How to fail your way to success with Dale Zwizinski

Every company has breakdowns in their revenue process. Sure thing. Deals slip into next quarter, competitors creep in and swipe deals away at the last minute and deals getting single threaded that don't get to power. These are just a few examples of revenue leak, but there are a ton more and they're preventing your team from reaching their sales targets. That's why I'm such a big fan of Clary's Revenue platform is the only tool that actually helps leaders take control of their revenue and thrive through any market conditions. Especially when things get tough. You can't afford to miss a single detail, but you also can't be leading by gut. Clary combines the science and the art of sales and sales leadership. So go to clary.com if you want to answer the most important question in your business. Are you going to meet, beat or Miss on revenue? Welcome to the live Better Sell Better podcast with your host Kevin Dorsey of Inside Sales Excellence, the number one Patreon group and YouTube channel for tech sellers and tech sales leaders, where we dive in deep for tactical advice on how to book more meetings more, close more deals faster and lead sales teams to success. But we don't stop there. We also focus on the person in salesperson. We talk about mindset goals, time management and so much more. So thank you for listening and if you're interested, head on over to patreon.com InsideSalesExcellence now with that, grab a notepad, get ready and let's dive into the good stuff. What up everybody? Welcome to another episode of the live Better Sell Better podcast. This is your host, Kevin Dorsey, AKA kd. And today we're going to teach you how to fail. We're going to teach you how to fail the right way. Because failure over the past few years has got a bad rap, right? The fear of failure is honestly the number one reason why most people don't succeed, because they never allow themselves to try. But failure also has gotten twisted a little bit over the past few years. You get phrases like fail fast, fail forward, fail fast and hard. Oh, you failed at your last startup. Here's $10 million to go, not fail again. So which is it? Is failure a good thing or is failure a bad thing? Can you actually leverage failure to succeed? And that's why I'm so excited to have Dale Zawinski here on the show to talk about just that. Dale is a high energy enterprise sales leader that has successfully scaled teams and revenues across the world. I'm talking global money here, not just regional pockets. All right? For companies like Oracle, Kite Desk smart action. And now breezy. He has learned how to leverage failure, learn from failure, and accelerate success from failure. And he's here to teach us about it today. Dale, my man, welcome to the show.

Hey, thanks for having me, Katie. I appreciate it, man. I've been trying to get. Get. Get a minute with you for a while, so it's been good to. Good to connect.

Hey, here we are. And this is what's fun. Cause you get to talk about the fun topics, right? So when I asked Dale, I said, what's something you want to talk about? His first response is failure. I said, yes, let's talk about failure. So let's dive right into this, man, because I do think it's something that is. It's so interesting. It's tiptoed around, but it's encouraged. It's like, oh, fail fast. But not really, especially in leadership, especially in sales leadership, we don't get a lot of room to fail. Right. So let's talk about this a little bit. How do you think failure can actually fuel success? Yeah.

I think what ends up happening is you have to fail. If you're not failing, you're not taking enough risk. And if you're not learning from the failures, then they're just. They compound on each other. So, you know what I look at is taking risks, taking calculated risks that some may fail. So it's not that you just take crazy risks, but you take calculated risks that you feel, I don't know, 70, 30, 80, 20. And you may end up in that 30 or 20%. But then you have to figure out why that happened and what I found. I mean, I've been in the game for a while now, and in the beginning, I was always afraid of failure. Now when I look back on my career, all the failures that I have had actually led me to where I am today. So if it was for those early failures, I wouldn't be here. So you have to look for why you, like, why did the failure happen? And it may not rear its head a year later, five years later, ten years later, and all of a sudden you're like, oh, that's why that happened.

No, And I love that. And you mentioned something there, too, around calculated risk, right? So how do you find that balance? Right? Because I think a lot of people, if they can't get it probably perfect, they don't try, right? Or they try to come up with this perfect plan, and then it bombs immediately and they just give up completely. Whereas this balance of, like, okay, it's calculated. I know there's some risks. Like, I have a couple questions on this. Like, how do you, how do you kind of measure that? Right. How do you know? Like, all right, I've got enough to try to pursue this without having to overthink it.

Yeah. From a reformed perfectionist, I feel like it's like, you know, and I think once again, it comes with a little bit of experience and age when you're trying to be perfection or you're trying to be over controlling. And then you realize, like, it just is not. It doesn't benefit you for where you're trying to go. And you got to be really self aware of where your blind spots are and where you can take the risk. Like, there's parts of me that I won't take a risk because I just know it's a huge blind spot and it could be, I may think it's a 30% risk, but it may like take out part of my career. So there's parts where you'll look at it and you'll say, it's almost like when you're understanding how organization works, you know, going into a new organization, you got to try to understand different departments, your team, the CEO. You're trying to figure out like how to get, how to maneuver inside the environment. And you take calculated risks and try to understand who you can trust in an organization, who you can trust in an account. So all those things go into figuring out what the calculated risk may be. And then if it's close enough, like, if I'm like, if I think I can recover from it, where I'm not going to like wipe myself out, I'll go take that calculated risk. If there's, if there's a, if there's a way that like I'm going to take this risk and I'm going to lose my job and I'm going to, you know, XYZ and that's going to like, and me out in the streets, I don't have a house anymore. Like, that's not a good risk right now.

Is that the weighing the pros and cons there is really, really important. And so how do you communicate it up though, right? Because I think that's one of the areas that I love that you mentioned this to you. You've kind of learned through kind of experience. Going through like communicating risk up is I think, scary for a lot of leaders. But even reps, right, they want to try something, they're afraid there's a risk. It's not perfect. How do you communicate that risk up without kind of like losing either the confidence of your leadership team or the CEO, where it's like, look. But also not setting yourself up for massive failure. Because if you make a promise like, oh, this is gonna work, and then it doesn't, well, then you're in bigger trouble. So how do you kind of communicate that risk up to the people that you're working with to make sure that everyone's kind of on the same page?

This is gonna sound weird, but I think it actually happens when you either go into a job or get hired. Like, you have to trust the leadership, and you have to trust the people that you're working for. When I. When I came into bz, one of the big things was it wasn't just about the job anymore. It's about the leadership. Like, I really wanted to go into an organization where I, one, had a seat at the table, but two, I could be like, it could. You could be trusted. And then once you're in there, the small wins end up with political capital. So you end up with these chips of political capital that you can spend, and then it aligns to the risk. So going back to the last question, how do you get to define where your calculated risk is? Like, how many chips do I want? Maybe I have 10 chips of political that I've gained from closing a deal or implementing something. And then I say, okay, I'm willing to take that in, but take that piece of chip and push it in for political capital. And then if I win, then I get the pot. And if I. But if I go all in, like, because I'm a big poker guy, like, if I go all in, then, you know, I gotta be willing to lose it all as well.

I love that analogy. It's the first time I've heard it. So we're gonna talk about this a little bit. Political capital and, like, political chips. I love this. And I. Because my team knows this too. I love analogies and, like, visuals. And you can picture that, like, okay, I've earned up some chips. I've earned up some chips. I'm going to put a portion in, right? Not all of it, but I'm going to put a portion in. So talk to me a little bit like how you earn those chips. Because, funny enough, and I've made this mistake too, right? You get to learn through experience. You know, I've had leaders, like, move on over time to new companies and new roles. And that's the first advice I give them is like, your first 90 really is about building relationships. I wish I'D had this analogy before, but like, building these relationships and connections in those first 90s is not necessary to come in and fix things right away because you don't have that equity built up with everybody. So how do you earn those political chips that you can hopefully cash in later or test, you know, room for error, things like that?

Yeah, it is experience. And my early leadership days, I went in like a bowl in the china shop and like smashing stuff around and not knowing what I was doing. And then I was in a negative, a negative chip hold. Before I even knew it, I was buying back in. But I think the way you do it is just small wins, like finding out when you're going into a new organization or you're trying to get the political capital, what do the other people need in the organization? It's just like a sale. You utilize your internal relationship just like you would an external relationship. And the problem that most salespeople and or leaders have is they treat the internal people different than they treat the external people. And everyone in the company has something they're trying to accomplish or go for. So find those personal wins, start checking off the boxes, and then you'll start getting political capital. People trust you to be trustworthy. It's weird when you go into organizations. Some people give trust and then take it away and some people give you trust in the beginning and then if you lose it, you can't re earn it. And so I think you have to understand those people. And funny enough, I learned this early. Early in my college career, I realized that if I had really good teachers, it didn't matter what the subject was. Like I could love math, but if my teacher wasn't good, then I wasn't going to do good in the class. Like I'd get a C or D or whatever. But if I didn't even like the classic, if I didn't like history, but I had a really good teacher and I was like engaged and understood what the monetary the world was then I did really good in it. So when I would pick classes in college, I would always pick the classes that had the best teachers or had the best, like almost yelp for teachers, right? Like who are the best teachers in the organization? So I kind of bring that analogy into the work world. And it's just been recently that I've understood because I'm a big sucker for great technology. Like, oh, AI this or hey, this is, this is going to be the next big trend. What I'm realizing as I get more experience, I won't Say older. As I get more experience, I realize it's all about the leadership. Because it doesn't matter how great your technology is or how great, you know, certain processes are. If you don't have good leadership in the organization and you can't, you can't balance or bounce ideas off of people and have a voice, if you can't have a voice upward, then it's really, it's going to be really difficult to gain political capital.

No, and I think that's a phenomenal way to think about it because it is. Like you can try to sell anything, right? There's a lot of great products out there to be sold, but if you're not on the right team, you don't have the right leadership. It's something that bothers me the most truthfully about the sales industry is I think we lose a lot of great people because their first teacher was a bad one. And if they had just gotten in with someone like you or someone like a Scott, someone like myself, like, we do care, we do try to do things that can change their career, but we lose good people because they didn't get that first good teacher. And it just, just drives me nuts.

It does. Like, I'm like on a mission. Because there's two things right as sales leaders. The problem is we never really got formally taught. I never got formally taught. I didn't get formally taught sales like I did. I did business and then I did entrepreneurship and I just like sales. Like, you're selling all the time. My daughter, I have a 15 and a 12 year old. They're selling to me all the time. So sales is inherent in everything you do. But when you get to the leadership perspective, being a parent really teaches you you gotta guide people without forcing things down their throat. And no one, there's not enough good sales training or methodology or people don't take it. It's really difficult. So I am definitely on a mission to try to figure out how to scale and help. I know Scott's done a lot of stuff. I know you done a lot of stuff. I listen to Amy talk about just, you know, being empathetic and listening and understanding. So I think, you know, I do a lot of mentorship stuff and one of my mentors, I was in one of the groups and I was mentoring this, this woman and she was young and she said to me, she said, I don't know if sales is for me, I don't really like this company. And as she went on, I'm like, let's just give it one more shot. I said, let's do one more shot. And we, we connected her with Chili Piper and she's killing it. Like, she just like, there's a process, there's a foundation, there's like. And she's just like, super happy. And it's like, that's the kind of stuff that you have to figure out early on. And like you said, like, if you don't have a good mentor, you don't have someone good to train you. And there's a lot of old school salespeople that just like, oh, let me see how many dials you're doing, or let me help. Like, it's all an activity thing. It's like, but what are the results? Like, I'm all for transactions. I'm all for doing activity. Like, my top three things as a sales leader is, do you grind? Because I can't instill grinding in you. Like, either. Like, I'm a big Eric Thomas fan and like, thank God it's money. Like, you got, like, that's either in you or it's not. And then the second one is like, can you sell with integrity? Because I don't care where you go or what you do, you're not going to stay where you are forever. And, and can you live with yourself at night when you go to sleep? And then the third one is just coachability. Like, are you coachable? Because I know I have a lot to learn. I have to be coached all the time. I'm always into learning. That's why I do these kinds of things. That's why I just joined up with Justin Welsh and his audience and income group. Like, you gotta get. You always have to be learning. And the time you stop learning, it's just like, it's not good.

No, it's. It's everything. It really is. Like, being passionate about it, I think also drives it too. Like, funny enough, we. I had. This is a couple months ago now, got lunch and drinks with a pretty solid group of people. So, like Scott Britton over at Troops Max from sales, Hacker. Who else was there? Dunlap was there. Carolyn Betts was there myself. Like, we go and like, we have a lunch and we were there. We played pickleball and had drinks and talked for almost five hours. And all we talked about with sales and scaling and learning and challenging each other, it was just, it's one of my favorite experiences. And I think people, they don't understand, like, the passion a lot of us have for what we do that is fun for us to talk About. Right. And having that desire to continue to get better and be challenged by people, I think is everything. Because, like, sales is changing. Right. The markets are changing, the teams are changing. Right. Like, the SDRs that I'm hiring today are different than the SDRs I was hiring 10 years ago. My AES are different, who we're selling to. And I think a lot of things have. Have changed. And you actually mentioned it, you know, kind of as we were getting ready for the podcast. Are you talking about, like, the sales economy? Right. And, like, how rapidly it's changing there?

A little bit.

Talk to me a little bit. Like, what are you seeing and feeling in terms of the change that sales is going through? Cause you get these two camps. Like, people like, sales has changed so much. Other people, like, sales is still the same. It's still just people, like, solve a problem. You're like, oh, okay. Because it's that easy. Right. So talk to me a little about, like, what you're seeing in terms of the changes with the reps, the buyers, the industry, and kind of what you're potentially doing about it.

Yeah. First of all, I'm coming down to Austin where we play some pickleball. So, yes, when I moved down to Florida, like, I was like, what's this sport that's like half ping pong, half like, like Wiffle ball? It's like, weird stuff, but it's serious business.

Yeah.

Personally, I think I, in my head is always changing faster than it really is because I see it, I see things a little bit differently. And I feel like every six to 12 months, you gotta, like, look at your ICP. I think you gotta look at, you know, the market you're going after. Like, should we verticalize? Should we not verticalize? Like, do we go back horizontally? Um, you know, even mission statements. I'm not saying you change your mission statement all the time, but what's your differentiator? Like, what? I listen to pitches all day long and I'm like, can you just tell me, like, in seven to 10 words why you're different than, like, everybody else in the market? Like, I don't care about all the other stuff. Like, okay, you're the best since sliced bread. But it's like, what makes you different than everybody else? So I think, I think social media in general has created this, like, instant gratification thing for buyers as well. So the consumer market has, like, really pushed in the enterprise market. You know, I do a lot of big company stuff, but I still think there's, like, this part of instant Gratification that people are wanting. And so you got to kind of serve it to them like before. And this is like way back in the day, but people had to come to you. Now, they, they. And this has been this way for five years now. So it's not anything new. But I think the way people are getting information with AI through, you know, IG and Facebook, like, things are getting served up to them based on their preference and they don't even know it. Like, people getting marketed to, they don't even know they're getting marketed to. And so I think in the software world, in the SaaS world, we have to think about marketing in that same way. Like, how do you almost subliminally let people know that they may need what you have? And trying to get people. I always like. People talk about a needle in a haystack. I always think about, I have to find the green pin in a stack of pins and I'm colorblind, so how the hell am I gonna do that and try to work backwards from there? So it changes all the time. I think it's gonna be even more rapidly evolving going forward because as more millennials flush into market, they're into instant gratification. I was Talking to my 15 year old the other day, we were walking around the neighborhood and she's like, I didn't have my phone until I was 8 or 9 or whatever. But my cousins, they're 3 and 4 and they have their iPads and phones, they going to be like. And so I just think it's, it's, it's going to be a, it's just going to change even more rapidly.

And I think that. And you touched on there briefly and something I encourage a lot of people to do is you need to study generations. You need to study how generations are different. What is different between Z and Y, millennial and X, and knowing where your buyer falls in that, how they've been marketed to for the. This is why I think PLG is starting to come so much. Like, because the, the millennial group coming up, and I'm on like the very, very outskirts end of that millennial group. We, we got free trials, right? That's what we got as a consumer. So once all of us as consumers are now business buyers, we expect the same thing. And I think that's where we're starting to see this shift. Shift, you know, in the market even all the way up into some enterprise companies is like, hey, you get to actually try that product out. And I think we're Going to see that continue in a lot of ways, because that does become a differentiator. I'm selling something, you're selling something. They get to try yours and get some impact. They have to buy mine to get the impact. Yeah, one of those is going to win in the long run if you've got a good product. And so I'm watching that very closely. Like, that's where I've been building out some of my mentorships and advisors is in that world and going, okay, I see this. I think this might be because it's what. It makes sense for humans. It makes sense for us as buyers, and so be very, very interesting. Very interesting to see how it all plays out.

And I think in general, one of the things. And as I go through companies and companies, like, people are so focused on the sales process, but everyone forgets about the buying process. I don't get it. Like, as a sales leader, like, I don't. Yes, my sales process is important internally, but the more and more, as we expand out, it's more of the buying process. Like, do you understand the buying process? What's the next steps? Who needs to sign off? And inevitably, 80% of the time, whoever you ask, like, they don't even know. Or they make something up. Like, I'd rather someone tell me, I don't know, and I got to go find out. And then you make them look smart. And that's good because you get these people that are like, just make up the buying process, and you're in the middle of it and you're telling your board directors, oh, yeah, we're going to close this big deal. Next steps are this, next steps are that. And then you get to the next steps, and they're like, oh, yeah, we got to go through a committee. And like, what just happened to the other thing? So I get people to write down the buying process a lot. Because people, this isn't always true. I don't like this statement, but I think it's happening more and more. Like, buyers are just like. I'd say buyers are liars. But the problem with that is that intentionally, they're not really trying to do it, but they're trying to guard themselves. They're trying to protect what they have to get an okay negotiation space or whatever. But by definition, sometimes they're not really telling the truth on what the whole process is. They'll tell you, I'll tell you three quarters of the process, and then the rest of it is the important part.

Well, and salespeople forget this Too. We sell the product all year long. They buy it all once.

Yeah, they don't even know.

They don't even know what the process is. Right. And then they go to buy and they go, oh, wait, legal has to get involved. Oh wait, I need a sales engineer to set. Like they don't even. Because they're buying it once, maybe ever. And I think as reps, we forget that they buy your product or something like it maybe, maybe three times in their entire career. Yeah, right. You've been in the game. You've been in the game. How many times have you bought a different sales engagement tool, like an outreach, a sales loft? Like, how many times are you buying something different like that in your entire career?

No, and even if I did, it would be like the same one. Unfortunately, like, I don't even. Like, you get used to it, which is part of the problem, which goes back to the failure part.

Right.

So I've seen too much failure on not mapping the buying processes. So then I start templatizing. Let's templatize the buying process. And then I don't care what our sales process is. Yes, we need verifiable outcomes. We go through the stages, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But you tell me what your customers are telling you. And I actually, because I failed a lot in this particular place, I actually map it past the close date. So I map it to value. So when are you going to get value, Mr. Customer? Okay, you want value in December 2021? Well, we have to map back to the implementation or like what the discovery part is and how we're gonna get you to value. Because if you go to close, like, then it's a close plan. And then people are like, it's about you. It's not about me. And so I failed way too much in the buying process to not make sure that we're doing the buying process right. It's hard. Every buying process is different.

So buying process is different. Company, company is different. Even for the same product, it's different. Like all those things are there. And you mentioned you kind of, you know, you failed at some of these things over time. Like, so this is a, kind of a two part question. How do you make sure you're learning from failure?

Right.

How do you actually make sure you're getting some takeaways, but also how do you bounce back? Because failure hurts failure. Like it's an ego hit. You look bad, you got egg on your face. How do you bounce them back? Unfazed. Right. And keep going with those Lessons. Because sometimes people do. They learn from a lesson, but then they never take a risk again because they're like, well, that sucked. I don't want to do it. So kind of two parts there. How do you learn then? How do you bounce back?

Yeah, I think you. It's funny because we're just going through something. One of my reps going through something similar right now. And I. When I talk to him, I'm like, are you okay?

He.

He's like, yeah, I'm okay. And then I talked to him, like, the next day. He's like, oh, I'm really pissed off. I'm really mad. So it's almost like you have to go through, like, loss. Like, you have to. You have to go through all the emotions of. And mourn it. Like, almost mourn the loss. Like, mourn the failure. Like, you got to mourn it. You got to feel it. You got to get in that emotion. Like, and this is something that I struggle with for a long time.

Like, you got to get in it.

But then, like, okay, once you go through those emotions and you sit in them for a while, you're like, I don't want to sit in this emotion anymore. Like, I'm sitting in pissed. Like, that's not helping me. Or I'm sitting in, like, I'm losing my commission check. I don't want to sit in that so much. And then, so once you get out of that, you're like, okay, but then you got to put it behind you. Like, that failure does not define you. That failure is there to learn. Someone I posted something recently, and someone wrote down. I wrote down, failure stands for first attempt in learning. So as an as. As a. As an acronym type of thing. And I think that makes a lot of sense where if you continue to go back and, like, live it in the past, like, you're gonna, like, keep beating yourself up, and you won't take any more risks. So that part of it and then the second part, which is. What was the second part?

So you kind of have the bounce back. But, like, how. So it's like, how to learn, right? So it's like taking. Because I think it's important because people, they'll fail, but they won't take that step back and say, what did I learn? What did I actually learn here? Versus, like, oh, that was a failure. The other part is, how do you bounce back? Like, how. You know, you go through the cycles of the emotions, but then you get back on that horse.

I think the tricky part on the. On the Figuring out how to. How you, like, what to learn about it sometimes, as I said, it may be a year later, it may be five years later. Some of my failures, like, I got fired early in my career, and I was like, this sucks. And I was young, and I was like, I didn't get it. And I was pissed for years. And I, like, always had a vendetta and, like, voodoo dolls and stuff. I'm like, what is going on? Like, I don't get it. And then, like, five years later, I got another job that, like, it then clicked for me. But then I had gratitude for the failure. Like. Like, for so long, I held onto it. And then at that point, when I realized what it was about, I had gratitude for it. And then from that point on, I realized that my failures. I may not be able to understand why it's happening today, but at some point down the road, I'm going to figure it out, and I'm going to be grateful. So I must have started at gratitude today, because if not, I just spent five years of my life being pissed off for no reason at all.

And I think that's important because you mentioned, I think, a really key aspect that is to look back with gratitude versus looking back with disdain. Right. Because if we always look back and, like, it's not like, the woe is me, but we look back at everything negative versus, like, hey, what did I learn? All right, cool. And do you eventually. And I like how you called this out, because I think it's important. You got to fail a few times before you can recognize a pattern. And it's that pattern recognition, truthfully, I think is one of the things that has helped me in my career the most, is being able to pick up on patterns early. And often. This seems to be a pattern either with myself or, wait, it happened to me. It also happened to Dale, also happened to Scott, also happened to Justin. That's a pattern. Maybe I don't have to experience it five times. If all five of us have experienced it. Okay, lesson learned. Move on to the next one. I used to tell my managers this all the time. I was like, if we're gonna make mistakes, let's make new ones. Yeah. Yep.

And I knew mistakes. I think that's where mentors really come in. Like, I'm super high on mentors right now and mentorship. I have an executive coach like, I like, and I've been in the game for a long time, but I think it's super important. The best athletes in the world, LeBron James, that dude's got coach, he got tons of coaches. What makes us think as like VPs or sales leaders, that we don't need someone to help coach us or we don't need someone to bounce ideas off of. And you know, I push back on that for a long time. And I think the other thing that that does as mentors or coaches, when you fail, they can be like super transparent with you. Like, they can put the mirror up because they've earned your trust. And they'd be like, look it, you failed at that. It really sucks. But, you know, here's something you may want to take out of it. And so if you get a good coach or you get a good mentor, they can help you through that mourning process a lot faster and you can get through it. However, I do warn, just because it happened to a mentor or a coach, you're a different person. And I've learned this through my children. I want to do for them versus guide them sometimes. And then I catch myself and be like, okay, they have to do it themselves. I can't do it for them. And I think that helps you as well.

That's a great call out because, I mean, I'm sure you get hit up for mentorship all the time. I get hit up all the time. And it's like, look, all I can give you is like my experience. It doesn't mean it's the same for you. You are a different person with different values, with different skill sets at a different company, in a different market, with a different product, with different leadership. Like, all of those are variables. And it's like, we can only give our advice there, but then it is up to you to implement measure. And I think the key to a good mentor or coach is be able to notice the small details, right? Like, I talk about this with my managers all the time. I don't want you to be micro managers, but I need you to be micro aware. What are the small. What are the small details that add up? And you had a post on this about some. Like, the small details can make a big difference, right? Like culturally, at a company with a product or a process, like, what are some of the small details that people tend to miss, right? Like if we think about hiring or taking a product to market, like, what are some of the small things people tend to not pay attention to that they should?

I think that's what makes great salespeople or great leaders is like the small, like the obvious stuff is always there. What are the things that you're missing? Or what, like I always encourage my team. Like, if you think our pricing's off or you think something's happening and you need something different for this customer, come tell me. I want to know. I'll go fight for you. My job is to remove barriers inside the organization. My job isn't to ask you, are you going to close this deal? When you're going to close this deal, how many calls do you do? That's not my job. My job is to take your input, understand, help you through the process and. And then remove barriers internally so you can get business done. That's. That's the way I feel. My job is, yes, I'll do the other pieces to it, and we'll coach through those things. But, you know, you need to be able to do your job without having the fear that you can't take a risk. Like, I feel like part of my job is to allow people to take risks.

Yes. Which.

Then you got to go build those political capital again.

So, you know, they got to build their chips up. You got to put them in. Speaking like, I love the poker analogies. Did you read Thinking in Bets by any Duke?

No. I'll have to read that, though.

You would. You would love that book. Absolutely love that book, because it talks a lot about, like, analyzing decisions and how the outcome does not determine whether the decision was right. Because the outcome, even if it's a 70%. It works 70% of the time. 30% still. It doesn't. Is it the wrong decision from. It's by Annie Dukes. She was World World of Poker. So you'll. You'll love that.

Oh, yeah, I have to. I'll have to look through that because I'm a big Malcolm Gladwell fan and he's all about numbers and. Oh.

So, hey, then, you might want to peep this one out. The data detective. Oh, man. You might want to. You might want to peep this one. I'm really, really enjoying that read right now, but I'm not. I got two questions left for you. I didn't realize we've already been riffing for, like, 35 minutes. Like, this went fast. So got two final questions for you. So the first one, we just call, like, the big three, right? We've talked about failure and culture and hiring and kind of like that, that mindset. What would the three key. If you. If everyone forgot everything except for three things about what you've talked about today, what would those three key takeaways be?

Take risks. Like, don't be afraid to take risks. Don't take them Personally. So take risks. Don't take them personally. Don't, like, allow your ego to take over, like, the understanding of the learning part of it. And then the last one is like, just like mourning. Go through that emotional piece of it. Because once you go through the emotional piece, put it behind you and move forward. Like, don't live in. Don't live in the despair part of it. Always try to find something positive out of it and then. And then have positivity through gratitude. Like, gratitude for me has always been. It's taken me. It took me 40 plus years to understand it. But if someone was to ask me what I would tell my younger self, start with gratitude.

I mean, it's a perfect segue to the last question, right? Because the name of the podcast is Live Better Sell Better. I have this weird idea that if we took better care of ourselves, if we got more joy and energy and excitement from our lives and we really lived better, the sales would improve as well. So what would your Live better advice be for people listening?

Yeah, I think it's being coachable. You know, the other things, I think you're. Some of them, you're born with, like, the grind, that kind of stuff. But just be coachable. Because if I was more coachable as I was younger, I would have understood that gratitude would help. So I think, you know, being grateful would have been. Would have been one of them. But I think if I was more coachable earlier and didn't get my ego in the middle of it so fast, I would have been. It would have been faster for me to get here. Can it happen? I see people do it all the time, but I think it just. I think it would be being coachable.

I think coachable falls right into that passion for learning and wanting to get better, right? Of, like, really valuing that. So this was awesome, man. Like, we got to go down some rabbit holes. I was pumped for. I was like, all right, this is gonna be good stuff here. So where can people get more of you? Where can they follow you, connect with you? Where are you putting content out? How can people get more Dale in their life?

Most of it is LinkedIn. Right now I am building out a website called the Sales Change Agent. I've been kind of on and off on that, so I got to get back kind of putting that together. So. Yeah, but LinkedIn, you know, come hit me up. I love engagement. Like, I don't give a shit. Like, don't like it if you don't want to talk to me. Like, but. But if you're going to put a comment, like, put something good. Let's riff on LinkedIn. Because I love the engagement part of it. And, you know, a lot of people ask me, you know, how are you writing your content? I'm like, it's just what's happening in my life on a daily basis. Like, I have enough content on a daily basis. I can just write stuff. So if you see me write something, it's probably something that either happened like a week ago or could have happened the day before.

Half the time. Some of the advice I'm giving is for myself, right? I'm reminding myself, like, oh, yeah, I need to be doing this. I should probably share it because that holds me accountable to it. So, man, I really want to know.

Like, or, like, I want feedback from the community. I'm like, yeah, that's the beauty.

That's like, that's why I did all this, is why how this. All this also went way beyond anything I ever imagined. When I started posting on LinkedIn. This was never the end goal of it all. I wanted two things. I wanted access to people smarter than me, and I wanted people to want to work. That was it. And if I felt like people at least knew who I was, then I could hit up smarter people and be like, hey, I'm struggling with this. What do you think? And then be able to share that with my team, which would then feed the funnel there. So, my man, this was amazing. Definitely not a failure of an episode. This was good stuff, dude. I appreciate you, appreciate your energy and insights, and we will be in touch again soon.

Definitely. I'm coming down to Austin. Play pickleball.

Let's go, my man. Let's do it.

All right, bye.