Overcoming the Nerves and Anxiety of Going Through Career and Business Changes with Glenn Hopper

Welcome to this episode of the Million Dollar Mastermind. I'm Larry Weddell. And before we get started, if you want to know exactly how to win again and Again, go to wydellonwinning.comwebinar now to watch something I've put together for you. Now let's get going into this episode of Million Dollar Mastermind. I'm here with Glenn Hopper. He's in Nashville today, and we're talking about winning. And he has a unique background in coming at winning because he started off with the idea of journalism, of writing, wanted to be a novel, a novelist. He got in the military and from one thing led to another, got into sales, which a lot of us do, but became the numbers guy, became the finance guy, and now he is chief financial officer at Sandline. And I'll let him explain about that. But welcome, Glenn, and let's talk about how you transitioned out of what was the transition out of the military like? Because transitions can make or break people.

That is a great question, Larry. So the transition, I'm not going to lie, I was very nervous, very nervous time in my life. And it was you. We talked about people making decisions based on fear. And if you make decisions based on fear, you're not going to be able to survive these transitions. So when I got out of the Navy, it was 1999, and that was at the end of the sort of dot com era. We were about to roll into the bust. So there were all these tech companies that I was looking at that I wanted to get out and go work for. And when I got out of the Navy, I put out, no exaggeration, over 200 resumes. This is the early days of Monster.com and some of the earliest time where you were applying for jobs online rather than in person. And was just I had a couple of months of terminal leave saved up, so I was getting a paycheck. But I had a young family back then. Son, my son was on the way, and we were not sure where I was going to go. And we just knew it was time to make the next move. So after several months and several resumes out, I finally got to a point where I had two job offers. And it was what I decided here would really set the path for the rest of my life. And one of the job offers was to work at an ad agency, a very creative role. And the other was to go to a telecommunications startup as a marketing guy and to be a product manager. The ad agency job sounded a lot cooler. It was the kind of place back then that you know, had ping pong tables and bring your dog to work and all that and you know, the espresso bar and you know, drinks in the office on Friday. So it was very appealing. But there was something about this startup telecom company where they called all the employees partners. You got equity and, and you got to feel like you were, and you got to be a part of building something. And so I turned away from the really cool sounding job that would have been short term fun and focused more on the more the corporate grind. I mean it was a startup but it was still, there was, they were growing fast enough and there was enough backing behind them that it got corporate pretty quickly and but ultimately that's what set me on the path for one startup to another and it's sort of established my career to this point.

And so as you got into that new position, how did you navigate, what was your thinking? What did you talk to yourself about that would allow you to get successful, be successful, meet the right people, get yourself in the right position and then continue to move up?

I think the focus that I had was I was product manager for a web based product that the, it was called the web Architect. And this is, this is in 2000. So it's a tool that is commonplace now but back then it was pretty revolutionary. But the product was, it was like WIX or Word Space or any of these website builders basically. And so the idea was we would sell telecommunication services to a company and they would also get this website builder so they could put their company website up. And I was, I'm not a developer but I've always been sort of interested in it and I don't think I'd ever make a living writing code, but I know enough to be dangerous. And when I started this job as the product manager, the first thing I did it was like getting a car and looking under the hood and wanting to see how it works. So I wanted to know all the programming that went behind it and, and all the behind the scenes. So I really. And that was unusual for someone in marketing to try to get that technical. So I think the way I differentiated myself was to not just say, oh, here's the pretty stuff that's on the front. This is what we do with it. I wanted to get under it and find out how it works. And that sort of ingratiated me with the developers and made me sort of a strange bird in the marketing group. And when you're fighting for limited resources, the fact that I could go in to the developers, talk to Them speak their language and tell them what I wanted. And I did it a couple of times or I even would mock up something for them just in my sort of limited PHP skills or whatever I was using back then. And it really, by doing that and having this common interest with these developers who, a lot of times when marketers came and talked to them, it was like they were speaking in a different language where I was speaking the same language as them. I was able to get my product over the other products in the company. I ended up able to deal more developer time and develop my product quickly, which led to. And I wasn't being fake with them, I was being honest. But by understanding what they do and befriending them, I was able to develop my product quicker than some of the other product managers were with other products. So that really got me to understand that no matter what your role is, keep diving deeper and understand who the people are that are making it happen and appreciate how hard they work and communicate directly with them rather than just taking for granted that you have this tool or system or whatever it is that just works.

And so I like the way you say that. Keep, you know, if we were going to have a chapter on that, it would be keep diving deeper. Don't just learn the job. What I'm supposed to do, shuffle paper, move this out, but go deeper. Why are we doing this? How does that work? And how quick did it come to you to take that approach once you got your feet on the ground, you.

Know, it was, there's no, it wasn't like I was, you know, doing some political move where I was trying to befriend these people for, to get benefits from them. It just came naturally. I think having that intellectual curiosity is where it starts. And if you're curious and not lazy, whatever your job is, you don't just. If, you know, if you're on an assembly line and your job is to put the handle on the door on a car, you know, and you don't ever look beyond putting the handle on the door on the car. If you don't step back and see the whole forest rather than the individual trees, well, you're never going to move up and you're not going to be open for. You're not going to understand what's going on. So no one's going to ever tap you to move up because you become, you could be the best person in the world at putting the handle on the door on the assembly line. But if that's the case, then no one's ever going to let you leave because that, you know, that's what they see you as doing. But whereas if you ask why you have that intellectual curiosity, you look at the bigger picture. That's the kind of people, they want to move up into management. And.

That causes you to wonder, what are we doing here? We winning or losing? What are the numbers? What's important? And that turns you into a numbers person. I'm going to tell you something I found in my career in financial services. Usually the computer guys are over in another building or another wing. And I was always a numbers guy, you know, because I had the thing where more than anybody in that I know, I believe that you grow or die. And when I started in financial services, I spent nine months transitioning out of construction and I was tapped out. You know, I'd been on food stamps and unemployment because I never wanted to do the daisy chain of job to job to job. I wanted to do the research, find the company where I could go beyond, you know, be financially independent and have my, you know, security, you know, have my own thing. And people couldn't pull the rug out from under me like in the military. And you'll relate to this. My number one thing was, well, number one, I wanted to make more money. You couldn't military. But the other thing is that I didn't want to be vulnerable like my dad was, to where somebody in the Pentagon could type a letter and send it to us and move us somewhere around the world any day of the year. I just despise that, you know, because there goes my friends, there goes my, you know, and now I'm, now I've got the nausea and nervousness like you go through a changing job. But kid, you know, kids don't like that. And so, so I was always numbers oriented once I got involved in the business because, you know, the idea is if, if you can do one, you can do 10. It's just a matter of time and getting your efficiencies and skills down. If you can do 10, you can do 100. But the idea is keep your momentum so you grow and you don't have to slump back. And also I believe slumps and death comes a whole lot faster than life. Life and living and growth. Growth takes forever, but death can come very quickly. You know, you can cut down. You can cut down 100-year-old oak tree in 10 minutes. And so I was always very maniacal about the numbers, you know, and from the first day of the month because you only have 30 days in a Month. And that month, you're either going to grow or die over the last, you know, the last one. And so I drove the home office nuts and I asked for so many reports. Finally I went in and I did. I went over and it turned out now this is an organization of 100,000 people. I went over and went in the building. This is the early 90s. I went in the building where the computer people were, and they treated me like Marco Polo going to China. You know, it's like, we've heard your name, we see your name on reports, and this, that, the other. It's kind of like, you know, I've never seen ears. That's what ears look like. You know, it was. And I became their buddy. And here's what I learned. The same thing you learned. The tech guys are the Green Berets of the corporate world. They're the special forces folks. Get to know them if you want, and they're overloaded. That everybody who comes up, from the CEO down who comes up with a project, a game plan, a contest, a new expansion or this, that the other, they go to the tech guys to get the numbers and the details and the data they need. And so those guys are like, I guess, a detective unit at the police force where they've got 73 murders to work through. And then all of a sudden you want them to work on yours. It's like, get in line, you know, and so. But if you're their buddy, you go to the head of the line. And I had the same thing. I had the same thing that I would get my stuff done quicker than the CEO would get his stuff done because he wouldn't know what their workload is or what they were working on. And, you know, he wouldn't know that they moved me in front of him. They just hadn't gotten his stuff out yet, you know, and it was hysterical to me how that worked. But what a valuable piece of information. I don't think I've ever shared that with, you know, on the podcast before. But I tell you, though, do you agree. Elaborate on that. Elaborate on that for me?

Yeah, I mean, it's. Think about it. If anyone. If you're in a role and people don't understand what you do and they come to you and ask you for something and they do it in a condescending way or in a dismissive way that they don't care how, you know, how hard it is. It seems easy to them because, you know, they might as well be type in a Google search and Hit Enter. And they don't know what happens behind the scenes. They just are waiting for whatever the browser returns to them. So when you, and you had a very good point about how overworked the engineers and the developers are and they really are, because you think about like our jobs, if you're not in that development world, you kind of, you have your routine things that you do, and it's easy to get into a rut and into a rhythm with that. But developers, I mean the backlog and the requests from all the other business units are non ending. And so they just are constantly looking at this wall of new work that's coming in and they've got competing priorities and they've only got so many hours in a day and they've got the CEO telling them this is your priority, the CTO telling them this is your priority, CFO telling them something different. And then, and nobody's even asking them how they're, how they're doing, how they're feeling, what they need. They're just dumping everything into this backlog and expecting results. So if you can talk to them and you can truly empathize with them because you may not you, you can't develop maybe as well as they can, but you understand the nature of what they're doing. And if somebody wants to make some change to some website or whatever, that it's not as simple as just drag and drop from one place. There's other stuff that goes behind it. So it's really about that intellectual curiosity. And anyone who is a customer of yours or a provider of stuff to you, the better you can understand their needs and where they are, the better you're going to, the relationship is going to be with them.

Yeah. And if you appreciate them in detail, they will appreciate you. And that relates to even giving compliments, you know, a compliment like you're a great guy or you're, you're, you know, just in general, you're just special, you know, what does that mean? But if you talk it and tailor it to like, I like the way you handle that situation, you know, I learned something from listening to how you answered that question. I like that. Can I use that? You know, now that becomes a compliment or you know, positive statement that will, you know, they'll carry with them, you know, and they won't look at it, just endless flattery. And so it relates to that type attitude relates to so many things. And I want to wrap up this thing with getting you to just, I'll repeat it and get you to make A comment about it is like when you focus on the big picture and you dial into those things and learn what makes that happen and you make it up your mind, you're asking questions about that, you've got an interest in it, you become the kind of person that the people that are running your company want to move up and you're telling me that as somebody who is now CEO of a company and you know, these things don't happen by accident. I mean there's certain people with certain mindset and interests and drives that do things cause them to do the things that cause them to get the nod or to be the ones to start their own business and things like that. Would you like you have a comment to make about that before we move on?

Yeah, I guess the last comment on it would be it's about having a meta awareness of where you are, where the organization is. So it's if you think about all of us as we coast through life, everybody, we're all having our unique experience. And so in this experience I could be seeing one thing and the person sitting right next to me could be seeing something different based on our past experiences. So if you're just laser focused on your experience in the world and you don't understand or appreciate what's going on around you, then you're not going to be great at interacting with other people. You're certainly not going to be great at leading other people. So I think it's just all about knowing what you do, what you contribute and where that fits in the overall scheme. And that's whether it's in a family situation, at sports team situation or a company or the military, what is my role, what do I contribute and how do I help people up and down the line from me to do their job. And we're all moving together. So I think it's just really about taking that focus away from the just narrow, just the only path is the path that I see ahead of me, right.

And the things that I do or that's the only thing that matters, you know, as long as I do my job, you know. But you know, if you're a soldier in a war and you do a great job of your project, but then you wind up losing the war, you know, it's just like there are bigger, bigger things. You know, it's just like Patton running out of gas and they're not going to give him gas during World War II. It's just like he didn't like it, but he has a sense to realize we got a war here, and my division or unit or whatever is not the only one. And you know, even at that level, you have to adapt. And so thanks so much. Can't wait to get going again. If you enjoyed what you've heard and are dead serious about finding out for yourself exactly how this works in the real world, I've taken the most valuable business lessons I've learned over 40 years and put them into something for you to watch. Go to Whiteellumwinning.com webinar now in order to move up as fast as possible. I'm Larry Widell, and I run the Million Dollar Mastermind. Go, go, go.