Episode 115: Joey Plesce – You Don’t Need All The Answers

Sales is an attractive job, and many end up in sales accidentally and achieve incredible success. Further, you can quickly progress from a sales representative role to a leadership position if you are good.

But to be successful at sales, you must be persistent and firm. If you are not ready for rejections from clients and if such things demoralize you, this job may not be for you. 

In this episode of Tech Sales is for Hustlers, our hosts Marc Gonyea and Chris Corcoran welcome Joey Plesce, the managing director at memoryBlue. Joey describes how he got into the sales world, even though he wanted to do sports marketing. Joey, Chris, and Marc discuss Joey’s sales roles — from SDR to MD — at memoryBlue, why athletes are good at sales, and how to overcome rejection.

Guest-At-A-Glance

💡 Name: Joey Plesce

💡 What he does: Joey is the managing director at memoryBlue.

💡 Company: memoryBlue

💡 Noteworthy: Joey grew up in a small town called Aldi in a family of six consisting of his parents, him and his twin brother, his younger brother, and his sister. He has been involved in sports since childhood; throughout high school, he played football and baseball and ended up playing baseball at Christopher Newport University. He wanted to go into sports marketing, so he became a marketing major at Christopher Newport University.

Joey manages client engagement and sales development in memoryBlue’s Denver office. He has been with the company for 5 years, and before joining the leadership team that opened the Denver office, he served as a client delivery manager for more than 3 years. 

💡 Where to find Joey: Linkedin l Website

Key Insights

⚡Athletes are good at sales. As someone who has been involved in sports all his life, Joey wanted to combine marketing and sports and work in sports marketing. Nevertheless, he followed his father’s advice and went into sales. “He was telling me like, ‘You should try and see if you can get a sales internship. One, it might be a little bit easier to get; it’s a tough job. But two, since I started in sales, I see a lot of athletes do really well in sales because, one, they’re used to having to break down the walls — like failing forward and trying to find a fix — but also they’re used to getting coached hard, be coached by a lot of different people.’ So, as long as you’re okay with hearing no, and you’re okay with getting coached and learning how to develop and evolve your process to get to those yeses, it could make sense. And that competitive desire to be the best or be number one and see yourself at the top of leaderboards could play well.”

⚡ If you have a goal, nothing can bring you down. During his internship at Aflac, where he made a lot of cold calls and sold door-to-door, Joey gained valuable experience. In the meantime, he realized he didn’t want to sell insurance, and in the fall of his senior year, he found out about memoryBlue. From his first day as an SDR, Joey was confident and determined. “I knew that the volume of calls was not going to be a problem for me; I’d done that for a full summer, so I knew that I was going to outwork the next person. I knew that I didn’t care that I was going to get rejected or hear no, and I knew that memoryBlue had the training program to help me get to where I wanted to be. So, I was confident that if I come in and do all the things that I can control, I’m going to be successful at this. And I’m not going to let little things get me down; I’m going to focus on the big picture because they’ve got these five paths that I can pursue, and this is going to help me figure out which one I want to go after.”

⚡An SDR does not need to have all the answers. When he started working as an SDR at memoryBlue, Joey’s DM was Frank Taylor, from whom he learned a lot. As Joey says, the most important thing he learned was to be comfortable with the unknown, thanks to Frank’s phrase, “Tell me more about that.” “It clicked while he was whisper-coaching me one afternoon. We’re in a PM blitz; I’m working on my cybersecurity client. This guy might as well have been speaking Spanish to me on the phone the way I wasn’t understanding what he was saying, and he said something for 30 seconds, and I’m sitting there like eyes glazed over, having no idea what the heck I’m going to say next. And I hear Frank in my ear go, ‘Tell me more about [that]; that’s really interesting.’ So I repeated it verbatim, and then he goes through this two-minute spiel about what they’re doing and why he’s upset about it. Like just spills his guts. And again, I don’t understand what he’s saying for these two minutes, so I’m still trying to figure out, ‘Okay, where do I go next? I’m hearing buzzwords here and there.’ And luckily, Frank and I earlier that day had worked on what we called ‘the homework clothes’ on our one-on-one.’ Essentially, ‘You’ve asked me a lot of really good questions today. I don’t have the answers right now, but here’s what I’d like to do. I’d like to go back and do my homework. Let’s set up another call where I can come back and get those questions answered to see if we can help you. Also, [I’ll] add on one of my senior colleagues to make sure that if you have follow-up questions, we can get those answered in full.'”

Episode Highlights

Interning at Aflac

“It was a really great experience because I got to do everything — like our internship at memoryBlue. You’re not getting coffee. You’re not making copies. You were doing a good job; it was the same thing at Aflac. I had to get a license to sell the health benefits package that we were doing, take a test, and all that. In the initial probably five, six weeks, it was all cold calling — all day, every day. You’re list building, you’re sending emails, that type of stuff too, but I was probably making 120, 150 cold calls every single day to different businesses that I had prospected. And that could be through the list-building tool that they had provided for us; it was like Sales Genie or something of that sort.”

The DM Role

“Incredibly challenging and incredibly rewarding at the same time. Obviously, the challenges came before the rewards. But I took over a team that wasn’t performing super well at the time — and that was the SDR’s individual performance as well as the client’s happiness — so it was an uphill battle. Candidly, looking back, you always wish you had more time in the previous position. And so, there’s so much more I could have learned in the SDR world; I had figured out what worked for me, not necessarily mastered the SDR role or mastered what would work for everyone.”

Being a Managing Director During COVID

“You had to be a little bit creative at that point because one of the biggest things that I think people come to memoryBlue for is the training. One of the biggest things is the culture and learning from the people around you, and it looks very different when you’re working from home. So you had to find ways to continue to bring that culture and that training type of mentality. And so it was a lot of Zoom calls, a lot of team calls, calls on my cell phone, where I could watch them blitz, shadow them, and coach them live. […] It was an unprecedented time, but we were all in it together. And I think it almost made our culture that much stronger that we were that way. And I think it really helped us once we were able to go back into the office in either June or July because every new hire that came in, they felt the tight-knit community.”

Transcript: 

[00:00:00] Joey Plesce: The easiest way to build trust when you’re taking over a team is one, show that you care and, two, show that you know what you’re talking about, and the easiest way to do that was call coaching, breaking down calls, giving them advice or feedback, and helping with an email that leads to a booked meeting. And suddenly, when you do that, now they’re willing to listen. 

[00:00:39] Marc Gonyea: Joey Plesce, I don’t think I’ve ever called you anything but Joey Plesce, so it’s gonna be Joey, Joey Plesce. Joey and Chris and I on the podcast today from his office, his original armlet, Joey Plesce, Julia Fitzgerald combo office now, but Founder, Resident, Managing Director, Joey Plesce.

[00:00:57] Chris Corcoran: Excited to be here?

[00:00:59] Joey Plesce: Absolutely, happy to be on.

[00:01:01] Marc Gonyea: We have lots of good stuff to cover. Joey, take it from the top, man, just tell us a little about where you’re from, where you were born, where you grew up? What, what, what were you like as a, as a young, young man? 

[00:01:13] Joey Plesce: Yeah, yeah. So, originally, I’m from about an hour outside of Philadelphia. So, uh, started elementary school and whatnot in Pennsylvania, and then in fifth grade moved down to Northern Virginia to a small town called Aldie, um

[00:01:29] Marc Gonyea: Aldie? 

[00:01:30] Joey Plesce: Aldie. 

[00:01:30] Marc Gonyea: Wow, there you go. 

[00:01:31] Joey Plesce: So, about 45 minutes, an hour outside of HQ, not including Northern Virginia traffic, mostly. But lived there for most of my life until moving out, uh, closer to the office once I joined the memoryBlue team.

[00:01:46] Marc Gonyea: But let’s go back in that. One of how many? 

[00:01:48] Joey Plesce: One of four. 

[00:01:49] Marc Gonyea: One of four. 

[00:01:50] Joey Plesce: One of four, in a twin.

[00:01:51] Marc Gonyea: In a twin? I’ve never met the other guy. What, where on the food chain were you and your twin? 

[00:01:58] Joey Plesce: I’m the oldest by five minutes. Uh, so, it’s me, then my brother Nick, or my twin Nick. Younger brother Josh is four years younger, and younger sister Samantha is six years younger. 

[00:02:09] Marc Gonyea: Okay. All right. And what was it like growing up in a house with the twin and, and three other siblings? 

[00:02:15] Joey Plesce: Fun. Competitive. 

[00:02:16] Marc Gonyea: Really? 

[00:02:17] Joey Plesce: Uh, absolutely. 

[00:02:18] Marc Gonyea: Can you tell us about that? 

[00:02:19] Joey Plesce: Yeah. So, first, both my parents were college athletes, um, they met at a small school in Pennsylvania called Geneva College. Dad played football for four years, mom ran track and field, I think for two years before she stopped to focus on school. But naturally, growing up, like, we played sports from the moment that we could pick up a ball, whether it was soccer, football, basketball, hockey, you name it.

[00:02:46] Like, even when we were in Pennsylvania, we used to have a concrete area in our basement that wasn’t quite finished, and part of how we finished it was my dad painted a hockey court, dumb, and we got some nets, and we used to play, me and Nick versus him, or me and Nick versus him and Josh.

[00:03:07] And we compete all the time, um, always had a basketball court in the, in the driveway, always gathered the neighbors after we finished our homework to go play other sports outside, like, you name it. Um, and my brother, uh, is a graphics guy, he works for the Bucks right now. 

[00:03:25] Marc Gonyea: Yep, the Tampa Bay Bucks.

[00:03:27] Joey Plesce: Tampa Bay Bucks. 

[00:03:27] Marc Gonyea: Not the Milwaukee Bucks and Giannis. 

[00:03:29] Joey Plesce: Correct. 

[00:03:29] Marc Gonyea: The Tom Brady Bucks.

[00:03:30] Joey Plesce: That’s right.

[00:03:31] Marc Gonyea: Okay. All right. 

[00:03:32] Joey Plesce: That’s right. And so, he actually, when we were younger, he used to make us jerseys for our team, like, neighborhood games.

[00:03:39] Marc Gonyea: Your brother?

[00:03:39] Joey Plesce: My brother would, like, we’d go, and we’d buy blank t-shirts, and we’d get the special markers that you could draw on, and he would make us hockey jerseys, and we would play little, like, tournaments within our neighborhood.

[00:03:54] Marc Gonyea: I would’ve loved, we got the Wood, Plesce we should introduced the, there’s two gravel gangs, Corcoran, they could have come up with gangs and played against one another. All right. So, who, so, uh, before Chris asks this, I’m gonna ask you, who, who’s the better athlete? You, the five, five-minute younger twin?

[00:04:11] Joey Plesce: Oh, myself, of course, of course.

[00:04:14] Marc Gonyea: Not even a hesitation. 

[00:04:15] Joey Plesce: No, no. I’m sure he’d agree. Not really, no, I mean, we competed all the time. I was always, I was always faster than him, so that was kind of my advantage, uh, he’s a little bit bigger than I am, so I’m sure he probably, he’d probably say, “Depends on the sport.”

[00:04:31] Marc Gonyea: Okay. All right.

[00:04:31] Joey Plesce: Um, but I’ll, I’ll, I’ll pick myself there.

[00:04:35] Marc Gonyea: All right. And then, what, um, do you have a favorite sport? 

[00:04:40] Joey Plesce: Favorite sport? I mean, it would depend because I think as you grow up, you kind of gravitate towards different things, um, obviously ended up playing baseball in college, but the one I miss the most now is football.

[00:04:52] Marc Gonyea: Football? Really? Okay, the sport I’d never played, unfortunately. So, all right. What’d you think you, you know, so, you’re in high school, I guess, just to make sure we cover all the ground, I don’t want to, like, I don’t wanna paint you to a corner hair brush, you know, sports, you were sports and school kid, was it all sports most of the time, little school, did you work, did you not work? Like, did you have anything else going on or was it just sports? Was, that’s, that’s okay, too. 

[00:05:19] Joey Plesce: Uh, I mean it was sports and school, like, you know, school was always…

[00:05:24] Marc Gonyea: Yeah, and there are lots of girls, and there are lots of girls, lots of girls. 

[00:05:27] Joey Plesce: Uh, you know, there are some girls here and there, some girls here and there, but mostly, mostly sports, mostly school, um, school is always a priority in, in our house. Like, like, I mentioned before, we’d ever play with neighborhood kids when we were younger, like, you had to get your homework done. Um, so, it was always a focus, um, and sports were gonna be taken away from you if you didn’t do well in school. 

[00:05:49] And so, I think I was always pretty good about holding myself accountable in that aspect, but it was very real that, like, sports were what drove me, and if I got a bad grade or if I wasn’t doing well, my parents would suspend me themselves,

[00:06:04] Marc Gonyea: Yeah, there you go. 

[00:06:05] Joey Plesce: um, if necessary. So, but sports is really what drove me all throughout high school, I mean, whether it be, like, the school teams that I was playing on for, like, football and baseball or it be travel teams ’cause, like, if you want to, if you want to play at the next level, 

[00:06:20] particularly in baseball, you need to be on a showcase team, and you need to go into tournaments during the fall, during the summer, like, you need to find ways for people to see, or individual camps for those schools so they can get a feel for what type of player you are.

[00:06:33] Marc Gonyea: Yep. Okay. So, you, you’re in high school. What did you think you wanted to do when you grew up? 

[00:06:38] Joey Plesce: Be a professional athlete was probably the first thing, you know, by senior year, I realized being 5’10, and at the time, I think a 145, it probably wasn’t gonna happen. But being a sports guy, I wanted to go to sportsman. I wanted to work for Nike, Under Armor, Adidas, um, a professional sports franchise. Like, that was the goal, and I didn’t really know it until, I think, my junior year,

[00:07:04] I took a sports marketing class, and my teacher was a genius, she had us do a fantasy football draft the first day of class, and then we had to make a full, like, marketing campaign for this, like, imaginary sports team. Different gear and ticket sales and everything like that instantly drawn in, but you had a lot of fun while you were learning it. “So, you’re telling me people do this for a living? I’m in, let’s do it.” So, that’s why I ended up more, uh, being a marketing major at Christopher Newport.

[00:07:32] Marc Gonyea: Okay. All right. And then, as you’re in school, wait, so, you said you played sports in college, tell us a little bit about that. 

[00:07:38] Joey Plesce: Yeah, so, I played baseball at Christopher Newport, CNU, my freshman, and then the first half of my sophomore year. 

[00:07:45] Marc Gonyea: It was that tough to make the change?

[00:07:47] Joey Plesce: Yes and no, right? Like, it is a totally different level, uh, that you’re playing with, even, uh, it is D3, and we were top five in the nation my freshman year, and I think the biggest change is, like, in high school, you’re the man, yeah, I mean there are other very good players on the team with you,

[00:08:04] but like, you generally, generally feel like when you step on the field, you’re the best player on there, or if not, in the top two, three. When you get to a Christopher Newport, or any really college sport, everybody else was the man, too. So, you’re not gonna differentiate yourself just with, like, your talent, otherwise, you probably, probably would’ve been D1 and got a full scholarship or something like that.

[00:08:25] So, you really, really had to love the game because of the, the time aspect of it, um, but you also had to try and find ways to just differentiate yourself outside of just your skill with, like, your work ethic or your baseball IQ. 

[00:08:39] Marc Gonyea: Yep. Got it. Okay. All right. So, you’re in school, playing ball, you’re doing the marketing, sports, marketing thing. What did you think you were gonna do? When did you kind of figure things out? I mean, you kind of know actually, I think you knew, but

[00:08:56] Joey Plesce: So, I still thought I was gonna go into sports marketing, um, my freshman year, sophomore year, and then most of my junior year.

[00:09:05] My junior year, I knew I didn’t have a ton of real-world experience, I didn’t have an internship at that point, I had lifeguarded, and I had been a, uh, summer camp counselor, which, you know, looking back on it helps with some of the skills you needed in an SDR role, or maybe management role.

[00:09:27] Marc Gonyea: There was a DM. 

[00:09:28] Joey Plesce: Yeah, exactly. But my junior year, I was looking into a lot of different internships at, like, these major organizations, you know, that were gonna allow me to pair marketing and sports, and I realized very quickly that, like, one, I was not alone, there are a lot of kids like me who wanted to get into that job.

[00:09:46] And because of that, it was not only highly competitive, but they didn’t have to pay you very much. And getting a paid internship was not the most important thing, but I did need some money to be able to, you know, enjoy life at school. And so, you know, and not getting either a lot of interviews or not getting a lot of callbacks, not getting anything, I was talking to my dad about, like, what options I could have, and he started as a sales guy, and he’s had a, a successful career.

[00:10:13] Marc Gonyea: And yeah, that’s when he learned how to dress.

[00:10:14] Joey Plesce: Yep. That’s right.

[00:10:15] Marc Gonyea: Joey Plesce, one of the best-dressed people all the time, ask him about that, Chris, back in Virginia, he’s like, “Yeah, my dad, my dad,” but I was like, “Dude, give your dad a shout out.”

[00:10:24] Joey Plesce: Yeah, yeah, my, my dad’s got a high standard, a high standard for high address professionalism, all that. So, he certainly, he set the tone, uh, which I’ve tried to carry forward, but he was telling me like, “Hey, you know, you should try and see if you can get a sales internship, one, it might be a little bit easier to get because

[00:10:42] it’s, it’s a tough job. But two, ’cause I started in sales, I see a lot of athletes do really well in sales because, one, they’re used to kind of having to break down the walls, like, failing and fa, failing forward and trying to find a fix, but also they’re used to getting coached hard, being coached by a lot of different people.

[00:11:02] So, as long as you’re okay with hearing no, and you’re okay with getting coached and learning, like, how to develop and evolve your process to get to those yeses, like, it could make sense, and that competitive desire to be the best or be number one and, and see yourself the top of leaderboards could play well.

[00:11:19] Marc Gonyea: Got it. Yeah. Lemme jump in. So, that’s where I misspoke earlier, I thought you had realized that earlier, but that wasn’t until you were the junior year.

[00:11:26] Joey Plesce: Yeah, junior year is really when I started considering. 

[00:11:29] Marc Gonyea: Okay. Excellent. So, then what happened? Then what happened? So, you went out and got an internship?

[00:11:33] Joey Plesce: Yeah, went out and got an internship with Aflac, actually, and it was a really great experience because I got to do everything, like, kind of like our internship at memoryBlue, you’re not getting coffee, you’re not making copies, you were doing good job. It was the same exact thing at Aflac. I actually, I had to get a license to sell the health benefit package that we were doing, take a test, and all that. 

[00:11:56] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. Tell us about, tell us about the, the day-to-day in that gig. 

[00:11:59] Joey Plesce: Yeah. So, it depends on what part of the summer, but like, in the initial, probably five, six weeks, it was all cold calling, all day, every day.

[00:12:08] I mean, you’re list building, you’re sending emails, that type of stuff, too. But I was probably making 120, 150 cold calls every single day to different businesses that I had prospected, and that could be through, uh, the list-building tool that they had provided for us, I think it was, like, Sales Genie or something of that sort.

[00:12:25] But I also, like, again, like, kind of like when I first started memoryBlue, I was commuting out to that office in Wellington, and so, when I’m driving down 50 and seeing different businesses along the strip, I’m writing ’em down on my phone as I’m in bumper-to-bumper traffic, going, okay, I’m gonna give them a call. 

[00:12:41] Marc Gonyea: Yeah, who are you calling? 

[00:12:42] Joey Plesce: Everybody. 

[00:12:43] Marc Gonyea: Everybody. 

[00:12:44] Joey Plesce: Every sort of business, I’m calling business,

[00:12:46] Marc Gonyea: What do you call businesses? 

[00:12:47] Joey Plesce: business owners to try and either sell them benefit packages if they don’t currently offer health insurance for their employees or to help supplement the packages that they do offer.

[00:12:56] Marc Gonyea: I see, I see, got it. Okay. And, and what’d you learn in that, that role? What was the big, the biggest thing you learned in that internship? 

[00:13:03] Joey Plesce: Biggest thing I learned in that internship is, one, I like the rush in sales, I like the yes, I like seeing myself at the top of the leaderboard, I like walking up and strutting to write my name on the top of the leaderboard, I, I love that. 

[00:13:22] Marc Gonyea: Yeah, why, why, why? Always forget about this, you’re so competitive, oh, yeah, it’s bringing back memories.

[00:13:27] Joey Plesce: I mean, it’s, it’s like, I don’t know, I said football is my favorite sport earlier, nothing compares to scoring a touchdown.

[00:13:34] Like, compared to it, I’ve hit a home run in baseball, like, you’ve hit the game wearing basketball, nothing compares to a touchdown and hearing the crowd go wild. It’s kind of the same thing in sales, like, nothing compares to getting, like, that first yes, or getting that yes to get you out of a rut,

[00:13:48] um, or the dip or whatever you want to call it. So, like, and feeling like, you kind of feel like you’re the man when you get that yes, and you’re walking to the leaderboard and whatnot. So, like, I loved getting that satisfaction and seeing myself progress throughout the summer. I also got the other side of the coin where I got hung up on or had people say not nice things to me, or, 

[00:14:12] and the rejection aspect of the role, but who cares about that? I’m a baseball guy, if I’m, succeed one out of three times, I’m in the hall of fame. So, that lasted bat never even happened, kind of like the last call, like, you learn from it, you move on, um, so I felt like that, like, played well in my skillset.

[00:14:28] But even, like, moving forward in the summer, I got to get away from just cold calling and actually going out in person and door knocking on these different 

[00:14:36] Marc Gonyea: That’s what I wanted to hit on, yeah. 

[00:14:38] Joey Plesce: And so, that was another great experience, a lot of the same thing, right? When you can get a yes in person, it’s that much more grant. Also, people are gonna slam the door in your face until you get out of their store, which is what it is. I actually went to buildings around our old memoryBlue office back in the day and was trying to get people to sign up, and eventually got to run, like, my own meetings and try and do the follow-up and get them to actually sign on.

[00:15:06] Marc Gonyea: So, so, it’s safe to say that job turn you on the sales

[00:15:10] Joey Plesce: A hundred percent. 

[00:15:10] Marc Gonyea: as a profession? 

[00:15:11] Joey Plesce: A hundred percent, yeah. 

[00:15:12] Marc Gonyea: That didn’t, because for, not everyone does that. 

[00:15:14] Joey Plesce: Yeah, oh yeah. There are, there are plenty of people there that had the opposite effect, and this was fully commissioned, so you didn’t sell, you didn’t make any money.

[00:15:21] Marc Gonyea: Didn’t make any money. 

[00:15:22] Joey Plesce: So, you’d see some people who were grinding, other people were on Facebook all day, they didn’t really care, it’s just satisfying something to put on the resume or whatnot, but like, you know, if I’m gonna put 40 hours a week into something, I’m gonna give it my all because otherwise, what’s the point? I might as well have stayed at home or done a different job. 

[00:15:39] 

[00:16:42] Marc Gonyea: That’s right. I like you, Plesce. So, so, you did that and sounds like it was an amazing influence on kind of your career. When you came back to school, so, what did you think you were gonna do then when you graduated? ‘Cause that was a summer before your senior year, okay. So, what’d you think you were gonna do, you know, uh, post, you know, the following May? 

[00:17:01] Joey Plesce: Yeah. So, I knew I wanted to do sales, I knew I wanted to give that a shot, I knew I didn’t wanna work at Alfac again. So, there are a couple reasons. One, I didn’t really feel like I wanted to stay in, in insurance sales, you know, it was a great experience, but it wasn’t something that I felt like I was super passionate about. Two, there wasn’t a lot of training on sales itself. So, we learned about the features and benefits and what we could be selling these people for, I don’t know, maybe a two-hour presentation in the first couple days of working there.

[00:17:36] And then they said, “All right, go out and do it.” So, I’m literally googling how to cold call to try and write my script and making my own changes throughout the summer on, like, what’s working, what’s not working, what other people are doing that’s working. So, I really wanted to find a place that was actually gonna cultivate those skills and show me what’s the right way to do it, and work with me and train me on how to get there.

[00:18:01] But to be honest with you, I wasn’t, like, set on tech sales when I first started my process. I knew I wanted sales, I knew I wanted training, I knew I wanted company culture, and ideally, I’d be in Northern Virginia, I was willing to relocate, but Northern Virginia was ideal to me.

[00:18:16] Marc Gonyea: How’d you find out about us? 

[00:18:18] Joey Plesce: Career fair. 

[00:18:20] Marc Gonyea: At CNU? 

[00:18:21] Joey Plesce: At CNU, fall of my senior year, um, like I said, I knew I wanted sales, so I updated my resume, printed it out on fancy paper, got my suit ready to go, dry cleaned, all that, and I went through the list of organizations that had sales positions and I made a list of who I was gonna make my rounds at, um, when I went to the career fair.

[00:18:42] And, I mean, it’s very easy to spot memoryBlue at the career fairs with the big elephant, like, so easy to pick ’em out, but also, like, you can’t just walk by the memoryBlue, our recruiters do an incredible job of just grabbing you, and talking to you and asking me, like, what are you looking forward to today? And so, memoryBlue, originally when I walked up, they weren’t the person I was going to see at that moment, I had ’em on the list, 

[00:19:07] Marc Gonyea: But that’s how it usually works, but maybe not nowadays, but when I was involved in it, it was never, we were never the first, first, the first person. 

[00:19:14] Joey Plesce: Yeah. So, I had have known the list, but Courtney White was actually

[00:19:18] Marc Gonyea: Courtney White.

[00:19:18] Joey Plesce: a recruiter.

[00:19:20] Marc Gonyea: Yeah, CNU alumn? 

[00:19:21] Joey Plesce: CNU alumn, that’s right, that’s right. I met Courtney at the career fair, and every time I talk about this, the best way I can describe the experience is it was just different because when you go to these career fairs, you’ve got your resume in one hand, you’ve got this, like, 30, 60-second elevator pitch of who you are, like, what class have you’ve taken, what you’re interested in,

[00:19:43] you hand it to the recruiter, they give you a business card, they say, “We’ll be in touch.” And that’s it, you know, you hope, you pray, you cross your fingers and hope that you’re gonna get a call. Courtney was not that way in the slightest, like, we probably talked for 10 minutes at the career fair about what I was looking to do, why I was interested in sales, what was important to me.

[00:20:03] She honestly asked me a ton of questions I hadn’t given a lot of thought to, which was very eye-opening, but the more that she asked questions and the more that she talked about memoryBlue, I started realizing memoryBlue checked a lot of my boxes, she’s talking about this strong company culture of a lot of people who are early in their career, who are maybe fresh outta school like myself,

[00:20:24] like she started, and she’s talking about the training program and the growth paths that we can offer, and the different companies that we work with and help support and why that’s so beneficial to your career, and, you know, I left that career fair, and I was hyped about memoryBlue, like

[00:20:43] Marc Gonyea: Courtney was an all-star, Corcoran.

[00:20:44] Chris Corcoran: Incredible. 

[00:20:45] Marc Gonyea: Right? Still is. 

[00:20:49] Joey Plesce: Yeah, she was so awesome. And so, like, after that, obviously, I had other companies that I wanted to, like, start an interview process with, but memoryBlue was definitely on my list. And so, I sent her a follow-up email, I sent her another follow-up email, I probably followed up with her, like, three or four times, like, 

[00:21:07] I’m sure she had a million resumes to go through and a bunch of other schools that she visited, but I blew her up to try and get an interview on the calendar, and eventually was able to come in and interview in over, I think Thanksgiving break and then winter break, and worked with her, um, interviewed with Frank Taylor, interviewed with Ivor Tafro

[00:21:27] Marc Gonyea: Ivor Tafro. 

[00:21:29] Joey Plesce: And then, luckily was able to have the opportunity to accept an opportunity before going back to school my second semester. 

[00:21:38] Chris Corcoran: Classic make red. 

[00:21:39] Joey Plesce: Yeah.

[00:21:39] Marc Gonyea: Hi, Chris. So, Plesce accepted before, before the year even hit, is that what you’re saying? Did you 

[00:21:47] Joey Plesce: Yeah, I literally, the day that I drove back to school, I called Courtney ’cause I had the offer in hand, I had, of course, I had my dad look over it, um, and tell me kind of what he thought 

[00:21:57] Marc Gonyea: Right? He probably asked questions. 

[00:21:59] Joey Plesce: Yeah, a couple questions. So, called Courtney up, asked her questions, she made me feel really comfortable and confident. I signed it live while I was on the phone.

[00:22:08] Marc Gonyea: Oh, excellent. 

[00:22:09] Joey Plesce: Um, “And just to confirm, like, hey, I’m all good, right?” She goes, “That’s the first time that’s, I think that might be the first time that’s happened. Yes. You’re all good. We’re so excited.” It was perfect. So, hung up, got my bags, drove back to school excited about the opportunity, fast forward to May, graduated in, like, the second week, like, May 16th, this area. Started on, I had, took, like, two weeks, took a trip with my parents and my brother, started June 6th at memoryBlue. 

[00:22:35] Marc Gonyea: I got a question for you, bud. Coming outta CNU, working for us as, like, a classic make ride, like, our sweet spot, how does that impact your, like, recruiting mentality as a delivery manager, and then as a founding managed director of this office?

[00:22:52] Because you go out, and now you recruit. Now, are you helping the team, like, does that experience, I mean, you went through exactly what we want everybody to go through, really, like, ideally.

[00:23:01] Joey Plesce: Yeah, yeah, I mean, I think it absolutely impacts, and it’s something that I’ve tried to place as a big emphasis, especially as we’re growing SDRs into delivery managers, and they’re managing their own teams of how impactful every interaction is, particularly with these May grads.

[00:23:19] And like myself included, like, had I not had the positive experience with Courtney, you guys would’ve been just another company, uh, let alone the company that I was really excited about and wanted to go work for after school. And so, it’s something that we really try and prioritize, especially here in the Denver office, and some of that’s based off of what I learned in the Virginia office and how important it’s growing a strong team and strong culture and the strong office as a whole. 

[00:23:44] Marc Gonyea: That’s great, that’s great. All right, so, let’s talk about, let’s take it back real quick. Everybody has their early day at memoryBlue, being an SDR at memoryBlue, I have, I have my own, uh, with Chris and I when we were doing it. But I don’t know if this is true or not, but looking at it, at some of the, the call prep notes, and it says you were blindingly confident 

[00:24:02] Joey Plesce: Yes. 

[00:24:03] Marc Gonyea: On day one. 

[00:24:03] Joey Plesce: Yes. 

[00:24:04] Marc Gonyea: Was that a good thing? Was that a bad, was that night? Tell us what you, did you just walk in, like, I’m batting cleanup today? You going yard, like, “What?”

[00:24:13] Joey Plesce: Not necessarily that I’m batting cleanup, like I, from my experience with Aflac, I was very aware that I knew, you know, like, I did not know how to sell, at least what I felt was the correct way, but I had gotten experience with the rejection aspect of this. So, I didn’t necessarily care that people were saying no to me,

[00:24:35] which I know is a, a big hurdle for a lot of people, and I saw that first hand in my internship. Um, I also knew, like, I had potential, so, I, and I knew that the volume of calls was not gonna be a problem for me, I’d done that for a full summer, so I knew that I was gonna outwork the next person, I knew that I didn’t care that I was gonna get rejected or hear no, and I knew that memoryBlue had the training program to help me get to where I wanted to be.

[00:25:00] So, I was confident that if I come in and do all the things that I can control, I’m gonna be successful at this, and I’m not gonna let little things get me down, I’m gonna focus on the big picture because they’ve got these five paths that I can pursue and this is gonna help me figure out which one I really want to go after.

[00:25:17] Marc Gonyea: Excellent. Okay. What was it like in the beginning? So, in terms of who were you working with? Like, you remember the team you were rolling with? Who was your DM? 

[00:25:28] Joey Plesce: Yeah, Frank Taylor.

[00:25:29] Marc Gonyea: FT3 was your, 

[00:25:30] Joey Plesce: That’s right. 

[00:25:31] Marc Gonyea: was your DM. Okay. All right.

[00:25:32] Joey Plesce: Frank Taylor was my DM back in the day. Yeah, Frank was an incredible manager, still is an incredible manager, but he’s a huge reason why I think I was able to be as successful as I was in the SDR role and move into the DM role, but I had a little bit of a unique experience when I first started, I, my mentor left after a couple days into the role.  

[00:25:54] And so, I kind of had a community mentor with my team, I think Brian Go, Goff officially got, uh, labeled as my mentor label, but like, Brian, um, Shreya, Dan Gallucci, they were, were all, uh, Danny Powers as well, like, they were all big parts in me just turning around and asking him questions and annoying him about, like, what’s working, oh, Zach Amos, I don’t think I said that yet, like, 

[00:26:20] Marc Gonyea: Yeah, yeah. I, I gotta hit the bell for one of those guys, they’re all…

[00:26:24] Joey Plesce: Yeah. So, like, and we, I would find ways to ask them questions outside of just like the office too, like, Gallucci, love him, he was a big reason why I felt super comfortable with the team when I first came on.

[00:26:37] Him, me, Zamos, we go on Slurpee runs, and pick their brains on, like, what was going on, like, they didn’t want an official one-on-one. So, I ride in the car with them, we’d go get a Slurpee, and we talk about what’s working, what’s not, what they’re hearing from me that’s, that I’m struggling with, and just finding different ways to try and pick the brains of those who were more successful than I was at that point. 

[00:27:00] Marc Gonyea: What, what did you get good at as an SDR? What did you know? What was your kind of superpower? 

[00:27:04] Joey Plesce: So, I guess I’ll give you a little background before I answer that. So, like, my, I was always on two-half times

[00:27:11] Marc Gonyea: Oh, wow. 

[00:27:12] Joey Plesce: as an SDR, oh, yeah. 

[00:27:14] Marc Gonyea: Corcoran loves that shit. 

[00:27:15] Joey Plesce: Yeah, I was always on two-half times as an SDR, and I think I had four or five clients in my first three months, so, to be totally,  to be totally honest, I didn’t know what most of them did. 

[00:27:33] Marc Gonyea: Yeah, yeah, yeah, right.

[00:27:34] Joey Plesce: And like, like, the intricate details, like, getting in the weeds with the prospect,  I couldn’t do that. Uh, I also wasn’t, like, a techie guy by nature. So, I had to buy cybersecurity for dummies, one of my

[00:27:45] Marc Gonyea: Of course, yeah. 

[00:27:46] Joey Plesce: So, I got really good at really not answering a lot of questions and instead asking a lot of questions based off of what they were saying, and really uncovering if there’s any sort of pain or any sort of challenge that I think my client can help with, and setting next steps based off of that. 

[00:28:08] Marc Gonyea: Yeah, that’s probably your strength, actually, right? There’s no, actually, probably it’s like the amateur and the professional type, type thing.

[00:28:14] Joey Plesce: Yeah, yeah, like, Frosty the Snowman, how the rookie is successful because he asked a lot of questions. I was the rookie, and I had to keep applying that on other campaigns, which I also think drastically helped me when I came in the DM role ’cause now I’m thrown into however many clients you’re managing,

[00:28:29] seven, eight clients that you aren’t on the kickoff call. So, now you have to learn on the fly, but that allowed me to coach the SDRs from day one, not specific their technology, but more specific to, like, sales in the SDR world. 

[00:28:41] Marc Gonyea: So, what I’m hearing is you kind of ended up using your lack of technical knowledge to your advantage,

[00:28:47] Joey Plesce: Correct.

[00:28:47] Marc Gonyea: right? 

[00:28:48] Joey Plesce: Mm-hmm.

[00:28:48] Marc Gonyea: So, by kind of realizing, I mean, I know you were trying to learn as much as possible, but it sounds like you, you, you were comfortable with the unknown and not have, some people can’t handle not having all the answers to the tech stuff, right? And they’ll, they’ll think they, they gotta know, but it’s not really what it was for you, you were able to kind of flip it where it made sense by asking questions and trying to understand. 

[00:29:08] Joey Plesce: Uhhuh, and it, it took, it took time to get to that point, too, because, like, at first, I thought I had to know all the answers, and one thing I always pinpoint is, like, my light bulb moment, if you will,

[00:29:19] and Frank worked on me, he had to be really frustrated with me, it took, like, two or three weeks, but just to set in. But just the phrase, “Tell me more about that,” even when you just didn’t know what they were, what they just said to you, tell me more about that, and they’re gonna spill their guts for, like, two or three minutes.

[00:29:34] Marc Gonyea: Oh, Plesce, this, no, this is gold right here. So, just set it up for us. What do you mean? So, how is Frank trying to teach you this, and why is that phrase so important? 

[00:29:42] Joey Plesce: Yeah, so, I mean, Frank was talking to me about it in call recording breakdowns, in one-on-ones, in a team setting, and it just, it wasn’t really clicking to me on, like, when to put it in.

[00:29:54] It seems like a very simple phrase, but, like, when you’re actually on the phone in the game for whatever reason, I never thought that was, like, the time or the place. And so, I actually, like, it clicked while he was whisper coaching me one afternoon, like, we’re in Blitz, PM Blitz, I’m working on my cybersecurity client,

[00:30:12] this guy might as well have been speaking Spanish to me on the phone, in the way I wasn’t understanding what he was saying, and he says something for 30 seconds, and I’m sitting there, like, eyes glazed over, have no idea what the heck I’m gonna say next, and I just hear Frank in my ear, go, “Tell me more about, that’s really interesting, tell me more about that.”

[00:30:35] So, I repeated it verbatim, and then he goes through this two-minute spiel about what they’re doing, why he’s upset about it, like, just spills his guts, and, again, I don’t understand what he’s saying for these two minutes, so I’m still trying to figure out, okay, where do I go next? I’m hearing buzzwords here and there, and luckily, Frank and I earlier in that day had worked on, we called the homework calls on our one-on-one. 

[00:30:58] Marc Gonyea: The homework calls? 

[00:30:59] Joey Plesce: The homework calls. Essentially, like, “Hey, you’ve asked me a lot of really good questions today, I, I don’t have the answers right now, but here’s what I’d like to do. I’d like to go back, do my homework, let’s set up another call where I can come back and get those questions answered to see if we can help you, also, add on one of my senior

[00:31:14] colleagues, to make sure if you have follow-up questions, we can get those answered in full.” And he whispered in my ear, “homework calls,” hit ’em with it, booked meeting, and then it just kind of clicked from that point forward. I don’t need to have all the answers. If I can ask relevant questions to what they’re talking about.

[00:31:34] What was the feeling like when you, when you started, or maybe when you booked the meeting, maybe for the first time? I know it might not be scoring a touchdown, but it’s a pretty good feeling, am I right? 

[00:31:43] Joey Plesce: Yeah. So, let me say we talked about my blind confidence earlier on. My first day

[00:31:50] Marc Gonyea: Move over, Jose can take off.

[00:31:53] Joey Plesce: My, I actually, the first time I booked a meeting was, I, it might have been my first CWB, it was in my first place calling. I booked a meeting, and, like, knowing what I know now, I didn’t actually book a meeting, I booked a time that I could follow up with her to call again. But like, I think because it was so early, it didn’t totally set in, what really felt better to me, or like, when I’ve got that rush of, like, scoring a touchdown was when I got on my next client, and I had to work a lot harder for it.

[00:32:28] It took me a couple weeks to get that first booked meeting. So, like, you know, you’re spending 40, 50 hours a week trying to get to this angle, and when you finally get it, like, there’s nothing better, or like, hitting quota for the first time, it’s, like, exhilarating, like you, you’re excited, the prospect shows up, you go on mute, you throw your hands up, everybody’s giving you high fives afterwards, you run, you hit the gong as hard as you possibly can. So, if you guys got noise complaints, I’m sorry, every time you hit it, it’s excited. 

[00:33:00] Marc Gonyea: McFadden in the courthouse. Great company, loved how McFadden said, remembers, “Hey, can you guys take it easy on the drum?” 

[00:33:07] Joey Plesce: I, yeah, I believe, but that was more comparable to, like, scoring a touchdown, that was more of the rust than, like, my first ever, like, quote, unquote booked meeting. 

[00:33:17] Marc Gonyea: That’s great. All right, man. So, you talked about your crew, the gig, I mean, I’ll, tell me more about that, is that what the phrase is? Tell me more about that? 

[00:33:27] Joey Plesce: Tell me more about that. 

[00:33:28] Marc Gonyea: Tell me more about that, I’ll try and work that in my repertoire. What’d you think you wanted to do? ‘Cause I know you had some early feelings about Frank’s job. Looking at that from an SDR perspective, right? You weren’t exactly enamored with what he was doing. 

[00:33:40] Joey Plesce: Yeah, yeah, that’s true. So, I mean, when I came to Memory Blue, I had the intent of getting into sales, and that’s really what I thought made the most sense to me. I mean, we talk about our five paths, hired out, rising stars, internally, that was what I was interested in, really hired out, rising stars to me seemed like it made the most sense ’cause we didn’t, we didn’t have a huge sales team when I first came on. I think it was Marco Johnson, Joey Cohen, Tommy Gassman.

[00:34:07] That was sales, you know? So, hired out with something I was really interested in, rising stars was something I was interested in, and I wanted to be a closer. I wanted to get into a closing role, I had this big scene in my head of being, like, the guy that they call to get the ball from the one-yard line across the goal line,

[00:34:26] come in the final meeting, seal the deal. So, one, I think that tells you how naive I was about sales in general, but, and, and, like, how it works. But two, um, I was laser-focused on that specifically, and I remember looking at Frank in maybe my second or third month after, like, a team huddle or something.

[00:34:47] I looked at him, I said, “Frank, I never want your job, I never want your job, you just seem like you deal with so much unnecessary BS, like, whether it be, I don’t know, clients or other SDRs,” or people just complaining about things that Frank has zero control over, but somehow it’s now his problem, he has to deal with that, I was like, “Thank God I’m not you.”

[00:35:14] Marc Gonyea: So, spoken by a guy who, with the open up and all 

[00:35:18] Joey Plesce: Yes, yeah, yeah.

[00:35:20] Marc Gonyea: Love that. All right. So, what kind of happened, are, are you were working on some clients, you found what you really liked,  right? 

[00:35:28] Joey Plesce: Yeah, yeah. So, like, after I worked on a bunch of different clients, I finally got to kick off a couple clients myself, which I really, like, 

[00:35:36] Marc Gonyea: As an SDR? 

[00:35:36] Joey Plesce: As an SDR, got to kick ’em off, so the two clients that I’ve worked the longest on were RockDove Solutions and Portnox, and Portnox’s actually a client again now. 

[00:35:46] Marc Gonyea: They came back. 

[00:35:47] Joey Plesce: They did, they did. They came back a couple times, I got to manage ’em later on as a DM.

[00:35:52] Marc Gonyea: That’s awesome. 

[00:35:52] Joey Plesce: Yeah, um, which was fun, but yeah. So, I started working on those for a couple months, and as I got to kick ’em off, I really liked it because I had a little bit more ownership than the other ones, like, I had 90 days to prove in my eyes, me and my value. Obviously, there are other people on the campaign, me and Courtney Tougas run, uh, RockDove Solutions together, me and Jessie Gabris were on Portnox, and Jessie ended up going and getting hired out. 

[00:36:20] Marc Gonyea: By Portnox?

[00:36:21] Joey Plesce: By Portnox, that’s right. And so, I started working on them, and I really started gravitating towards RockDove Solutions. One, it wasn’t super techy, so it was easy for myself to pick up early and often, but also it was going after big fish, like Netflix, Walmart, Walgreens, you name it, like, the big companies that, like, I’m, I remember one night I’m sitting at home on the couch watching TV after work, and I see a Walmart commercial come on like, “Hey dad, I booked them today.” Like, how cool is that? And you get to flex that, like, granted, I mean, 

[00:36:59] Marc Gonyea: That’s cool, no, that’s cool ’cause one of the biggest companies in the world, yeah.

[00:37:03] Joey Plesce: I believe they occurred, but honestly, I’m not sure. 

[00:37:07] Marc Gonyea: You just say, “Yeah, they occurred.” You’re gonna find out. 

[00:37:09] Joey Plesce: I’m gonna say yeah, um, cut the, I believe out of there. But yeah, so, I, I started really liking Portnox, I liked my reps, I liked the technology, I liked who I was going after, they had full cycle sales reps,

[00:37:25] they had a hybrid type of role where you’d work from home a couple days, you’ve worked in the office a couple days, which pre-pandemic was not necessarily the norm for everything. So, that was kind of cool to think about, but I really saw it as an opportunity to get to, like, my end goal of being a closer. So, that’s kind of what I had honed my sights in with.

[00:37:43] Marc Gonyea: And, but what happened? 

[00:37:45] Joey Plesce: So, I think around my fifth month, Frank, you know, talked to myself and the other members of the team at that point, Chelsea Kothman had gotten on it as well, I think Jessie Gabris also was working halftime on RockDove, if I remember correctly.

[00:38:01] So, there was four of us that were competing for them to hire somebody out, and they probably were only gonna be able to bring one person on. So, all of us from meeting with him internally, uh, in one-on-ones and whatnot. 

[00:38:11] Marc Gonyea: Chris, right?

[00:38:12] Joey Plesce: I’m sorry?

[00:38:12] Marc Gonyea: Was it Chris? Was it Chris? 

[00:38:14] Joey Plesce: Yeah, Chris Britton. 

[00:38:14] Marc Gonyea: Chris Britton, yep, good, tough customer.

[00:38:17] Joey Plesce: Very, very, yeah.

[00:38:19] Marc Gonyea: Tough but fair.

[00:38:19] Joey Plesce: Absolutely, absolutely. And so, I’m, there’s one day, probably I’m five, five and a half months in, something like that, I’m meeting with, uh, Frank and one-on-one, and we’re going over my resume, he’s trying out me, scrolls up my LinkedIn, picking his brain on what types of questions I should be asking in this interview,

[00:38:36] like, all the, all the great guidance that, like, helps me really just appreciate Frank as a manager and as a person. And so, once we kind of wrap up, he goes, “Hey, if you have, you know, a, a few extra minutes, I do have something I want to talk to you about.” I was like, “All right, shoot.” He goes, “Hey, we may be having a delivery manager position open up in Virginia here soon, and I remember you bringing up management might be a path you want to pursue someday back in your interview way back when.”

[00:39:05] Marc Gonyea: This is Frank Taylor? 

[00:39:05] Joey Plesce: It is Frank Taylor. 

[00:39:06] Marc Gonyea: We’ve got Frank Taylor in it. 

[00:39:07] Joey Plesce: So, yeah, I mean, it was wildly impressive, at that point, I had interviewed over a year earlier. So, for him to bring that up was, like, really impressive.

[00:39:16] Marc Gonyea: He’s a good listener. 

[00:39:17] Joey Plesce: But, you know, Frank is, well, again, a huge piece of why successful, he’s, a guy will take his, the shirt off his back for you, he’ll do anything. And so, he’s somebody I really respected, I was like, “All right, Frank, like, sure, tell me about it, man. Like, I see the day-to-day, like, I see what you do behind, but tell me a little bit more about the behind-the-scenes.” And so, I ended up taking, like, 20, 30 minutes or so, and he just talked to me about all the, the parts of the DM role that I really didn’t know about or hadn’t really seen firsthand,

[00:39:46] and it was really interesting to me. So, he asked at the end, like, “Okay, so, now that we’ve talked about all that, like, kind of where’s your head at? What do you wanna do?” I said, “Well, I’m interested to learn more. What, what would next steps look like from here?” And so, he said, “Well, set up some time with Marc Gonyea.”

[00:40:02] And you and I hadn’t had a lot of FaceTiming at that point. So, that was, that was a little intimidating to set up time with one of our co-founders. So, I shot you an email, you and I went back and forth, we got a time on the calendar, and we sat down in a conference room for about an hour,

[00:40:17] and talked about the role and, like, looking back on it it was very much an interview, I didn’t really perceive it as an interview at any time. But, you know, after that conversation, like, you had given me even more insight on what the role entailed, and, again, it was really interesting, a lot more than I had known based on just my time as an SDR itself.

[00:40:35] And so, I remember afterwards, you asked me like, “Hey, so, what do you wanna do from here?” And I said, “Well, I’m interested, I wanna keep having the conversation.” He looked at me, and he said, “All right, well, tomorrow we’re gonna do it for real. Suit up.” I was like, “All right, let’s do it.” So, I went home that night, I started preparing my questions,

[00:40:54] I thought about what I wanted to, like, talk about during that time, there was no shave November. I shaved my beard completely. 

[00:40:59] Marc Gonyea: Yeah, there you go. 

[00:41:00] Joey Plesce: Wanted to show you guys I was serious, and I have the opportunity to sit down with you and Chris and Wisdorf, at the time, I didn’t realize why she was in the meeting ’cause she was

[00:41:10] heading up talent, but obviously took over delivery, I, uh, sat down with you guys for an hour, and it was more of, like, an interview style. Thursday, I sat down with Chris Britton and the RockDove team for an hour, uh, very much in interview. And then, Friday, it was kind of decision time to an extent,

[00:41:28] not to say that I had, like, two people, like, yes, you have offers, let’s go, but like, I had to make a decision on what I wanted to do next. And the more that I thought about the opportunities, the more that I talked to my parents and loved ones and whatnot. I just realized, like, RockDove is a really cool company,

[00:41:47] there’s a lot of things I like about it, it was gonna help me get into, like, a closing role if I go to that route. But I am 23 years old, I’m six months removed from school, and this company’s gonna invest in me to learn how to interview, learn how to hand selectors on my team, learn how to train people, manage clients, do all these things that I had no idea how to do.

[00:42:09] And so, I thought from, like, a personal and professional development aspect, that was way too good for me to pass up if given the opportunity, and luckily enough, you guys went with me, gave me a chance. 

[00:42:20] Marc Gonyea: Yeah, well, we’re lucky that you decided to do it ’cause RockDove fired a bunch of people away, it would’ve been easy for you to go and work there, no doubt about that. I think it’s interesting, Corcoran, with Plesce and, you know, based upon how high he’s elevated and what he’s con, so much he’s contributed here, he’s been, he, he’s experiencing these things that he had to, like, 

[00:42:40] learn that relate to, with a manager, like, as a manager, how he got recruited, being an SDR, but also being an SDR on multiple campaigns, Halftime, Cyber, a client who wanted, the clients who, who were, like, tough to work with and maybe didn’t, like, appreciate his game, clients, a client who wanted to hire him, right? And then he went through the whole thing with us, Frank turned you onto the opportunity,

[00:43:03] And Frank was doing a sales job too ’cause he knew he was competing with RockDove, right? And me trying to assess ’cause I didn’t know you, assess, but sell you on the opportunity, which you ended up doing many times before, right? All these people you’ve developed to become delivery managers.

[00:43:18] So, and then, weighing your options ’cause you had them, and then you, then you took the DM one. So, you know, I’ll ask you that question again. How, how, how does that impact you? Like, going, having been an SDR and going through those things and deciding between “Should I take the client? 

[00:43:34] I’m not even taking the DM job. Should I go work for this client? Yes or no?” But then, layering it, “Should I be a DM?” But have you used Zeppelin? 

[00:43:42] Joey Plesce: Yeah, I think it has because, you know, I think one of the biggest things that I realized through that process is, like, I had set the goal to become a closer, but that doesn’t necessarily mean, like, that’s the only option.

[00:43:56] It doesn’t mean that I wouldn’t really enjoy other paths that are offered. So, especially with people who are interested, whether it be in the DM role, recruiter, like, um, getting hired out, you name it, like, I’m really trying taking an approach of trying to ask a lot of questions and understand what do you like about the role?

[00:44:14] What don’t you like? What excites you most about the other role? How do you considered this, that, or the other? So, I can understand exactly what they want to do, and then I can actually give them good feedback on, and advice and guidance on what path they could consider, then, you know, put the objectives or follow-up steps to put them in a good place to get the offer to be able to say no.

[00:44:34] Marc Gonyea: Yeah, and, I mean, you had a good idea early as to what the upside was of being a DM, not the upside in terms of, like, all these skills that you learned. We’ve had people on the podcast who, you know, Julia was on it, she worked for you as an SDR, as a DM, and, you know, you kind of passed that shared experience down. So, how was it as a DM? So, you ended up taking the job, right, as a DM? What was that like? 

[00:45:01] Joey Plesce: Incredibly challenging, and incredibly rewarding at the same time. Obviously, the challenges came before the rewards, but I, uh, took over a team that wasn’t performing super well at the time,

[00:45:14] and that was the SDR’s individual performance as well as, like, the client’s happiness. And so, it was an uphill battle, uh, I also, you know, candidly, like, looking back, you always wish you had more time in the previous position. And so, there’s so much more I could have learned in the SDR role

[00:45:32] Marc Gonyea: Why do you say, yeah, why do you say that? Say that, that’s interesting. 

[00:45:36] Joey Plesce: Because I had figured out what worked for me, not necessarily mastered the SDR role or mastered what would work for everyone. And so, what I mean by that is, like, I, I was a phone guy when I was an SDR, I probably booked 90% of my meetings over the phone. So, I could help call coach, uh, SDRs, and I, I’d like to think pretty well when I first started.

[00:46:01] But if you have a low connection campaign, it’s very difficult, you know, you only get two shots a day, that’s a lot of pressure to be booking a meeting a day, or be able to hit quotas. So, like, adding the other aspects of your game, like, email outreach and LinkedIn outreach, those weren’t staples for me.

[00:46:18] And so, I had to learn as I taught, as a new DM, rather than taking the time to really master that originally to help me be better prepared for that next step when I, it was my job to teach other people to do so. 

[00:46:31] Marc Gonyea: Yeah, yeah, that’s a great, that’s interesting ’cause a lot of people will have that sort of reflection, but it’s good. So, I think you’re super self-aware. So, you, I remember, everybody has challenges early on, and I remember, I think being a DM on RockDove, right, right? Because Britton’s no-nonsense. 

[00:46:49] Joey Plesce: Yeah, no, Chris Britton was no nonsense. And he is, when people ask me, like, which client has helped you learn the most, he is always the first one to come to mind because of that.

[00:47:01] He, he wasn’t interested in, in feelings or anything like that, he’s interested in bottom-line numbers, what’s happening, what’s not, ROI, you name it. And as a young DM, I wasn’t used to having some of those conversations and I didn’t necessarily know the best way to handle all of those conversations and, you know, as a, as a result, like, I don’t think I guided him or the campaign in the way that I should have or could have.

[00:47:31] Marc Gonyea: You didn’t know how. 

[00:47:32] Joey Plesce: Yeah, exactly, right, it’s part of the learning process, but like, reflecting on that after the fact, whether it be in the moment or after they had eventually hired people out and been done with our partnership with memoryBlue, I look, you look back, and you’re like, “What could I have done differently?” And there’s a long list of what I could have done differently. 

[00:47:51] Marc Gonyea: What, um, you know, another part about this job, we don’t talk about it over, but this is a big, this is a big thing with delivery managers when they get promoted, is the team, as long as you inherent, inherent team, right? So, you had a team of folks you didn’t necessarily pick,

[00:48:06] Joey Plesce: Correct. 

[00:48:06] Marc Gonyea: right? So, how, how did that go down, too? 

[00:48:08] Joey Plesce: Well, I think it’s two things. One, not necessarily folks I had picked, but two, a lot of people have been there longer than I was. So, it, it’s kinda an uphill battle on both sides of

[00:48:16] Marc Gonyea: So, SDRs with more experience. 

[00:48:17] Joey Plesce: Absolutely. There’s some that have been there over twice as long as I had been there ’cause I had been an SDR for about six months when, when I transitioned. So, this is an uphill battle to gain their, their trust more than anything, and that, one, I, I, I knew what I was doing, and two, I was on their side and trying to help them reach their goals, but there were some that were under-performers and we had to have very real conversations earlier than I expected on performance management and performance review on, on how they were doing,

[00:48:47] and, and set coaching plans accordingly, and next steps, and I learned early how important it was to hold people accountable to those goals and, uh, hold myself accountable to holding them accountable. But I think the biggest struggle is taking over a team that wasn’t necessarily performing well,

[00:49:05] a lot of it was because they didn’t have expectations that they were being held to, um, whether it be like the number of dials or the number of new names or the quality of those types of things, call breakdowns, one-on-ones, like, you name it. So, it was totally resetting the culture by doing what I had seen Frank do to build such a strong team. And if I can take one second, I’m realizing I forgot to shout a couple people on that 

[00:49:28] Marc Gonyea: Dude, give a shout-out, you’re not in the rush. 

[00:49:29] Joey Plesce: Yes, absolutely. So, some of the rockstars on Frank’s team that made us so good, Jessie Gabris, 

[00:49:34] Marc Gonyea: Jessie G. 

[00:49:35] Joey Plesce: Chelsea Kothman.

[00:49:36] Marc Gonyea: Chelsea Kothman, you got, got, got rocked up, right?

[00:49:38] Joey Plesce: Uh, Jesse Matthews. 

[00:49:40] Marc Gonyea: See, oh, Captain America. 

[00:49:41] Joey Plesce: Yep, yep. Back in Luck, T Luck was on there. 

[00:49:44] Marc Gonyea: T Luck, there you go. 

[00:49:45] Joey Plesce: Uh, we had Matt Stevens.

[00:49:47] Marc Gonyea: Oh, Mr. Stevens. 

[00:49:49] Joey Plesce: Mario was on our squad. 

[00:49:51] Marc Gonyea: Mario Bruno. Mario was on your team? 

[00:49:53] Joey Plesce: Mario was on our squad for a little bit, I think he eventually went over to, uh, Swaggy P’s team. 

[00:49:58] Marc Gonyea: Yeah, Swaggy P, he’s got married. 

[00:50:00] Joey Plesce: Yeah, congratulations to him and Simone. Brady Clarkson was on the squad. 

[00:50:05] Marc Gonyea: Brady Clarkson.

[00:50:07] Joey Plesce: Oh yeah. I’m sure there’s others that, uh, I’m forgetting, too, and, and for that, I apologize. 

[00:50:12] Marc Gonyea: That’s all right. You can hit it on LinkedIn after. 

[00:50:14] Joey Plesce: Yeah, yeah. But like, I learned from what Frank had done, and how he had developed such a successful team. So, I knew there were certain things that were non-negotiables for me. We’re gonna have an AM huddle, and we’re gonna have a PM huddle, and there’s certain metrics that you need to come prepared to talk about during that time. We’re gonna have weekly call evals as a team every single week, we’re gonna have one-on-ones every single week,

[00:50:34] and this should be a theme of each one-on-one that we’re going to cover. And I’m gonna blitz coach, and I’m gonna wanna look at your list, and I’m gonna want to get in the weeds, if I don’t know what’s going on, I need you to teach me, uh, I need you to show me so that I can give you my expertise.

[00:50:49] So, uh, I’m not gonna say that everybody loved that approach early on, but I think the easiest way to build trust when you’re taking over a team is one, show that you care and two, show that you know what you’re talking about, and the easiest way to do that was call coaching, breaking down calls, giving them advice or feedback, and helping with an email that leads to a booked meeting. And suddenly, when you do that, now they’re willing to listen, now they’re willing to implement. 

[00:51:14] Marc Gonyea: Yeah, I mean, and you talk about it with, with some hardcore authority right now, but you were learning all that stuff. 

[00:51:19] Joey Plesce: Oh my God, yeah, yeah, it was, it was not easy to stop.

[00:51:22] Marc Gonyea: The first six to nine months were tough. 

[00:51:24] Joey Plesce: Absolutely. That was the hardest part of being a DM, uh, probably the, the same as an MD, to be honest with, with you, but like, I had no idea it was gonna be nearly as challenging as it was.

[00:51:37] Marc Gonyea: As it was. 

[00:51:37] It was a year-end review meeting with you, me, and Kristen for my first year as a delivery manager, and obviously, I don’t think you guys had come in with the intention of, like, trying to talk about me potentially being a, a, a managing director, but, you know, I think after starting to see success of, like, running my team and starting to build those relationships and getting clients to say, you know, past initial contract and continue to work with us long term and, you know, competing against 

[00:52:10] Joey Plesce: the other offices, it started to pique my interest of, like, you know, if I can do this, why not try and continue and become a managing director and open my own office and be able to, uh, kind of expand my, my management style outside of just SDRs of, of ours, of, of managing managers and other DMs as well. Then, they give me a list of things that I needed to work on to be, to continue to grow from my game as a DM to be put in that type of position. 

[00:52:38] Marc Gonyea: And then what happened? 

[00:52:38] Joey Plesce: I don’t think we actually re-pick back up that conversation for another six or nine months off, or something of that sort. But when the time came around that we were starting to think about opening up another office, the Boston office, I think because I had brought it up relatively consistently, I think I naturally kind of forced my, my name into at least the equation to, to start talking about, you know, if we’re gonna open an office, let me be a part of the conversation, um, amongst others who are interested as well.

[00:53:12] Marc Gonyea: So, it very quickly became a two-man race.

[00:53:15] Joey Plesce: It did, it did, it was, uh, it was a fun two-man race, uh, obviously was competing against Jeremy Wood, who literally started as a DM, as a DM the same day as I did. Um, so, we had been through a lot together at that point of really learning on the fly of, you know, what worked, what didn’t, you know, picking the brains of, of those around us and kind of sharing it with one another and we quickly became the more tenured DMs in the office.

[00:53:49] So, I think, I think whether we were competing for Boston or competing just against one another day-to-day, or, or as, like, mentors to other mentees or whatever else, it became very easy for us to compete and try and kind of prove who was, who was the guy, or who should be the guy going up to Boston to, to lead the charge.

[00:54:08] Clearly, you can tell if you check out our website or look online or anything that, uh, I didn’t win that race and, and Jeremy ended up being the guy selected to go to the Boston office, you know, obviously it was a bit of a tough pill to swallow in a sense because, like, whenever you’re competing for something, you wanna win, um, and you want to be able to get the job, you wanna be able to get the opportunity, whether it’s sports or it’s the professional setting.

[00:54:32] I think when you lose, there’s, there’s a part of you that has to look at, like, okay, what were the downfalls or what were the things that maybe caused you not to get that? Um, so, you can continue to grow, but I also think there’s the other, other part of me, especially being, Jeremy being, you know, a good friend of mine and a great colleague.

[00:54:50] It’s also recognizing how great, how great Jeremy was as a delivery manager and how well I thought he would do as an MD. And so, there’s kind of a respect factor in that, too, of, you know, if I’m gonna lose, I couldn’t have lost to a better guy.

[00:55:06] Marc Gonyea: Joey, a lot of people would’ve quit, they would’ve, they would’ve taken their ball and gone, gone home. So, it says a lot about you that you didn’t.

[00:55:16] Joey Plesce: I’m not gonna tell you that the thought didn’t cross my mind at some point after learning about it because I think it was, was, and it wasn’t even, like, “I can’t believe that they didn’t pick me, like, screw this, I’m gonna leave, take my ball and go home.” It’s more so when, at the time that we opened the Boston office, it was generally, like, four years in between offices open, if I remember correctly.

[00:55:42] So, then you’re thinking to yourself, am I gonna do this form, do I, more years to reach that ultimate goal becoming a managing director, or do I do something else in memoryBlue? Do I do something else outside of memoryBlue? Um, and I think, probably one of the biggest reasons I didn’t quit, if we’re being honest with one another, was the ability to have pretty open and transparent conversations with the leadership team at memoryBlue.

[00:56:11] You really talked about, like, what other opportunities, uh, could there potentially be to continue to grow at memoryBlue, or just taking on different projects outside of the delivery manager role, you know, I got a really unique opportunity to help out with starting the Academy program and, and, uh, working with Jen Doe and, and Kim McAvoy and, uh, going down to, to Texas and actually running it in person, originally, as well as, like, taking on different mentees for other delivery managers, both in the Virginia office and office as well as, um, in other offices.

[00:56:46] And even just exploring, like, what, what other MD type, MD type opportunities could there be? I mean, memoryBlue’s had big plans from the beginning, talking about, you know, not just opening different locations, but jumping into to, you know, getting into the federal practice and expanding our, our PPM business and, and things of that nature.

[00:57:06] Uh, so, I, I, I, I felt like it wasn’t a scenario at the time where I felt like I needed to just take my ball and go home because it wasn’t, like, the coach was telling me, they were offering me, saying, “Hey, what, what position do you like to play? Let’s see how we can fit you into the overall game plan.” And so, it kind of, it, it made me feel a little bit better, I guess, personally, with that, you all had my best interest, professionally, in mind, and that’s, that’s a company you wanna work for.

[00:57:33] Marc Gonyea: And then, and then, what happened then?

[00:57:37] Joey Plesce: Well, as we were exploring all these, these different paths, the thought never really got outta my head that I wanted to be in managing director, and I wanted to open my own office. And, I mean, we probably, I don’t know how long we talked, maybe six, nine months, maybe longer, I’m not, I’m not totally sure what the timeline was, but at some point, I’m having a meeting with Kristen and Marc, and we’re talking about, you know, my future and what interests me, and

[00:58:03] they kind of casually, fully throw in it, like, “Hey, uh, you still interested in being an MD?” It’s like, “Well, of course.” “We think, we think we may be able to open up another office here in the next year, like, if that’s something, like, if that’s something you’re interested in, like, let’s talk more about it.” It’s like, “Well, we’re talking right now, let’s get down to details.”

[00:58:26] And so, we started talking about everything, you know, um, everything from different locations to, as I was asking questions about, like, what we really learned from the Boston experience, and I’m calling Jeremy on the side and asking him, like, if, advice, or what I should know that I haven’t even thought about when opening up the new office.

[00:58:45] And, um, I mean, it was, it was certainly not just a one-conversation type of thing because naturally, when you’re talking about opening up an office, you’re really uprooting your life, you’re moving across the country and, you know, I had a girlfriend at the time, still have the same girlfriend, Stephanie Salsini.

[00:59:03] She was obviously a big, big key factor in my decision on the location of where we’re moved, where we’re moving and, and what would work for us personally as well as what would work professionally for, for memoryBlue being in a major tech HubSpot.

[00:59:19] Marc Gonyea: So, you end up moving out to Denver, opening up the, opening up the office, and when, when, when was this for the listeners?

[00:59:26] Joey Plesce: Yep, and I moved to Denver in February of 2020, Super Bowl weekend was my first weekend out here. And so, we had Super Bowl Monday off, and then Tuesday is when our Denver office for Denver office officially opened, and it was just, uh, me and Nikki Johnston out there on day one.

[00:59:50] Marc Gonyea: Nikki Johnson, the legend.

[00:59:53] Joey Plesce: Yeah.

[00:59:53] Marc Gonyea: Just you two?

[00:59:55] Joey Plesce: That’s right. Yeah.

[00:59:56] Marc Gonyea: Wow.

[00:59:57] Joey Plesce: Yeah, it was just us. 

[00:59:59] Marc Gonyea: And you weren’t open long?

[01:00:01] Joey Plesce: No, no, we weren’t, I think we were open about a month and a half, um, and I think I had started to grow, I think I grew the team to five or six people, six people, um, and we had an all-hands-on meeting company, company wide. I remember, I think Jeremy was in my office that day.

[01:00:24] He had happened to be out there for a ski trip and was staying with me and helping me get things set up, and Nimit was out here too, you know, planning to help go to different, uh, events, to get the word out about memoryBlue in Denver. And, you know, I think it was mid-March we decided we were going fully remote for the time being as we figured out

[01:00:45] this new thing called COVID at this, um, which was obviously quite culture shock considering we had never been, we barely worked remote ever at memoryBlue prior to that point, we were always, always in office. So, the thought of being, um, fully remote with a team of almost all completely new SDRs, new SDRs, and new clients that we had just kicked off was, uh, was pretty daunting at the time.

[01:01:20] Marc Gonyea: But you guys found a way to get it done.

[01:01:23] Joey Plesce: Yeah, yeah, we did. And it was, I mean, you had to be a little bit creative at, at, at that point because, like, you know, one of the biggest things that I think people come to memoryBlue for is, is the training, one of the biggest things is the culture and learning from the people around, people around you, and it just, it looks very different when you’re working from home.

[01:01:46] So, you had to find ways to kind of continue to bring that culture and that training type of mentality. And so, it was a lot of Zoom calls, a lot of calls over Teams, calls over Teams, calls on my cell phone, uh, where I could either watch them blitz and, and, and shadow them and coach them live, or even just other things, like, after huddles, every, after PM huddle every Thursday we had game night, and that was something that we’d come up with in our culture club that we started.

[01:02:14] And so, we’d all hop on, and we’d play Quiplash, and everybody would, uh, or, or any other, like, virtual game that we could find, and, you know, we’d have a couple beers and just, you know, really enjoy each other’s company and kind of found solace in that, like, we were, this was weird, it was unprecedented times, but we were, we’re all in it together, and I think it, it almost made our culture that much stronger that we were that way.

[01:02:39] And I think it really helped us once we were able to go back into the office in either June or July because every new hire that came in, they felt that tight-knit community. And so, it helped us really create, uh, the culture that’s continued to expand into what it is today.

[01:03:02] Marc Gonyea: So, what, what, what role is more challenging, managing director or, or delivery manager?

[01:03:09] Joey Plesce: I would say, managing director, personally, I think, um, I think the delivery manager’s role is incredibly challenging, but I think there’s another level when you get into that second tier of management because as a delivery manager, once you kind of figure out what works for, for your team and directly manage the relationships with the clients because you’re talking to them constantly in the SDRs, constantly, constantly, um, I think it’s, it’s easy to get into a rhythm and continue to operate at a, a pretty high rate. 

[01:03:53] And I think you can do the same thing, obviously, as a managing director, but it’s a much different learning curve when you go from being the one who’s actually executing on everything until determin, and, like, as an MD, what do I execute on verse, what do I coach my DM to execute on, and learning when to give them enough rope to go make their mistake or, or learning when to model it for them.

[01:04:19] It’s a, a totally different challenge, and it’s hard when you traditionally have been a top performer to let somebody go out and make their own mistakes or, or, or see where their performance might be lacking and not just sting it in and start doing it yourself, but rather coaching and guiding them how to, how to do it on their own.

[01:04:41] Marc Gonyea: So, now that you’re MDN, you’re promoting people to become delivery managers.

[01:04:47] Joey Plesce: Mm.

[01:04:47] Marc Gonyea: What, what’s, what’s the sort of traits we talked about what you look for in SDR. What are you looking for in those folks who can become a DM?

[01:04:55] Joey Plesce: You know, I think, I think it’s a lot of the same things, like, obviously you still need work ethic, you still need grit, you still need coachability because it is incredibly challenging, it’s incredibly difficult, um, I think I would place an even bigger emphasis on, like, proactivity though, and people who are really going out of their way to let, first just let me know that they’re interested in the DM role, but also show me that they’re in the, the DM role.

[01:05:26] Because I think one of the biggest parts of building relationship with your clients and your SDRs and being a really strong DM here is proactively diagnosing either issues or potential issues and coming with a game planning, coming with a solve. And so, if I see that early on in what, how they’re approaching the delivery manager role, 

[01:05:44] whether that’s them picking up mentors or working other campaigns or trying to shadow different aspects of the DM role, that’s gonna make me a lot more confident in that as a candidate. And then, of course, I have different exercises that I, uh, run them through to get them to start performing some of the day-to-day aspects of the role in more of a mock call type of setting.

[01:06:07] Marc Gonyea: You gotta get some little Bootcamp over there, Joey Plesce’s system.

[01:06:12] Joey Plesce: A little bit, a little bit. I, uh, I have them do, um, run through a couple different exercises. So, one of the first things that I have them do is they will break down a call on ExecVision for me, uh, either one of their calls or one of their teammates calls is they will break down a call on ExecVision for me, either one of their calls or one of their teammate’s calls, and I want, and I want them to break it down with comments and highlights and scorecard it as if they were the delivery manager, and then they have to send it to me ahead of time, ahead of time, so I can listen to it and know, know, uh, like what’s on, on there.

[01:06:52] But we’re gonna sit down in that conference room for 30 minutes, and they’re actually going to coach me, and I’ll play the role of the SDR and they’ll play the role of the DM, and I can get a sense of what their, what their coaching style looks like, and also what they’re picking up on, what they’re focusing on, and what kind of next steps they set and things of that nature.

[01:07:09] And I’ve got another one that’s responding back to some old emails that I’ve gotten from clients in the past and see how they would hand, handle it, and a couple of them are kind of nostalgic to go back through ’cause you can see how I didn’t handle them, right, the first time, right, I can kind of coach ’em through, like, my, my fault as an early manager and, and, and coach ’em up on how I would handle it now, knowing what I know now and even things like taking screenshots of our, our client portals and, uh, the numbers and running a mock weekly call where I’m the VP of sales, or,

[01:07:42] you know, I’m the, the head of marketing, or point of contact of some sort and seeing are they able to diagnose what’s working or what’s not on a campaign based on the numbers and, and how do they communicate effectively to the client and the game plan and, and what we’re doing to either course correct or continue the success that we’re having.

[01:08:00] Marc Gonyea: Joey, how did, how did you know to save all this stuff?

[01:08:04] Joey Plesce: It’s a little bit of coming up with things on the fly, like, the emails I can’t take granted for that was Kristen Wisdorf coming up with it, it was for one of my old SDRs, Colin Cunningham, who really wanted to be a delivery man, manager, and, you know, we were trying to think of, like, what are some ways that we can help him prepare for the role more effectively. 

[01:08:26] And so, uh, Kris, uh, Kristen had asked about some emails and, and went back through the archives and found some, um, that I thought would be helpful. And so, that’s kind of what I started with. But, then as you, as you continue to do the MD role, you realize, you know, there’s so many things that you are coaching your individual DMs on, on a, on a pretty regular basis, and so,

[01:08:47] you start to notice the themes of those things, and one of the big things is individual call coaching, another is how they’re effectively communicating with the client, and so much of that is not just the written word, it, it’s the physical either face interaction or over Zoom calls. And so, you know, I was like, why am I only checking their email capabilities when I’m not checking how they’re coaching or how they’re talking to, to clients like that?

[01:09:11] It made no sense, um, and so, I kind of had an aha moment and started to put it together for future delivery managers to go through. 

[01:09:20] Marc Gonyea: Fascinating. Plesce, what are you most proud of, um, in terms of op, opening that office or being a DM, or being an SDR, you’ve got a lengthy track record with us. What, what, if you look back on your accomplishments, like, what, what, what brings you the most, uh, pride, but, you know, meaningful pride.

[01:09:44] Joey Plesce: You know, it’s a, it’s a really good question, and it’s hard ’cause I think this job, just, like, you have such a unique opportunity to talk and, and create relationships with so many people, both our clients, our SDRs, other managers, but I think, honestly, I think the thing that I’m most proud of is whatever the position SDR, DM, MD, like, each job has been 

[01:10:07] increasingly more difficult, and I haven’t taken my ball on going home, you know, we started an office in COVID, in the heart of COVID. New city, was out here by myself, didn’t know really anyone outside of two or three people from either high school or, you know, a couple other, like, memoryBlue alums, and, you know, we didn’t, we didn’t let that stop us from being able to accomplish the ultimate goal of building an office.

[01:10:38] And, you know, in my opinion, building it bigger than I had ever dreamed of when I first opened, accepted the role. I mean, back in the day, I think most of our satellite offices were somewhere between about 30 and 40 people, and, you know, we’re up to, I think, 81 employees in our Denver office currently, um, so, it’s, it’s grown so much bigger than I ever thought it would be.

[01:11:00] And to be able to play a part in the people that we’ve been able to hire and manage, hire and manage, and help them grow into their career, like, it’s just really rewarding to be able to say I was a big reason why, why these people are able to go on to bigger and better things.

[01:11:20] Marc Gonyea: I say, Plesce, I go out there, um, and I meet folks, there’s, like, a contingent of people from Virginia who move out there, but all over the country, none of those people working for us move out to Denver office. Maybe we would’ve gotten someone else, maybe we would have, that’s not how I look at it, I look at it Joey Plesce, who decided to move to Denver, skinny up, and then fight through COVID, you wouldn’t be working for us. So, you know, we owe you a debt of gratitude for that.

[01:11:50] Joey Plesce: I appreciate it.

[01:11:51] Marc Gonyea: That’s all I got for you, Plesce, man. It’s been a great, that’s all we’ve got for you, it’s been a great session.

[01:11:55] Joey Plesce: Awesome.

[01:11:56] Chris Corcoran: Lots of wisdom.

[01:11:57] Joey Plesce: I hope so, I hope so. I’m excited to hear the, the final cut once we get it all together, but it was a lot of fun, both talking about it and kind of going down memory lane a lit, a little bit, talking about the, the OG hustler’s, hustler’s cove and whatnot.

[01:12:15] Marc Gonyea: I forgot about the curtain, T Luck.

[01:12:19] Joey Plesce: Yeah, you go way back.

[01:12:22] Marc Gonyea: All right. Very good.

[01:12:23] Chris Corcoran: Thanks a lot, Plesce. 

[01:12:24] Marc Gonyea: Well, thank you very much.

[01:12:26] Joey Plesce: Absolutely. Thank you, guys, I guess let me know if, if you need anything else.