Tech Sales is for Hustlers Podcast

Episode 45: Nimit Bhatt – The Pioneer

If you want adventure in your professional life, it doesn’t get more daring than traveling halfway across the country to open the first remote office in company history. Because Nimit Bhatt embraced that challenge, memoryBlue was forever changed for the better.

Nimit’s career journey mirrors the growth and evolution of our company. He started as an SDR in the HQ office – the only office at the time he joined in 2012 – and has gone on to elevate into multiple leadership positions during his tenure. Client Delivery Manager, pioneering Managing Director of memoryBlue Austin, the company’s first dual office Managing Director (Austin and Silicon Valley), and, most recently, Head of Sales. He is a key member of the company’s Leadership team and his work has helped define who memoryBlue is and what it has become.

In this episode of Tech Sales is for Hustlers, you’ll get a ringside seat to Chris and Marc’s first-ever session with a current employee. Nimit’s willingness to explore new professional territory leaves valuable lessons in its wake for our listeners. A natural storyteller, Nimit shares his triumphs, tribulations and, ultimately, his successes with a certain flare that keeps everyone in the room rolling in laughter.

Guest-At-A-Glance

Name: Nimit Bhatt 

What he does: Nimit is Head of Sales at memoryBlue. 

Noteworthy: Nimit was the first memoryBlue employee who was offered to open and run an office outside of DC. He accepted it and moved to Austin, TX. However, Texas was just the start, as he went on to manage the Silicon Valley office and forge new paths for the company in a variety of areas. 

Where to find Nimit: LinkedIn

Key Insights

⚡It’s better to over-communicate than under-communicate. SDRs need to provide clients with accurate information and they need to do it on time. A lack of communication can lead to failure. ”Let the client come back to you and say, hey, I appreciate this. You don’t have to send me an email.  It probably won’t happen, but it’s a better situation to be in than not communicating enough.”

⚡ When I conquer one obstacle, I get another thrown at me. People come to memoryBlue to gain experience and to ultimately launch a professional sales career. However, Nimit decided to grow that career right at memoryBlue and let his success translate to company success. It was challenging but rewarding. ”I was an SDR. I wasn’t the best, but I was a pretty good SDR. Do you wanna be a DM? Did the DM role. I got pretty good at that. Hey, you want to move to Austin and open an office there? Ok, cool. I started building a team out there and got to a pretty good spot. Oh, we need some help with building out things in the San Jose office. Ok. Let’s do it.”

⚡You can’t always be a base chaser. People like success. The problem is, success doesn’t come overnight. It requires patience. ”We had clients come in and say don’t be a base chaser. It’s ok to be a little patient. I know we hire impatient people, and that’s great. But you do have to exercise a certain level of patience when it comes to developing your craft, and the more time you focus on that, it’s gonna pay dividends later when you do go to that next role.”

Episode Highlights

Chapter One: Austin

”It started with a trip that Chris and I took to North Carolina. It is our first year going there to be a sponsor and try to recruit some students. It was just Chris and me in the car, and the conversation came up. Chris was like if we open an office somewhere outside of DC or Virginia, would you move? I said yes in a heartbeat. I’m ready to go anywhere.  Look, you had the opportunity to go to an awesome town, and you have a job. It’s not like I’m moving there and trying to find a job. My company is moving me there, supporting the move, and setting me up with a cool opportunity. I knew that if it failed, I could always move back.”

A 24-Year-Old in a Demanding Role

”I grew up really fast. I was 24 when I moved to Austin, and I felt like I was in my mid-thirties. I had to be more mature. I wasn’t just running an SDR team or talking to clients now. I felt like it was my business. I was managing P&L, but the office too. So it felt like I was watching all the money that was coming in, making sure clients were paying us and not to do some collections work. That experience was amazing.”

You Can’t Make Everybody Happy

”We had these newer people. They’re ballers; they have the potential versus SDRs that we have on this flagship campaign in their tenure, but they’re not doing as well as they could be. So I sat down with these individuals that were in the camp and explained the situation to them. I told them, look, this is the way it needs to be. I need to put you guys on a performance plan. It was a tough conversation. So a lot of them ended up choosing to resign. So we switched to these new people. These guys went on the campaign; they blew the doors off of it. They tripled the production; they led me to believe that there are always obstacles, but I think that’s the beauty of having new people — they’re going to figure it out.”

Chapter Two: California

”It sounded like another challenge. There was no way I would’ve been able to move out there as the first office and build that thing out. Absolutely no way. It was the experiences that I had in Austin that led me to do well in San Jose. I was like, yeah, let’s do it.”

Austin Office Versus San Jose Office

”It was tough in San Jose because of the competition. It was a lot easier to hire people in Austin. We competed well with other companies. Our base salary and our comp plan weren’t too far off. In California, there was a lot more disparity. Some startups get funding every day, and they throw money at people to come work there. We saw just crazy high base salaries for SDRs, and it’s tough to compete with that. But it helped us filter through candidates a little bit better because we knew the people that were coming to work for us could easily get a job somewhere else. But the fact they chose to come to memoryBlue helped a lot. I think that attributed a lot to the success.” 

How to Create and Foster a Culture Within Company 

”Getting to know each SDR as best as I possibly could. And it all starts with the interview process, especially in San Jose. When I was running the office, I was making sure I interviewed every single person, at least one part of the process. Storytelling mastery is one of the best skills you can have in sales, even in management. Over time, as you manage more and more people, you’re going to find more similarities. There are people that I’ve managed, years apart, who are very similar, and I can relate their story to them. And people respond well to that. ”

The Best SDRs Don’t Necessarily Make the Best SDR Managers

”I am of the belief that the best SDRs don’t necessarily make the best SDR managers. But I want to hear stories about things that happened while they were SDRs. I want to see if they’re there to make an impact. I think that’s what it comes down to. I don’t want them to look at the manager’s job as a nine to five job. I want them to see it as I’m here because I want to be here. I want to grow.”

Chapter Three: Phoenix, COVID, and ”The Sales Minute With Nimit” 

”I had to pivot. So I sat down and thought to myself: All right, how can I still provide value? I needed to take this all virtual now. So I immediately started doing these videos. It was called The sales minute with Nimit. And that was gold. We were able to use that stuff a lot. We have a lot of things on our website about it. I was like: I got to keep this up. So I sat down with Chris and Kevin. We came up with this whole webinar series about SDR management, training, coaching, messaging through COVID. I also worked on building out our partnership network because there are lots of companies that do what we do but different. It’s amazing to see how they’re handling COVID and how they’re handling sales development.”

Transcript:

Nimit Bhatt: [00:00:00] I am of the belief that the best SDRs don’t always necessarily make the best SDR Managers. But I want to hear stories about things that happened while they’re an SDR that they can talk through,  growing moments for them. Right? What were some of the best things? I would ask questions like, “All right. If let’s say you’re in charge of memoryBlue training for SDRs, what changes would you make? What would you do? What would you change about the onboarding process the first two weeks of an SDRs time here? What would you change about that?” Because I want to see if they’re actually there to make an impact. I think that’s what it comes down to is I don’t want them to look at the DM job as just like a nine to five for them. I want them to see I’m here because I want to be here. I want to grow. I want to develop and I want to make an impact. I want to see the office change in this way or that way to be, I want to be part of the growth. 

[00:00:47] Marc Gonyea: [00:00:47] Welcome everyone. Today is a big day on the podcast for many reasons, but the main reason is that Nimit Bhatt is on the podcast today. For most of you who currently work at the company and the alums, he needs no introduction. For folks who are maybe new to the show, let me tell you a couple of nuggets about Nimit and we’ll get into it and we spend some good time talking about Nimit today. 

Nimit, just giving a little bit of his backstory, took the LSAT, was ready to go to law school. He backed out and started his career in sales. He opened and established our first office outside of Washington, DC, which in Austin, Texas, and his story within the company is very interesting. He currently resides in Phoenix, Arizona. 

[00:01:48] Nimit Bhatt, welcome.

[00:01:49] Nimit Bhatt: [00:01:49] Thanks for having me. Longtime listener. First time caller. Fired up.

[00:01:53] Chris Corcoran: [00:01:53] Thanks for calling in today, Nimit.

[00:01:56] Nimit Bhatt: [00:01:56] Yeah, for sure. I’m excited to revisit story.

[00:02:00] Marc Gonyea: [00:02:00] Well, you know what? It’s great. We do alumni and we also should be talking about internal folks and your path is a very interesting. I mean, we think that obviously, which is why you’re on. But I think what we want to do is let’s just take it back and let the folks who don’t know you. And maybe you give Chris a new nugget, 

[00:02:18] a little new flare about yourself.

[00:02:19] Let’s talk about this. Let’s talk about family background, where you grew up, those sorts of things. Then we’ll go up through, through high school, college a little bit, get into it.

[00:02:26] Nimit Bhatt: [00:02:26] Cool. Yeah, for sure. So I grew up in Laurel, Maryland, which is the literal halfway point between Baltimore and DC. fun fact, it’s the meeting point of four different counties in Maryland. So I grew up in the Howard County part of Laurel and yeah, I mean, I, I had a very, I mean, I had a good childhood.

[00:02:46] I mean, it wasn’t lavish or anything, We were fairly middle-class, My parents both moved to the United States back in the eighties and they wanted to establish a life here and have a good kind of future for myself and my older brother. so yeah, I had a great childhood, they did a great job of making sure that, I had the things that I wanted, but at the same time, understanding that it’s not free. That, money grows, money doesn’t grow on trees.

[00:03:08] You have to work for it. You have to do your research at the time, these things just because you want something doesn’t mean you have to have it. me as a kid, believe it or not, I was incredibly shy, very quiet. I think most kids are. A lot of kids are, I was very short for my age. Like all my friends were taller than me.

[00:03:26] I was, I guess what would be commonly referred to as husky. so I was a little had a little cushion going on. So I was like this short, chubby, Indian kid with glasses. I played the violin. I was a very easy target and know, for the most of elementary school and middle school. And then I really branched out and came into my own, broken out of my shell in, in high school.

[00:03:52] Marc Gonyea: [00:03:52] What’d you put on the size and when did you get the height?

[00:03:56] Nimit Bhatt: [00:03:56] That’s the thing I hit this growth spurt out of nowhere in high school. It was like over the course of the summer, I just shot up like several inches. some of the huskiness flattened out and yeah, and, you know, it gave me a lot more confidence and then I sort of similar, I got the reputation of being like the funny guy.

[00:04:13] I would do like certain, like impressions of teachers and things like that. And certain movie stars and things like that. So it got a lot of attention, some popularity out of it. but I really broke into my shell. There, there was one individual in particular. It was my high school orchestra teacher who  I had for four years. he was unlike any other teacher I ever had.

[00:04:32] he was a lot younger, he was more relatable. He was hip, he was cool. and he really had a passion for teaching and his whole thing was, as cliche as it sounds, he’s just like, “Hey, be yourself. Right? Don’t worry what other people think, right?  you have your own unique personalities, you have to find it and just go after it”.

[00:04:48] And when you’re in your mid teens, there’s a lot of stuff going on internally and it’s nice to hear stuff like that. And because of that, I branched out a lot more. I discovered that I had like a singing voice. So, I got into choir as well.

[00:05:00] Back then yeah. But yeah, cause, I’ve always hadn’t completely dropped yet, so I was still hitting high notes back then.

[00:05:07] And so yeah, I got involved with the school choir and acapella group and I was in a band in high school and that’s where it really just opened up. And that’s where I got used to being in front of people, be comfortable around large groups of people and and doing my thing.

[00:05:22] and then I got my first job when I was in high school at Subway. My illustrious career as a sandwich artist began. junior year of high school. And that was a cool experience, right? I mean, all my friends were working and I felt like, all right, I need to get a job. And my parents were at Subway getting dinner and the manager was there and my mom’s “Hey, are you looking to hire people?

[00:05:42] Cause my son’s looking for a job”. She’s “Yeah, can he come here right now?” So she calls me and I drive over there and I started the next day. And yeah, so my mom’s kinda like my agent. So

[00:05:52] Marc Gonyea: [00:05:52] Yeah.

[00:05:52] Nimit Bhatt: [00:05:52] Yeah, so I had that job for a while and, you learn a lot about, customer service, but patients how to deal with different types of people, effective communication, working in high pressure situations.

[00:06:05] It wasn’t in the greatest part of town. So yeah, I definitely had some characters kind of roll, roll through there you had to deal with. but yeah, I mean  that, that job, it was a lot of fun. And I knew the owner pretty well. I got to know the owner. he was a baller. He owned like all six Subways at Laurel, has got all the franchises and I would always like pick his brain and that’s kinda my first exposure to like the business world.

[00:06:27] and so yeah, I had that job and and yeah, and then it was time to figure out where I wanted to go to school.

[00:06:34] Marc Gonyea: [00:06:34] And where, and where was that? Hold on. A couple of words about your parents. So, Chris and I have both had the pleasure of meeting them.

[00:06:41] Nimit Bhatt: [00:06:41] Yes, That’s right.

[00:06:42] Marc Gonyea: [00:06:42] We know where you get your size from. Your old man, right? And you get the intelligence and the good lucks and everything else from your mom.

[00:06:52] Nimit Bhatt: [00:06:52] Awesome. Yeah. Yeah. I appreciate that. And you’re right. People say the same thing. Yeah.

[00:06:56] Marc Gonyea: [00:06:56] Good. As they should, as they 

[00:06:58] should. All right. So you’re looking to go to college. W where did you, what did you think you wanted? Where did you go? What’d you major in?

[00:07:04] Nimit Bhatt: [00:07:04] Yeah. So so some backstory on that. So, I have an older brother. He’s 10 years older than me. And he joined the military. This thing was like, 2002 is when he graduated. He did ROTC all through college at a College Park and joined the Air Force, right out of school when he graduated.

[00:07:19] So, this is like post-9/11, like we’re, we’ve, we’re in Afghanistan, Iraq, everything like that. So he was all over the place. we sometimes even know where he was. so he’d be like shipped overseas and things like that. So, I knew that, at least for the foreseeable future, he wasn’t going to be, close by God forbid something happened.

[00:07:38] So I always knew, I, I wasn’t going to move to California and go to USC or anything like that. I knew that I would have to go to school somewhere close to Maryland ideally in state, but it could be Pennsylvania, Virginia. So, I applied to Penn State, Virginia Tech, College Park and then UMBC and Towson. And toured all the schools and ended up going to a UMBC University of Maryland Baltimore County.

[00:08:03] Go Retrievers. And yeah and  it, a lot of it had to do with the financial situation as well. Yeah. It was the lowest tuition and it was close. It’s still close to home, about 20 minutes away from my parents’ house. they were known for having great undergraduate teaching and education.

[00:08:20] They didn’t have a football team or anything. So I kinda just got juggled with what was most important at the time. And I actually had more friends from high school who were at UMBC and I just enjoyed it. I’d love the campus. obviously no regrets at all. I mean it’s an amazing university.

[00:08:32] It’s gained so much attention in the past few years. If I had applied now with the grades I had in high school, there was no way I’d even get in. Like they’ve raised the bar a lot. they had the greatest upset in sports history when they upset University of Virginia in the first round of the NCAA tournament, the first 16 seed to ever do it.

[00:08:48] And and yeah, so ended up going there and had the best four years of my life there. And that’s where really shaped me to the kind of person that I am today.

[00:08:59] Marc Gonyea: [00:08:59] What’d you major in?

[00:09:00] Nimit Bhatt: [00:09:00] I was a political science major. I changed my major quite a few times. So this might be a good story. So going into college, I I thought I was going to be an engineer.

[00:09:11] My dad’s an engineer. A bunch of my uncles are engineers. My grandfather on my dad’s side is a, was a very well-known engineering professor in India. He wrote many textbooks. Some of them are still used today throughout universities, engineering schools there. I occasionally will run into people there who are like older, who went to engineering school in India and they would know him by name or they, if, or they had him as a professor. they would know him.

[00:09:33] so I always thought it was in my blood. I was like, I you I was pretty good at math. I can figure this out. So, I went in as a mechanical engineering major and learned very quickly that I was not good at it. first semester it was like, “All right, it’s definitely not in my blood”.

[00:09:48] it’s definitely, is this isn’t going to happen? I mean, I did okay, but I really didn’t enjoy it. Didn’t really enjoy the students that were in my classes and they weren’t very supportive or helpful at all. It was very competitive. You’d be seasoned incredibly competitive engineering and science school.

[00:10:04] And and I knew that going in. so, I wasn’t really sure what I wanted to do after that. so I was a, an undeclared major for a while and then started taking some courses in history, political science, law, and and really enjoyed it. And ended up deciding, “All right, maybe I can go to grad school, law school maybe be a professor”.

[00:10:24] So, yeah, I mean I originally thought I was going to be a mechanical engineer. I worked two summers for a construction company, thinking I was going to do it to be an engineer. And yeah. and then changed to political science.

[00:10:37] Marc Gonyea: [00:10:37] So, you’re coming up on graduating from school, What’d you think you wanted to do?

[00:10:43] Nimit Bhatt: [00:10:43] Yeah. So for me, I thought it was gonna be law school. that was the natural path. So I,  I knew I knew I had to do an internship, because I didn’t want to go into a blind. I knew it was going to be three more years of my life. A lot of money spent on going to law school and everything goes just

[00:10:58] all right. Before I do this, I need to make sure this is something I actually want to do. So, my academic advisor ha he, he knew a guy who ran a law firm in New York city. They go like way back. It was a technology and entertainment law firm. So they did a lot of IP, but they also worked with low-level celebrities and things like that.

[00:11:16] So, he made a call. They happened to be interviewing for an internship, summer internship. So I took the Megabus, went up to Manhattan for two days at the cousin who was living in the city. So I stayed with her, interviewed and then ended up getting the internship. And then I learned that it was an unpaid internship.

[00:11:35] So I had to work to save some money to be able to do it. so went up to New York for the summer. I lived in Manhattan for about two and a half months. I mean, that was kinda like my first time in, I mean, I lived on campus, but that was only 20 minutes away from my parents. I could go home whenever I wanted. This was now a four, four and a half hour drive from them.

[00:11:55] So, it was really like my first time truly away from home. And yeah, I mean all the money I saved up I blew, of course while I was there. But yeah, I mean, I, I got to see the inner workings of a law firm and what it’s like to be a lawyer. And cause up to that point, I just, it was what I saw on TV.

[00:12:12] It was watching Suits and Law and Order and  and you think it’s this the whole like glamorous lifestyle and it’s like “My client pleads not guilty”, And it was a dramatic courtroom scenes. And then you realize it’s incredibly boring. Right? Right? I mean, it’s, I mean, there’ll be days where they would just be in a room, like a conference room, like from 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM with one client.

[00:12:34] And that’s it. And that was their day and they never were really happy. and they,  they definitely liked their booze and, I just like, “I this is the only, this is what I wanna do”. there was one senior partner there that I became a little bit close with.

[00:12:48] We’d have lunch together and things like that. And towards the end of my internship, he was asking me, he was like, “So, why do you want to be a lawyer?” And I was like, “Well, that’s a great question. I will, I want to make a lot of money and, I feel like I can construct good like arguments and like being a problem solver and communicating and helping people”.

[00:13:06] And he’s “That’s great. so there are a lot of other things you can do with your life, where you can make a lot of money and do all those things. And it doesn’t have to require you to go through all the BS that you’re going to have to go through. Cause I’ll tell you right now. I mean, it’s going to be very difficult.

[00:13:20] And if you don’t, if you’re not passionate about being a lawyer and being in law, it’s incredibly competitive. You’re going to have to go to a  really good school. And and and you might regret it, later in life. So, just think about that and this quite segue to something else.”

[00:13:35] But he was also, so  he was Pakistani. Right? As he grew up. So him and I had similar backgrounds. And we both had parents who really value good education and getting a good job. And what it really came down to is,  they want at least my parents, right they wanted me to be successful in life and that meant making enough money to be comfortable.

[00:13:54] So, you don’t have to worry about money that you’re comfortable. but you don’t have to really go through some of the things that they had to go through. Right? And which makes sense. And which is why I think a lot of, people with that background, they tend to gravitate towards going into medicine or law or being an engineer or something because you can make a lot of money.

[00:14:10] And what we found out is there are lots of other professions that you can have where that’s reputable and that you can make a lot of money. So, I took that conversation with the senior partner. I mean, I took it to heart and I came back and I was like, “Man what am I going to do? Cause he was right.

[00:14:26] I don’t, I just did this because I thought I was gonna make me a lot of money. I don’t think I actually really want to do this.” So backtrack before my internship there was a guy I knew in college, his name is Thaddeus Walsh. The first of many bell rings of the day. Thaddeus. So I did a lot when I was in college.

[00:14:49] the best experience I had in college was I was in the all-male acapella group. We were called the UMBC Mama’s Boys, and that was enough for four years. And Thaddeus, so Thaddeus was a senior when I was a freshmen. And that’s when I first met him. We were both in the group together. as you can tell, Thaddeus has it as a deep bass in his voice.

[00:15:04] And so he was yeah, “Well, no, yeah, oh my God. More work”. Yeah. Right? So yeah he’s going to hate me for doing that. so yeah, so  we were both we’re both in acapella group, and so we obviously, we were close and we were good friends. And even when he graduated, we still kept in touch. So, I ran into Thaddeus at a friend’s house.

[00:15:27] it was almost like a little reunion we were having for the acapella group. And it was maybe a month or two before I went to New York and he was asking me like, “Hey what are you going to be doing?” And to be honest, like he’s,  I told him I was going to, I’m going to New York, I’ll be a lawyer, all this stuff.

[00:15:40] And then he started telling me, “Oh, well, I’m doing this cool thing”. and I really wasn’t paying attention to be honest. Cause I, I was just like, “All right, whatever dude, like that’s cool”. but you know, I’m,  I’m gonna, I’m gonna, I’m gonna, I’m going to be a lawyer. So he kept talking about it.

[00:15:53] He like, walked with me to my car and was like, “Hey, just if things fall don’t, if things fall through for whatever reason, just know “Hey, just give me a call. I’ve never referred somebody to come work at memoryBlue, unless they don’t think they throw up to snuff. And you’re the only person that I think would be able to do it.”

[00:16:08] I’m like, “All right, dude. You’re definitely in sales. All right. I got it. I got it”. So so fast forward everything fell through. so yeah not entirely. So my LSAT score was okay. it, wasn’t going to be good enough to get me into the type of law school that I knew that I would have to get into if I was going to get a good job.

[00:16:26] So, we had a family friend who’s a lawyer like recently became graduated law school, passed the bar and everything. So, I talked to him and he said, “Look, one thing you could do if you’re not sure right now, because I agree, like it’s a lot to go through is go work somewhere for a year. It doesn’t have to be in the legal field.

[00:16:43] But just have an office job. Don’t worry about the money. Just go work somewhere for a year, get some work experience. Law schools love that. Especially if your LSAT score, isn’t where it, isn’t where you want it to be. You can always retake it. But if you have that work experience maybe a year, two years, law schools love that.

[00:16:58] And that’s why you see, there are a lot of people that go to law school later in life, because of that.” So that was kinda like my “How I explain to my parents? And and it helped because, he was, this family friend, someone that they really respected. So, with him saying that they’re like, “Okay.

[00:17:12] Yeah. All right. That makes sense.” So that, so  that, that was the band-aid on that for the time being. So came back from New York. I had one last semester to finish up, since I changed a major a couple of times. I did take some more elective, so I have one more semester to go.

[00:17:26] And then I started thinking about, “All right, where am I going to work”? And I totally forgot about the conversation I had with Thaddeus. So I was applying to, I mean, I just went to our school job board and just applied to whatever job looked cool. and then I remembered my conversation with Thaddeus and I think I texted him or I sent him an email.

[00:17:43] And he responded like right away. He’s “I’ve been waiting for this email, my entire, like all year or something”. something like, like super cliche like that. and then and then I got a call from Dustin Deal, was my, who was my recruiter.

[00:17:55]  Marc Gonyea: [00:17:55] The Deal.

[00:17:57] Nimit Bhatt: [00:17:57] He was a huge reason why I ended up taking the job and I’ll get into why.

[00:18:01] Marc Gonyea: [00:18:01] I want to hear this.

[00:18:03] Nimit Bhatt: [00:18:03] So, yeah, so Dustin called me, I was like super nervous.

[00:18:06] I was terrified. And he was telling me all about memoryBlue and everything you guys do. I’m like, “All right, this is awesome. This is cool”. And,  took the personality assessment, past that. And then so during my conversation with Dustin,  he asked me, so I, so for people who don’t know, so I was living in Laurel, Maryland at the time.

[00:18:23] So, I graduated or I was close to graduation. That last semester I was living at home. And that, I mean, this was, 10, 10, 11 years ago with no traffic from Laurel to Tysons Corner is like maybe 40 minutes. now I can’t even imagine how long that commute would be. So, I knew that it, so Dustin was asking me, “Hey, would you relocate to Tysons if you got the job?”

[00:18:46] And I said, “Well, I mean, eventually I would, I don’t think I would, I think it’s too risky to move to, to do that initially. especially cause one, I’m not really entirely sure what you all do.” so there’s that but but yeah, I mean, I don’t know if I’d be good at it. I’ve, I mean, I, I’d done some sales related things in college, but you know, I was business manager of our school newspaper.

[00:19:04] So, I was doing ad sales. I worked at our campus bookstore selling computers. So, but I didn’t think it was ever going to be like a career. So yeah. So he said, “All right, well, we prefer you to relocate, understand where you’re coming from. Let me get back to you.” And then I think this is something that, I mean I know we’ve done it when the commutes there’s. The interviews are intentionally scheduled during rush hour times to see, how serious the candidate is about making that commute.

[00:19:32] So, my first interview was with Chris in person. And it was at like four or four. It was like the end of the day. so so, so rush hour time. And I was still in school. it was like finals time too. It was at the last like couple of weeks like studying for finals and going through the whole memoryBlue interview process.

[00:19:48] so there was a lot going on in my life at that time. So, I made the commute down. I left way earlier than I needed to. I got to the office super early. I just sat in the parking lot. And this was the first floor of old courthouse. And at that time the lobby was closed because they were doing a bunch of construction.

[00:20:07] So, the main entrance to the office, wasn’t there. So, we had, I’d to go through some like side entrance and, I guess, the instructions that I was given by Deal, weren’t that clear. So, I was freaking out and and I appreciated Thaddeus, of course for getting me into it, but I didn’t want to rely on him too much.

[00:20:24] Like, I wanted this to be like, “All right, I got this job myself and just Thaddeus’s putting a good word for me”. But I called him like two times. I don’t know. I don’t even know if I’m in the right place. Like I don’t.. and then he was like, “All right, okay, I’m coming, I’m coming, I’m coming.” and he comes out and brings me in.

[00:20:36] And then I had my first interview with Chris, which top five most terrifying moments of my entire life. And it’s so, so for people who don’t know, or people are people that know Chris now, and Chris, I think you’d agree with me. You’ve mellowed out a lot over the past few years.

[00:20:52] Chris Corcoran: [00:20:52] you should have met me before.

[00:20:55] Nimit Bhatt: [00:20:55] Right. I mean, I can only, I mean, people now are like, “Oh man, Chris is pretty intense.” I’m like, “Dude, you have no idea. Like, he was a terrifying individual”. for, so that was a very scary interview. But you know, it was very regimented Chris had his notes, he had a piece of paper, every question. Right?

[00:21:12] Very intense, short, “Loving to win, hating the lose, which feeling is more important or stronger and why? Right? Mount Rushmore, national monument, highly recognizable. Who would you add to it and why? So, I want to talk about failure. What was the last time you failed at something?” And I mean, I don’t know what I said.

[00:21:40] I mean, I’m, I probably was like, “Oh, this interview, cause I’m not doing very well.  I could tell”. Right? Cause cause Chris is very good not showing his cards. Right? At least then. Right? he didn’t want, he didn’t want me to get happy years. Right? He wanted to to have a control for every candidate.

[00:21:54] so yeah, so we, you know, went through it and I learned more about the position and what I loved is every time I showed up at the office, like Dustin would like, come up to me, talk to me, make sure I’m good. He got me a glass of water. and,  and always made me feel comfortable. And what I loved is after every interview, he would always call me and get feedback from me and asked me and no other company I was interviewing at the time was doing that.

[00:22:15] right? There were some companies that I had one phone call interview, and they gave me an offer. And I’m like, no, this isn’t how this works. I’d others there, there was never any follow-up like I had to constantly follow up after interviews. And I,  I understand there’s as a candidate, some degree of that, but, don’t make it impossible.

[00:22:30] So, he was really guiding me through the whole thing and he was making sure I was prepared. He was calling, he’s following up with me. He would call me the day of every interview to make sure that everything was still good to go. so you know, that, that was a huge reason. I told him, at the end of the interview process, that I was like, “Yeah, I feel like you’re kinda like my dad, like you were like helping me”.

[00:22:47] He goes, “Well, you made me proud, son”. And then I forgot the offer. but more of the interview. How was that first interview with Chris? So very regimented, there was an agenda, it was scheduled, it started on time and it ended on time. Chris was there. He knew what he was doing. I mean, it was very, it was very structured.

[00:23:07] Marc Gonyea: [00:23:07] Oh, no.

[00:23:08] Nimit Bhatt: [00:23:08] And then there was my interview with Marc.

[00:23:11] Chris Corcoran: [00:23:11] Marcy good times.

[00:23:13] Nimit Bhatt: [00:23:13] Marcy good times. So, I had my second interview. So my first interview was during PM rush hour. My second interview was during the morning rush hour. So, I think it was like 8:30, 9 o’clock in the morning. So, I left at like the crack of dawn. I got to the office like an hour early because there’s of course, that day there wasn’t any traffic.

[00:23:33] And I can remember I had set an alarm on my phone just in case I dozed off in my car. cause I got there so early, I didn’t want to go inside. So yeah, so I go in, I’m like jacked up on three cups of coffee. I went to that gas station down, I think at Exxon, next to the Taco Bell and I went there and I got a coffee and then I went inside sat there.

[00:23:53] Nine o’clock rolls around. Thaddeus comes out, sits with me for a little bit. I got to meet, Bill. Was that Bill?

[00:24:00] Chris Corcoran: [00:24:00] Bill Peace.

[00:24:01] Marc Gonyea: [00:24:01] Peace. Oh, wow.

[00:24:02] Nimit Bhatt: [00:24:02] Dude 

[00:24:02] Marc Gonyea: [00:24:02] Bill 

[00:24:02] Nimit Bhatt: [00:24:02] that guy, that guy taught me how to fill out a W2. I learned everything about filling a W2 from that guy. I think Doug Smith was there too. He was sitting in that little nook, he was a, the weird little nook you had in the lobby. so anyway, 9:15 rolls around and then 9:20, like a like a typhoon. Marc, Marc walks in “Hey, I’m Marc, nice to meet you. Oh, give me a little bit, we’ll get started. Sorry. I’m late.” And then I’m like, “All right”. And then like another 10 minutes rolls by and he walks out.

[00:24:33] He goes, “Oh, you ready? You ready?” I was like, “Yeah, let’s go. Let’s go.” I was like,”Yeah”. And it was unfortunate, cause like my my caffeine buzz was kind of worn off at this point and I was like all jacked up before and I was like, “All right. All right, I’m ready to go”. Chugged water. And yeah, so we would go in and Marc’s “I’m sorry, sorry.

[00:24:48] I’m late, man. Sorry.” “No, it’s fine”. He goes,  no. I’m wasting your time. oh, I feel bad. I feel bad. Like this it’s unprofessional. I shouldn’t do that.” It’s crazy how very few things change. we, as humans, we experienced lots of change in our lives, and, know, there’re something that don’t change. and this was Marc. This was pretty beard, pretty slicked back hair. This is when you had your Bieber haircut.  but you still had your puffy vest, right?

[00:25:13] Marc Gonyea: [00:25:13] I still have it.

[00:25:16] Nimit Bhatt: [00:25:16] Right. So but yeah, I mean, so I will say, and I hate to toot my own horn. That was by far the best interview I’ve ever done.

[00:25:25] I mean, I was on fire for that interview. so it started off, I remember vividly Marc was like, “So a CS, what are you majoring in? Was like a political science?”He goes, “Oh, cool. what’s one course you’re taking right now that you really like?” And I’m like, I’m taking this class on South Asian politics and Marc’s “Oh yeah.

[00:25:40] Okay. So  so like India, Pakistan well, what’s with all the conflict what’s going on over there?” And luckily I just taken an exam on that and I had read essays all about exactly what happened. So, I took Marc back to ancient times  I ran it back. I was like, Marc, you ready for some BC?

[00:25:58] So So, I explained everything and I don’t remember. I mean, I couldn’t do it again now, but I just let everything go and like, the first 20, 25 minutes of our interview it was all about that. Marc was like asking me questions, but it wasn’t just it wasn’t a one way conversation.

[00:26:12] He was like asking, follow up. It’s “Oh, well, why is that? That’s really interesting.” And that, and that, honestly, that, that settled me down. Especially,  it was a stark contrast to the first interview I had with Chris and it was very informal. And we had a conversation and we talked about what I wanted to do and the law school thing.

[00:26:28] And Marc got all fired up and he’s “Yeah, that’s all. Yeah, no, I totally understand it. Totally. That totally makes sense.  yeah. You follow me, right?” So this, that, this is pre follow me. You follow me came…

[00:26:37] Marc Gonyea: [00:26:37] Yeah, I know that came.

[00:26:38] Nimit Bhatt: [00:26:38] It came and went.

[00:26:40] Marc Gonyea: [00:26:40] Oh God, will you respond when…

[00:26:42] Nimit Bhatt: [00:26:42] yeah. See, I do these things to help you. so yeah, so I it was awesome interview.

[00:26:47] Got got to learn a lot about the company and where the company’s headed. And then came back into my role-play about, about a week later. I don’t think I did very well at all on the role-play. I remember not, I remember being very prepared. The preparation was there, the execution was not there.

[00:27:02] And now that I’ve had the opportunity to interview hundreds of SDRs and gone through the role-play with them I that’s the exact way that I’d do it as I look for the preparation. Not necessarily. If the execution is there, great. But it’s more the preparation. So I knew I was prepared, but, I knew I could work and execute execution and Marc was like, coaching me on it.

[00:27:20] And and then he pulled up the LinkedIn group for the alumni and show me where all the alumni were going. And what honestly, what attracted me most to the position was the fact that, you come here for, a year, 15 months, and then we worked out place you somewhere. So, for me at the time where I was still thinking I was going to go to law school, that was perfect.

[00:27:39] Right? I was like, “All right, let me try this because I want to go to law school after a year or two. So the very least, let me work somewhere for a year. And maybe if something better comes out of it, right, I go work for my client or I can play somewhere and I’m making good money. why not? I’d rather do that than just go work somewhere else where that’s not a possibility.

[00:27:57] So, at least have options”. so I remember the day I got my offer. I had just taken my last final exam of college. I crushed it. I was like on, I was on cloud nine and a couple of other friends from class, we all, we all, we were all studying together for and everything like that. We were like, “All right, we’re done.

[00:28:16] let’s go blow off some steam”. And we were on the way to the bar and I got a phone call on my phone and I was in the car with them. I was like, “Shsh, I gotta take, I gotta take this”. And it was Chris. And Chris “Hey, how are you?” And I was like, “Yeah, I just took my, I just took my last final exam”.

[00:28:32] He was like, “Oh, that’s awesome. Congratulations. well, I got some great news for you.  we want to hire you.” And like that was like, and then as soon as the call was over, it, all my friends were cheering. It was going crazy. And then we went to some bar in downtown Baltimore and the rest is history.

[00:28:47] and it just made it, it was like the pur, it was like something of a movie of just how that whole day played out. And then, went home, got, print out the offer letter and then had to have the conversation with my parents to kinda let them know. “All right. this is reality. Like I’m not going to law school right now”.

[00:29:02] I remember my dad was like going through the offer letter with a fine-tooth comb. And he was like, “What do you mean your client can hire you? And what’s this like training payback thing?” And, as lot of questions. and there’s, it’s a long offer letters.

[00:29:13] It’s a pretty lengthy offer letter. So, he’s got to read through it and, ultimately, they’re just like, “Look, yeah, we, we trust you. if this is what you want to do, do it and let’s see what happens”. So, it helped that my brother had a very, non-traditional kind of your career as well.

[00:29:28] Right? He went to the military and my parents were like, “Why are you going in the military? That’s like the last thing we want you to do. And my mom would always get really sad and not knowing what he’s up to. I mean just like any other in the military parent would worry. but it helped set it, set the path for me.

[00:29:41] that my brother had having that type of career path and that kind of lends itself to me, trying to try something different. so yeah, so th that’s how the process went. It was it was awesome. And it’s great that we, at least from the recruiting standpoint, we keep that up. following up with the candidate after each process, part of the process, checking with them.

[00:29:59] And ultimately that’s, that, that’s what kind of led me to feel good about coming and coming on board?

[00:30:09] Chris Corcoran: [00:30:09] Great. And then talk about once you started, did you end up commuting from Laurel or did you move down or how did that all play out?

[00:30:15] Nimit Bhatt: [00:30:15] Yeah. So, I commuted for about the first three months. cause I, I still wasn’t too sure about what my job was going to be every day. luckily, we’ve gotten a lot better at explaining it but then I was still like not really sure. And I wasn’t sure if I was going to be good at it.

[00:30:30] but yeah, so I did the commute for a while. It was, that was man. That was dreadful. some days would be close to two hours each way, depending if there is a, if there’s an accident and I know Chris, you always say not never put a bridge between you and your office. And I had to go, I’d go over the bridge every day.

[00:30:46] And yeah, so it was very early mornings. It was late nights. And then in between it was making 150 calls every day and getting rejection and then do it all over again the next day. so yeah, so I come in first day and I had to do the boards. I don’t, had to learn how to do the boards,

[00:31:04] So back in the day, we used to have these big whiteboards and the newest person had to fill them. So they’d have print out the daily huddle report which is funny. We still call the daily huddle report. People don’t realize why we call it. That is because back in the day, there was only like 20 SDRs and we would literally have a huddle with all 20 SDRs and we’d go over the daily huddle report with everybody.

[00:31:23] like that was it. if you would just call the DHR , they don’t, they don’t know why we call it that. So yeah, so we had these whiteboards and we had a printout, the DHR, and every day, this archaic thing we had to do was write each person’s name, like stack ranked for dials conversations, talk time.

[00:31:43] meetings booked and meetings occurred. So I think there’s five boards you have to fill out every morning. and as a new person that had to be done before the blitz started at 8:30 right? And sometimes people’s numbers wouldn’t be in. So you had to go chase them down and say, “What were your numbers yesterday”

[00:31:55] And like it was just panic, especially on days where I was in more traffic than I thought. And I had to rush and I mean years of my life probably came off from the, from those days. I’ll get to other story a little bit, but yeah. So Ian Wisecarver was,  the most recent hire.

[00:32:13] So he taught me how to do the boards and the new. So as a new person, I had to do that. And it was awesome because the way the office was situated is you had the entrance. Then you had this skinny hallway on the left side, you had Marc and Chris’s office. The right side was the floor and the board’s kind of line that hallway.

[00:32:28] So as I was there, because I had to get there earlier than everybody else to do the boards. People would walk by and say, Hey, what’s up. I’m, nice to meet you. And, looking back, I mean, it was like, there really weren’t many like cliques, right? I mean, everybody was just like cool with each other.

[00:32:42] everybody knew each other when knew each other’s names. And that was a great way to meet everybody. especially cause my first week at the company, it was the first week of the year. and we had first Friday on that Friday. So the Friday, my first Friday at the company was first Friday.

[00:32:55] So it was great to be able to meet everybody before then. so I do the boards and it was unfortunate is I think the next, like four people who we hired after me all left within the first couple of weeks. So I had to go back to doing the boards and it was me. So I was like two months in I’m like, why am I still doing the boards every morning?

[00:33:12] I’m like I’m too old for this now. Right. I’m over this. Right? Like I’m booking meetings. I can’t be doing this. So yeah, so that, that’s what it was like back in the day. so my mentor was Richard Reese. still I mean still one of my best friends, he was a groomsman.

[00:33:27] Him and Thaddeus were both groomsmen in my wedding. and yeah, I mean, he was a, and I think he talked about this during his podcast episode. he was pretty hard on me. yeah, I mean, this was 2012. I don’t know if it happened now. I mean, it’d be a different story. I mean he was pretty harsh on me.

[00:33:44] but it, that, that’s what built me now. I mean, I was still very nervous. I was still very shy when I started and,  and he helped me kinda break out of my shell too.  and get me going. We were both in the same account, which really helped. we were both on Clarabridge Along with Sam Johnson,

[00:33:59]  Marc Gonyea: [00:33:59] Johnson.

[00:33:59] Nimit Bhatt: [00:33:59] also super crucial to my development.

[00:34:02] He sat really close to me. So he would always hear my conversations and walk over and want to talk to me about it. so, Clarabridge was, that was like the most amazing, it was my only client as an SDR that I had. And it was just amazing. I mean, it was just like, the technology was really amazing.

[00:34:19] The people were awesome. our main point of contact with James Schiefer, who was another another alumni. So he got it. He understood. what’s crazy is I was taking over for Tiana Bell or..

[00:34:32]  Marc Gonyea: [00:34:32] TKO.

[00:34:33] Nimit Bhatt: [00:34:33] T yeah, Tiana Oletzke at the time. She had just moved to Florida and she’s going to be a recruiter and she was the SDR on Clarabridge. So I took over all of her accounts and that’s why, like Tiana and I we go back to literally like my first week at memoryBlue because I was on the phone with her and she was talking to me through all that. And then as I moved up the ranks and she became like the recruiter that fed me candidates. I mean, she got to know me really well.

[00:34:54] Marc Gonyea: [00:34:54] You guys were tight.

[00:34:55]Nimit Bhatt: [00:34:55] yeah. We were, we talked all the time and yeah, so Clarabridge was great at the time. It was it was like our second largest campaign next to the next day and crew. So so it was very important to the company. Marc was my DM, which I got to tell people that now. And they’re like, they can’t believe that. “The wait, wait Marc was a DM”? And I was like, “Yeah, he was my DM”.

[00:35:17] Yeah. I mean, it’s…

[00:35:17] Chris Corcoran: [00:35:17] Hey, just  quick. So that  the the listeners know the whiteboards that you were filling out and Marc and Chris’s office, it wasn’t Marc’s office and then Chris’s office. We shared an office.

[00:35:29] Nimit Bhatt: [00:35:29] Yes. Yeah. Yep. And Chris’s desk was right up against the window, like looking onto the floor and it, Marc’s like in the back corner, like facing away from everybody. so you’d always see Chris and my desk was like, if I just turned, I would see it, his face would be like right there. So so it’s still terrifying.

[00:35:46] Cause I hadn’t really talked to him since like my interview because Marc was my second interview. Role-play was with Marc. But it was awesome. Cause we had that bell in the lobby. So every time you, every time someone booked a meeting, you walk all the way in the lobby and you hit the bell.

[00:35:59] And then on the walk back, sometimes Chris will be standing there with giving you a high five as you walk back to your desk. so it was cool at the office that you guys were right there. So, yeah, so Clarabridge so that, that was an awesome campaign. I supported four different AEs there. and I think it went up to five for a brief period of time.

[00:36:17] And they were like all the top performing AEs there. It was all enterprise. Their top performing rep is a guy by the name of Matt Cohen. amazing that guy. He was, he taught me a ridi- I’ll tell you a story. He taught me a ridiculous amount about what it takes to be an SDR and to make these calls and have these types of conversations.

[00:36:36] and there were a few and Ian Wright was another one where I just learned a lot. I learned a ton from that guy. I had one rep I supported named Jeff Rosen. And that guy was a machine. he had Northern California technology companies. it, honestly, he was very intimidating.

[00:36:52] I mean, he, I mean, he’s a very smart. I think he’s an MIT grad. and it was weekly calls with him. there’s a guy Brian Clark who who I supported as well. And it was just awesome, like learning from all these people. and I, cause I had my weekly call with, Schieffer and the crew, but then I had one-off calls with them every week and go over the meetings that they’re in process and they’d always help me out.

[00:37:11] And it was nice because, know, they didn’t just kinda brush me off. Like they saw the value in what I was doing, knowing that it was enterprise, that it was going to, I mean, cause they, they knew that they didn’t want to do it. They didn’t want to do it. they knew the amount of work that went into having to call these companies.

[00:37:24] And that you had to talk to 20 different people to get to the right person. And they knew that’s what I was doing and they wanted to support me in every way possible. there was one conversation in particular that I had with Matt Cohen. like there’ll be days like where I’d be like scared to talk to them.

[00:37:38] Cause I knew I didn’t really have a whole lot. and  and and when, especially when he had a lot going on I, I always felt like I was like bothering him, but but no, he was really supportive. there was one time and this is a story I was telling my SDRs, especially when they’re newer, I would tell the story.

[00:37:52] I had a conversation with a prospect and they said they were using XYZ software. I’d never heard of that before, but they said it did the same thing as Clarabridge. And I brought it up on my conversation with him. Cause I don’t really have, I didn’t have any meetings booked that week for him. So I was like, “Hey, I had this conversation, they brought the software.

[00:38:08] Have you ever heard of it”? He goes, “Well, did you look it up”? I was like no, I didn’t do the research”. And that, at that moment I realized that he just trapped me and he’s like, “All right, Nimit. I think he was having a rough day. Alright. So walk me through how many conversations would you say you have a day.

[00:38:24] Like actual, not like they hung up on you. Like how many actual conversations would you say you have a day”? And I was like, “Ah on a good day, maybe three or four solid conversations. We’re actually get into the meat of the conversation”. He’s like,”Okay then like, how many calls do you make”? I was like, “Probably a hundred.

[00:38:40] Let’s just say a hundred”. He’s “Okay, so you’re telling me that in an eight hour workday you only talked to three or four people”? I was like, “Yup”. He goes, “Okay. So what that tells me is that you need to milk those three or four conversations for everything that they’re worth. You have to get curious.

[00:39:00] You have to do research, you have to treat those three or four conversations as your only way to get meetings. That’s the only way you’re going to get better. It’s the only way you’re going to develop”. And that advice today still just like sticks with me of understanding that. Yeah. I mean he, yeah, he’s right.

[00:39:18] I should’ve been more curious, I should have looked up this solution, but, and so it was a huge learning experience for me. and that’s why I tell SDRs is that, look, the job is not easy. Don’t make it any harder for yourself. if you could, if you’re going to talk through to four people, well then focus your energy on those conversations and making sure you’re prepared and making sure that you are asking questions and getting curious with the prospect and extending the call as much as possible. Just because you don’t book a meetings

[00:39:41] is what, what Matt would tell me, it’s not like, obviously if you book a meeting great. But I mean, that doesn’t mean just because you don’t book a meeting doesn’t mean it’s not a successful call. It can still be a successful call without you booking the meeting.  and that, that really stuck with me.

[00:39:55] so I had great support from the reps that I had there. it helped me develop a lot. so just, that was  the main Clarabridge experience, but the first big kind of a growing up moment for me as an SDR was maybe about two or three months in. Reece and Sam Johnson they left.

[00:40:13] So they were the two they’d been there longer than me. They’re more experienced. They were leading the way on the Clarabridge campaign. And all of a sudden they both left around the same time and they finished their tour of duty at memoryBlue and they wanted to do their next thing.

[00:40:25] And I remember the conversation when Reece told me that he was going to be leaving, he got his job at ADP and he’s like, “All right, this is your campaign now this is your team. Its your team now”. Was like, it was like super dramatic. it’s like something that like, like Friday night lights or something.

[00:40:38] but yeah, so I immediately, and then I had a hire two people or we had to hire two people and that was my first time being a mentor. So we hired a Brand Tension

[00:40:49] Marc Gonyea: [00:40:49] Yeah. Oh, grants.

[00:40:51] Nimit Bhatt: [00:40:51] and Brittany Bertolino, I believe.

[00:40:54] Marc Gonyea: [00:40:54] Brittany Bertolino

[00:40:55] Nimit Bhatt: [00:40:55] so I, I became their mentor and so like Marc was the DM, but he was DM-ing like every client that we had. I think Chris only had two or three clients that he was managing directly.

[00:41:06] So Marc was like,  sure and Marc was running sales. So he was super spread then. So like, as like the lead SDR I was like the DM on the campaign. And that was like my first taste of being a DM. so I, I would run the weekly calls even with Marc was on it and he could be like, “All right, you got this”.

[00:41:22] So, right. So I, I’d run the calls and whenever we went on site quite often so I would be, I’d make sure they all got there on time and got them through the motions there. And I had to, I was the mentor, so I had to coach them and we had some late evenings and explain the technology to them and helping them and everything like that.

[00:41:40] So that was like my first kind of big, like growing up moment while I was there. And yeah, and that’s, that was kinda my first taste of what it would be like to be a DM.

[00:41:54] Marc Gonyea: [00:41:54] That’s a lot to take in.

[00:41:58] Nimit Bhatt: [00:41:58] Yeah,  this is the first time I’ve really talked about all this stuff. So it’s all just like coming out.

[00:42:03] Marc Gonyea: [00:42:03] It’s all really good.

[00:42:04] Chris Corcoran: [00:42:04] Let it out, Nimit. Just let it all all. Let it all out.

[00:42:08] Nimit Bhatt: [00:42:08] It’s like a therapy session. I should lay, I should lay down.

[00:42:12] Marc Gonyea: [00:42:12] Hey, hey who was really 

[00:42:14] good, who was the best SDR in that crew back then, besides yourself?

[00:42:18] Nimit Bhatt: [00:42:18] Man. So I mean, Reese was really good, of course. I have to say that. but let’s see. So, so the people that sat around me, so I, I hate to be like, “Oh, back in my day it was all, but we had some ballers on the floor and I think it was just cause it was a a it was a smaller crew.

[00:42:39] I mean, people were, the blitz was like, you don’t bug people during the blitz. like that was there. That was the time everyone was like on the phones. Like you were doing your thing. And this back in the day as a new hire, when you’re on the new hire ramp, your monitor had to be turned off during the blitz.

[00:42:53] You had to do the packets every day. that was terrifying. So like in the morning I’d print out. Or I, you had to print out the pad to print my call list for the day, take notes on it. I had to type out every one of my slip peace print that out at the end of the day, submit these packets every day.

[00:43:08] And it was really scary because the night before, my first day being on the phones. Tiana sent me her, she finally sent me her list that I was supposed to call cause like her list. And it was just like formatted, it was it just for some reason, the way she sent it over and it was a mess. And I was up until like midnight the night before, like fixing it and making sure everything was good.

[00:43:30] I like, rushed to the office as soon as I could in the morning, printed everything out. And then I had to do the boards. I was like sweating. It was like a race against the clock to get the boards done. And I think like for since, for like, when it got to the bottom of the boards where everyone was at like 0% for something or whatever. I would just like, “I would stop”. and then I got on the phone and started making my calls. And and people around me were like, “Come on in, we gotta hurry up. You gotta hurry up. We gotta go on the phones. You gotta get the phones. Your first day”. So right next to me was Evan Thomas, who was just a dialing monster. Like before I knew it, he had a hundred calls already made,

[00:44:07] he had three meetings booked. behind me was our Arash Almasi. Who is like one of the most, like hyper-focused people I’ve ever worked with.  he was there, he was on a mission. And right across from him, so run the other side of my cube in front of me, Dustin Deal was sitting there and I’d always hear him on the phone here had like my desk would vibrate cause he had like a deep voice.

[00:44:29] Sam Johnson was diagonal to me. So around me, I had people that were just like on the phones a lot.  and being around that, it helped a lot. Evan Thomas was really good. I, Michael Twist was awesome. He was so good. Oh man. So there was one

[00:44:48]

[00:44:48] so twist was like, Oh, I think I ever really got some lethal.

[00:44:51] He was like always there. so there’d be some evenings because for a while I was calling West Coast, so I would stay a little bit late. And he would be there and he’d just be like, like pacing around, like on the phone “Who’s he talking to right now? It’s six o’clock”.  and I, I had a rough day and he like walked over.

[00:45:07] He was like, “Hey, how are things going”? I’m like, “Yeah, it’s good. it’s Tom talking to these people who are a lot smarter than me. And it, I’m trying to explain this solution to them”. He’s “You know Nimit your best part about being on the phones, you can be whoever you want to be, but right?

[00:45:22] Like they don’t know what you look like. They don’t know what you’re wearing that day. They don’t know how old you are. You can be whoever you want. That’s the best part. They can’t see you”. And I’m like, “Damn. Okay. All right”.

[00:45:36] Marc Gonyea: [00:45:36] All right. Twist. Okay.

[00:45:38] Nimit Bhatt: [00:45:38] All right. All right. So yeah, so I was like, “All right”, that I was fired up after that.

[00:45:44] I got back on the phone. I was like, that was like some of the best advice. So yes, he was really good. Andrew Bass, I mean he, yeah, he would come find me if I didn’t say his name. the ba the Honey badger. yeah he did some crazy, awesome stuff. Like it would make me mad cause he was so good.

[00:46:03] there was one time I just walked in his office. Because, so back then we had the main floor with them but with two little rooms. I think Chris referred to it as the power room and the energy room. Cause because Chris, right? Cause some things never changed. And so it would think it was like Bass Fabian or sorry, Tim Fabian, sorry, Tim Fabian and Reese were in that, in the one that was closer to the lobby. So I’d be in there a lot. Cause Reese was in there. And and I and Bass would always want to show off while I was in there. He’d always like, he always just happened to be calling a certain prospect at that time. Right? And show off a bit, or it makes it like, “Oh, dude, just made 150 dials.

[00:46:46] Wow. That was fast”. you like stuff like that. And then he’s “Nimit watch this. I talked to this prospect yesterday. He blew me off. I’m going to call him again. I’m going to get this meeting booked”. Right? And then he, and he calls him and sits there and he’s “Hey, I lost a lot of sleep last night over our conversation yesterday.

[00:47:02] I felt like I didn’t represent my company in the best possible light. I was looking, look, I know you told me that right now, something how to get that”. So he’s just going through this whole thing. He was going negative and all that stuff. And then he books the meeting and then he hang, he hangs up the call and he’s “That’s how it’s done,

[00:47:18] Nimit”.

[00:47:20] Marc Gonyea: [00:47:20] What

[00:47:22] Nimit Bhatt: [00:47:22] That did not that did not just happen. I was like, “Wow, like how, like, how’d you do that? I could never do that. I could never do that”. And so it was like stuff like that. And Tim was like, “What are you doing, Bass? come on, man”. Right. so yeah, so Andrew Bass was awesome.

[00:47:38] so Aria Nanbar. That

[00:47:42] guy

[00:47:43] was a the, he would lead the boards and talk time and dials. and he was notorious for that. So that was always like, all right that’s that? That’s the guy to beat? he was always an activity machine. I mean, of course Tommy Gasman. Alright. Of course. Alright. he was,  he was there he, think he joined maybe six months before I did. he, yeah, he was really good. Ryan Mitchell. I mean, come on. Ryan Mitchell later, as well as an SDR, I ended up moving into one of those rooms as I was transitioning to be a DM. And he was in that room too. And he gave me so much advice. Just he’d always be listening.

[00:48:19] And, every time I left a voicemail, he would, he’d want to talk about it. he was very, he was super helpful for me in my development. But yeah, those are the those are the main people that like, mean. And Dustin Deal was awesome too. I mean, as a recruiter, he was just, that guy was such a beast.

[00:48:34] th those are the people I could probably rattle off more people that were in that office, because it was, I mean, there was like, there were more DNS now than there were SDRs and I, in that office, when I first started. Yeah, yeah. It’s the growth, the growth has been, it’s just I love talking to new hires now because they know I’ve been here for awhile and “What was it like when you started”? And

[00:48:53] I’m just like, “They had no idea. They had no idea what it was like back then back in the day”. so it was fun times and yeah, I mean, it was truly like a boiler room type environment and in a good way, in a good way, it was very competitive. And yeah, I mean you had to put it, you had to put in the numbers and it was very transparent.

[00:49:14] Like people knew that if you weren’t, if you weren’t working, people knew. and people made it known. so yeah, so, that was, I was an SDR for nine months. and still in the back of my mind I was thinking, all right, I’m still gonna be doing this for a while. And then law school. Right?

[00:49:30] just a few months away from that, I would tell my parents like, “Yep, I’m still going to be going to law school. I’m pretty, I’m getting pretty good at the sales thing, but, I don’t think, I don’t think it’s gonna turn into a career”. and yeah. And then, obviously things changed as I got better as an SDR.

[00:49:44] And for me, my mindset was “All right. I think I’m gonna go work  for my clients. I think I’m gonna go work for Clarabridge”. Like, I would love to they I went to whether sales kickoffs and I mean, that, that was such a that was such an incredible experience. like I remember calling my, my girlfriend at the time I was working with, I was like, I’m on cloud nine right now.

[00:50:02] th like today was the most amazing day I’ve ever had right. Cause like I got to go to the sales kickoff, I got to meet all of the DM’s all over the world. They flew in for this. and so Jason Snyder was the VP of sales there. I respected that. I mean, I still do, but at that time, like I respected the hell out of that guy.

[00:50:21] and like I was like, I was always like in shock. I was always in awe of him. Like when I saw him, he’s like such this like awesome figure. and yeah, and I love talking to him and, he was like talking about kind of the future of Clarabridge. the CEO Sid Banerjee  was someone that I, I was like following really closely cause I really respected his background and what he did with that company.

[00:50:40] And he spoke and I got to meet him and then they took us all out to go, “Go-carting”. I think Marc, you came to that. and it took us out to this awesome dinner and it was just like, for somebody that was less than a year out of college with like very little sales experience, like I was in a room with some very rich people, to be honest, like people that made a lot of money and a close like the biggest deals for the company.

[00:51:02] And that was really awesome. Like that, that, that was such a cool experience. And I’m like, “Yep this is, I think this is where I want to be. Like, this would be awesome path to take”. and so that was great. and then something completely unexpected happened. an email came out to staff from Chris saying, we’re looking to build the company”. Right? Up until now,

[00:51:23] we’ve kept it lean. The goal was to come here and get hired by your client or go get placed out somewhere. But we feel like it’s time to really grow this thing and expand. And our vision is grow this office, maybe have other offices around the country. And Thaddeus at that time, he was like in a hybrid DMS TR role.

[00:51:44] And I talked to him about it and he was like, “Dude, you should do this. Like you. So like in college, right”? I was business manager of our school newspaper. I was business manager and music director of our acapella group. Like I’ve managed people. I liked being a leader. “And that is just I think you would be an amazing delivery manager.

[00:52:03] You should really think about it”. And I’m like, “Well, that’s, I’ve only been here for six or eight months or seven months at the time. I don’t think there are way more qualified people who work here”. He was, “Yeah, but you should still do it because if you, let’s say don’t get it this time, then they at least know you’re interested and, hey, you got a good thing going with your client and you can just go work there.

[00:52:22] All right.  if the cards fall that way”. So so I responded to the email. I was like, “Hey, Chris I’m interested”. And then 10 minutes later, I get a calendar invite sent to me for the next day on brand called Power Lunch. All right? So I wasn’t sure whether we were having lunch or we’re going to have lunch in that power room.

[00:52:42] I got to know so, oh man, this is bringing back some stuff. So I need a second here.

[00:52:49] Marc Gonyea: [00:52:49] Or lunch.

[00:52:50] Nimit Bhatt: [00:52:50] If I start crying, it’s only because I’m laughing so hard. And so. so I was terrified of Chris. Like absolutely terrified of Chris and a lot of people were. Right? Just Marc was like the, “It was like the,  you’re gonna, you’re gonna, you’re gonna talk to Marc.

[00:53:05] Marc was most likely your manager, unless you were like Tim or a few other people that report directly to Chris and right? So like with Marc, it was like, he’s very like, he’s fun. He’s, he’s funny. he’s super personable and you love being around him”. and then, then Chris was more like the intense, head down, do your thing, give you like high fives where your hand would shake.

[00:53:26] Cause he would like, like precision and power. and right? Like Chris was a guy who practices high-fives like a hundred percent. that was what he did. Right? so I, I ran it. So our kitchen was like, I mean, it was like, it was the size of, I mean, it was tiny, right? I mean, it was, I mean, it was bigger than the studio apartment that I was living in New York city of my internship, but it was like, it was tiny and it was like a single little hallway.

[00:53:52] So if you walked in and somebody else came in the kitchen, they had to move out of the way for you to come out of the kitchen. Right? It was like a little, it was like a dead end. So I would be so terrified whenever I was in the kitchen getting coffee or water, and then Chris would walk in.

[00:54:06] Cause Chris were always walking to fill up his water, his coffee, and yeah, and he was like a he’s, he’s a “Nimit, how’s the bridge doing”? I’m like, “What”? Goes,” Clarabridge, how there, how are they doing”? I’m like, “They’re doing fine. I don’t know. Did you hear something like that”? oh dude.” Great. It’s all good to hear.

[00:54:25] Good to hear.

[00:54:34] Marc Gonyea: [00:54:34] Yeah.

[00:54:40] Nimit Bhatt: [00:54:40] You like Indian food”? As like, “Actually Chris, I just call that food”.

[00:54:52] He’s

[00:54:55] “What’s your favorite Indian restaurant”? I was like, “Oh, yo, I don’t know. I think there’s there’s this place. There’s this place down the street. It’s really good”. It was ,  no. That place is shit. you want to go? You want to go this other place”? So, so fast forward…

[00:55:12] Chris Corcoran: [00:55:12] This never happened.

[00:55:13] Nimit Bhatt: [00:55:13] As of course it happened. can’t, I can’t make that up. There’s, there’s another funny story here. this definitely happened. So, so back in the day we had this like small Keurig machine. That was our coffee machine and that thing needed to be filled up 25 times a day.

[00:55:30] And and at one at one morning, there was like a, there’s like a line to get coffee. And Sam Johnson was filling up coffee. And when he, so he was filling up the water tank from the water cooler and and Tim Fabian was like Sam, like just use the tap water. Why aren’t you using the water cooler”?

[00:55:51] And he goes, “Tim, you know why I’m filling it up with the water cooler? You know, you know why? Because Chris Corcoran fills it up from the water cooler. So yes, I’m going to fill it up in the water”. People were terrified of, of,

[00:56:05] you

[00:56:06] and Tim was like, “Well, the water heats up enough to kill any bacteria”.

[00:56:10] It’s an a, so like this whole, like thing, that’s just it was the conversation we just had back in the day. so that was like the aura of Corcoran and the office. Fast forward. So we had the Power Lunch, so we’re deciding where to go. And I was like, “Hey Chris, let’s get some Indian food”.

[00:56:23] And he was like, “Ah, I’m not fueling Indian food”. and then we went to, I forgot where we went somewhere someplace in mar mosaic before it was really mosaic. And I mean, yeah, so that’s where we really talked about what the position would entail. I honestly didn’t think I was in the running for it and it was more like, “Okay.

[00:56:39] Yeah. I mean, if there’s something you really want to do, we can talk more about it”. I think you’d be great for it. Like you, you’re doing all the right things. I love how you, you’re like managing the Clarabridge campaign and I, yeah. And Thaddeus has, says great things about you, so yeah, let’s  let’s make it happen”.

[00:56:53] so probably a few weeks later and I became a DM. I became the DM on the Clarabridge campaign and then started building my squad of SDRs. And then probably a month later, a month or two later, then we had moved to the top floor of 8 to 30. And then Marc brings me in the office.

[00:57:14] He’s “Hey, so Clarabridge wants to interview you”. and I was like, “All right, awesome. This is this is great”. And,  I felt weird cause I just got this promotion and Marc was like,  no, you should really hear it. Like just hear them out, go it’s, it’s great and they’re, they’re you and everybody else on the campaign”. So yeah, so I went there and met with, several people there.  they gave me a great offer and that was kinda like my, my, like my fork in the road of what I wanted to do. one hand, at this client, I know the technology really well, a bunch of they’ve closed deals from stuff that I’ve generated like big, big deals for the company.

[00:57:49] I’ve got a good reputation there. It was an opportunity to build an SDR team from scratch. They wanted me to come in and do that. And it was awesome and it was, and at the time, right? The culture of memoryBlue at the time was, you come here,  this is a temporary stop for you on your journey, right?

[00:58:05] You’re here for a short period of time. when all things considered the short period of time, this is where you learn how to be a good SDR, but you’re going to have a ceiling here. there’s nothing else that you can be, right? That’s when you go to your client and you go close work.

[00:58:20] and I was conflicted because I wasn’t sure in every sales person in their career has that choice to make.  maybe a few times with whether they want to be an individual contributor or they want to be a manager. And for me, that was like my first opportunity to see I

[00:58:34] what I, because the job at Clarabridge was to be an SDR for awhile. and during the interview process, I was like,” Hey, I’ll manage a team. But  I ultimately want to close work. Like I want to be the next Matt Cohen”. Right? so yeah, and I was conflicted. And then I had this memoryBlue thing, right?

[00:58:49] Where, I, again, opportunity to build something from scratch in terms of like my team and I get management experience. And also I know how to be an SDR. I can teach other people I’ve always wanted to teach for a brief period of time. And I wasn’t sure once I decided I wasn’t gonna law school, I thought I was gonna be a college professor of political science or law.

[00:59:07] so I knew that I, I had that knack for teaching and developing people. So so I had to make that decision. I talked to several people, some people were like, “Yeah, I mean, you see the memoryBlue thing through, I think that’s pretty cool”. Others were like, “No, dude, get out of there.

[00:59:19] Like you gotta spread your wings and fly. And you gotta, you gotta leave the nest someday”. and then it was crazy. Like I was all the way up to the final, like minute of the day where I had to make a decision. And I mean, I obviously I chose to stay with the company and, right?

[00:59:36] I, I always knew that, there, there would be similar opportunities for me, whether at Clarabridge or other companies in the future, if I ever decide to go that route, And, I, at this point I developed a pretty good relationship with my team already, and I felt bad leaving them at that time.

[00:59:50] Cause they were still just so new. And and I had a lot of really great clients that I was managing and met some really cool people. So yeah. So, at that time I, I stayed with the company and I’d had that conversation with Jason Snyder. And he was like super supportive and like, “No, you know I appreciate the, I appreciate it. Thanks for giving us opportunity, Call me any time you, you need anything from me”. And that was awesome. Right? It was awesome just to go through that experience. It was super stressful but you know, obviously it worked out for me, but yeah, so I decided to stay, be a manager. It was awesome having Thaddeus there too, as a manager. It’s cool that he and I were friends in college and we’re doing this thing together. And yeah, I mean, it just took off, right? I mean, it wasn’t just like a temporary thing. Like out of nowhere we hired more D promoted, more DMs, like Mike Mishler in the mix Ben Decowski Lee Ryan D Jack Wagner came back.

[01:00:47] Remember that? That’s what it was. D Jack came back. So it was me Thaddeus and D Jack for awhile. And just it was just awesome I learned from Thaddeus. It was, it it was even more awesome to learn from D Jack because he’d been at the company a long time ago and it was two wildly different personalities.

[01:01:02] And and then D Jack and I became really good friends and I’d always go to the gym with him after work. And he’d be like, he taught me the basics of like how to lift weights and stuff, which was awesome. to him, him and I were really close. He helped me out a lot. And yeah, and I mean, the operation just grew.

[01:01:17] I mean my, my team grew like crazy. And this is, this story, this is the, one of not my low light, but the second low light of of my very junior, very early management career. and I’ll preface this by saying that I didn’t really get a whole lot of training. I was kinda just you’ll learn along the way, just.

[01:01:38] do what Marc does”. Right? and it’s crazy because a lot of the things that I do now I did because I used to watch Marc do it, 

[01:01:45] Marc Gonyea: [01:01:45] We trained the SDRs. We train the manager.

[01:01:47]Nimit Bhatt: [01:01:47] yes. That’s true. That’s true. So we had a client and we had just kicked off and there were a couple of days where we were still assembling the team and the client calls me and he was already like a pretty intense guy and he’s…

[01:02:03] Marc Gonyea: [01:02:03] Let me preface this. He was a hard core. He’s a hard core client.

[01:02:06] in a good way. Right? Freddy, he still refers this work. He’s a great guy, but he’s on point. He’s in your mix. He was on point and it was a rookie manager back to you.

[01:02:19] Nimit Bhatt: [01:02:19] So I wasn’t at my desk at the time and I guess he was trying to call me and I wasn’t answering. and then he calls Ashley Soprano.

[01:02:27] Who

[01:02:28] was who was who was, yeah,Lounsbury now who was SDR on the campaign. he calls her looking for me and so she walks over to me and she’s “Hey, so he wants  to talk to you”.

[01:02:40] I’m like, “Oh, that’s weird. why is he calling you”? And then I talked to him and he’s just laying into me “What is going on over there? I’m paying you guys all, It was like, and I just completely froze and I, I was probably already flustered from something else that day.

[01:02:57] So as I tended to do early on, and so I just, I didn’t know what to do. Cause he was like, yeah, I walk into Marc’s office. I think Chris is in there with him. 

[01:03:07] Marc Gonyea: [01:03:07] Of

[01:03:07] course, he’s standing right there.

[01:03:08]Chris Corcoran: [01:03:08] you like pushed me out of the way.

[01:03:11] Nimit Bhatt: [01:03:11] Yeah. So Yeah. So I took my headset off and I handed it to Marc. I was like, “Marc, you need to talk to this guy.” and it was funny because like I told him, I was like, “Hey, so I’m all right, just hold on one second. I’m going to put my director on the line.” He’s “But you’re the delivery manager.” So I, I handed the headset to Marc and I mean, I, my face was all red. I was sweating. Chris’s face was all red. He was sweating. Marc’s face was already. so yeah, I haven’t ever really talked about that after it was it was rough. but yeah, that was, 

[01:03:52] Marc Gonyea: [01:03:52] It’s how you learn.

[01:03:53] Nimit Bhatt: [01:03:53] Yeah. That’s how you learn. And yeah, I mean, I could totally see  if I pull something like that, now I’d be looking for other job.

[01:03:59] or at least I mean, I can imagine one of my DMS walking to me, do I mean, yeah, I could totally see why that was a bonehead move. But yeah, but that’s how you learn, right? That, that, that’s how that’s how you learn. So, 

[01:04:10] Chris Corcoran: [01:04:10] You were probably thinking, “Man, I should have taken him that Clarabridge job.”

[01:04:13] Nimit Bhatt: [01:04:13] Okay. a little bit. Yeah.

[01:04:17] Marc Gonyea: [01:04:17] I mean, if you look at the types of people that he was at Roby. Right? Roby got acquired by ASAP. You’re talking about working with high achievers or high performers at these emergent technology companies who need pipeline. And we’re good at it, but you know, we’re a young company, we’re a young company in many ways.

[01:04:40] We’re still young company and they want indeed results. And we’re w he went probably wanting to get going, and there’s a lot of mistakes. So I remember like it was yesterday. I was like, “Why is he hitting me?” He says that, and I was like, well, I was like, is he quitting?” And then you’re like, you’re pointing at the headphones and you see this is it.

[01:04:57] This is…

[01:04:58] Nimit Bhatt: [01:04:58] Turning my badge and my gun turning in my headset and my keys, my keys.

[01:05:01] Marc Gonyea: [01:05:01] I don’t say Jason Snyder really won. I love Jason. Jason’s great. And the guy’s awesome. And you’re you were at, you had to have fun. You were like “It’s Freddy.” I was like, “Oh man. So I’m scared of Freddy too.” So it all worked out. He came back, go ahead.

[01:05:17] Nimit Bhatt: [01:05:17] Yeah, yeah. I learn a lot from that, cause I can see where I dropped the ball. right? Because there are just, there are going to be times and clients that,  they need a little bit more communication than others, right? Like they would appreciate just like a quick email, like what happened today or what’s the plan for this week and coming out of that.

[01:05:34] Marc and I were doing a post-mortem on it. And it was like, yeah, this is, obviously he was very upset. but we dropped the ball because there was a period of maybe 48 hours where I, as a manager, wasn’t communicating with him to let him know what was going on. Because there’s always like that time after we kick off, when we first get on the phones where a lot of stuff is happening right?

[01:05:54] It’s like when you’re having some type of big landscaping project done, or there’s, you’re waiting around for permits to be approved and all, all this have to get lined up. And,  that’s  what we’re going through. So, so coming out of that, that was one thing that I was doing a lot more.

[01:06:05] And when I was teaching my DMs to do in the future of alright, just send updates. It’s better to over-communicate the under communicate. let the client come back to you and say, “Hey, I appreciate this. You really don’t have to send me this,  an email every day, like it’s totally fine.”

[01:06:18] Like that’s a much better situation to be in. It probably won’t happen, but it’s a better situation to be in then not communicating enough. So, so yeah, so, there, there were some awesome stories like that. for sure. I mean, we could spend hours talking about that, but.

[01:06:31] Marc Gonyea: [01:06:31] How did we, all right, so you’re doing your thing? How did transition to Austin come?

[01:06:36] Nimit Bhatt: [01:06:36] Yeah. Yeah. So it started with a trip that Chris and I took to North Carolina for the around campus interview. This is our first year going there to be a sponsor to, to go to the career fair and try to recruit some students. So these are students from all over the country. Who were in the sales internship. And they all fly to Chapel Hill, North Carolina at UNC, and they go through training and everything there.

[01:07:03] And they have a career fair at the end. and we had, I think we had a candidate maybe it was Julianne Sweat Thompson,  come through who went through that program. I think it was her. And yeah, so once we heard about it, so, so, that was maybe a, I don’t know, a three, four hour drive.

[01:07:21] so it was just me and Chris in the car and I’m still terrified of him. but but yeah, so the conversation kind of came up. I think Chris, maybe just mentioned offhand. And I immediately jumped in and was like, yes, I would a hundred percent move to. I think Chris was like, if if we like we open office, like somewhere else, like outside of DC or Virginia, like w would you move?

[01:07:39] I said, “Yes”. In a heartbeat and Chris “Oh, really? You would”? I was like, “Yeah, a hundred percent. Like I’m ready to go anywhere”. and so I think that’s what laid the foundation of it. and then. I don’t know how it came up, but I think Marc, he reached out to me and said, “Hey, Chris and I want to talk to you about like your future and talking about maybe where you see yourself going within the company”.

[01:08:02] And I think he told me had something to do with maybe moving somewhere else. And the timing couldn’t have been any more perfect. Cause I just got out of a relationship at that time. So I was ready to, I was ready to move. I was like, get me out of here. And for me, for the entire life that I remember there before I like, I was a baby, we moved around and stuff, but like Maryland was like, all I knew, right?

[01:08:23] I elementary school, middle school, high school, college. All within 20 minutes from the house where I grew up. So that was like my bubble. there was New York that was for a couple months, but I was in this bubble and I think at that time I was feeling like I, “Oh, trapped was the right word, but I wasn’t sure.

[01:08:40] I was like, wait, is this really where I’m going to be for the rest of my life”? am I and always had a knack for moving somewhere and then trying something new. So. we had the meeting and he asked me again “Hey, is something that you want to do”? And I said, “Yes, a hundred percent”. So I think the options were Seattle, Denver, Austin, where there were the three parts.

[01:09:00] We knew that San Jose was going to be too big,  project to tackle at that time for being our first office. so it was awesome. So the, my homework was to do research on those three cities and decide. Obviously,  for a professional standpoint, almost pitched to you, which city it should be, but also of course you guys were like, personally, like we want you to go where you want to go.

[01:09:20] so Seattle was a bit too far for me. I’d never been there before, but you know, it just seemed like it’d be like a rainy and stuff. And from what you know, so I, it was too far. Denver would have been cool. My brother had just moved to Colorado Springs or was about to move to Colorado Springs.

[01:09:36] So it’d been cool to be in Denver. But I think at that time, Denver was still like, it wasn’t quite there yet. It wasn’t quite an up and coming tech city yet. but it had a lot of potential. And that year we had just had the coldest winter on record. The is it, the El Nino came through or whatever.

[01:09:55] And it was blisteringly cold. And as soon as like Denver, I just thought of snow and cold and mountains. I’m like, I want nothing to do with that for a while. and then it came to Austin. I’d been to Austin once before. I knew it was, it was, the weather was amazing. It was an outdoors town with a big music town.

[01:10:13] And I looked at cost of living all, always cost of living analysis. And ultimately came back and said, “I think Austin is a place to be. It was the fastest growing city for nearly a decade. Or over the past decade, it was a number one city for young professionals which is exactly the type of, it’s a huge hiring pool for us.

[01:10:31] it was, in striking distance of some amazing sales programs. You had a UT Dallas, which is,  the Dr. Howard Dover. Right?” Who was

[01:10:40]  Marc Gonyea: [01:10:40] Howard Dover?

[01:10:41] Nimit Bhatt: [01:10:41] The Dr. Howard

[01:10:42]  Marc Gonyea: [01:10:42] Dover.

[01:10:43] Nimit Bhatt: [01:10:43] Yeah. Yep. it was only a couple hours away. You had a university of Houston had a great sales program, Baylor. you had Dr.

[01:10:50] Vicky West, the Texas state run the sales team down there. there was a lot of great schools, a lot of great potential there. And there’s a place people wanted to move. So I thought, all right, this is great, right? I can almost get a pay bump because I’m not, the cost of living plus there’s no state income tax in Texas.

[01:11:04] I forgot about that. That very important piece. so, I saw it as a win and it was only about three or four hour flight wasn’t anything crazy. So I knew that I had to go back home. I could easily do that, and I knew that I’d be coming back to HQ every night and then too. So yeah, so ultimately decided on, on moving to Austin and then made the announcement in may of 2014, we did a training and I just kinda went through his whole presentation and yeah,

[01:11:32] I mean, it was amazing. I just said,” Hey, if you’re interested, come let me know”. And  by the end of that day, I had 15 to 20 people coming through saying, “Hey, I’m interested. I’m interested”. so

[01:11:43]  Marc Gonyea: [01:11:43] I remember that. Oh, I’m sorry. But of course now we’re talking about it. We, I mean, we never, we thought you’d want to do it, but we’re like, you never really sure someone’s going to want to do it. It was the commitment for the business to have somebody move and open an office. Like we had never really

[01:11:58] conceived of that happening. We talked about it, but when Chris and I kicked up the business, we were never like, yeah, whenever we’re going to have an office in Austin. And this is probably going to hire, who’s not going to go work for one of the best tech companies in the DC area. It’s going to go open the office for us in Austin.

[01:12:12] Like I had never even been to Austin before and Chris had either so, but we knew it was a good place to do it. So we were shocked that she wanted to do it, but obviously head over heels as well.

[01:12:23] Nimit Bhatt: [01:12:23] Yeah. I mean, it was, I mean, look, you had the opportunity to go to an awesome town and you have a job doing, it’s not like I’m moving there and trying to find a job. It’s my company is moving me there and,  helping support the move and setting me up with a really cool opportunity.

[01:12:38] And I knew that if it failed, I mean, I could always move back. Right?

[01:12:42]  Marc Gonyea: [01:12:42] Yeah, and stay there.

[01:12:44] Nimit Bhatt: [01:12:44] Or stay there. Right? Yeah. So yeah. And it was really exciting time for the company. SDRs were super fired up about it. And I think that’s why a lot of people I think their first instinct was just to, come in and let me know they’re interested.

[01:12:55] And I was super excited because I had all these people and, I thought that the best way of going about it was to bring as many people with me, from DC down there to open up the office. I thought I needed all that. selfishly a little bit was just because I wanted to keep my clients because I had great relationships with some really awesome clients.

[01:13:11] And I knew that if those SDRs were to come to Austin with me like I would get to keep the work so having to give it to other DM. So yeah, so I w I was really excited. And then of course, over the course of the next few weeks some of those people Mike Vessels being one of them.

[01:13:26]  Marc Gonyea: [01:13:26] Excellent.

[01:13:27] Nimit Bhatt: [01:13:27] he was originally in, and then he got an offer from his client.

[01:13:30] So, so he left will Hinkebein.

[01:13:34]  Marc Gonyea: [01:13:34] No, he can buy it.

[01:13:35] Nimit Bhatt: [01:13:35] He was like, last minute he pulled out I think I don’t wanna get any other ones wrong, whether they were actually interested, but th there are quite a few other people that were all about coming in and then, for other reasons they decided on, this isn’t, I want to stay here and build up my, build my network.

[01:13:50] and, or they weren’t ready to leave the Northern Virginia area. So when it was all said and done, I think it came down to, I think it was like seven of us ended up going the original crew with John Stephens,

[01:14:03]  Marc Gonyea: [01:14:03] John Stevens.

[01:14:04] Nimit Bhatt: [01:14:04] Anita Obasi. For Anita, her second day at memoryBlue was the day that we

[01:14:12] ha did the training where I talked about Austin and she was a hundred  percent like,”Yes, I’m in. Like Austin is a place I want to be”. She even talked about that. She’s like the coolest part of on never looked experienced. That on the second day of the job, my boss came to me and told me, “Hey, I’m moving to Austin opening an office.

[01:14:26] Do you want to come”? that was the coolest thing. so big shout out to her and all the great things that she’s doing. Micah Austin Hon. Another really good friend of mine. he

[01:14:35]  Marc Gonyea: [01:14:35] Also in your wedding?

[01:14:36] Nimit Bhatt: [01:14:36] Yeah, he was,  yeah, he’s at my wedding, as my bachelor party. super awesome guy. he taught me so much about fitness and I, I attribute a lot of that to him. And,  Nathan Real, also big shout to Nathan.

[01:14:51] That guy came with me when we drove down together. I picked him up from his place near college park and we drove in my 2010 Toyota Corolla. And I wasn’t sure if it was gonna make it all the way and switched off for a few hours and we stopped at some hotel in Nashville. we were, so we were like, let’s go party.

[01:15:07] We were so tired. And then we drove from Nashville to Dallas that night there and in Austin. And then he lived with me for, so the first name of the office was my, my living room in my apartment. and we like set up  our whole he set up his whole like monitor situation, everything. And yeah, so, so we did that for about a week before the w it was two weeks before everybody else came down and an office opened.

[01:15:28] who else?  Marc Nagy. Mike Starmer and, oh my Gosh. Who am I missing anybody?

[01:15:36]  Marc Gonyea: [01:15:36] What about prime time?

[01:15:38] Nimit Bhatt: [01:15:38] See, Nick Khan came. So Nick Kham, He came

[01:15:40]  Marc Gonyea: [01:15:40] time prime

[01:15:41] Nimit Bhatt: [01:15:41] little bit later. he wasn’t a part of

[01:15:43]  Marc Gonyea: [01:15:43] That’s right. That’s right. That’s right. That’s right.

[01:15:45] Nimit Bhatt: [01:15:45] So also story about him. He came to me and told me that he wanted to move to Austin, but he wasn’t hitting his number.

[01:15:52] or he hadn’t hit his number yet or something. And he said, “Look, I want to come but. I want to prove myself first. And so I’m, let me stay. I’m gonna stay here for a little bit and hit my number a few more times. And then I will,  I’ll make the trip”. And every time I came back to DC, after that he’d always like, try to chase me down and talk to me about it.

[01:16:07] And I would like intentionally of like making jump through some hoops and then he, yeah, and then he finally, I was like, “All right, there’s this guy he’s serious. Like he wants to do this”. so he moved down on a Thanksgiving weekend. And I was hosting Thanksgiving at my house for all the people that were in town, all that memoryBlue SDRs, who were in town.

[01:16:25] And he came by and like that guy, he’s a riot man.  he’s a riot, he’s a riot. He showed up with a so he went to the grocery store to pick up some items and he came with the basket that like you’re supposed to put back full of food. and in Austin, you had to pay for bags like it wasn’t free.

[01:16:45] So if you wanted a bag, you didn’t bring your own, they’ve charged like 40 cents or something for a bag. And I was like, “Nick, why did you bring the baskets”? “They’re going to keep charging me for bags. I’m gonna keep taking their baskets”. Like that guy was like salt of the earth, man. is awesome. Just he’s such a good personality.

[01:17:02] He was so great to have in the office. Like that guy hustled, man. Like he, he would intentionally leave his cell phone in his car for the morning blitz. So he wasn’t didn’t get distracted. And and like that guy, he led the way man. He led the way. We did the hustle competition and him and Adam Kirschner,

[01:17:21]  Marc Gonyea: [01:17:21] Kershner.

[01:17:21] Nimit Bhatt: [01:17:21] to Kerscher was the first FCRA hire, the first SDR hire and Austin also the first non DC SDR  in the office.

[01:17:29] So that was the first kind of test of like. How are these two kind of cultures going to clash? but obviously, I mean, Kerscher knew that, he, the bar was set pretty high and him and Kim ended up winning that competition for the office. so I got to take them out to I think went to the W in downtown Austin and, the bar tab was,  was paid for by, by big blue.

[01:17:49] So Yeah. So it was awesome. so, I think that was the first real challenge. I think was what’s the culture going to be like right? Cause you had all these people come from HQ and I think for some of them, it, they saw it as an opportunity because, “Oh, there’s no Marc.

[01:18:05] There’s no Chris. Right? It’s just Nimit, like Nimit was cool with us. Right? He’s he’s kinda, we’re buddy with him. He’s not going to get super mad at us for stuff”. and I guess I could see where they got that idea. So they saw, Mo moving to Austin as an opportunity to be able to like slack off a little bit.

[01:18:19] Right? Not for everybody, of course. Right? for some, and that, that made a tough for me when I’m trying to build this, knowing that there was like a magnifying glass on this. That like everything was being watched because it was the first office. And I was like the Guinea pig. I was definitely the Guinea pig for that office.

[01:18:36] and back in the day there was no sales apps. right there was like, no real, like IT support like in person. It was all over the phone. Yeah. There’s no Nina. and then before Nina, like Tiffany, like there was Tiffany Done, 

[01:18:49]  Marc Gonyea: [01:18:49] We had to do a lot of stuff besides help you set up your office.

[01:18:51] Nimit Bhatt: [01:18:51] Yeah. Yeah. I mean, yeah. So like I had to like so Sierra com just sends me all of the switches, the network switches for the phones and the internet.

[01:19:02] And they’re like, all right. so we’re going to call you and you’re going to do it”. I was like, “What”? So I was like watching a YouTube video. I think I probably, I think I called Thaddeus. Cause that’s kinda what that is, was doing from memoryBlue. in the office, like he was always in the server room for whatever reason, like doing like unplugging stuff and plugging stuff in.

[01:19:18] So I was on the phone with Sierra.com and it was like super late super frustrating. I was up on a ladder. and I had to ask the kind of the custodian and the maintenance guy in the the office building to lend me a ladder. And I was up there and I was doing it. So, and it honestly was great cause it really felt like my thing, like it was my operation. Chris and I went down there to look at office space.

[01:19:41] and yeah, so yeah, so anyway, so, so, so going back, so it was tough to build that culture and that was the first real challenge of how is it gonna mesh. And so it was tough for awhile. and I think.  as the team changed and certain folks left and newer ones came in, it started to feel a lot better.

[01:20:01] one thing, yeah, I learned, and I think it’s still true or it stayed true for several years is, I mean, the type of candidates we were interviewing down there, I mean, the type of people, I mean, it was very bootstrap very bootstrap. Especially people that kind of grew up in the South.

[01:20:14] Like they see as like I’m gonna work hard. there were people I’d interview. One in particular Taylor, Capelle, Taylor Capell. So I remember her interview just cause like I was, she, I was like, “Yeah, so what brought you to Austin”? She’s “No, my roommate and I were, we were in Virginia and we decided we’re just going to pack up the station wagon and drive down to Austin and figure it out,

[01:20:36] once we got there”. I’m like, “Figure it out when you get there. Like what”? there was another guy, Devin Cushing.

[01:20:43]  Marc Gonyea: [01:20:43] Oh, wow. Perfect.

[01:20:45] Nimit Bhatt: [01:20:45] He same type of deal. Him and his roommate were like, we’re just, he was in Michigan and he’s we’re going to drive down to Austin to figure it out. He got a job at Starbucks and which is working at a Starbucks and on the side looking for other things to do.

[01:20:58] And it’s just I don’t know. I, that, that just blew my mind, like coming from, know, coming from I guess the Northeast or Mid-Atlantic whatever you wanna call it. “That’s crazy”. Like just a, right?, I mean, just to move to just a random city and just say, “I’m going to figure it out”. I mean, my parents were only just cool enough with me going into sales.

[01:21:17] I couldn’t imagine them being like, if I was like, “Hey, I’m going to move to Austin. I’m going to figure it out when I get there”. They’re like, “Wait, what, no, you’re not going to do that”. So that was the first like major shock to me. Yeah. So like they all wanted to work hard. They all wanted to make money.

[01:21:30] And so like that crew we first started was just so awesome. Like that it was a good group of people. and yeah, and  it was very bootstrap when we first started. For sure. It was, it was scrappy and it was fun. It was fun. yeah, I learned a lot about like building that from scratch and it evolve into its own culture.

[01:21:47] Right? and I think that was, I think that was tough for people in other offices to figure out. Right? That, that like the culture can be different here. that’s just what it is. And for me specifically, like not having Marc where I can hand my headset off the Marc anymore.

[01:22:02] Right? I have to handle it. I grew up really fast, like  really fast. I was what, 20. So that was like, I was like 24 when I moved to Austin and I felt like I was like in my mid thirties. like it just, I mean, I had to be more mature and cause I, I wasn’t just running an SDR team and talking to clients like when people came to the office,  when like the landlord came to the office, I had to talk to them.

[01:22:27] I had to check the mail. Like I had to do all that stuff and like one time my internet went out and it’s just because the bill wasn’t paid because they weren’t sending the bills to the right address. And I had to like go on the, send everybody home for the day. I had to be on the phone with Time Warner or whatever and get it all straight, straightened away.

[01:22:44] I had to call Chris like, cut a check that I think things like that. I really felt like it was like my business and I mean, I know I was managing PNL, but that office too. So it really felt like I was watching all the money that was coming in, making sure clients were paying us and not to do some collections work.

[01:22:57] And like that experience it was amazing. it was looking back on it. And I remember when when we had the meeting, we were talking about moving to Austin, like I was like, so I was so excited about it. And then Chris was like, “Look, it’s not going to be all rainbows and butterflies.

[01:23:12] they’re going to be some days where you’re like, man, like, why did I do this”? and I had many of those takes. like looking back, I just can’t even believe some of the stuff that I went through there. yeah, you almost forget when, when it, when the longer,  you’re out from it.

[01:23:28] so, so yeah, I mean, there’s a lot more we can unpack, but yeah, that was it. It was a cool, it was a cool opportunity for sure. And yeah, it was cool being able to say that I moved to Austin, opened up his office and run it and yeah, it was it was great. And then and then I took over operations in the the San Jose’s office as  well.

[01:23:47] Chris Corcoran: [01:23:47] Well,before we move on, before we move on, because I think there’ve been some moments that were painful at the time, but certainly instructive for you. and, th the Freddy headset, one was one of them as a baptism into kind of being a a delivery manager or an SDR leader.

[01:24:02] And then you had an opportunity in Austin that was similar. If you could share the story of. It was a flagship client and kind of what that whole thing and the lessons, if you could share with the listeners.

[01:24:15] Nimit Bhatt: [01:24:15] Yeah.

[01:24:16]  Marc Gonyea: [01:24:16] I want to touch on one thing. This isn’t just like Nimit learning and all this shit, right? Like Christian, Marc learning stuff. All the time making all sorts of mistakes. So it’s not like it was Nimit  just that.

[01:24:28] Chris Corcoran: [01:24:28] Well, I mean, first off, I mean, one thing, like when w when he went to go open up the office we essentially said it,”Nimit, here’s a blindfold and a pack of smokes. go ahead. Good luck”. now when we’re like, we just opened up Seattle and we had our Nina who runs operations for the company.

[01:24:43] We flew her out there to set all this stuff up and we’re we’ve learned a lot. And some of that, or a lot of that was at Nimit’s expense.

[01:24:52] Nimit Bhatt: [01:24:52] Okay. Yeah. Oh yeah. I know. Yeah.  I’m always so envious of J Jeremy Wood and Kyle Gross and it,  it, yeah, it’s, it was tough. It was tough. It was a good learning experience, but yeah, those guys have it, so, so much easier of that, that, that whole process.

[01:25:08]  Marc Gonyea: [01:25:08] But I want to make that clear to everyone listening. This is just Nimit’s mistake shows to Chris and Martin mistakes too. So let’s tell we all, are we all look.

[01:25:16] Nimit Bhatt: [01:25:16] I also signed up for this, so it wasn’t like forced upon me or anything like, yeah.

[01:25:21] th this was voluntary as hard as it is to believe to go through all this. but yeah, so yeah, to, to Chris’s story. So yeah, so we had a flagship. campaign, I believe it was five SDRs, which is that’s a big campaign, a lot of money. And because it was a flagship with it with a  very well-known company we wanted to put more experienced SDRs on there.

[01:25:42] So there, there were a few STRs that we had who, they’d been at the company for a long time. They’ve been on some few, a few campaigns. they were tenured and I know I, and they were also really good friends of mine. There are people that would, I’d hang out with on the weekends. and I said, I was like, all right, this is a great opportunity.

[01:25:59] Let’s do it. this is going to be the squad. We’re gonna have some tenure SDRs on it. And they were good. I think th they were on some really tough campaigns. And so, and because of that, they didn’t have the ability to always hit their number and things like that. So, on paper it, it didn’t look that great from like a numbers perspective.

[01:26:14] but I knew that, clients, they love them, right. They love talking to them. They were very client facing very personable. And honestly, that’s what I feel like I needed for this campaign, because I knew this couldn’t fail. So. We started the campaign off. And it was I mean, it was going well.

[01:26:31] the client was super, super happy. our main point of contact, she was just, she was over the moon on the SDRs that we had. she was like a sales director and she was just ecstatic with who we had. but the problem was on our end that the guys were getting a whole lot of meetings every month.

[01:26:49] Right? They get a few, the quality was definitely there. There were high quality meetings, but like, when you look at the numbers, you’re like,  we could do more. And it’s easy as a DM to fall like fall for it in a way. And because I was offending them a lot, partly, they were good friends of mine, and I knew that they were good at their jobs.

[01:27:07] and the client was super happy. And as a DM, you’re like, all right, the client’s happy, then we’re good. great. But what we didn’t really realize is that, we still have to uphold our standards. And if we think we can do better, then we should take that chance. At the same time at this time the the client flow was a little slower. We weren’t getting as many clients as usual, I think may have been time of year or whatever. and I was talking to Tommy a lot. It was like, “Yeah, like we’re working on it.” So we had a bunch of new hires who like some of these guys, Aaron Bravo, John Campbell,

[01:27:42]  Marc Gonyea: [01:27:42] Bravo.

[01:27:43] Nimit Bhatt: [01:27:43] Sack, sack, Saxton Archer. I, these guys blew me away in the interview. and they came on board and they were on billable. So they like, they weren’t on a client. they were calling on a paper meeting client. And they’re waiting to go on work. And the work wasn’t really coming in.

[01:27:59] So when they weren’t on work, that hurt profitability. so that’s not good. Right? And the bench was getting bigger and bigger. and me managing PNL, seeing that, and then having conversations  with Marc and Chris about it, like, all right, well, like if the client flow is not there and  we got to do something, we got to figure it out. And it was a pretty, it was a pretty tough situation.

[01:28:19] Like it wasn’t an ACR it was across all the offices, so it wasn’t just mine. like we had a San Jose office at that time. So I remember there was a call where it was me and Mike Mishler on the call. And it was a kind of it was tough conversation. Hey, like we like, profitability, isn’t where it needs to be.

[01:28:35] We have a lot of people on the bench. We gotta do something about this bench. So what it came down to is look, we have these newer people.  they’re ballers they’re, or at least they have the potential  versus SDRs that we have on this flagship campaign.

[01:28:50] Who are tenure, but  they’re not doing as well as they could be. And it was made even more difficult because the client was super, super happy. So, I sat down with w with these individuals that were on the camp, the client, and explain them the situation. And told them, “Look, this is the way it needs to be. Like, I need to put you guys on, on a performance plan and right. And assuming you all can, step it up and I’m going to be there with you and be working with you. We’re going to make it happen. we’ll be okay”. And they didn’t really take too kindly to that.

[01:29:24] And it was tough because again, they were good friends of mine. and so that was tough conversation to have, and they felt, you know that I, I wasn’t serving their best interests and it was tough. It was a  really tough conversation. so a lot of them ended up choosing to resign.

[01:29:39] And so that left a void. I think it was four, four of them left. so there was still one person who was still in the campaign, who was doing really well, actually. so. Yeah. so we switched in these new people. So people

[01:29:53]  Marc Gonyea: [01:29:53] I remember. Yeah. I mean, we’ve finished. I remember it very similarly, except this is like the classic dilemma. The client loves the client, loved them, but one of the guys in the client, I remember a VP was like, “Hey, I want more too”. And we’re like, “Hey guys, we need more”. We probably could have gotten away with not getting more, but we know that the client’s thrilled and happy, but we know we can probably do more and do better.

[01:30:22] It’s not enough. Because eventually the client will come to us. Some of them will come knocking at the client like, Hey, you guys need to do more. I know this. These people love you, but we think you can get more. And I was driving to Virginia Beach on a four on a Friday. And it was like nearly. we got to talk to these guys.

[01:30:40] And I, my friend was driving with me the three and a half hour drive in Virginia Beach. And I said, “Hey, I gotta take this call. It’s going to be like 15, 20 minutes. Can you drive”? And you and I are on the phone for three hours. Maybe the whole, almost the whole way there, just like, figuring out what we could do and how we could do and what we’re going to tell the guys. Now we’re in a way out to them because we didn’t want them to think it was punitive.

[01:31:02] And it was very, and I remember you didn’t want to do it and I didn’t want to make you do it. Right? Like we were looking at our chops and we’re going back and forth and eventually, and you did it and you’re like, “Nope, Nimit, you want me to talk with them”? And we talked. He was like, “No, I got it”.

[01:31:18] These are my guys, like my office, I’m going to do it. So then you did it solo and it was tough for everybody. And even the client was like, “Well, you guys did what? Because of this?” And so everybody was upset, but how did it turn out? It turned out pretty good.

[01:31:36] Nimit Bhatt: [01:31:36] I mean, it literally turned out like the best possible thing happened. I mean, they, these guys went on the campaign, they blew the doors off of it. They tripled the production that that the old crew is getting like that, that they led me to believe that there are always obstacles in their way that was causing them to not be able to get the results that we wanted.

[01:31:55] But. I think that’s the beauty of having brand new people that they’re going to figure it out. And so, so again, this is the client was upset that we made this change and because of that higher ups at this company now had their eyes on it,  on us. so

[01:32:12]  Marc Gonyea: [01:32:12] I was like, “You guys did what”? And we’re like, “Well, you guys, you want that, this is kinda what we need to do”.

[01:32:20] Nimit Bhatt: [01:32:20] Yes. Yes.

[01:32:21] Yeah. So and at the same time, I had to come out to HQ for one of our early leadership retreats that same week that all those new people were getting onboarded for the client. So out of step out a lot to go on these calls and broke the introductions. And I had one of one of the AEs in particular called me and it was like an evening and I saw his number come through and he was like really upset.

[01:32:47] He’s like, “Why did you take this person away from me?” And I explained, I was like, “Look, I’m going to give you a really solid person.” and they ended up like being best friends. Right? So, yeah, so that was a situation. I mean it was a really tough situation to go through. And yeah, it was classic, more, more often you want to be more proactive, right?

[01:33:08] And especially in any type of client facing role, you don’t want to wait for the client to come to you and say that they’re upset about something. you want to be in a position where you go to them and say, “Hey, I’m gonna be making this change.”  and that’s a very tough thing for a DM to do.

[01:33:20] Especially when the client really likes the person because you could be wrong, right? The next person that like we could have put these new people on and they could have done worse. And right? So that was always going in my head and then that would have just derailed everything. So luckily it all worked out for the best and yeah, that client end up sticking around for a long time.

[01:33:38] Long

[01:33:38]  Marc Gonyea: [01:33:38] long time. And those two of those estimators we put on the campaign. Work to that company almost four years ago. And they still work there.

[01:33:47] Nimit Bhatt: [01:33:47] Yeah. Getting promoted and 

[01:33:49]  Marc Gonyea: [01:33:49] Right? You. And I ended up going to the headquarters, spilled coffee on the VP and the elevator? Thankfully, I did it. I couldn’t believe it. The whole coffee dropped out of my hands.

[01:34:01] It’s like in slow motion. And it was just like a little drama. Just shoot. Remember that? It was

[01:34:06] Nimit Bhatt: [01:34:06] Do I remember it? I have nightmares about that. You kidding me?

[01:34:11]  Marc Gonyea: [01:34:11] It’s nine degrees and they did a coffee

[01:34:13] Nimit Bhatt: [01:34:13] My God, man.

[01:34:15]  Marc Gonyea: [01:34:15] elevator with him. And I say, “Hey, control, the second. I felt like, I would go to what happened. So luckily just to drop down into shoe. But long story short, we ended up keeping them around for a long time. They wouldn’t come back at some point I’m open and then the two guys are still there and they’re all stars.

[01:34:29] Nimit Bhatt: [01:34:29] Crushing it. Yeah. Blown out of the water.

[01:34:32]  Marc Gonyea: [01:34:32] Okay. So what are you a tradition and something?

[01:34:36] Nimit Bhatt: [01:34:36] Yeah. So yeah, so, just as a quick sidebar, people ask me, “Why, why you’ve been there for so long? Like why do you stick around”? And, what I say is because as soon as I’m bored, I get another, bored’s the right word. But as soon as I feel like I’ve not plateau’d, I’m trying to get the right word, but like, when, if I conquered one obstacle or one thing, I get another thing thrown at me.

[01:35:01] Right? And it’s it was a concert with them. So I write, I was an SDR. I was pretty good. I wasn’t the best, but I was pretty good SDR. So, okay, great. So, you won’t be a DM. Awesome. Did DM grew the team? Okay. Awesome. I got pretty good at that. “Hey, you want to move to Austin and open an office there”?

[01:35:16] I was like, “Yeah, okay, cool”. Moved to Austin, where, started building a team out there. Got to a good, pretty good spot and then saying, “Oh, actually, so we need some help with building out things in the San Jose’s office. you know that this might be a good time for one of you to talk about kinda the state of that of things there.

[01:35:34] But yeah, it was tough. I think we learned, you talk about learning about building an office in Austin. I think we all learned a lot about, having an office in Silicon Valley and what comes along with having a presence there. And yeah, so there was a,

[01:35:48]  Marc Gonyea: [01:35:48] it’s a, it’s an amazing, it’s there’s a reason why we waited to do California, right? Not, I wouldn’t think you could do it. I thought it was like a big mountain to tackle as the first. So we made the second and I, the office, what’s a great office of, we love the office for all the Cali folks listening, but it’s a unique beast because it is the epicenter of high-tech in the universe.

[01:36:13] Well, maybe at least on the planet earth, can’t speak for all it all aliens, alien races out there and the one sold them.  but in the United States, and that brings with it all sorts of great things for a company like memoryBlue, certainly for our employees, certainly for our employees. what I mean by that from a challenging standpoint is there are so many options for folks in high-tech who live out there.

[01:36:35] And then the folks who come into the memoryBlue program and get exposed to things and how with the training and the exposure and the clients, I mean, they’re high sought after assets have to work with us for three or four months. I mean, that’s just so, so there’s always the the probability or possibility that they’re going to go work for a tech firm.

[01:36:55] And so, and we’re still, and we’re still learning how to like, develop a match of the culture. So it was a lot to ask the people who opened that office and they did a really good job. There’s no doubt about it, but we had an opportunity to get someone who had the experience of opening his own office.

[01:37:13] And then we wanted who’s the best person in the company. The most expensive person is going to be to take the experience of opening an office and helping not reopen, but helping transition an office that had was on his first on a second generation of like life. So we want you to go out there. We asked you if you would tell you, would you do this?

[01:37:31] What happened then?

[01:37:32] Nimit Bhatt: [01:37:32] Yeah. I mean, absolutely. Right. I mean, it sounds like  another challenge. And going back to what you said, Mar I mean, there, I mean, there was no way I would have been able to move out there as the first office and build that thing out. Absolutely no way. It was the experiences that I had of Austin that kind of led me to be able to do well and able to do in San Jose.

[01:37:50] so like that experience, that, that helps. So yeah. So yeah, I was like, yeah let’s do it. Right? and I think the goal was one year. And he gave me a certain milestones to hit him. How many SDRs we needed to hire to find somebody to take over for me in that role while I run things in the interim.

[01:38:06] so yeah, so I sit on a mission. So I was out there probably at least twice a month. I was flying out there. Got tons of airline points, got some status on Southwest. And yeah, I was going out there all the time and juggling running things in Austin. I had Joey Sorensen, dot two out of two to run running the show which was super helpful.

[01:38:29] like those guys were really good at just keeping things going while I wasn’t there and communicating with me and flew out to California and just got to just a lay of the land and kind of understood that, yeah, we got to inject some, we got to inject some more kind of memoryBlue love here.

[01:38:45] I think it’s very easy at being, three hours behind HQ. and it, I ran the same thing. I had the luxury of at least having some folks from DC, bring some of that memoryBlue HQ energy, but you know, these people don’t know anything about the, they have no attachment to memoryBlue HQ as a company for them, they just, this is the place that they come to work.

[01:39:05] So. I would go there and I would meet with lobby’s SDR. So first it was meeting with every single SDR there and determining all right, this person’s probably going to leave soon and right. And then figuring out, all right, “Who are like the key, like four or five SDRs that I see a lot of potential in that I think are going to like, they want to be here and they want to see things through and see things happen a different way”.

[01:39:30] so that process took some time. So Joe Reeves.

[01:39:33]  Marc Gonyea: [01:39:33] Joe Reeves.

[01:39:34] Nimit Bhatt: [01:39:34] now is now the managing director of that office. At the time he was still a DM and I knew that he was naturally, he would be the person that would run that office one day. so I relied on him a little bit and he was like, he’s only a right-hand man.

[01:39:48] And I remember for a period of time, it was almost daily, he would call me, in and so in Austin it would be the evening. It was two hours ahead. It’d be like six or 7:00 PM and he called me and he would be like, “Hey, left today” or “So-and-so put in their notice” and that happened.

[01:40:03] And that was a tough period because the office shrank a lot as there was a change in leadership and which is natural, right? I mean, any, this would happen in any company. This is not exclusive to memoryBlue. so, so once the dust settled on that, it was time to really start rebuilding.

[01:40:18] And so I changed a little bit of kind of the candidate profile of what we were looking for. I think we learned this in one of our leadership sessions. We had somebody come teach us and it was like looking for the type of people that, it was people who you knew were going to be able to do the work, but people that was, that were going to be really good for long-term growth and people that had a good,

[01:40:37] good energy about them. And we’ll be good for a culture that we want to build there, which is going to be people that, “I’m here to learn. I’m here to work”. And, my goal is set on find the best possible position for me getting out of here. But we’re also looking for people who really wanted to get into management right?

[01:40:54] Because people that would want to stay people that would be open to moving to another city where we have an office. and, it took a while to figure out what type of profile we were really looking for, because we knew that there was this, there were particular types of people that we knew would do really well in this type of environment.

[01:41:07] We looked for people that had backgrounds, where they would work in a startup environment, people that did a lot of extracurricular things in college. So people that built things right? “Tell me, for example, something you’ve built”. And right? And so you, you learn that and you learn about the types of people that you want to have there.

[01:41:24] And so we built a really awesome crew of SDRs there. I mean Omar Lopez, right? like that guy was,  Jake Akin.  yes. Wow. He’d be so mad at me for, yeah. I, I  I blanked like having those people in the office was just, was huge for just culture. I mean they’re both like class clowns, right?

[01:41:44] I mean,  in, in the best possible way having them in the office was really awesome. There, there was like yeah, and then we brought in Dan Yorkie, boomerang to to be in like, I mean, that guy was awesome. Like he was like, he, so he wanted to come back. He was, I think he was at threat metrics at the timer.

[01:42:03] I can remember, but I ha I had several meetings with him because I knew that this was going to be, like, I had to make sure it was the right person. Especially if I’m bringing somebody from the outside. And even though he started memoryBlue, this is like an outside hire, right? It’s not, I’m not promoting a current SDR.

[01:42:19] So, I met with him and I told him like, “This is what we’re trying to do”. And he was just like, “You have my word, like  we’re gonna, we’re going to get this to where it needs to be”. And like from day one, that guy was just, I mean he over-communicated with me, which is exactly what I wanted.

[01:42:33] he helped build out a lot of those campaigns. There were some campaigns we were struggling on that he was able  to figure out and turn around. And it was awesome having him and Joe, they just compliment each other so well.

[01:42:47]  Marc Gonyea: [01:42:47] I mean, Jordan, he’s a baller. I mean, there’s that about that? And Yorkey, Yorkey was like one of the guys, one of the PE people who he always knew his numbers.

[01:42:58] Nimit Bhatt: [01:42:58] Yeah 

[01:42:58]  Marc Gonyea: [01:42:58] Always Marc. I know Marc. I’m going to give, “I know my numbers, Marc”. It didn’t matter what day of the month it was. And then he would always tell,”I need, Omar.

[01:43:09] I need two, I, I need two from you. Omar. I need two from you. Colby, I need three from you, what that green on your face? I need three from you, Colby”.

[01:43:16] Nimit Bhatt: [01:43:16] Colby Cambra.

[01:43:18]  Marc Gonyea: [01:43:18] Oh, Colby. Bell. Boom. So, yeah. You’re so, so that, that was significant.

[01:43:24] Nimit Bhatt: [01:43:24] Yeah. So, yeah, so the three of us and then we actually ended up promoting Morgan Blehm as well. so we, we had three DMS out there, I think for the first time ever. and yeah, so it was just, it was a good crew. It was a great crew. They helped build that thing out. We had some awesome clients come through there, hire their people out.

[01:43:42] And we got the office to where we needed to be. I mean, and then one year we got to whatever the, I think the goal was like 25 SDRs two DMs and a Managing Director. and that’s, Joe plugged into to the role and you know what that was, again, that was the next challenge was all right.

[01:43:58] “Let’s see if you can do it here”. so yeah, so I think that, that was a really cool experience and I’m glad we were able to do it. And then officer’s, they’re absolutely crushing it now. I mean, Joe, ha, I can’t take credit for, so there was other stuff he does, but he’s just naturally he is a natural leader and he  truly cares about his clients and he truly cares about as SDRs and It shows. it really does show with him.

[01:44:21] And,

[01:44:21]  Marc Gonyea: [01:44:21] He’s beloved.

[01:44:22] Nimit Bhatt: [01:44:22] He, yes. I mean, he’s just, yeah, he’s awesome.

[01:44:25]  Marc Gonyea: [01:44:25] So much, so, so much of that, you’re not going to do an imitation of him. You’re going to do whatever.

[01:44:31] Nimit Bhatt: [01:44:31] Joe Reeves.. “Okay. Oh, yeah, Nimit, hey”. He knows, he knows that I do, we were a top strip and there was there was a guy walking around the pool with this big iguana and people could take pictures with the iguana. So I was in the pool with a bunch of the California people. We saw Joe walking towards the pool and I’m like, “Oh man, Joe”, and you’re Joe, he’s built, man.

[01:44:59] He he takes good care of, he takes good care of himself. And I was like, “Dude, Joe’s gonna love this iguana”. He’s gonna be like, “Oh, iguana”, and then and then just like clockwork in the backyard, he’s like “Oh, an iguana”. And did he do this photo shoot, like shirtless photo shoot with the iguana and it was awesome.

[01:45:17] It was like Joe. And he just, he’s you know. awesome, man.

[01:45:21]  Marc Gonyea: [01:45:21] Joe’s great. Okay. All right. So Nimit we’ll quick. Just the two offices, like what do you see? How do you see the differences in each office being successful?

[01:45:31] Nimit Bhatt: [01:45:31] So so, it was really tough in San Jose because, just because of the competition. it was definitely a lot easier to hire people in Austin.  we competed really well with other companies like  our base salary and our company wasn’t too far off. versus in California, there, there was a lot more disparity, right?

[01:45:48] There are startups that just get funding every day and they just throw money at people to come work there. and we saw that we saw just re they just crazy high base salaries for SDRs, and it’s really tough to compete with that. but in a way, I think that, just thinking glass half full, I think that helped us filter through candidates a little bit better because we knew the people that were coming to work for us.

[01:46:10] We knew that they could easily get a job anyway to other tech companies. but the fact that they chose to come to memoryBlue I think that helped a lot. And I think that honestly, I think that attributed a lot to the success of how we’re able to grow that office. And I think it was also educating them on what the tech world is really and that you can’t always be a base chaser.

[01:46:31] We brought a lot of alumni back to do like little fireside chats. That was really big. We had clients come in and literally say don’t be a base chaser”. and even in Austin, too, Jim Mongiello at Couchbase came and,  he’s an  amazing individual. I still keep in touch with him.

[01:46:49] And yeah he came to the office and he straight up just told the SDRs don’t be a base chaser. Like you you need to be an SDR for a while. You can’t be an AE until you’re ready. And just because you’re doing okay right now as an SDR doesn’t mean you’re going to be a great AE right now.

[01:47:02] And like just hearing that’s really good. and so, yeah, so I, I think it was just edgy, educating SDRs on that and teaching them that it’s okay to be a little patient. Right?I know we hire people naturally who are impatient and that’s really great. but you have to actually, you do have to exercise a certain level of patience when it comes to developing your craft and knowing that, the more time you focus on that,  it’s gonna pay dividends later when you do go to that next role.

[01:47:29] and when you become an AE it’s you’re going to be just that much better at that role.

[01:47:36] Chris Corcoran: [01:47:36] So, Nimit. you are, your super power is almost being like the custodian of culture. Talk a little bit about how you install a culture. you did that in Austin and then you also installed it in San Jose? What sort of things can you can leaders do to create and foster a culture?

[01:47:54] Nimit Bhatt: [01:47:54] Yeah. I mean, you have to, people feed off of energy and, even when I was like, no, having a great day, I made sure that the SDRs still saw me as like a, bubbly, funny guy. Right? Like I always love joking around with people like, lightheartedly and I mean, people really fed off that and I, it, for me, it was,

[01:48:16] getting to know each SDR as best as I possibly could. And it all starts with the interview process. especially in San Jose. when I was running the show, I made sure I interviewed every single person, at least one part of the step. And tended to wanted to do an interview too, because that’s where, so like my interview with Marc, my second, my first interview with Marc, which is interview two, right? Marc, got to know everything about me, my background.

[01:48:40] He asked me my favorite course in college, and we talked about that. So that’s the kind of stuff I was doing, because if you can do it at that point and really get to know them really well when it comes to when they actually come work for you. Assuming that you take good notes and you keep track of this stuff.

[01:48:53] You can bring that stuff up with them. And they’re like, “Wow, you remember that”? And things like that can just show that you actually care about their development. people love hearing stories, right? Storytelling mastery is like one of the best skills you can have in sales, but even in management, right?

[01:49:07] Capturing stories of people. Because over time as you manage more and more people, you’re going to find more similarities. Right?  there are people that I’ve managed years apart who very similar and I can relate their story  to them. And people respond really well to that. And then you create this really cool culture of, people come to work for you.

[01:49:25] They come because they’re out there, they’re excited to come see and “Oh man, I wonder what Nimit’s going to do today”. Right? I’m like, I wonder who’s I wonder, like what joke he’s going to make today, what impersonation he’s going to do today or what, or whatever it may be. And and yeah,

[01:49:37] and I made sure even as I moved up to managing director where I wasn’t like directly involved with SDRs. On a day to day. I still made sure that I didn’t forget the basics of call coaching and breaking down a call with somebody. because that that, that can really show wonders as well.

[01:49:53] I mean, it really can make the SDR feel like they’re important. And I think the SDR job it’s incredibly thankless. It is. It’s good. It’s the hardest sales job anyone’s ever going to have in their career. And if you can make them feel important in that role that what they’re doing  is huge for themselves, for their client.

[01:50:13] you the culture will follow, right? I honestly, I think it’s just be human, make sure you care about your people and then the culture will come and it might surprise you in certain ways. Right? And I think if you focus too much on culture, then  you’re forcing it.

[01:50:28] And I was more of I mean, I’m just going to come, I’m just going to be me. I’m just gonna do what I’m going to do. And,  and  the culture will it’ll come, it’ll be it’ll show up.

[01:50:37] Chris Corcoran: [01:50:37] Another part of culture is the team in the people that make up the office.

[01:50:42] Nimit Bhatt: [01:50:42] Yeah.

[01:50:43] Chris Corcoran: [01:50:43] I’m interested in getting your thoughts on what you look for when you’re interviewing and selecting an SDR as well as what you look for when you’re evaluating an SDR leader.

[01:50:57] Nimit Bhatt: [01:50:57] Yeah. So when it comes to the SDR, it comes down to hunger and curiosity, are our other two things I look for is how badly do they want to do this? And how much do they, like, how coachable are they? How much did they want to develop? And I look to see, I love hearing stories from people. I don’t just want them to tell me, I want them to tell me a story about it and the way they tell the story about it.

[01:51:24] I think that’s going to, that’s going to resonate really well or that it’s going to, it’s going to bleed through really well when it comes to them actually being on the phone, because sales is all about telling stories, right? You have to, you have to tell stories about what your solution does, what it has done for a customer that’s similar to them.

[01:51:38] so if they can tell really good stories about anything I mean, I’ve had candidates tell me stories about when they were in the boy Scouts and stuff. Right? like things like that. There was like 10 years ago right? Or stories about, people, that came from like a rougher background, like telling you like, stories about that stories about people like, what they did in college.

[01:51:55] And, I had one kid, I had one guy Blake Howard of that’s an oldie. Right? he was big into fencing. And I always remember this that guy told me everything he knew about fencing. I learned more about fencing than I did about Blake himself and the interview. But like he ended up like being, he was also like he acted like plays and stuff too.

[01:52:14] but yeah, I mean, he, he talked a lot about fencing  and the way that he, his body language, how excited he got about it. I’m like, “Man, if  if he can get paired with a really good client and likes the technology, like he can beat me deadly”. so, yeah, for the SDR hunger curiosity are the things to look for when it comes to SDR manager.

[01:52:30] I mean, some of those things I, for me, I want like an SDR manager to walk through. All right. Let’s say you haven’t asked tr that’s not doing that well, what happens next? and  let them talk about it. Right? And just see them figure it out.

[01:52:44] All right, client. is unhappy. Right? We know we, we got a bad survey,  feedback from a client. What happens next? And see how they handle it. for when it comes to us, to your manager, I tend to, because I am in the belief that the best SDRs don’t always necessarily make the best SDR managers.

[01:53:02] but I want to hear stories about things that happened while they’re an SDR that they can  talk through,  growing moments for them. Right? what were some of the best things? I would ask questions like, “All right. if let’s say you’re in charge of memoryBlue training for SDRs, what changes would you make?

[01:53:17] what would you do? what would you change about the onboarding process the first two weeks  of an SDRs time here? What would you change about that”? because I want to see if they’re actually there to make an impact. I think that’s what it comes down to is don’t want them to look at the DM job restaurant manager job as just like a nine to five for them.

[01:53:32] I want them to see is I’m here because I want to be here. I want to grow. I want to develop and I want to make an impact. I want to see the office change in this way or that way to be, I want to be part of the growth. And for me, honestly, that was the hardest part. I could never get a DM to stick long enough

[01:53:45] for that. And I always tell Kristin ,I’m like Kristin Wisdom, if you’re not, if you hit the bell,

[01:53:50]  Marc Gonyea: [01:53:50] Who’s he? 

[01:53:51] Nimit Bhatt: [01:53:51] I always tell her I’m just, I’m incredibly jealous of her ability to be able to get her DMS, to stick around for a really long time. Like I just I just could never do it. And I don’t know whether it was just because it was a remote office and it wasn’t HQ or  what it was.

[01:54:04] But I, I had ideas that did it for probably,  I think two years maybe when the longest, but then they were like, I’m going to something else. And they never go into SDR management after they leave. It’s it’s always like customer success or they go BAE or something.

[01:54:16] And yeah, and I think that was the part that I can never really figure out. Right? there’s a lot of great stuff that I did. But yeah, I mean, I was managing SDRs for about seven years right before, that’s a good segue into kind of what I’m doing now, but yeah, I mean, there, there was a lot that I learned and I felt like, all right, I think I’ve done all that I can on on, on for this part of the business.

[01:54:36] I’m ready to take the company to the next level and outside of sales development as a service and client delivery world. What else can I do? Because, I mean, I know w when you’re on the rocket ship, you don’t leave the rocket ship. So, you know what,  you know what’s next?

[01:54:53] Cause if you do, you’re going to suffocate because you’re know you’re somewhere in the stratosphere. So so yeah, so that, that kind of segues into kind of how what’s been going on in the past year, unless you have any other questions.

[01:55:03] Chris Corcoran: [01:55:03] No, let’s talk about that.

[01:55:04] Nimit Bhatt: [01:55:04] Yeah. So, okay. So when I moved to Austin I met my now wife.

[01:55:12] we met on the internet on a dating site and this particular dating site didn’t really do, it was newer. It was geared towards so it was an Indian dating site. I’ll just say it. so, and the app was still really new. It was like in beta and they didn’t do a good job of kind of filtering by geography.

[01:55:31] So you could match with people that are like halfway across the country. It would only tell you if they’re within like 300 miles of you. It was crazy. so me being in Austin, there’ll be a lot of like bachelor parties that would come through Austin. So I’d like match and they’re like, “Oh no, I’m just here for the weekend”.

[01:55:48] But I ended up matching with by my now wife and I literally, I was just like,” Oh”. Her name is Trishna. And I was like, “Oh, she’s got a pretty name”. Yes. And then we connected. She was living in Arizona at the time. So she grew up in Arizona in Scottsdale. She was at a university of Arizona in pharmacy school at the time.

[01:56:06] We got to talking. I flew out to to see her. She flew to Austin and the rest is history. So she ended up she, she finished pharmacy school. She did her residency in Houston. Then she moved to Austin. So we lived in Austin for two or two or three years. so at some point we’re thinking about a longterm now that we’re, now that we’re married, and,  we want to have kids some day, like where do we want to be?

[01:56:29] I knew personally that I didn’t really want to move back to the East Coast. I’d lived there my whole life. and that’s just, let’s just keep thinking, let’s keep thinking West. And she was like, “Well, yeah, I mean I would love to move back to Arizona someday”. I’m like, “Yeah. Someday. Yeah. Yeah. someday in the future. Yes”. So,  we came out here so her best friend was getting married and she was, one of the bridesmaids, so we,  we flew out here. So while she was doing all wedding stuff, I was kinda like, let’s just see what the housing market’s like here.

[01:56:59] Just  just curious, just do some searches. And  her, my father-in-law w was with me. And I came across this like new development that was like, still being built out this huge, like mass development in the North, in North Phoenix. And we drove out and took a look and like I just fell in love, like with with it.

[01:57:17] Right? And I was like, “Man this would be really cool”. And it was awesome. Cause like phase two development was happening. Like next year, like a year from then. So I was like, “All right, well, let’s just see how things go”. And then as things became a little more real of “Oh wow. We could actually build a house here”.

[01:57:32] And it would be like, it’s like our dream house. It’s at the house we’re going to raise a family. Like our house, my house in Austin was nice, but I wasn’t gonna be able to really raise a family there. it was cozy, so to cozy. So coming out here and cost of living, everything like that.

[01:57:44] So I flew out to DC. We, so we flew out to DC to visit my parents. And while I was there, I was like, “You know what, I want to do this in person. I want to talk to them and just just see what their thoughts are of me moving to Phoenix”. At this time, I was still in Austin and running the, I think, running two offices or or whatnot.

[01:58:02] So I talked to you guys and I was just like, “Yeah, so I’m moving to Phoenix and I was, I was 99% sure that it was going to be okay. Well, let’s let’s put you on the rising stars. I got I was like, cause there’s no way this is pre COVID. Right? So I was like, “There’s no way that they would have me do anything like super remote”.

[01:58:21] And, then I just think about in the past people that have moved remote and still work for the company and,  and so I got, I was just like, all right, let’s see what happens. Like I knew that I would be okay. I find something, but, when it came to buying the house, I was like, it’d be good to have something.

[01:58:33] So so yeah, so it was immediately like, “Yes, do it, move, full speed ahead. Do what you gotta do. We will figure something out”. Right? which is like that’s like the memoryBlue mantra for me in my nine years. we’ll figure it out. Right? let’s look, I sit all the time, let’s,  let’s wait until becomes a problem. That, that the famous Corcoronism. Let’s worry about it when it becomes a problem. So yeah, so, we’re talking about right. what would it look like if I was living in Phoenix, but I was managing San Jose and Austin. It’s like an hour and a half, two hour flight to each one of those. And I could just just be, always be traveling because I was already doing that when I was flying between the offices.

[01:59:14] And then you guys presented  this new role saying, we talk about taking things to the next level. I don’t think it’s going to be in delivery. I think it’s going to be on, on acquiring. obviously acquiring new customers, but doing it in a different way. Not like our traditional outbound, like we have a sales team internal, but there’s a whole event world out there.

[01:59:32] there are trade shows that we can sponsor. There are stages that we can s we can speak at. So like I’m hearing, and I was not expecting this at all. I was like this, I think you guys told me to come back out. flew flew me out there for a day. And we’re like, all right. And took me out to lunch.

[01:59:47] And,  and just like, all right, this is it. And so. and I talk about this it takes me a while to process things. And my wife gets mad at me all the time, because like, I get like a gift and it’d be an amazing gift, but I’m not like, “Oh my God, this is incredible”. I’m still “Oh, okay”.

[02:00:00] And she’s you need to be happy when you get cool stuff. and this goes back to. This goes back to when Chris and I went to Austin to look for office space. That was my first time really in Austin in years. And that’s when it really felt real, felt like, “Oh man, like I’m going to be living here”.

[02:00:15] So I was very quiet on that trip. Like it wasn’t my usual self cause I was, I mean, I was a little nervous and we were looking at all these office spaces and Chris was like, really like he was wheeling and dealing and learning and then every now and then he’d be like,”Hey, Nimit, you fired up, man? You fired up? Are you excited”?

[02:00:29] Cause I think Chris is a little nervous that I was like right. Cause that I was taking it all in. Right? I’m just like seeing this the first time really seeing the city, because I’d only been there for a night before. So I never saw like during the day we, we drove all over the city, all over downtown. Well, totally different bars and stuff and yeah,

[02:00:46] and Chris be like, “This is a cool little town. It’s a cool little town, Nimit. You should be excited to live here”. That was that. That was, that. That was a little bit of Marc, or it doesn’t have a

[02:00:55] Chris Corcoran: [02:00:55] Yeah.

[02:00:57] Nimit Bhatt: [02:00:57] that was a little bit Marc know, like “You fired up, man? You fired up?” I’m like. “Yeah. yeah, no, I’m fired up, man”.

[02:01:06]  Marc Gonyea: [02:01:06] to move here.

[02:01:07] Nimit Bhatt: [02:01:07] Yeah. I think what Chris actually wanted to say was like, “Dude, we’re about to spend a lot of money on this are you going to are you going to do this? Like, all right, I’m about to drop a ton of money on office space here. there are loans that need to happen for this.

[02:01:18] are you gonna do this? are you gonna back out on me? are you in, are you out”? So yeah, so, yeah. Anyway, so. when you guys bring in the new opportunity to me initially, I was like probably I was like very quietly. “Okay. No, it’s, that’s interesting. Let me think about it”. And I went to the airport and I sat in the airport and I did a pros and cons list of it.

[02:01:36] And there, there, there were a lot more pros than cons to the role. And I honestly felt like it was like, that honestly, being able to go to all these events. And so the thing is I was already going to some of these events, right? I tag team with Marc, or I’d go to a lot of these career fairs, but the problem was is I would be glued to my phone because of course, when I’m there, there’s some fire that comes up.

[02:01:56] So I got to go out, I gotta step out of the career and the career fair, or, I guess step out of the session. I, one of these conferences or step out of the happy hour and, put out a fire. And I was thinking, well, now I get to go to these events, but I don’t have that part. So I can be more engaged.

[02:02:10] And I can go meet with people. I was already highly involved with the AA-ISP chapter in Austin. I helped bring it back there. So I met a lot of great people through that and, I’d loved going to these events. that was like the, my favorite times of memoryBlue was getting to go to the and see Marc, like in his element, like at these things it’s amazing.

[02:02:27] It is like you could “Marc, you could run a book about it. Like it’s incredible. See how you connect with people and how you bum rush people. It’s just like you you just. You’re such a savage to some of these sessions, like you’ll, there’ll be a room of 600 people and you’re like, stand up and ask like a really, just like a question that’s like really hard hitting”.

[02:02:44] Right? Cause a lot of these events it’s very like happy go lucky. everything is awesome. And Marc’s just  no. Let’s talk about performance management. All right. Let’s talk about firing SDRs. Like how do you guys do that”? Right? the keynote speaker and stuff. So so yeah, that’s what I wanted to do.

[02:02:59] Like I wanted to get to that. so the job was perfect and of course COVID changed the world and specifically changed my role. Like I had just handed everything off to Kristin who was taking over delivery and all the offices. So I, and I was doing some traveling. We just opened our office in Denver.

[02:03:15] So I was going to see Joey Plesce. all the time. and we sponsored a, an event for the Colorado technology association. So I got to go there. And that was the last like event that I did before everything shut down. And I got to speak in front of her in a room full of people, which is that is where I’m most comfortable.

[02:03:31] Like I’m the, I’m more comfortable in front of a huge group of people than I am like, sitting at home, watching TV. Like I love being in front of people. so, I always saw myself cause there, there are leaders in the space like Gabe Larson. Like I like, I love that guy. just like his stage presence is what emulate John Healey, his stage presence.

[02:03:50] Like I want to emulate that. so, I wanted to be that right? So even David Delaney at Tenbound, like his events were like so awesome. So yeah, so I wanted to do that and it was the, it was my dream job was perfect. And Then the world changed and in all the events. So I was scheduled to go to nine events in the first half of last year. I had flights booked, hotels booked.

[02:04:16] I had this huge Excel spreadsheet of all the different events that I was going to a sponsoring some of them. Some we weren’t. I was speaking at some of them at a workshop for one. And then and then one by one, like Domino’s they all started getting canceled. So we were

[02:04:30]  Marc Gonyea: [02:04:30] Tell you. Go ahead. Finish your thought.

[02:04:32] Nimit Bhatt: [02:04:32] No. So, I mean, honestly it was really scary, right.

[02:04:35] Because first, right. I mean, the MBA’s getting canceled and right? People are like dying every day and then you, the stock market was crashing. And like I was by myself. So, so Trish had already moved out to to, to Phoenix. She found like her perfect job for her out here. And it, the quality of life was so much better for her.

[02:04:53] And so she moved out here already. So I was by myself, in Austin, going through the whole moving out process. So stuff was getting boxed up and shipped out and everything. And the weekend that I moved out of Austin, that was the weekend, everything shut down. so I wasn’t even sure. I was like, wait, the movers even going to come and tr and Trisha supposed to fly in and help me out.

[02:05:14] But I was like, “No, don’t, it’s too risky”. And so I’d go. So I’ll go with that whole process. Plus all these events were getting canceled. I mean, to me, we all, the media, we know that,  they can hype things up. So I was like, “Man, like what’s going to happen”? And all of a sudden, like my job went away. 

[02:05:27]  Marc Gonyea: [02:05:27] I’ll tell you too, is that we’ve participated  from a far. On that circuit because we’ve been too busy to work and deal with the problems and the challenges of executing it. And you’re the perfect person to talk about this in the industry. That’s because we work at memoryBlue, but because of all your experience doing this as an SDRs delivery manager, opening office, interviewing people and cultivating people, developing people, letting people go, and then the experience of doing it in different markets.

[02:05:54] There are very few people in the industry with your subject matter expertise. This is a perfect and a new challenge for you. You’re phenomenal stage. And just talking to people too. I appreciate the kind of things you said, but you’re exceptional at

[02:06:05] Nimit Bhatt: [02:06:05] Well, I learn from you. So it’s a 

[02:06:06]  Marc Gonyea: [02:06:06] Yeah. Delivery forms that you don’t need to learn anything from me.

[02:06:10] So, and then the world came and it stopped. It’s unfortunate, but at some point we’ll get back to it, but I think you’ve what’s it called? Pivoted. You’ve pivoted. It’s talking about that. And then we’ll end with talking about what you’re focused on now, in addition to what you’re doing.

[02:06:28] Nimit Bhatt: [02:06:28] Yeah. So, yeah, so yeah I had to pivot, so I sat down and thought to myself, “All right, like how can I still provide value”? So I thinking about all right, the reason, some of the big kind of objectives that I had for the role was I want us to be a part of, the

[02:06:44] like the LinkedIn elite kind of crew, right? so these like influencers, like people that like, it’s a recognizable face. Like I, I want my face w what people to think of when they see memoryBlue at an event, or they come across something on social media or whatever. I want them I want this to be the face they they they see.

[02:07:01] and so I was like, “Okay, well, I needed to take this all virtual now”. so I immediately tried to get on every single type of so I started doing these videos. I, it was called the Sales Minute with Nimit. So I was doing these little videos and first it was in person. It was like a quick literally like a minute or two kind of interview with somebody on the fly, asking them one question or two questions and getting their feedback.

[02:07:23] And that was gold. Like we, we were able to use that stuff a lot. We have a whole thing on our website about it. So I pivoted that to virtual. I was like, I got to keep this up. And then I was like, I need to get on the mat as many webinars as possible. So I sat down with Chris and with Kevin and we came up with this whole webinar series about, about SDR management, training, coaching, messaging, through COVID.

[02:07:44] and we put together this awesome web series. it came out really well. And I got people in the game on for a panel for one of them. I tag team one with Steve Richard. Who’s just  he’s huge on that front and brings a lot of personality and a lot of followers to something like that.

[02:08:00] so yeah, so I started just figuring out, alright. “How can I drive more traffic to memoryBlue”? So I started doing a lot of that. I started speaking more. I started coming up with like different topics that I could speak to. I was talking a lot with a lot of the DMS about how they’re managing people through COVID. I was talking with Jackson Hawkins a lot.

[02:08:16] Jeremy would, because Jeremy’s team was absolutely crushing it and those months early on in COVID. So I was like, “What are you doing”? And I was packaging all that stuff up and sharing it with people through LinkedIn mainly, and on things that I was talking about. And even when I was having one-on-one conversations with people who were asking me I preach storytelling, so I need to practice that.

[02:08:37] So I was coming up with a lot of that. I also worked to build out our partnership network a lot because there are lots of companies that do what we do. But like different my way. We would never directly compete with them. They, we offer complimentary services. so I worked to build that network out a lot more and that included, marketing firms and different types of consulting firms, but also included some private equity firms and VCs.

[02:09:02] and that was a lot of fun too right? Getting to talk to them and how they think. And it’s amazing to see. How they’re handling COVID and how they’re handling just sales development and how important they see it is. so that was really a lot of what I was doing last year. And I was able to help bring in a lot more logos because of that.

[02:09:18] towards the end of the year, I started closing some of these deals too. It’s like, all right, let me just, I started, let me just finish it. And I made some amazing connections along the way, and people that were just referring us work left and right. Which was awesome. And us referring them work.

[02:09:32] And yeah, I mean, I, that was the biggest, that was the biggest shock for me. Right? For the past seven years to that point, I woke up every day and I had a calendar full of stuff to do. I had interviews to do, I had client meetings. And then that doesn’t even include when I got to the office, the fires that were waiting for me there.

[02:09:52] Right? Like I was a firefighter with an extinguisher some days coming in, right? Just putting stuff out and things that would come up throughout the day and basically overnight. I woke up. I’m like, my calendar has nothing on it. Right? And that was really difficult for me. That was incredibly hard.

[02:10:11] That was an adjustment that took as a transition. It took some time. And so there was, there’s a period of time where I was freaking out cause I’m like, like “I’m not doing anything. Like I need to find stuff to do”. And so I was talking to as many people as I could in the industry and

[02:10:26] Dan Gottlieb at Topo is a good friend of mine now. And I talk to him all the time and it’s just great to learn about what’s going on.  and his side of the world is Scott Barker and outreach. Right? I mean, he, and just learning from him cause he, so he runs partnerships at for outreach.

[02:10:39] So it was great to just learn about what he does. And so I took a lot of that in and yeah and it was able to build out kind of the role for the year and yes, and, all these events when they come back. I’m coming like a hurricane.

[02:10:51] So just watch out.

[02:10:54] Chris Corcoran: [02:10:54] Yeah, essentially when COVID hit it was like, Nimit go add value. And that was all we did was just go add value. And you were able to do that miraculously.

[02:11:04] Nimit Bhatt: [02:11:04] Yeah. I mean, it was, yeah. I mean, it w it was tough at first, but but no, I mean, I just know there are, luckily there are a lot of virtual events. And there were a lot of connections that I made because I used to go to these events. Like I knew 10 bound and I was, so I was able to reach out to Delaney and say, “Hey we wanna present for one of your conferences”.

[02:11:21] And a lot of these people, they were looking for people to PR because they were freaking out just as much because they had this huge event planned and speakers weren’t going to become in there anymore. So.  and I had a good story to tell, and that, that was really big. Jason Bay who runs blissful prospecting,

[02:11:34] he’s a good friend of mine as well, and he that’s what he was kinda, he actually helped me craft some of these stories. He’s like, “That’s all you need. You need a story to tell, and then the gigs will come”. So, so, so to speak. So that’s what I focused my energy on. most are really good at PowerPoint.

[02:11:48] like scary good at PowerPoint. So I was able to put together some really awesome presentations really quickly and on the fly and,  that, that helps a lot too. So it also helped with Academy. I forgot about that. I spent some time rejuvenating some of the content and adding some of my own flare and experience to it.

[02:12:04] And, it’s all stuff that they still use an Academy now. So that, that was that was the first thing I did which was a lot of fun too.

[02:12:12]  Marc Gonyea: [02:12:12] Which leads us to modern day things are gonna go away, but what else are we asking you to do this year? As we as we  start work with with our lumps.

[02:12:23] Nimit Bhatt: [02:12:23] Yes, for sure. So we’ve been really good at the outsource SDR. World for a very long time. and now this year we want to continue to add value to these technology companies that need sales development help. If we can’t do it from outsourced SDR standpoint, we can do it from a direct placement standpoint.

[02:12:40] right? we can help, we’ve hired thousands of SDRs. We know the candidate profile, especially for B2B tech. We know how to hire them. We know how to, to position a company for them to go work at that company. And we know what’s best for them and guide their careers. So that’s a big focus for the company this year is building out the direct placement practice.

[02:13:00] And there, there is an Avenue there with our alumni. Right?  they’re out in the tech world, the majority of our alumni end up in tech and some of them end up in manager positions in aid positions and, that’s an untapped market. And I have a lot of relationships with a lot of alumni over the years and especially the older ones who are now they’re not SDRs anymore at their companies.

[02:13:21] they’ve moved on. So. I think so I’ve become this little alumni aficionado where I’m helping pronoia or direct place in business. and understanding that, we have rising stars that can go work at these companies and the companies can hire them for free if they have an alum working there.

[02:13:35] So going that Avenue, but also looking for ways where we can provide more value because, yeah, these companies, they’ve figured it out, right? If they’ve hired one of our rising star, if they hire one of our people, they’ve got the SDR part figured out for the most part. So how can we add that?

[02:13:47] How can we continue to pump people like that to their companies? How can we help? How can we help them hire AEs in some of these markets where it’s a lot tougher. Right? I talked to, the ASP members here in Phoenix and their biggest thing is it’s so difficult to find really good sales talent in Phoenix.

[02:14:04] Right? And that’s where they’re struggling. So it’s something that the companies are always going to need. So I’m working closely with a lot of our alumni. We’ve got some good relationships and and yeah I’m putting on my sales hat and and rolling up the sleeves and picking up the phone and looking for ways for us to just crack into some of these companies that, that we know we can help out from from a recruiting standpoint.

[02:14:26]  Marc Gonyea: [02:14:26] I’ll tell you what. whether it will work with folks or not, I would help the people who you talk to engage the alums or the their managers, their hiring manager, their manager’s manager, a lot of value to offer them based upon your experience in the industry, even in a conversation.

[02:14:41] Nimit Bhatt: [02:14:41] Yeah. Yeah. It’s been really great connecting with a lot of these alumni too. And I almost feel like I have them on this podcast, because I’m just learning everything about what they’ve been up to and what they’re doing. And they, I mean, they all say the same thing and they’re just like, yeah, I have you to thank.

[02:14:54] and to be honest, there are some alumni that I didn’t really see eye to eye with all that. Well, when they were SDRs and in some that I was really tough on. only because I knew that they could, th the potential was there, they just needed to push and yeah. And someone would come back and they’re like, yeah, I know.

[02:15:09] Thank thanks for kinda everything that you did. I can’t think memorable enough for the opportunity and stuff like that. And and that just leads itself to,  we helped them out and in turn the they’ll help us out and  keep preaching the good word.

[02:15:20] And it’s great for our alumni too, that we have there, we’re building a direct place in practice because as they look for, to move on in their careers and looking for other opportunities. We can help them find those opportunities. Right? Like I always used to tell candidates or the interview process

[02:15:34] that, like once you’re in the family, you’re in the family, right? Just mafia right? once you’re the marry a good family, when you leave, like it doesn’t end there. It doesn’t end there and we will always want this to be a place you can always come back to and we’ll help you.

[02:15:44] don’t put leave pride at the door. Like you coming back to other, come back, work, work for us and boomerang, or use us to help you find your next game. There’s nothing wrong with that. We want you to do that. So.

[02:15:56]  Marc Gonyea: [02:15:56] Yeah. Awesome. Well, man, that was good. That was right. That was nine years in one month, according to LinkedIn. And I know there’s more, I’m going to talk about, but we have no,

[02:16:11] Nimit Bhatt: [02:16:11] No, and that the scary part is that  there’s a bunch of stuff we missed. So like we could, I think we could spoke, we could talk for another, like three or four hours on this stuff. Yeah.

[02:16:20]  Marc Gonyea: [02:16:20] I talked about ice cream shops. We can talk about tracking. I mean, there’s all sorts of things we’ve talked about, but we’ll save those for another episode. Maybe we’ll have to we’ll have you host a, and love you host some of these alums that work for you at one point on his podcast, too. That might be cool.

[02:16:35] We’ll figure things out for the things that we’ll name it. It’s going to be a good 2021.

[02:16:40] Nimit Bhatt: [02:16:40] Yes, it is. Yeah, no. And I have to say this while it’s being recorded. I cannot thank the two of you enough for the opportunity that you guys gave me. like I was a college kid that was completely lost. So what I want to do, I thought I was gonna be a lawyer. And you saw this 22 year old kid and you’re like, yeah, go move to Austin and open up our first office ever, yeah, sure.

[02:16:58] Go for that guy. I was like, “I don’t know. All alright cool”. Like even my parents were like, “They  want you to do it”? and and my parents are very supportive.  and,  and like, when they told me there was when they told me  “Hey, by the way, we’re really proud of you and everything that you’re doing with your career”.

[02:17:12] I’m just like, “Yes, thank you”. Right? I, that, that’s exactly what I want to hear. and I could have done that without you guys. And you continue to give me opportunities.  I know I’ve been here for nine years, but you’ve given me the opportunity to be here for nine years, which is awesome.

[02:17:25] And I mean, do let’s let’s double it, right? let’s, let’s, let’s keep it going.

[02:17:30] Chris Corcoran: [02:17:30] Yeah, Nimit. I want to thank you for seizing the opportunity.

[02:17:34] Nimit Bhatt: [02:17:34] Yeah.

[02:17:35]  Marc Gonyea: [02:17:35] Yeah. Then you took a chance to us as much as we took a chance on you.

[02:17:39] Nimit Bhatt: [02:17:39] Right. Yeah. Well, it wasn’t as bad as what I’ve heard that you serve people at silver diner and stuff like that. And when you had the office next to the dump, those are the true OGs right there.

[02:17:50]  Marc Gonyea: [02:17:50] I don’t know your OG status for sure. And earlier, you’d like to crystallize your wedding, which we both fortunate to attend and want your dad to get upset at your parents. Your parents were phenomenal and I love Chris. I love hanging out with him, especially your dad. That guy is great. I can have a great job.

[02:18:07] It’s a great job with you and your brother’s actually cooler than you are though. I don’t get

[02:18:11] Nimit Bhatt: [02:18:11] A hundred percent. He’s way cooler than, yeah. Yeah. Way cooler.

[02:18:15]  Marc Gonyea: [02:18:15] All right.

[02:18:16] Chris Corcoran: [02:18:16] Very good. Well, Nimit, tons of wisdom today. We really appreciate it.

[02:18:18] Nimit Bhatt: [02:18:18] Thanks for sure.

[02:18:20]  Marc Gonyea: [02:18:20] Oh, Trish Krishna is awesome too. Right? You could

[02:18:26] Nimit Bhatt: [02:18:26] She won’t even listen to this. Don’t worry.

[02:18:30]  Marc Gonyea: [02:18:30] a shout out like your spouse, your partner in crime.

[02:18:32] Nimit Bhatt: [02:18:32] She’s a ride or die and she, yeah, she stuck with me through all this.

[02:18:36]  Marc Gonyea: [02:18:36] No great shakes either all the time. So like you got to have somebody to come home and talk to about,

[02:18:41] Nimit Bhatt: [02:18:41] Yeah, no. Yeah. I mean, she put it with me going to California every two weeks. And even when Chris met her for the first time, he was like, “Hey, by the way, I want to thank you for putting up with Nimit like always being all over the place”. but but yeah, so no, that’s awesome.

[02:18:53]  Marc Gonyea: [02:18:53] I’ll leave her out. I get her upset. Cause we’re going to see her the next time. It was

[02:18:55] Nimit Bhatt: [02:18:55] Yes. Yes, for sure.

[02:18:57]  Marc Gonyea: [02:18:57] For sure.

[02:18:58] Chris Corcoran: [02:18:58] Good night. Thank you, Nimit. All right. See ya.

[02:19:02]