Tech Sales is for Hustlers Podcast

Campus Series: Christopher King – The Importance of Support After Failure

Guest-At-A-Glance

Name: Christopher King

What he does: Christopher is a professor at Howard University, CEO of We Are Marcus, and Managing Principal at Theo Advisors.

Company: Howard University, We Are Marcus and Theo Advisors

Noteworthy: Christopher C. King is an activist entrepreneur, educator, and consultant. Before WAM, Christopher worked for ten years at the intersection of education, technology, and social impact. He has also worked in mentoring and education.

Where to find Christopher: LinkedIn | Website | Website

Key Insights

⚡ You can be a professor and a startup entrepreneur at the same time. Being a professor is a job, and many professors are satisfied with that, but some also do business on the side. Christopher is living proof that you can be both a professor and an entrepreneur at the same time and be equally successful in both fields. In addition to being a professor at Howard, he’s the CEO of We Are Marcus and the Managing Principal at Theo Advisors. “I started a journey of creating my own company after working in AdTech sales at a charter management organization, and we ended up reorganizing ourselves to support charter schools and HR and finance. And I thought to myself, ‘Well, teachers don’t care about that at all; what they care about is the students that they work with.’ And for me, that meant figuring out how to build a closer relationship between the teacher and the student.”

⚡ Change your relationship with fear and failure. We often encounter roadblocks and challenges on the path to success and the realization of dreams. For some, the first failure will break their wings, but others, the successful ones, will understand it as a lesson and become strongly motivated. According to Christopher, if you overcome that fear, there are many opportunities in front of you. “I want to highlight failing, but also tightening feedback loops and having a sense of humility and being reflective. All of these pieces add up to, ‘If things don’t work out, I do have information that’s going to help me the next time.’ I never had a fear of trying — that is also helpful. And I grew up on limited means; I know what it’s like to make something out of nothing. So I think that taking that along my journey has just provided me with that sense of confidence.”

⚡ Howard University offers many opportunities. Christopher attended the Master’s Degree Program at Howard University, and today, he is a professor at the institution. He notes that the university is an excellent springboard and that if you use everything it offers, it can help you with personal development and advancement. “I think universities do a good job of attracting partnerships and capital. But I think what’s special about Howard, in particular, is that it was built and designed for people who have initiative and are powerful innovators to take full advantage and make Howard what it is. I think it attracts that type of person. So it was easy for me in the MBA program to collaborate with other forward-thinking, young professionals who are gifted, talented, and black. The diversity of that was also a highlight for me. I got to know people from around the country who had different experiences than me.”

Episode Highlights

The Importance of Support After Failure

“I did lean on my support network at that time [once he realized failure] — getting on the phone with people who trust and love me and supported me. My mentor needs to be mentioned; my mom needs to be mentioned. So being super vulnerable and being able to go through a grieving of failure. I think, during that process, there are some superpowers that sort of push in that being present in the moments of being disappointed is very human and important. And I think that was an empowering process for me.

I’m coming from a place of being healed from and pushing through failure, but I’m acknowledging that it’s not simple and it’s not overnight; it was definitely life-changing. But there are so many other occurrences: being robbed at gunpoint, not getting the job offer I may have wanted, not getting the investment capital, people saying ‘no,’ around though we are market’s value proposition. There was a sense of belief that pushes underneath it because I’ve been through some stuff.”

Christopher King – Professor at Howard

“I teach a course called Business Problem-Solving, which is the quantitative and qualitative brainchild of my faculty mentor, Dr. Carlos Buskey. He and I worked together; I was a teaching assistant there during my MBA program, which is how I ended up teaching it. Now I pitched a course where I’m teaching product management and management consulting and innovation, and then that kind of turned into, ‘Well, BPS is already here, so do that.’  

So I started with 35 students three years ago, and now, I have 150. I teach a series of case studies that walk students through small, mid-size, and large businesses. I infuse a little bit of startup thinking, and in the past couple of semesters, I’ve talked with them about investment models and how to teach them to not only be entrepreneurs, founders, and business analysts, but also to be investors because I have a personal interest in attracting black and brown students to ownership and investment.”

The Qualities of Successful People

“Integrity and intrinsic motivation, and I would definitely highlight communicative people. I was raised that way. So I gel really well with folks who can think out loud.  And I think my management effort and leadership style is to create spaces for them in which they feel comfortable doing that without consequence. So I think that’s shared — it’s not all on them. It’s what we do as an organization to create a culture for those people to thrive if they have a relationship with adversity that they have clarity about, that they’re aligned, and they’re motivated on their own. They have their own definition of what impact looks like so that we can collaborate and figure out what we can do.”

Transcript:

[00:00:00] Christopher King: I want to highlight failing up, but also tightening feedback loops and having sense of humility and being reflective, all 

[00:00:08] of these pieces sort of add up to, “Well, if things don’t work out, I do have information that’s going to help me the next time.” 

[00:00:19] Kristen Wisdorf: Welcome back, hustlers, to another episode of the Tech Sales is for Hustlers, special Campus Series.

[00:01:01] I am your host, Kristen Wisdorf, and today joining me, I have Libby Galatis. Hey, Libby. 

[00:01:08] Libby Galatis: Hey, Kristen. 

[00:01:09] Kristen Wisdorf: And today we’re super excited. Libby and I are chatting with Christopher King, who is a professor at Howard University. He’s also an investment partner and entrepreneur, a CEO. He has all of the above, all of the things. He’s even a memoryBlue client, which is pretty exciting. Welcome to the podcast, Christopher.

[00:01:28] Christopher King: Thank you. Thanks for having me. Look forward to this conversation today.

[00:01:31] Kristen Wisdorf: Yeah. Well, we like to start all of these chats with professors and on our podcast just learning a little bit more about you. So, Christopher, if you could answer the same question I actually ask all the students when I interview them, which is, tell me about you. Take 60 seconds and just give us the background of Christopher King.

[00:01:55] Christopher King: Sure. I could take that so many different directions. I started a journey of creating my own company after working in EdTech sales at a Charter management organization. It was a dream job if that’s a thing. And we ended up reorganizing ourselves to, to support charter schools and HR and finance, and I thought to myself, “Well, teachers don’t care about

[00:02:21] that at all. What they care about is the students that they work with.” And for me, that meant figuring out how to build a closer relationship between the teacher and the student, and one of the major entry points for that was how we create more relatable content in schools. And as a former teacher myself, you know, I was constantly looking for resources, and all of the three

[00:02:48] black men that worked at the school of a 98% black and brown school population. We were very much pulled between classrooms to talk about our lives and, and just listened to the student. I also sort of informed this approach through relational organizing training that I went through as a door knocker and the labor movement, holding house meetings in rural Georgia, very much impressed upon me the importance of active listening and creating shared narratives to move people towards action.

[00:03:23] And the smallest of us, 5, 6-year-olds to 10-year-olds, are no different. They want to relate, and they want to create their own story, but they also want to hear yours too. And that’s the thinking, some of the ethos behind WEM academy, which is the current product that we’re taking to market this year,

[00:03:40] again, and we’re excited to, to go ahead and create as much impact as we can throughout the country in the world.

[00:03:46] Kristen Wisdorf: Okay, this is, there’s a lot to dive into here. That’s very exciting. So, you were EdTech sales, which is huge, it’s a big part of our public sector practice here at memoryBlue, but I heard you say you were a door knocker in rural Georgia, where you doing door to door sales. Like, what were you selling?

[00:04:04] Like, let’s take it way back and start. Let’s talk, like, college or pre and post-college Christopher and, like, how you found your way as an early professional in school and just after school.

[00:04:19] Christopher King: Great stories there. I decided to study public policy in undergrad. Political science was entirely too theoretical. I was that change-the-world type, and what I wanted to sort of dig into is develop some skills around measurement and details and legislation and had some very impactful internship experiences

[00:04:38] back then. I interned at the Division of Budget in New York State and did a brown-bag lunch with some of the elected officials and senior policy advisers, and they told me that, “If you want change, don’t work here.” And I took that to heart because I was excited to put on my suit and go to my internship and talk to people and get into the data and uncover stuff and create proposals

[00:05:04] and the thinking here, just to be clear, was that the elected decides what they want, and then the bureaucrats create in-depth analysis to inform that opinion.

[00:05:14] But the change in government and in that public sector lane that we all play in now is very much subject to politics and subject to money and influence.

[00:05:27] This is pre-major tech, innovation, and large tech companies that, you know the space, but I saw the writing on the wall at that time and that led me to pursue the LSAT, which was an amazing experience for me. I’m sure nobody, very few people, get on this broadcast and talk about how standardized tests were amazing for them, and I’ll tell you why. Also, you’ll probably hear the undercurrent of my messages, uh, sort of obsessive optimism. You’ll see me be able to make a lemonade out of every batch of lemons. And I say that because the outside, I learned a lot about myself and I used that skill set later in law school

[00:06:07] and then in, in entrepreneurship, I can genuinely sit in a chair for 12 hours and work on something obsessively, and 12 would be modest in that context compared to the other things that I actually had to do along my journey, including working on the reelection campaign for Barack Obama in 2012 in Virginia, where there were about

[00:06:26] 10 of us who worked on a campaign that we love to say changed the state, that changed the country, that changed the world. Right? And that was due to that obsessive focus and some obsessive optimism. So, going back to that story about undergrad and how that informed my work, the question that you asked is what we’re reselling

[00:06:44] and I love the question because I had a visceral reaction to the word ‘sales’ for a very long time, and Caroline and I have talked about this quite a bit. I got my start working after my fail tour in law school, I went out, and I worked for SCIU, and the organizer and training program. And they, essentially, SCIU is

[00:07:05] the probably, arguably one of the most successful unions in modern labor movement history and one of the things that we talked about often, and obviously, you can fall on SCIU one way or another, that’s not paramount to the story, but the idea is that we weren’t selling anything. We were motivating people based on their self-interest to come together around shared affliction for a shared desired outcome.

[00:07:31] I know that’s a mouthful, but essentially we were not offering them anything that they couldn’t do themselves. We were facilitating a process for them to change their lives, and we were organizing low-income food service workers. My start was at Morehouse and Georgia Tech campuses against a major employer, one of the top five foodservice employers

[00:07:53] and again, the company doesn’t matter, but the idea is that I was actually leading house meetings and door-knocking workers who were incredibly disenfranchised from their work. And meaning sick days were not plentiful, so you had people serving food, and they were sick, minimal health care options and then also no reasonable benefits for the jobs that they were working on.

[00:08:24] Their kids couldn’t go to school at any reduced tuition costs at these flagship institution in the Atlanta area. I cut my teeth there, then I, we stalemated a bit on those campaigns, went back to Brooklyn and worked on a similar campaign. We drove 500 miles a week down to South Jersey

[00:08:44] and was organizing the K-12 work, food service workers there, so that’s when I, you know, I was also raised by educators and 

[00:08:50] Kristen Wisdorf: Yeah. 

[00:08:51] Christopher King: I’ll tell you teaching later. I’ve lived a couple of different lives, so this broadcast could go a little long, so I’m going to try to be concise.

[00:08:57] That was a very important experience for me, and I transitioned into teaching and operations work later on.

[00:09:06] Kristen Wisdorf: So, you got your start, or did you, were you born and raised in New York? I know you went to SUNY Albany, right?

[00:09:13] Christopher King: Yeah. The undergrad? Yeah. That’s pretty much the full story there. I was born in Charlotte, North Carolina, my family’s from the Caribbean, but I grew up in, um, brief stint going from Brooklyn to upstate New York and graduated high school there.

[00:09:25] Yeah. 

[00:09:26] Kristen Wisdorf: So, you did college in New York, went down, spent some time in the outskirts of Atlanta, went back up to New York. How did you find your way to DC? I imagine, you know, you were told at that one internship, if you want to change the world, don’t work here, so you kind of left, you went out and did some other things,

[00:09:46] what brought you to the Washington DC area? Was it a specific, was it Barack Obama’s campaign? And that’s when you were like, that’s it? What’s the story there?

[00:09:55] Christopher King: Yeah, I love the question. I was attracted to DC after a semester in Washington and undergrad. Talk my way into an Honors program. We just had our reunion recently, it was great to see people in person after so many, so much time in lockdown. I didn’t love it then. I was an intern on Capitol Hill at a senator in New York’s office, and I got the coffee and for a month and then quit that internship and worked for the shadow senator of DC on condo conversions and landlord-tenant law that he was working on.

[00:10:30] It was a small law firm, and that’s what got me into the, you know, I was already very grassroots-oriented public school kid with chip on his shoulder. I was very much oriented around the voice-of-the-people type, but in DC at that time, I saw that 20-year-olds are running the country, was not attractive to me, you know, I was not impressed.

[00:10:50] And what got me to DC was, a decade plus later, working at that Charter management organization, I got wind of Howard because the CEO of the firm that I was working for was a black man named Jones James Stovall and he very much inspired me. It was the second black male leader that I’ve worked for in New York city

[00:11:09] that I was extremely impressed by, and I learned a lot from him. And Howard sort of rose to the radar. I had finished the public administration master’s, after working full-time, I did the program in the evening at Brew College, and then I thought, “I really would like to hire the most qualified person to run my startup.”

[00:11:29] And at that time, I didn’t think that I had the reps to be able to hold forth in spaces where a skillset wouldn’t be required, and the MBA spoke to me, I was an unconventional business student, everything I’ve told you doesn’t scream MBA, but fortunately I think we got to a place in the country where we want people to have that skillset who don’t come from ivory-tower, pedigree-heavy backgrounds and business, business business.

[00:12:00] I was more of a social entrepreneur and the social-impact oriented, and Howard, shout out to Verness Lapel and some other folks who really paved the way for me and helped me navigate Carlos Buskey, my faculty advisor or faculty mentor, and Alison Morgan, the list goes on and on. But yeah, Howard changed my life.

[00:12:22] Yeah. 

[00:12:23] Libby Galatis: So, with your journey, you’ve really explored so many different avenues, and I admire how action-oriented you seem to be. As soon as a decision is made or you’ve set your mind to something, it’s all in, that is what you commit to. But with that commitment obviously comes a lot of risk with 

[00:12:43] rejection and setbacks, and you had mentioned, I am keep bringing it up, but, “If you want to make change, don’t come here,”

[00:12:50] a lot of people reach those points and barriers, and they’re not able to push through, so I’m curious, like, thinking back to those years, the really formative, where you learn the most to set yourself up for where you’re at now, what would you consider to be your biggest setback and what did you learn from it?

[00:13:08] And how did you push through? 

[00:13:09] Christopher King: It’s my relationship with fear. If this were a blog post after this podcast, it would be, “How to change your relationship with fear and failure,” a fear and that, the connection between fear and failure. I failed early on, I told you earlier about that LSAT experience and being a law school dropout,

[00:13:27] that very much led me to, apologize for getting emotional here when, like, I’m really comfortable with crying on camera, I cried my eyes out, and I was 22 at the time, and I was at that pace, I had skipped a grade, I graduated from early-ish, I had that Honors thing that I had figured out and Vanessa, I could figure it out how to talk my way into situations and overcome so much

[00:13:54] and then when I got to the point where I feared failure, and then it happened, I became fearless. I told you about knocking on doors in rural Georgia, there were barking dogs chasing me off the front porch. I am genuinely not afraid.

[00:14:09] Kristen Wisdorf: So,

[00:14:10] Christopher King: Yeah.

[00:14:11] Kristen Wisdorf: it sounds like you experiencing these things that are scary, whether it’s to you or just to the general population, is what has given you the confidence to not be afraid anymore. So, it’s actually like going through the tough thing. 

[00:14:27] Christopher King: Absolutely. 

[00:14:27] Kristen Wisdorf: Yeah. I think that resonates with a lot of young people coming out of college, web, or maybe they’re in their first job, and they’re considering a change, and they’re scared of failing, or they’re scared of making the wrong move, or they’re scared of going to law school or not going to law school.

[00:14:44] Right? Like, everyone has choices, and the path, and I think your story resonates. Like, you can become an entrepreneur and a CEO and a professor, even if you are, you know, a law school dropout, right?

[00:14:59] Christopher King: Right. And, you know, I want 

[00:15:01] to highlight failing up, 

[00:15:03] but also tightening feedback loops and having 

[00:15:06] a sense humility and being reflective, all 

[00:15:09] of these pieces sort of 

[00:15:11] add up to, well, if things don’t work out, I do have information that’s going to help me the next time, and I never had the fear of trying, so I guess that is also helpful.

[00:15:25] And I grew up on limited means, I know what it’s like to make something out of nothing, so I think taking that along my journey has just provides that sense of confidence. I also have a relationship with God and have a sort of divine conviction about me, so that provides me with a little bit of protection and peace in stormy times. 

[00:15:48] Libby Galatis: I think it’s interesting when you talk about your relationship with failure because I’m speaking from personal experience, I relate to how failure played a role to motivate you, that fear of failure not being an option, I have to succeed. I mean, that can push you so far in life and that experience where you experienced true and honest core failure, black and white failure,

[00:16:13] changed your relationship. So, the motivation shifted from fear of failure to what? I’m curious, like, how, what specifically shifted in you to push you forward from that moment? 

[00:16:25] Christopher King: Fear of, of failure to what? Like, how did I define the next step? 

[00:16:29] Libby Galatis: Yeah. So, it’s interesting that the fear of failure was the motivator and what pushed you 

[00:16:34] towards success. 

[00:16:36] So, I’m curious 

[00:16:37] when you shifted after that experience, like, what is your motivation now, or what was the motivation once you realize failure wasn’t something to be feared? 

[00:16:45] Christopher King: Right, right. I did lean on my support network at that time, getting on the phone with people trust and love me, that supported me, my, my mentor needs to be mentioned, my mom needs to be mentioned, right? So, having, being super vulnerable and being able to go through a grieving of failure, right,

[00:17:08] I think during that process, there’s some superpowers that sort of push in that being present to the moments of being disappointed is very human and important, and I think that was an empowering process for me. So, like, I did mention earlier that sort of information, and then that information being empowering enough

[00:17:29] to see that at other people and see or be able to attract more opportunities in the future because I’m coming from a place of being healed from and pushing through it, but acknowledging that that’s not simple and it’s not overnight, it was definitely life-changing, but there are so many other occurrences being robbed at gunpoint, not getting the

[00:17:53] job offer I may have wanted, not getting the investment capital, people saying no around though we are markets value proposition. There was a sense of belief that pushes underneath it because I’ve been through some stuff, right? I think the reps matters there.

[00:18:10] Kristen Wisdorf: It’s not just persistence or optimism or belief, it sounds like it’s, you’ve experienced things that are truly challenging, so you have perspective to say, “I can make it through this because I made it through these things in my past before.”

[00:18:25] Christopher King: Yeah. And that’s subconscious, right? Like, this that I walk around with every day. It’s more so to just trying to find, I talked about that obsessive optimism, I think that’s where it comes from. It’s like, “Ah, I think the glasses are full on this one.”

[00:18:39] Kristen Wisdorf: Yeah, that’s amazing. Well, it sounds like Howard was a real kind of turning point for you. Coming to DC, going to Howard, having mentors, what was like that next chapter, right? Like, how did Howard shape your professional future, and what you did after it? We have Howard alum who work here at memoryBlue, but how did it impact you specifically?

[00:19:02] Christopher King: Howard is an incredible platform for people like myself to leverage attract resources. There’s an abundance of opportunity at the university, but there is a difference between people who go after those and people who see them, and they’re sort of like, there just to get by. And I think that’s just the university ecosystems.

[00:19:26] I think universities do a good job of attracting partnerships and capital, but I think what’s special about HBCU and generally, but Howard in particular, is it was built and designed for people who have the initiative and are powerful innovators to take full advantage and make Howard what it is. I think it attracts that type of person,

[00:19:53] so it was easy for me in the MBA program to collaborate with other forward-thinking, young black professionals who are gifted, talented and black. I mean, the diversity of that also was a highlight for me. I got to know people from around the country who had different experiences than me and I held the entrepreneur banner heavy because I knew that going in and Howard was helpful for me too,

[00:20:23] I had an aligned purpose, but Howard elevated that and provided me with the sort of personal support to know that this could really happen and it will continue to happen if I stay on course.

[00:20:36] Kristen Wisdorf: That’s very special. You know, you are now a professor at Howard, so it feels like it came a little full circle, probably, for you. Talk about what you teach at Howard and what you’re trying to instill in the students who go through your classes.

[00:20:55] Christopher King: I teach a course called Business Problem-solving, which is the quantitative and qualitative, quantitative brainchild of my faculty mentor, Dr. Carlos Buskey, and he and I worked together, I was a teaching assistant there during my MBA program, which is how I ended up teaching it now. I sort of pitched a course where I’m product management and management consulting and innovation, and then that kind of turned into, “Well, BPS is already here. Do that.”

[00:22:20] So, I started with 35 students three years ago, and I have 150. I teach a case study, uh, series of case studies that walk students through small and mid-size and large businesses. I infuse a little bit of startup thinking, and in the past couple semesters I’ve talked with them about

[00:22:41] investment models and how to teach them to be entrepreneurs and founders and business analysts, but also investors because I, you know, I have a personal interest in and attracting black and brown students to ownership and investment.

[00:22:58] Kristen Wisdorf: So, you had mentioned earlier in our conversation about how originally, when you were younger, you had this, like, aversion to the word sales and you teach business problem-solving, you’re a startup entrepreneur, how have you made your way to the other side, I hope the other side of thinking that way about sales? Like, walk us through that journey.

[00:23:21] Was there a moment as an entrepreneur or a CEO? Like, what kind of helped you bridge that gap?

[00:23:30] Christopher King: Oh, gosh, love the loaded questions today. I will try, no, I’m just kidding. No, it, sales is such a, let me just talk about, maybe I can sort of back into the answer there, they tripped your MBA fashion. I think the sales piece is creating a transaction that provides value in exchange for money, right? Money, we romantically and revenue income, whatever, all that stuff, it comes down to

[00:24:00] a relationship of shared value and I think the aversion to sales, right, this is going back to the Caroline conversations, said, you know, it can become on tactics and on ethos, it can be distasteful for people who are movement builders, right, who come from activism and I am a representation of fusing all of those things.

[00:24:24] I think the headline to this conversation could be “Activist Entrepreneur.” I am trying to change people’s mindsets or mindset around an EdTech tool and what mentoring used to be. And in revolutionizing mentoring, sales is a very important part of our process to build relationships with the community of educators, right,

[00:24:49] that want our service, and they need to think about that as we need to figure out how to create sustainable revenue patterns for that. They need to pay for it. And back to the question you asked me earlier about the union and what people were buying from our sales, people had to buy into investing their money into something that would create more value for them.

[00:25:18] And I spread that across, whether it was income, healthcare, benefits, et cetera, all that stuff, all that undercurrent is money moves in our economy and people value what they spend money on, right? So, it’s not, I love talking about this, particularly in the education and public sector, because of partnerships, right?

[00:25:39] The partnerships person that an ed, education company, they’re a salesperson, business development, that’s sales, right? All this, the word, I think this is a great example, not unlike the union context, let’s not get distracted by the word and get a sense of what really means.

[00:25:56] Kristen Wisdorf: That’s such a great point. Let’s not get distracted by the word but focus on what it really means. And I think that you are a great example of, you know, our headquarters is just outside of DC. We have a lot of, you know, former people who went to school for politics, or they were pre-law, or they worked for on a campaign, and they have

[00:26:17] social activism, and they believe that they can make a social impact, and they end up in technology sales, and I think you are that kind of living proof that you can be both. You can do both things. You can be a business person, and you can make a difference and also give back too, as a professor as well, so I think it’s probably good for people to hear that they don’t have to choose necessarily between maybe doing well for themselves and being in sales and still making a difference, especially if they can align themselves with the technology that really can make a difference.

[00:26:53] Christopher King: Further, that person defines it for them, right?

[00:26:58] Kristen Wisdorf: What do you mean by that?

[00:27:00] Christopher King: Right. So, my approach to getting in deep relationships with our customers for shared impact because the product benefits youth that then creates a cycle of impact for communities, right? But if people are thinking about sales as the prior versions is no different than teaching, by the way, the prior generation did something in one way, and now you’re coming in, and you’re thinking, “Okay, well, you did it this way.

[00:27:27] Let me learn from that and hold it as instructive, and now I’m going to do it the way that I think is more aligned with my personal ethos.” And it’s important for that person to define it for themselves. I don’t define how Kristen does her job, right? So, it’s important for you as you reflect on your family, your historical context of where you came from, and what it looks like to have a one-year job or a ten-year job, or a hundred years of impact

[00:27:58] and that’s what we’re not talking about, right? People ask me, Hey, what do you want to do here with this? And I took this, borrowed it from Don Peebles and RDP three, his son, they don’t develop in sustainable communities for 4 years, they don’t develop for 40 years, they, their family has a 400-year plan,

[00:28:18] right? So, it becomes, if you’re grounded in that mindset, you define what it looks like. If you have some sort of vision on what you’re doing every day and how that creates sustainable impact longer-term, so, I guess we’ve successfully moved away from the sleazy sales conversation because it, it doesn’t have to look like that.

[00:28:39] Kristen Wisdorf: Yeah, I agree. And we and colleges across the country are kind of doing the work to educate people that sales isn’t that kind of sleazy misconception that maybe it was even 10, 15 years ago, but it is great to hear from you because you’re not only a professor, teaching the next generation of students, whether they go into sales or not,

[00:29:03] right? You’re doing it, and you’re doing it with a startup and you’re kind of walking the walk as well, and that’s really important for people, 

[00:29:12] Christopher King: Hmm. 

[00:29:13] Kristen Wisdorf: especially in the DC area, right?

[00:29:15] Christopher King: Yeah. Yeah. I love that. Thank you. And I’m flattered that you think of me that way. I think it’s, if somebody comes through my professional history that we talked about before, sometimes their work examples and I think that’s okay too, I think we’ve got to sort of normalize, “Hey, if there isn’t an example, that doesn’t mean that, 

[00:29:35] Kristen Wisdorf: It can’t be done. 

[00:29:36] Christopher King: yeah, it can’t be done. And for the women who are listening to this broadcast and thank you, Kristen and Libby, for holding your space, that there’s so much to be said about disruption and innovation and def, and defining it for yourself, that there may not be a black male executive in sales within my immediate geography that I can reach when I’m in high school

[00:30:02] and there may not have been that example for you, for you to guide in the spaces that you went, but that doesn’t mean that you don’t go after it, and it doesn’t mean that you can’t be the first or the second. 

[00:30:13] Libby Galatis: Your mindset, I’ll never forget when Chris Corcoran, he’s the co-founder of memoryBlue, I was in a meeting with him, and we were talking about a bunch of challenges and unpacking a lot and just kind of planning, and he looks at me, and he goes, “Libby, where some see challenge, others see opportunity,”

[00:30:30] and I feel like you should have that painted on your wall somewhere because is it clear, like, in your story, you have to learn how to look at circumstances and situations and roadblocks to grow and learn from them because in discomfort and in failure, that is where true growth happens, which is why, in my opinion, getting experiences like, what I’m sure you’re sharing with your students in the classroom and what we do at memoryBlue, pushing our young talent out of their comfort zone to push forward with that growth

[00:31:05] and I really connect and love that messaging and consents that you value that too.

[00:31:09] Christopher King: 100, yeah, 100%. That phrase I have echoed over and over and over again, and then to take it to the next level, bring your suggestions along with your concerns. The orientation around problem, problem, problem, right? And back to BPS problems, business problem solving, it can’t be a problem if you don’t want to have a solution,

[00:31:31] so we got to figure out what solving and iterating looks like and very connected to that, that prior dialogue around failure and fear of it.

[00:31:41] Libby Galatis: Definitely. So, we’ve talked a lot about failure. a lot about setbacks, I want to flip the script and talk about some achievements, you know, if you could think back on your journey so far, what do you think was one of your biggest or best achievements that you’re most proud of? 

[00:31:58] Christopher King: The feedback from our first client, where students were really excited about what we had, what we had created for them and I had no idea what’s going to happen and that talk about fear, I kind of just blocked it out, took a nap, didn’t think about, you trying not to think about it and then the students came back 

[00:32:21] and the client came back and said, “They love this week. They want more.” And that was an early college initiative at CUNY, where we had some underachieving, underclassmen freshmen who were coming in, didn’t score as high as they wanted to on grades, and what they needed to do was connect their academics to, to their shared stories because school didn’t have relevance to them in a concrete way and our content was very helpful in connecting, “Hey, here’s what happens next. Here’s what life looks like if you participate in this process actively, and here’s what it looks like if you don’t.” That is super present for everybody on this call, but for middle school and high school students, early underachieving underclassmen,

[00:33:08] that was a monumental experience for them that we hope to replicate with all of our, our young people and earlier, right? The idea is to try to get to them right when they start to feel like, “I’m doing this mundane thing. This teacher is telling me to do something I don’t really care. I’m upset about this.”

[00:33:29] And the teacher doesn’t know. We want to figure out how to connect, create the connective tissue in the academic environment, as well as out of school time.

[00:33:40] Kristen Wisdorf: That’s very exciting. Now, on the flip side of that, and I’m sure there are no shortage of opportunities in your past that you’ve used as lessons, but what was the hardest kind of lesson or let’s just call it failure that you’ve taken with you and you’ve made adjustments because of it?

[00:33:58] Christopher King: Hardest failure, I’ll speak to, and just to connect me to the product, we got some feedback from an investor that I later built a relationship, really good relationship with. He was thinking about our content as, it was directly counter to what we thought about how students initially felt about it, and his response was, “I couldn’t give this to my kids because it’s not engaging enough.”

[00:34:26] And for me, in my classroom teaching experience, you know, I would get boys and girls would come to us or down to a variety of staff with emotional distress challenges and being, building a relationship and being there for them and talking to them about what our lives look like, what is engaging for the students, but then we had a parent say it’s not engaging

[00:34:51] and then we had another parent say, a parent-teacher in a school in DC say, “We don’t want our children to be the next Tuskegee.” So, very offensive to me, given my story that I shared with you on both ends. One, it is engaging for a student who doesn’t have a strong relationship with the black male mentor to hear their story.

[00:35:15] That’s my fundamental premise, right? The next is, and that’s engaging, right? And the next is that we’re not testing on students, and we don’t have any ill intent on, you know, the content that we create, and there’s also filtered filtration processes in place so that educators have eyes on what content goes in front of kids. In terms of learning from all of that,

[00:35:37] as much as I, “Ah,” I’m defensive over how that made me feel in those moments, what we want to do is invite people into the tent, right, and have them inform what we do. And we can create work in groups by city, by school, there’s so much we can do, and it goes back to that ethos of the conversations we were having earlier around organizing and relational experiences versus transactional ones, right? And we can create a relational experience with our clients, such that yes, we’re exchanging value and we have tap hole going back and forth, but we also are listening, actively listening, and tightening those feedback loops so that our product makes sense and is both engaging with new features, is still candid, but also we have controls in place that make everybody feel comfortable but also create impact and moments of discomfort our information,

[00:36:30] good information. 

[00:36:32] Libby Galatis: I think a lot of what you’re talking to kind of points to one of the core values at memoryBlue, which is every single sales rep that comes here has to be able to take feedback, has to be able to receive feedback, learn from that. Coachability is such a core, important trait for our reps to have because if they are too set in their communities, and they are too committed to their process they’ve already determined

[00:36:56] that is right, they have nothing to learn, and they can’t grow. So, coachability, I think that’s an absolute core, basic fundamental value of successful people, and my question is do you have maybe two or three other qualities that you see and people in your life or successful students that you taught when it comes to the idea of success?

[00:37:19] What are some qualities of good examples of successful people? 

[00:37:22] Christopher King: Integrity, right? Intrinsic motivation. I would definitely highlight communicative people I’m drawn to. I was raised that way, so I gel really well with folks who can think out loud, but also in a play, and I think with my management effort and leadership style is to create space spaces for them to feel comfortable doing that without consequence,

[00:37:47] right? So, I think that’s sort of shared, right? It’s not all on them. It’s what we do as an organization to create a culture for those people to thrive, if they have a relationship with adversity that they have clarity about, that they’re aligned, and they’re motivated on their own.

[00:38:05] They have their own definition of what impact looks like, so that we can collaborate and figure out what that, with what we can do together. Yeah, quality, successful people, that’s, I think that’s good for now. I’m sure I could keep talking about that, but I think those three are really strong.

[00:38:20] Kristen Wisdorf: Okay, we’re going to hit you with a little game we like to play, which is answer the first thing that comes to your mind. These could be a little off the wall, and let’s just go with it. So, if you could have a billboard anywhere in the world saying anything you want it to say, where would it be, and what would it say?

[00:38:42] Christopher King: It would say, “There’s opportunity in every challenge,” and it would say, “WAM Academy is just the beginning.”

[00:38:56] Kristen Wisdorf: That’s good. Okay. A little bit of like background, like, this is kind of like, your ethos and a little bit about your business. Okay. I got it.

[00:39:06] Christopher King: Yup. Yup.

[00:39:06] Kristen Wisdorf: I like it. Okay. I need another fast question. Who is your biggest influence in your life, and why? All the, throughout all the years, who’s made the most impact?

[00:39:20] Christopher King: All the years? You’re going to create a competition.

[00:39:23] Kristen Wisdorf: I know, but.

[00:39:26] Christopher King: You don’t want that kind of

[00:39:27] smoke, Kris.

[00:39:28] Kristen Wisdorf: It’s against you.

[00:39:31] Christopher King: Oh, wow. That’s a question I almost refuse to answer. I’m going to start listing people. My mom, my mentor, my father, Dr. Cornell West, that I had a pleasure to meet when I was a junior in college. Former President Obama, our favorite president. My immediate support network Tommy, Harwood, I would say, my grandfather, my grandmother who’s 102 years old and has survived a pandemic and was born in 1920.

[00:40:05] But my grandfather, who I was compared to when I was a child and that was the most generous girl dad, raised my mom and my two aunts, and he’s no longer with us, but his example informes the type of person I want to be a throughout my life. I told you you’re going to go deep.

[00:40:27] Libby Galatis: All right. All right. 

[00:40:31] Christopher King: mention my students who are now in 8th grade.

[00:40:33] Kristen Wisdorf: We went way back.

[00:40:35] Libby Galatis: I love it. All right. My question is, what advice do you have for the students in your classroom or just young people in general that right now have a visceral reaction to sales or a career in sales? 

[00:40:52] Christopher King: Yeah, advice I would give them is figure out what kind of skillset you want to develop and see if sales fits that, if your personality aligns with growth campaigns and are creating value in the world, as big as you can dream. Sales is likely a place where you should get some skills that you should develop a skill set that I think is going to be transferable into anything that you do.

[00:41:22] So it’s a path worth taking because you’re going to learn a lot about people and yourself, and I would say that is a tremendous opportunity that arguably is not repeatable in other types of work.

[00:41:38] Kristen Wisdorf: That’s amazing. Well, on that note, we will wrap. Christopher King, we’ve enjoyed having a chat with you today. I think your path and everything you’ve done and accomplished already in your career and in your life is very inspiring. I’m sure it’s a lot of the people at Howard, but definitely to a lot of our listeners as well

[00:41:58] and we’re very honored that you are a memoryBlue client, so thank you for trusting us with your business as well.

[00:42:04] Christopher King: Yes. Yes, absolutely. It’s going very well, and I have nothing but great things to say about Ellie, I will name her out loud. She is fantastic. My team is continually telling me how great the experience is. So, thank you again for your time. Thanks for having me. Thanks for having me as a client.

[00:42:20] Kristen Wisdorf: Thank you.