Latest / Beyond Fulfillment Podcast / Reinventing After Failure: Insights on Grit, Leadership, and Company Culture with Mike Chaput

Transcript

Reinventing After Failure: Insights on Grit, Leadership, and Company Culture with Mike Chaput · Beyond Fulfillment Podcast

• 0:00
  Foreign.
• 0:05
  Mike Chapet, welcome to Beyond Fulfillment.
• 0:08
  Thanks, Dave.
• 0:09
  Thanks for having me on.
• 0:10
  Yes, sir.
• 0:11
  We are excited to have this conversation.
• 0:14
  So, Mike, you are the president and the, the founder of NSight.
• 0:18
  And that is a, a company within the cybersecurity realm and doing a bunch of interesting things there.
• 0:25
  We'll certainly get into that.
• 0:26
  But you've got quite a fascinating start to your entrepreneurial journey over two decades ago.
• 0:33
  If you could just to set the stage for our listeners, can you talk about how you became an entrepreneur?
• 0:39
  Yeah, it's kind of a crazy, unlikely story that's.
• 0:42
  Even when I try to tell it, it's hard to believe.
• 0:45
  But I graduated from Michigan State, your home state, I suppose, and with electrical computer engineering.
• 0:54
  My first job was with Texas Instruments.
• 0:56
  I worked there for about three years and wanted to get into entrepreneurship.
• 1:01
  I ended up meeting a gentleman who wanted to sell his business.
• 1:06
  The business started out as computer reselling and then it got into kind of installing networks and you know, wide area, local area networks.
• 1:15
  And so I ended up taking a Small Business administration loan at 24 years old along with my college roommate.
• 1:22
  And we bought this company called PCs Networks back in January of 2000.
• 1:28
  And the condensed story is something like this.
• 1:30
  It was, the thing was destined to die in the first month.
• 1:33
  Like it was a, if you didn't sell a big project and fulfill big project and there was no cash flow and the thing just went under.
• 1:40
  There was no recurring revenues or anything.
• 1:43
  And the, the previous owners like kind of quit on day, day one almost.
• 1:52
  You know, it was like the, the, the owner was responsible for sales and that thing, we kind of just like mailed it in and, and we, we couldn't figure out how it was going to math out from, from
• 2:02
  day one.
• 2:03
  And somehow rabbit out of our hat, we ended up surviving the first month and then rabbit out of our hat, we end up surviving the first quarter and then rabbit out of our hat, we ended up surviving the
• 2:12
  first year.
• 2:12
  This was, by the way, in the middle of the dot com implosion.
• 2:15
  So the entire Bay Area where we were doing business, the market for selling the kind of, the technologies that the, that we had been selling kind of just evaporated.
• 2:24
  And then there was 9 11.
• 2:27
  And I remember during 9 11, like thinking like, nobody would answer their phones and if we didn't, if our sales model wasn't just absolutely cooking, like we just couldn't, couldn't, couldn't survive.
• 2:36
  So like people taking a month off of answering their phones and mourning the nation, like meant we were going to be out of business.
• 2:42
  And somehow we survived.
• 2:44
  We made it all the way to 2004.
• 2:48
  So we're four years in.
• 2:51
  And part of the way we survived is we had built a pretty significant software development business.
• 2:57
  And the lead of the software development business left the business, took the developers, took the clientele, and evaporated the small, tiny margin that we'd been surviving on.
• 3:10
  And the whole thing kind of went bankrupt.
• 3:12
  We were in a really punitive, terrible lease.
• 3:15
  We were just really poor business people in the beginning.
• 3:18
  You know, at 24 years old, I hadn't managed anybody.
• 3:21
  I hadn't sold anything.
• 3:23
  I hadn't led anything.
• 3:24
  I didn't understand even what a CEO was supposed to do.
• 3:27
  But here we were, you know, with a big, giant debt burden, trying to figure out how to survive.
• 3:32
  And, you know, kind of following the bankruptcy, we kind of gathered ourselves and started another business, which ended up being quite successful over the course of a couple decades.
• 3:44
  So.
• 3:45
  Wow, okay.
• 3:47
  So many questions just on that, that initial story.
• 3:50
  I've never heard anything like that.
• 3:52
  All the entrepreneurs I've interviewed, oddly enough, so, so when you, you've been working for three years, Texas Instruments, you want to get into entrepreneurship?
• 4:01
  Like, what, what about entrepreneurship appealed to you at that time?
• 4:05
  You know, I kind of feel like one of those kids who was like 8 years old and knew they wanted to be a professional athlete or something.
• 4:13
  Like I, I businessman.
• 4:15
  He had, he had started a, a supply chain company in the automotive industry.
• 4:21
  And so I kind of had this mental model of, you know, being a business leader for my, for my father.
• 4:28
  And he made my brother and I work in the factory, like, really, really young.
• 4:33
  So I started working in the factory when I was 13 years old.
• 4:36
  But unfortunately, my brother kind of liked it.
• 4:38
  You know, he liked the factory and he, and he was kind of a grease monkey a little bit.
• 4:42
  And I hated the factory.
• 4:44
  Like, it was, it was just horrible.
• 4:46
  And I could go on and on about all the things I, that wasn't for me about working in a factory.
• 4:51
  But I knew that I wasn't going to be part of the family business or the family hierarchy from kind of early on.
• 4:57
  So I kind of had it in my mind that I wanted to do entrepreneurship, be in my own business at some point in time, and I just didn't really know how to get there.
• 5:05
  So I just kind of studied hard and then TI was made me a really good financial offer.
• 5:10
  I figured I would need money if I was ever going to be in entrepreneurship, and I need experience.
• 5:15
  So I did that as kind of a stepping stone.
• 5:18
  Three years in the, the corporate culture at TI just, I found it soul suckingly draining.
• 5:26
  So I was just like, I quit by part luck and part grit and thoughtfulness.
• 5:35
  I ended up making quite a bit of money at a young age.
• 5:38
  I, I started investing that factory money when I was in, when I was 13 years old.
• 5:44
  And it ended up, I ended up putting it in this stock of a bank where my mom worked.
• 5:50
  And that bank actually grew a lot and then it sold and it sold for an all cash offer like right when I hit ti.
• 5:56
  So I had this like giant lump of money.
• 5:58
  And then I was at TI like in 1997 basically, which was right before the dot com boom.
• 6:04
  Working at Texas Instru.
• 6:05
  We were selling chips to companies like Cisco.
• 6:07
  And so I had this like technological bent.
• 6:11
  I started investing all that money from that bank liquidity into these tech stocks and then they just blew up.
• 6:15
  And so I ended up like, you know, at 24 years old with this kind of like substantial amount of cash.
• 6:22
  That's a dangerous thing by the way.
• 6:24
  If you're a young person with a, a lot of cash, you might do something really stupid like me, but I had it.
• 6:29
  And so I was either going to start a business with it or I considered buying a franchise, but I wasn't that interested in like restaurants or franchise models.
• 6:38
  I really love technology and so when I, when I met these guys who, who had this kind of computer technology business, I thought this could be for me.
• 6:46
  You know, I'm kind of a tech head.
• 6:47
  I love computers.
• 6:48
  I had a computer engineering degree and I was able to raise a little capital, get a business partner, get an SBA loan, get seller financing and make this deal happen at a very young age.
• 7:01
  I mean, the reality is if you're a banker out there, you know, don't make a big loan to a 24 year old who's never sold anything or let anything.
• 7:10
  But they did.
• 7:11
  And that's kind of the way it was back then.
• 7:14
  And so yeah, yeah, I mean it seems crazy, right?
• 7:17
  Like you said, like it like they, they loan this money to a young kid to buy this business and he's got no experience and then negotiated a.
• 7:29
  Terrible deal by the way.
• 7:30
  Like I didn't know how to do due diligence and I was so hung up on trying to get the loan, you know, make the loan look right that I just like, I didn't consider all the things like, you
• 7:41
  know, I bought an integrated businesses to the business that I started in 2004.
• 7:46
  Called Insight.
• 7:47
  And like, you know, the due diligence is like a really a good part of the thing.
• 7:50
  You got to negotiate a good deal.
• 7:51
  You got to come up with an integration plan.
• 7:53
  You've got to look for synergies or reverse synergies.
• 7:56
  And, you know, all I was trying to do at 24 years old was get the deal to close, right?
• 8:01
  We ended up signing a terrible lease.
• 8:03
  And that's a whole other, other thing that.
• 8:05
  But we never negotiated anything, so, you know, we didn't.
• 8:08
  I didn't know what I was doing, you know, and I just got over my head.
• 8:12
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• 8:52
  And do you think the person that sold this to you too kind of like realized you were like, I guess, quote unquote naive and just kind of like you said they quit on day one.
• 9:02
  Do you think they kind of took advantage of the situation?
• 9:05
  It was a, you know, these guys are still alive.
• 9:09
  You know, maybe they're going to watch this video and have their own perspective on it.
• 9:13
  My perspective on it was, it was, it was a pair.
• 9:15
  It was two guys.
• 9:16
  One was kind of the founder owner and one was kind of like the lead sales guy.
• 9:20
  The business model required really good sales.
• 9:23
  The majority owner and founder, you know, I think he kind of honestly tried to do what he could to teach me how to run the business.
• 9:32
  But I think he negotiated the deal such that if the seller note didn't materialize, he was like, fine with it.
• 9:39
  I don't think the guys liked each other that much.
• 9:41
  And they were just anxious to get away from each other and move on with their lives and take what they could for the business.
• 9:45
  And they negotiated a pretty good deal for the business, such that if the seller note didn't materialize, I think they were like, you know, fine with it.
• 9:53
  And the, the guy who led sales, the gentleman who led sales, you know, I don't know, like, once the deal closed, he was kind of like, all right, go sell.
• 10:03
  You know, and I mean, I guess he tried to do a couple sales calls, but they were Kind of.
• 10:11
  They had a, like a toxic element to the culture that my business partner and I didn't understand.
• 10:17
  They, they would yell at each other, they would yell at employees.
• 10:20
  It was like, really, like, we, you know, TI Had a.
• 10:24
  I thought a terrible culture, too, but it was, it was like Dilbert or it was like, you know, it was, it was satired by the movie Office Space.
• 10:33
  If you ever saw that.
• 10:34
  That's what TI Was like.
• 10:35
  It was like a Dilbert comic or Office Space.
• 10:38
  These guys were like.
• 10:40
  I mean, they were like yelling, raised voice, tempers, disrespectful to employees and to each other in the middle of the office were like, this isn't helping us at all.
• 10:51
  And at some point in time, we were just like, look, you know, we don't, that's not how we reroll here.
• 10:56
  We're not going to just be shouting at everybody.
• 10:58
  And, and so, you know, I don't know.
• 11:00
  It's, It's.
• 11:01
  I don't want to speak for them.
• 11:02
  They.
• 11:03
  They have their own story.
• 11:04
  I don't think they're bad human beings, but they left us in a tough spot, that's for sure.
• 11:08
  Okay, so somehow you, you, you run on fumes for years and you make it till 2004 before the business finally collapses.
• 11:16
  And I, I read you called that received.
• 11:21
  Is that that business going under?
• 11:23
  No disrespect to my alma maters at the Hot School of Business and the Columbia Business School, but, yeah, I probably learned a heck of a lot more in that period.
• 11:34
  One of the things that is interesting is since I had no idea what I was doing back then, I.
• 11:41
  And I was just.
• 11:42
  I had this nervous.
• 11:43
  It's like, hard to explain the kind of nervous energy that I had when I was, you know, that young and responsible for so much and payroll and debt service and trying to figure out how to sell and manage,
• 11:56
  but I, I just read every book I could get my hands on.
• 12:03
  So, you know, I'd go into the Barnes and Noble audiobook section of the business section and I would just buy.
• 12:10
  I remember loading those CDs in there, you know, back.
• 12:13
  Back in the, you know, early 2000s, and I listened to every business book.
• 12:17
  I probably listened to more than a thousand books over my career.
• 12:21
  Maybe it's even like 2000 or something like that.
• 12:24
  But, you know, I had an hour commute each way, and then I was doing sales, so I was on the road a lot.
• 12:28
  And I just never went anywhere without an audiobook.
• 12:31
  I joined Entrepreneurs, or it's called Yeo Back then, but I joined Young Entrepreneurs Organizations, now called Entrepreneurs Organization really early on.
• 12:40
  And so then every business person I would meet, they'd have their book list.
• 12:43
  And I really just tried to learn a lot, as much as I could, you know, in the, in the low and cheap and free way, which was a lot of audiobooks and a lot of peer to peer learning
• 12:56
  and.
• 12:57
  Yeah, and eventually I started kind of understanding a little bit about leadership back then and how to run a business.
• 13:04
  But you know, I was, I was too far deep in a hole with bad leases and, and debt service and, and you know, I want to call it a partnership.
• 13:15
  It wasn't really a partnership, but I had the software developer who I was really linked to, who wasn't trustworthy, who ended up sealing the business.
• 13:23
  And it was just like too many things to tolerate and the business kind of toppled.
• 13:29
  Okay, so that business goes under and then you immediately started what's now your current company, which is nsight.
• 13:40
  Yeah, so a couple things about that.
• 13:41
  So one, my business partner today, my co founder, is my college roommate from Michigan State who also worked at ti.
• 13:50
  So my co founder of nsight is somebody who.
• 13:54
  We've stood in each other's weddings.
• 13:56
  We've known each other since we were 18.
• 13:58
  We worked together in our early career, we worked together in a failed business and we've had 20 some years at NSIGHT together.
• 14:06
  So you can imagine the trust relationship between the two of us was like the one kind of pillar that we built everything else around.
• 14:15
  And so what happened was there was one of our employees at the company that failed was a guy who I recruited to the company from a high school friend that was one of the smartest guys I knew.
• 14:29
  And he's just a brilliant guy.
• 14:32
  And I basically called him and said, hey, you want to come out and do this thing with this?
• 14:38
  And he moved from Michigan to California.
• 14:41
  And then there was another really young guy.
• 14:43
  He was, he was our same age who worked for the company when we bought it, who was just really in.
• 14:48
  He was like all in.
• 14:49
  You know, like we were working like startup hours.
• 14:51
  You know, we just go in in the morning, we work till late at night, and then we do the same thing and we'd be working weekends.
• 14:56
  And so we were working like a startup, even though it was kind of like not a startup.
• 15:00
  And the four of us were just kind of cranking on this thing.
• 15:03
  And so when that thing ended, we just thought, you know, like, if the four of us stick together along with the network that we built over the last Four and a half years.
• 15:11
  Because four and a half years there's a lot of sales calls to go on.
• 15:14
  It's a lot of time networking in Yeo.
• 15:16
  It's a lot of business experience.
• 15:18
  It's even I had relationships with technology vendors and so there was a lot of relationships that I had built over the four and a half years and a lot of knowledge I had acquired.
• 15:27
  So for one thing I really knew how to sell by four and a half years.
• 15:30
  I really know how to, to cultivate a new customer from the sea of nothing.
• 15:35
  It was a lot of telephone calls and cold calls and cold emails and I knew that grind.
• 15:42
  And so the four of us got together and we thought hey, you know, we had this bankruptcy attorney who coached us all the way through the bankruptcy.
• 15:50
  It was a personal and corporate bankruptcy because we had personally guaranteed everything.
• 15:54
  And so we got a lot of advice on what could we do.
• 15:58
  And there wasn't a lot of limitations in terms of what we were able to do professionally following the bankruptcy.
• 16:02
  So we could go solicit old customers, we could go solicit old employees.
• 16:06
  And so you know, originally it was just like the four.
• 16:09
  It was the four of us plus a really scrappy group of maybe three other people who we just, you know, we had, they didn't have a job anymore and you know we said hey, you want to come and
• 16:20
  give this thing a shot?
• 16:21
  And they said yes.
• 16:22
  And then we, we were just able to, to just build from that.
• 16:27
  And that's how Insight started.
• 16:29
  It was a super scrappy thing.
• 16:30
  We had a tiny little office in, in Berkeley, very, very modest and, and it was just a grind and a year or so into it we figured out a totally different service model than the old business and that
• 16:47
  was this recurring IT service model where we would do unlimited help, desk support, we do the systems admin for small businesses.
• 16:57
  So the previous business PCs networks, the one that failed was more of a mid marketplace.
• 17:01
  We sold large scale networking projects to companies like Monster Cable in Brisbane.
• 17:07
  A very huge, huge, there are hundreds of users, it's a large company or maybe people have heard of Jamba Juice, they probably remember that was big in the bay back then.
• 17:16
  So we do like large scale projects for more mid market companies.
• 17:21
  And then with nsight what we were doing is kind of technology management for small businesses.
• 17:26
  Lots of lawyers, lots of wineries, like little like less than 100 seat customers.
• 17:31
  And that model took off and because it was recurring it was natural to kind of grow if we did a good job, which we knew how to do a good job.
• 17:38
  But we knew the technology well.
• 17:41
  Then you know, the customers would stay and, and we would go off and win new customers and one thing led to another and you know, the company today is about 140 employees, 35 million in revenue, 100% bootstrapped.
• 17:56
  So we never took any third party capital.
• 18:01
  My two part to two of my four partners moved on.
• 18:04
  But I'm talking like one of them moved on 16 years in and the other moved on like 20 years in.
• 18:10
  So the, the four of us were together for like 16 years and then you know, three of us were together another four years after and now it's just back to my, my, my original co founder and I.
• 18:19
  Wow.
• 18:20
  Okay.
• 18:21
  So a lot of grit, lot of resilience, lot of self belief.
• 18:27
  Right.
• 18:28
  And just, I mean I always ask people this and you know, when you're going through, right like those tough times, like when you go through the bankruptcy, right, like everything implodes and it just bl up.
• 18:43
  Right.
• 18:43
  And like you said, you decided to just keep going, right?
• 18:48
  Because you had this network, you had this people, you had this core group of, of friends that you'd been grinding with for years that you believed in each other.
• 18:55
  But even starting the new thing after all that and taking time to scale, was there ever a point in time where you thought about giving up?
• 19:16
  Sorry for the pregnant pause there.
• 19:20
  I don't know.
• 19:21
  I don't, I don't think so.
• 19:23
  Like, I really don't think so.
• 19:27
  I mean, thought about it seems so small that maybe I want to say yes, but I never seriously considered giving up, to be honest.
• 19:34
  Okay.
• 19:34
  I, I seriously considered what would happen if things failed and I just couldn't do it.
• 19:40
  You know what I mean?
• 19:41
  Like I, I gave a lot of thought to like what, what the heck would I do if everything just completely imploded?
• 19:47
  And, and I, you know, I, I just couldn't do it.
• 19:49
  I wasn't capable.
• 19:51
  But I never really thought about giving up.
• 19:53
  You know, that, that to me is like stop putting effort into it.
• 19:57
  Just, you know, and I, that was never really an option.
• 19:59
  You know, it was like I was like a dog with a bone.
• 20:02
  There's not much other way to think about the way I was about trying to succeed in the business.
• 20:09
  It was like, yeah, if it were possible to do it, I was going to figure it out.
• 20:14
  And that was kind of the mentality.
• 20:17
  Okay.
• 20:18
  And so given like the way you described the first company, PCs networks, it seems like you made every, every foolish mistake possible.
• 20:28
  Right?
• 20:30
  Like, right.
• 20:31
  With that whole.
• 20:32
  And then somehow you survive four years, that goes under.
• 20:34
  And then when you look at the, the, the, the run you've had with Insight and where you're at now after 20 plus years and, and grown so strong, what do you attribute like the success of Insight to, in
• 20:48
  terms of what would you do differently that caused Insight to be so successful?
• 20:56
  I mean, it's a, it's a multifactorial formula.
• 21:01
  You know, the reason why I'm on these podcasts and I, I host my own show now if people are interested in it, I'm writing a book.
• 21:12
  And the, the ethos that I, I represent or the, the messaging that I most passionate about is, I would call it in the domain of vision and values.
• 21:24
  But even it's, it's really not even that.
• 21:27
  It's just not that simple.
• 21:28
  There's, you have to do a lot of things well to be successful in business.
• 21:33
  And you know, so we'll take it back to the, to the very first thing.
• 21:39
  Like the first thing we had to do was be competent business people.
• 21:44
  You know, we had to, we had to understand the game of business.
• 21:49
  We really needed to understand how the scoreboard worked, understand financial management, understand how you, you have to use your profit and loss statement and your balance sheet and your cash flow as a, as a constraint to your decisions.
• 22:05
  Like, you know, you can't do everything and you know your customers will want you to death, your team will want you to death, you'll want your to, you'll want yourself to death.
• 22:16
  But you have to put some constraints.
• 22:18
  And one of the things that people find impressive about insight, when I say it, and to me it's kind of like a little bit normal.
• 22:28
  We've never had a red month.
• 22:30
  Like it's been 20, you know, 22 years.
• 22:33
  Like, we've never, we've never lost money in a, in a reporting period, period.
• 22:38
  Not a quarter, not a year, not a month.
• 22:41
  And so when you run a business that's on the verge of cash flow death, you, you just learn that profitability is a choice.
• 22:49
  It's a, it's.
• 22:50
  And I just look at it as a constraint.
• 22:52
  You know, it's like we don't, we won't make decisions that aren't, you know, it's just like if we can't be profitable, we won't, we won't do that.
• 22:59
  We won't bring in bad customer agreements that can't make profitable.
• 23:02
  We won't overpay people.
• 23:03
  If that won't make profitable, we won't buy things or, or run initiatives or experiments if, unless, unless they're cash flow or profitable.
• 23:10
  And so we've, we've managed business with that constraint.
• 23:13
  And I, you know, that's like just a baby step that'll, that'll keep you alive.
• 23:18
  I, I really believe you have to have a good vision.
• 23:22
  So you have.
• 23:23
  And, and you know, the way I've been explaining it is that there's this complicated formula kind of, you could start off, you have the successful business at the top, and then the first two prongs would be something like
• 23:34
  strategy and then culture.
• 23:38
  So, you know, strategy is like, hey, what are we going to go do?
• 23:41
  And culture is kind of like, well, how are we going to do it?
• 23:43
  What are they going to be?
• 23:44
  The behavioral norms that, that are going to define what makes us a team.
• 23:48
  And those are the kind of, the uniting, the uniting principles of winning in business.
• 23:53
  And your strategy includes a lot.
• 23:55
  So it includes your go to market your products and services, your agreement structures, your, you know, your operating protocols and procedures.
• 24:06
  But culture is an equal partner.
• 24:08
  You know, it's like, it's, it's.
• 24:11
  What are you going to stand for?
• 24:12
  What are the behavioral norms?
• 24:13
  How are you going to manage the human beings that are going to make your, make your strategy come to life or come alive?
• 24:21
  And so one of the things that we did early is we, we set, you know, we set a vision, we set core values and we set a vision.
• 24:31
  And we didn't get that right, actually.
• 24:35
  But having it wrong and being totally aligned to it is a lot better than not having it.
• 24:44
  So, you know, being aligned to something wrong is actually better because then you can, you can see what, you can see what happens in the world, and then you can pivot.
• 24:52
  If you don't know what your strategy is or what your culture should be, it's not well defined, then you have no way of troubleshooting either thing.
• 25:02
  And so, yeah, I think, you know, if I were trying to distill it for the point of this discussion, I would say you've got to have a good business strategy, you've got to have a great culture.
• 25:12
  And then, you know, you, you have to be a competent leader manager.
• 25:18
  You know, you have to know what you're doing, otherwise you're just going to make a lot of mistakes.
• 25:24
  Okay, all right, so you said strategy and culture are really like equal partners.
• 25:32
  Which one would you say was more difficult to get right?
• 25:43
  You know, I think it's, I don't want to weak out on this questions, but it depends on the stage of your business.
• 25:52
  So, you know, if your business is immature, then you know, your, your culture is less important at that moment.
• 25:58
  So, meaning if you don't know, if you don't have a good product or service set, if you don't have, you know, like at, like at PCs Networks, our, our product, service go to market was a little weak, wasn't
• 26:13
  well differentiated.
• 26:14
  It didn't have recurring revenue, which made it kind of a hamster wheel.
• 26:20
  It was difficult to survive and grow.
• 26:22
  And so it became the biggest, the biggest problem at that point in time was our strategy.
• 26:29
  It's like, we need a better go to market, we need better differentiation.
• 26:32
  We need, you know, we need a better strategy.
• 26:37
  When you, when you kind of get a decent strategy.
• 26:39
  So when you figure out what your, your, your niche is, like, who's going to buy from you, what's your right to win, so to speak.
• 26:45
  And then you, then all of a sudden, quickly culture becomes the most important item because now you're talking about how do you execute that great strategy and how do you scale it?
• 26:57
  And that's a human managerial piece.
• 26:59
  And that's going to require prioritizing cultural leadership.
• 27:06
  Okay, all right.
• 27:08
  It goes back to the point where I say, like, they're equal partners and they have to be aligned.
• 27:12
  So one of the things that you didn't ask this, but maybe I'll just answer it anyway.
• 27:17
  One of the things I see is, like, people, a lot of leaders think that the culture should be some kind of derivative of them.
• 27:25
  And, you know, I've had arguments or discussions or spirited debates with leaders about this because they're like, well, how are you gonna, how are you gonna authentically lead, you know, if it's not an authentic derivative of you?
• 27:40
  But my perspective is leaders need to adapt to whatever behavior is going to help their organizations win.
• 27:48
  And, and maybe they just have to grow personally to become a better human being, you know, like, like the.
• 27:53
  But just because you're away, that doesn't mean that, that if everybody behaves that way, that it's going to scale to a great business.
• 28:01
  In fact, if everybody behaves like you, it might be a really crappy business.
• 28:05
  Maybe you need to change your behavior.
• 28:07
  So I really think that culture needs to be the set of behaviors and princip going to help your strategy execute the best.
• 28:14
  And if that means adapting or growing or changing as a leader, then get to work on that, because otherwise you're just going to be seriously inhibited in terms of execution.
• 28:26
  Okay, no, that's, that's fascinating.
• 28:28
  Right?
• 28:28
  I Haven't heard it said that way, but it may, when you, when you say it like that, it makes a lot of sense in terms of.
• 28:34
  Because typically too, right, like, it's, it's the, the CEO or the person in charge that really is kind of dictating what the culture should be.
• 28:43
  And it is, like you said, it's a derivative of them, but now you're saying it's, it should be based on what's going to help the company win, regardless of how the leader is or what the leader wants.
• 28:54
  Yeah, like, and, and also, you know, you're not set in stone, you know, just because your, your dad was away or your mom was away or your teacher or coach was away.
• 29:03
  And just because that helped you succeed as an individual or got you where, you know, wherever you're at that you like, it doesn't mean that's the philosophy or the same principles that are going to get you from where
• 29:14
  you are to where you want to go.
• 29:16
  And that's, by the way, where you are and where you want to go.
• 29:19
  That's vision.
• 29:21
  You know, people talk about a visionary and like, you know, this is a visionary leader.
• 29:25
  It's like all that means, like, nobody talks about what that means, but all that means is a visionary can see a future state and they can describe it really well to a team because nobody can build anything that
• 29:37
  can't be first described or first imagined.
• 29:41
  You know, it's like nobody can build.
• 29:43
  If I say, hey, build me a house, it's like, you're not going to get much of a house.
• 29:47
  You've got to be able to, to describe it in extraordinary detail so that you can hand it to a team of people to build.
• 29:55
  And it's the same with a company.
• 29:57
  Like, if you can't describe the future state, then nobody can build your future state.
• 30:03
  So you need to create a vision for your company and you need to be able to describe it really well and detail such that people can execute it, blueprints, so to speak.
• 30:15
  But you also have to figure out, like, if everybody believed these principles and ideas and behaved this way, then my strategy and vision would emerge.
• 30:27
  And it's not always the case that, you know, your, your culture, if everybody did it, your vision would be realized.
• 30:36
  You might have to go look and be like, yeah, you know, like we're.
• 30:40
  There's two kind of problems on the cultural side.
• 30:42
  One is you.
• 30:43
  You might ask if everybody, is everybody doing exactly what our values are?
• 30:49
  And if the answer is yes and you're vision isn't emerging, Then it's pretty easy to diagnose.
• 30:55
  You're like, everybody's doing what we're asking them to do, and the vision's not emerging, so we're not asking them to do the right things.
• 31:02
  We need to ask them to do different things.
• 31:04
  And you're.
• 31:05
  You might be the case that your.
• 31:06
  Your values or your culture isn't broad enough.
• 31:09
  Maybe it's not aligned, maybe it's not.
• 31:13
  Maybe there's not enough components to it, but there's.
• 31:16
  You know, then the other piece is everybody's not doing what we think they should be doing.
• 31:20
  And then you're not managing your culture well or operationalizing it well enough.
• 31:24
  And there's a bunch of tactics to try to figure out how to make your culture come.
• 31:27
  Come to life, including clearer values, incorporating the values into hiring and firing and recognition and all these kind of.
• 31:36
  Kind of dimensions.
• 31:37
  But, you know, the way I look at it is you've got both of these things, strategy and culture, and you've got to constantly be like, why aren't we achieving our vision?
• 31:46
  Is the.
• 31:46
  Do we need a different vision?
• 31:48
  Do we need a different strategy?
• 31:49
  Or do we need to, like, really take a serious look on our.
• 31:53
  Our values and our behavioral norms and the way that people do things?
• 31:57
  And are people bought into those?
• 31:59
  And if so, why?
• 32:00
  And if not, why not?
• 32:02
  And troubleshoot that.
• 32:06
  Okay.
• 32:07
  All right.
• 32:07
  And, Mike, when you look back at the whole journey, right, Considering what you went through at such a young age, so eager to get out there, everything completely fell.
• 32:16
  You really gritted it out, and you built this amazing company over two decades and with your friends, and you've experienced this, you know, the success that you have.
• 32:24
  When you look back at all of it, what's been the best part of it for you?
• 32:32
  Yeah, that's.
• 32:33
  That's all.
• 32:34
  That's a.
• 32:36
  I have to think about it, that it's definitely something, like.
• 32:41
  It's definitely something on the dimension of the.
• 32:43
  Of the human relationships I've been able to develop through the course of this thing.
• 32:49
  So, you know, if you.
• 32:53
  And, like, it's.
• 32:54
  It.
• 32:54
  That's a very wide statement.
• 32:55
  But it's like, if I.
• 32:56
  If I look back now, one of the things that's really interesting to me, Dave, is I launched this podcast.
• 33:05
  The quality of the people who I can call on the phone and say, hey, would you want to.
• 33:10
  Would you like to come be a guest on my podcast?
• 33:12
  And it's like, sure.
• 33:13
  And mine's not a remote podcast.
• 33:15
  It's actually.
• 33:16
  They have to drive all the way over here or some cases fly into town to do it.
• 33:20
  And we're talking like CEOs who get like a hundred solicitations for their time, you know, per day.
• 33:28
  And I call them and they're like, sure, yeah, I'll drive over to your thing and have a conversation with you.
• 33:32
  And it's like, it's a little humbling.
• 33:34
  It's like, what is it about my career that's made it such that people would say yes to that, that question?
• 33:41
  And it's that I've done really difficult things with, with people.
• 33:46
  You know, it's like I've gone to business school with other people who have serious careers, and I've made relationships where they're like, of course I'll come and do this if that's, if you'd like me to do it.
• 33:59
  Or I'm part of professional groups like, like Young Presidents Organization, where, you know, I've spent a lot of time trying to, as best as I can, use whatever experience and network I can to help uplift other people in
• 34:12
  their business.
• 34:12
  And so then when they, when I, if I ask for something, they're.
• 34:16
  They're saying yes, because that's kind of the nature of the relationship or, or even clients.
• 34:21
  You know, it's like we make a very, very honest attempt to create enormous amounts of value for the customers that engage with us.
• 34:30
  Like, it's not there.
• 34:33
  There's nothing about the ethos of insight that's a maximum extraction strategy.
• 34:38
  We're not trying to extract maximum value from customers or from employees and try to, like, drive shareholder value to the exclusion of everything else.
• 34:47
  It's a ecosystem of balance.
• 34:49
  It's like, how can we deliver an incredible product and service to the customer?
• 34:55
  How can we compensate individuals who work for us and not just, by the way, like in monetary compensation, but how can we make their work meaningful, make it a good place to work, make it such that there's, you
• 35:10
  know, community there to the degree that we can, that.
• 35:12
  That there's.
• 35:13
  There's recognition for the work, make sure that there's learning and growth associated with it.
• 35:18
  So not a singular dimension of compensation, but make sure that the.
• 35:21
  It's a great experience for, for the people who work for us while simultaneously balancing the need for the business to be solvent, profitable, a place where my business partner and I don't want to immediately flip it to a
• 35:32
  private equity because the returns are good and that we're excited to continue to be a capital partner in our own business.
• 35:41
  So it's like a.
• 35:42
  It's a balance, it's a balanced situation.
• 35:44
  And so that's the ethos.
• 35:46
  And so it's been relationships, it's been employee relationships, it's been customer relationships, it's been professional relationships that have made this thing really, really rewarding.
• 35:59
  And if I might, I'll just tell one little story.
• 36:01
  We, we had a, a ten year anniversary for.
• 36:06
  There was like, we did a little small acquisition and there was like six people from that acquisition that were still around after 10 years.
• 36:15
  And so we were celebrating them all and we, we threw a party at a, at a brewery, but we invited a bunch of old colleagues that were no longer working for the company but they were all off doing
• 36:28
  other things and they came to celebrate their old colleagues and three of them came up to me separately in a non coordinated way and told me, went out of their way to tell me how important their time at
• 36:43
  NSIGHT was to their career.
• 36:45
  Now we're talking.
• 36:46
  One person was the IT director at Birkenstock, I'm sure, you know, the German Sandal company.
• 36:52
  One was the IT director at the Golden State warriors.
• 36:56
  One was a senior IT leader at Facebook.
• 37:00
  So these guys have gone on to do like, you know, work for big companies and all this kind of thing and they all said a version of the same thing, which was, I'm not looking to come back.
• 37:08
  I like my, I like my job a lot.
• 37:10
  I have great pay, but I couldn't have gotten there at all if it wasn't for the learning and growth and the time and the mentorship, the time I spent at Insight and the mentorship I got there and the
• 37:20
  experience.
• 37:20
  There's just no way I'd be where I'm at with my career.
• 37:23
  And it's moments like that that are worth, let's say, a lot more than the financial results.
• 37:33
  You know, it's like you learn at some point in time.
• 37:36
  It's, it's, it's, it's nice to, it's a lot better to have money than to not have money.
• 37:40
  And I've been on both ends of that spectrum.
• 37:42
  You know, I've been bankrupt, been trying to bootstrap a business where there's never enough cash flow to go around, where you, where you can't afford to eat, where you're arguing or your wife about, you know, the, the purchase
• 37:53
  of a chai tea latte at Starbucks.
• 37:56
  And that's no fun.
• 37:57
  So I'm not trying to, to minimize the difference between, you know, having financial resources.
• 38:03
  Not.
• 38:03
  But at some point in time there's just, you know, you can't buy fulfillment really.
• 38:08
  And it really comes when, when you can see other people succeed who you care about.
• 38:13
  And that's that, that's what creates, I'll call it durable meaning and purpose in your career.
• 38:18
  So it's something like that, you know, something about the relationships that, that I've been able to develop in the, in the course of the career.
• 38:25
  Okay, love that.
• 38:26
  All right.
• 38:27
  And Mike, if people want to find out more about you, your company, they want to check out your podcast, any of that, what's the best way people can find you online?
• 38:36
  You know, the best way is just.
• 38:38
  Mike Chapet, is it.net or.com?
• 38:41
  Boy, I should know that my, my YouTube channel is called the Chape it Persp.
• 38:47
  So you can, you can find us there.
• 38:49
  That's where we're going to be launching our podcast.
• 38:51
  We're also going to be promoting it in all kinds of ways.
• 38:55
  The company is www.enDSight.net e n d s I g h t.net so if you're interested in it managed services.
• 39:04
  What we're really excited about now at NSight is helping companies do technological transformation in the age of AI.
• 39:11
  So we've been managing the technology stack mostly as a, as the primary way of customer engagement.
• 39:17
  But right now I think that the primary way customers are going to receive value from their technology partner is in closing the gap between what technology they're using and what technology is capable, what the technology is capable of.
• 39:30
  It made a giant leap in the last three years and most of the companies out there in the small business circle are just not taking advantage of all the capabilities that AI is offering.
• 39:43
  And so we're doing a bunch of training boot camps, services, we're doing agentic AI building and there's a whole slew of things you have to be good at, including data management, which is something that we've been doing for
• 39:53
  more than a decade.
• 39:54
  So if you're interested, if you're a business person out there and you're interested in talking to somebody about technical transformation and implementing AI, that's, that's a reason to reach out.
• 40:02
  And if you're just interested in, in business, I also writing a book which I hope to release this year about leadership and my principles and a lot of the stories that I, that I had, those are both fun
• 40:13
  stories, but they have a point.
• 40:15
  They're, they're, they're there to teach a kind of a lesson about, about leadership.
• 40:20
  So I tell a story and then I break down what I think you're supposed to know from that story and in the book.
• 40:25
  So I'm doing a lot of things trying to give back, trying to help other leaders who are.
• 40:28
  Who are looking to get as good as they can.
• 40:30
  They can get.
• 40:32
  Okay.
• 40:33
  All right.
• 40:33
  We will link all that in the show notes for everyone as well.
• 40:36
  All right.
• 40:37
  Well, Mike, thank you so much for taking the time to be here and sharing all this incredible wisdom from your journey with our listeners.
• 40:42
  We greatly apprec.
• 40:43
  It.
• 40:44
  You're.
• 40:44
  You're welcome.
• 40:45
  Dave, can I say one last thing before you.
• 40:47
  We sent.
• 40:47
  Send them off.
• 40:48
  Sure.
• 40:49
  Well, if you're.
• 40:51
  If you're watching and listening and you made it to the end of this episode, first and foremost, just want to thank you for your time and attention.
• 40:59
  And I know.
• 40:59
  I know Dave feels the same way.
• 41:01
  It's a little bit annoying as a.
• 41:04
  As a host to kind of constantly ask for the same stuff that you've heard a million times where like, like scribe or like, like subscribe and comment.
• 41:12
  But the thing about it is, is that the Internet figures things out by crowdsourcing.
• 41:17
  So if you're out there and you made it to the end of the episode, it's probably because you thought it was interesting.
• 41:22
  That's a good signal that others might think it's interesting that you probably want to know what's next on the agenda.
• 41:28
  And so it really is super helpful, not just to Dave.
• 41:32
  He doesn't get paid for this, by the way.
• 41:34
  It's kind of something that we put in the universe because we think good ideas need to be spread.
• 41:39
  And so if you like and subscribe or comment or engage, you're really doing other people a favor.
• 41:45
  You're putting a service out there in the world.
• 41:46
  So just want to make a call to action if you've made it this far.
• 41:50
  Yeah, like, and subscribe, put a comment.
• 41:52
  Tell us what you think, and we'd appreciate it.
• 41:56
  All right, Mike Chapet, thanks so much.
• 41:59
  Thank you, Dave.
• 42:00
  Appreciate it, Sam.