How Salespeople Can Thrive in an AI Era | TFOS E19

In this episode of The Future of Selling, host Rick Smith is joined by Michael Gallagher, founder of the Stevie Awards and co-founder of two AI-driven companies: Reqsy and ImageShield.

Michael shares why recognition matters more than ever in an AI-powered world, how storytelling is the key to standing out, and why building your personal brand is crucial—especially for early-career sales professionals facing automation threats.

🔥 Key Topics:

Why Michael launched the "Oscars for Business" in the shadow of Enron

How AI is changing sales recognition—and how to use it wisely

How to tell a story that gets noticed (and wins awards)

Advice for sales reps who want to future-proof their careers

💡 Whether you’re a seller, a team leader, or just curious about the future of recognition and AI, this conversation will leave you with clear, practical takeaways.

Connect with Michael Gallagher https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-gallagher-a8b785/
Nominate a Sales Pro for a Stevie Award: https://stevieawards.com//sales

Connect with Rick Smith https://www.linkedin.com/in/rick-smith-094b29b
Connect with Conquer https://conquer.io/

Creators and Guests

Host

Rick Smith

Chief Customer Officer at Conquer, Host of The Future of Selling Podcast, Eternal Student

What is The Future of Selling?

The Future of Selling is the go-to podcast for sales professionals looking to sharpen their skills and stay ahead in the competitive world of B2B sales. Each episode features expert interviews, real-world case studies, and actionable tips to help you navigate the complex B2B buyer's journey. Whether you're dealing with long sales cycles, multiple decision-makers, or rapidly changing technologies, we’ve got you covered. Tune in to discover the latest trends, best practices, and proven strategies for closing more deals and building lasting relationships in the B2B space. Perfect for sales leaders, account managers, and anyone aiming to master the art of B2B selling.

Future Of Selling (00:01.836)
All right. Hey, welcome to the Future of Selling podcast where we dive into challenges, we dive into trends, we dive into innovations, really anything impacting the future of sales or the sales landscape. I'm your host Rick Smith. I'm so appreciative that you decided to join us today. And let me let me introduce our guest. So our guest today is Michael Gallagher. So Michael is described as a serial entrepreneur, a recognition visionary. Love that.

and a long-time champion of innovation. So Michael's best known for being the founder and executive chairman of the Stevie Awards. Maybe you've heard of those. We're going to talk a lot more about those today. So the Stevie Awards is the leading business awards platform. Michael also has spent more than two decades in the Stevie Awards spotlighting excellence in sales, customer service, marketing, leadership.

across 60 plus countries. And matter of I was just talking to them before we started recording and they're actually now starting a new category. So we'll probably hear little bit about that today. I think that's amazing. However, his innovation doesn't just stop with recognition awards. Michael is also the co-founder of two AI based startups. I think they're both still in startup mode, which is Image Shield and RECSI. So we'll find out more about that from Michael as we get going here.

Really excited about the conversation today because Michael is such an innovator and he's also just a forward thinker. He's been doing this for 22 years in working in the area of recognition. So it's pretty exciting. So Michael, welcome to the podcast and really just thank you for your time today, sir.

Michael Gallagher (01:42.316)
Thanks for having me, Rook.

Future Of Selling (01:43.514)
Yeah, absolutely. So I always like to get started with a couple of fun facts before we get going, just to give people maybe a little bit more background. We will hit on a lot of different things today, but just a couple of things we looked up and found out about you and you can confirm things are accurate or they're not. But you know, the name Stevie, which I always thought that was interesting. I heard about the Stevie Awards a number of years ago, but obviously now you're in the podcast. I've leaned in a little bit more to it. But the word Stevie comes from the Greek name Stefanos.

moon crowned. Is that accurate?

Michael Gallagher (02:14.766)
Yes, that is accurate. When I started the Stevie Awards, it's hard to find a name. It's hard to find a name for a business or a product or service that's meaningful and that's available. So looking for a name, I took two baby naming books out of the library, boy's book and a girl's book. And I went through both books and wrote down any name that sort of resonated with me. And I wanted a name that...

Future Of Selling (02:21.753)
Yeah.

Future Of Selling (02:27.3)
Yeah. Yeah.

Michael Gallagher (02:43.338)
that sort of resonated with Tony, Emmy, Grammy, sort of had that E, know, like Stevie has. It had to be a name that had a positive root connotation, which obviously Stevie Stefanos does. And it had to be a name that I could use around the world. It couldn't be a name that was okay in the US, but profane in some other country, right? So I wrote down the list and I went through the list and then checked to see what was available and almost nothing was available, but Stevie was available. were only...

Future Of Selling (02:49.988)
Yes.

Future Of Selling (03:01.998)
Yeah.

Michael Gallagher (03:12.494)
two Stevie's that I could find. One was a sports rider in Detroit gave out a Stevie Award every year to, but it wasn't an award. It was just, you he wrote a column, right? And the lawyer said, well, it's not an award. That doesn't count. And there was a monastery in Canada that gave out an award called the Stevie. And I thought, well, I don't think the Canadian monks are going to sue me. So it became Stevie. And Stevie was also my father's name. So there was another reason, but

Future Of Selling (03:27.33)
Right. Yeah.

Future Of Selling (03:41.742)
Alright, so there was a, I wondered if there was a personal connection.

Michael Gallagher (03:42.158)
But that's not the primary reason. It was available and it met all the criteria.

Future Of Selling (03:47.692)
Yeah. Yeah. It was like, and also this is my father's, this is really cool. So, all right. Got it. Got it. Okay. Well, good there. The other kind of cool, you know, fun fact around the Stevie award is that, that your, actual award, the trophy that's handed out is made by the same company that, makes the, the Oscars trophy.

Michael Gallagher (04:08.844)
Well, not anymore. It was originally designed and made by by ours Owens in Chicago. I don't know if they still make the Oscar, but at the time and for many years they did make the Oscar. And when I talked to them about creating the award, they said how heavy do you want it to be? I said, how heavy is the Oscar? They said eight pounds. I said it should be eight pounds. And and it was huge. know, the the trophy is now our grand award is the is the original Stevie Award trophy. It's a monster.

Future Of Selling (04:15.833)
Okay.

Future Of Selling (04:21.327)
Yeah.

Michael Gallagher (04:38.798)
trophy and it was just so expensive to ship and so fragile because it has a glass piece on top. It just became impractical to keep it as the everyday Stevie Ward trophy. So we had a smaller one designed and the smaller one is now the gold, silver, bronze trophy. And the large one, the original trophy is the grand trophy. We don't do so many of those anymore every year. But it has become a coveted trophy.

Future Of Selling (04:38.82)
Right.

Future Of Selling (04:56.11)
Got it.

Future Of Selling (05:01.156)
Got it.

Michael Gallagher (05:08.534)
award around the world.

Future Of Selling (05:10.542)
Yeah, yeah, no, think it's I think it's cool. And I did and I did read that that it was eight pounds. It's like, my goodness, is it heavy? But that makes sense, right? But now it's the that's the primary one, but you've got others that aren't as you

Michael Gallagher (05:17.71)
It's a monster.

And, you know, and counterintuitive, the bigger one is actually more fragile than the smaller one.

Future Of Selling (05:30.234)
Yeah, okay, got it. So final fun fact. And again, you can tell me this is true or not, but I was kind of looking you up and you were described as a contrarian because when you launched the Stevie Awards, and this was the reason that title was out there, when you launched the Stevie Awards, you were encouraged by most people not, don't do this, right? Because it was kind of a time of a lot of stuff going on, you know, in the...

Michael Gallagher (05:50.732)
Yes, that's correct. Yeah, for younger people who don't know this, there were a lot of business scandals in the early part of the 21st century. There was WorldCom and Enron, there was a lot of stuff. of painting, tarring the whole business community with this brush that there was a lot of corruption and greed. And I got my MBA back in 1994, and I considered myself a student of business. And I realized that there are

Future Of Selling (05:59.695)
Yeah.

Future Of Selling (06:13.455)
Right.

Michael Gallagher (06:20.15)
many millions of businesses around the world at that time, 25 million plus in the US alone, many more now probably. as we know, most people go to work every day with the best of intentions, honorable intentions. They want to do the best work that they could do. And I thought, why should everyone who goes to an office every day or shows up for work every day be charmed with the brush for the misdeeds of these few people? And I knew how to do award shows. I had worked for six years in New York where I grew up.

in the 80s for a company that put on a film festival and advertising awards, lots of media awards. So I knew how to do it. And I was in a position where I wanted to do something of my own. thought, well, the world doesn't need any more film festivals, but why isn't there an Oscars for business? And I talked to people I knew and they said, well, you couldn't pick up a worse time to do this. instinctively for me, when someone says you shouldn't do something, I think I probably should do that. It's just the way I am. So if people say I'm a contrarian, I just know from experience that

Future Of Selling (06:57.582)
Right.

Future Of Selling (07:14.596)
Yeah. Yeah.

Michael Gallagher (07:20.786)
The opportunity is to zig where everyone else is zagging, You don't want to be a zagger among the millions of zaggers. The opportunity is looking where no one else is looking. And I did that. And we've had some copycats since then. But when we started the Stevie Awards, there were really no opportunities for managers and salespeople and engineers and financiers and customer service executives to get.

to have an Oscar moment, to get on a stage and with a spotlight and thank their parents and their teachers like we've all seen actress and actresses do on award shows our entire lives.

Future Of Selling (07:57.626)
Yeah, yeah, no, I think that's incredible. And that was kind of the statement that you were talking about. That's the one that kind of caught my attention on this fun fact, right? And I don't know if this is a direct quote or not, but hey, if it doesn't feel safe, then it has a high impact potential. And I think that's just what you're talking about, right? If everybody else is zagging, that's the safe route. But find the route that's not quite as safe. And I think that probably also speaks to kind of your kind

Serial entrepreneurship, right? Your kind of innovator piece, right? If you're going to be an innovator, you got to go where the, you know, where it ain't so safe or not too many people are hanging out.

Michael Gallagher (08:36.546)
Yeah, there's a lot of competition in the zag market, right? If everybody's going there. But one of the things I learned, and I didn't become an entrepreneur until I was in my 40s. So I had a lot of working experience behind me. And when I speak to students now, which I do a lot, traditionally I've discouraged them from starting businesses right out of school. My message to them has been go work for somebody for a couple of years, learn an industry, learn.

where the opportunities are in your industry or your organization, or I'm going to take you and all the mistakes you're going to make, make them on somebody else's dime. Learn a little bit about what the working world is like. One of the things I learned starting late as an entrepreneur is that, and again, being a student of business, you hear statistics that most small businesses will go out of business within five years. And a lot of that is due to

people starting business, probably shouldn't have started. But from my point of view, a lot of it is that people were unrealistic about how much money they were gonna need to get to break even, but also people give up too quickly. And one of the things I've learned, one of my startups which you've referred to as Image Shield, which we've been working on for almost five years now, started during the pandemic and we've had a couple of pivots and we haven't given up because we know there's an opportunity there and we know there's gonna be a need. We're a little bit early. If I were in my 20s,

I might have given up on it. I might have said, this hasn't really taken off. And I just know being an older person, it just needs more time.

Future Of Selling (10:04.676)
Right. What do you do instead of give up then? mean, you hit a dead end, right? I you got two options. I give up or I do what? I what do you do in place of giving up?

Michael Gallagher (10:17.582)
Well, one of the things I pride myself on, I'm not really a self-promoter, I don't do a lot of interviews like this, I like to stay busy and productive. My philosophy is our purpose on this planet is to be useful. I want to make as many contributions as I can. One of the things I do pride myself on is being resourceful. When I'm presented with any challenge in a business context, I'm pretty resourceful and be able to come up with a solution pretty quickly. And as I mentioned with Image Shield, we've had a couple of pivots.

You know, the current version of Image Shield, we have an app now that has recently been approved, is in the Google Play Store. And we're still waiting for Apple approval to be in the iOS store. And we'll be marking that. That wasn't the original vision for Image Shield. We've pivoted a couple of times. We've learned. being a student of business, and I read a lot, and I know what's going on in the technology industries, and I know what's going on in the world, AI is going to unleash a tsunami of deep fakes and challenges.

to people's identity and the protection of their likenesses. And there's gonna be more and more cause for people to use tools like Image Shield to help protect themselves against that. I saw that coming five years ago and we were talking about it five years ago. And I kinda didn't understand why a lot of people didn't see that it was coming, but I knew it was coming. When the high school bully has tools available to do digital things to their classmates that they used to have to do in the schoolyard.

We know people are going to have to use tools like this.

Future Of Selling (11:49.818)
Yeah. Well, tell us a little bit about that, though. And if you don't mind, you know, cut. So I was going to ask you, hey, you know, tell me about that, you know, how you started Stevie Awards and why I think you kind of went into that, right? It was you felt like there was a there was a gap because of everything else. You know, there were so many kind of negative sentiments going on in the in the business world at that time. It's like, you know, let's start highlighting some of the positive things that are going on that make.

Michael Gallagher (12:15.886)
Well, I'll take you back to my history. As I mentioned, I was in my 40s, which is not that late for starting a business. But we kind of have this vision of entrepreneurs starting in their 20s or 30s when they're young and they don't have so many commitments. Maybe if you were kids, maybe they just don't have a lot of commitments. They have the freedom to start a business. But when people say to me, why didn't you start earlier? My response is I wasn't ready. I did it when I was ready.

And I, you know, looking back, I really did it at the right time because I had a lot of work experience behind me. In industries that have been, that were valuable in being able to start the Stevie Awards, as I mentioned, I worked for a company that did media awards. So I knew how to do it. I knew how to recruit judges and issue a call for entries and organize it to have winners determined and put it on an award ceremony. I'd done all that before. So, you know, I was at a point, I was working in the dot-com world from the mid nineties up until the

early 2000s and I got to a point where I just couldn't do it anymore. I just couldn't work for other people anymore. I need to do something on my own. I had made a little dot com money, not a lot, but enough to let me work from home for a year and put it together. And I thought, what do I want to do? What do I know how to do? I thought about buying a little publishing business. And again, reading the Wall Street Journal every day, was like, why isn't there an Oscars for business? I know how to do that.

Future Of Selling (13:24.696)
Right.

Michael Gallagher (13:37.506)
And I talked to people I'd worked with and they all said, you couldn't make a worse time for doing this. And I thought, well, if they think that there must be something to it. And I started to work on it and people did respond to it. It was hard the first couple of years because any business is going to take, like every entrepreneur on the planet, you open your door and you think the world is going to rush to your door and it doesn't work that way. So the rubber meets the road. When you realize that, can you adjust?

I remember it was probably 2000, 2007, 2008 or so. One of our third Stevie Awards program we started was called the Stevie Awards for Women in Business, which is still one of our programs. It's now in its 22nd year. It recognized the achievements of female entrepreneurs and business owners and executives and employees and women related to achievements around the world. And a woman named Nancy Knowles who started a business in Canada.

with her husband called Smart Technologies. made electronic whiteboards used at academic institutions around the world. And she gave a speech as we let winners, some of the winners who come to our events do, she got on stage. And she said that her business was successful, the revenue that she and her husband thought they would have in their first year, they didn't have to the 10th year. And that statement says a lot about successful entrepreneurs.

Future Of Selling (15:00.442)
Wow.

Michael Gallagher (15:05.229)
that like every entrepreneur, it doesn't come as quickly as you think it will, but can you adjust your expectations? Can you adjust the way that you're operating to either reserve cash or raise more cash to get you to the point where you can be successful? And a lot of people give up before they get to that point because the world doesn't rush to your door as soon as you open it. So, you what can you do then?

Future Of Selling (15:05.262)
Right.

Future Of Selling (15:09.316)
Yeah.

Future Of Selling (15:24.472)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Can you actually seize obstacles as an opportunity not be overcome by the by the lack of

Michael Gallagher (15:33.934)
Well, you have to be resourceful enough to be able to pivot, right? So the Stevie Awards was successful initially as I thought it would be. The first year was the American Business Awards, which is our oldest. We just concluded our 23rd annual of that. In 2024, we started the International Business Awards, which has sort of the same categories as the American Business Awards, but it's open to all organizations worldwide. And we started the Stevie Awards Women in Business, and we now have nine Stevie Awards programs. But the first couple of years were hard, right? I think back in how hard I worked this first couple of years,

Future Of Selling (15:53.754)
Sure. Yeah.

Michael Gallagher (16:03.918)
I don't even like to think about it, it was so hard. Not that it's easy now, but one of the great things about being an entrepreneur, and I'm a real promoter of entrepreneurship, and there's two schools of thought about who can be an entrepreneur. On one side, and I'm on this side, it's anybody can start a business. Anybody with work experience and passions, who's a self-educator, can start a business. And it doesn't have to be a Meta or a Google.

It doesn't have to, you don't have to conquer the world. You just need to be able to support yourself. If you can have a business that supports yourselves and your family, that is success, right? But there's another school of thought that not everybody is suited for that. And I don't believe that. Sometimes when I talk, I go off on these tangents. Now I don't remember your question. What was your question?

Future Of Selling (16:52.762)
That's okay. I we were just talking about this TV Awards and kind of what started it all for you, right? Kind going back to the early days.

Michael Gallagher (16:58.926)
Yeah, so, you know, so, you know, one of the great things about being an entrepreneur, and if you do it right, it never feels like work. So, you know, I come to the office every day. I came to the office every day during the pandemic. I was the only one coming in. We sent everybody home. Most people are still working from home because I'm just like after the pandemic is like, why am going to ask these people to fight through traffic every day? No, it works. Just let's just do that. It just doesn't feel like work if you can find a business at the intersection of what you know and what you love.

Future Of Selling (17:27.066)
Yeah.

Michael Gallagher (17:27.99)
If you can find that combination where your passions are combined with your experience and your knowledge, and if you can make successful businesses that you're just doing what you know and what you love. It's never feels like work. I this doesn't work for me. It's just what I do. It's very rewarding watching people get on stage and get a big trophy and talk about how meaningful is to them and have people.

I went to a high school reading recently and somebody who knows what I did said to me, you've impacted the lives of tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people around the world and that's my reward. Is it about the money? Most entrepreneurs, if they feel the way I feel, it's never about the money. The money follows you being good at what you do.

Future Of Selling (18:16.314)
Yeah, yeah, I think, you you use the phrase, you know, it never feels like work. So I want to I want to kind of unpack that a little bit. And because I think there's a piece of it and you can confirm this, you're much more of an entrepreneur than than than I am at this point. But it doesn't mean it's not hard. Doesn't mean it's not difficult. It doesn't mean that you don't have those days that really kind of drag you down and you have to fight through. I don't think that's what you're saying.

I think, so just unpack that just a bit and maybe kind of explain that.

Michael Gallagher (18:48.878)
I got my undergraduate degree at Ford University in New York City in journalism. And I got my MBA at George Mason University here in Virginia where I've lived since 1988. And I was recently invited back at Florida's business school to coach student entrepreneurs. And I had a Zoom call with a couple of them. And we were talking about starting a business. And I cautioned them, you know, it's going to be harder than you think. But

The process is a privilege. Not everyone gets to start a business. Not everyone around the world is in an environment where that's even possible. And as hard as it is, just enjoy it. The process is a privilege. It should be enjoyable to go through those challenges of starting a business and making it successful. As hard as it is, just enjoy that process. It's something that not everyone gets the opportunity to do. Just enjoy it.

Future Of Selling (19:24.473)
Right.

Michael Gallagher (19:48.014)
As I mentioned, it was really hard at the beginning because it was my first business and it was just really hard the first couple of years. But I think back on it now and as hard as it was, it was never unenjoyable. It was always a challenge. I like challenges. You can think of it like a puzzle. you're a person who appreciates puzzles, starting a business is a puzzle. There are pieces that are missing that you're looking for, that you haven't found yet. You're still figuring out how they fit together.

You should always find some joy, even in the hard things in life, because it's something that, if it goes away, you'll miss it. You don't know how valuable it is while you have it sometimes.

Future Of Selling (20:29.658)
Yeah. Is there a common thread for you that's run through, know, because you've got at least three businesses we've talked about today, the Stevie Awards, Image Shield, Rexy. Is there any kind of common thread that runs through those three for you or is it, know, is it, well, I'll just end the question there. Is there a common thread for you that runs through those?

Michael Gallagher (20:37.356)
Yes.

Michael Gallagher (20:50.19)
Um, well, in terms of the applications, no. Stevie is quite different from image shield, which is quite different from rexie. Rexy is the common element with image shield is the use of AI, which we can talk about. Um, you know, we will be using AI with Stevie award soon. Um, you know, what, I mentioned to your producer that the timing of this conversation is good because earlier this month in July, 2025, we opened.

Future Of Selling (20:54.468)
Okay.

Michael Gallagher (21:19.086)
the 2026 edition of our Stevie Awards for Sales and Customer Service for nominations. that's in its 20th year now. And it recognizes the achievements of individual sales performers and sales teams and entire sales organizations and sales related achievements around the world. And one of our newest Stevie Awards programs we started last year was the Stevie Awards for Technology Excellence, which has lots of different categories to recognize

people and organizations and teams and related achievements in technology industries. And the number of nominations, typically it takes, you know, anywhere from three to five years for a new awards program to start to catch on and start to grow. But we saw the nominations in a Stevie Orchard Technology Excellence double this year from last year and the second year it doubled from the first year, which is quite extraordinary. And looking through the nominations, we saw

that a lot of these technology individuals were using ChatTPT and tools like that to write and create their nominations, which is one of the reasons that the nominations grew so quickly. It was extraordinary. The formatting and the kind of content that was included in them from individuals across disparate organizations, so we knew they weren't collaborating, was quite similar. So it was clear that they were using common tools to create these things.

So I sat down with our CTO and I said, you know, we need to look at this and figure out how we can capture this to be able to use it for other of our awards programs. Because obviously sales people and customer service reps and people with other and other functions outside of technology are not going to be as sophisticated using tools like ChatDBT or Anthrox Cloud to be able to create their nominations. So we're actually starting to work now on creating an AI tool.

based on ChatDBT or Cloud that people can use to actually create their nominations. So I don't know when we'll have it available, but in the foreseeable future, we'll have a tool like that that salespeople or customer service reps can use in helping them to create their nominations for the Stevie Orts for Sales and Customer Service. But that said, we recently opened again entries for our Stevie Orts for Sales and Customer Service. And we've recently, and we've added a whole lot of

Michael Gallagher (23:45.856)
AI related categories to that competition for regarding the use of AI in customer service and sales.

Future Of Selling (23:54.362)
Yeah, let me get your kind of perspective on some of that, right? Especially as we think about, you know, how we stand out, how salespeople, sellers, sales leaders, sales teams stand out in kind of this age of AI. So everyone has in sales has access to AI tools, right? Some similar, some more cutting edge. mean, certainly from, you know, the company I work for Conquer, we've got our take on AI and we're moving forward in a number of areas that we believe are unique.

but there's also some common tools out there like you're talking about, know, chat GPT and things of that nature. So in your view, what actually separates top performers today from everyone else? I mean, you know, you've got lots of nominations coming in, you see a lot of data, a lot of information. So if they've all got access to these tools, what stands out and separates the top from everyone else?

Michael Gallagher (24:47.414)
Well, I really can't speak to what separates great sales performers from not great sales. I mean, that's not what I do, right? So, and I'm not a judge. mean, we have more than a thousand people around the world who act as Stevie Ward judges every year. When I say I was looking at the nominations of the Stevie Ward for Technology Excellence, I was just trying to figure out why we got so many more than last year, because that growth was kind of extraordinary.

Future Of Selling (25:03.342)
Yeah.

Michael Gallagher (25:13.806)
So I was looking through the nominations, I saw those commonalities and the commonalities spoke to the common use of some tools. And when I presented that to our CTO, was, oh, they're just using the chat. Right. So what I can say in terms of the Stevie Awards, what separates highly rated nominations from non-highly rated nominations is, you know, the feedback we get from judges is it's not enough.

Future Of Selling (25:26.808)
Right.

Michael Gallagher (25:43.704)
to say, tell the world what you did. To say that you increased sales some percentage over the prior year or the client base by some certain number. What the judges want to know is, what's the real world impact of that? How have you made, how have you improved your own organization or your customers' organizations? Have you increased revenue? Have you increased profit? From a customer's perspective, how have you made customers' lives better?

Nothing we do, and that just goes to show that nothing we do exists in a vacuum, right? Everything we do impacts other people, whether it's with our own organizations or our customers or our communities. And being able to explain that, being able to relate what you do to the impacts it on other people is really important in the context of an awards nomination. That's where we see the success.

Future Of Selling (26:37.038)
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. You know, was telling you before we got on, I was listening to another podcast you were on and one of my kind of regular podcasts I listened to. And you guys got into talking about storytelling, which kind of makes me think that's where you're kind of going. Unpack your point of view on storytelling, right? Why is that so important? And not just nominations.

Michael Gallagher (26:52.17)
It's really, it's really important.

Future Of Selling (27:02.382)
But even in the sales process itself, maybe you can comment on that, maybe you can't, but talk about the importance of storytelling.

Michael Gallagher (27:08.63)
All of human history is told in stories, right? If you open up a history book, it's not bullet points. It's not a PowerPoint. It's series of stories, right? And people are storytellers. This is what we do. This is how we relate to other people. This is how we tell our own story. I I've been telling you my story. I didn't hold up a bunch of bullet points to you. Storytelling is really important to illustrate the impact, right? And every story has several parts. It has a before condition.

It has a middle condition and it has an ending, right? And in terms of a nominate, a Stevie Awards nomination, it's before condition. This is the way things work. The middle part is how we addressed the needs we saw in that first part. And then the last part is what's the outcome, right? How has it impacted my organization? How has it made my customer's lives better? How has it my community better? And if you can structure a nomination with that story format, this is the before condition.

This is how we addressed it and this is the outcome. That is a story. And not only is it a story, it's a work of art, right? We do webinars in advance of our entry deadlines for all of our programs now. And we cover this in that. And one of the benefits of going through that process is you wind up with a story you can use in another context. It's not just a story that's an award nomination. It's a story that you can use to build your...

corporate brand or even your personal brand. Personal branding is really important. I want to talk a little bit about that. The great, I mentioned that our nominations and our Stevie Awards for technology actions more than doubled from last year in just the second year, which is quite extraordinary. But a high percentage of those increased nominations were individual technology performers nominating themselves because they see the writing on the wall. They're the closest to the impact of

of AI and they see the impact that AI is going to have on the workforce, especially on performers at the lower end of the food chain of the workforce. So the entry level performers, right? And this is really going to be important for your audience, for a sales audience who are just starting in their careers or just a couple of years into their careers. A lot of organizations are going to look to automate

Michael Gallagher (29:34.7)
a lot of functions in their organizations and they're going to start at bottom.

Future Of Selling (29:38.575)
Right.

Michael Gallagher (29:44.814)
chat AI, predicted that within the next five years, 50 % of all entry-level jobs will disappear. Now, will organizations be successful in automating a lot of functions? We don't know, but they are going to try. So if you're a sales representative or someone who's just starting out in a sales career, you need to build your personal brand. You need to show your value.

Future Of Selling (30:01.775)
Right.

Michael Gallagher (30:13.806)
to your current employer and to any potential employers in the future. And one of the ways you can do that is through nominating yourselves in a Stevie Awards program or some other sales recognition program. Several years ago, we eliminated the entry fees for most of the sales individual categories in our Stevie Awards for Sales and Customer Service. So right now it doesn't cost you anything to nominate yourself. That doesn't mean you're gonna get an award. That means you have an opportunity to pursue that. You have to take the time.

to rationalize what has been your contribution to your organization. What has been your contribute, the impact you've had on your organization's customers, on your community. need to tell us, think about how you're going to tell that story and you need to start to build the process of building your personal brand. So if the day comes when your position with your current employer is automated by AI, maybe they won't be successful, but they are going to try.

Future Of Selling (31:09.112)
Right.

Michael Gallagher (31:10.642)
You need to be able to have a brand building exercise behind you that's going to help you find that next opportunity. Now, as I mentioned, the individual non-executive technology performers who are out there who are closest to the IR industry, they see this coming, which is why we saw such an explosion of nominations.

Future Of Selling (31:20.142)
Yeah.

Future Of Selling (31:33.786)
Yeah, yeah. you do you have like an example maybe of some maybe an individual contributor or because I think that's what you're referring to that they that they you know, they they they submitted a nomination, they built their stores, submitted a nomination, and it really, you know, transformed their career or transformed their brand. Any any kind of examples you got have maybe off the top of your head?

Michael Gallagher (31:58.318)
We don't really follow the careers of our winners because there's just too many of them and they're all over the world. Sometimes they reach out to us and tell us about the impact they've had. What I can speak to is some of the people who are successful with nominations and are sort of serially successful, they nominate themselves year after year.

Future Of Selling (32:11.14)
Okay.

Future Of Selling (32:22.714)
Sure. Yeah.

Michael Gallagher (32:25.144)
They're just good at telling the story, their story. And building is something that an objective third party, the disinterest of third party as I say, which is what our judges are, right? Our judges are disinterested third parties. They're reading a story about someone they don't know, about an organization they don't know. And the story is told in a way that someone who is unfamiliar with their organization or their industry can read that story or watch the video of that story because we do allow.

Future Of Selling (32:44.952)
Right?

Michael Gallagher (32:55.852)
nominees to submit videos now in many of our categories, that they can understand and appreciate it. And again, that's a work of art if you can do that. We have seen non-executive sales professionals be successful at that, at telling that story in a way that someone who doesn't know anything about their industry or anything about their organization can understand that just by reading that nomination or watching the video telling of that nomination. There's a real skill to that.

Future Of Selling (32:58.871)
cool.

Michael Gallagher (33:25.23)
And it's admirable when you see it, but again, we don't follow the career. Sometimes people will write to us and say, this has had a real impact on it, but it doesn't really happen that often. We're also busy dealing with the trees of our daily lives. We really step back and say, wow, look at that forest.

Future Of Selling (33:38.86)
About four.

Future Of Selling (33:43.77)
Yeah, gotcha, gotcha. So really, you know, in this kind of go back to this idea of the pervasiveness of AI and how it's doing, it's impacting everything we're doing, impacting all the industry, especially sales. So, I mean, you really see this at this awards and Stevie Awards and kind of this approach in storytelling as a way to stand out.

And in this day of, everybody's got a bunch of AI tools. We can all kind of sound alike in an email, but the way I have to separate myself is through recognition, through the brand I'm building, through the awards I'm getting. Is that what I'm hearing?

Michael Gallagher (34:30.286)
Yeah, what you don't want to do is just throw everything into AI. First of all, you put it into chat GPT, unless you're paying for a private mode, you're basically putting it into the chat and into the public domain. So one of the things we caution entrances, if you're a private company and you want to get chat GPT or one of those tools to help you compose a nomination, don't put your organization's revenue figures and that sort of stuff in there because you're basically making it public. Right? So you don't want to do that. You don't want to do that.

Future Of Selling (34:58.155)
we do. Yeah. Yeah.

Michael Gallagher (35:00.43)
But you're right. If everyone does the same thing, every nomination is going to wind up reading the same. actually, we see that. We just announced yesterday the winners in this year's TV Awards for Technology Excellence and notified those winners on Monday. And last week, we were figuring out the winners and going through a lot of them and in some cases, looking at scores and looking at the nominations.

Future Of Selling (35:09.188)
Yeah.

Michael Gallagher (35:27.95)
The scores weren't as high as we thought. think the judges were reacting to all these nominations read the same, right? Your personality is going to come out in what you write and what you say. Chatti Bti can help you organize facts and figures and statistics and press releases into a narrative, but only you can make it about you. Only you can add your personality to it and add your twist on

your understanding of the impact it's made on your organization, your industry, your community, your customers.

Future Of Selling (36:02.298)
Yeah. What's your point of view on this? I anybody who's kind of, I mean, I think anybody who's smart is probably going to try to use ChatGPT to improve and cut down the time on building content, right? And I build, I do work on some content myself sometimes. Do you think it's better to kind of begin the process with your own thoughts, right? I write my own draft, then drop it into the ChatGPT for...

kind of improvements or do I just put my very, very raw thoughts or tell Chet, hey, here's what I want and then it punches it out and then I try to improve it or do think there's a preference on where? Yeah.

Michael Gallagher (36:37.678)
Well, honestly, I think if you can write, you should write. I haven't asked ChatDB to write anything for me. I I'm older, I'm old school. I can write, I know how to write. So I'm gonna write. The time it would take me to ask ChatDB to do something and organize it in a way that it could, I could probably just have written it. So I'm gonna do it. If you can write, write.

Future Of Selling (36:45.4)
Yeah.

Michael Gallagher (37:03.662)
at ChatDB, again, if you have a lot of, I mentioned we're gonna build a tool for the Stevie Awards to help people prepare nominations, and it's probably gonna be a tool that you can use year round, right? So year round, you're gonna have press releases, you're gonna have ideas, you're gonna have statistics, you're gonna have earnings reports. It should be something that you can, throughout the year, just throw that stuff in there, right?

Future Of Selling (37:32.143)
Right.

Michael Gallagher (37:32.206)
And then when it comes to the time, okay, I need to prepare a nomination. You can ask the tool to look at all of that and just sort of summarize it. And I say, it's gotta be in 650 words because our nominations require, you have a word limit. You know, it's gotta be that. And focus on these things and exclude these other things. That's really what it's gonna be good for, right? Is that a finished nomination? No, you still wanna personalize it. still wanna, you you still wanna, you know,

make it stand out from all the other nominations. They're gonna be just like that because other people are asking you to do the same thing.

Future Of Selling (38:08.41)
Yeah, gotcha, gotcha. Let me ask you this question. I would think of you as an expert in the area of recognition and awards and things like that. Do have any advice for whether it's a leader or a sales team or a company that's trying to lean into kind of recognitions and awards? mean, is there anything that they shouldn't do?

Michael Gallagher (38:34.254)
Well, awards are tools. When I started this TV Awards, thought, well, why wouldn't any company enter this? learned quickly that, as a student of business, I should have known this. Every organization is different. Every organization has a different culture, a different history, a different norms, a different expectations. And we talk to organizations and they say, we're fine nominating ourselves. We're okay with our employees nominating themselves. That's great.

And then we talk to other organizations and they go, well, we either win as one or we win as none, right? We're only going to nominate the organization as a whole. We discourage individuals from nominating themselves or individual teams. So every organization is different, but awards are tools. And like any other tool, it's only worth what you do with it, right? So if you have a hammer, you can build a house with it, or you can gather dust in a box in your garage, right? So an award is a tool like that. You can...

Future Of Selling (39:14.138)
Yes.

Michael Gallagher (39:32.514)
If you win a Stevie Award, you can use it to build your personal brand, can build your organizational brand, you can use it as a tool to attract customers, to attract employees, to attract investors, or you can bring it back to your office and put it on the shelf in the lobby and let it gather dust. And if you're doing the latter, I don't know why you entered in the first place, but people do do that, right? So I encourage anyone who enters

the Stevie Awards or any other award program to not only think about how you're going to put your nomination together and make it the best as possible, but if you win, what are you going to do with it? How are you going to merchandise that? How are you going to leverage that win to do all those things, to show your employees that you value them? And the fact that you've nominated them in the first place is you're probably the way there.

Future Of Selling (40:16.12)
Yeah, for your brands.

Future Of Selling (40:25.646)
Yeah. Yeah.

Michael Gallagher (40:28.078)
How are you going to help that to build your reputation among customers, among potential customers, among in your community? All those things matter, right? So you have to think about that from the beginning as well.

Future Of Selling (40:39.374)
Yeah, yeah. Have you seen any any particular like creative ways? What are the most creative ways you've seen people make a submission or tell their story with their Stevie Awards or other recognition programs?

Michael Gallagher (40:51.342)
Um, that's a hard one. Um, again, every organization is different. Um, you know, we have many organizations that enter year after year. Um, but, but most, I don't know if it's most, um, I would say three quarters of nominations we get every year from organizations that enter every year. Sometimes they send a lot of nominations. Sometimes they send just a few. Um, you know, the other, you know, maybe 30%, 40 % of our organizations that, you know, they have a mercenary approach. We did something great this year.

let's submit our award nomination. Next year, we didn't do anything that great. We're not gonna nominate ourselves.

The ones that are sort of mercenary, they have sort of novel stories to tell. I remember there was a budget airline some years ago that did some really novel promotion and they nominated that promotion. they may have nominated again some years later. I think they've done it a couple of times, but a lot of entrants are like that. They just do something that's really, that's kind of novel and they want to nominate that.

Michael Gallagher (41:59.182)
It's a card. That's a hard one to answer because again, every organization is different. We've organized the Stevie Awards in that way so that we have lots of different categories. Organizations can choose the categories for achievements that fit their achievements. We have other entrants who just load up on as many categories as possible. And we welcome that, obviously, because our model is based on entry fees for the most part.

Future Of Selling (42:27.098)
Yeah, got it.

Michael Gallagher (42:28.098)
But we have to respect the goals of every organization and why they would want to enter.

Future Of Selling (42:33.882)
Sure, gotcha, gotcha. Well, good deal. Well, Michael, you're an interesting person, an individual, and you've been doing some interesting work. Let me kind of end with, and I we're getting close to the end of our time, I would just like to find out a little bit about you as an entrepreneur and you as a person and a leader for that matter. So if I can just ask you a few kind of quick hit questions. Who's been the biggest influence on your life?

Michael Gallagher (43:00.27)
There have been so many really. I I did not come from an entrepreneurial family. My father was a blue collar guy. My mom was a teacher. Which was one of the reasons why starting this TV awards was so terrifying. I had no entrepreneurial background to start. But being a student of business, I did learn pretty quickly that businesses just aren't as successful as out of the gate. One of the things I caution students when I talk to them is you have terrible models.

You see organizations like Meta or Google or Amazon, Amazon less so, there are almost, there's like singularities that exploded to whole universes in like a matter of seconds. if you look at that, you think, well, if I'm not that successful that quickly, I'm not successful. And it's just not the case. It just takes a long time. So I caution them on that. I mentioned earlier that my philosophy is we're on this planet to be useful.

Future Of Selling (43:59.492)
Yes.

Michael Gallagher (44:00.014)
to leave a legacy. And I think one of the best ways that anyone can do that, if they have the resources and the time and the inclination to do that, is to start a business that's going to make the world better in some small way. I think the Stevie Awards makes the world better in some small way by putting a spotlight on people that normally wouldn't have a spotlight put on them. I think ImageShield is going to make the world a slightly better because it's going to help people to monitor how their likenesses are used. There's going to be more more abuse of that.

Future Of Selling (44:24.922)
protect themselves.

Michael Gallagher (44:30.126)
I think, RECSI, which I haven't mentioned RECSI, but the system that we had designed and built in 2002, 2003 to run the Stevie Awards is still the system we run it on. So it's an old system. We've added a lot to it over the years, but it's coming to the end of its life. And three years ago, we started on the process of designing a new system, what we wanted. And we hired a software development company to build that for us. And it's been a...

It's been a lengthy process. It's wound up costing more than twice what was originally estimated. And we knew exactly what we wanted. We had a system that did what we needed to do. We just needed a new version. And it still wound up costing twice what we originally estimated. And we just knew that the beginning of the software development process, software development like Cypher was kind of broken. And that's the process where a client in collaboration with a software developer develops a requirements document, figures out everything that needs to be in this system.

Future Of Selling (45:03.044)
haha

Michael Gallagher (45:27.63)
and then translates those particular requirements into the individual software development tasks. both parts of that are broken. the requirements gathering, we've talked to more than 30 software development companies around the country now, and they all say the same thing. Especially with smaller clients, they don't know what they want. If you don't know what you want, you're gonna wind up with a requirements document that's incomplete or inaccurate. And then...

Future Of Selling (45:33.102)
Yeah. Yeah.

Future Of Selling (45:54.255)
Yeah.

Michael Gallagher (45:55.478)
The process of translating those requirements into actual software development descriptions so the developer knows what they're doing and that's going to be a lot, know, in a bigger system the more tasks are going to be. Those aren't properly translated, you're going to wind up with software that doesn't do what you want it to do or it's going to wind up doing something but not really what you need. which is why our product is costing more than twice, you know, a lot more than originally estimated. So we know.

Future Of Selling (46:15.268)
Yes.

Michael Gallagher (46:24.622)
We thought there's an opportunity to fix this. We can use AI to fix that. So the reqsi.aod, started this year. We're starting working on building a prototype now to kind of fix that front end of the software development lifecycle. So that's what we're working on. So again, if we can make that work, it's going to make the world a better place. It's going to bring down the cost of

Future Of Selling (46:41.284)
Cool, cool, Yeah, no, I think that's great.

Michael Gallagher (46:52.598)
of custom software development projects. Companies like ours won't to spend as much. Projects will get done quicker, which will make it better for software developers too. They won't have to use as many resources. They'll turn around projects quicker, which means they can bring in more work. It's less likely that, and we've had, because this project has been going on so long, some of the people who working on our project on the developer end left.

Future Of Selling (47:04.143)
Yeah.

Future Of Selling (47:18.628)
Yeah.

Michael Gallagher (47:18.638)
So we can have new project developers, new developers. mean, the longer a project takes, more likely that is to happen. So it's going to be less likely to happen or projects get done quicker. you know, again, my philosophy, you know, make, you know, I don't want to retire. I'm in a retirement age. I don't want to retire. What am I going to do? Play golf, die? wants to? That's, that's pointless. Right. I'm going to work as long as I can, make the world as better as many ways as I can.

Future Of Selling (47:24.59)
Yeah, thanks.

Future Of Selling (47:35.182)
Yeah.

Future Of Selling (47:42.778)
Yeah. Well, let's kind of talk about today because I know I got to let you go. We're almost at the end of our time, but a couple of takeaways, right? So if I am, let's say that I'm an individual seller, right? That's where you've spent a lot of the conversation and time around. If I'm an individual seller and I'm trying to stand out in the world of AI, what are the top two key takeaways or top three that you would say, you got to do this, you got to do that, you got to do the other? What do you think?

Michael Gallagher (48:11.63)
Well, there are several things that I advise everyone to do, whether they're in sales or anything. And that is be informed. If you don't read a lot, you need to read a lot. Right? And this is not a political topic, right? So people on the right may say, well, don't read the New York Times and the Wall Street Post. Read the New York Times and the Washington Post. You know, if you don't like the editorial page, don't read the editorial page. People on the left say, well, don't read the Wall Street Journal, don't read the Financial Times. Read the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times.

Future Of Selling (48:21.85)
Okay, informed.

Michael Gallagher (48:41.44)
I read all four every day. I get the Washington Post delivered on my driveway because my wife wants it, but I read them all online every day. It's important to be informed. And if you want to be informed about AI, which everyone should be, there are plenty of free newsletters you can get about AI and they drop in your inbox every day and read those newsletters. informed. AI is going to impact every industry and every profession. You need to be informed about it.

Future Of Selling (48:43.14)
Okay.

Michael Gallagher (49:08.75)
And you need to use it. mean, if you read AI news, you know that there are lot of organizations now that are mandating that all of their employees be comfortable with AI tools. And whether your organization is mandating or not, use Chat GPT. Start using other tools. You can use the free versions. You know, just get comfortable with them, but you need to start being familiar with these tools because they are going to impact your career. If you're more senior in your career, they're going to be less of an impact than if you're at the beginning of your career because

Future Of Selling (49:27.972)
Yeah, so.

Michael Gallagher (49:38.188)
your organization is probably going to try to eliminate your job and automate it. It's unfortunate.

Future Of Selling (49:42.042)
So be informed and be informed about AI for sure. Use AI and anything else.

Michael Gallagher (49:50.67)
Again, be a reader. I caution everyone, be a reader. you know, a lot of people say to me, well, you know, I'm up on the news. What do you do? Well, I watch television news. Television news is not news. It's mostly opinion because opinion is cheap. Everyone has opinion. mean, anyone can get opinion. You know, real journalism, real news, it takes time and it's expensive. So read newspapers. It sounds old fashioned, funny, dirty, but you don't have to get them delivered to your house like it's 1970.

Future Of Selling (49:53.881)
Yeah.

Future Of Selling (50:00.356)
Yeah. Yeah. Got it.

Future Of Selling (50:12.174)
Yes.

Future Of Selling (50:18.244)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Got it.

Michael Gallagher (50:19.052)
Read them online, And pay for your journalism where you can, right? I pay for my subscriptions because good information ain't free.

Future Of Selling (50:27.576)
Yeah, gotcha, gotcha. Good deal. Okay, Michael. Well, hey, I appreciate the time today. Thank you so much for the conversation. Thanks for what you're doing with the Stevie Awards and I hope your other two companies go really well. And you know, let's stay connected and hopefully be able to talk to you again soon. All right. Thank you, sir. Bye bye.

Michael Gallagher (50:43.598)
Thank you Rick, it's been a good conversation. Thank you.