Tech Sales is for Hustlers Podcast

Episode 70: Joe Reeves – Everyone Has Their Own Superpower

A winning team is built from the top down. And Joe Reeves is precisely the type of leader needed to create a championship squad.

Managing Director of memoryBlue’s Silicon Valley office, Joe has turned his six years with the company into something special. He quickly progressed from SDR to DM, and, ultimately, now steers the ship as the leader of a rapidly growing office. From coaching sports to stage direction to his management experience, he’s observed and absorbed the best of a variety of leadership styles. And that knowledge has helped him lead the Silicon Valley office to over 200% SDR growth and an internal management team that has tripled in size since he took the helm.

In this episode of Tech Sales is for Hustlers, Joe discusses the way he had to master patience to improve as a manager, the effective methods he deploys to get the most out of a high-performing team, and a behind-the-scenes glimpse into what it takes to create a great office culture in the midst of a global pandemic.

Guest-At-A-Glance

Name: Joe Reeves

What he does: Managing Director

Company: memoryBlue

Noteworthy: Almost six years ago, Joe started working as an SDR at memoryBlue. He quickly transitioned into the more demanding role of a Delivery Manager, where he was able to grow professionally and eventually become the fantastic Managing Director that he is today. 

Where to find Joe: LinkedIn

Key Insights

⚡ Learn to be patient. Joe admits that patience is not one of his strongest assets — that’s why he had to work hard to learn it. Patience is always important, especially if you hold a managerial position where your job involves inspiring others while understanding that you can’t motivate everyone in the same manner. “I think the customer service thing is always going to cascade into anything you do, even your personal life. You learn patience while dealing with someone who might be a grumpy customer. If nothing else, do it for the tip, do it for quality customer service, whatever it is. But patience is a virtue I’ve never had. At least, I was not born with [it], and I think that was probably the biggest thing — just learning to be patient, whether it’s with yourself and what you’re doing, or external variables like crazy customers that you can’t really control.”

⚡ There are two main pieces to being a Delivery Manager — the SDR side and the client side. After only six months of being an SDR, Joe quickly transitioned into the DM role. Looking back on that initial period, Joe thinks his SDR skills were valuable but not enough to be a successful DM. The client side also plays a vital part in the role of a DM. “There’s the whole client side too, and that’s usually, I don’t know if I want to say hurdle, but that’s the new skill set people need to learn, and that’s where you’re going to come into shadowing and learning. I found it a little simpler for me. I wasn’t shy to have those conversations with clients, but I think that that’s what I’ve seen for DMs. The bigger skill set that they need to develop is how do you manage a client relationship.”

⚡ Seek help from everyone because everyone has their own superpower. You can learn something new from everyone, especially when you’re a brand new employee. According to Joe, you should seek help from everyone because they all have their own style and flavor. “Everyone has at least one or two pieces of advice or, if nothing else, perspectives that you might not be thinking of or aware of. So even though I still did this with the top performers, I noticed in the office and the company and what not [that] everyone has something; everyone’s got a little superpower that you might not be thinking of. And, take it from me, the charger who’s sometimes impatient, the person who’s a little more quiet and the listener who [is] very patient, they have something that they could probably share with me that could be a game-changer.”

Episode Highlights

A Good Delivery Manager Needs to Be Open to Learning

“If you’ve done the job well, can you teach the job to someone else? And by the way, that’s not always the case. The best players aren’t always the best coaches. But I think that as long as you can master that piece and you’re open to coaching and learning and trying new things, having new conversations with clients, it wouldn’t be as bumpy as I thought it would be. […] If you’re becoming a DM, or if you’re thinking about becoming a DM, you’re probably already helping your colleagues in the office in some way, shape, or form, whether it’s a mentee, your neighbor or the new hire who seems like they’re overwhelmed. If you’re in this delivery manager conversation, you’re probably already doing this, and then, it’s really just making it much more robust and thorough.”

Burnout Doesn’t Happen Overnight and Here’s How You Can Prevent it

“You have to plan for it, and even if you feel like you don’t need it, there’s a good chance you might because, again, I think it’s very gradual. It’s very subtle, and not an all-at-once thing. Typically, it’s the law of diminishing returns. It’s very mild over the course of time. […] You have to ask yourself, ‘Is the thing that I’m taking a break from work for, is that me taking a break? Or am I just expending my energy somewhere else?’”

How to Maintain a Positive Company Culture While Working Virtually

“When you’re in the office, you’re going to learn more. You’re going to have more fun. You’re going to be more engaged, and that’s all it is. That said, we grew the California office more than we ever had during 2020-2021 because I think we were able to adapt to that virtual environment, and we were still able to do a lot of virtual coaching development. […] We had people eager to get back to the office earlier this year because they knew what they were missing out on. They know what this is. The relationships, culturally or even just personally, still virtually happened during COVID; there are still people who became great friends.”

Transcript: 

[00:00:25] Marc Gonyea: Joe Reeves live and direct, but we’re in Joe Reeves’s conference room in San Jose, live and direct. What’s up, Joe?

[00:00:55] Joe Reeves: How’s it going? Nice seeing you. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen you, Chris. I’ve seen Marc, you’re in there at some of the top strips, but I think it’s been a minute since I’ve seen you on the West Coast, Chris. 

[00:01:07] Chris Corcoran: Normally. I was here much more recently than Marc was, one when we came and looked at when we went to the office space.

[00:01:13] Joe Reeves: I think I missed you on those trips. 

[00:01:15] Chris Corcoran: You were busy work. You’re doing work.

[00:01:17] Marc Gonyea: I preferred to speak softly and carry a big stick. Joe, seriously. It’s amazing to be sitting in the conference room of the San Jose office. Like breakdown for us the numbers, what the office is looking like? 

[00:01:34] Joe Reeves: Currently at 65, we’re about to have about four or five people elevated positively from their clients. So we’ll shrink just a little bit, but we need to backfill those spots.

[00:01:42] So by end of month we should be 70 to 75 SDRs, 8 delivery managers, and I continue to need more people on top of that. So,… 

[00:01:53] Chris Corcoran: So Joe, I remember when I first met you in person. Do you remember?

[00:01:58] Joe Reeves: Might’ve been during one of your summer trips way back in 2016 when you brought the family out. Okay. I don’t really remember exactly our engagement,… 

[00:02:08] Marc Gonyea: But when you were hear last… 

[00:02:10] Joe Reeves: That must’ve been it. 

[00:02:11] Chris Corcoran: So it was here, my family, we got here on a Saturday and they wanted to see the office. So I come to the office on a Saturday, Joe Reeves getting it done. 

[00:02:22] Joe Reeves: Hard, hard working Joe Reeves.

[00:02:24] Chris Corcoran: He had just started. 

[00:02:25] Marc Gonyea: He didn’t even know. Was it, was it for show? 

[00:02:27] Chris Corcoran: It was not for show. And I was like, “Okay, this guy is ready to play.” 

[00:02:31] Joe Reeves: Yeah. There’s a whole bunch of us in here. And I think that over the weekends some of us would trickle in to do list building. So before this Jeanne Ball told me because I’m… 

[00:02:43] Marc Gonyea: Jeanne Ball. 

[00:02:44] Joe Reeves: I was bartending on the side as like a second gig before I came here, and I was thinking about carrying that over. And she said, “No. Whatever you’re doing that you would do bartending on the side, pour in here.” And I was like, “All right, we’ll try some list building on the weekends.” 

[00:02:58] Chris Corcoran: Either making drinks or list building. 

[00:03:02] Joe Reeves: Lists. Yeah. 

[00:03:03] Marc Gonyea: That’s pretty cool. 

[00:03:04] Joe Reeves: Yeah. 

[00:03:04] Marc Gonyea: It’s a good memory.

[00:03:05] Chris Corcoran: Yeah, well stuff like that sticks with me. And I remember Jessica Hollinger as well. And Mike Mishler. 

[00:03:13] Marc Gonyea: Fish daddy. 

[00:03:17] Chris Corcoran: Wait, what do you mean this California work ethic? It’s Saturday, they’re getting after it. 

[00:03:21] Marc Gonyea: Right there. 

[00:03:21] Joe Reeves: Yeah. 

[00:03:22] Marc Gonyea: All right, Joe. All right. So the office is lightened on a fire so much, so we’ll leave this here in a second. So much so that you’re moving into a new office fairly soon, right? Because we need more capacity. 

[00:03:32] Joe Reeves: We need to get out of this office next week and we’ll be virtual for the remainder of the month in February 1st as long as all the demos is done, we’ll be in the new office February 1st.

[00:03:42] Marc Gonyea: Excellent. 

[00:03:42] Joe Reeves: Which will finally house us ’cause we’ve twofold outgrown this office. We do not fit. 

[00:03:47] Chris Corcoran: That’s amazing. 

[00:03:48] Marc Gonyea: I remember when I would come here in the summers before COVID in two, three years ago, and I was like, “Man, how are we ever going to fill this office up? So big.” 

[00:03:55] Chris Corcoran: Yeah. 

[00:03:56] Marc Gonyea: And now it’s way too small.

[00:03:59] All right. Well, Joe, so as you know, the folks listening that we got people who work here now, people were thinking about coming to work here. Some of your alums, your former colleagues who want to check into what’s going on with Joe Reeves. And you know, maybe some people out there in the ether.

[00:04:13] But I think for you, it is important that you worked from SDR to DM to MD. The folks who work here now can be curious about that. But before we get going into that journey, just tell us a little bit about Joe Reeves, like where you’re from, where you grew up, those sorts of things ’cause it’s get to know you a little bit more.

[00:04:29] Joe Reeves: Yeah. I kind of grew up all over the place, California, Arizona bounced around a lot. I lived in the desert, but next thing river, in Colorado River. I moved into the mountains around when I was in high school age or so, so skiing, snowboarding was a big thing for me then. And then I moved right over the hill here now, to Santa Cruz mostly ’cause I was like, I’ve lived in so many places at this point,

[00:04:50] I want to live next to an ocean. So I figured Santa Cruz makes sense. 

[00:04:53] Marc Gonyea: What were you like as a kid? 

[00:04:54] Joe Reeves: As a kid? 

[00:04:55] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. You know, just kid general as making kid in the high school. 

[00:04:59] Joe Reeves: A lot of sports. I was team captain football, team captain basketball. Was good at football, I was not good at basketball. We were small school, so it was easy to be team captain then. 

[00:05:10] Marc Gonyea: Come on, Joe.

[00:05:12] Joe Reeves: But it was lot of sports. I’d even did theater too. A friend of mine actually, kind of bamboozled me into getting into theater at one point. And so, I mean, I wasn’t, I was football practice, basketball practice, cross country for a while practice, and then in the end with theater. And honestly, I think obviously all those things helped me out with what I’m doing now.

[00:05:30] Right? I mean, confidence and competitiveness and yada yada, but I’ve been bringing up all the damn time that the theater piece that’s, I think, I’ve heard you say this repetition is the mother of learning, repetition is the mother of learning. Like, if I need to go grab a script and go into a room and say my script 50 times in the matter of 10 minutes, like, it’ll help you.

[00:05:49] So like there’s, you know, I was all over the place. I was doing a lot of sports. I was doing theater. I picked up my first job as like a food runner at 15 or so. I’ve been pretty much working ever since. 

[00:06:00] Chris Corcoran: And this was in Mammoth? 

[00:06:01] Joe Reeves: This is in Mammoth. 

[00:06:01] Chris Corcoran: Yeah. 

[00:06:02] Joe Reeves: Yeah. It’s a funny story, I actually moved from Arizona to Mammoth in like 2006 and it was middle of the winter. And so I moved from no name Arizona spot that no bull had a city, no one’s ever heard of this place. It’s like 70, 80 degrees in the middle of the winter. And I moved during the biggest snow year Mammoth had had in like 50 years.

[00:06:24] And so I got elevation sickness and I was buried in snow. It was very shocking. But it’s kind of funny because I instantly became the cool kid in school, because school only had maybe 70 kids in my graduation class. So who’s this guy that we’ve never met?

[00:06:38] I’ve known everybody in the class, everyone knows each other since elementary. So once they saw a new face, I was Mr. Popular for like a month. 

[00:06:48] Marc Gonyea: Until they got to know you.

[00:06:49] Joe Reeves: Until they got to know me and then I, then it was, “All right now it’s just another one of us.” So, but yeah, and I mean, it was, I was just very active.

[00:06:55] I was always working. I’ve always been kind of a big workaholic. I stay busy, I really don’t like sitting still. And I’ve learned that about myself. I need to schedule my relaxation or else I won’t be able to relax. So I mean, it was just like my rest days and stuff. 

[00:07:10] Marc Gonyea: But, hey, real quick. What did you think working 

[00:07:13] when you were 15? Like some will luckily do that.

[00:07:15] What kind of perspective did you think that carried into like your told you’re even like as the MD of the office now? 

[00:07:21] Joe Reeves: What…? 

[00:07:22] Marc Gonyea: Like work and like yeah, what’d you learn? 

[00:07:24] Joe Reeves: Oh, I mean the customer service thing I think is always going to cascade in, in anything you do, right?

[00:07:29] Even just personal life. Like the patience you learn with dealing with someone who might be a grumpy customer. Like, hey, like if nothing else do it for the tip, right? And nothing else do it for quality customer service, whatever it is. Right? But, I mean, patience is a virtue I never had.

[00:07:43] I was never born with that at least and I mean, I think was probably the biggest thing is just, you want to be patient, whether it’s with yourself and what you’re doing, or external variables, like, quite crazy customers that you can’t really control how they operate. But that patience, of course that’s relevant in everything, but especially even now to this day in the manager role patience is probably the biggest thing that I really needed to learn because you learn that not everyone’s you.

[00:08:08] Right? And so when you start working with people and trying to motivate and engage and push people who don’t have the intrinsic motivation you do, that’s kind of a hard lesson at first. Right? And that’s just, again, back to patience. Like and I started, I started growing and nurturing that trait in myself decade and a half ago.

[00:08:27] Marc Gonyea: It’s interesting. 

[00:08:27] ‘Cause you’ve managed a lot of people since you’ve been here and now the most… I think I know from working with you that you’re impatient because you asked for something to get done, it was always looking for what’s going to get done, ” Give me an answer. I need an answer. What’s the deal with this?” But you have to be incredibly, you need to have a reservoir of patience to be able to manage the SDRs and help develop them.

[00:08:47] Right? And mentinon working with DMs and help develop them, so that’s very good for us that applied directly what you’re doing now. So, all right. So you’re in high school, you’re coming out of school, you’re in the great state of California. How’d you end up where you with the school, 

[00:08:57] Santa Cruz, right?

[00:08:58] Joe Reeves: I went to Santa Cruz. It was just one of those college tours and I fell in love with it, luckily for me. I like Davis too, and Davis’s a great school. 

[00:09:05] Marc Gonyea: Where’s Davis?

[00:09:06] Joe Reeves: Half up north between here and Sacramento. Beautiful, beautiful campus. What I did not know about it is it’s surrounded by Cal country. So I’m kind of… Yeah. I’m happy I kind of didn’t end up, I didn’t end up getting in. So I mean, that’s kind of my issue, but I’m kind of blessed that I didn’t, because I probably would’ve picked it.

[00:09:26] And I don’t know if I would have enjoyed that life experience as much as I would have at Santa Cruz. 

[00:09:30] Marc Gonyea: Okay. 

[00:09:31] Joe Reeves: Plus, I mean, even when we were in, I was in Santa Cruz, I was 30 minutes from here. I mean, some of these things already started lining up for this kind of role that I was in the heart of Silicon Valley or right next to it.

[00:09:40] So when this jump happened, it was pretty straightforward. So yeah, I mean, Santa Cruz, I liked also that it was next to the ocean. 

[00:09:48] Marc Gonyea: What’d you major in? 

[00:09:49] Joe Reeves: Business. So at Santa Cruz, so it was a BME, Business Management Economics, which is mostly econ. There was actually very little like business and like, micro econ and stuff like. That

[00:10:01] there was actually very little of that. ‘Cause I know we talked a lot of schools like Chico and whatnot, and slowly they have marketing programs, they have sales programs. There’s not really much something like that at Santa Cruz. So a lot of my background was actually econ and like macro econ and whatnot.

[00:10:15] And so I studied that there at school. I’d even kind of dabbled a little bit in politics too, poly side, decided that that wasn’t really for me at some point. The space is not really something I’m excited about, it just wasn’t for me. And then I started working in Jamba, which is pretty shortly into my, when I was a sophomore. I picked up a role and geometries, they

[00:10:34] promoted me to a shift manager within a month, an assistant manager within a year, and then an AGM out our general manager a year after that. So by my junior year, a full-time curriculum study at UCSC and then Jamba Juice 45, 55 hour work weeks managing a store downtown Santa Cruz, and then in Capitola.

[00:10:57] Chris Corcoran: So didn’t they see what you could do in and have you focused on turning around underperforming stores?

[00:11:03] Joe Reeves: Yes, so I did all my first like basically two years at the downtown store, which was pretty good store. And then once they promoted me to GM, they moved me to, they called the Mission Street store.

[00:11:14] It’s on Mission Street on the other side of the Santa Cruz, wasn’t doing so well. I turned that one around. I did that one for I think about nine months and now… 

[00:11:21] Chris Corcoran: What’d you turn it around?

[00:11:22] Joe Reeves: I mean, the first thing I think was just raised the bar. I mean, ’cause like the manager at the time just kind of had a lower expectations.

[00:11:29] And at that point, you know, you could just say the overall speed of the staff, peoples people are complacent with being just kind of where they were. So I came in and I kind of raised the bar and naturally there was some people who were against this and people got excited about this, right? Top performers are always excited to get pushed and naturally they were pretty quickly the people that I ended up promoting my shift supervisors. So pretty quickly over the course of time it was, these numbers are where we’re at and these are the numbers that we want to be at from a overall satisfaction is the easiest one to talk about. Cost of goods and labor costs and where are we hitting targets or not,

[00:12:03] they were. I started working in the line a lot more too. I got, as a general manager, I was still on the line quite a bit just to help with flavor stuff and model what I was looking for from this new, newer employees. And after a while the whole tide kind of changed. Right? And then before you know it, I don’t need to be in the store.

[00:12:21] I don’t need to be in the front of house to have it be running at the speed that I needed it to. 

[00:12:26] Chris Corcoran: So Joe, who taught you to do that? Or how’d you know that that’s what was needed? 

[00:12:30] Marc Gonyea: Yeah, what’s that like working 50 

[00:12:32] hours a week in your undergrad? 

[00:12:34] Joe Reeves: Again, I like to stay busy. I also liked being financially independent for the most part. I had, I didn’t need to have to get support from anybody else.

[00:12:43] That’s good for my family. Right? They were able to take care of themselves. Where did I get it from? 

[00:12:48] Chris Corcoran: You know, who taught you? Or how did you know you come in here? And like, “This is what we need to do. We need to raise the bar.”

[00:12:52] Joe Reeves: It’s a good question. I’m not really sure if I have necessarily a concrete answer. Maybe the one, one of the inspirations I would say I had was probably my regional manager, pretty was Angela Flores. She’s a total hard-ass. And I kind of liked that. I liked that. Right? She was total hard-ass and she was like kind of our general manager of the downtown Santa Cruz store, but more so regional manager. She kind of check out all the other stores,

[00:13:17] so, I mean, I, I just kinda saw how she operated, how she communicated and she was very touche. Whatever she said was what she said and that’s kind of how it was, and you better do it, right? And so I guess maybe that was probably it, but I mean, I also didn’t really see her managed directly in the front that much ’cause that just wasn’t really her job.

[00:13:34] So I don’t know. I, I saw kind of how she operated and how she managed her people, and I liked that style. It kind of suited my personality, my opinion. And honestly, to be frank, I kind of saw what not to be. Like, you know, I also kind of saw what the managers and how they were running at the stores at the time.

[00:13:50] And quietly to myself, had my own constructive criticism of, “Okay, I see what you’re doing here. And I don’t think that’s working. So I know when I get in that position, if I get in that position, I’m not going to do that.” Right? At least I know my parameters of what not to be. So, it’s kind of hard to tell them. I mean, I don’t know if I have necessarily a single source. It’s just, you know, having high expectations for yourself and try not to be flexible with those.

[00:14:11] Chris Corcoran: Well, you were part of a lot of different teams, right? Your football team, your basketball team, your theater team, you were working since you’re 15. So at that point you were in your early twenties. So you already had five or six years of seeing all these different, or you were exposed to all these different leadership or leaders.

[00:14:29] And it sounds like what you were doing was you were observing and you were seeing not only what not to do, but then also what to do. 

[00:14:38] Joe Reeves: No, but that’s exactly true. And I mean, I think obviously being in a sports setting when you grow up, you know, there’s always kind of what’s next. So like, even in JV, as a freshman, I’m watching the varsity team captains run their teams.

[00:14:50] So like, yeah, there there’s always that. Right? And knowing that even when you feel like you’re the big fish, you’re not. Right? You have more to grow, you have more to learn, so you kind of always are seeing what that next step is and hopefully you’re aspiring to be that. And so, yeah, I mean, there was definitely a couple of leaders.

[00:15:05] I, I’m trying to think if I have any specific in mind. Like the varsity team captain that comes to mind and it was Matt, just some guy from the high school. Yeah. He was, he was someone who was like even when I was like in JV is like a young freshman. This guy was like the big dog on the varsity team.

[00:15:18] So like, yeah, there’s always someone who was that, and obviously when it went into a more into the workforce, like Jamba Juice, like Angela was a big one. And, you know, we were part of a franchise of nine stores between Monterey and Scotts Valley. So I would see what the big stores were.

[00:15:33] And I’d started looking up who those people are, who’s the manager running that store. Right? And so, you know, just identifying who’s at the top and then start bugging that. And that cascaded here. Right? And in fact, I know you’ve already had some of these people, we had Dan Yorkie. He was someone that I learned from. 

[00:15:47] Marc Gonyea: I got to get that guy.. 

[00:15:48] Joe Reeves: ‘Cause he was here, he was already here for like five months, I think,

[00:15:50] so, I saw him, I tried to learn from him. Timmy. He was one that was… 

[00:15:55] Marc Gonyea: Just, I mean, this guy…

[00:15:58] Joe Reeves: He, and it was funny ’cause he wasn’t exactly open at first. Like I almost had to like earn it. And then like when he saw me coming in early or coming in on weekends, finally, it was like, “I’ll share some stuff.”

[00:16:06] And then even one this was when I, Andy Gager. Like, I don’t know why this tip will live with me forever, but something, I even try to think of it right now is, ” If you feel like you’re speaking too slowly, you’re probably speaking just right.” Because most people speak too fast. I’m even getting a little hasty as I get excited about these conversations.

[00:16:25] But, you know, like I would identify the whoever it was, whether it was Matt DeSalvo in football, or Angela Flores at Jamba Juice or whoever might be. I mean, we have the DHR that makes it really easy to see who top performers are, find who they are and see if they’ll give you anything, one or two pieces of advice and then carry it out.

[00:16:43] Marc Gonyea: All right. 

[00:16:44] So Joe’s in school, just crush it… It’s not like you, you had a pretty active social life too. 

[00:16:50] Joe Reeves: Yeah. 

[00:16:50] Marc Gonyea: Right? ‘Cause I want to talk about this because some of them you recruited, some of those recruiters come to work 

[00:16:53] here, but we’ll get to them. How, 

[00:16:57] you were in a fraternity, right? You’re an officer in the fraternity?

[00:17:01] You remember, I mean…

[00:17:02] Joe Reeves: I was… 

[00:17:02] Marc Gonyea: You had time for all these?

[00:17:04] Joe Reeves: I held a position, so I actually, I did end up convincing one of my friends to rush with me back when we were freshmen, Collin Nuschy, who is the alumni now. So I convinced him to rush with me and we both got in, and I think there’s a lot of work at first, you know, especially when your, like… 

[00:17:24] Marc Gonyea: When you’re rushing. 

[00:17:25] Joe Reeves: You’re rushing out the pledge quarter.

[00:17:27] I mean, honestly though that’s another thing that like really helped with just kind of creating the habits and the schedule. ‘Cause like a lot of people think, “Oh, this was out of a fraternity.” Like our expectations were, you need to log four hours in the library every week. Right? And they have like a way of tracking that with you.

[00:17:42] And there was, you need to be in the gym two or three times a week with a brother, with a brother that was like a big thing, ’cause you need to get to know them. Right? So you use that session, right? Yeah. Go exercise with someone or like go on a coffee or whatever it was. It was like, the expectations were never like some

[00:18:00] crazy, movie thing. It was like, “Oh, do this with someone else.” And typically it was probably for the better school. So if anything, yeah, it was more on the, more on the plate, but it, if anything helped me just figure out the schedule even more. 

[00:18:14] Marc Gonyea: All right. So you get out of 

[00:18:16] school and when did you real like marry

[00:18:18] the Jamba Juice? I mean, ’cause they’re in a good way. Right? ‘Cause what happened you’re getting out of school? 

[00:18:23] Joe Reeves: So when they made me a general manager, they wanted me to do about two years. This was like that tail end of sophomore to junior year. So I’d been out of school. I had like one extra quarter, like five or eight credits,

[00:18:34] I had to finish. I almost finished up with school and basically I’d only been working at Jamba Juice outside of school. I’m at my third store now in Capitola. This is their, one of their busiest stores. It’s the outside sales store. It’s the fundraising store too. Like if there’s an event in a school, fundraiser, that’s us.

[00:18:50] So I’ve been doing this at this point for like six to eight months out of school. And I’m kind of thinking about, “All right. What’s next now that my two years about wrapped up?” 

[00:18:58] Marc Gonyea: Yup.

[00:18:58] Joe Reeves: And I cannot remember, you might remember her name, something white, Rachel White? Who was one of the recruits. 

[00:19:04] Chris Corcoran: Courtney White.

[00:19:06] Joe Reeves: I believe she reached out to me.

[00:19:08] And she kind of took a chance on me, some guy out of college and working at a Jamba Juice in general manager, sure, but like, I don’t have tech background or experience in my econ degree is econs somewhat relevant, sure brought me in. I interviewed with Jeanne Ball and Mike Mishler and…

[00:19:26] Marc Gonyea: It’s just crazy.

[00:19:26] I mean, throughout for you… I mean, like 

[00:19:29] it’s kind of funny just traditionally not that we’re experts top talent evaluators, but the fact that you’re worried about like, “I don’t have this major. I was just a general manager at Jamba Juice.” Do that makes you like the world best candidate? 

[00:19:42] Chris Corcoran: Yeah. Turnaround experts. 

[00:19:44] Marc Gonyea: But a lot of companies or people, not just companies, want like put a lot of value in that.

[00:19:49] So thankfully that’s the case, or maybe we would never would 

[00:19:53] be sitting here right now. 

[00:19:54] Joe Reeves: I think, yeah, and at this point too, I’ve come to that. Like, I love a blank slate ready to learn. Bright eyed, bushy tailed, give me that any day. Who’s ready to come in, so,… 

[00:20:04] Marc Gonyea: So I’m sorry. So you were here with Jeanne, Mish.

[00:20:08] White was your recruiter. And then so what happened? You got to get 

[00:20:11] into the mix? Did you like? 

[00:20:13] Joe Reeves: Got in the mix. I interviewed. I was interviewing for like some other, so I had like, I think it was an Oracle at the time. And then also I’m a family member in like logistics supply chain. 

[00:20:22] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. 

[00:20:22] Joe Reeves: She’s high up the food chain,

[00:20:23] she’s like a VP somewhere down south. So I’m there in this Oracle, ‘ cause I was ready to take the next step out of Jamba Juice. I knew I hit my ceiling there. I kind of stepped away from the other two ’cause the logistics supply chain thing would have been 

[00:20:34] a good gig, higher, much higher paying,

[00:20:36] ’cause I knew somebody. I don’t really know if I really want to get into that kind of like line of work of logistics and managing some sort of warehouse and whatnot. Oracle was obviously, everyone knows the name Oracle. You know, and I was really just starting, but I feel like, “The interviews were going well, but did I want to sell at Oracle?”

[00:20:54] And I think I had a misconception about a career, right? Like, “Do I want to be here for 30 years?” While didin’t really know at the time that people kind of jump a lot more than that, but the reality is I did not know if that’s something that I wanted to get into. And I loved that we have kind of this year long gig here at memoryBlue, because I think a lot of people sometime say

[00:21:14] yearlong seems like a long time especially even for like post-grads or something like that. I loved the idea to play the field. That’s how I saw it. I was like, “One year to get exposed and learn a hell of a lot about a world that I don’t really know much about.” Right? And so I get to learn about the things that I like and the things that I don’t like, probably more importantly, the things I don’t like.

[00:21:37] And just a lot of exposure to this things. So that kinda made it an easy choice for me to say all in with memoryBlue, I got the gig and, the rest is now here. 

[00:21:47] Marc Gonyea: So you’re doing your thing. Who you’re rolling with when you first started? 

[00:21:50] Joe Reeves: Mike Mishler was my DM. 

[00:21:52] Marc Gonyea: Okay. 

[00:21:53] Joe Reeves: And he was like hybrid DM, MD.

[00:21:55] So he was definitely, he was busy with like… He had a large team, as a man and like as like a DM slash MD. Like 30, 40 people on his team, and he’s an MD, he should have any of us. 

[00:22:07] Marc Gonyea: Right. 

[00:22:07] Joe Reeves: ‘Cause they were just like really getting things off the ground. So, luckily for me, I didn’t really need that much micromanaging.

[00:22:13] Plus Jeanne Ball was always really accessible. In a bus, like I said earlier, I was finding whoever was the top performer and I’d say, “What do you got for me?” And I just kind of find one tip and just run it into the ground for three to four days straight. 

[00:22:29] Marc Gonyea: Right. 

[00:22:29] Joe Reeves: And once I felt like I got it down, find someone else and say, “One more tip.”

[00:22:33] Right? And I just kind of keep doing. 

[00:22:34] Marc Gonyea: Who were those people you and Timmy’s from besides the folks you mentioned?

[00:22:37] Anyone else 

[00:22:38] you can remember? Who’s the best SDR on the office beside yourself? 

[00:22:41] Joe Reeves: Dan Yorkie and Timmy.

[00:22:43] And this is actually now one of my best friends. And he was the silent killer back then because Mike would come in here at whiteboard and he would like write down just every once in a while, like stack rate. And one day he wrote EMC soul at the top. And I was like, “Who’s that guy?” And he was like,… I don’t think he, he was very a heads down type.

[00:23:07] He’s very social butterfly dude, but at work he was heads down type. So, I think I asked Jeanne like, “Who’s he?” And Jeanne loves him. 

[00:23:13] Chris Corcoran: Yeah. 

[00:23:13] Joe Reeves: They, yeah, they’d come over here kind of at the same time. So I got to meet him. He taught me a few tricks here and there. We kind of been some best friends ever since. I still see that guy.

[00:23:22] In fact, I’m going to be seeing him in March. So not like these are, he’ll be… 

[00:23:27] Marc Gonyea: In March, where are you going to see him? 

[00:23:28] Joe Reeves: He’s down in San Diego now. 

[00:23:29] Marc Gonyea: Okay. 

[00:23:30] Joe Reeves: So he’s like the principal recruiter or something of the companies that so,.. 

[00:23:34] Marc Gonyea: Come back for him. 

[00:23:35] Joe Reeves: I’m going to go down and go see, yeah, I’m going to go just to a visit down there in San Diego, see him and actually I don’t think I have any other friends down there that are memoryBlue alumn. 

[00:23:43] Marc Gonyea: Not yet. All, all right. 

[00:23:44] Joe Reeves: Yeah. 

[00:23:44] Marc Gonyea: But early in your career what happened in memoryBlue? 

[00:23:47] Joe Reeves: So first things first was just kind of silly as I so I was in Santa Cruz. 

[00:23:52] Marc Gonyea: Yep. 

[00:23:52] Joe Reeves: And that commute over the ’17, which is like one of the most dangerous and annoying freeways like in California, if not even the US. 

[00:23:59] Marc Gonyea: Certainly.

[00:23:59] Joe Reeves: And I’ve got like this old Ford Escape. So I’m like driving this big car, old car over the 17. I’m leaving at like 5:00 AM, ’cause I don’t want to be traffic and… I did that for like two weeks, and I was like, “Nope.” I actually picked up all my stuff and I moved on to a friend’s couch over here, just ’cause I didn’t want to do the commute.

[00:24:17] I knew I was coming this way anyway, so I lived on a friend’s couch for about a month. And actually coincidentally enough in that house, a spot opened up, so I just moved down the hallway. I was used to doing 50 hour work weeks at Jamba Juice plus full-time curriculum study at school. I was thinking about bartending on the side here,

[00:24:33] Jeanne Ball talked me out of it. So I thought I might as well pour the 70 hour work week that I was already doing into this. I don’t mean 70, but you know, I was not accustomed to weekends. Weekends were working at Jamba Juice, and bartending on the side, and getting homework done. So what’s a weekend?

[00:24:50] So, you ran into me on a Saturday because why not come on in on a Saturday, work for four hours and get some list building done, right? That’s four hours that gets pour back into calling in the workweek. Right? So it was just a lot of pouring time and practice swings and finding one person to give me some advice on something.

[00:25:08] And I would just run that advice until I was perfected at it, and then try to find the next thing. 

[00:25:14] Marc Gonyea: It’s interesting, right, this whole,.. 

[00:25:16] We see this more people who invest in themselves outside of the 

[00:25:19] workweek. 

[00:25:20] Like maybe it’s you and I are from kind of from the DC area. It’s like, Saturday and Sundays are viewed as like, “Well, I’m not doing any work on Saturday, Sunday,” but the people who are investing in themselves on that Saturday, you can get so far ahead of everybody else.

[00:25:34] You get your shift together for the next week. 

[00:25:36] Chris Corcoran: Right. 

[00:25:36] Marc Gonyea: And I know some dudes in the soccer world to do that stuff. Like Saturdays is like, ” It’s kind of at work, so workday. Why wouldn’t it be a workday?” So… 

[00:25:43] Joe Reeves: Well, and it was interesting to watch kind of like the tide turn on some of these things. ‘Cause like for instance, 6:00 AM, Timmy was like the only one in at 6:00 AM for awhile.

[00:25:52] And when I was trying to learn from him and get some advice at Timmy’s coming in early. Is it, “Hey Timmy’s getting earlier, right?” I come in at 7:00, he was already here. In 6:30, he was already here. I get in at 6:00 and I’d see that I started coming in with. So like it’s like that 6:00 to 8:00 AM was like some of the most productive time of the day.

[00:26:08] I might get more done in that, over the next six hours after that. And then kind of… 

[00:26:13] Marc Gonyea: “Give me some of that job.” 

[00:26:14] Joe Reeves: And then the list building was, ” Why not coming three to four hours? Just get a hundred of your names bill,” because if you’re knocking out 150 names a week, you’re doing good.

[00:26:22] Why don’t I get most of that done on the weekend, outside of business hours for that time into calling. We’d have music in here. San Pedro Market Square was downstairs, we had the keg here back then it was like, “Grab a beer, play some music, list bill for an hour or two,” right? 

[00:26:35] Chris Corcoran: Yeah. 

[00:26:36] Joe Reeves: You were rarely alone.

[00:26:38] You come in, and there probably be one or two people like Mike Mishler, Jessica in here just working away. And then typically you’d probably all work together and at some point someone would call it and the rest would be like, “All right, let’s go to San Pedro. Let’s go grab a bite to eat. Let’s go grab a beer together.”

[00:26:52] Right? It was, I mean, it was work, but it really didn’t feel like it wasn’t like work, you know? We’re hanging out, we’re being productive, we’re getting stuff done, and this is going to make us money in the week. So I’m kind of all about it. 

[00:27:05] Marc Gonyea: So early on data storage company came knocking for you, right?

[00:27:09] Joe Reeves: Yes. 

[00:27:09] Marc Gonyea: Early. 

[00:27:10] Joe Reeves: Yeah.

[00:27:10] Marc Gonyea: So tell us about that. 

[00:27:11] Joe Reeves: So I had two half-time clients, when I first started. First halftime client it’s kind of back to that whole what I want to do, what I don’t want to do is data storage. One of the most important things in the world that like every single company needs data storage. 

[00:27:25] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. 

[00:27:26] Joe Reeves: I cannot, I’m just so bored.

[00:27:28] I get so bored from data storage. It’s like big IT. I don’t know, it’s just not an exciting. 

[00:27:33] Marc Gonyea: You don’t like it. 

[00:27:35] Joe Reeves: Yeah. But they liked me. And so they flew me down, there based in Irvine, they flew me down 7:00 AM flight to 7:00 PM flight. Meet the team, get to know ’em. CEO took me out to dinner. First off this isn’t everyone’s priorities, but I mean I’ve been working in here at memoryBlue

[00:27:50] we could talk about culture for days. I’m working with my best friends, I’m working with new friends. If this new company, I would have been the youngest by like 20 years, you know? I’m like 23 at the time, then the next person, yeah, 20 year difference. Company has only like 20 or 30 or 40 people or so pretty small, very quiet,

[00:28:05] everyone has families, right? And I asked the CEO, I was like, “Can you tell me about culture?” And he said, ” There’s not really much of a company culture. That’s part of our goals we do want to get younger, but we have families where it’s more established.” And I was like, “I appreciate the honesty, this isn’t for me.

[00:28:19] And I know that right now.” I thanked the client, shook hands and part the ways. 

[00:28:22] Marc Gonyea: W what about your other client? 

[00:28:24] Joe Reeves: A much bigger cybersecurity company up here. 

[00:28:28] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. 

[00:28:28] Joe Reeves: They have a full campus. They’re right up the way. I wasn’t ready to be a small cognitive 

[00:28:32] to big machine.

[00:28:36] Marc Gonyea: They want to hire them. 

[00:28:37] Joe Reeves: Great company, great 

[00:28:38] company, great campus, all those things. Right? And I know like a lot of the people that we have full kitchen all the night, all the products, it was all there. I wasn’t really ready to be a small cognitive big machine.

[00:28:50] I kind of almost ties back to that whole work thing. I was like, “I’m not really sure if this is something I want to just put myself into it, kind of just get lost in the mix.” 

[00:28:59] Chris Corcoran: So Joe Reeves play in the field. 

[00:29:02] Joe Reeves: This has been playing for six months. 

[00:29:03] Chris Corcoran: Seeing all the pitches. 

[00:29:05] Marc Gonyea: Data storage down south. Proof point, like, lets legit, I think it got acquired by it.

[00:29:12] I can’t remember the purchase, but if they got purchased like two legitimate companies, cyber and data storage. And your, and you said, “No, that’s not 

[00:29:20] for me,” which is 

[00:29:21] great. Okay. 

[00:29:22] Joe Reeves: Yeah. 

[00:29:23] Marc Gonyea: And then what kind of happened then? 

[00:29:25] Joe Reeves: So, I mean, after respectfully declining and getting a new halftime client here and there, and get to the whole playing the field. Data stores wasn’t up my alley. Cybersecurity

[00:29:36] what wasn’t at my, I suppose, was the company like structure or how they operated. Right? So I learned a little bit about that piece in my preferences. I had a client that was data integration tool. I was fascinated by this company. Super fascinated. Right?

[00:29:51] Because it, it would’ve thought data integration, but like the world real-world application was…

[00:29:56] Marc Gonyea: What company was that? 

[00:29:57] Joe Reeves: The Unified. 

[00:29:58] Marc Gonyea: Oh, okay. All right. 

[00:30:00] Joe Reeves: And that stuff was, that was probably one of the hardest things for me to even sell too, because it was so ahead of its like its time. And you’d like talk to these folks and if you could get the message across, it’d be like that doesn’t exist.

[00:30:12] You know, like actually it does. We’re literally the one of the only 40 vendors in this space that does do that. In fact, we were the only one. It was like one in 40 and it was like… anyway. Bottom line, I learned some things that I like, I learned some things I didn’t like. Technologies that I never even would have heard of ended up being the most fascinating for me.

[00:30:31] But month three at data storage, month five was a proof point, month six was one the delivery manager role got offered to me. And again, at this point I’ve been doing pretty well and then helping others in the office. I had referred two of my best friends into the office, Max Hufft and Collin Nuschy.

[00:30:50] And, I worked with two other ones. There’s not Max Hufft, I’m sorry. Jonathan Adams. I met Max Hufft and ENC, so he was one of my best friends. I’m helping other people in the office. It was an easy decision, right? With delivery manager was, yeah, absolutely. 

[00:31:06] Chris Corcoran: Plus you already had a lot of leadership experience in Jamba.

[00:31:09] Joe Reeves: That was another big thing, right? Well, no, in fact, I’m the oldest sibling of six. So like this sort of thing has…

[00:31:20] Marc Gonyea: Six? Oldest sibling? 

[00:31:22] Joe Reeves: Oldest of six. 

[00:31:23] Chris Corcoran: It’s a lot of responsibility there. 

[00:31:24] Joe Reeves: So I mean, it’s just helping and mentoring is something I’ve always done. And then, yeah, at Jamba Juice, I have the four years minus a month of management experience there. So, and I was happy that this was an exciting, fun place to work.

[00:31:37] It was doing exactly what I was hoping it would do. And the delivery manager obviously just, it offered the same kind of path, but almost exponentially, right? You have one or two clients now in delivery manager, I had 6 to 10. 

[00:31:51] Chris Corcoran: Right. 

[00:31:51] Joe Reeves: And I was, you know, now I’m helping other people start their careers or, and there’s a whole Rolodex of them

[00:31:57] I can name off later. You’re going on a first name basis with these new clients, like VPs of sales, and marketing, and CEOs and co-founders of tech companies. They have Joe Reeves in their cell phone, right? For better or for worse. Right? But it was an easy choice, and then of course, kind of a little bit back to the Jamba Juice thing, it also kind of gave me an outlet for that whole turn around.

[00:32:19] I’ve had a great time. Not that we need that as much as just… like I had a great experience as an SDR those first six months, a lot of fun working with friends and learning a lot of things really fast. I was really excited to be on the other side and kind of orchestrate that experience. So that was exciting for me.

[00:32:36] And then of course, again, from Jamba I, I like running the numbers. Like having a number and then creating plans and processes to move a business towards those numbers. That’s exciting for me. So there was an easy choice. 

[00:32:49] Marc Gonyea: It’s interesting what you’ve said, Corcoran, is being on the other side and orchestrating that experience.

[00:32:55] And I don’t know if everyone looks at it that way 

[00:32:57] with this, that’s a great way to look at it. 

[00:32:59] Joe Reeves: What do you mean? 

[00:33:00] Marc Gonyea: Well, what did you mean 

[00:33:01] by orchestrating the 

[00:33:02] experience? 

[00:33:03] Joe Reeves: I have lifelong memories. I have lifelong friends from that six month experience as an SDR. If I can create that even for a few people here, which I already know has happened, but if I can create that for a few people like that, that’s amazing.

[00:33:22] That’s fulfilling. That’s…

[00:33:23] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. 

[00:33:23] Joe Reeves: Something else, right? I know this is a job, but like… The fact, again, I have EMC, so Max Hufft in my life because of memoryBlue. 

[00:33:31] Marc Gonyea: Yep. 

[00:33:31] Chris Corcoran: Yep. 

[00:33:31] Joe Reeves: John Adams and Collin Nuschy, I’m not going to say they have their careers entirely, but like, this was their foundation.

[00:33:37] Marc Gonyea: Yes. 

[00:33:38] Joe Reeves: As for myself, so like that, it’s a big deal. 

[00:33:41] Marc Gonyea: That is a huge deal. 

[00:33:42] Chris Corcoran: Huge deal. 

[00:33:43] Marc Gonyea: Right. And so you’re replicating that for like the future versions of Joe Reeves? 

[00:33:47] Joe Reeves: Correct. 

[00:33:47] Marc Gonyea: Like through the years you’ve definitely got it… 

[00:33:50] Joe Reeves: And I’m excited to be a part 

[00:33:50] of that. That’s what I’m trying to say is like, there’s a woman fuzzy spot inside of me

[00:33:55] that feels good about that too. 

[00:33:56] Marc Gonyea: Yeah, of course. And it’s the same reason why Chris and I like doing. The same damn thing. 

[00:34:01] Chris Corcoran: Exactly. 

[00:34:02] Marc Gonyea: Right? 

[00:34:02] Chris Corcoran: Exactly. 

[00:34:03] Marc Gonyea: All right. So you were the second delivery manager in California. 

[00:34:06] Joe Reeves: Yup. 

[00:34:06] Marc Gonyea: Right, which is so early. What was that like transitioning from being an SDR to being a DM?

[00:34:13] Because I know, I do know you’ve got the experience, but still because of it, ’cause there are SDRs now who are thinking about being a DMs who, they probably want to know how the role was. They might have the experience. 

[00:34:23] Joe Reeves: So I think that there’s really two main pieces into DM. There’s the SDR side and there’s the client side.

[00:35:28] And so from the SDR perspective, it’s how to do the job well, now teach someone else to do that job. And hopefully if you can ramp up your team size over time, it’s teaching your individuals one at a time and eventually have a team of 5, 6, 8, 10. But at one point it’s just, it’s teaching other people to do the job, right?

[00:35:48] Now of course, there’s the whole client side too. And that’s usually the, I don’t know if I want to say hurdle, but that’s like the new skillset people need to learn. And that’s where you’re going to come into shadowing and learning. I found it a little simpler for me, just I wasn’t shy to have those conversations with clients, but I think that that’s what I’ve seen for DM’s be the bigger skillset that they need to grow is how do you manage a client relationship.

[00:36:11] And it’s not just a client weekly call or something like that, like what’s the ongoing communication you have, what are the things you should be thinking about, what are some of the, like from a strategy perspective, how can you bring more value to the campaign. I’m talking about a lot of things there.

[00:36:24] Right? But I think, honestly it really just starts with if you’ve done the job well, can you teach the job just someone else. And by the way, that’s not always the case. Best players aren’t always the best coaches. But I think that as long as you can master that piece down and you’re open to coaching and learning and trying new things, like conversations with clients that you’ve never been in, it wasn’t as bumpy as I thought it would be.

[00:36:47] Right? Especially because, and I think for internal memoryBlue’s SDRs who are looking into doing this, if you’re becoming a DM, or if you’re thinking about becoming a DM, you’re probably already helping your colleagues in the office in some way, shape or form, whether it’s a mentee, or your neighbor, or the new hire who got put next to you

[00:37:07] and they seem like they’re, they’re overwhelmed, right? If you’re in this delivery manager conversation, you’re probably already doing this. And so then it’s really just making it much more robust, thorough, right? Like it’s not helping them here and there it’s, “No, what is your first couple of weeks look like?”

[00:37:23] And I’m going to make sure I’m at least a resource. You don’t get to micromanage, but a resource for you every single step on the way. And then, I mean, I feel like memoryBlue’s provided the things that we needed on the client side, the internal book of business side. Right? ‘Cause there is P&L, there is managing your own full book of work.

[00:37:40] You are the owner of that, but I think we have a pretty good process of getting people spun up for that. 

[00:37:49] Chris Corcoran: Actually learn to handle with the clients. Does that sound like it came kind of naturally to you, but are you drew upon maybe your Jamba Juice experience or, or was it was a microgen or? 

[00:38:00] Marc Gonyea: Different?

[00:38:00] Chris Corcoran: Yeah. 

[00:38:01] Joe Reeves: And you know, I learned, and this was for me, this is how I learned was, I learned a lot really quickly just by watching Jeanne Ball and Mike Mishler talk. So once they elevated me, I was hired May 16th, 2016, and November 1st was my DM day. And I had like two really full months of just watching Jeanne Ball and Mike talk. We’d go into the Fishbowl.

[00:38:22] That was his office name. And we’d be in the Fishbowl end of the day, it’s like, you know, 5 o’clock, 5:30, and they’d just be talking about whatever their clients and their transitions and problems. And they were just problem solving themselves. And I was just watching. Right? And taking it in.

[00:38:38] So that was probably a big thing that at that, helped me understand how they want to communicate with clients. Jeanne Ball and Mike, of course, too, but a lot with Jeanne Ball was helping me getting, you know, up to speed with clients. And honestly I had probably one of the most high expectations clients I’ve ever had. 

[00:38:55] Marc Gonyea: Who? 

[00:38:55] Joe Reeves: Joe Nagy.

[00:38:56] Marc Gonyea: Oh yeah. 

[00:38:57] Joe Reeves: Joe Nagy. He was one of my first clients for Zetta. And he was so patient with us and with me, because I was new. And then he had so many different expectations, and things he wanted, and we hit the mark. We miss the mark, we’re just shy of the mark. But, I think also just having almost in that for that relationship with a very tough client, a very client that had very high expectations is very data-driven.

[00:39:25] So he didn’t really want to take anything for face value. He wanted to see numbers, he wanted to see all of it. That pushed me on too. That was, was, you know, learning how to manage and work with a client who had those high expectations. And I’ll tell you, I was sweating a lot sometimes with him, but honestly after awhile, I was like, “You know what? If I can manage that client relationship and that client engagement, the rest is great.”

[00:39:48] Chris Corcoran: Yeah. 

[00:39:48] Joe Reeves: Not true. You do still get some other crazy clients, but I mean, overall, everyone always has a good reason. You just have to find them halfway, understand where clients are coming from or whoever the other person is on the other side of the table. And try to, you know, understand it again, it game plan from there. 

[00:40:04] Marc Gonyea: Is it very, very challenging position to be a DM, right?

[00:40:08] And it’s such an education, we’re leaving out all the other stuff, interviewing the SDRs, bringing them on, but winning them. One of them that it is competitively ridiculously 

[00:40:18] tough market, right? I heard it in the Bay. 

[00:40:22] Working with the clients, we’re oriented to kind of put ourselves out there for the clients, the way we structure our agreements,

[00:40:28] and we give them access to all the numbers each week, we hold this as highly accountable. So we invite the scrutiny because we want it. 

[00:40:36] Some people get a little carried away with it. 

[00:40:38] Joe Reeves: Yeah. 

[00:40:38] Marc Gonyea: But 

[00:40:39] that’s okay too, because that’s how we do it. But that culture is what really forms you. You did a good job, 

[00:40:45] that better than anybody.

[00:40:46] Joe Reeves: Well, and again, 

[00:40:47] so to 

[00:40:47] the whole point of like, you go from having one client or two clients to 5 or 10, like I’m going to use the word again, it’s exponential. You’re exponential of building your network, your exponential of learning. You just start learning so much so fast, because you’re not just on one or two clients, you’re on 5 to 10 and now you’re not learning your own skillset of being an SDR.

[00:41:07] You’re training 5 to 10 people, and they’re going to have their own obstacles and weaknesses and strengths. And so you’re going to get more visibility into all sorts of things that you’re more from 

[00:41:16] an 

[00:41:16] individual contributor. Your world, your problems and obstacles too, not some teeny.

[00:41:22] Everything is 5 to 10 X, just because that’s literally what it is. How many more clients, how many more team members? So you just see so much more so quickly. 

[00:41:29] Chris Corcoran: That means more technologies?

[00:41:31] Joe Reeves: And I mean more technologies. Yeah, I’m of, at this point it’s been over a hundred and twenty-five technologies.

[00:41:36] I feel like I must have seen at this point, like teases easily. Like directly within the office. So, I mean, even just very recently, I still will get ahold of a CIP of a new client and at least see what they do. Right? I know what it is. So just interesting because I’ll see something even still I’ll be like, “Oh, that’s interesting.

[00:41:53] I didn’t know that even that was a manual process in this world and now there’s something automated.” 

[00:41:57] Chris Corcoran: And also you get exposed to that many individuals, right? Those clients, and exposed to that many different cultures. So you can see all these different cultures, these people, these technologies. 

[00:42:09] Joe Reeves: Yes.

[00:42:10] And then that’s, that was probably something I learned within my first year at memoryBlue is again learning what I like and what I don’t like. And I thought to myself, from a what do I want to sell perspective, but that was something else I learned is I also realized I should be factoring in kind of how leadership and cultures are operating at these companies.

[00:42:30] Right? And that was something I hadn’t even thought of before I joined memoryBlue. Now I’m aware that keep an eye out for these things, ’cause I know these are part of what I value and I want to see if a company operates that way, the leadership operate that way. So it definitely, again, you know what you know, and you’re aware of some of what you don’t know.

[00:42:48] There’s a lot of what you don’t know you don’t know. 

[00:42:50] Chris Corcoran: Right. 

[00:42:50] Joe Reeves: This place totally helped me with a lot of that. 

[00:42:54] Marc Gonyea: You’re doing your thing, all the while you’re working here, right? 

[00:42:57] Joe Reeves: Yeah. 

[00:42:58] Marc Gonyea: You’re a delivery manager, it’s a tough market that… 

[00:43:01] for technology, this is the world’s most competitive market for technology, right?

[00:43:05] In the world’s history of business. You’re doing the job, you’re also seeing some of your colleagues, some of these folks you worked with, some people who, when you started or when, who came on and knew you or people or clients 

[00:43:15] moving along like, “Joe, want you come over here?” Or people are asking you to leave, you’re kind of observing.

[00:43:21] Joe Reeves: Yeah. 

[00:43:21] Marc Gonyea: Why did you stay?

[00:43:23] What have you stayed? 

[00:43:24] Joe Reeves: I’m trying to think, ’cause there’s a couple of reasons. So I think one, the first one that I’ll say is

[00:43:29] I almost think it would be crazy, and I even at the time, I still think it would have been crazy to jump off the train while the train is picking up so much speed. Like when I started five and a half, six years ago, we were three offices and what 150 people, 125 and now we’re six offices, and over 500, and multiple teams that just didn’t even exist back then, now exists. Like the

[00:43:55] cross-functionality, the company is just absurd explosion, in 5,000 8 years in a row now like. So number one is just, I mean, why would I get off the train while the train is picking up speed and momentum and I’m in this position of leadership, right? So that was a big one. Number two, I began to kind of back to the whole Jamba Juice 

[00:44:16] thing. 

[00:44:16] I liked getting something to a steady state. It runs itself with or without me. And that was always something I thought about too, was I don’t want to step away from a mess, right? Not that we were a mess, but we were growing and it was very fragile, and I didn’t want to step away from things while things are still kind of getting spun up.

[00:44:34] I wanted to make sure things are pristine, right? If I ever took that next step. And then of course three, and this is, I want to say I was outside of this, but I, again, I was more on the orchestration side was, it was the culture. That’s still a big value for me here, is I love the people I’m working with. 

[00:44:49] Tom Lacalle.

[00:44:50] I know, hey, you know, come on, you see, you said, you see half these people and you start smiling and you start laughing. Right? Like, so that was a big thing too. And again, I’m more on the orchestration side, right? And that doesn’t, I’m still involved in the mix, but I’m probably not doing the happy hours with all my boys once a week. But either way, like this culture you’ve seen in the boomerangs that we get back. I hear it from my friends.

[00:45:11] It’s not really as abundant in the space as you might think. So I’ve been very happy with what we’ve been building and I’m happy to be with the people that I work with every single day. And I think that every single day that business was getting closer and closer to what I wanted it to be.

[00:45:24] Marc Gonyea: So you’re doing this DM thing. 

[00:45:27] How did the MD role kind of coming about, first of all in your mind, right? Because we can always come to you with opportunities, but like, where did you see the DM job rolling with you, as you know, we were growing and we want to stay. How did that kind of come up?

[00:45:41] Joe Reeves: I knew I wanted also to do the DM role long enough to where I felt, I don’t want to say comfortable, but like competence in the role, right? Like I didn’t want to do the role for 6 to 12 months and be really bad and trying to jump down. I was like, 

[00:45:54] Marc Gonyea: Yeah, yeah. 

[00:45:55] Joe Reeves: I wanted to know that I was good at this job,

[00:45:57] an SDR manager job for at least probably in a year and a half, two years. And I think around the year, year and a half Marc like me and Dan Yorkie were running this office as DMs with Nimit coming in every two weeks, ‘ cause he was managing the Texas office. And so he was kind of also half running this office.

[00:46:16] We got to maybe six business days a year or a month. So me and Dan were in the office. 

[00:46:22] Marc Gonyea: Yup. 

[00:46:22] Joe Reeves: Yeah. And so it was known that it would have to come up eventually, like California will need to have an MD at some point. And that’s kind of when I started feasibly thinking, “I could be open to taking that role,” or like I’m in very interesting to taking that role.

[00:46:37] I mean, now we’re kind of already doing that together a little bit too. So, I think it was like a year and a half in, and I can’t remember if the 5K was a new, incentive or not, but I think it was rolled out around that time where, “Hey, if you want to be a manager for two years, I’m already at like 18 months, you get this 5K trip.”

[00:46:56] And so I was like, “That sounds perfect. I’m going to do this 5K. I’m going to finish up my six months. And I’m going to try to throw my name in the ring early 2018 when it seems like this conversation is going to come about.” So, I mean, I guess first off it was just, the growth path was there. I could see myself wanting to do it.

[00:47:13] The office again was continually picking up steam. So it seemed like a pretty obvious growth path, at least attempt. Right? 

[00:47:23] Marc Gonyea: Sure. 

[00:47:23] Joe Reeves: So… 

[00:47:24] Chris Corcoran: Talk about some 

[00:47:25] about your 5K, ’cause I remember that it had a very big impact on you. 

[00:47:28] Joe Reeves: Had a huge impact. So I’ll say this, I was tired. 

[00:47:32] Chris Corcoran: And so, you know, you’re doing 

[00:47:33] it right.

[00:47:34] Joe Reeves: I remember it was like right before, it was right before the 5K happened and it was like, we were, it was, I think the whole company had this, or at least California, we needed like 18 people at one point. It was like massive hiring coach. And there was a week where I held 19 interviews. And Dan did the same, like it was like. 

[00:47:56] Marc Gonyea: That was wild. 

[00:47:57] Joe Reeves: We were just, yeah, know, so, and again, it makes sense.

[00:48:00] We’re growing pays, I think about promoting someone, all these things are happening. So I was tired of this 5K got rolled out. I’m like, “I’m totally in on that.” I never been to Europe. I was thinking about doing the Euro trip post-grad, like in my summer. I never had a summer. I went from finishing up school to continuing Jamba to working here.

[00:48:18] Right? 

[00:48:19] Marc Gonyea: Hard too. 

[00:48:19] Joe Reeves: Yeah. So, the Euro trip never happened and I told myself it will happen at some point in life, whenever these happened. 5K comes up there it is. I bought a one-way ticket, there not only to, I bought a round trip ticket, July 5th to the 25th in 2018. And I bought it Tomorrowland ticket, which is a big festival out in Belgium.

[00:48:42] And I got my friends tickets to Max Hufft and a friend of mine, Ethan. They paid me back for theirs. I got reimbursed for this thing. That’s all I bought. I bought two, I bought four tickets. I bought three tickets to this festival and I bought one round trip ticket with two and a half weeks in between.

[00:48:58] And I just went to Europe, by myself with a big backpack, and not really much of a plan except for a few spots that I thought I wanted to hit, flew into Paris, immediately left because I knew I was coming back that weekend. So it was like a Wednesday, I went to the Mediterranean and hung out there for three days.

[00:49:13] Went back to Paris that weekend. Saturday was their best deal day. So I met up with some friends who’s apparently is from there, he’s from Santa Cruz and he was in Paris. So meet up with them, best deal day and watching fireworks off the Eiffel Tower. The very next day, Sunday was the World Cup where France won and the whole city just went

[00:49:37] berserk. It was amazing. Went up north to the Netherlands and bounced around there, Amsterdam. And then met up with my friends, ’cause I did this two weeks of traveling. They didn’t, they flew in the day before… 

[00:49:50] Marc Gonyea: You’re given like, so we get the shorter, the bridge version. 

[00:49:53] You remember, you tell me how you had a good time when you met a Mediterranean.

[00:49:56] You’re meeting people. Right? Did you stay in hostels? 

[00:50:00] Joe Reeves: I wanted to stay in hostel. I am a social guy. It’s funny, ’cause I showed up at like, it’s like nine o’clock, my phone’s at 3%. I don’t know the language. I don’t have a hostel. So I go to a coffee shop.

[00:50:12] I asked for a coffee, I get the wifi. I charged my phone. I go, I find on this app hostelworld.com and there’s a hostel literally 50 yards from me. 

[00:50:19] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. 

[00:50:20] Joe Reeves: So I go there. “Do you have a bed?” ,”Yes.” There’s like four bunks in one big room. I set my bag down. I quickly showered and then I stepped out and there’s like a communal space and there’s like 30 or 40 people that are all about my age, give or take five years.

[00:50:35] And like the owner comes out and literally just pulls out just a whole bunch of bottles of champagne and a bunch of little small bites to eat. Everyone drinks and hangs out and catches up. And then we all went to whatever the little downtown section was. That was like for the next three nights in a row.

[00:50:49] And it’s a social hostel, apparently that’s a thing. 

[00:50:51] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. 

[00:50:52] Joe Reeves: I didn’t know this, but yeah. So it was the whole time then. Yeah, it was a swim in the Mediterranean. Basically float, you don’t need to really swim, you just hang out. It was a great time. No, I I’ve dozens of pictures, experience I’ve never had before like that.

[00:51:06] And there’ll probably be a minute till I have another one like that. 

[00:51:08] Chris Corcoran: I remember when you came back, you were a changed man. 

[00:51:11] Joe Reeves: That’s what, that’s what Marc said. Mark said, “I don’t know what you did, but you came back different,” because I, and I felt it. ‘Cause I, it’s an interesting thing about like burnout is like, I don’t feel like, at least for me burnout doesn’t happen

[00:51:23] like it’s not like one day I wake up and I’m like, “Ah,” it’s more like efficiency just kind of wanes very slowly until I realized, “I need to take a damn break.” And everyone needs to do it. But the incentive like that 5K, I know we have the 3K for even just one year SDR like, it was exactly where it needed to be.

[00:51:42] And it worked exactly how it needed to work. And I have lifelong memories for too. 

[00:51:47] Chris Corcoran: It’s great.

[00:51:47] Marc Gonyea: I think it’s great too, ’cause it kept you focused, right? 

[00:51:49] Joe Reeves: Yeah. 

[00:51:50] Marc Gonyea: In 18 months, 24 and then I’ll maybe stick around and put my name in the hat. But, well, what did you 

[00:51:55] learn from that? Like moving forward. ‘Cause you’re a hard charger.

[00:51:59] No doubt about that. 

[00:52:01] But moving forward, you come back and we’ll get into it. You elevate into the MD role, the beginning of 2019, right? 

[00:52:08] Joe Reeves: Yes.

[00:52:08] Marc Gonyea: Yep. In 2018, 2019 we elevate into an MD role, but what have you learned to make sure that you take that break and make sure people who work for you take that break? Because we’ve, Chris and I don’t want you to burn it out.

[00:52:20] Joe Reeves: Got it. I mean, you have to kinda, you have to plan for it, right? Like and even if you feel like you don’t need it, there’s a good chance you might ’cause again, I think it’s very gradual. It’s very subtle. And it’s not an all at once thing typically. It’s a very, very, there was a law of diminishing returns.

[00:52:37] It’s very mild of the course of time. So like you have to aim something for that. I will say this too. I think, we have a young culture for the most part, so I think sometimes people have mistaken a vacation with the boys to Vegas or to somewhere like that is like, that’s also sometimes not ease. 

[00:52:52] Marc Gonyea: That’s tiring. 

[00:52:53] Joe Reeves: It’s tiring.

[00:52:54] Marc Gonyea: That’s fun as hell, but you don’t you don’t relax. 

[00:52:56] Joe Reeves: That’s not relaxing, that’s not recharging the batteries. And I think that’s maybe something I had also talked to myself again and worked with some of my best friends. So I get it. I was in that position, but you need to sometimes ask yourself, “Is this actually recharging you?”

[00:53:10] Right? And walking around Europe, I’m, I’ll walk, I was walking 10 miles a day and I talk about the champagne social room. And like that wasn’t every day. That was just, that was the hostel and the first thing some bars during like the big Cup. But like, otherwise it was sightseeing and traveling and trying new unique foods and places.

[00:53:29] So, you have to ask yourself, “Is the thing that I’m taking a break from work from? Is that be taking a break,” right? Or am I just expending my energy somewhere else? 

[00:53:39] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. 

[00:53:41] Joe Reeves: So… 

[00:53:42] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. 

[00:53:42] The hard charging tourist takes a show to Vegas. It’s not a lot of relaxation. 

[00:53:46] Joe Reeves: Exactly. Exactly. 

[00:53:49] Marc Gonyea: All right. So you come back and then at some point we orchestrated you to the MD role,

[00:53:52] so congratulations on that because it was a competition, right? We love Dan Yorkie. Obviously. I don’t want to get to Dan Yorkie at some point to boomerang back, but Joe Reeves is the one of the competition, which we were very fortunate for you to choose to come on as MD. What was that like and why did you decide that’s what you wanted to do?

[00:54:11] Because you’ve got people too who are maybe DMs now, and then, you said, “Oh, hey, I’m going to run my own office.” Like, why? What was it like rolling into that? Well, ’cause that’s another transition. 

[00:54:21] Joe Reeves: The why again, trains picking up speed. Trains pick them up momentum, especially now I can head an office

[00:54:28] that makes sense. Right? The numbers don’t lie that the company is growing. We’re continually investing in things to not only support our growth, but support quality too. Like leadership things are getting like Stacy’s now a leadership coach. I think our team’s getting built out. Like there’s more things from both quantity and quality perspective that you guys are investing to make this company grow the right way.

[00:54:54] So that was an easy choice number one. The big change and this didn’t happen at first, ’cause it took some time for us to start growing past this was changing how I work from training individual contributors. I’m a DM managing SDRs. I’m teaching an SDR how to do a job that I was doing before. Right? Now it’s becoming more on training managers to train individual contributors.

[00:55:19] All right. So how do you create productive SDRs when you have less time with productive SDRs. You have to train managers, the tools, the processes to do that job for you. Right? So that was a big switch. And so, at first it’s almost, it was almost a little easier than I thought because I still was able to be a DM because me being a DM for say Tom or Trevor, some of the first DMs that I elevated, I just was a DM for them to emulate what I wanted them to see, the model the behavior, to show them the questions.

[00:55:50] And so I was doing the job for them and they would learn and we would debrief and there was that kind of process. So that was fairly simple at first, ’cause it was almost just like, again, teaching someone the job that I had just done. And then we went from two managers to now eight over the course of like 18 months.

[00:56:08] And that’s really where I needed to start creating more daily, weekly overarching processes to help me kind of spin up more delivery managers when we’re trying to promote one almost every two to three months. And again, I’m trying to spin up delivery managers to train quality SDRs. So, teaching these delivery managers here are the things to look for,

[00:56:33] here’s how you should be hosting these conversations, how you keep an eye out for common pitfalls. Like, so I could talk for weeks. 

[00:56:40] Marc Gonyea: What do you look for 

[00:56:41] then in folks who want to 

[00:56:42] be DMs? 

[00:56:43] Joe Reeves: For those who want to be a DM, that is really the first thing that any SDR that is interested in being a DM.

[00:56:52] I want to know, I want to know why. And I want to know if that’s really something that you want to do because, some people are just looking to get promoted and… yeah, I get that. That’s fine, but I’ll even tell them point blank like, “If this isn’t something you want to do, this thing will probably chew you up within the first six months.

[00:57:08] ‘Cause it’s a hard job and there’s a lot going on.” 

[00:57:11] Marc Gonyea: Job is difficult. 

[00:57:12] Joe Reeves: It’s difficult. You need to want to do this. And by like, you need to want to help others. Right? Because that was a big thing I also asked myself when the DM role came up was what’s a stronger driving force for me? Is it the adrenaline of a close, even though I was closing discovery calls, but I mean the adrenaline of a close or helping my colleague Teran Bickler, get up to speed. Since he was, because I know he was one of the, he was new when I was also starting to spin up.

[00:57:44] So like what was more fulfilling for me? What was more exciting for me? Honestly, it was helping other SDRs. So that’s number one. Do you want to do this? Do you want to help other SDRs? You want to help other folks? Number two is of course that maybe this is more like number one, but number two is, can you do the job

[00:58:03] well? You’re probably not having this conversation with us if you can’t, but that’s another big one. Or maybe more importantly, can you teach? 

[00:58:08] Chris Corcoran: Can you teach?

[00:58:09] Joe Reeves: Right? Because again, best players are not always going to be best coaches. So I’ll see typically again, anyone in this conversation, they’ve probably been doing this already in some way, shape or form with a mentee or their colleagues.

[00:58:22] So tell me a story. Who are you helping? How are they doing? What’s that been looking like? Right? 

[00:58:27] Marc Gonyea: Tell me a story. 

[00:58:29] Joe Reeves: So that’s by the second thing. And then the third is just the typical thing I might look for anybody, like, even in an SDR, are you showing me coachable qualities, right? Like, are you going to listen to feedback and not defensive or anything and then turn around and apply?

[00:58:45] Just like the hard part is turning around and applying a piece of feedback is sometimes tough, right? ‘Cause it’s this communication stuff, right? Like you we’re in sales, your words matter. So, if I say, “Watch out for these things and say things these ways, and communicate in this way,” sometimes tough piece of feedback.

[00:59:04] So some of the main things is that I, after that it says it’s just that I look for grit. I look for positive attitude because again, you’re going to have tough SDRs. You’re going to have tough clients. You can have all sorts of stones cast your way and you have to be ready to take a lot of them.

[00:59:19] Marc Gonyea: So, Mr. Reeves. If you go back 

[00:59:21] to like your first 

[00:59:22] night before you started the night before you 

[00:59:24] started memoryBlue, what advice would you have for yourself?

[00:59:28] Joe Reeves: It’s something I did, but I still even feel like I could have done it more is seek help from everyone, because everyone has their own style and flavor. Everyone has at least one or two pieces of advice, or if nothing else perspectives that you might not be thinking of or aware of. So even though I still did this with the top performers I noticed in the co in the office and the company and whatnot, everyone has something.

[00:59:56] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. Everybody’s got a little superpower. 

[00:59:57] Joe Reeves: Everyone’s got a little superpower that you might not be thinking of. And take it from myself, the charger who is sometimes impatient, the person who’s a little more quiet and the listener and very patient, they have something that they could probably share with me.

[01:00:10] That could be a game changer for me. So like everyone has, and it just as much as compared to that, there is so still seeking out even if it’s just the one key thing that one person can share with you, because there’s not a concrete tip. Like Andy Gager told me, ” If you feel like you’re speaking too slowly, you’re probably speaking to

[01:00:28] just right.” 

[01:00:29] Marc Gonyea: Yep. 

[01:00:29] Joe Reeves: Everyone has something like that, if not more. 

[01:00:33] Marc Gonyea: How do you keep it going? Because we got to get everybody back on the office, right? This is what I want to talk about. 

[01:00:38] And you’re big on culture. 

[01:00:39] Joe Reeves: Yeah. 

[01:00:40] Marc Gonyea: So how do you keep the 

[01:00:41] culture going when you got people in disparate locations? This is not a California thing,

[01:00:45] this is like, this is a United States business. Or you got people who report into an office who live in downstate and live two hours away? Some people are cohabitating like in North Cak-a-laka, because everything you mentioned about learning and you got to be present, right? It’s hard to 

[01:00:59] do 

[01:00:59] that.

[01:01:01] Joe Reeves: So I think that’s a great question that I think everyone’s asking themselves. How do you manage company culture in a virtual environment? And there’s kind of two pieces that I see it as from a training in development perspective, nothing beats being in the office organically even ringing this bell while we’ve been here.

[01:01:19] Like that bell goes off every time someone books a meeting, or the massive four-foot gong we have gets dinged when someone gets their first meeting or, it’s quota. This office is an electric factory when everyone’s in here and people are booking meetings, that’s what it is.

[01:01:35] Right? So you’re not going to beat that from a virtual perspective. Right? And that’s, I mean, this is just, this is why we’re going to continue to be an office of the capacity that we can is when you’re in office, you’re going to learn more. You’re going to have more fun. You’re going to be more engaged and that’s all that is too.

[01:01:50] That said we still, I mean, we grew in the California office more than we ever had during 2020 to 2021. Because I think we were able to adapt to that virtual environment and we were able to do a lot of virtual coaching and development still. Academy, we love to have it in person, but that’s also that was, I think created virtually, right?

[01:02:10] Or it wasn’t, it was in-person for a minute, and then it was virtual. But like that was made to be virtual is, you know, by design. You have six offices plus other people. So we can do it virtual from a training and development, but you’re still not going to beat being in person, and I think that right there is a big hook for a lot of the people here.

[01:02:29] We had people eager to get back in office earlier this year. Like absolutely, because they knew what they were missing out on. They know what this is. I mean, the relationships, even culturally or even just personally still happened during COVID virtually, there are still people who became great friends. 

[01:02:46] Marc Gonyea: Dip sessions where I do and

[01:02:47] I’m like, “Man, these people are pretty close and they’ve not even been in the office together.” 

[01:02:51] Joe Reeves: Yeah. Right? There’s a lot more of them now. We have pretty bad COVID surge right now. That’s why literally, yeah. So and… 

[01:02:58] Marc Gonyea: Early January, 2022 for the audience. Omicron’s kinda make this mild the way 

[01:03:04] through. It’s like mild, but contagious way.

[01:03:07] Joe Reeves: Mild but contagious, exactly. I had it, and it’s luckily I was, it was like a three-day in and out. It was mild. So it’s going and what we can do, right? But anyhow, I think that that’s a big, that’s its big hook right there. And to be frank, when people come in into the office and everyone’s in the office, they really only need to be here for one day to see it and feel it.

[01:03:25] And they’re all ready. 

[01:03:26] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. 

[01:03:26] Joe Reeves: So, how do we do it? I mean, from the leadership perspective, it’s still within the people we hire. Right? The people we hire are naturally organically creating relationships with other memoryBlue folks, whether it’s virtual or not. And then the second you get them in the office, they see what they will do it, which is again, back to the my first six months here. 

[01:03:49] Marc Gonyea: It’s a competitive advantage.

[01:03:51] Joe Reeves: It’s a huge competitive advantage. I think of myself as a great teacher. I think my delivery managers are great teachers. Being in this office is a great teacher. But don’t get me wrong, we do well teaching SDRs what we need to teach them, but again, you’re not going to substitute out when one of the top performers in the back row books a meeting and half the office overheard them.

[01:04:14] Like, you’re just not going to, that’s another big piece of art. 

[01:04:16] Marc Gonyea: No substitute. 

[01:04:17] Joe Reeves: There’s no substitute for that. We are a sales floor, and you’re going to learn from your peers and colleagues almost as much as you will from your managers. So yeah, you need to be in the office for that.

[01:04:28] Marc Gonyea: Is a Tahoe 

[01:04:29] trip still thing, even with the size of the 

[01:04:31] office? How do you manage that?

[01:04:32] Joe Reeves: I’m supposed to have an idea about that tomorrow. I’m trying to get some details on this, but I’m not so sure. 

[01:04:39] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. 

[01:04:40] Joe Reeves: We have identified, we have the spot identified and not everyone’s going to want to go. 

[01:04:45] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. Okay. 

[01:04:46] Joe Reeves: Which is okay. So we will see, I mean, I need to figure out some of the ironed out details today.

[01:04:50] Actually I have messaged the person who’s running point on that for our culture 

[01:04:53] club. 

[01:04:54] Chris Corcoran: To talk a little bit about culture club and that Tahoe trip, just because a lot of listeners aren’t going to have any idea what you’re talking about. 

[01:04:59] Joe Reeves: So I mean, first off culture club, I mean, first off you guys are gracious enough to give us a budget every single month per head.

[01:05:06] So we get to do this great events. Like, I mean, we go to sharks games all the time. We love going to sharks games, especially ’cause it’s three blocks away. It’s literally it’s walking distance. So we would have like a beer downstairs at the San Pedro Market Square, and then you go to the game. One of the big trips and it’s almost as is tradition at this point for me,

[01:05:24] ’cause I was here when we went to the Tahoe trip and it’s just kind of been happening every year since is California, typically a lots like two to three months of budget. So making sure we hold our first Fridays and other big network events like that. But, we do a big Tahoe trip, which is, two to three days Tahoe, South Lake and it’s who wants to go to Tahoe and ski on ski for a day, gamble in the evening.

[01:05:48] And, Tom is even the big one who drives us with me and he’s like, “That’s what I made some of my best friends at memoryBlue was at the Tahoe trip two years ago. ” And there’s, I mean, it’s just like the happy hours, but I guess maybe a little bit larger scale, obviously. You get to see your colleagues and your coworkers in a much different light.

[01:06:05] And honestly, at that point it’s now these are your friends who happen to be your colleagues, not really the other way around. So it’s a great trip. It’s a lot of, I mean, it’s, it’s me at the village. We typically set up a big dinner at the village. People can go and gamble.

[01:06:19] We typically get a house that has a couple of things like a pool table, foosball table, great views, all that fun stuff. Or staying at the club whatever it is. Right? We have a great time as 

[01:06:30] a whole team. 

[01:06:31] Chris Corcoran: It sounds like fun. So the problem now is you’ve been companies where the office has gotten so large that you were having a hard time 

[01:06:36] finding a spot?

[01:06:36] Joe Reeves: Yes. But then there’s COVID, which is kind of like turning that like almost on its head. So it’s like, yes, from a size perspective, we’re too big to have pretty much any day to spot that would take us at this point. It’s got to be a couple of different smaller locations, but then you have COVID and you have people with COVID.

[01:06:54] So now suddenly the number of people who can’t or don’t even want to go is a little less. We’re still looking at it. We’re going to see if we end up actually doing it or not, depending on the current spot we’re looking at and then to depending on head count, which is what I want to have finalized.

[01:07:07] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. Cool. No, I 

[01:07:08] was curious. I mean, that’s kind of a uniquely California. 

[01:07:11] Chris Corcoran: Definitely it’s cool. 

[01:07:11] Joe Reeves: Why I saw the Virginia is trying to get an idea off this, off the ground?

[01:07:15] Marc Gonyea: I don’t know if it was going anywhere. 

[01:07:16] Joe Reeves: I saw someone say, “Come back.” 

[01:07:18] No. 

[01:07:19] Chris Corcoran: I don’t know nothing about it. What’s going on? 

[01:07:20] Marc Gonyea: They’re trying to keep her on a thing on the slopes.

[01:07:22] Joe Reeves: I saw it. 

[01:07:24] Yeah. 

[01:07:25] Chris Corcoran: Okay. 

[01:07:25] Marc Gonyea: I heard about it in a while though. 

[01:07:27] Joe Reeves: That is, 

[01:07:27] and that is what… 

[01:07:28] Marc Gonyea: I’m going to die. 

[01:07:29] There’s no snow there either. 

[01:07:32] Joe Reeves: There’s snow up in the mountain. We got 20 feet over the two week periods. So I was supposed to come home after Christmas. I was supposed to come home on the Sunday, Monday.

[01:07:42] We got 20 feet, basically between December 17th and like the end of year. The day I was supposed to come home 395 was shut down for three days. That is the only way in or out of Mammoth. There’s no other way in or out of the, out of the town. I was going to leave and it was just shut down. And then Wednesday it started snowing again,

[01:08:00] and so I’m like, “All right, I’m gonna do it at this point, 2 more days left.” I was like, “I’ll work from home. Hope my dad’s shovel out of… tons of snow”.

[01:08:08] Chris Corcoran: That’s amazing. 

[01:08:10] That’s amazing 

[01:08:11] Marc Gonyea: Young man dad. 

[01:08:12] Joe Reeves: He was out there, he was doing probably more work than me on the snowboard. He touched the snowboard. 

[01:08:17] Chris Corcoran: He’s smart man. 

[01:08:19] Joe, favorites podcasts? 

[01:08:21] Joe Reeves: Favorite podcasts?

[01:08:22] I don’t really listen to too many podcasts. There was one. Tim Ferriss, is I think Tim Ferriss is the one that I’ve listened to a couple of his ’cause he brings different people. 

[01:08:32] Chris Corcoran: Yeah. 

[01:08:33] Joe Reeves: All right. And that’s kind of that almost align… No, I think about it, it aligns with that whole, I want to get advice from different sources, from different people, from different perspectives.

[01:08:41] So I don’t really listen to podcasts this year, and even actually just yesterday I downloaded Audible and paid the premium on my I’m going to get on the whole, get at least 12 books done this year. 

[01:08:55] Chris Corcoran: One a month? 

[01:08:55] Joe Reeves: One a month. And I think with one a month that’s four in feature. I could probably knock out more.

[01:09:00] Chris Corcoran: Yeah. 

[01:09:01] Joe Reeves: So we’ll see. 

[01:09:02] Chris Corcoran: The 10 minute commute, which is going to turn into a 6 minute commute. 

[01:09:07] Joe Reeves: Against me. 

[01:09:07] Chris Corcoran: Yeah. 

[01:09:08] Joe Reeves: This is against my goals. But yeah, I think Tim Ferriss was a big one. In fact, I even think I have, I don’t know if it was his, but it’s Tribe of Mentors as a book. 

[01:09:15] Chris Corcoran: Yeah.

[01:09:16] Joe Reeves: Yeah. So I think it’s of the same leaf.

[01:09:19] Chris Corcoran: Right. 

[01:09:19] Joe Reeves: But I’m going to try and get more into it this year. 

[01:09:22] Chris Corcoran: Great. Very good. Very good. 

[01:09:24] Marc Gonyea: Joe, that’s it man. 

[01:09:26] Joe Reeves: That’s it? All right. Yeah. 

[01:09:27] Chris Corcoran: Great. Lots of wisdom here. 

[01:09:29] Lots of wisdom. 

[01:09:30] Joe Reeves: I hope so. I mean, there’s a lot than you, that’s happened over the last five and a half years, but obviously I thank you both for everything you’ve done for me, right? Here,

[01:09:38] I’m sitting with you guys on the podcast. This is great. 

[01:09:41] Chris Corcoran: Well, thank you. Thank you for everything you’ve done for us. Are you kidding me? 

[01:09:43] Marc Gonyea: Yeah, I wish we had said that before, because now it looks like I’m just saying that, but I’ve always loved working with you. You’re steady, you’re inspirational, you get shit done.

[01:09:52] People like working with you. You form relationships with these folks. Like not just your boys who you met here, but I know everyone who worked here, that people in the podcast were coming on next, it was still Chris and I are in California doing a podcast from the San Jose conference room. They’re coming on because of you. 

[01:10:08] But you know, 

[01:10:09] because of the company, because the relationships that they formed through you.

[01:10:11] And I said, “Listen, Joe Reeves asked me to reach out 

[01:10:13] to them.” ” I kind of know him, but I don’t really know him that well, as well as I should. 

[01:10:16] We’re good until the Virginia.” 

[01:10:18] We appreciate you. 

[01:10:19] Joe Reeves: I appreciate that. 

[01:10:20] Marc Gonyea: Very fortunate that you work here. 

[01:10:22] Joe Reeves: And I’m excited that you have these, I want to make sure I try to say hi to them as they come in, because I know I’m close with all of them. But Brandon’s in next.

[01:10:29] I hope you brought in donuts from the…

[01:10:31] Marc Gonyea: We’ll do virtual though, he is an SKO, but he keeps coming 

[01:10:35] in. 

[01:10:36] Joe Reeves: I hope he’s bringing donuts. He, his family runs the donuts. 

[01:10:40] Chris Corcoran: Yeah. 

[01:10:42] Joe Reeves: But no, I’m excited about that, ’cause I know, I do know all of them on some level or another. So, good stuff. I appreciate it. This is exciting and yeah. Happy for continued growth this year and they’d get the, I want to max out our next office.

[01:10:53] Marc Gonyea: You got to tell Corcoran I’m going to go to your next vacation, and then we’ll talk about next time in the office. 

[01:10:58] Joe Reeves: Next vacation. 

[01:11:01] Chris Corcoran: Thank you.