the blogging software at our coworking space. The folks from Shanghai came over and said, this is really interesting, coworking, we've never heard of it. Do you want to move to Shanghai with us and start a coworking space there? So I thought, I'm 24, that sounds like a great idea. I'll move over. So went over there, we opened a coworking space, and again, just kind of shortening this story, um, everybody spoke Mandarin, or at least was bilingual inside of the, the coworking space. And, you know, even the people that were working at the VC fund that were kind of sponsoring it. And I thought, okay, I'm gonna go to Beijing because that's where they have the clearest accent. I'm gonna go there for 3 months, I'm gonna do a crash course, and then I'm gonna come back. And I realized after 3 months that I couldn't say that much. And so I decided I'm going to do another 3 months. And then it was summertime and I studied on my own. And then I decided I'm going to do another 3 months. So I ended up doing 3 semesters of Mandarin, just kind of in my early 20s, never had studied it before, but I was fascinated with it. And, um, it was a great experience to live within a different culture. Uh, and that, you know, I stayed in Asia for another 5 years after that, I lived in Hong Kong and started my first— besides just freelancing, started my first real company there. Wow.

And how fluent are you in Mandarin today?

我可以。I can speak Mandarin at the markets, and I could still talk to a taxi driver, and I can text message in Mandarin. But unfortunately, I just don't use it very much. And also, after that, year and a half of being in mainland China, I moved to Hong Kong and the preference there is, you know, English, Cantonese, and then Mandarin. So I didn't practice it that much. I thought I was going to build a company in mainland China and my Mandarin was going to be really important, but I ended up building this international company in Hong Kong and didn't end up using it very much.

Well, still, the experience was probably earth-changing for you, earth-shaking and life-changing.

Absolutely. And especially, you know, just like if you live somewhere in Europe, living in Hong Kong is a great base to travel among the rest of Southeast Asia. So I was able to do that and expanded my world massively from just being a kid from small town Texas.

Wow, incredible. So you came, came back to the United States. What happened next?

Yeah, my last company, our biggest client was Groupon. Kind of back in the heyday of Groupon before they went down, before their IPO price went down a little bit. They were our biggest client and they kind of acquihired us into Groupon. And I ended up staying with them for about a year and then working with a VC fund called Arbor Ventures in Hong Kong. And I I was going to stay in Hong Kong longer, and I was just like, I've got to go back to the US and start my next company there because San Francisco, that's startup, you know, that's the holy land for startups. I've got to try doing it there. So I moved back to San Francisco. I tried angel investing for a little while, but then ultimately two things happened. One, a friend of mine was— kind of presented this idea of launching an offering that was similar to Apple's iPhone upgrade program. Basically, it's an offering where you can pay monthly for a device and get a new one on a regular schedule, just like a car lease for your device. But what happened very quickly there is that we found out that there was an opportunity to help Apple retailers in Scandinavia. So this is kind of a— I could go into the, you know, serendipity and synchronicity that occurred there, but we ended up moving to Stockholm and our first partner was Apple and they helped us launch an iPhone upgrade program at some of their retail partners. And so I, you know, trying to get back to San Francisco, I ended up moving to Stockholm and I've lived there the last, 4 and a half years. I recently came back.

So does get— does getupgraded.com— is it operating in Europe now?

Yeah, our, our first partner was— I guess you could call them like the Best Buy of the Nordics— and we helped them launch an iPhone upgrade program. So when I say upgrade program, I just mean car lease for your device, pay monthly, get a new one on a regular schedule. Very similar to what a lot of people do on from Verizon or AT&T, right?

Um, but you were doing this for, for computers, not for phones.

We, we do it in the Nordics, we do it for phones, computers, um, and Xboxes. We have a, we have a program for Microsoft called Xbox All Access. You pay monthly for an Xbox, it includes a digital game subscription in, in that bundle, and you pay monthly for it and you can get a new Xbox every 24 months. So that's the type of thing that we started to enable. When I moved back to San Francisco, in order to meet new people, I applied and got into this community of the World Economic Forum called Global Shapers. And it's a, it's a community for people under 30 who are trying to make a difference in their community. And I started learning about circular economy. This is what kind of piqued my interest when my other friend brought the, the idea of, of this upgrade program concept to me. Um, and that's why I wanted to join with them and, and help bring this to life.

So as I understand now, what you do on this program is, is your subscribers will get a new computer or laptop or whatever every, every 2 years, and you take back the old machine. That's right.

That's right.

And then what happens with the old machine? After it's refurbished, what do you do with it?

We refurbish it and put it back onto the market. Eventually, when we have some of those coming back, we'll add them to our website and we'll have both new and used side by side. And I usually say that I want to see the consumer electronics market function more like the auto market, right? Where the majority of transactions are financed. They're financing or, or there's a lease. And then the majority of volume happens in the secondary market. I really think that for most people, just like most people should be buying a— it makes the most financial sense to buy a used car, it makes the most financial sense to buy a secondhand laptop. A 2-year-old MacBook Air, that's— I'm making up a number here, you know, that's something like $20 a month because we don't sell those yet. Is— that's the— that's an amazing option for, for most people. And if we can get it back every couple of years, refurbish it, make sure the battery works, and then put it back out onto the market, that's how we extend the life of, of all of these devices.

Well, it also makes incredible economic sense for you, for your business, because you've got the— you've already spent the money on the capital for the computer and now you're just releasing it. Other than your refurbishment costs, you're using the same asset over and over again. Yes, more revenue.

Yeah, that's right.

It just scales automatically, right, as you get more machines out there.

Yeah, I don't— you know, I— there's a, um, there's certainly a sustainability aspect to this where we're, we're hopefully we are reducing the number of devices that need to be created in the world. Um, but I don't believe in hitting consumers over the head with that or We're leading with that. I think most people— that, that's a, that's nice and it checks the box and everyone should do that. But what we really need is a new financial model that replaces the, the existing one. And the majority of customers, especially on MacBooks, they buy them cash or if they are financing them, it's either over a very short period of time and maybe with a high interest rate. And so for our customers, if you have good credit, there's, there's no interest. We, we cover that on your behalf because we think there's If you're a convenience seeker, you're not the type of person who wants to pay any interest. If you're an affordability seeker and you're— that monthly payment being very low is important to you, we do have to charge some interest rate because maybe you don't have as good of credit score. But so yeah, that's—

so people go to your website to sign up for the program?

They do. Yep. GetUpgraded.com. You can find out what your price might be. Without, of course, without doing a hard credit check, you know, um, you can just plug all your information in there and doesn't do a check on your credit score or anything and see what your price is and make the decision there. And this goes along with my original, you know, just out of school working as a freelancer, I needed a high-performance device, a $2,500 Mac,, and I knew I was going to replace it every couple of months. Um, and this is the program that I always wanted to bring to life.

This is kind of a classic example of seeing a need and then finding the solution to fulfill the need.

Yeah, I know, I know what that's like. I know what it's like to upgrade your Mac every 2 years and you see, you know, you sometimes say, yeah, I'm going to move the data over, uh, but it doesn't happen. That's why we include a FireWire cable and instructions on how to do it. And you say, I'm going to sell this used device on Craigslist or eBay or Facebook Marketplace, but it never happens. And that's why we send you a box. Hey, just here's instructions on how to transfer the data, wipe the device, and then send it back to us and we'll find it a good home. We're trying to make it as, as easy as possible.

And, and what kind of success have you seen with, with this model?

Well, our— we just launched getupgraded.com, but in, in the Nordics, we've served over 200,000 customers and sold over $100 million worth of devices. So we know that this model works well, and we just need to bring it here to the US. And that's what we're, you know, we're just gearing up. We just launched the website last month, and we're gearing up to hopefully have this more people know about it for the holiday season.

So, so you're, you're in that startup marketing, creating brand awareness, getting people to know that this, this option exists.

Exactly.

Yeah. It costs a lot of money and a lot of effort to make that happen.

It does. It does. But I guess maybe the benefit is that we think about this as being a, you know, it's kind of like SaaS. You, you, you have Doug as a customer and as long as you treat Doug well and he has a good experience, he's opting in to buy his next device. So that's, that's where we're— yeah, that's the model. Yeah.

Yeah. How does Apple take to this? Do they— they— the company— is the company supportive of the model?

Yeah, absolutely. Um, they've— they helped us. They were the original partner that helped us get into retailers, um, in Scandinavia, and they've been completely supportive here in the US. We're not an authorized reseller, so in the US we work with an Apple authorized retailer, GatorTech, and we, we plug in our solution around their offering, and we're hoping to do that for more retailers. So you can imagine the likes of all of the big electronics retailers that sell Apple products. We want to go help them launch these types of programs as well.

So, so a customer would come into a Best Buy, for example, and let's say Best Buy was working with GetUpgrade, then the customer could sign up for Get upgrade. They get their initial machine from Best Buy, walk out the store with it, but then 2 years later, all of a sudden the box shows up, or they get emails saying, you're about due for an upgrade, watch for the new computer, and it shows up.

That's right.

And that's, that's right.

Big retailers like that, they often want to white label the program, so they might want to use their own name. You know, it's Costco Plus or Target Plus or whatever, but, uh, Behind the scenes, we're facilitating it and we're, we're just trying to bring that to, to more consumers.

So, so as you're doing this and creating this whole new model, what is it that gets you up in the morning and gets you excited?

You know, I love, I love this business, but ultimately I love the people in the business. I love being able to design the, the team that I work with. I love to be able to, to say, is this the group that I think is one, the, the, the high-performance team to get that we can get on the, to put on the field? And are these the types of people that I want to spend 10 hours a day with? Um, I really appreciate the ability to be able to do that. And that we can all align on a similar mission. So, you know, just like I would say family comes first, my team comes first. And hopefully by treating the team right, we also treat our customers right and we'll be successful in business.

Are you guys mostly remote or hybrid?

We went completely remote when the pandemic started. And that's actually when I moved back to the US was about midway through the pandemic. And it works well, but I've, I have felt and other employees have discussed how there's a bit of loneliness. We, you don't have the water cooler talk, you don't have the camaraderie, you don't have lunches together. So we're working on pulling together an office. I think our two offices are gonna be Stockholm and Austin. And I think it's really important that people can connect.

Do you pull people together for meetings, quarterly meetings or annual meetings?

We do. Yeah, we do pull people together and for a week at a time and we'll, you know, it's half work, but it's half just getting to know each other. And because especially if there's new people on the team, you know, we will make the joke, well, I've never seen your legs. Um, yeah, and that's, that's so important. And I love that you talk about listening. Um, that's, that's a huge part of our team building, is, is just like this podcast, it's hearing other people's stories. So when, when we come together, um, you know, there's usually a, a moment where we're sitting on the ground cross-legged or we're sitting in chairs or— but we're, we're also like asking, tell us your story. Where are you from? What motivates you? How do you— why do you get up in the morning? What do you care about besides work? Um, and you can get short versions of that sometimes on, on Zoom calls. You can, you can get a 20-minute call, but when you're together, that story can be an hour long, and then it could last into the night. And you can ask later, I was thinking about this, you know, at dinner, can you elaborate on what it was like? And I just, you, you can't do that without real quality time together with the team.

And as you've gone through this process of learning about each other and listening to each other, what have you discovered?

Um, about our, about our team, I guess I've, or just about, about team building and organizational development in general?

Yeah.

I guess I'll go back to that those stories are important and connecting on a human level, on knowing people's internal motivations and knowing what's happening in their family. It's important for those things to be shared, especially in a small team, right? If you're sub-50 people, you can know everyone. And if you know what's going on in people's families, you know that they're, they're dealing with something with their sister is sick, or they're taking care of their mother, or their dog is sick, or every Friday they go to church and, and do this certain thing. Knowing all of those, those deep details in a, in a small team, it helps everybody have empathy and sympathy for their co-workers and to understand more deeply why they have a hard time on Fridays or why they were down this week. And that's, you know, we spend so much of our lives with our teams that I think it's just invaluable to create that type of connection.

It brings humanity back into working relationships. Yeah. And people are no longer fungible goods there to produce, but they're human beings with feelings and emotions and experiences that when shared show how much common ground we all really have with each other.

Yeah.

And also appreciate the shared differences that we've all gone through that enrich all of us when we learn about them.

That's right.

That's why listening is so, so foundational.

Yeah.

And it's amazing to me how many teams don't spend the time to learn how to listen to each other. I think that it is really difficult, to your point, to function, especially as a small team, unless you devote yourselves to listening first and talking less later.

That's right. It starts with the leadership of the team setting an example.

That's right.

That they're willing to listen and that we are an organization that does listen. We're an organization where it's okay to share what's going on in your life, because it's just going to make us more effective.

The other thing that, that, that strikes me is that you're, you're creating another aspect of leadership that very few leaders talk about, which is creating psychological safety. When people feel safe, emotionally safe, to be able to share themselves personally, that's a team that's going to perform exceptionally well because there's going to be less gossip. No judgment or criticism, acceptance and understanding. And in, in those circumstances, the deepest introverts will feel safe to contribute. And again, I think that's something that a lot of leaders miss and a lot of teams miss. So it's a good, good job.

That's, that's how you get the best people on the field.

That's right. And, and they get the most out of the best people.

That's right. Yep. Because they want to work for their for their colleagues, for their brothers and sisters. They want to pull their, their weight. They don't want to let them down.

That's right.

They don't want to, they don't want to miss a, a guard or miss a tackle and allow the CEO to get sacked.

Not that I'm a sports fan, but it's not only, it's not only that, it's also that they feel part of a team. They feel part of a community, and it gives them an identity that they love and relate to, and they're motivated to, to continue to contribute.

Yeah, I mean, we could keep going on about the benefits of it. Retention is another one because there's a fabric that's been created among the team because of those shared stories and because people are willing to, as the Entrepreneurs Organization might say, go into the 5%, the 5% of things that you don't typically share with, especially not your coworkers. You maybe don't even share it with your extended family. If you can get into that 5%, that's where the deepest bonds are made.

Right. So what is it that's unique about you that you bring to the table that makes all this happen?

It's a good question. It's probably just perseverance and naivety and my brain saying that you can keep going and you can do it and you can bring this to life. And I'm willing to be open about my faults and difficulties along the way. And I think that that helps bring the whole team along with me when, especially when things are rough, and there's always something rough.

Right. If I may share what I'm observing, I think that your unique experience growing up being homeschooled by parents who said, we only want you to have positive feedback, positive self-regard.

Yep.

Coupled with your international experience in Asia and in Europe has created a truly deep, deeply authentic human being.

And if I were—

if somebody asked me, what does John Eric bring to the table, I would say deep authenticity. Yeah, and that's a really rare attribute. So good job.

I appreciate that.

Probably why you're able to create the team that you've been able to create is because you come to the table open and vulnerable in a positive, powerful way and authentic, and people see that and they want to— they want to work for you and they want to work with you and they want part of what you are. Yeah, you probably— you may have heard people talk, talk about that.

It, it's definitely— it's a characteristic I— that resonates with me. I would love to be known as somebody who is like that.

I suspect that if you did a 360, you would probably find out that that's the way your team looks at you. Yeah, because even short time we've known each other, I can pick that up.

Yeah, the challenge is, and the, the thing that I, that I need to learn more about it. Well, there's lots of people that are not, um, not authentic, not bringing their authentic self through, but their companies are— can be far more successful than mine. So what then? That's a— it's such a question, right? What, what matters? I'm sure that so many entrepreneurs deal with that. They think, um, I'm being— I'm doing— I believe I'm doing these, you know, good things for my team. I care about my team. This other group they're ruthless, they're jerks, people fire, they get hire and fire. And, but you know, who's to say which one wins?

Okay. So that gets to a really fascinating question of how do we measure success?

That's right.

And I learned a long time ago that success is not measured by money. Yeah. Success is measured by people and relationship and how much you serve and serve others. I left a very successful law practice after 22 years to serve humanity. Best business decision I ever made in my life. I don't make nearly as much money as I made as a trial lawyer. Yeah. I serve more people in a week than I served in over 2 decades as a lawyer. And that's where the satisfaction is. Yeah. So I know a ton of lawyers who are ruthless, hardcore, just like I used to be. And I look at them today and they're burned out husks with no joy on their third wife, miserable, and they got millions of dollars in the bank. And I look at my life where I'm just blissfully happy every day. I get to do amazing things. And so that to me is what's important. Yeah. And I'm not gonna— I don't measure myself against other people's money. I measure myself against other people's true contentment and happiness. Yeah. You know, as I think before we got on, I think I mentioned this weekend I was down in Santa Barbara attending wedding, and we were with friends and family down there. We know a lot of people in Santa Barbara, and my wife and I were kind of looking at each other and said, how happy are these people really? They live in these beautiful gigantic mansions where they're all worth tens of, not hundreds of millions of dollars. We're little country mice up here. And yet we have— we're sitting in the hot tub this morning watching the sun come up over the Sierra Nevada saying, this is priceless. Yeah. And those people don't have it, and we do. So good job for you. One more question. What's one thing about yourself, John Eric, that we would not know about unless you revealed it to us? Uh, I like the discomfort.

Well, I was going to tell you about how I was on the rowing team in undergrad, but you already know that one because we talked about it before the show. If I could think of a better one, I would give it to you, but I'm just going to go with I have a 30-pound multi-poo named Fluffy.

A what? A 30-pound multi-poo?

Multi-poo.

Yeah. I've got a border collie. I've never heard of a multi-poo.

Maltese and poodle?

Maltese and poodle.

Yeah.

That's fun.

And he's right here.

Oh yeah, probably a little fuzzball, huh?

Yep, definitely. Very fluffy.

Yeah, yeah. No, I've got a 2-year-old female border collie who is an incredible dog.

Fluffy's my first dog and won't be my last. It's amazing the bond you can create with dogs. And it's amazing how they help me get out in the morning. Okay, let's go for a run in the morning. All right, let's go for a walk in the evening.

She'll tolerate you being quiet during the day working, but boy, come at, come 4 or 5 o'clock.

That's right. It's my time.

Let's go. Exactly right. Yeah. So the dogs provide balance in our lives.

Yeah. And, and can be a reason to, can be a habit, can be a, right. It's so important to create those small habits to latch on the other larger ones. So Just wake up at 6:45 and taking Fluffy out in the morning.

That's it.

That's an anchor to my day.

Excellent. Well, John, thank you so much for your time today. I really enjoyed our conversation.

Thanks, Doug.

Doug Noll here. Thank you so much for listening to Listening with Leaders. If you are a successful executive leader who would like to be on this program, please visit podcast.dougnull.com/podcast. If you got something out of this interview, would you please share this episode on social media? Just do a quick screenshot with your phone and text it to a friend or post it on the socials. If you know someone that would be a great guest, tag them on the social media to let them know about the show and include the hashtag Listening with Leaders. I love seeing your posts and guest suggestions. We are regularly putting out new episodes and content. To make sure you don't miss any episodes, go ahead and subscribe. Your thumbs up, ratings, and reviews go a long way to help promote the show and mean a lot to me and my team. Want to know more? Go to my website, DougNoll.com, or follow me on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram. That's @DouglasEnoll. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you on the next show.