Tech Sales is for Hustlers Podcast

Episode 79: Mike Mishler – The Prerequisite For Success

More talent = More money. After a decade of continual growth, Mike Mishler built a legacy of recruiting all-star sales professionals and creating unstoppable teams.

As Automox’s Director of Sales Development, Mike knows that it’s always worth making room to bring on top performers. Prioritizing team culture and retention means leaning into the interview process, leading by example, and being intentional about diversity and inclusion.

In this episode of Tech Sales is for Hustlers, Mike shares ways to cultivate camaraderie and loyalty, make a positive impact through management, and consistently demonstrate individual and team value.

Guest-At-A-Glance

Name: Mike Mishler

What he does: Mike is the Director of Sales Development at Automox.

Company: Automox

Noteworthy: Mike is a skilled leader and passionate about creating an environment of success for inside sales teams. Training, coaching, and onboarding are his key focus areas. 

Where to find Mike: LinkedIn

Key Insights

⚡ Work hard to make an impact. As a child, Mike learned the importance of a work ethic. He was always hardworking and devoted, first helping his grandparents and later doing various jobs during his school and college days. However, it’s not the paycheck that motivated him the most. He saw finances as the means, not the goal. ”I think you can make more of an impact on yourself and your family and friends, if you have more resources and you’re successful. That’s how I got into sales.”

⚡ Company culture motivates people to stay. As a manager, Mike learned the culture you build is what makes people accept your offer and then stay at your company for a long time. Employees want to work in an encouraging environment, which motivates them to move forward and grow professionally. ”People come to work on my teams not only for the culture, the strong leadership, the opportunity to have those foundational skill sets developed, and have that upside for them in their career, but also for the company that they’re with.”

⚡ A strong team is a prerequisite for progress. Mike’s superpower is the ability to build a strong team quickly. It’s like he has that sixth sense for identifying the top talent and welcoming them into his team. One of the things he does is motivate people but not give them false promises. Instead, he is very clear about the complexity and challenges particular roles carry, and he also shows the good sides and the benefits of accepting them. In addition, he believes open communication and diversity are key team strengths and ”if you don’t have good talent, you’re not going to be able to make that impact.”

Episode Highlights

From an SDR to DM

”It’s a logical next step — going into management. I’ve always enjoyed it. I love having teams and people and helping them be successful. And so the opportunity presented itself, and you all presented me with the opportunity, and I jumped at it and haven’t looked back since.”

A Successful Salesperson Must Be Competitive but Also a Team Player

”I’ve always enjoyed competitions. I’ve always enjoyed incentivizing team members. I think, in sales, you can find the right people that are motivated and driven, and you don’t always have to hold that carrot in front of them, but it’s more fun. It makes it more fun seeing that competitive drive in folks.

[…] I would say the collaboration and how much they enjoy working with each other, even if it’s just going to a baseball game or something like that. I think if you develop deeper relationships with your coworkers, that motivates them that much more the next day or the next week.”

The Key to Managing Remote and Distributed Teams 

”We had a distributed team before, so I would focus on a few things. One is the leader, making sure you lean into your one-on-ones and have them consistently. If you have a team of 15 to 18, sometimes that gets away from you. I’ve been intentional about making sure you commit to consistent one-on-ones each week. 

Make sure you’re investing the time, and have team huddles on Zoom. It’s not the same, but at least you can have those huddles and team competitions. It can be an experience where they may do something on their own with their family or friends or do something together on Zoom.

We have sales enablement training every Thursday, from eight to nine. I’m looking for opportunities to have more of that team collaboration. So the whole company is going to Mexico in March. The whole team is invited to Chicago for that AIP summit, […] [which is a] great opportunity to collaborate.”

It’s Critical to Have Leaders Who Can Help You Reach Your Full Potential 

”I think [it is important] having leaders around you that have empathy for the role, but also understand the impact they can make as a BDR.

So it’s not just me as a leader, but other folks are reinforcing that, where they can learn and say, ‘Hey, we’re looking for you to make an impact this month, this quarter, or this year as a BDR, but I’m not hiring you as a BDR. I’m looking for that rising star talent where you can be an AE. So you are competent enough to be customer-facing, and you can work towards that. But we’re not hiring BDRs, we’re hiring future AE leaders.”’

Regardless of How Capable You Are as an Individual, If You Are a Leader, You Need a Good Team to Succeed

”It’s tremendous in terms of the opportunities. It is leading by example and learning what to do and what not to do. Hopefully, you pick it up pretty quickly as a leader and take a different approach the next time.

Not everyone is going to work out, but I think, if you have the right approach to interviewing, onboarding, and following some of the best practices overall, you will have a successful team. That’s how we were able to do well and make a good impact.”

Transcript: 

[00:00:51] Marc Gonyea: What’s up, Mike? 

[00:00:52] Mike Mishler: Marc, Chris, good to, great to be here. Thanks for having me. 

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

[00:00:56] Yeah. 

[00:00:57] Great to see you back at the scene of the crime. 

[00:00:59] Mike Mishler: I come back and a few hours later you guys are moving out of the office. I got 

[00:01:04] one last glimpse at it. It’s a 

[00:01:06] good, good memories 

[00:01:07] here. 

[00:01:08] Chris Corcoran: Great memories for sure. Hell yeah. We have a lot to cover. 

[00:01:12] Marc Gonyea: All right, Mike, this is hop into it right away, so I want to go right to the good stuff,

[00:01:16] but before we get to the good stuff share some of your background with the listeners and with Chris and I, meaning where you’re from, where’d you grow up, that sort of thing. Like, his kids, siblings, anything else you might think is relevant and I’ll slow you down and speed you up. 

[00:01:32] Mike Mishler: Yeah. Sounds good. 

[00:01:34] Thanks. I grew up in, on the East Coast,

[00:01:37] I moved out to California about seven years ago, but prior to that grew up in South Central PA, close to Gettysburg, had a number of my family from Pittsburgh area as well, so I’ve always been a Pittsburgh area sports fan, 

[00:01:50] go Steelers. 

[00:01:52] No, I mean, growing up in Pennsylvania 

[00:01:54] I was the third, 

[00:01:56] I had two brothers, two older brothers,

[00:01:58] one of those is out here in California now with, 

[00:02:01] a niece and he’s up there and, uh, he’s expecting his second as well. I don’t want to be the 

[00:02:08] favorite uncle for a younger sister as well, so we had 

[00:02:13] four, four in our family, a family in Pennsylvania, then some family in Michigan 

[00:02:20] as well. Where were you in the food chain?

[00:02:22] Third. Okay. Got it. All right. Yeah, I think that’s where some of my initial, we can get into this a little later, but 

[00:02:28] some of my initial inklings towards, uh, sales came about, 

[00:02:34] I. 

[00:02:35] Marc Gonyea: Tell us about it. 

[00:02:35] Mike Mishler: I think early on I had a strong work ethic. 

[00:02:39] Marc Gonyea: Not 

[00:02:39] anymore? 

[00:02:40] Mike Mishler: No, I still do. 

[00:02:41] Marc Gonyea: I know you do. 

[00:02:42] Legendary.

[00:02:43] Mike Mishler: So, I had, my family, my grandparents are from 

[00:02:46] Michigan and they have a farm out there in 

[00:02:49] Michigan,

[00:02:49] so we would go up there once or twice a year, but when we got older, it was that tradition in the family for 

[00:02:57] when you’re about 14 to go to work in the cornfields, so when I was 14 my parents sent me to my grandparents’ house and for three or four months, I’d work 

[00:03:07] in the corn fields pulling off that, 

[00:03:10] those tassels 

[00:03:11] on top of the corn.

[00:03:12] And, we did make good money, especially for a 14-year-old. No, not many expenses. Not many expenses, grandpa and grandma didn’t charge rent. I mean, that, that was, early on, I had a good work ethic, I think 

[00:03:25] my family and what they taught my parents, it’s still that and meaning I stole that from that, the people around me, that carried on and that 

[00:03:33] translates well to sales,

[00:03:34] I think in sales, if you outwork your peers, you can raise the top 70, 80% and then there’s a lot of other things to get there. But I started working early on, I, I did a bunch of other jobs too, 

[00:03:45] I was, did mowing, landscaping, I was soccer referee, did that for a number of years, 

[00:03:53] I worked at a, uh, an amusement park as well, 

[00:03:57] when you think of as a small town one, but I did that for a couple 

[00:04:00] of years. 

[00:04:01] Chris Corcoran: Were you the guy who, like, guesses people’s age and weight? We did not have that.

[00:04:06] Mike Mishler: I think you all have a money machine and things too, probably should incorporate that into the expenses. No, go-karts, games, birthday parties, things like that, but I helped, I eventually got the opportunity 

[00:04:18] to be a manager for it, so I did that during high school and helped the other high school kids get things down and go on the grass and things like that.

[00:04:25] But I did that and then before I went to school, it’s kind of crazy that summer, summer before freshman year of college I decided to work there about eight 

[00:04:36] hours during the day and take a night job as well so I actually worked at Walmart during the evenings, the summer before school. 

[00:04:45] Chris Corcoran: Double-shifting? 

[00:04:45] Mike Mishler: Double-shifted. 

[00:04:47] Marc Gonyea: Just to kind of stack up the cash? What for? To stack up the chips?

[00:04:49] Mike Mishler: I mean, I, the work ethic was instilled in me, but I would say a great family, I love my parents. They all worked for the 

[00:04:58] state or federal government, my 

[00:05:00] dad worked for the state of Pennsylvania, my brother, he did, my sister, my other brother was in Maryland who worked for, I think Montgomery county, which all good jobs, but I would say, something around that, I don’t know if it was the third child 

[00:05:15] thing, being third in row, I just wanted to go take against the grain a little bit. 

[00:05:20] Contrarian. Yeah. I’m so very motivated to, 

[00:05:24] I would say, be impactful 

[00:05:27] and how, I wouldn’t say I’m just money-motivated, I’d say more, more motivated to be impactful,

[00:05:34] and I saw all, I 

[00:05:35] saw financial resources as one way to get there, so that was, I think you can make more of an impact 

[00:05:42] to yourself, to your family, your 

[00:05:44] friends if you have more resources and you’re successful. And, that’s eventually how I got into sales, but before college, yeah, just working to earn money for things

[00:05:54] I wanted, a car, paying for school, I paid for school myself. 

[00:05:57] Marc Gonyea: Paid for school yourself? Wow. How’d you do that? 

[00:06:00] Mike Mishler: Some upfront and some scholarships, qualified for some scholarships coming out of high school and 

[00:06:06] then some loans put back. So, you all helped with that. 

[00:06:09] Thank you. 

[00:06:10] Marc Gonyea: You earned it. 

[00:06:12] Chris Corcoran: Yeah, you earned it 

[00:06:13] for sure. For sure. 

[00:06:14] Marc Gonyea: So, you went to Liberty?

[00:06:16] Yeah? 

[00:06:17] Mike Mishler: Yeah. It’s South Central Virginia. 

[00:06:20] Marc Gonyea: You went to South Central? I was looking at. 

[00:06:23] South Central VA? 

[00:06:24] Mike Mishler: South Central California, maybe it’s next. We’ll see. I was looking at two completely different schools, I was looking at Liberty, which is a private 

[00:06:31] school in Virginia and I was looking at Penn State.

[00:06:33] Yup. My brother went to Liberty, my dad went to Penn State, 

[00:06:37] looked at a few other schools, but those were the finalist. 

[00:06:40] I decided to go to Liberty here, like my brother. I went 

[00:06:43] there for a weekend, hung out, it seemed fun, good environment, so 

[00:06:47] decided to go to Liberty and that created a lot of opportunities as well

[00:06:54] for me. 

[00:06:55] Chris Corcoran: A lot more expensive though, right? 

[00:06:57] Mike Mishler: Yeah. Private school in Virginia compared to in-state, 

[00:07:00] in Pennsylvania. 

[00:07:01] I should have looked at those numbers a little closer.

[00:07:09] Marc Gonyea: All for a reason, right?

[00:07:11] Mike Mishler: Yeah. All for reason. As I went to Liberty, I was, I’ve always been very involved in high school, I was involved in 

[00:07:17] sports, 

[00:07:18] I played soccer when I was little through high school, I played baseball when I was little, I tried out for basketball, that’s where that ended.

[00:07:25] I was about seventh grade, I tried out, but I looked 

[00:07:29] around me and I had to look up to some of the other folks so I decided to 

[00:07:34] pursue other interests instead. I’ve always been involved in, I got involved pretty quickly at some things at Liberty, with the sports, intramural sports. I took a job there working as 

[00:07:45] intramural sports, um, and it was a 

[00:07:48] good experience.

[00:07:49] Um, I was, uh, 

[00:07:51] I, I went for a communications degree, I 

[00:07:55] actually went on to my master’s degree but I was involved within their 

[00:07:58] business program as well, 

[00:08:00] so good opportunity to network, learn from some of the professors, but I think what 

[00:08:04] was most impactful for me during that time was the opportunity to get that hands-on experience.

[00:08:09] So, that was from being, uh, in the intramural sports, I think being competitive in sports, you play well with others, you competitive, you learn, you have to work on the team, I think all that’s applicable to sales. And, in grad school, I was a TA, a 

[00:08:25] teacher’s assistant, so I 

[00:08:27] had the opportunity to

[00:08:28] learn from that experience. What did you go to grad school for? That was the communication business undergrad, international business 

[00:08:35] undergrad. 

[00:08:35] So, grad school was paid for, which was nice, and I had the opportunity to continue doing an internship 

[00:08:43] that I was involved with, starting in my 

[00:08:45] undergrad,

[00:08:45] so. 

[00:08:46] Marc Gonyea: How’s grad 

[00:08:46] school paid for? 

[00:08:47] Mike Mishler: Grad school was paid 

[00:08:48] for from the TA. 

[00:08:50] Marc Gonyea: Ok. Nice. Yeah. 

[00:08:52] Mike Mishler: But, I, 

[00:08:53] during my time at Liberty, I was trying 

[00:08:55] to get involved, I wanted a business-sales type opportunity. I liked sales because I had seen opportunities where people, you, you work hard, you’re paid how much you’re worth.

[00:09:07] I think we’ve all had those jobs where you’re working twice as hard and the person next to you is getting paid the same, so 

[00:09:12] I liked the upside of sales. I didn’t know much about tech sales or anything at that point, are they, the value of it, but especially being from South Central PA, South Central Virginia, but during 

[00:09:24] Liberty, I got the opportunity to, uh, 

[00:09:26] do a semester abroad.

[00:09:28] My semester abroad 

[00:09:29] was in DC.

[00:09:44] Liberty. 

[00:09:45] We had the opportunity to work for a nonprofit, 

[00:09:47] we had, probably about 20 of us in 

[00:09:49] DC, the big city. 

[00:09:54] Marc Gonyea: And you mastered that. 

[00:09:55] Chris Corcoran: Southern Baptists take DC. 

[00:09:58] Mike Mishler: Yeah. And I worked for a nonprofit, everyone had different internships, but I worked there, and there’s a little sales involved, little direct mailing, that was about it,

[00:10:07] but that was a good experience. I liked the energy much more than I was used to in 

[00:10:12] Virginia and Pennsylvania, energy was good so I saw that as a potential next step. 

[00:10:16] Another opportunity in, while at Liberty, I was looking for jobs during 

[00:10:22] the summer, of what to do, and I was in one of my sales classes and they said, “Come do this and you can earn $10,000 this summer.”

[00:10:32] So piqued my 

[00:10:33] interest, I wanted to have, again, that 

[00:10:37] practical 

[00:10:38] work experience that could be applicable and stand out in terms of looking for that next role after college, but also get some good money and experience while I’m at school. And, I like the challenge, what I mentioned earlier about going against the grain, doing things differently, that was all motivating to me,

[00:10:55] and this was different, it was a door-to-door, door-to-door sales internship, where they would train you for during the semester, you’d have training sessions on campus and you’d have a week-long sales training where they have everything, they have an actual door in the room where you knock on the door and you practice knocking on the door,

[00:11:20] you practice leaning forward a little bit, wiping your feet like you’re going to go in, be pretty assumptive there. So they get through everything. 

[00:11:27] Marc Gonyea: I did door-to-door for two summers. 

[00:11:30] Mike Mishler: You didn’t get the, you didn’t get the door knocking? 

[00:11:32] Marc Gonyea: But I didn’t get the lean-in training. 

[00:11:35] Mike Mishler: You extend your hand a little bit. Yeah. And then you wipe your feet,

[00:11:38] like you’re under … 

[00:11:40] Marc Gonyea: People must love 

[00:11:41] that. 

[00:11:42] Mike Mishler: They love it. 

[00:11:42] Marc Gonyea: They love it 

[00:11:43] Mike Mishler: At a high, high-entrance rates.

[00:11:51] Marc Gonyea: Hold on, this, this, back out real quick. 

[00:11:52] Mike Mishler: Yeah.

[00:11:52] Marc Gonyea: Looking at your LinkedIn, this is, you knew that for almost four years? 

[00:11:55] Mike Mishler: Yeah. 

[00:11:56] Marc Gonyea: So, when did you start doing that? 

[00:11:58] Mike Mishler: I believe it 

[00:11:59] was my 

[00:12:01] sophomore year. 

[00:12:02] Marc Gonyea: So, some. 

[00:12:03] Mike Mishler: Undergrad. 

[00:12:03] Marc Gonyea: So, summer after your sophomore year? 

[00:12:06] Mike Mishler: Yeah. 

[00:12:06] Marc Gonyea: Okay. Got it. Okay. That you’re like, “Okay, let me check this thing out.”

[00:12:10] Mike Mishler: Let’s check it out. 

[00:12:11] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. 

[00:12:12] Mike Mishler: So, you can make good money and get some good experience, my parents thought I was crazy, my brothers and my friends. 

[00:12:18] Marc Gonyea: Why did they think you were crazy? 

[00:12:20] Mike Mishler: They were not familiar with it, it’s unknown. 

[00:12:24] Marc Gonyea: What were you doing? Break it down. 

[00:12:25] Mike Mishler: I mean, that motivated me to do it more though because they said, “Hey, this, you’re not going to do well. Why? You’re crazy.” “Okay. I’m going. See you.”

[00:12:38] Looking back, I would say that’s one of my motivators in terms of people telling me it’s not possible, or even people, any, if someone this week says, “Hey, no, I’m not going to have work for you, for Automox, I don’t think this is a good opportunity,” but that will motivate me.

[00:12:54] Two years later when we go public, you know, whatever happens, you never know, but when there’s a successful outcome, things like that can motivate me too. But my parents and them saying, “Oh, you’re crazy,” maybe I was, but what I did was, for the entire summer we, 

[00:13:09] the first week was training, so we went to, uh, east Tennessee, the northern, northeast part of Tennessee, we went for a week-long training in a hotel, 

[00:13:18] they teach you everything from your script, how to, uh, how to demo, how to overcome objections, things like that, basic for door-to-door sales, and then, so you have the training for week, and then what they do is they point you and one or two other people to a county in, I think the first summer 

[00:13:41] it was Tennessee and then North Carolina my last two summers, they push to a county in central Tennessee and say, “This is where you’re going.

[00:13:51] This is your territory and we’ll see you every Sunday.” We had a meeting, everyone got together in Nashville, Tennessee. So, what you have to do is you go into a place you’ve never been before, 

[00:14:03] you kind of a parachuting in, so they’re dropping you, well, I have maybe a couple hundred bucks to start my business and uh, you have to manage your own business for the 

[00:14:13] summer and that business was selling educational books, storybooks, school books, things like that. 

[00:14:20] It originally started through a group called “Thomas Nelson Publishers” out of in Tennessee. The job is you’re set, you’re doing 20 demos a day to families, hopefully in their kitchen or living room and you’re selling books 

[00:14:31] Marc Gonyea: Door-to-door. 

[00:14:32] Mike Mishler: Door-to-door. So, but first, before you do that, you have to find a place to live. 

[00:14:35] Marc Gonyea: Yes. 

[00:14:36] I remember this, Mike told me. 

[00:14:38] Chris Corcoran: Yeah. 

[00:14:38] Marc Gonyea: Out door-to-door, two summers, but you know, in zip code 20 minutes from my house, and I remember you tell me about this and I was floored because I hadn’t heard about this yet.

[00:14:48] Mike Mishler: You probably thought I was crazy too, like my parents. 

[00:14:51] Marc Gonyea: I don’t think you were 

[00:14:51] crazy 

[00:14:52] because I had done, like, a double-A-ball version you do in the big leagues. I did, like, double-A ball, it’s still a lot to go door-to-door on weekends and stuff like that, but, like, you’re in the big leagues. 

[00:15:01] Mike Mishler: No, I roll up into town and they’re giving you tips, they give you some tips, of course, of how to find a place to stay, but I’m at McDonald’s, I’m at the bank. 

[00:15:09] Marc Gonyea: Just to be clear, real quick. You don’t have a place to live? 

[00:15:14] Chris Corcoran: Homeless. 

[00:15:14] Marc Gonyea: This is like, they say, “Go to this county in the middle of Tennessee.” 

[00:15:18] Chris Corcoran: Belt-bottle Tennessee. 

[00:15:19] Marc Gonyea: With a couple of bucks, they don’t give you money, right?

[00:15:23] Mike Mishler: No money. 

[00:15:23] Marc Gonyea: They’ll give you. 

[00:15:24] Mike Mishler: It’s your own money. 

[00:15:25] Marc Gonyea: It’s your own money. 

[00:15:25] Mike Mishler: You start your business with you, keep track of all your expenses and everything you take in, every Sunday you fill out your expense report, things like that.

[00:15:33] Marc Gonyea: And they’re like, “Find a place to live.” 

[00:15:35] Mike Mishler: Find a place to live. I know nobody, I don’t even have a phone book to find a spot. So, what they coach you on is, hopefully you find a nice person,

[00:15:46] don’t look too sketch. Buy maybe a nice shirt or something. Oh no, but you’re asking around door-to-door, it’s all about referrals as well so you’re trying to find referrals, you’re going to community centers, things like that, where potentially people tend to be more willing to help others,

[00:16:06] so you ask around and if you don’t find a place your first night, you get a hotel. Most people, you get there on, say, Monday or Tuesday, you want to find a place to live that first week, that’s your main goal. Settling. Usually I could find it within two or three days. Okay. So, especially by summer three or four, that was pretty good but

[00:16:23] eventually you get a referral or you find a person, but if you don’t get a hotel for a few days or a week, but eventually someone opens up their home typically to you or a apartment outback, but usually it’s a spare room where they had kids that went off to 

[00:16:38] college or working and they have an extra space in their house.

[00:16:41] And, the next tactic you need to do is try to keep the prices though, so you try to negotiate it, hopefully you find someone that’s not too expensive, you usually pay them weekly or monthly rent, 

[00:16:53] where you can get it for free if you’re a really good salesperson. 

[00:16:56] Marc Gonyea: Do you ever get it for free? 

[00:16:57] Mike Mishler: I don’t think so.

[00:17:02] So, I did that my first summer, 20 demos a day, knocking on doors, dogs chasing you at sun, I’m thirsty, I’m out there driving around, the police are, police are coming after me because it looks suspicious. Yeah. All that, especially. I bet you learned a lot. Learn a ton. Is there a ton of skills?

[00:17:22] You learn a lot about yourself, you definitely have to, uh, push yourself a good bit. We’d have different books we’d 

[00:17:28] read, read throughout the summer, motivational books. I don’t have any quotes on me, but I’ll have to get back, maybe you have some, 

[00:17:34] but just try to keep yourself motivated,

[00:17:36] you’re out there by yourself, you’re not with anyone. Are you coming back to your roommates in the evening, but there’s a lot to learn, then each Sunday we would get together and learn something new 

[00:17:45] about sales. 

[00:17:46] So, that was a good experience during the summer. 

[00:17:48] Chris Corcoran: What did the job pay? What did it pay?

[00:17:51] Mike Mishler: It varied. Some people coming out of the summer. 

[00:17:54] Chris Corcoran: No, per hour? 

[00:17:55] Mike Mishler: Nothing, 

[00:17:57] Chris Corcoran: Nothing. 

[00:17:57] Marc Gonyea: Zilch. 

[00:17:58] Mike Mishler: Zilch. 

[00:17:59] Chris Corcoran: So, this was a hundred percent 

[00:18:00] Marc Gonyea: Unless you stole something. 

[00:18:01] Chris Corcoran: commission. In fact, it’s worse than a 100% commission because you had to pay rent. 

[00:18:05] Mike Mishler: Pay rent, pay gas, take car, food. 

[00:18:09] And that’s why you keep tracking your expenses, you can kind of see how you’re doing.

[00:18:12] Hopefully you’re bringing in a little more of that. 

[00:18:15] Chris Corcoran: Than it’s going out. 

[00:18:16] Mike Mishler: Than it’s going out, but you have to make a phone call to someone that can get you some cash. But it doesn’t pay, but if you usually have two sales, you make $6000, $7000, $8000 two sales a 

[00:18:28] day, three, you can get $10,000 to $12,000, $15,000+, so that’s kind of how you keep track of what you get to earn. Don’t pay anything, I was able to make some money, I don’t think I made too much at first, but I think after expenses were the $4,000, something like that. 

[00:18:43] Marc Gonyea: Pretty good. 

[00:18:44] Mike Mishler: But yeah, the good thing about that is you’re away, you’re not going to the movies, you’re not spending money every weekend like a lot of other people, but in school or between years. So, I’ve come back, I have a $4,000 check, so you’re a lot further ahead than people that are paycheck-to-paycheck. 

[00:19:03] So, I did that and, uh, It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done, my parents still thought I was crazy, my family, friends, the next summer comes around and have the opportunity to recruit a team, so. 

[00:19:14] Marc Gonyea: Here we go. 

[00:19:14] Mike Mishler: Here we go. 

[00:19:15] Chris Corcoran: Here we go. 

[00:19:15] Marc Gonyea: Sign me up again. Yeah. 

[00:19:18] Mike Mishler: Run into back. Parents still thought I was crazy, everyone thought I was crazy, “Why don’t you, uh, do something, get a normal job?”

[00:19:26] Chris Corcoran: Yeah. Yeah, get an internship. 

[00:19:28] Mike Mishler: Yeah, yeah. No, I thought about it, but the opportunity to recruit, that was appealing to me, helped lead, manage other people, I’ve always enjoyed that, and I think that’s where I, uh, discovered how passionate I am about having a team and having them be successful,

[00:19:45] so I’ve learned more through having a team then my own selling out there by myself. 

[00:19:50] Chris Corcoran: Why do you say that? 

[00:19:51] Mike Mishler: How you manage them, how you coach them through shit that comes their way out there, the dogs, the police, the sun, no one answering, not, not selling anything, being away from home, those are pretty challenging obstacles for some 

[00:20:05] people that may not be expecting 

[00:20:07] them or haven’t ever experienced them.

[00:20:09] So, it gives you plenty of opportunities to lead, I would lead 

[00:20:12] by example, similar to how I do it today and get in the trenches with them where you would go 

[00:20:17] out there for a day and coach them on and coach them on tactics, things like that, but it’s more about having that positive mindset and approach 

[00:20:27] that can get you through a lot more than figuring out how to wipe your feet on the, on the mat going into the house.

[00:20:33] So, I did the leadership role in that. 

[00:20:37] Marc Gonyea: Summer two. 

[00:20:38] Mike Mishler: Summer two, summer three and summer four. 

[00:20:39] Marc Gonyea: Okay. 

[00:20:40] Mike Mishler: So, I came back, I built a team that year, second year I came back and they build a team and then I continued building as well, so a little, a little pyramid scheme here we’ve got going on. 

[00:20:51] There you go. But no, just building my, uh, org, it was fun, it was motivating to me, I’ve always been a part of, enjoyed being a part of 

[00:21:01] growing, to be part of the growth phase of, of companies, 

[00:21:05] and there’s a lot I learned and you can make more money too. I made more money as the, as the team got bigger from there, your profits too. So, I did that and currently got my master’s degree because I wanted to do that another year and it was paid for, and I could do that as well, so get some good experience, get my masters paid for and doing the internship, but coming out of school, made it through my time at Liberty, had a few options of what to do next and, uh, coming to you all. 

[00:21:36] Chris Corcoran: Well, before 

[00:21:36] we move on to that, so I’m curious when you were selling door-to-door and what did you learn when you were leading a team of door-to-door salespeople?

[00:21:44] Mike Mishler: Yeah, I think when I was selling, I think it was share the tactics, some of those 

[00:21:49] are good, but I think it was more about myself, what motivates me. I think the value of having, having grit, how I would describe that is just working towards success, knowing obstacles or roadblocks will present themselves to 

[00:22:06] you, but you’re not letting them frustrate you or stop you from moving forward, when that first summer, when a police pulls you over and says, “Hey, you need to stop selling in this area,” because you 

[00:22:18] get into complaints or your tire goes flat or you get noes and you haven’t gotten into any house and it’s a hundred degrees outside. So, I think it’s more about myself and what motivates me and how to kind of motivate myself when it is hard and challenging, so probably more about myself that first year, 

[00:22:37] second year, how to lead, how to have a leading by example, having empathy for my team, I think the value of me spending time in their shoes as well, I’m not, 

[00:22:48] I’m not going to do anything I haven’t done myself. I can tell them that because I have gone out to a county, a city in central Tennessee where I didn’t know anyone, I found a spot to live,

[00:22:58] and I knocked on those same doors, not the same, well, some of them were knocked on by the same person. Yeah. I think that type of the separate leadership attributes about a team, about, I would say that 

[00:23:10] with leadership, having that consistent communication with your team, having timely and clear communication, clear feedback, I think some of that started at that point as well,

[00:23:22] and having fun, that team collaboration, I think, has allowed me multiple times to scale teams quickly, in a impactful manner where people enjoy working with me and amongst each other, because of that environment that I help foster, I mean, it’s on them too, but as a leader, you have to foster that collaborative working environment where I’ve seen, sure, some people will 

[00:23:45] leave, but in talking to people that have been a, a part of the teams I’ve been, they enjoy that and that was often one of the most memorable or most exciting times for them and most impactful, I would say. It was about to have an impact, right? Yeah. 

[00:24:03] Chris Corcoran: So then what brought you to to our footstep? 

[00:24:07] Mike Mishler: That’s a good question. I was on looking for jobs, probably finished up school in May, and I was looking for jobs,

[00:24:14] I started probably in November, I forget when I accepted an offer, but I was applying a little early on, say January, I was on my college website, we have a careers board, and I saw something about memoryBlue, a bunch of others had applied to too, but I was looking at business jobs, sales jobs, 

[00:24:32] mostly sales jobs, and applied to memoryBlue, as well as a few others, and interesting enough, they were all in Northern Virginia and DC area, going back to the big city, so 

[00:24:44] what I was aspiring for. 

[00:24:46] Chris Corcoran: Right, right.

[00:24:47] Mike Mishler: But I got, uh, reached out and I got a phone call from Tiana. 

[00:24:51] Marc Gonyea: TKO. 

[00:24:52] Chris Corcoran: Tiana Oletzke. 

[00:24:52] Marc Gonyea: Woohoo. 

[00:24:53] Mike Mishler: TKO opened the door, opened the door and that’s all you need 

[00:24:57] sometimes. 

[00:24:59] Marc Gonyea: This is in 2012? 

[00:25:01] Mike Mishler: I think so. 

[00:25:02] Marc Gonyea: Long time ago, 

[00:25:03] Mike Mishler: long time ago. 

[00:25:04] Marc Gonyea: 10 years ago.

[00:25:04] Chris Corcoran: 2012. 

[00:25:05] Mike Mishler: Yeah. 

[00:25:06] Chris Corcoran: So, you got a call from, from Tiana. 

[00:25:07] Mike Mishler: And, I was looking at for a few sales jobs, they’re all in, I think we had an assessment with let’s say, DISC assessment, and I don’t know how I did, but hopefully I. You passed. I passed. I mean, achievement, competitiveness, being in golf and sports, a lot of that is transferrable, but I eventually got an interview scheduled to come to your office in Northern Virginia, tyson’s coordinator was the first floor of that office on, I forget that road, 

[00:25:36] Chris Corcoran: Old Courthouse Road, 

[00:25:37] Mike Mishler: Old Courthouse Road, first 

[00:25:39] floor. First floor. 

[00:25:40] Chris Corcoran: There’s not many people that could see that. 

[00:25:41] Mike Mishler: Came into the left, I saw Jack Wagner 

[00:25:43] sitting at the desk. 

[00:25:44] Marc Gonyea: the Jack. 

[00:25:45] Chris Corcoran: Wow. 

[00:25:46] Marc Gonyea: Man, where’s that guy? Miss you, Jack. 

[00:25:48] Mike Mishler: Probably had a Andrew Bass walked by. 

[00:25:51] Marc Gonyea: Oh, the honeybadger. 

[00:25:52] Mike Mishler: Honeybadger.

[00:25:54] Marc Gonyea: Would he and, 

[00:25:57] would Gassman and Bassman share an 

[00:25:59] office then, or no? 

[00:26:00] Mike Mishler: I think Gassman has always been sharing an office with someone, checking on him and make sure he finds his own corner office. I had a couple of other interviews that day for different sales jobs in Tyson’s corner, and I interviewed with memoryBlue,

[00:26:15] you both, I’m not sure who else was there, and the opportunity for tech sales, for that foundational sales career was very motivating, the appeal of the culture, of the training, the training program, and having kind of that stepping stone for your tech sales career was all appealing, so 

[00:26:35] eventually decided to move forward. I was coming back, yeah, I was driving across Pennsylvania for something, going 

[00:26:40] into this, driving down the highway and there I see Tiana, who’s the number, and then there’s a big-ass tunnel in front of us which, slam on the brakes and stop so I can get this offer before I lose reception on my phone, picked it up and accepted the offer, so I think that was a few months before start date. 

[00:27:01] And then finishing up school, finished up my masters, almost had a little issue with my thesis but we managed to work through 30-page papers or not, or 50, I forget what it was, but it’s been not really my thing, but had to do it. 

[00:27:20] Marc Gonyea: To get the degree, right? 

[00:27:21] Mike Mishler: Got 

[00:27:21] the degree. 

[00:27:22] Marc Gonyea: Yeah, it’s all you needed. 

[00:27:24] Mike Mishler: Yeah. 

[00:27:24] Marc Gonyea: Changed your life. 

[00:27:25] Mike Mishler: Yeah, it did. So, I, uh, I packed up everything and I moved to, uh, Northern Virginia. I was in, uh, I think Deanna is where was the apartment I was with, with a couple other guys, but I started in, I think it was June 4th or right around that day, and first day I walked into the office I have, you put the new hires in the office back then. 

[00:27:48] Chris Corcoran: Oh yeah. Energy room. 

[00:27:50] Mike Mishler: I think we started that. Yeah. 

[00:27:53] I think it’s mostly Brittany, Brittany Bertolino and Taylor Pierce. 

[00:27:59] Marc Gonyea: TP. 

[00:28:00] Mike Mishler: TP, Brittany and I started that same day together, so we had a good squad. 

[00:28:05] Chris Corcoran: Great squad. 

[00:28:05] Marc Gonyea: Yeah, that’s good, that’s quality right there. Are you serious? 

[00:28:09] Chris Corcoran: Great squad. 

[00:28:10] Mike Mishler: It’s like a 2004 quarterback class.

[00:28:19] Chris Corcoran: That’s when we put all the new hires together so they could all learn from each other. 

[00:28:22] Marc Gonyea: Now, could kind of scared together. Be together, or highs and lows together, storytelling. 

[00:28:27] Pressure to make 

[00:28:28] it. 

[00:28:29] Chris Corcoran: Yeah. 

[00:28:29] Marc Gonyea: Right. 

[00:28:30] Mike Mishler: Yeah. But, uh, I got the speed pretty quickly, I think, the training, the onboarding, listening to some of the training recordings, some of the books, things like that, having a mentor like Andrew, Andrew was actually my mentor, 

[00:28:43] he was one of the most experienced then so he had a good approach, great work ethic, motivated to be successful, and I think some of that pushed me as well as other folks in the office, but being in that energy room helped as well. So, we were pretty competitive right off the bat, we’d have competitions amongst ourselves, well, mostly Brittany and I, Taylor, he didn’t get so many meetings,

[00:29:05] Brittany and I, we compete for meetings, compete for dials. 

[00:29:15] Marc Gonyea: I gotta tell ya, I gotta tell ya, so my first sales job, after the door-to-door and the undergrad and finances I was not going to use, people who are all a lot older than me. Yeah. And, I had an opportunity to work with younger people, but like, they weren’t the quality of the people that we hired,

[00:29:32] some of them were, like, some of them more, some of them were more that would have killed to have shared an office with Mishler and Pearson, Bertolino, like, competing and encouraging each other, like, I would have killed for that. Yeah. Would have been awesome. 

[00:29:45] Mike Mishler: Yeah. We ensured that came, and came up with competitions. Most mornings we do some who can get the most vows, who gets the next meeting, things like that, you’d hear each other’s phone conversations and learn from that, what they heard, overcoming objections, things like that. Brittany gets a meeting and, of course, I have to, then when Taylor got one, you gotta do something quick.

[00:30:04] I don’t want him to get past, Taylor, I love you, you’re doing great. So, I can say this. 

[00:30:10] Marc Gonyea: Yeah, you could Taylor has a good nature.. 

[00:30:12] Chris Corcoran: So, who’s your manager? 

[00:30:13] Mike Mishler: Who was my manager? Jack was my manager. 

[00:30:15] Chris Corcoran: Oh, Jack, okay. 

[00:30:16] Mike Mishler: I was on Logi Analytics at that point. Yeah. LogiXML it was. 

[00:30:23] Marc Gonyea: Did it change your name? Yeah. Yeah. 

[00:30:25] Mike Mishler: PPM client.

[00:30:26] Marc Gonyea: There you go. 

[00:30:27] Chris Corcoran: That’s perfect. 

[00:30:28] Marc Gonyea: One of the faves. 

[00:30:28] Mike Mishler: ” Welcome to town, here’s your PPM.”

[00:30:34] No, I didn’t know what PPM, Chris, you showed me an Excel sheet of what you can do to make money, I’m, “Okay.” This is what you get when you, 20, it goes back to the door-to-door sales, you sell 3, 3 books, you get this, okay, I’m going to get 20 meetings a month. 

[00:30:50] Marc Gonyea: Mish, we have a PPM got making over 

[00:30:52] 200K a year. Yeah. And, the company, hopefully. Mishler, what’s his name?

[00:30:57] Mike Mishler: Hopefully he’s a rising star. Logi Analytics, let’s go with that, that name for that. PPM, there’s, I think, me and, um, Skip, who else was on that one? I forget who else?

[00:31:12] Marc Gonyea: Skip. 

[00:31:15] Mike Mishler: He and I going at it. PPM. It was kind of a cool, you got this, Skip and Andrew and some of those folks that were around, they’ve done well with our clients. And, uh, I’m coming in, didn’t know anything, I’m just trying to get after it, so it was a DHR that was either on the computer, you’d refresh it each morning or something,

[00:31:35] see everyone’s activity. Yeah. So, I would try to come in at 7, 7:30 and 

[00:31:41] mate, this comes back to the work ethic and importance of it in sales, trying to make 10, 15, 20 dials so that one, you’re ahead of everyone else and you don’t have to worry about as much about anyone else keeping up with you during the day, to try to set myself apart early in the day and focus on just good outcomes of setting up meetings and next steps for logi. That first month that did pretty well, and I think may have been surprising to a few folks like Skip, too. 

[00:32:10] Marc Gonyea: Well, you had this wonderful door-to-door 

[00:32:12] game what you’re bringing in, right?

[00:32:14] Mike Mishler: Yeah, I had good numbers, I had some sales skills learned, I would say tone on the phone 

[00:32:20] of some people in sales tend to speak very fast, usually a little slower in speaking, not in thought, and I think some of that translated well and just my motivation and drive to be successful. Coming out of school, I wanted to do well, I, I saw the opportunity in front of me and I, I’ve seen what other people every, at memoryBlue every couple of weeks and a couple of months you’re seeing people elevated internally and to customers, to clients, so the doors there, you just have to make that impact and 

[00:32:49] value and the opportunities will present themselves. So, having a consistent approach like that, having that, being in that energy room, having that competitive nature amongst your peers, showing up a few minutes early, making those calls, separating yourself,

[00:33:02] I think all that set me up pretty well to be elevated to a senior sDR after, I think, seven months. I started in June, I think I missed it in December, I would tell my seven-month mark, but not bad. 

[00:33:17] Chris Corcoran: Were you always on the PPMs? 

[00:33:19] Mike Mishler: PPM. I was on there for a number of months, maybe four or five months, at least.

[00:33:24] I went to, uh, Alliance Solutions along with. Steven German? No, that was Harold. Okay, that was with the Alliance, Hell yeah. 

[00:33:36] Marc Gonyea: My guess with curveballs. 

[00:33:39] Mike Mishler: And, Hitachi, I think it was on Alliancewith Hitachi. I was on it, and Hitachi pretty quickly after that, another PPM, but they saw the opportunity in, or how I did with Logi and wanted me to make an impact with Hitachi as well. That was one of the harder clients. 

[00:33:53] Chris Corcoran: Yes. 

[00:33:54] Mike Mishler: But you could, it was good for the business, so having some strong performers that could do well. But both of those I had, uh, I was the only one on the Alliance, I think, so that gave me the opportunity to take ownership of that account with the outcomes, with the meetings, with the client engagement, with the weekly meetings, weekly reporting, so that helped in terms of moving to a leadership role later on as well. 

[00:34:19] Marc Gonyea: Mishler’s leaving out 

[00:34:20] to, like, Mish, like, go, I’m sort of going to keep going with this impactful theme, you’re, like you said, you’re a guy who works hard, but you’re a fun guy to work with, like, you bring some culture and you bring your own point of view on things and, you know, you like to do stuff, you go on to sports games or traveling, you’re out and about, and people want to work with folks like that.

[00:34:39] So, I remember that being like, “Who’s this guy from Pennsylvania with his master’s degree?” Not that did that, one of our early clients, one of Chris’s sales managers did that, selling door-to-door stuff, the books, and I think it might’ve been the same with the competitor, different one, yeah, and I was like, “Those guys, you have some talent doing that,” but I definitely remember you standing out back in the early days.

[00:35:01] Mike Mishler: I think I became a mentor after senior SDR. 

[00:35:06] Marc Gonyea: Who, do you remember who?

[00:35:08] Mike Mishler: I forget. 

[00:35:08] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. That’s all right. 

[00:35:10] Mike Mishler: Hopefully, hopefully they’re, they’re well.

[00:35:17] Marc Gonyea: All right. And then how did the DM thing pop up? 

[00:35:20] Mike Mishler: It popped up, I think it was always following Nimit’s lead for a few years there, so 

[00:35:25] he was someone that I was trying to keep up with, 

[00:35:27] I think it was a, some ideas for my career, so I was senior SDR, that was one of the potential next steps in terms of one of your clients could hire you.

[00:35:39] My boy, Harold, him and one other guy, Carl, running that, might get hired there, but it’s a little different culture at memoryBlue. 

[00:35:51] Marc Gonyea: Yeah, we’re not going to go there, that was, we were not going to go there. Just back to Harold and Carl had a great business, this was ready for you to, career, one guy was 

[00:36:00] a career-fed guy. 

[00:36:02] Mike Mishler: But now I’ve always been, I did the books for four years,

[00:36:07] so I’m fairly, I don’t know if it’s loyal. 

[00:36:10] Marc Gonyea: You’re loyal. 

[00:36:12] Absolutely, loyal. 

[00:36:13] You know, as long as it’s 

[00:36:14] in return. 

[00:36:14] Mike Mishler: Yeah. As long as it makes sense. I mean, but aside from that, it makes sense, it’s a logical next step going into management, I, I’ve always enjoyed it, I love having teams and people and, and helping them be successful

[00:36:27] and so the opportunity presented itself and you all presented me with the opportunity and I jumped at it and haven’t looked back since. 

[00:36:35] Chris Corcoran: So, you became a manager? 

[00:36:38] Mike Mishler: Yes. 

[00:36:39] Chris Corcoran: And then how did you build your team? 

[00:36:41] Mike Mishler: Yeah, that’s a good question. I’ve always done it fast, I would say. 

[00:36:44] Yeah, I would, no, it’s a lot. 

[00:36:46] Chris Corcoran: We talk about it all the time, Mike, about how your super power is building teams fast, and you, for whatever reason, you’ve always been the person who’s been able to identify the secrets, at least our business, it can be more about, like, outside of memoryBlue that we knew for sure is building a team. But a good team. And, a strong team,

[00:37:06] and you, you’ve always thought about, like, team building, build the team, scale scale, scale, scale. 

[00:37:12] Mike Mishler: Yeah, I’ve done it three times since leaving memoryBlue and what I learned at memoryBlue helped, was a hundred percent transferrable. Even some of the people. Oh, yeah. Well, my people. 

[00:37:23] Marc Gonyea: Definitely some of the people. 

[00:37:26] That’s probably what you want.

[00:37:27] Mike Mishler: Yeah. 

[00:37:28] Chris Corcoran: All the, most of the other managers were focusing on other areas and you were always saying, “You know what? If someone’s good, I’m going to hire them and I’ll figure out a place on the team,” versus other people were more worried about, “Eh, I don’t know if we’ve got enough work.” It’s a, talk about that philosophy,

[00:37:43] maybe you learn that through building your team. 

[00:37:45] Mike Mishler: Yeah, I think recruiting people, having team members under me before, where some of the other managers, if they’re coming from an sDR role, they may not have as much leadership experience. I think given, getting my MBA and be a TA and I think helped in working with other people in that group as well, but I would say just my approach to it in terms of building, identifying strong talent, I think leaning in to the recruiting interviewing process myself, I think, I mean, some of it, I’m not sure too, I, some of these people how they got on my team, like, I know one of my first reps, like, Abby, Abigail Lacy. 

[00:38:24] Marc Gonyea: Abigail Lacy. She’s a legend. 

[00:38:27] Mike Mishler: I think you, you, that was early on, I think you, you two helped with that one in terms 

[00:38:31] of recruiting, but how I came from, uh, being a DM to, I think at one point I had maybe 15, 18 people over there at Boone, how I got to that point, I would say leaning in that motivation to be successful, and what success looked like to me at memoryBlue at that time was building a big team

[00:38:49] and that probably tied back to my comp plan, where if another spreadsheet with numbers on it, if you have a bigger team and you have more clients, or you have more people get hired up by clients, you make more money, so that was one motivator. But leaning in, I’d say identifying top talent, I’d say my ability to think a couple of steps ahead, where you have a plan, you have a couple of plans and a backup plan for everything

[00:39:13] and if shit hits the fan you can figure out something else in terms of way to align people, so I’m screening people at anytime I find some, someone, I think, early on too I was trying to recruit and hire people out of school and sign them, six months ago I was putting in, I think we had a waiver wire. 

[00:39:29] Chris Corcoran: Still do.

[00:39:30] Mike Mishler: We still do. Yeah. I’d like to see that.

[00:39:32] Marc Gonyea: The waiver, wire, by the way, we had the original wire from when you were around, it was living on because it’s critical, right? It’s like one of those little, yeah. And again, actually. 

[00:39:49] Mike Mishler: Just like those hustle letters, what else? 

[00:39:52] Marc Gonyea: We’ll get to that. But then it got deleted one day. I was so distraught. I was so distraught.

[00:39:57] So, we have a new one now, but the original one, it was like the tree or whatever. 

[00:40:01] Chris Corcoran: Tell the listeners what the waiver wire is. 

[00:40:03] Mike Mishler: The waiver wire, we had, I think we had, we started with one waiver wire, but I think we evolved to a couple of, we had a waiver wire for talent, so as we do team interviews and we want to make sure it’s fair,

[00:40:16] so if you have a couple of managers, whoever’s topping the line for the waiver wire, you could put in a claim, you could have that candidate, same for clients, for clients as well. So, so being able to navigate both those waiver wires, loved 

[00:40:28] it.

[00:40:29] Chris Corcoran: Well, so hold on. This is the science so Mike Mishler comes into play.

[00:40:33] There was a secondary market that got created, where you could train for waiver spots. This is where you cleaned up. This is where you 

[00:40:41] cleaned up. 

[00:40:42] Mike Mishler: Ben Decowski, Leigh-Ryan, love you all. No, it was good. You helped me. 

[00:40:49] Chris Corcoran: No, those are good people. 

[00:40:51] Mike Mishler: I loved working with y’all. No, but being able to, uh, I’d say again, plan a few steps ahead,

[00:40:57] not worry about the business, understand if you have the people, you have the opportunity to be more successful, and if I believe in myself as a leader, I can have them work on PPM for a couple of weeks or whatever it may be. Right. So, positioning myself where, okay, this DM has extra people, resources available,

[00:41:19] I’m going to scoop them up, I’m going to bring them on my squad. Yeah. And, okay, I don’t have business, but business comes in now that DM doesn’t have any talent.

[00:41:31] Marc Gonyea: It was classic.

[00:41:39] Mike Mishler: But no, that actually happens in real time, so. 

[00:41:42] Marc Gonyea: No, I know, Mike, we were fucking there, dude, you remember? 

[00:41:45] And, the 

[00:41:46] best part about it was we were hiring some good people, but you have some strong people, we don’t hit home runs all the time, right? In our business and hiring people, you can can’t hit home runs a lot, and it can make a huge difference because you get one of those, two of those people on work, they still have clients, like, “Can I have a little bit more?”

[00:42:04] Mike Mishler: Yeah. 

[00:42:04] I mean, you’re not going to have a home run for everyone, you don’t have to, especially being in leadership, but if you have contributors across the board, I was thinking about the office 

[00:42:14] here in California, we could touch on a little bit more at some point, but 

[00:42:18] I mean, you have people like Connor or James on Carbon,

[00:42:24] you have those guys going over every day, every week, at least onsite, you can count on them, they have the aptitude and competence to be successful and that helps you scale a lot quicker if you could do that out here with MobileIron, I think Andy was in here on the podcast, Kaitlyn Garish was on a number of weeks ago, Jeanne, Justin, Henry, Anton, and Tanya, having those folks and being able to recruit and hire people and aligning them, that makes your job a lot easier in terms of management of clients and expectations and results. And, same thing for the being on the East Coast,

[00:43:02] before I moved out here, 

[00:43:03] just trying to identify that top talent, 

[00:43:05] so I think I did a good job in the recruiting process and claiming people off the wires and clients, but I would say what was even more impactful was making traits for people. 

[00:43:20] Chris Corcoran: Billy Bean. 

[00:43:22] Mike Mishler: Billy Bean. 

[00:43:23] Chris Corcoran: Money Ball. So, one of the things I’ve noticed is that you were always able to build this team,

[00:43:29] you used to always have disproportionate amount of females in a good way, disproportionate amount of minorities in a good way, how are you able to do 

[00:43:38] that? 

[00:43:38] Mike Mishler: Yeah, I mean, people like Abby, having someone like her on the team early on, being 

[00:43:43] intentional about the diversity on your team, that’s always been important.

[00:43:48] Looking for opportunities to lean into the hiring process like Julianne. Julianne.

[00:43:55] Was on, Julianne Sweat was on me, Ryan’s team, I think this came back to the waiver wire as well. 

[00:44:01] Marc Gonyea: Of course it did.

[00:44:02] Mike Mishler: Been a trade for Julianne, I think in my mind. 

[00:44:03] Chris Corcoran: Julianne was on the trading block?

[00:44:05] Mike Mishler: Her client left and I was able to scoop her up and put her on the touch. 

[00:44:12] Marc Gonyea: Julianne, you know, played softball on college, got to go to college for three years, little bad-ass right?

[00:44:19] Good what she does. You find a home for those people, Tommy, it doesn’t matter if you have openings or not. 

[00:44:24] Chris Corcoran: You make openings, right? 

[00:44:25] Mike Mishler: Make openings. Sarah Welch, uh, in Virginia, just, I mean, looking for the skills and traits in folks, but being very intentional about who’s on your team, do you want all white males from Chico? No, you don’t. That’s not the best for, as a leader, who wants, that’s not the best approach, as well as for outcomes, and I look at, what we did at one of my previous companies, Evident.io, when we were acquired, we, from Palo Alto networks, we kept the top half of performers, they were all non-white males, so I think we had four women, we had Caleb Mills and, akil, Akil was not memoryBlue, but he’s from UCLA, so good squad and the team has performed well and I think they liked that collaboration, they liked sharing that work, working environment of having people with, all from the same, same school, same background, South Central PA. 

[00:45:23] Marc Gonyea: Yeah, don’t get me wrong,

[00:45:25] we’re not saying white guys and Chico are bad or bad employees, but, like, there’s something to be said for having a team of people from different backgrounds in different perspectives who, because the qualification, would want to get after it. Yeah. Because in our line of work it does not inbound city, right?

[00:45:45] And, even you, you departed, you couldn’t be in a multiple, and we could have a better person besides, who became for you and the folks who came after you is people who go and opens offices, you moving out there, we haven’t gotten to that yet, it’s very unique. But, like, what you’ve done since you left is very impressive,

[00:46:01] and Chris and I have been in the sales development game for awhile, you are best at building these teams quickly and efficiently, with, with top performers, no matter what color or creed planet they’re from, nobody cares, right? But mixing it all up, it makes everyone better. 

[00:46:16] Mike Mishler: Yeah. Yeah, for sure. So, having, I would say always, always being, always recruiting, always interviewing, always wanting to build as well, so I think sometimes managers and leaders are focused on what’s in front of them today or this week, and they’re not thinking a month, two, three months ahead of the time or the summer grads that are coming up, so being able to plan ahead, claim those college grads four or five, six months ago off the wires and have them aligned to you, making those trades for people like Julianne or having Abby, given the mix on your team, I think Sadie. 

[00:46:54] Marc Gonyea: Sadie. 

[00:46:54] Mike Mishler: I think you made a little. 

[00:46:56] Marc Gonyea: Those are my favorites. 

[00:46:57] Mike Mishler: Sometimes you’d change your clients, no, I don’t think you change clients, I think it was just people. 

[00:47:03] Chris Corcoran: Yeah. 

[00:47:03] Marc Gonyea: A few of us do that. I’ve 

[00:47:04] never tried to regulate the wire at first, and then I was like, “I’m out of this thing.” 

[00:47:07] Oh. 

[00:47:08] Mike Mishler: I was the commissioner. 

[00:47:10] Marc Gonyea: The market managed itself. 

[00:47:13] Mike Mishler: Look how that turned out. 

[00:47:15] Chris Corcoran: Yes. Yes. Eddie is another one. So, in addition to building these teams, like, this, I think that your superpower is building teams of high-caliber talent who are you good at it, good culture, great culture, which is where I’m going with this whole thing is you ran some incentives that would really move the needle and get people fired up.

[00:47:33] Mike Mishler: Yeah, I was looking down on some, uh, Instagram or Facebook photos from, and it seems like at every team photo people were pulling up numbers of attainment or something, it was a baseball game tied to hitting a number by a certain day or a competition with a winning, this team against this team and whoever won got to go,

[00:47:52] and I’ve always enjoyed competitions, I’ve always enjoyed incentivizing team members. I think in sales you can find the right people that are motivated and driven and you don’t have to always hold that carrot in front of them, but it’s more fun, it makes it more fun, seeing that competitive drive in folks as well,

[00:48:10] so. We would have different competitions, we’d have it amongst other DMs, other managers in the offices, we would set up, incentivize, I try to alternate between a individual competitions and a team competition, so try to switch it out every month or every quarter where you’re doing something different, some more near term time-bound, maybe on activity metrics, like, right now with my teamwork, January is our end of the year and end of the month,

[00:48:35] but earlier in the month, trying to drive activity metrics or scheduled meetings and then switching to a completed meetings and then switching it to a team where you’re paired up with other people. Sometimes people can sit off in the sidelines with some of these individual competitions, but when you’re paired up with other people or other folks, it motivates them,

[00:48:54] they don’t want to let other people down, they can let themselves down, but they don’t want to let others down, so trying to find opportunities like that, and again, making it fun. I mean, these, that’s part of the memoryBlue culture and I think I tried to instill that in my team where we’re going to work hard, but we’re going to have a good time as well,

[00:49:09] but yeah, it typically is driven to outcomes, but if it’s not, I would say the collaboration and how much they enjoy working with each other, even if it’s just going to a baseball game or something like that, I think that motivates them that much more that next day, that next week, if you develop deeper relationships with your coworkers. 

[00:49:33] Marc Gonyea: Mike, we’ve got guys and gals from this office who, people were getting married, people who were into this weddings. 

[00:49:40] Mike Mishler: Brandon, Austin? 

[00:49:42] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. Right.

[00:49:42] Babies coming out of memoryBlue, lifelong friends, like, we’re making people helping people, 

[00:49:49] moving on. 

[00:49:49] Mike Mishler: Trying to figure out where this is going, with the babies. 

[00:49:52] Marc Gonyea: But, you know, which is the culture. 

[00:49:54] Mike Mishler: Yeah, no, it’s a good, it’s a fun time, but if it goes back to, I mean, people wanting to 

[00:50:00] be successful, have those foundational skills and foundational relationships, that’s probably one of my, the biggest takeaways from memoryBlue. I mean, you’re going to, in tech sales you’re going to have the opportunity to make a lot of money, get a lot of promotions and become a senior SDR manager, get hired out by client, get promoted there,

[00:50:17] but you can remember that the people that you go on that journey with and the experiences along the way, so trying to create those meaningful experiences with each other, like you all do with a, was it the tops trip? 

[00:50:30] Marc Gonyea: We did that when you were here. I wish we did that when you were here. Yeah, we do it twice a year.

[00:50:35] Mike Mishler: Not the only one. 

[00:50:36] Chris Corcoran: Yeah. 

[00:50:36] Marc Gonyea: No, Mike, no, it was great. 

[00:50:38] Mike Mishler: We’re going to Mexico next, next month. 

[00:50:40] Chris Corcoran: That’s great.

[00:50:41] Mike Mishler: Maybe we’ll see you there. 

[00:50:42] Marc Gonyea: Where are you going? 

[00:50:43] Mike Mishler: Cabo 

[00:50:44] Marc Gonyea: Cabo. Nice. 

[00:50:45] Chris Corcoran: There you go.

[00:50:45] Marc Gonyea: Let me ask you a question. So, we have a lot to cover, but 

[00:50:48] how are you handling, or what’s your meaning long-term plan for handling COVID with people in the office, or maybe you’ve got more experienced people now it’s not as big of a deal, but the shared experience of being in the energy room or being on the floor, that’s basically what you just said that you probably don’t want to say that, are you hearing the person?

[00:51:05] Yeah, you know, we went through it too, we went home March 13th to flatten the curve for two weeks. Yeah. 

[00:51:12] Chris Corcoran: Two years to flatten the curve? 

[00:51:13] Marc Gonyea: Two years to flatten the curve. Some of these will be fixed, but anyways, then we were back in the office in June, half on, he put only half on half, it, after I was at home, you lose that

[00:51:22] and then, like, this thing, now we could pull it past it, right? But, like, what’s your take on that? ‘Cause that’s being lost, driving around Silicon Valley from the airport. 

[00:51:31] Mike Mishler: There’s no traffic. 

[00:51:33] Marc Gonyea: No traffic. 

[00:51:33] Mike Mishler: Love it. 

[00:51:33] Marc Gonyea: Parking lots are empty, nobody’s in the offices, and we get lots of calls from clients where like, “Hey, my people are at home.

[00:51:39] They’re not doing as much as they should be.” 

[00:51:40] Mike Mishler: Yeah. Yeah. 

[00:51:41] Well, the good thing for me, I was going back to some of these, but I was at StackRox and our team was distributed across the US, I had someone in Idaho, someone in Northern Michigan, someone in Texas, someone in Florida, and they all came from diverse backgrounds as well.

[00:51:59] Marc Gonyea: You’ve been talking about Red Eye company? 

[00:52:01] Acquired them?

[00:52:02] Mike Mishler: Yeah. So, we had a distributed team before, so I would focus on few things, one is the leader making sure you lean into your one-on-ones and having consistent one-on-ones, that’s the one issue that can come up if you have a team of 15 to 18, sometimes you get away from that one-on-one.

[00:52:17] Yeah. 21. I’ve been intentional of making sure you commit to consistent one-on-ones each week with, with your team. I want you to start pushing those off, choose you don’t care about them, or you’re not invested in that growth, so making sure you’re 

[00:52:31] investing the time and your team, making sure you have a team huddles on Zoom, it’s not the same, but at least having those huddles, having team competitions as well, it can be an experience where they may do something on their own with their family or friends or they do something together on Zoom,

[00:52:47] we’ve done wine tastings, we’ve done Happy Hours, so there’s a good amount you can do remotely, but I think. 

[00:52:53] Marc Gonyea: What about the learning? 

[00:52:54] Mike Mishler: As a leap. About what? 

[00:52:55] Marc Gonyea: The learning. 

[00:52:56] And, that on the floor, maybe you can’t replicate it. 

[00:52:58] I don’t know. 

[00:52:59] Mike Mishler: We have Thursday training every Thursday, 8 to 9, our sales enablement,

[00:53:06] that is one area I’m looking to lean in towards this year, 

[00:53:10] so for Automox, for our team here, we have 33 outbound BDRs, we have 5 inbound SDRs and a number of managers and leaders. 

[00:53:22] I’m looking for opportunities to have more of that team collaboration, 

[00:53:25] so what we’re doing, one, the whole company is going to Mexico in February, in March,

[00:53:30] the whole team is invited to Chicago for that AIP Summit, so they’re learning, I think you all sponsor that, helped with that as well, but great opportunity to collaborate, get to know each other. 

[00:53:43] Marc Gonyea: Do you bring the whole team to that? 

[00:53:45] Mike Mishler: Yeah, for us, if you travel, you need to be vaccinated, but other than that you’re good to go

[00:53:50] so most of them will be attending. Yeah. That in 

[00:53:53] Chicago and then everyone at Automox works remotely so we have them, they can work anywhere in the US, but we do offer, WeWork space so they can use that whenever they want, so it’s okay. The first Friday of every month we’ll have everyone in the Bay area come to the office in San Jose once a month.

[00:54:15] So, it’s not as frequent, but still having that, and then we’ll go to happy hour doing that Topgolf event, but having regional events, so we have it planned where some of the senior leaders as well will show up in Boston, a couple of the leaders go to the WeWork space in Boston, in April, and then have a Red Sox game after that,

[00:54:34] and then go down to DC, hit up everyone in Northern Virginia. Meanwhile, they can do, do this team collaboration that we work every week or every couple of weeks, but having some, I don’t think it has to be all the time, but I think all the time you should have something that they can see, that’s tangible, that they’re working towards, even if it’s 12 months out, hopefully it’s not 12 months, but a Cabo trip in February or

[00:54:58] we are working at a baseball game in May as the next, having something always next, I think, can be pretty motivating and announcing that, something to work towards. And, what do you think is going to happen in the future? 

[00:55:10] Marc Gonyea: Do you get to go back? Do you think it’ll stay like this? I think it would go back to kind of more traditional office.

[00:55:17] Mike Mishler: Well, 

[00:56:15] hopefully we’ve had 90% of California vaccinated, so 

[00:56:18] hopefully these California, we can, yeah, we can 

[00:56:20] open up. But no, I think it will be probably a hybrid for most companies. Yeah. But I mean, there is value in being in the office and especially as a rep you’re, can be a disadvantage because you can’t show your impact,

[00:56:34] you’re not walking, the CRO is not walking by your desk and seeing you make the aisles at 7:00 AM, they’re not seeing you dressed up nice or how they could trust you or how competent you are in front of the client, they won’t see that unless you’re on Zoom and you have good lighting in your background,

[00:56:48] you have maybe one of those ring lights in front of you and yeah. That’s how you make 

[00:56:52] an impact now but, and sorry, I’d say we’re going to 

[00:56:55] miss that, but yeah. 

[00:56:56] We’ll see what happens. 

[00:56:57] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. Sorry to go off course a little bit. 

[00:56:59] Chris Corcoran: So, Mike this is a 

[00:57:00] very timely topic that you’ve been in, living well, winning on the recruiting trail, right?

[00:57:06] You’re able to get talent, magnetized talent to come in, to join your team in a very challenging war for talent. Share with listeners kind of what you do to win on a very competitive recruiting trail. 

[00:57:20] Mike Mishler: Yeah. Yeah. I should have more conversations with the folks on my team too to get their feedback.

[00:57:26] I would say leaning in, as a leader, I would say my, how I would describe it probably is, I don’t know if this resonates on a initial Zoom interview, but my approach to a probably servant leadership, the first time I heard someone 

[00:57:41] in sales development talk about that was, Ralph, Ralph Barsi, out here at ASP event, and just his 

[00:57:47] approach to leadership and how intentional he is with, I would say having a inverted org chart where you are very intentional with helping to create an environment for success for the BDRs, for every BDR,

[00:58:00] and you’re here to help them be successful and help create environment. Sure they have to work hard and do the little things to be successful but having that intentional focus on your team, I think, 

[00:58:11] will resonate probably by some of the questions by your proven track record, some of those things.

[00:58:17] So, I would say I am more, I’m more excited about someone 

[00:58:23] on my team getting elevated than myself. 

[00:58:26] A couple months ago, I think we announced Erin Conley was getting promoted, I sent you and her a text, I’ve been on Zoom, I mean, that’s more satisfying to me, especially at this point, then my own.

[00:58:38] Sure, I want to continue doing well and have, have that impact and make good money and, but seeing someone get, from your team, get to that next step in their career, and not only get to that next step, but do well, very well, that is what success looks like for me. 

[00:58:56] And, I think in how you’re communicating, 

[00:58:59] how you finding out with

[00:59:00] prospects what makes them tick, what motivates them early on in the interview and, and making sure you, you keep that in mind throughout the interview process and throughout their entire time on your team. I would say in this market too, it’s very competitive, but again, leaning into that interview process, trying to hire quickly,

[00:59:17] but I have, I think about 34, 34 candidates in process right now for BDR roles, so it’s always recruiting, always interviewing, always hiring. So, we’ve grown our current team from, from when I started in March, it was at 2 and it’ll be right around 40 next month, so going from 2 to 40.

[00:59:39] Wow. Not quite as well as you’ve done in Colorado or Seattle or here with 60, 70. 

[00:59:46] Marc Gonyea: 71. 

[00:59:46] Mike Mishler: Just trying to keep up with you, trying to keep 

[00:59:48] up. So, leaning into that process, having a good candidate pipeline. I think my approach to servant leadership, to diversity and inclusion as well, how I’ve done well with that is, one, just being intentional with it,

[01:00:01] I can in my hires, I think, some of the partnerships as well, partnering with memoryBlue after I left in terms of recruiting, partnering with us in technology, Kendrick and Timmy, and some of those guys, and SV Academy, the new hire folks from diverse and underprivileged backgrounds and the first to go through school and some families and things like that so they partner with organizations like that. So, I think leaning into that, having some partners, being intentional and not 

[01:00:32] single -minded on what type of candidate you’re going to hire. 

[01:00:36] Chris Corcoran: So, Mike, that’s great. You have access to all these diverse pools of talent, what I’m seeing is if you have these SDRs that someone wants to hire you’re going to be in a dog fight because there’s going to be other companies that are going to want to hire that same person.

[01:00:49] How are you winning that candidate? 

[01:00:51] Mike Mishler: Yeah. I think people like money. Yeah. But I, at Evident, Evident.io when I left memoryBlue, we did not pay as competitivily as we do now, but I think both times that culture, 

[01:01:04] people come to work on my teams for the culture, 

[01:01:08] for the strong leadership, for 

[01:01:10] the opportunity 

[01:01:12] to have those foundational skillsets developed and have that upside for them in their personal career, but also the company that they’re with.

[01:01:20] So, trying to align yourself with, memoryBlue has been the fastest growing company for how many years? Nine. Nine? In a row? Yeah. Love it. So, being a part of high-growth companies where people see the upside, I think that helps you, but it still comes down to making sure you have a leader that is willing to put in the effort and energy and their passion,

[01:01:44] and they’re more satisfied for again, seeing, seeing Erin get elevated, 

[01:01:49] and celebrating that, and pointing to that, hopefully you don’t have to, 

[01:01:53] Marc Gonyea: you have to. But people notice. They should see and they hear, the word gets out, the word’s out. Word’s out big time on working for you, and Taylor was just in here doing her podcast,

[01:02:03] she was talking about how she’s, I mean, she would have been successful in most places, right? But she was able to work with you and do her thing and kind of get where she wanted to go, and this is not just her, there are other people like that. Word spreads. 

[01:02:16] Mike Mishler: No, I’ve done well in recruiting new talent, but I think I’ve done even a better job of people that already know me, or know of me, saying, could be set up memoryBlue and making waiver train, trades, or in moving out to California, having 4, or 5, 6 people come out with me there. You can talk about that.

[01:02:37] Having people now coming through a memoryBlues Rising Stars program, I mean, it’s funny, I was talking to our CRO, Jeff St. Claire, he was describing what he’s looking for and he’s like describing 

[01:02:48] this program, like, he’s like, “I’m looking for these rising stars.” I’m 

[01:02:52] like, “That’s what this is called.” How convenient.

[01:02:56] So, that was easy to sell him on that, and he was a BDR as well, so I think having leaders around you would like that, that have empathy for the role, but also understand the impact they can make as a BDR, so it’s not just me as a leader, but other folks reinforcing that, where he can lean and say, “Hey, we’re looking for you to make an impact this month, this quarter, this year as a BDR, but I’m not hiring you as a BDR,

[01:03:19] I’m looking for that rising star talent where you can be an AE, 

[01:03:22] so you are competent enough to be customer-facing, or that’s in the near term, you can work towards that, but we’re not hiring BDRs, we’re hiring AEs leaders. 

[01:03:31] Marc Gonyea: I had a conversation with Erin, I would been, we’re missing her, responsible,

[01:03:35] I did not try to get her to stay, right? 

[01:03:37] Mike Mishler: Yeah. 

[01:03:37] Marc Gonyea: Right, and we talked about what she wanted to do, she said, “Oh, I’m going to be with Mike Mishler at Automox.” So, I was like, “Oh shucks, what am I supposed to say to that? Like, he’s got a track record of getting people where they want to go.” Said, I was like, “Okay.” I mean, awesome.

[01:03:53] ‘Cause word speaks for itself, like, I know you’re going to get, I know you, you take care of the people who work hard. 

[01:03:58] Mike Mishler: I take care of them. 

[01:03:58] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. 

[01:03:58] Mike Mishler: And, I care about them, I care about their success, someone like Taylor Moore who was here at memoryBlue, 

[01:04:06] I was able to recruit her to come to Evident.io. I think sometimes people just need that door open as well

[01:04:12] and that’s what memoryBlue does, creates an opportunity to open those doors, and the, and you can work your ass off and learn and be curious and have that growth mindset, and I think you can be, be very successful 

[01:04:22] but you need people to open that door and I’ve done that for a lot folks.

[01:04:25] Chris Corcoran: Yeah. 

[01:04:26] So, Mike, one could 

[01:04:26] say you’ve, 

[01:04:27] developed a bit of a reputation.

[01:04:32] Should we turn the mic off? 

[01:04:34] No, no, no, but listen, listen, we, we, what do you actually think about it? So, as a 20-year-old college student, Mike had to recruit people to spend their summers working a hundred percent commission, six days a week, selling textbooks, he was successful building out a team, doing that. Living in some random place.

[01:04:56] Yeah, you do that, this is the easiest thing you’ve ever done is building these students in this market. 

[01:05:01] Mike Mishler: And, you’re giving me AC

[01:05:04] and my own desk to stay inside all day? Yeah. Yeah. So, coming from that, everything’s easier. I would say it’s never easy. Right. But it is easier. I mean, memoryBlue gave me an opportunity to you’re, you’re hiring 15, 18, 21 people on your team, you have 10, 15, 20 different clients you’re trying to try to manage, you’re, uh, moving across the parking lot into Boone.

[01:05:32] Yeah. And, that gives you opportunities to learn, but you’re balancing everything and you’re competing with these other DMS in the office, trying to think a few steps ahead, claiming people six months out, hoarding all the, all the work to, to your team as well, but I think that, that type of mindset and approach, but always being intentional with your people. As I’ve, from interviewing with a company or talking to them about my approach, I would say it’s focused on the people, the processes and the tools.

[01:05:59] I try to put the processes in place today so that a team of 10 BDRs can operate as if they’re at 100, or a couple years down the road some of the same processes work. But it comes down to the people, if you don’t have good talent, you’re not going to be able to make that impact so I think being intentional with them, Taylor Moore coming over to Evident, being acquired by Palo Alto Networks,

[01:06:21] it wasn’t just Taylor, it was Collin Nuschy, who else was there? Melanie and Kayla, the four of them. So, having those four put us in a great position for success. They understand the culture, they understand how I lead, they understand the working environment, they understand the potential career paths as well,

[01:06:43] they’ve seen it happen, so having those people around you as that foundational team helps as well, and I think that goes back to recruiting. Okay. MobileIron, you have those four or five on it. Carbon 3D, you have James and Co, Comer on it. I think some of those things 

[01:06:58] help 

[01:06:58] Chris Corcoran: as well. So, talk about, Taylor talked, told, told us a story,

[01:07:01] now I’d like to get your version of it, of when you got acquired and then you came into 

[01:07:07] Marc Gonyea: At Evident.

[01:07:08] Chris Corcoran: At Evident, you got acquired, and then you went on and had to work on the same sales floor as the Palo Alto SDRs, and you took your talent in your offence and what happened? 

[01:07:21] Mike Mishler: It was quiet, not in our cubicles, right around us.

[01:07:25] You know why it was quiet? It didn’t have white noise. Okay. So, at Evident that’s probably my top 10 takeaway, make sure you have a gong and make sure you have white noise, same vendors. So, if anyone needs help in setting up a 

[01:07:41] office for SDRs, I got the, have the links. At Evident, we scaled that team quickly,

[01:07:48] we went from, uh, I think 2, when I started, to around 14 reps, and, uh, we went from, I think about 4 million to 16, I’m sure the board awarded it as if we were pacing towards 30 or 40 million by the end of that year to help that acquisition number. But no, it was exciting opportunity for us,

[01:08:10] we were acquired by Palo Alto Networks and we moved from our office in Pleasanton, we had the gong, we brought the gong, we left the white noise machines, but, uh, 

[01:08:20] brought some of the other stuff, 

[01:08:22] and we show up in the office and a big company, eight floors, big name. Big name. Top cyber security company out there,

[01:08:30] so it was exciting. You talk about career opportunities and growth and having the opportunity to work with 

[01:08:37] some of those other types of individuals in that type of company, where they’re at, how much they’ve grown, it’s exciting. But we came in and they put us on the floor with their core inside sales team

[01:08:49] and it was unfair. I had the top seven reps from Evident, I had Taylor and six others. I had four females, I had Kayla and Akil, and, and, again, that just shows that diverse team’s work and they were the top four performers and those who we kept in. So, having a proven team of six or seven reps, they’re onboarded, they’re up to speed, we made a pretty big impacts and we just encourage them to, to dial away and the interesting thing is it doesn’t take too many dials to set you up apart, and just like coming into memoryBlue my first, couple of weeks, I mean, you’re making calls,

[01:09:28] you’re trying to make 10 to 15 early on, so setting yourself apart from some of the other competitors and they made the mistake of putting leaderboards around the office so you would always see the cloud team of these six reps at 50, 60, 70, 80 dials by noon, and then you have 6, 7, 8, 9. 

[01:09:49] Marc Gonyea: Indoor cats. 

[01:09:50] Chris Corcoran: Wow. 

[01:09:51] Mike Mishler: Dials. Indoor cats. Got spooked. 

[01:09:56] Marc Gonyea: The outdoor cat summit, but it came rolling in, man. 

[01:10:00] Mike Mishler: Yeah. I mean, so it was a great opportunity to make an impact, we noticed, unfortunately some of them probably did, didn’t like all the noise in terms of, I think a few of 

[01:10:09] them came over to us and said, “Let’s ease up on the calling.”

[01:10:14] The funny thing is they, they eventually, after a couple of weeks, the managers took us off the leaderboards. 

[01:10:20] Chris Corcoran: They took you off the leaderboard? 

[01:10:21] Marc Gonyea: Took you off the leaderboards? 

[01:10:23] Mike Mishler: They took the cloud team off. 

[01:10:25] Marc Gonyea: Unbelievable. 

[01:10:26] Chris Corcoran: Only in California. No. Big company, I think. Big company. They kind of get used to the in-house. 

[01:10:33] And, they do a lot of things right. Growth, but. 

[01:10:36] Particularly successful company, but sometimes the sales develop, sometimes the outbound piece gets caught up in the shuffle and people are paying close attention to it, doesn’t need to and. Yeah. That’s the matter of discipline and 

[01:10:47] focus. 

[01:10:48] Mike Mishler: But, I mean, um, they’re getting maybe a call or two inbound per day and we’re the core team,

[01:10:55] so they’re not making many calls if they do get 

[01:10:57] a call, you’d probably be lucky if they pick it up too. 

[01:11:02] I had a conversation with the folks and they were like, I’m like, “So, you have this ring for 60 seconds before it 

[01:11:09] goes to the next person in line, so you have how many calls?” 

[01:11:15] So many calls that are ringing for two minutes and nobody’s picking it up

[01:11:19] there. 

[01:11:20] I call my health insurance company. This is why 

[01:11:23] Wow 

[01:11:24] big companies buy emerging companies. Yeah. This is why, because this is, the tech guys are saying the same thing, right? The tech guys is in Netherlands, looking my product, old-fashioned developed this code, still got all these features we threw out and, like, you have to go acquire it because you want the people and the culture and the process. 

[01:11:41] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. Yeah. So, it’s that, thankfully, that’s how it works so let me just face in the world full of guys in this, on this call right now, on this podcast. 

[01:11:47] Mike Mishler: But no, it was good, 

[01:11:48] it was a great experience, great opportunity 

[01:11:50] for some of those folks. A lot of them have been promoted a few times, since they made good money, I saw on the website, I think memoryBlue, you did a survey where, I think, 

[01:11:58] 1 in 8 alumni after three years make 300K and I think a couple of those folks are well on their way to that, if not already, so things like that, the people around you, the leaders, as well as the opportunity can help open that door, so I think it’s about, about finding the right people and, 

[01:12:16] and the right opportunity. When I left memoryBlu, I was originally, uh, thinking about what to do next, I think I had a conversation with you, Marc, about, of what I was looking at, uh, I think it was Netskope and Evident and a few other opportunities, and you mentioned about kind of having your niche in what you’re known 

[01:12:36] for and I come back to my superhero skills of scaling teams and growing teams. I’ve stayed in security, I’ve stayed in software sales, I’ve stayed in with series B or C companies, and I’ve enjoyed it. I love the culture, I love the growth, I love the challenge, I love proving people wrong in terms of, 

[01:12:57] is this company going to be successful? I was at StackRox and they’ve been around for a while, they had some internal leadership change, they had one rep 

[01:13:06] that I knew, someone that was leaving, I still, I went there, I saw opportunity, maybe I wasn’t right in line for thought process, but it was a high-growth company and I wanted to prove people wrong and we scaled that team and were, we were acquired by red Hat a year and a half later. 

[01:13:21] And, the impact, I’m enjoying making an impact with these teams because at Evident, I think we were responsible for it was about 

[01:13:28] 60% of the outbound revenue over that year and a half, in terms of being attributed to some of those initial meetings, so the ability to scale team quickly, especially in a startup, 

[01:13:39] a Series B, Series C startup, if you can go from 2 to 44 in 10 months, or you can go 2 to 15 in, in 4 months, having someone like that has put me in front of some good opportunities. 

[01:13:51] Marc Gonyea: Absolutely. 

[01:13:52] But you do, just doing it well. Yeah. This is the thing we need to come back to, like, the diversity and all that stuff is all really great.

[01:14:00] Right? And, it’s important, but you got to get the people to produce 

[01:14:04] and you’re able 

[01:14:04] to do both. 

[01:14:06] Mike Mishler: So, yeah, it’s, I mean, some of the same playbooks, we do circle leverage, we do rifle shots, we do one-two punch, we do 8 to 12 touches up on processes, we have Outreach, we have ZoomInfo, LinkedIn. Curious. We train people.

[01:14:23] Yeah. We have consistent enablement, same as memoryBlue, where you’re not going through a week-long onboarding or a month-long onboarding, you’re onboarding indefinitely. Yeah. 

[01:14:34] You’re always learning, you have that growth mindset and I think instilling that type of approach, that’s why we’re going to Chicago in march with our team, to have that opportunity for enablement, we have weekly sales enablement and one-on-ones. 

[01:14:48] Chris Corcoran: So, let’s circle back to you leaving Virginia and memoryBlue to come and open up the office that we’re in today, so talk about that, and, I mean, there’s some interesting stories on terms of the eve of your departure. 

[01:15:04] Mike Mishler: I don’t know if we have time for that,

[01:15:06] having touched on some other things. That’s an epic story. No, no. We were growing in the 

[01:15:12] Fox Chase office, second 

[01:15:14] floor, and I think we needed to expand, and as a manager, I had the opportunity to go over to Boone for a period of time before I moved out to California, and that gave me a good opportunity to

[01:15:23] have my own office. I do miss that Deli. 

[01:15:27] Marc Gonyea: Everyone, everyone misses that Deli. Anybody who’s been in that office, Chris never went to that office, he came out, he probably came out here more than they went to that office, but, like everybody missed that office. 

[01:15:38] Mike Mishler: Yeah, they did, and until it was the middle of the summer and it was 90 degrees and everyone’s sweating.

[01:15:44] Yeah. I wondering why, why everyone’s sweating. 

[01:15:46] Chris Corcoran: Yeah. 

[01:15:47] Mike Mishler: And then, um, winter comes and it’s cold. 

[01:15:52] No, but that gives me a good opportunity to have my culture, further develop the culture of the team, have those competitions, it’s us against the world or us against HQ. 

[01:16:02] Marc Gonyea: And, just what you were like a bunch of Buccaneers. 

[01:16:06] Mike Mishler: We had some strong talents, some strong talent, again, that’s recruiting,

[01:16:11] that’s making those trades, that’s building created that opportunity. Yeah. 

[01:16:16] Marc Gonyea: It is an outbound 

[01:16:17] Mike Mishler: business. Yeah. There is no 

[01:16:19] Marc Gonyea: inbounds. The idea of the phone ringing for someone to call, like, that would never happened, so you’ve got a bunch of people who were getting after it, who were training to work for these tech companies that are trying to get after it,

[01:16:29] and there’s no inbound, it’s, you gotta make it happen. You gotta make it happen. You gotta make it happen, this is the long short of it. So, you were doing, and we were so excited about it because we had, like, tech corner and some other things, but it was like twos and threes, right? Fours and fives people, this was across the parking lot, so we could see it,

[01:16:48] so I guess we felt more secure about it. Right? 

[01:16:50] Mike Mishler: But you were doing your thing over there. Yeah, we did. Well, we had some good clients, you had good people aligned to some of them which helped create opportunities for, again, people to get hired out, that motivated others and, but eventually had an opportunity to, uh, pack up my civic.

[01:17:05] Yeah. 

[01:17:06] Chris Corcoran: So, we had Nimit, who opened up the first office in Austin and once we saw that that was successful, we saw what you were doing in Boone, we were like, “Mike, let’s open an office. Let’s go.” And, where do you want to go? And, where did you say? Did we give you a choice 

[01:17:19] Mike Mishler: or do we talk through it? Maybe you had your mind made up,

[01:17:22] I don’t know, but uh, now it was 

[01:17:25] potentially 

[01:17:26] Seattle, it was an option, 

[01:17:28] you love 

[01:17:28] Seattle. I do 

[01:17:29] Marc Gonyea: love Seattle. I’m a big fan. I still have that office though. Yeah. 

[01:17:32] Mike Mishler: Denver or Boulder area as an option. We may have narrowed it down to the West. Go West. Yeah. And then Silicon Valley, so might as well go big. Yeah, we’re going West. Silicon Valley. We narrowed that down. I think just the upside of the market, the opportunity, again, being excited and motivated by the challenge, being around this culture, recruiting in this area, living in this area was all exciting, so jumped at the chance to go out of here. So, I had to, if 

[01:18:09] you have a question about Krista, night before, I’m not sure exactly what happened the night before, but I do remember it goes back to the recruiting, so I recruited, I think I was trying to figure out how I recruited so many people, because I think initially it was one or two and then all of a sudden there were six or eight, and I was out here in California getting calls from people in DC when we move out here. You don’t see as fast, 

[01:18:30] Marc Gonyea: Mike. Yeah, like 

[01:18:31] Mike Mishler: Eric and Alexis and Mack and Nate, friend Mackenzie, Mackenzie, Nick Casa, some others came out, Sarah and Hope and some of them came out right away,

[01:18:45] but. 

[01:18:45] Chris Corcoran: I remember it was the night before, you also recruited someone at, like, 10 

[01:18:50] o’clock at night, and convinced him 

[01:18:52] to, “Hey, just get in the car and let’s go.” 

[01:18:54] Mike Mishler: Who was that? 

[01:18:55] Chima. Chima. No, there were people like Brittany and Wisconsin, “Oh, hey, we’re going west, you want to come with us?” She’s going from, I think Minnesota out there. James, it was an early on right before I even left

[01:19:10] I recruited him. Yeah. Just finishing up school in Chicago. Yeah. He’s playing football and he’s gonna come out here and meet us in San Jose, we don’t have an office yet, but see you there. We’re in, uh, in some happy hour or something, going away and some of the team is flying, I believe,

[01:19:29] so I’m packing up about 4 desktop computers, putting them in my trunk. I don’t have much, 

[01:19:35] many, uh, 

[01:19:36] luggage or anything, but I have a trunk full of computers and monitors and 

[01:19:42] I don’t think I put a gong in there. 

[01:19:45] I think it pulled some things off the wall in the Boone office, I don’t know who, you probably came up with that,

[01:19:51] sorry for snagging them. But again, going back to my team, I 

[01:19:56] wanna make sure they’re happy, 

[01:19:57] have a good culture, you want them to enjoy walking into the office that first morning, yeah, so think I, I scooped up some hustle letters, maybe a few alumni of the year, I’m not quite sure, but I put everything in the car and I took a four-day trip across the US. My dad came to help drive,

[01:20:15] we stopped in, uh, Michigan and Colorado and then somewhere around Vegas, and then went up to California so we were there pretty quick, and I think we arrived on a Thursday or Friday and we were trying to open the office on Monday. So, pretty pretty quick turnaround for the opening, similar to how y’all doing 

[01:20:34] it here,

[01:20:35] probably in a few 

[01:20:36] days, come Monday. No, we do 

[01:20:37] Chris Corcoran: No, we do it a lot better now. 

[01:20:39] Marc Gonyea: But no, a price, a lot more resources. You got movers. Yeah. So, tell the story about the hustle letters, people hood or not. 

[01:20:46] Chris Corcoran: Well, it was, Mike was leaving on a Friday night and we knew the team that he was taking,

[01:20:51] and then I found that out that last minute Mike persuaded Chima to join and somehow made him, the guy just decided on the spot, “I 

[01:20:59] want California.” 

[01:21:00] Mike Mishler: But the good thing about bringing all these people, I brought the clients. Right. Oh thank. So, from my book of business, I did that door-to-door. Yeah. Enough. Yeah. I didn’t want to show up with nothing. 

[01:21:10] Marc Gonyea: But then also, so in all of our offices we have these big hustle letters, in Boone

[01:21:15] we had them too and so Mike, I guess, decided he was taking them with him. 

[01:21:20] Mike Mishler: A little decor. 

[01:21:21] Marc Gonyea: A little. 

[01:21:22] He was going to meet him anyway. 

[01:21:23] Chris Corcoran: How did he find out about it? 

[01:21:24] Mike Mishler: We used to tell you as you go over there.

[01:21:26] Marc Gonyea: I think it’s one Monday they’re like, “Yeah, I think Mishler took the hustle letters,” 

[01:21:29] Mike Mishler: It was awesome decor on the wall or something, they were nails.

[01:21:33] Yeah. 

[01:21:34] Marc Gonyea: And then it was, our first office was in, 

[01:21:36] Mike Mishler: TechMar. It was about 

[01:21:38] a hundred yards from Levi Stadium. Yeah. It was a nice office. It was a pretty cozy. Yeah. Everyone. 

[01:21:46] Chris Corcoran: So, you shared, it was like a Regis. 

[01:21:48] Mike Mishler: It was like a Regis. 

[01:21:49] Chris Corcoran: And they did not like us, I don’t think, we were loud and boisterous.

[01:21:52] Mike Mishler: We were not their typical clientele. 

[01:21:55] We were racking up the fax teaser.

[01:21:59] Chris Corcoran: They were charging for everything, “You want some air?” 

[01:22:02] Mike Mishler: They pumped that air in that room, kept billing us. 

[01:22:06] Chris Corcoran: But we were only there for, like, a month or two while we were waiting for our original space to get ready. 

[01:22:10] Mike Mishler: Yeah. But they probably accelerated it, the reason to stay. But we moved in pretty quick. Yeah. Over the weekend, I think, we’re in planning for us to move in until the next week or something, but we got set up pretty quickly and got up and running.

[01:22:23] I think the, couldn’t have white noise in there, but we made it work, if you walk around the hallway on the headsets, things like that, but that original group, again, it goes back to the culture, I mean, we were out here, there’s about six of us, I mean, I wanted to show one, I could accomplish this challenge,

[01:22:42] so that was always motivating 

[01:22:43] each day and, I wanted to start building, start scaling because that, 

[01:22:47] the bigger the team, the more, more upside I saw my mind. Sure there’s ways to superbill and do some PPM. Yeah. But building teams was always exciting, so we scaled pretty quickly. We were out of there in a couple months, started building out the office in downtown San Jose,

[01:23:04] so TechMar was nice, I think Taylor Pierce referred us to that one 

[01:23:08] and we had a 

[01:23:09] couple of football games, maybe a tailgate over there, but being down here in San Jose, the high-rise next to San Pedro square, you have restaurants, bars, you have The Sharks you can see from the office and having our own space here was, um, very exciting for all of us,

[01:23:30] so we, everyone grabbed their computer, put 

[01:23:32] it in the car and we drove over 

[01:23:34] to our new spot. 

[01:23:35] This was the coolest office at the time. Yeah. We were like, “This way, downtown office.” We weren’t in this office before, but we were close, 

[01:23:42] we were next door. We were next door. Throw a baseball. Yeah. Get in there, I think we were a few floors down as well

[01:23:50] and kept growing. Yeah. Again, going back to recruiting, hiring, hiring ahead, trying to plan a few steps ahead, leaning into your people, having them excited about the opportunity and working with each other, that team collaboration, I think all was pretty, pretty impactful, and I don’t know how long it was until we moved to 

[01:24:09] Canton. It was not long.

[01:24:11] It was definitely less than 90 days, you now, but it’s quick. 

[01:24:14] If we were to put another, uh, I know you have alumni of the year, but I think Nimit and I are going for the most offices. Okay. Most office, so when I started in HQ in Northern Virginia, I was on the first floor of that one, on old courthouse

[01:24:28] and then we moved up to the second floor and then moved across the parking lot. How many offices have you 

[01:24:33] all had? You know? 

[01:24:34] Chris Corcoran: I have no idea. 

[01:24:36] Mike Mishler: 20? 

[01:24:37] Chris Corcoran: Probably. 

[01:24:37] Mike Mishler: 30?

[01:24:38] Chris Corcoran: It was here. No, no, no, not 30. Not 30. 

[01:24:41] Mike Mishler: Not yet. Not that anymore. 

[01:24:42] Chris Corcoran: No, no, but we had, before we got into …. early years, 

[01:24:47] Marc Gonyea: We were at that weird townhouse, it was gross, basement office townhouse, not like the office. 

[01:24:56] Mike Mishler: But scaling a team out here,

[01:24:58] tried to follow a similar blueprint, I guess what was different about here was I hit capacity in terms of my own ability to manage the clients and lead the team, help coach and onboard new hires, so getting some other folks in the mix with giving them leadership opportunity, identified a few people to help with that, which helped us scale.

[01:25:16] I think we were at about maybe 25 or so after a year or two and nothing like Joe, Joe’s doing today, but we still had a lot of the same culture and approach to how I lead and grow and scale. 

[01:25:29] Marc Gonyea: Who 

[01:25:30] did you promote as DMs? Jeanne? 

[01:25:32] Mike Mishler: Jeanne? Jeanne Ball. 

[01:25:34] She was one of these recruits from, from DC colonists.

[01:25:39] She was a colonist. She was a colonist, she was 

[01:25:43] one of those, couple of weeks before, I think, I was able to recruit her, so, 

[01:25:48] bringing her over and having people around you like that, that are, again, passionate about leading, helping coach, she, she was in sports and competitive, extremely competitive and driven and wants to be successful and prove other people wrong to, to learn to my approach,

[01:26:02] so that aligned. And, we had some others and we scaled the office to about 

[01:26:05] 25 in 

[01:26:06] about a year, year and a half. 

[01:26:08] Marc Gonyea: I remember 

[01:26:08] coming out here and visiting, what’s going on a call with Jeanne, now, she wasn’t here that long, she was here long enough for, like, the amount of growth professionals she had, she would never have grown that much, work and stay in Virginia.

[01:26:20] Same with you, right? Like, you’re out here now, even though you’re a boon, we kind of left you alone, not really, we were still in the mix here, you were by yourself. And, Chris and I was talking about it, it’s really, we have a lot of respect for, like, you and Nimit and Wood and Plesh and Kyle, anyone else? Who’ve left and opened an office because you were here on an Island, right?

[01:26:42] People are, now we’re talking about all the good stuff, they’re, the people are upset about quotas, right? Not all the hires are brilliant, you’ve got brilliant hires who are going through some rough patches and, like, they’re coming to you, right? I mean, you can call, maybe you’ll get me, {…} but maybe it’s four o’clock here, and several blocks there, my family, like, you’re doing this thing solo.

[01:27:03] Yeah. Which is, that’s a right, how much did 

[01:27:05] you learn from that? 

[01:27:06] Mike Mishler: Yeah, I mean, it’s tremendous in terms of the opportunities and leading by example and learning what to do and what not to do, hopefully, hopefully you pick up pretty quick as a leader and 

[01:27:17] take a different approach the next time.

[01:27:18] But, 

[01:27:19] I mean, you’re not going to, everyone is not going to work out, but I think if you have that right approach to interviewing, onboarding, following some of our best practices overall, you will have a successful team 

[01:27:31] and that’s how we were able to do well and 

[01:27:33] make a good impact. 

[01:27:34] Marc Gonyea: Mike, 

[01:27:35] all of who will work for you, are all, some of them are doing great and the offices wouldn’t it be where it was, obviously wouldn’t be here if you didn’t move out of here, but the Toggle trips still lives on. I heard they’re going in a few weeks. Yeah. There’s, there, COVID, can’t stop the Toggle trip, which is like, that sounded like Mishler original, but that’s like the most favorite trip,

[01:27:52] I think the other officer’s look on now, with the 

[01:27:54] green at the end. 

[01:27:55] Mike Mishler: Do you know what my favorite trip was? 

[01:27:58] Marc Gonyea: AC? 

[01:27:58] Mike Mishler: AC. 

[01:27:59] Marc Gonyea: Yeah, I know. 

[01:28:00] I lost my mind too. When we first started doing them it was so much fun. Yeah. Remember? 

[01:28:04] Mike Mishler: Do you still do it? 

[01:28:05] Marc Gonyea: We haven’t done it in awhile. I haven’t gone like the… 

[01:28:07] Chris Corcoran: the Lacy’s changed in that, all these casinos now are around, it’s easier to get to the Atlantic 

[01:28:12] city.

[01:28:13] Mike Mishler: And, it’s 

[01:28:13] still 

[01:28:13] fun. 

[01:28:14] Chris Corcoran: Yes. I agree. The bus trip’s the best part. 

[01:28:16] Mike Mishler: As long as you get everyone on the bus. 

[01:28:17] Chris Corcoran: Yeah. 

[01:28:20] Very good point. Good point. So, Mike, share with listeners a little bit about the difference between leader, leading 

[01:28:27] individual contributors 

[01:28:28] versus leading leaders? ‘Cause when you first came out here, you talked about how you had a span control and you could grow it to 18 or 22, which is a lot, but then as you can only get so, so far.

[01:28:38] Mike Mishler: Yeah. 

[01:28:39] Chris Corcoran: And so then you have to kind of go to big time scale and what you’re doing now, where you have leaders, so you’re leading leaders as opposed to 

[01:28:46] just individual contributors. 

[01:28:48] Mike Mishler: Yeah. I mean, it’s a different profile of person, they have different motivators. 

[01:28:53] They have, again, going back to that servant leadership, being intentional about your team, they, they are more excited about their team member hitting their quota than them, they are themselves, so 

[01:29:04] finding that, those types of characteristics, those, like, Jeanne that are getting up in the morning, they want to coach, they want to help their team, crush it on MobileIron or whatever their client is and help them get to that next step in their career, and they appreciate the opportunity, they, as a leader have in front of them, and they’re, they’re looking to help make an 

[01:29:23] impact for other people in the next step. So, but I think some of the things of recruiting, interviewing, making sure you 

[01:29:29] hire the right profile of people. At Automox, we have three, four other leaders, at Elevated one of our sled BDRs to a leadership role, she didn’t ask for it, but as I approached it with her she kind of fit the mold of caring about investing time in others. And, another one of my team members today came from Jim Info, again, passionate about coaching, 

[01:29:56] enabling new hires, getting them up to speed. That one in DC? That’s Maggie in DC. Actually, I’m recruiting out of Europe now, so the UK had a, uh, sales development leader, she’s very passionate about the space and being involved in some of these groups has helped in terms of recruiting, staying close to the SDR community,

[01:30:16] she’s moved from the UK to Florida actually this week in January and she’ll be joining our team next Thursday. So, making sure you, I would say giving them the opportunities, again, to open the door for the leader, but helping to, from your experiences, going back to the door-to-door sales. Having experienced a lot of that myself, I’m not 

[01:30:35] surprised, some things I’m still surprised by, 

[01:30:38] there’s less surprises now

[01:30:40] so I think having that experience under my belt, focusing on them as leaders, having that clear communication with them, having that time, the communication, having those weekly one-on-ones, celebrating their successes as well, creating opportunities for them to grow their careers, that motivates them.

[01:30:57] So, we elevate Jeanne, Jenny was one of the other new SDRs, she’s done well over at Sama, I believe, I think they went 

[01:31:04] public a few months ago, they’ve been doing well. But finding people like that to help you grow, you can only get to 

[01:31:10] a certain spot if it’s just yourself, but if you have team leads, if you have people like Abby or Julianne or Sarah, or some of those other folks that can help take lead, or James and Conor, it can put you in a good spot in terms of scaling. 

[01:31:26] Marc Gonyea: So, I don’t know what we should do there, should we, we didn’t talk at all about Silicon Valley stay. 

[01:31:30] Chris Corcoran: … this and redo it, finishes on Zoom and talk about them. 

[01:31:34] Marc Gonyea: What he’s done to suspend the Valley?

[01:31:36] Chris Corcoran: Then go for it. 

[01:31:37] Marc Gonyea: Well, do we want to do this now? 

[01:31:39] Mike Mishler: Yeah. 

[01:31:39] Marc Gonyea: Okay. This is going to be 

[01:31:41] longer. 

[01:31:41] Mike Mishler: Well, we can go a little quicker. 

[01:31:43] Marc Gonyea: No, no, Mike, this is, I’m not in a rush, I just want to make sure we, like, give it the time it deserves. All right. So, Mike, you’re in the Valley,

[01:31:52] you move on from memoryBlue, we talked a little bit about what to do, and the niche is amazing. right? Like, what’s your philosophy now? What’s your approach? Because it’s obviously clear you like working with these in cyber, I guess it’s the cloud, but not really, but then there’s a Series B and C founding companies, and then you’re building out these squads,

[01:32:12] what else is important to you as you look and kind of evaluate these opportunities? Because that’s like a science in 

[01:32:17] itself. Yeah. Right? 

[01:32:19] Mike Mishler: Yeah. In terms of evaluating opportunities there’s so many now being, so many who are hiring remotes, earlier on there’s so many startups, you never know, there’s a hundred other security startups,

[01:32:29] if you look at some of the, 

[01:32:30] same for sales tools and how much that’s grown, same with security 

[01:32:33] companies, folks in other industries. I would say my experiences at memoryBlue, I think one of the, as a rep, what you learn most is where you see yourself, what you enjoy in terms of 

[01:32:43] you 

[01:32:43] liked yourself behind a Series A startup that has no messaging, no, no product sales or a publicly 

[01:32:51] traded company like Splunk.

[01:32:52] Where do you see yourself? 

[01:32:53] During that time, I saw myself, I saw it appealing to being that Series B, C, where they’re investing in sales development, they’re investing in, in inside sales, so it’s a good opportunity for me to make an impact with my skills and what I’m passionate about. So, Series B or C,

[01:33:10] I came to a security company, I’d worked with different clients at memoryBlue, but I think as I got more familiar with it, I understand the upside, just like memoryBlue in tech sales security with how much data there is out there, I would say the persona is different in terms of going after people in IT or security

[01:33:30] but once you hone your skills in that area and you can have a repeatable process, those skills are valuable, especially in Silicon Valley or other places. So, Series B or C, but having strong VCs, proven track record, ones that you’ve heard of, having strong leadership that wants to invest in you and the sales development, inside sales function.

[01:33:54] I worked with Jeff StClair at Evident.io, I said, he started his career as a BDR at NetApp, he was a same quarterback, he was a backup quarterback and I were state, he started a few games, love you, Jeff, and he went from Iowa, he packed up his car, went to California, and in 1999, he was at NetApp as a BDR,

[01:34:15] and the funny thing about that is pretty much everyone that he was starting with, our VPs of sales, CRO, CMOs, and the same thing to be said about people I started with that at memoryBlue, or people today, the people around you are BDRs today, but they’re going to be the piece of sales in a few years. But finding a leader like Jeff, for others that will invest in you and give you, empower you to make decisions and to grow and to come up with comp plans and to buy sales tools and to invest in the function is important,

[01:34:46] so making sure you have those types of leaders around you, staying in security, strong VCs, people with a proven track record and they’re right at that growth stage, but they haven’t quite experienced it yet, and that’s where you 

[01:35:00] can make a big impact as that inside sales team. 

[01:35:03] What’s too big for Mike Mishler? Like, what to, do you like these smaller companies, like, you, are you like, “I never want to work for a big company?” or, like, would you? 

[01:35:12] I’d consider it.

[01:35:13] Yeah. If they pay me well. Yeah. No, and give me some nice chairs. I think at this point, I came to Automox, had good VCs, good leadership, good timing, we were at 125 team members last January, so a year ago, we’re at 411 today, so the company has gone from 125 to 411. We received a significant round of funding, uh, 110 million

[01:35:38] last March, so we’re in a good spot. But I came to Automox to become, hopefully, be a part of a company over a longer period of time, to have that sustained growth over two, three years, I think it’s hard to know much more past that, but if I can be a part of a company that goes from 15 million to 100 million in three years and be, have a huge impact in terms of the revenue and the team and gone from 2 to 44 or so in a year, in terms of team members, where we will be in a couple of years as well,

[01:36:08] and the experiences I’ll learn from this. The previous two startups I was with, we were acquired right around, one was around probably 15, 16 million in revenue, 

[01:36:17] another one we 

[01:36:17] went from about 3 to 8 in a year. This one, Automox, 

[01:36:22] started 

[01:36:22] about 15 and we should be at a 100 million in two years, by the end of 2023.

[01:36:26] So, the opportunities for me to learn, who knows down the road, I mean, there’s VPs of sales development, there’s VPs of inside sales and I haven’t told him this, but I would say Ralph is kind of my, what I would work towards, Ralph Barsi, in terms of SDR leadership, inside sales leadership, part of growth, maybe a company like CrowdStrike or Octa or something like that at some point

[01:36:49] but I think for now, if you can have a good run over a period of time, say Automox is 3, 4, 5 years being a part of a few successful exits, I would say can open doors and create opportunities for myself in terms of what I want to do, if I want to have my own business or, or something, or come back to memoryBlue, open up the,

[01:37:09] “Where are we looking to go next?” 

[01:37:11] Marc Gonyea: Where do you want to go, 

[01:37:11] Mike? 

[01:37:12] Chris Corcoran: The South Central California. 

[01:37:13] Mike Mishler: South Central. PA’s talent, though, cheaper out there. That’s how Outreach got started up, near, uh, Penn State. That’s right. That’s right. Yeah. It gives you more flexibility and going back to why I got into sales originally, having 

[01:37:27] resources, I would say, to be more free or open to do what you think would be motivating and impactful, and you’re passionate about, whether it’s starting my own consulting company or something like that, or starting my own company or working for a bigger. You’re not as reliant on your paycheck if you’re part of a few growing teams over a sustained period of time. If we go public or get acquired or something like that.

[01:37:52] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. Or I can, descendancy of working at one of these companies, like, I remember when Prozac was, when started, right? We worked with some people who were founding employees there. Remember, Octa was early, super early, and there’s no reason why, build up one of the, Automox or somebody else might become that CrowdStrike.

[01:38:09] Yeah. 

[01:38:10] Easily. They’re co-founders, the chairmen of our board, so we’re off to a good start for sure. And, they have me. They got you. As well as about 10 other people from memoryBlue, so. You did good. 

[01:38:22] I love that. Yeah. Yeah. I want Automox to do particularly well and I want some of the memoryBlue folks

[01:38:28] you included. 

[01:38:30] Mike Mishler: The memoryBlue model, as well as people, have been foundational for each team that I’ve been a part of since leaving. When going to Evident we had 4 people, memoryBlue was a client of Evident.io, we hired 4 of them on eventually and brought them in and they were part of the foundational team.

[01:38:48] Some of that team came over to Palo Alto Networks when I left there and went to StackRox, I had a solid team there as well, and we recruited and scaled that 

[01:38:57] team to about 14 or 

[01:38:59] so, as well, and then coming to Automox, taking advantage of those partners like SV Academy, technology, hired a couple with Timmy and those folks, I think we’ve hired about 10, starting with Aaron,

[01:39:11] Aaron’s strong hire, Sergio 

[01:39:14] out of DC, we have 

[01:39:16] John up in Boston, our Grant, our Boston team’s got, Grant’s in DC, Ben in Virginia and Rachel in Virginia as well. Not all came directly from, you’re client a couple, I don’t know how we got in front of all of them, Paul, Paul Castle, so from, from Sergio, we had Ashley Brock, she left, she went to her client back here,

[01:39:45] that was good. You, Joey, Nikki, Nikki out here in California, Peyton, Peyton Johnson. Who else? Carley. How did Carley get in front of us? Carley. Armentrout. Yeah, Carley. You know about that? I didn’t know 

[01:40:00] about that. Are you kidding me? He’s doing the same thing all over again. Doing it all over again. Good job. Did you hire Carley or somebody 

[01:40:07] else?

[01:40:08] I think I referred her. I think I get a referral, but. Don’t. Hopefully. 

[01:40:12] Marc Gonyea: Mitch, and you’re working with Tommy, right? 

[01:40:15] Mike Mishler: Yeah. Tommy’s always 

[01:40:16] helped me out. 

[01:40:17] Chris Corcoran: I know, I was making sure I had, ’cause I, like, Stars coming out legitimized. 

[01:40:21] Mike Mishler: No, we worked with Eric now. 

[01:40:22] Chris Corcoran: Yeah, Eric’s great, too.

[01:40:23] Marc Gonyea: Chris is like, you know, I agreed, once we arrived at Stars office feet, you know, who’s going to crush risingstars? Fishdaddy. I mean, it’s all, it’s all there. It’s just, we’re just waiting for that shift to come in, Chris and I could see it out on the horizon. We’re getting running the … 

[01:40:40] Mike Mishler: 575 alumni on the website. What are the other 574 doing? 

[01:40:45] Marc Gonyea: We have 620 

[01:40:46] good standing. 

[01:40:47] Mike Mishler: They may not be leaders, but are they not referring 

[01:40:50] talent through guys and started what’s going on? They are. 

[01:40:55] They don’t have a waiver wire to manage the process. 

[01:40:58] Marc Gonyea: They don’t, no, they don’t. 

[01:40:59] Chris Corcoran: But we knew that you’re, that’s like one of your superpowers is team building and getting access to the, in magnetizing, through different sources.

[01:41:07] If you could, like you said, you, you see, getting every plays ahead. Yeah. 

[01:41:12] Marc Gonyea: I mean, it’s like, Mike’s the Pied Piper man ’cause you’ve got legitimate street credit, Mike, ’cause you started the business here for us and then these other companies, and that’s why I asked you about how you size up these opportunities because there’s an art and a science to that.

[01:41:25] Yeah, it is. … a million. 

[01:41:27] Within memoryBlue, we opened a lot of startups. 

[01:41:29] Mike Mishler: Yeah, that helped. 

[01:41:30] Marc Gonyea: Some of them, and this is not the Star’s fall, like, Bill Gates said it himself, he already knows 90% of the companies he invested in aren’t going to make it, 10% are going to make it, and are going to make up for the other 90% that don’t. The front page of the Wall Street Journal, editorial section,

[01:41:43] right? And, you got to pick them and you seem to get pretty good job to figure out which ones you want to go to, so people like Carley Armentrout, who know what the fuck they’re doing, right? They, like, that says a lot. I love your answer on how to handle the virtual thing, because we, we have to deal a little bit with that next, we got distributed workforce and the sales team, you got some people work from the house, but anyways. 

[01:42:06] All right. So, like, 

[01:42:09] 10 years later, everything you’ve done, what advice would you have for yourself the night before you started at memoryBlue?

[01:42:16] Mike Mishler: The night before I started at memoryBlue? 

[01:42:18] Yep. Know 

[01:42:19] Marc Gonyea: what you know now, what would you tell 

[01:42:20] yourself? 

[01:42:21] Mike Mishler: I would say, “Sleep well, my friend, it’s going to be a fun ride.” No, I mean, it’s a great opportunity I feel like I embraced at each day, I mean, not every day, but most days embraced it

[01:42:35] and just the opportunities, the different roles, the different clients, that, the learning opportunities that presented itself. memoryBlue is a great opportunity, I mentioned earlier, in tech, if you do it well, if you do the BDR role, you should be that 1 in 8 and you should work towards 300K in revenue,

[01:42:51] so you’re going to have R and a W2, so you’re going to have the, the money, you’re going to get good promotions if you do it right. Like, so many people through memoryBlue, but you gotta remember the people, so I would say just continuing to embrace that. I did a great job of having a strong culture within my own team, in hiring and building it.

[01:43:12] I would say sometimes I do probably put my head down, sometimes, with my own team and their efforts and I think that a sales development, the inside sales community is pretty big and it can be impactful for you and your career as well, so making sure you take advantage of other people at other offices at memoryBlue, people in Austin and after Nimit moved down there, making sure you network with them, I’d say even at HQ, you tend to be highly engaged with your own team, which is great, but making sure you, you build your network because there’s gonna be so many great relationships.

[01:43:45] I mean, I finished up a kickball season a few weeks ago, unfortunately we lost, still trying to get over that, my passion and I hate losing so that motivates me, I’m still trying to get over that kickball loss, but played with someone from memoryBlue there. I’m going to a Sharks game with someone from memoryBlue this weekend, a couple of weeks we’re going to Tahoe and doing skiing.

[01:44:08] I left memoryBlue many years ago, but the people I worked with are still friends and great people, so I’d say making sure you take advantage of all the people that you work with, I mean, not getting along with everyone, but there’s plenty out there where you can build your network and you’re going to remember those people and those experiences and the memories with you,

[01:44:24] and they’re gonna be friends for many years down the road, so making sure you take advantage of that, take advantage of that inside sales community, like ASP and other groups. And, that was easier when it was a pre-COVID and you can show up to these quarterly networking events, but while you have those people around you in this community, everyone’s, there’s a lot of like-minded individuals that want to work their way up in their career and you can lean on each other,

[01:44:51] you can collaborate, you can have that friendly competition, hopefully most of the time, and, but those people are going to be friends outside of work for 10, 15 years down the road. 

[01:45:00] Chris Corcoran: Very good. 

[01:45:01] Well, this was great, Mr. Mishler, lots of wisdom. 

[01:45:05] Marc Gonyea: It’s been a long time coming, Mike. With COVID, I don’t get out here as much.

[01:45:09] One of my grantes is that I get to keep up with you as much, so it was good to get the download. 

[01:45:13] Mike Mishler: Yeah. I loved it. Happy to come by any time, looking forward to seeing the new office and DC as well. Yeah. I haven’t seen that one. I see some, uh, I think Instagram and Facebook videos. Yeah. But I appreciate the opportunity of coming to, to memoryBlue.

[01:45:29] Yeah. I’ve tried to instill that on folks as they’re coming to my team as a BDR where this is their launching pad on, on a fishdaddy’s team. Right? Keep it up. My team doesn’t know that today, so we don’t need to tell them all about that, but. 

[01:45:43] Chris Corcoran: Keep, keep hiring rising stars. 

[01:45:46] Keep hiring rising stars.

[01:45:47] Mike Mishler: A lot of them are our CRR leadership, loves memoryBlue as well, so let’s keep this, keep this going. 

[01:45:54] Marc Gonyea: Keep the tradition going. 

[01:45:55] Chris Corcoran: So, Mike, we’ve talked a lot about you winning on the recruiting trail and you’ve been doing it for years and years and years. You’ve hired hundreds, interviewed thousands, if you look back on all the people you’ve ever hired, 

[01:46:08] Marc Gonyea: This is a high risk 

[01:46:09] question. 

[01:46:10] Chris Corcoran: Who has been the best, your best hire to date?

[01:46:13] Mike Mishler: Best hire to date? Hundreds of hires, I mean, there’s a lot of good ones. I’m

[01:46:19] probably going back to my time in, uh, Virginia, decided to hire a, hire Robbie Connors. 

[01:46:26] Marc Gonyea: Robbie connors. 

[01:46:27] Chris Corcoran: Robbie Connors, really? 

[01:46:29] Marc Gonyea: RC, dude, he’s very 

[01:46:31] successful. 

[01:46:32] Mike Mishler: Dude, Robbie, so I think, I mean, memoryBlue we’re here that via a launching pad for tech sales and their career and we have, uh, a strong enablement program, consistent,

[01:46:44] the finding people with that growth mindset that have that hard work ethic, I think sometimes you just need to open the door for someone, that’s what you’ve been doing since you all started and that’s what I’ve tried to do with my BDRs and SDRs and if you have the infrastructure and support in that consistent enablement and the weekly training and the onboarding and the mentor program, all you have to do is open that door for Robbie.

[01:47:05] Sure we made a couple of one-on-ones, some call-coaching, but, uh, that’s all some people need and that’s what you all have been doing a long time with hundreds of folks and I’ve tried to as well, where he has a great work ethic, he cares about being successful, but also helping his team and his manager, other folks around him be successful,

[01:47:25] and that’s all motivating to him and he can be impactful. I mean, sometimes you need those people that are just, get after it and they’re going to improve it. I think Robbie’s been promoted 2, 3, 4 times since he left memoryBlue and, and he was a consistent performer there and he was great to have on the team.

[01:47:39] He was one of those. He was like, great locker-room guy. He came across the parking lot with me to Boone. Yeah. He carried his computer, I’m sure, like all of us over there, and I can still remember him, uh, sitting over there in that, in that office, and I’d love his passion, his energy, his excitement for a meeting, you have Christian dialogues for success,

[01:47:59] it’s about, finding and identifying talent and how I’ve been successful in finding hundreds of talents. It’s hiring, some people may not initially think they could be a good fit so you’re maybe taking a chance on them, but I think that’s also allowed me to get more diverse folks on my team.

[01:48:16] I hired a girl from, uh, Florida, she just finished up school a couple months ago, she had no sales experience, I just brought over someone from C, CDW that had some good experience, but finding people from different backgrounds, different experience levels and having an open mind. Sure you’re going to stick to, they’re going to go through this assessment,

[01:48:39] you have the DISC assessment, we have a, one of our partners, our VCs insight has a assessment where they test on competitiveness on drive, on stress tolerance and things like that, we identify that, I would say Robbie, Robbie fits that bill and that’s what allows him and others, so many others to do well and take advantage of that opportunity to just open the door for them.

[01:49:00] Well, here 

[01:49:00] we go, Chris, is it, hard work will beat talent when talent doesn’t work, it’s what it is. Yeah. Like, you could say there’s some people might be more talented than others, in my counting under the three of us in that room, but you had to work hard and be patient with it. I mean, like, you know, when you follow Robbie’s story and when he was assigned a project and he waited a while to get into that closing role, but it was all the right decision, how they wanted the highest return on investment employees at that 

[01:49:25] company.

[01:49:26] Yeah. I love Robbie. Joe out here in California is not bad either. Yeah. So yeah, it’s good to notify leaders as well. I’ve heard people recently, I know our team at Automox is growing pretty quickly, so I try to hire folks that are looking for that leadership opportunity or have been team leads in the past and having people like that available, and having multiple career options for them,

[01:49:49] same as you all have here, is very motivating to them and it helps put your team in a good position to be successful. So, I had someone start last week, they don’t know this yet, but I have a few things in mind for them and of what I could elevate them too, in a couple of months. Erin, someone like Erin Conolly never asked to be promoted probably ’cause she was there for such a short amount of time.

[01:50:10] I knew that was what she wanted to work towards, but proactively reaching out to people like that, like Erin, one of my team leads, they never asked for team lead role, but being intentional. We approach it as a, I’ve always approached it as a meritocracy, where it doesn’t matter how long you’ve been there,

[01:50:24] if you can add more value in other role then we’ll help you get there. So, open the door for people like Robbie, have a open mindset, stick to the process and have a clear playbook and enablement around them and people to support them, you should be pretty good spot as a team. 

[01:50:39] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. And Joe’s, he is your legacy.

[01:50:42] Mike Mishler: He is. 

[01:50:42] Marc Gonyea: Here at memoryBlue, right? Yep. He wasn’t a Virginia guy. 

[01:50:47] Chris Corcoran: No. 

[01:50:47] Marc Gonyea: He’s a California guy 

[01:50:49] Mike Mishler: Through and through. 

[01:50:50] Marc Gonyea: Through and through. 

[01:50:51] Mike Mishler: Where was Joe before? 

[01:50:52] Chris Corcoran: Jamba Juice. 

[01:50:53] Mike Mishler: Jamba Juice. 

[01:50:54] Marc Gonyea: Jamba Juice. 

[01:50:55] Mike Mishler: to, to high rise in San Jose. Yeah. Leading 

[01:50:58] the office. 

[01:50:58] Marc Gonyea: He’s got 71 people working for him here soon. So, but that. 

[01:51:02] Mike Mishler: Opened the door. 

[01:51:03] Marc Gonyea: That’s your legacy, Mike. 

[01:51:04] Open the door.

[01:51:05] Mike Mishler: I’m going to go have a conversation with him, make sure he doesn’t let me down. 

[01:51:08] Marc Gonyea: All right. 

[01:51:09] Mike Mishler: Please do. 

[01:51:10] Marc Gonyea: All right, Mike. Thank you. 

[01:51:11] Mike Mishler: Thank you.