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#dogoodwork is not a label but a way of living.
It is the constant and diligent effort to achieve a new level of excellence in one’s own life.
It is the hidden inner beauty behind the struggle to achieve excellence.
It is not perfect but imperfect.
It is the effort, discipline and focus that often goes unnoticed.
The goal of this podcast is to highlight that drive.
The guests I have on this show emulate this drive in their own special way. You’ll be able to apply new ideas into your own life by learning from them.
We will also have 1on1 episodes with me where we’ll dive into my own experiences with entrepreneurship and leadership.
Every episode is designed to provide you with ideas that you can apply and grow in excellence in all areas of your life, business and career.
Do Good Work,
Raul
INTRO
Hey, welcome back to the podcast today.
I am talking to Joe Indu.
Joe is a sales consultant where he helps
technical sales teams increase their
performance without increasing overhead.
And in today's podcast, we dive into
that strategic framework, and I really
appreciate the way that he laid it out
where it's really tangible, definitely
take notes because you can lay out
the exact steps you need to take in
order to create not just effective
outbound messaging, but also very
effective inbound demand generation,
marketing, and sales material, hope
you enjoy this conversation with Joe.
PODCAST
video1256594835: Joe, welcome to the pod.
Thanks for having me, Raul.
I'm excited for this conversation simply
because I love all things sales, all
things marketing, all things helping
other people achieve their goals,
which is the essence of true selling.
So welcome.
Thank you very much.
I'm happy to be here.
Open book, so ask away.
No, it's going to be fun, man.
We, just have a simple conversation One
of the things that I let's frame it.
There's go to market strategies.
There is how to increase sales
that we don't currently have.
Then there's also companies that
are doing successful or doing okay.
They have sales, have momentum,
but they could be doing better.
And then you also have companies that
have momentum, but they're optimizing
team staff, like leadership, et cetera.
So there's all these different
facets in terms of, looking
from a leader's perspective, the
pendulum of growth in a company.
the initial stages, product market
fit founder sales fit really, frankly,
typically most founders should be, in
my opinion, doing founder led sales.
Then you have maybe your actual strategies
that you want to increase your channels.
How do you get more people to know
who you are, et cetera, et cetera.
And assuming you're bootstrapping or
you have some funds to to venture funds
to either venture strap, which is a
new thing, apparently like one round.
And then from there you
bootstrap from the rest.
And then from there you're starting
to increase like the higher levels,
sales leadership, sales org.
Sales management at the whole nine kind
of help me dissect your perspective.
Where do you come in an organization's
like life cycle when it comes to that
like story arc that I just laid out?
Yeah.
I think.
If you were to look at sales maturity
as a three stage growth cycle, right?
So the first stage is we're really
still trying to figure out the
identity of the company what it is
that we do and truly what's the value
that, that we bring to the market.
That's stage one, right?
So that's like figuring out our
story, figuring out how to who
our ideal customer profile is.
How do we get in touch with them?
What makes them really want to talk with
Then you have stage two, which is, okay,
we figure some of these things out.
Now we need vehicles, right?
So we understand the story.
Now we need a vehicle to bring
that story to the market, match
it up, start to scale, start to
build some systems around that.
And then stage three
is like true maturity.
Now we're actually really scaling.
We've got, we've figured out
what works and also we've
really figured out what doesn't.
And so now we want to accelerate the gas.
I help people the most with
stage one and stage two.
Stage three is more of an
operational exercise, right?
So it's an optimization around operations.
Whereas stage one is discovery.
Stage two is engineering and
design of how to get to the market.
And those are the places
where I play the strongest.
I like the term design because
there is, a creative component to
it, but there's also constraints.
And especially if you work with
founders, there's a multitude
of different constraints,
which makes the work exciting.
Tell me more about the design
work that you do in stage two.
Yeah.
So design I like the word
constraints that you used, because.
I think that those constraints is
what actually gives us the freedom
to accelerate thing is, think of it
like this, if I told you to write
an essay and just give you a blank
sheet of paper, that's really hard,
but if I give you a writing prompt,
now you can do something right St.
Thomas Aquinas used to have this exercise
about like rules and things like that,
he's okay, imagine you build this huge
mountains really high up in the air,
you put 20 kids at the top of that
mountain, And you leave them there.
They're all going to sit down
and basically cry because I could
fall off the edge of the mountain.
But if I erect a really firm fence
around the barriers of that mountain,
give him a soccer ball to play.
It's fine.
You can have fun.
Yeah.
Because they know that within
this confine, I'm safe.
So everything I do within
these confines are safe.
So understanding those constraints
within the business are really important.
And especially around stage two, if
you've got a company that say sub a
hundred million dollars in annual revenue.
It's really important that everything
we do at this stage is directly
tracked to bottom line KPIs.
And so all of our design is around that.
So for example, most companies I talk
to are still looking for like virality.
How do I do content?
How do I get out social media?
And all of these things are good ideas.
But what I really help them do is get
very clear about, we want one message,
one vehicle, one ICP, and let's get that
locked in a direct messaging approach.
And the reason why I'm really strong on
that is because if I get more at bats,
if I can have more conversations, if
I can understand my metrics to go buy
a customer, and I know exactly what
it is that they're responding to and
what their own language is and speaking
to me about their problem, that gives
me The tool set to build out other
types of outreach, these things where
I don't have as much direct control.
So the kind of design constraints that
I'm looking to work with a founder
is let's not do 20 things haphazardly
without any coordinated strategy.
Let's really Focus our resources on
one specific vehicle and then push
that, scale it, get a lot of at bats.
Even if they don't close, I want to have
a lot more conversations with people.
And then that gives me the fuel
and the formula and the, Speech
patterns, really, of how to have
those conversations at scale.
And and then once we have that, then
you can start putting in systems, right?
And then again, if you're still under
a hundred million, it's important
that the systems that we use to
scale are still very personal, right?
So it still requires conversations, even
if those conversations are asynchronous.
I'm not a fan of, Hey, I'm just going to
throw you up against a automated webinar.
You're going to do a form
and then you're going to.
I mean that, that can work.
But I find that you get much better,
not just close rates and stick
rates, but satisfaction and more
importantly, referrals if we keep
the human element inside, inside the
sales process from the beginning.
And in fact, if you do it the right
way and your discovery calls really
provide value, you can get referrals
before people become customers.
It's probably just to.
Put a pin on it.
This is probably one of the most valuable
things I've heard in a very long time
when it comes to sales is usually
when it comes to sales and marketing,
we talk about, okay, how do we get
more MQLs, SQLs people on the phone?
How do we get more done deals, close
deals one and move people to that stage.
But that's usually
where the thinking ends.
It doesn't really go.
It's how do we create the process so
that we have higher LTV or referral rates
lowering or CAC or cost for acquisition?
Like I think those conversations are
more, not to Say, oh my gosh, Joe,
amazing work, but it's dude, I like that
because it's a more mature approach to
strategy versus, Hey, let's just get
as many leads as possible and as many
close one deals tell me more about.
So when you mentioned vehicle,
that means a lot of things.
Especially to me, like when we
talk about vehicles and I can give
you some context, when I look at
vehicles or mechanisms, like unique
mechanisms I'll give you a story.
One of my clients, they sell pretty
much anything, everything that everyone
else sells in digital marketing okay,
we can do website, we can do content.
We do all these different things.
And I dove deep what's the one thing
that you really do differently here?
And what stuck for her was like,
she does brand communities.
And Oh that's different.
That's interesting.
So what does this brand
community do for me?
And then we went through the metrics
of what it actually does for clients.
Like it increases revenue lowers, cost per
acquisition, lowers ad spend all the, all
these nice things that her clients want.
Like, why don't we just sell that thing?
Instead of selling the work and the hands
of I can do all these different things.
It'd just be a commodity.
I'm going to sell you this
thing that is different.
So for me, that thing becomes the
vehicle and I'm speaking in very simple
languages here, but that, that actual.
Package product is what I call
a vehicle or unique mechanism.
I want to define here on your end.
What does it mean when you focus on
you mentioned one ICP, one problem,
one vehicle is your vehicle that you're
describing, like our go to market strategy
or channel for outreach, or is it actually
like the thing that you're selling?
I think I'm in alignment with you here.
It's the thing that we're selling, right?
So we want to have one core
operational job that we're doing
to bring value at the beginning.
And that, that oftentimes makes
founders freak out, but, there's
just so much benefit from focus.
And that focus helps you, not, Play
in areas where you shouldn't play it.
So you can get really, good at one
thing, which means you now can start
getting economies of scale, you
can fulfill faster, you can fulfill
better, your revenue per deal goes
up, you can start many of my, many
of the clients that I work with
don't do products, they do services.
And so when we get into sort of one core
vehicle allows them to not charge on
time and materials, but charge on value.
And so now they start seeing
exponential EBITDA growth,
like exponential EBITDA growth.
It's really beautiful because
they're doing less work.
There's less change orders.
There's less client frustration.
Everybody's happier and
they're more profitable.
It's it's a silver bullet and
I can't take credit for this.
It's not something I designed.
There's many there's so many things.
I wrote this a while ago, like
everyone's going to keep writing about
positioning and so many things will
be written and have been written.
It's It's not going to change, but I
think the interesting part here is that
it stems back to our perception, right?
We see things differently depending
on obviously value based pricing,
but it's all our perception,
which I think it's what leverages
and we were leveraging here.
One, one of the interesting things
here that I want to poke around because
now I get where you're coming from and
seeing where this is, where this can go.
So value based pricing, obviously we're
not going to dive deeply into that,
but I would recommend looking into.
What is your market care about?
And what is the deliverables
that you actually do?
And how for example, simple example,
you have a heart attack and if you can
get this thing, this cure, whatever,
and they're going to save you from
dying, how much is that worth to you?
You'd probably pay several
million dollars for that versus
30 for I don't know, a little.
Pill or something like it's all
depending on what's important to you.
Selling services, finding the one
thing let's dive into the one thing
and finding that unique factor.
How do you work with clients
to find the unique factor?
And I think this is going to be
really enlightening for the audience,
because I think right now there might
be people listening to sell several
types of things, multiple pieces, but.
And I'm going to skip to the
end saying, I know it's going to
feel scary to position yourself.
It's going to feel scary to only sell
one thing, but this is getting your
foot in the door so that you can expand
your services and do more for them.
But it also helps you become more
profitable and streamline operations.
But I think the key thing is discovering
what is that one thing and then
working through your mechanism,
which is you actually help them
highlight that one thing through
your technical storytelling system.
So how do you combine both?
Yeah.
So if you'll allow me to take a step
back, trying to help a client figure
out what their one thing is with
one vehicle is depends on really
what stage of maturity they're at.
Let's start with stage
one, which is based.
They still don't really
know themselves, right?
They're still looking to figure
out how they match with the market.
And so they've built something.
Some service, some tools, some technology.
And they did it.
Most of them, they did it
with a problem in mind.
And then typically by the time
they're talking to me is they've
already hit some frustration there.
So okay, I've got I've used,
chat, GPT vision to analyze.
Hey stubs, right?
Because I want to shorten the
close cycle for underwriting.
Let's say that's a real example.
And then I set up my, clay workflow.
I'm pulling information from
from Apollo and from seamless.
I'm cleaning it up.
I'm sticking it through email
automation with AI on it.
I'm sending out a thousand emails.
I've warmed up all my email addresses
and I'm getting nothing in return.
Yeah.
And they're coming to me and they're
like, okay, we'll fix my email stack.
I'm like, Whoa, bro.
That's not the problem.
Okay.
We're not saying the right words.
So in that situation, the question
becomes you've, got a tool.
You think you have a problem, but we just
have to have a lot more conversations.
And like you said, it's scary because the
reality is you got to pick up the phone.
And those situations, the job that
I do for them is not let's go sit by
the white board and diagram all the
things out that we want to diagram out.
No, we don't know the market
is the one that knows.
So you tell me who you think
is going to buy this thing.
And you tell me the two or three
key problems you think that
they're struggling with every day.
Okay.
And then what I'm going to do,
and so let's use this as an
example for context, right?
I think the person who's going to buy
it as someone who's a VP at like a mid
level bank and they've got a staff of
underwriters and we're paying these guys
too much to do clerical work at the end
of the day, because they need to be doing
high thinking work, but they have to do
all this clerical work that specialize.
And I think AI can solve that problem.
Bingo.
Now let's get a list and
let's get on the phone.
You give me two or three key
problems and let's just call.
With a super simple script of
Hey, I'm building this tool.
Want to do some research.
Help me out.
I think people in your situation
are struggling with one or one, two
or three of these problems Do any
of these resonate with you at all?
And let's just have a quick
conversation about this I'm not
trying to sell you anything and you
just do the work and that's scary.
But those are really Good
conversations to have.
It's not hard to do it.
You spend two hours a day calling
and you'll have two or three
conversations, maybe four or five.
It's not great, but the learnings in
having your target market specifically
tell you exactly what their problems
are and how they talk about it and what
they're in their own language, that's the
key and how they're trying to solve it.
And then now I can take that and
one, I can continue cold calling
because now I have the right language.
And two, I can go back to my email cycle
and figure out where were we going wrong.
What was the things that we were saying
that we're making people not respond
and we make everything buyer oriented.
And then from there we get into
the storytelling system, but we
start telling stories that attract
people to say, Hey, you get it.
You get the problem that I'm having.
Now I'm, now it's worthy of having
a conversation because within the
sales process, we must deliver value.
And even in your cold emails or
cold emails must deliver value.
We can't position it in the standard,
but we Personalized intro line.
Here's my quick case study.
Do you want to have a meeting?
No, we want to bring clarity to the
person when they read the cold email.
Hey, here's this problem
that you're having.
Let me help you articulate it better.
Here's some things that maybe you've
tried, but here's something that you
might want to think about trying.
Now, can I help you?
And you'd be surprised how those
simple tweaks of getting oriented to
your buyer's personality, how they
talk about things and giving them
value from every step of the way.
We'll take a system
that's producing nothing.
And then from there you start
getting some real traction.
That's fascinating.
I know we're going to dive in
and get nerdy with the tech.
And I know a lot of people
like whoa, clay seamless.
How do you tell me how to
send a thousand emails?
That's scale.
There's plenty of YouTube videos
to show you how to do that, but it
sounds like this particular example,
they're more technically advanced.
So I love using clay.
I love Apollo, but I think you have
to use them in a, this is like the,
thinking that goes behind pressing send.
So help me understand a little
bit further, because this
is, this Really insightful.
First, we do the actual market research.
What are we actually helping
them with and do they actually
care by having conversations?
And you're being bold enough to just
dial, have a conversation, get feedback.
And based on this podcast and
other experts that I've had
on and my own experience, you
only really need to have 12.
Conversations.
That's the key after 12, I recommend
21 because you want to predict what
the next one's going to say, but that's
because I like to be very, precise,
but you only need 12 conversations.
That's not that hard.
You can do that in a week.
That's right.
You can do that in two days if
you're dialing a hundred day.
That's correct.
I'll tell you, here's, the trick.
Get an account at like Apollo or
Seamless or something like that.
Pull your list, get a trial account at one
of these calling systems, like just call
or Kie and you upload your list and then
just say, okay, for the next 90 minutes
I'm calling, which play on your phone.
On your keyboard, you've got your headset
and you're just having conversations.
You got your little script and
you're just having conversations
and you will get your 21 calls.
Pretty quickly.
I think that I actually think that's
a good number because I think what
we're really looking for is you want to
have their problem into three buckets.
You want to know, here's
my ideal customer profile.
And they've got I know if I talk
to them, they for sure 90 percent
of the time, they're going to
have one of these three problems.
And I know how to talk about that
problem in their own language.
And I know the three or four things
that they've tried already that haven't
worked or have only worked partially.
Once you know that you're ready to go.
So let's, put this in a framework,
the goal that they want to achieve,
the three problems that they have, the
three or four things that they tried
per problem and their own language.
If you have that, is literally.
A marketer and salesperson's goals.
Like I can do so much with that.
That's right.
You have your whole story.
And then now you map that to
your escape arrival framework.
So it's okay, here's the place that
I'm at and I want to escape from that.
Here's the place that I'm going to,
and I'm trying to arrive from that.
You map out that transformation
process and different people are
going to be at different stages.
And so now I know once I'm having a
conversation with someone, where they
are in this process, what's the next
thing that's going to be interesting.
So tell me, how you work this
into your technical stuff.
Like storytelling system, because right
now we just did the heavy lifting work.
Like this, work in itself, to be
honest with you every, startup, every
founder has to go through this grind.
You get that, get the insights.
How do we implement this
to get tangible outcomes?
Like you mentioned.
Yeah.
Okay.
So there's, two parallel
tracks that are running.
The first thing is, once I have
these buckets, I'm doing cold
calls and I'm never stopping that.
I'm just going to calling or
doing cold emails, but I prefer
calls because I think it's faster.
And I think people don't do it anymore.
So it works.
Okay.
So I'm doing that to have one on
one conversations, but while I'm
doing that, there's one missing
piece, which is I have to do.
Research into the market, right?
So I've done research into my
client, my potential clients, but you
didn't know the surrounding market.
Like what's going on
socially, economically, techno
technologically, et cetera.
What are the market outside influences
that are present today in 2024, or
whenever someone's listening to this,
that are impacting their reality, because
what I really want to do is look at.
Trends as things are changing over the
past three years, five years, 10 years.
So for example, let's go back
to this underwriting thing.
The annual salary of underwriters has gone
up by 23 percent over the last four years.
By getting access to funding as
farter money's more expensive.
So there's all this capital
market stuff that I can weave in.
There's all this salary.
There's this there's this
dearth of qualified employees.
And so I weave all these things
in plus you have FinTech coming
in, which is Going digital first.
So you have all these standard local banks
who were caught stuck with, I have aged
technology, increasing overhead costs
and no real way out of that situation.
And if I don't do something, I'm for sure
in the next two to three years my, my
loan origination is going to hank, which
means I'm not going to have any money.
So now I've got a story, right?
So I weave, I now that's the technical
story is I've got the market.
The tech, the technical part of
what I'm actually trying to sell.
But more than that, I know their
reality and I weave a narrative
that's data driven around that.
And then the question becomes
how do I meet them where they
are to tell them this story?
And easy.
I can do an executive briefing.
I can do lunch and learns.
I can do asynchronous webinars.
There's many ways I can repackage that.
So you're going to market with them.
Then this year you get GTM, like
that's how you get a market.
And this is how you educate and add value.
What you do, here's you do top of funnel,
middle funnel, bottom full of content.
And then you mentioned on the email,
because I get I'm pretty sure you do too.
Tons of cold emails.
LinkedIn, thankfully has stopped
getting a lot of spam, or
maybe I don't see it anymore.
But a cold email.
Some are great.
Some suck.
Most suck.
Tell me more about like cold, calling.
I think help the mystic.
I know I said, but cold calling.
In my opinion, I think works
better in middle market.
That's just my opinion.
I think if you're a founder or new,
like it may not work as well, but I
could be happily wrong about that.
So I tend to lean towards the
cold email, cold messaging.
What do you think about that?
I, maybe I'm not the best
person to ask because I'm just
a big fan of direct outreach.
Like I put myself through university
selling AT& T door to door.
So I have a weird personality where like
the rejection doesn't bother me that much.
But what I find is if you're really,
if you've got a, if you know for sure
this, I think this is really the thing.
If you know that you're going to
give value on the call, you're
not scared of having the call.
So if I know that if I get the
right person on the phone, that
the first thing is I'm going to
give them an out immediately.
Number one, and then number two, that
what I have to tell them, even if they
never do business with me is going
to at least improve them marginally,
then it's fine for me to reach out.
The problem is if I'm going to
call and all I'm looking to do
is just take, that's the problem.
That is, feels smarmy and
nobody wants to do that.
And I feel safer by doing a cold email.
But a cold call it's very simple.
I ring you up.
You hello, Raul.
Hey roll.
Listen, this is a cold call.
Do you want to hang up on me now or
take 30 seconds and hang out, hang up on
me then most people, are pretty chill.
They're like, dude, you're being honest.
Give me your ticket 30 seconds,
unless you're like in a meeting and
they really can't take it, but more
times than not, they're like, shoot.
And then I know my three buckets.
I'll go listen, rule.
Most.
VPs of underwriting are
struggling with this, or this.
They invite me in to handle these three
things that I don't know if any of
those apply to you, but if you could
wave a magic wand and fix one of them,
which one would you want to address?
And then you start telling me, you're
like I'm not going to say I'm perfect.
I think we do have this dot, And then
I go, Hey, sorry, 30 seconds are up.
You want to hang up on me now?
Or do you want to keep going?
Oh, let's keep going.
And we're off to the races.
So for me at any level, cold call
works because it's very, simple.
And there's tech, there's tools to
not have you waste your time, like
dialing and listening to ringtones
and all those kinds of things.
So you can optimize it.
So I'm a fan of that.
And then on the cold email side, I think.
There's two things you can do.
Again, it takes a really scientific
approach of split testing.
And when I say split testing, I
don't mean split testing, which is
what people do, where they take two
identical email copies and they change
a couple of things to say, no, we're
not looking for one or 2 percent change.
No, I'm T I'm testing
radically different approaches.
Like you always want to have a
standard sort of just straight up.
Here's who I am.
Here's what I think you're dealing with.
Here's how I want to help you.
Let's roll.
But then you want to do
something completely wacky.
For example.
In this loan origination
thing, one guy told me, I feel
like I built a Frankenstein.
I just, that was such a good visual image.
So I called up, I didn't do it.
Don't do GPT.
I got an artist to draw me up a
cartoon of a computer engineer,
building a computerized Frankenstein
that looked really nice.
He was like smiling and friendly looking.
And then that was just the headline
is like, Hey, building a tech
Frankenstein for underwriting.
There's a better way to do it.
And then launch that against our
standard and it outperformed it like 1.8x
Yeah, I don't, but it was because that
concept came from the market of this.
Yeah.
They, told you, they told
me, so I just repurposed it
and sent it out there, right?
So for email, cold email,
you're experimenting like that.
No, you don't need to get
to a thousand emails a day.
You can start with 20 to 50 until you
figure out what's actually responding.
Because for example, if you're getting 3
percent response rates, That's not good.
People are like, Oh, that's great.
No, it's not.
That's not.
That means you've, really
messed up somewhere.
Thank you for saying that.
Everyone just says Oh, you're sending
a thousand get three response.
It's going to be amazing.
That sounds terrible.
Oh gosh.
Nobody wants to.
And then you've got all this tech thing
that you have to manage your whole,
cause you're burning email addresses.
There's all these other things you
have to be paying attention to.
But the bigger thing is man, how
many, how much time are you wasting
of other people in sending out?
97 percent of your emails are unwelcome.
Yeah.
No.
So typically if your response rates
are that low, you haven't done your
research and if you have done your
research, then your list is really poor.
And that's where people
don't spend enough time.
They get these tools, they put
in a little selects, they see
this big list of 10, 000 people.
They're like, wait, look
at all this potential.
It doesn't cost me anything
to send an email, so I'm going
to market that whole list.
No.
Let's get that list down
to two or 300 people.
That's highly specific.
I am more quality.
Yeah.
For example, if I'm doing this
underwriting thing, let's go find
banks that are hiring underwriters
right now, and they're hiring
from for at least two positions.
That means that's telling me that they
have way more paperwork than they can
manage and they're willing to pay 60 to
80 to 120 K a year to solve that problem.
And so if I can come and automate
that and save them 40 percent on
just the manual labor, they may
still hire those underwriters,
but now they're going to have the
ability to go process way more paper.
So those are the people I want to talk to.
And now I can research very specifically
and speak really clearly Hey, I saw
you're hiring these two people here, that.
Probably means you have this, and this.
Let's have a conversation.
And now your response rates are like
60, 70 percent because you're not doing,
you're not doing anything in bulk.
Yeah, it's more relevant.
You're not ready for bulk until you're
at stage late stage two, stage three.
Interesting.
And I think that's one of the things
that I, the danger of the terms do
these things, quote unquote at scale,
because all these things are, Technically
automated, but here we're looking at
relevance plus automation, plus research,
plus actual thinking behind it in small
batches versus just like a one full
swift, like swing of 10, 000 emails.
100%.
Like one of the things I'm investigating,
I don't have a solution to this, but I'm
trying to use AI to do like certain types
of web scraping and things like that.
So for example, in this situation,
is there a vision bot that can go
and client crawl the job boards to
make me a list of banks that are
firing for multiple underwriters?
That's probably doable.
So that would save me the time.
But what I don't want to do is just
go to my lead generation list and say,
okay, I need everyone with this title.
That's making this much that the
companies between this and revenue
and a senior level go that's
such an, that's the beginning.
One of the latest lists too, that I'm,
that I built for a client is we're looking
at specific language that they're using in
their company bio so that we know exactly
where they stand in terms of worldview.
And then from there we filter
out team size and revenue, cause
they have to afford the service.
But then the third is
like their tech stack.
Like I have a very specific tool.
Cause if they're investing in that
tool, they must care about this thing.
You have to care about this thing.
Then we're also comparing that towards
website hits and engagement on the
website, meaning they're investing in
these things that are growth oriented,
but they're sucking in these two areas.
Therefore they know that's important.
They care about it and they're more
likely to respond to something around like
what you mentioned, the three buckets.
You might be struggling
with this, or this.
Which one is that?
And that's the real work.
That's the brain work that you have to do.
It's beautiful to hear that.
And most people just won't.
They just won't do the work and to build,
to bring value to someone, you have to
put something of yourself into it, right?
To we have to give of ourselves
to make ourselves valuable.
And so sometimes you're giving of
yourself way before you reach out to
the person and that's perfectly fine.
And we should be eager to do that because
that's where we earn where we earn our
paycheck because we're doing something of
more value for that, client, namely not
wasting their time and then giving them
some clarity that they didn't have before.
Yeah.
You're in the right for it.
Switching gears here.
I want to dive into a
little bit of your story.
Just briefly around the essence
of do good work is like the
beauty behind the struggle.
Ever nice to have difficulty or
it's ever nice to go through that.
But no, one's going to
see you waking up at 4 AM.
No, one's going to see you burning the
midnight oil and getting things done.
So this is what the high, the
highlight of the podcasts are.
I know there was a time in your,
background when you mentioned where
it was very difficult second child
on the way you got let go, and.
What helped you stick through that?
Cause I think it's going to be
useful for us to hear not only the
good, but also like when things get
difficult, like how'd you persevere?
Yeah.
I've had definitely my fair share of
struggle, and I anticipate there to be
fair share struggle on the way to, I don't
think it's all behind me and that's good.
That's part of, that's part of caring
so I'm Catholic just because that's
going to be part of the framework
of what, I'm talking about here.
That's part of how I would say carrying
the cross of my role in life as a
first off as a husband, second as
a father and I need to provide for
my family, but there's a hierarchy
to that providence of spiritual.
Emotional, financial in that order, right?
And the world tells us to do it the
opposite way as men are, the job
is to provide financially for your
family first to establish that kind
of financial stability, then make
yourself emotionally available.
And then if you can spiritually
is as great as a third.
But I've seen through concrete events
in my life that's not the case.
And that, God, Jesus is very honest
with us when he says, seek ye first the
kingdom of God and his righteousness and
everything else will be given you besides.
And that's a really strong word.
Like even if you go to the Greek
gratis, that's the Latin, but
the Greek is similar, which
is it's a totally free gift.
And so the question is is
that something I can rely on?
Can I bank my family on that?
If so, then that means I can live my
professional life in a very different
way than, I would, if it's not the case.
So let me give, put this, let's say it's
almost like an iteration of Pascal wager.
Yeah.
In a sense, But, the difference
between Pascal's wager and what
I'm talking about is Pascal's
wage wagers okay, play your bets.
And what I'm saying is no, Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
No.
But I'm just, I'm taking it the
step, the next step, which is.
put it to the test.
There's very few times where
God says, put me to the test.
And, at the end of the prophet Malachi, he
said in this situation, he says, when it
comes to providing for your family, this
is one place where put me to the test.
It's okay, let's see.
So in this situation,
I'll be very concrete.
I got, so my, degree was
in biomedical engineering.
I went to school, I got, I went
to, I'm, I happen to be blessed
with knowing how to do school well.
There's many things I can't do well,
but I can do school really, well.
I can hack standardized tests.
I just did it.
My brain works that way.
I can take, I took, I was a B
student, maybe A and B, but yeah.
Yeah.
I might be a B person, but
I'm a great student, man.
If I could get, if I could get paid to
just be in school, I do it all the time.
I'm good at school.
Anyway, so I got, I go to
university early and I'm on this
fast track to get my doctorate in
undergraduate doctorate in six years.
Wow.
I'm like, yeah.
But then I really rapidly discovered
I didn't want to be a doctor.
Okay.
No problem.
So I did, I pivoted and
did biomedical engineering.
I graduate, and I come to the faith
around that kind of time, and I'm here
in Houston where there's a huge medical
center, lots of firms I can go work
for, and for me, and this may not be
the case for everyone else, but what
I discovered was all of them source
their tissues from aborted fetal stem
cell lines, and so for me, ethically,
I had to walk away from my career.
I couldn't find a company that could
guarantee that I would never have to work
with those board, those types of tissues.
I happen to have just gotten
married and my wife and I were
blessed with a pregnancy within the
first six weeks of our marriage.
And then that first,
pregnancy was delicate.
So my wife had to leave her career.
So she leaves her career.
I leave my career.
We have two, I have two, I'm
working two jobs now as a result.
Because I'm trying to figure
out what I'm going to go do.
So I tested in for business school.
I wanted to go to
Stanford business school.
And I was working for a company
that did test prep at the time
running their Houston office.
So I was working in the
day, working in the night.
My wife has the baby.
Obviously I want to be
home with my family.
So we discern, okay, let's leave the
night job because you're working too much.
I need you here.
And this is not really a
good way to start a family.
And so I leave the night job and then
the next week, the day job has a layoff.
So I go from having two jobs to none.
And my wife was also not working.
I was like, panic, real time panic.
And that was a really, stressful time.
And I did what everyone else would do,
you start applying for things, you start
looking at who you can who you can lean
on, you start asking you, you basically
start scrambling, I can remember we'd
actually gotten an eviction notice to
get kicked out of our apartment I'd
even applied to waste management to
haul trash, like I was willing to do
whatever, and here's, waste management
didn't even give me a call back, fine.
So I do all that.
It's a Sunday night and we have
to have, I think it's something
like 6, 000 by the next Friday,
or we're going to get evicted.
I'm having this conversation with
my wife and you can imagine she's
pregnant with our second, we're in this
really terrible financial situation.
We don't really know what to do.
And she tells me Like she's looking at me
like you're the, head of the household.
What are you going to do?
I've tried everything.
We've asked.
We've applied.
I don't know.
I don't have an answer for you.
I wish that I did.
I know that.
This is not how we want
our marriage to go.
That's not the situation we want to be in.
I understand very clearly how stressful
this is and I'm carrying the stress too,
but I don't know what we're going to do.
It's God's going to have to help us.
And she's no, like God yeah, God's helps.
But you've got to put your action into it.
God helps those who help themselves.
And I was like, no.
If that is how God is,
I'm not interested in him.
It's what do you mean?
It's I'm a bad father.
I'm a new father and I would
never treat my son like that.
My son really needed my help.
And I saw that he's been trying
things that weren't working.
I'm waiting for him to figure some
things out before I lend a hand.
That would make me a pretty crappy father.
If God's like that.
Then I You're out.
I'm not interested.
Yeah, I'm out.
I'm out.
I'm like, I'm totally out.
Wow.
Because we went to sleep like that.
I, kid you, not I, this is I, not joking.
I woke up the next morning with
an email from a client I hadn't
talked to in four or five years.
Yo Joe.
Oh, wow.
I'm actually I, wanna
go to business school.
I just discern I wanna go to business
school, but I got a test in two weeks.
Can you work with me every day this week?
I'm home for break.
I'll pay you 6,500 bucks.
Can you, I know it's
crazy, but can you help me?
Absolutely.
You're good at school and this
guy needs to go to school.
Yeah, and and it was, and not just that,
it was exactly the amount that we needed.
Like within a couple of 30 bucks more,
like it was exactly what we needed.
And it was like that from one night to
the next morning with me having done
nothing, it just shows up in my email.
I still have the, stuff from that check.
It's in the frame for me to remember.
Yeah.
So for me I don't when people that talk
to me about like the struggle, I want to
be very clear that for me, the struggle
has been struggling to, to realize that.
It's not about me, like all I can
do is knock the doors, like St.
Joseph was trying to figure out
where he and Mary are going to go.
And he's trying to figure out
where is Jesus going to be born.
The only thing he can do is knock doors.
He's just knocking doors
and trying and trying.
He didn't have some master
plan that figured things out.
He didn't have some it wasn't
anything of his own merit.
His merit came in his fidelity to the
process of my job is to knock doors.
God handles the rest.
Yeah.
And so for me, that's what I've
discovered is I just put, I just do
the next best thing that I'm supposed
to do, knowing that I there's,
90 percent of what's going on.
I have no clue.
I don't know how it's going to pay off.
I don't know what's going to happen
longterm, but I can trust the process and
I can rely that God has the rest of it.
And so I just keep knocking the doors.
And so people are like, how do you
know, how do these things work?
I'm like I'm, not that smart.
It's a discipline of hope, right?
You're disciplining on hope and trust.
That's exactly right.
And just to.
Put a bow around the story.
So remember I said, I applied to
waste management to haul trash.
It wouldn't give me a call back within
three years of this event happening.
I was in the boardroom of negotiating
major deals with waste management.
Then I told their CFO to
his face three years ago.
You wouldn't call me back to hire, to haul
your own trash, sign the document, bro.
That's awesome.
That's incredible.
Oh my goodness.
That's beautiful.
Thank you for sharing that, man.
Yeah.
No, this is great.
Joe, for everyone listening
here where can they go to one?
Thank you for being vulnerable and
sharing who you are and your insights and
to learn more about what you're up to.
Yeah.
So the best place to
reach me is on LinkedIn.
So slash Joseph and do J O S E P H
in the you that's my LinkedIn page.
You can reach out to me there.
Or you can go to the Catholic CEO.
com, which is the organization
I do most of my work through.
Both of those locations are places
you can get in touch with me and other
folks like me who do similar work.
Because for example, my suite, my
sweet spot is within technology, but if
you're in a different kind of company,
but you like this kind of approach and
thinking there's people we can connect
you with who, who think like this, but
have specialties in different fields.
I like it.
I'll put the link to your
LinkedIn on the show notes.
Joe, thanks again, man.
My pleasure.
Take care, man.
Thanks for having me.
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