In this concise interview, Professor Pete Alexander hosts Sam Gupta, a veteran ERP consultant and co‑founder of ElevateIQ. Sam outlines his 20‑year career that began with programming, transitioned into ERP consulting for manufacturers and distributors, and culminated in launching the ElevateIQ startup and the WBS ROCKS community. He shares why ERP implementations, especially warehouse barcode automation, bring visible joy to users. Sam argues that most professionals lack sales and people skills, recommending Toastmasters to develop them. He emphasizes the power of being a "super connector" on LinkedIn to lower sales and marketing costs. He suggests two fellow leaders—Robert Johnson and Inger Van Ruij—as future podcast guests. Finally, Sam recounts his first job counting money in his family’s distribution business, highlighting early exposure to finance. Listeners are directed to find Sam on LinkedIn and Twitter via his name and the ElevateIQ/WBS ROCKS tags.
Chapters
This is Professor Pete Alexander with the Winning at Business and Life podcast, where business leaders share their insights. It is 6 questions in 7 minutes because successful business leaders are busy and rarely have more time to spare. So let's get to it. Question number 1: In a few sentences, please tell me who you are and what you do.
Hey, Pete, thank you so much for having me. First of all, I'm Sam Gupta, and I'm part of an organization called ElevateIQ. I have spent roughly 20 years doing ERP consulting. And for folks, those might not be familiar with what an ERP is, it's the, the large system that manufacturers, distributors, and retailers use to be able to process their transactions, to be able to run their operations and finance in a nutshell. So I have had a very dramatic journey. Typically in the ERP world, it's going to be slightly more dramatic, I don't know, Pete Alexander, what kind of audience you have. They might not be able to follow the kind of jokes that we have in the ERP community, to be honest. But my journey was slightly dramatic because I started as a programmer. And typically ERP consultants don't start as a programmer. So I did a little bit of programming towards the beginning. So I got this deeper perspective into problems. I can analyze problems at a very deep level. But after that, I spent a lot of time in the business community in doing the ERP consulting. Typically ERP means accounting, finance, a little bit of supply chain, that stuff. Then roughly around 2012, I started doing a lot more startup and ElevateIQ is the most successful startup that we have, which is in the ERP business. Then we have the WBS ROCKS community as well, which is the podcast, it's the community, it's happy hour. That's about me.
Well, wonderful. And Sam, it's an absolute pleasure to have you on the show. Question number 2: What is something that makes you smile and/or laugh about working in your industry?
So yeah, the smile, uh, you know, part I'm going to take because, uh, typically when we look at these ERP system implementation, most of the time when you go through the implementation, nobody really laughs because— and the reason for that is because they just don't know what they are getting into. Right? The amount of workload it is going to have, the amount of frustration it is going to have as part of the ERP implementation, that's just natural, right? But once you implement that, once you start utilizing the ERP, that's where the real smile comes. That's where they see the value. And typically the smile is going to be, let's say, I don't know whether you have seen those barcode scanner or not, uh, in the warehouses. So if you don't have an ERP system, what is going to happen is you have to punch in these numbers and it could be very hard for for the warehouse workers. Obviously they are going to make a lot of mistakes. They have to, let's say, make a lot of round trip right inside the warehouse. So it's very time consuming for them. It's a very manual effort. So they really smile when they can do these things using newer devices, using the barcode readers, using the machines in more in the automated fashion. They are not gonna have as much conflict in the team. They are not gonna have as much chaos in the team. So I love seeing that smile after the ERP implementation.
Great story there. Thank you for that. Question number 3: I have a fictitious book with all the answers for business. What chapter would you think most companies should read?
In my opinion, and I have argued about this, one of the missing skills in most people is going to be sales skills. Okay. And I think the chapter that everybody should be reading is going to be the sales skills. Now, when I talk about sales skills, I'm not I'm not talking about pushy sales skill, and I think we were joking about this one in the pre-show, but I'm talking about the real people skill, like the, the ability to make connections, the ability to be able to relate with people, the ability to connect with people. I think that is where everybody can shine in their career. And one of the problems that I, I see in the industry, especially for people who are in slightly more backend roles, they just don't get as much exposure in developing those people skills. Sometimes their growth is going to be limiting just because of this issue. So what I advise everybody is go to Toastmasters, okay? That's an amazing institute in developing your people skills, in developing the skills that is going to provide you the, the critical, uh, you know, uh, skills that you need to be able to provide a feedback, to be able to critique somebody or, you know, help somebody. So Toastmasters is an amazing institute.
And I'd agree with you. I think that that's a really good one for presentation skills, etc. It's good advice there. Question number 4: Other than the generic work harder, have a great attitude, and care for customers, what advice or insight would you give to other business leaders?
Be a super connector. I think that's another one that is really missing. So utilize what you could do to help people around you. So for example, Pete, you have, let's say, I don't know, 7,000, 8,000 10,000 connections on LinkedIn. I have 7,000, 8,000, 10,000 connections on LinkedIn. Now if you look at the sales and marketing cost of the community, and this is the clear overhead on the community, which is going to be 30 to 40%. The only thing that we are doing is we are all chasing customers, okay? If we all became the super connector, we can reduce this burden down and we can all, you know, spend time towards, you know, producing something good that helps somebody. That adds value to our lives. So yeah, so that would be my perspective on that.
And I think you're really, really on point with that too. And you demonstrate it better than anyone that I know, Sam. You are truly a super connector yourself. So thank you for that. Question number 5, what other business leader like yourself would you like to acknowledge and invite to be on my podcast?
So obviously, Pete Alexander, I mean, you have had like, what, 200 to 300 people on the podcast. Right. So I don't know if you have already had these guys, but I'm going to name two people who are amazing. And you see, they blew my mind when I talked to them on LinkedIn, the kind of skills they have. One person is going to be Robert Johnson. I don't know if you're connected with him. The second person is going to be Inger, Inger Van Ruij. I guess that's how— I don't know how to pronounce her last name, but she is phenomenal. I would highly recommend that you have her.
Perfect. I'll, I'll reach out to both of them. Thank you for that.
Please.
And our final question, question number 6, please tell me about your first job.
Well, so my first job was very non-traditional. My first job started when I was 5 years old, because in my family, I grew up in a business family. So we are traditional distributor and manufacturer. So in my family, there is a saying that if you cannot do anything on the shop floor, what you can do is you can count money and do accounting. Okay, so that's when my first job was counting money. I cannot even recall when that started. Okay, and after that I started doing books. So by the time I graduated, I already had a lot of skills that a lot of people don't have from the business perspective.
That's great too. And, and you know, if you've got an understanding for money and stuff, you're going to be successful in business. That's obviously the case, and, and it's the case with you. So it's a great story, Sam, and I really appreciate you for being on the show. How can people find you?
Well, so there are a couple of ways. I'm super active on, on LinkedIn, super active on Twitter as well. So if they want to look me up, the best way to look me up is going to be Sam. It's S-A-M. The name cannot be easier than that. The last name is super easy as well. It's G-U-P-T-A, Gupta. And type either Elevate IQ or WBS ROCKS, and you should be able to find me on LinkedIn, Twitter, social media. Google it.
Perfect. This is Professor Pete Alexander with the Winning at Business and Life podcast. Thanks for listening.
