In this Business Blast Podcast episode, host Tyler Wagner interviews Wes Bergeron, a business account strategist. Wes shares a pivotal personal story about graduating with a degree in political religion studies, facing numerous rejection letters, and learning to bet on himself despite a mismatch between his degree and career path. He emphasizes the importance of asking the right questions to uncover client pain points and craft effective plans. Wes advises professionals to truly buy into a company's mission and culture, even when challenges arise, and to leave the organization better than they found it. He tells his younger self to use rejection as motivation rather than defeat. For personal fulfillment, Wes highlights building healthy boundaries as key to happiness and better life margins. He recommends the book "Everything That Remains" by Josh Milburn and Ryan Nicodemus, noting its lessons on minimalism and prioritizing meaningful passions. His favorite quote from the same book underscores the necessity of failure for learning what works. Finally, Wes directs listeners to connect with him on LinkedIn and his Twitter handle @Megatron332.
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Welcome to the Business Blast Podcast. I'm your host, Tyler Wagner. This episode is brought to you by Authors Unite. Authors Unite provides you with all the resources you need to become a successful author. You can learn more about Authors Unite and join the free community at authorsunite.com. Now let's jump into the episode. Alright everyone, welcome back to another episode of the Business Blast podcast. I'm your host Tyler Wagner. Today I have Wes Bergeron with us. He's a business account strategist. So welcome to the show, Wes.
Hey guys, how's it going? Thanks for having me on.
Of course, thanks for joining us. I will dive in. The first question I have for you, Wes, is what's the best story from your life that has an underlying valuable message?
For me, it definitely had to be when I graduated undergrad. I, my background was in, uh, political religion studies, and as I graduated, I applied to a bunch of, a bunch of colleges to like do, um, to do teaching, but then I also applied a bunch of churches to do, uh, religious work, more like pastoral ministry, whatnot, and I got a lot of, a lot of rejection letters, and That just, it kind of killed me for a little bit because I didn't know if I was ever gonna do what I, like, what I set out to do in college. But what I ended up realizing was, like, you have to just get in there and you gotta figure out what you're good at, even if it's something outside of what you're doing in your degree, and you gotta give yourself a little bit more of a shot. And I learned to kind of really bet on myself. I think he, it's really funny, I was watching the NFL draft even last night, you see a lot of these guys saying, I should be going to this place or this place to do these things, and you have a lot of confidence in what you do. And now I'm in a position where I'm managing business accounts and to interview in front of people with, you know, tons of experience and not to have that, you have to really bet on yourself a lot more. And through that experience in college and not doing what my degree was about, I had to really develop a lot of self-confidence. So betting on yourself was really something I had to learn about quickly as I got older.
Yes, and what's the most valuable piece of information we should know that is within your expertise or industry?
Most valuable piece of information I would say is that, you know, the questions you ask reveal answers you didn't expect to get. I think about all the times I have to call customers and really get to know what's going on in their world. World and what's going on in their companies. Some of these customers have a list of questions, some of them have none, but they have a lot of worries, a lot of pain points, a lot of hopes, and you, you have to be really critical about the questions you ask because those questions will unlock some incredible stories, but they'll also unlock just great plans you can develop for them, yearly plans, monthly plans, quarterly plans, The questions you ask definitely matter.
And what's your best piece of overall business advice, so not necessarily industry-specific?
Best piece of business advice I would say is buying into a company, what they do is everything, but it's not the only thing. What I mean by that is just really you want to really kind of buy into what their message is and what they're doing because you want to grow there. You want to Get your feet set. I'm closing in on being 30, and so many people my age, it's like we kind of jump from job to job 'cause we're not happy, we're not satisfied. But I think we have to peel that back a little bit and buy into what the company is about and what they stand for, and then find a way to leave the place better than when we found it. 'Cause when you get hired on to a place, you have this high and you're excited 'cause you got a job, you're getting paid, you're making money, but then you kind of hit some roadblocks along the way. And in those roadblocks, you have to find a way to still buy into what the company is doing, but find a way to make it better. Every day you're there.
And if you could give your younger self one piece of advice, what would that be?
Be motivated by rejection. Don't be afraid if someone tells you no, because that kind of stuff should motivate you to go out there and prove yourself even more every day and to find a way to move past that no that was told to you. Because sometimes, you know, a no is just maybe not right now. No, is it like forever? No. You have to find a reason to not look at that and be totally dejected and be hurt and defeated. You have to find a way to turn that into something positive that really catapults you into the next phase of life. I mean, all the greats, all the greats have had some rejection in some way, shape, or form. And if they stop there, we may not have books about them. We may not have movies about them. And on the human, on the, in the, non-famous level, I guess you would say, you know, you want to keep that in mind. You want to keep pushing towards that. And so let that motivation, uh, you kind of breathe a new fire and a new desire to do something that's bigger than yourself.
And in your opinion, what's the key to happiness?
Uh, for me, I would say it is building good boundaries for yourself. I think if you can build some good boundaries You can create even better margins. I know I said it earlier, but just having more of a, I guess my faith is important to me, I would say, and it may not be for everyone out there, but I would also ultimately say like we as people need to create good boundaries, healthy boundaries for ourselves to ultimately grow and to find good things that are going on in our world, whether that be the job we have, whether that be the stuff outside of the job, The better boundaries we create, the better the margins we will have to really speak to why we are so happy and what is really making us tick every day.
And what's the best book that you've read and what was the number one thing you learned from that?
One of the best books I've read is actually a book called Everything That Remains by Josh Milburn and Ryan Nicodemus. They really kind of talk about this idea of living a life with less. Stuff involved. And for me, one of the best things I learned out of that book was just, we have to cultivate a life that has really meaningful priorities and ultimately leads to even greater passions. I think we're just so consumed by what we do in our 9-to-5s that sometimes it's hard to break away, disconnect, and to find a way to really declutter our lives so that way we can go into what we're doing every day with a better passion, a better desire to serve those around us, but also just to make our names in our industries, I think really important.
And what's your favorite quote and why?
It's actually from that same book. The quote says, "I know I might fail, but we must fail. We must all fail from time to time. We have to figure out what doesn't work so we can find what does." I think to just to realize like we do things in this life that sometimes just do not work out. But we don't know unless we try. And for me, this is always a reminder of trial by error. Like, I won't know what works until I get my hands dirty and start doing something that matters. And if what I do ends up not really mattering that much, then that's fine. It happens. But I can't really speak to what doesn't work. I can't really speak to what works until I realize what doesn't work. 'Cause if I just keep looking at all the success, I will never be able to speak to failure 'cause when failure hits me, it's gonna hit me hard and I won't really know how to respond.
Yes, thank you so much for coming on, Wes. The last question I have for you before we let you go is where's the best place for people to find you online?
Yeah, so I mean, the best place is probably, I would probably say it's through LinkedIn or through my Twitter, which I'm using a lot more now. The Twitter is, It's Megatron, like the actual Transformer, 332. I stay on that pretty regularly, just looking at everything and anything that's either sports or political related these days. So that's the best place to find me, those two places.
Perfect. Thanks again for coming on, man. We really appreciate it.
Yeah, my pleasure. Thank you so much.
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