Latest / Quarterback DadCast | Intentional Fatherhood & Leadership at Home / Todd Caponi - Speaker, Author, and Sales Expert

Transcript

Todd Caponi - Speaker, Author, and Sales Expert · Quarterback DadCast | Intentional Fatherhood & Leadership at Home

• 0:03
  Speaker 2: Hi, I'm Riley and I'm Ryder, and this is my dad's show.
• 0:14
  Speaker 3: Hey everybody, this is Casey Jaycox and welcome to season five.
• 0:17
  Speaker 3: I'm very excited for this episode.
• 0:19
  Speaker 3: I'm also very excited to announce we have a brand new sponsor to the podcast our friends Lauren Jones and Rob Mann over at Leap Advisory Partners.
• 0:26
  Speaker 3: I could not be more excited and thrilled that you're going to be sponsoring this for the next 13 weeks.
• 0:30
  Speaker 3: Let's hear a little bit more about what you guys are doing from Lauren.
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: Leap Advisory Partners is proud to sponsor the Quarterback Dadcast.
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: Our first core value is empathy, always, and that's why we're proud to sponsor the Quarterback Dadcast for the most authentic discussions around failure, success, leadership, empathy, leading with empathy.
• 0:52
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• 1:03
  Speaker 2: Now let's get to today's episode with Casey Jaycox.
• 1:07
  Speaker 3: Well, hey everybody, it is Casey Jaycox with the Quarterback Diacast.
• 1:10
  Speaker 3: We're in season five and, for those that can see me and my guests, we are on video.
• 1:15
  Speaker 3: For those of you listening in your car, we appreciate your support.
• 1:17
  Speaker 3: But if you want to find this episode on video, you can go over to YouTube, which you will find where the videos are produced, can go over to YouTube, which will you will find where the videos are produced.
• 1:26
  Speaker 3: But today's episode is one I was looking forward to.
• 1:27
  Speaker 3: Um, I read his book.
• 1:28
  Speaker 3: They have one more to read.
• 1:29
  Speaker 3: He's a sales nerd like me.
• 1:31
  Speaker 3: He's a friend of Keith Waitman.
• 1:33
  Speaker 3: We're not going to hold that against him, as well as Matt green.
• 1:35
  Speaker 3: We've got buddies in common.
• 1:36
  Speaker 3: Um, but what I love most about, talk a pony.
• 1:39
  Speaker 3: Our next guest, you guys, is one.
• 1:46
  Speaker 3: He is a sales nerd.
• 1:46
  Speaker 3: He is transparent, he is old school.
• 1:47
  Speaker 3: He references Caddyshack in his book, which is I can quote that for years and I got shout out for quoting the movie Vacation in my book.
• 1:51
  Speaker 3: But that's not why we're going to have him on.
• 1:54
  Speaker 3: Like I said, he's an author, he's a sales executive, he's a Hoosier, but more importantly, he's a dad and we're going to learn how he's working hard to become that ultimate quarterback or leader of his household.
• 2:03
  Speaker 3: So further ado.
• 2:03
  Speaker 3: Mr Caponi, welcome to the Quarterback Dadcast.
• 2:06
  Speaker 4: Oh man, it is good to see you brother.
• 2:10
  Speaker 3: It's good to be on.
• 2:10
  Speaker 3: Okay, so first question out of the gate.
• 2:12
  Speaker 3: We always start each episode with gratitude, so tell me, what are you most?
• 2:16
  Speaker 4: grateful for, as a dad today, that I get to do this.
• 2:18
  Speaker 4: So there's a lot here.
• 2:20
  Speaker 4: I'll try to keep it short.
• 2:21
  Speaker 4: A few years ago my wife discovered the power of homeschooling, and people don't know this about us, but my kids are homeschooled and then they go to a co-op a couple of days a week, and so, from a family perspective, when I say I'm busy, there's no comparison to the busy level that my wife is.
• 2:44
  Speaker 4: But the fact that I get to watch these kids grow up right on the other side of the wall here and watch them capitalize on their strengths and grow into incredible human beings, I couldn't be more thankful for that, and a wife that is just so fully invested in the kids that I don't know how this happened, but I feel blessed and I'm so lucky.
• 3:04
  Speaker 4: You hit the jackpot.
• 3:06
  Speaker 4: Three sevens, exactly, that's what it seems like.
• 3:13
  Speaker 4: It took a while to get there.
• 3:14
  Speaker 4: I'm older, started having kids a little bit older.
• 3:16
  Speaker 4: Life is good, my brother.
• 3:26
  Speaker 3: I love it, man.
• 3:26
  Speaker 3: What I'm grateful for is a couple of things.
• 3:28
  Speaker 3: One I have a son that's now in college which feels really weird to say and my mind is still for like a 20 year old wise ass, but I and I'm just grateful for the growth that I see in him and obviously I'm going to see him in the flesh.
• 3:40
  Speaker 3: I get to see him on FaceTime or I'm now on Snapchat everybody which feels weird to say too, but he responds back to me that way, but I'm just grateful for the growth I've seen in him over the last like three weeks and I'm just grateful for the.
• 3:55
  Speaker 3: I guess the adversity not adversity just like our family had to change, like we went from four in the house three in the house and just going through that journey, you can talk about it, you hear people talk about it, but to go through it it is hard.
• 4:09
  Speaker 3: I would say it, man.
• 4:10
  Speaker 3: At first we got a lot of tears in the household, but like we're all thriving now and he's off doing his own thing, and so I'm just grateful for that journey is, you know, it's easy and fun, it's exciting, it was, but it's hard to go through.
• 4:20
  Speaker 3: But I'm grateful for that.
• 4:21
  Speaker 3: That's awesome, that's awesome.
• 4:23
  Speaker 3: Well, bring me inside the Caponi huddle as you're the quarterback.
• 4:26
  Speaker 3: Maybe you're the GM, maybe your wife's the GM, but, like tell me, talk about the squad, who's who's on the team?
• 4:31
  Speaker 3: And then, how did you and your wife meet?
• 4:34
  Speaker 4: Yeah, so um, we long story again, but um, and I love that we're doing this.
• 4:41
  Speaker 4: By the way, I've been way, I think I've been a guest on probably around 200 podcasts and I've never once had this conversation, so that's really, really cool.
• 4:50
  Speaker 4: So I've got a 13-year-old daughter, 11-year-old son.
• 4:54
  Speaker 4: My daughter's name is Eden, my son's name is Luke.
• 4:57
  Speaker 4: I met my wife back in 2007.
• 5:03
  Speaker 4: I was running a small business.
• 5:05
  Speaker 4: I was always a pretty decent sales guy, but I always knew my passion was for teaching and coaching and training and all of that.
• 5:16
  Speaker 4: And so, way back in 2003, I took everything I owned, I sold it and I bought a sales training franchise.
• 5:22
  Speaker 4: I sold it and I bought a sales training franchise.
• 5:24
  Speaker 4: I promptly I ran it into the ground.
• 5:26
  Speaker 4: But by about 2004, I got heavily involved in a local chamber of commerce and I ended up on the board for it.
• 5:38
  Speaker 4: And even after I left and shut down the business, I stayed associated with that board and my wife was basically running the Chamber of Commerce.
• 5:46
  Speaker 4: At the time.
• 5:47
  Speaker 4: There was a woman that was in charge of it and then she was her right-hand gal that was really making it all run, and so I was heavily involved in there all the time and we ended up hitting it off, going on a couple of dates and the rest is history.
• 6:02
  Speaker 4: So that was 2007.
• 6:04
  Speaker 4: We got married in 2009 and then had my daughter in 2011.
• 6:10
  Speaker 3: There we go and tell me what are Eden and Luke up to?
• 6:14
  Speaker 4: So Eden is.
• 6:16
  Speaker 4: You know she's third.
• 6:17
  Speaker 4: So when we talked about, like, your kids being in college, you know my kids are right in that range where they're changing, right.
• 6:24
  Speaker 4: You know puberty is happening, like all of that, and so you know you've got the emotion and you've got to be able to manage that.
• 6:31
  Speaker 4: You know you talk about having to be patient, having to be empathetic, having to realize that that's just kids being kids.
• 6:38
  Speaker 4: But I'm just I'm so proud of the kids because they've surrounded themselves with really really good people and I just that they're turning into really really good people.
• 6:50
  Speaker 4: So there's obviously the emotional highs and lows, but my daughter is heavily involved in her youth group, so she does that.
• 6:58
  Speaker 4: They go as a part of the homeschooling, they go to something called a co-op for a full day once a week.
• 7:04
  Speaker 4: It's amazing, dude, that it's just in the area here and there's 120, 130 kids in this thing.
• 7:11
  Speaker 4: It's crazy how this has grown and exploded.
• 7:19
  Speaker 4: But you also talk about heavily involved parents that really each and every one of them care.
• 7:22
  Speaker 4: When I grew up, I used to think the homeschooled kids were the weirdos, right, like.
• 7:26
  Speaker 4: Oh, one thing you know and now you know.
• 7:29
  Speaker 4: You just look around and see these incredibly well-parented, well-invested in children that are doing the right things and they're not overexposed socially but not underexposed either, to where they've got really, really good friends you know it's 2024, like they're on FaceTime and doing all that kind of stuff every afternoon, evening, every weekend that they're with their friends.
• 7:57
  Speaker 4: So there's a lot of that type of interaction, but a lot of it comes from the youth group that they go to, which it's not only an opportunity for them to get together a couple of times a week, but they go to, which it's not only an opportunity for them to get together a couple of times a week, but they go do charitable work.
• 8:08
  Speaker 4: It's all Christian-based, so they've got that foundation being built along with it.
• 8:15
  Speaker 4: So that's Eden.
• 8:16
  Speaker 4: That's primarily what she's involved in Her friends, her youth group, she does gymnastics.
• 8:23
  Speaker 4: Oh, one other thing her youth group, she does gymnastics.
• 8:30
  Speaker 4: Oh, one other thing We've been blessed to be able to have a little place up in Wisconsin that we go to most weekends, and the place is it's a lake house, right, and I used to affectionately refer to it as remember the old movie the Money Pit, that everything was falling apart.
• 8:44
  Speaker 4: It was designed in the 70s.
• 8:46
  Speaker 4: We've been slowly renovating this thing and a couple of weeks ago we were sitting in a little kind of family room living room area.
• 8:56
  Speaker 4: She looked at the fireplace and she's like you know, that fireplace would look fantastic if we whitewashed it.
• 9:03
  Speaker 4: And we're like would look fantastic if we whitewashed it.
• 9:06
  Speaker 4: And we're like, really Like, how does that even work?
• 9:07
  Speaker 4: And she's like I'll figure it out.
• 9:08
  Speaker 4: And so she went like on this study and she's like we need this, we need this.
• 9:12
  Speaker 4: We went over to Home Depot, we loaded it up and this weekend she did it.
• 9:16
  Speaker 4: It looks freaking awesome.
• 9:19
  Speaker 4: And to the point where now you may have noticed, because when we first talked, my background looked different than it did now, right?
• 9:27
  Speaker 4: I don't know if you noticed that, but she picked out this color.
• 9:30
  Speaker 4: I renovated it.
• 9:32
  Speaker 4: I went through a little family issue a couple of weeks ago and kind of took my mind off things by renovating all of this.
• 9:38
  Speaker 4: The cover of the Transparent Sales Leader, my second book she picked that color.
• 9:42
  Speaker 4: So that's another thing that she's got just a knack for is that kind of interior design and a knack and an eye for what's going to look good, and she's 10 out of 10 so far in all of the things that she's pursued.
• 9:58
  Speaker 3: Go girl yeah, and.
• 9:59
  Speaker 4: Luke.
• 10:00
  Speaker 4: Yeah, so, luke, he's 11.
• 10:02
  Speaker 4: Same thing.
• 10:03
  Speaker 4: He's involved in a lot.
• 10:05
  Speaker 4: He just started Flag Football a couple of weeks ago.
• 10:09
  Speaker 4: Let's go, so he's into that.
• 10:10
  Speaker 4: And then he's just such a nerd for Minecraft, so I mean he's figuring out all of it, which it's funny because he's taught himself how to code as a result of Minecraft.
• 10:24
  Speaker 4: So like he'll develop servers and code them and set up all these texture packs and all this stuff, and I'm like I don't know what the heck you're even talking about, dude, but him and his buddies are, you know, battling and doing all kinds of stuff all the time and so high on Minecraft.
• 10:41
  Speaker 4: Then he's got this talent for just loving sports.
• 10:46
  Speaker 4: He's not going to be a professional athlete by any means, but he understands the games.
• 10:51
  Speaker 4: He's athletic enough to be at the higher end of most of those, but yeah, so a little bit of sports.
• 10:56
  Speaker 4: Played baseball this summer.
• 10:58
  Speaker 4: I think this is his third season doing that, yeah, so sports and Minecraft.
• 11:05
  Speaker 3: There we go.
• 11:05
  Speaker 3: Is he the Walter Payton or the Jim McMahon of this flight football team.
• 11:10
  Speaker 4: He is more the Steve Mongo McMichael of the 85 Bears, or we're going to make that reference there we go.
• 11:18
  Speaker 4: I'm not a big dude, but he's a big kid man.
• 11:21
  Speaker 4: He'll get after it.
• 11:22
  Speaker 4: He's so nice, but he's not big kid man.
• 11:23
  Speaker 4: He'll get after it.
• 11:25
  Speaker 4: And he's so nice, but he's not letting people get by either.
• 11:30
  Speaker 4: So I would push him more towards the kind of maybe less defensive lineman, more like offensive lineman.
• 11:37
  Speaker 4: He's not letting anybody get to that quarterback.
• 11:40
  Speaker 3: Well, as a former quarterback, I would love to have him block for me.
• 11:43
  Speaker 4: Exactly, there's my.
• 11:44
  Speaker 3: Uncle Rico moment.
• 11:45
  Speaker 3: Right there everybody.
• 11:46
  Speaker 4: That's right.
• 11:49
  Speaker 3: Well, one question I always like asking dads is to kind of go back in time and reflect on what was life like growing up for you and talk about the impact that your parents had on you now that you're a dad.
• 12:02
  Speaker 4: Yeah, so growing up you up, it's funny.
• 12:05
  Speaker 4: So, as you probably know, my mother just passed away about two weeks ago actually two weeks ago today and so been a lot of reflection going on over the last couple of weeks and my dad passed away three and a half years ago.
• 12:21
  Speaker 4: He would be 101 now.
• 12:23
  Speaker 4: So if you do the math on that, my mother just passed away she was 19 years younger than him.
• 12:31
  Speaker 4: So when you grow up in that kind of environment you have no idea, you don't even recognize that they're 19 years apart.
• 12:39
  Speaker 4: Who cares?
• 12:40
  Speaker 4: My dad was 49 when I was born and was already, you know, he's running sales organizations and so he was selling, you know, by the millions, boxes, not only for moving and storage but also for consumer package goods.
• 13:10
  Speaker 4: So you know, like oh, I don't remember, like one of the big cereal, like Kellogg's was a big client of his, like you know, the cereal boxes, those are all coming from his company and he was the guy selling.
• 13:22
  Speaker 4: He was gone a lot but I didn't notice Like it was.
• 13:30
  Speaker 4: He always felt present to me.
• 13:31
  Speaker 4: He was, you know, doing the three martini lunches, because that's how you sold back in the 70s and 80s, right, and so there was always, you know, going out to dinner, going out to lunch, there was just there was his company had a resort in Hilton Head or like I guess I don't know if it was like specific to them, but they would always go down to the retreat at Hilton Head and it would be my dad and the guys working for him and then a bunch of their biggest customers and they would just drink and play golf for days and then come back and then you know he's killing it, the company's doing fantastically well and you know it's just a different era.
• 14:09
  Speaker 4: But the one thing that stuck with me is he has the same personality I do.
• 14:16
  Speaker 4: He was the guy that was always emceeing all of the retirement parties.
• 14:21
  Speaker 4: So if somebody was retiring, you know, calling my dad, his name was Roy, so like Roy was going to come in and do the retirement party and be the MC for it.
• 14:28
  Speaker 4: So he had that personality.
• 14:30
  Speaker 4: But from a sales and sales leadership perspective, I can't I can't help but think that.
• 14:36
  Speaker 4: So much of his approach kind of translated to the way that I think about it, Cause he wasn't old school in any of the terrible associations you think about as it relates to sales and leadership at the time.
• 14:52
  Speaker 4: These people that worked for him were his best friends, and at my mom's funeral this last week, some of my dad's, the people that reported to him, were there, and that's crazy to me.
• 15:04
  Speaker 4: My dad had been retired 35 years, so that's the kind of upbringing right it's.
• 15:11
  Speaker 4: You know, stay at home mom that just was always there.
• 15:14
  Speaker 4: You came home from school.
• 15:15
  Speaker 4: You never had to use a key right.
• 15:17
  Speaker 4: She was always there, waiting for you and asking how your day was, taking care of everything, and then my dad was out there working, smiling, laughing and building a good life for me.
• 15:26
  Speaker 4: So I was not one of those people that was born with a silver spoon by any means, but I also.
• 15:32
  Speaker 4: I didn't have it rough either.
• 15:34
  Speaker 4: I had a good foundation and some really, really solid parents bringing me up so cool.
• 15:40
  Speaker 3: Well, I mean condolences and sorry about your mom's passing.
• 15:44
  Speaker 3: I think when we were exchanging messages, I think condolences and sorry about your mom's passing, I think when we were exchanging messages, I think I'd share that my dad passed away December 29th 2021.
• 15:50
  Speaker 3: So I know what that's like to lose a parent.
• 15:52
  Speaker 3: It sucks.
• 15:53
  Speaker 3: But there's a lot of positives that I mean.
• 15:56
  Speaker 3: Positive in the sense that, like they're still with me, yeah, my dad's still with me.
• 16:01
  Speaker 3: I sometimes like, when you know whether one one of my kids is having a my son's having a golf match, my daughter's playing hoop I'm like you know, grandpa, mike, you're up there.
• 16:08
  Speaker 3: You're like, really, kid, let's, let's, we could use that six foot putt today, bud, you know, or just and just, sometimes just showing gratitude or having a conversation, even though there's he's not responding back.
• 16:18
  Speaker 3: I kind of get this feeling inside my body.
• 16:19
  Speaker 3: It's like like at the goosebump, feeling like he hears, hears me, you know, um, at at a curiosity.
• 16:26
  Speaker 3: When you so as your your dad doing, he did.
• 16:29
  Speaker 3: And when you said three martini lunch, I laughed because my dad, he used to call him two martini lunches.
• 16:33
  Speaker 3: Your dad must've been a better drinker than my dad, but he that he sold uh washers and dryers for Whirlpool for like 30 something years.
• 16:43
  Speaker 4: Harbor, michigan.
• 16:43
  Speaker 4: There you go, that's right.
• 16:44
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and you know he, that's what he did, and my dad was not the best salesperson, not the, but kind of like an above average seller.
• 16:52
  Speaker 3: I remember he'd go to never.
• 16:54
  Speaker 3: Never was the best, but he, I'm curious, you as a doing some, a lot of what your dad done how much of that was taught versus what you saw.
• 17:06
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it's funny.
• 17:06
  Speaker 4: I'll tell you one other thing.
• 17:07
  Speaker 4: My dad so he passed when he was 97 and a half years old, right, so almost 90.
• 17:12
  Speaker 4: His dad lived to be 98.
• 17:14
  Speaker 4: So I think I might be here for a while, but one of the things I'm grateful for you mentioned my second book, the Transparent Sales Leader, and you'll see that there's the dedication in it is to my dad, the original transparent sales leader.
• 17:28
  Speaker 4: I'm just blessed that I got to tell him that before he passed, right.
• 17:32
  Speaker 4: But hey, listen, I'm working on this, but it will be dedicated to you and like just kind of lit up, which was awesome.
• 17:40
  Speaker 4: But, yeah, most of the approaches that I take are, I think that it's a lot of my own studying and a lot of my trial and error, but I think there's got to be a foundational element that you're just kind of born with, or maybe it was developed just by seeing him and watching him on stage just being himself and roasting people and it was hilarious, right, it was awesome.
• 18:07
  Speaker 4: You know, there was my mom and my dad, my brother, who's a few years older than me, and me.
• 18:14
  Speaker 4: My brother is just like my mom a little bit more subdued, a little bit more under control there, and then my dad is a little bit more out there and boisterous and fun and, you know, kind of own in the room and that's.
• 18:27
  Speaker 4: I've tried to be like that and so I think it's part.
• 18:31
  Speaker 4: You just got to get comfortable with it.
• 18:33
  Speaker 4: Uh.
• 18:34
  Speaker 4: But then there's part of it that just I think you're born with.
• 18:36
  Speaker 4: And I'll tell you, since I've been doing what I've been doing here for the last five, six years, um, I remember when I first started, like I would go out and give a keynote and there's 500 people out there and man, I was physically shaking before I go out there back then and I loved that endorphin rush.
• 18:54
  Speaker 4: Now you give me a couple thousand people.
• 18:57
  Speaker 4: I don't know what it is.
• 18:58
  Speaker 4: It's like me talking to you there's nothing right.
• 19:04
  Speaker 4: It's like there's no nerves, there's no like it's become part of like second nature so that's part of where that answer comes from is like some of it is nurture, some of it is nature, and I think I got a little bit of both.
• 19:18
  Speaker 3: Love it when you said corrugated boxes.
• 19:22
  Speaker 3: So my first sales job out of college was I worked for a company called barcodes West.
• 19:26
  Speaker 3: They were a um labeling company and I called them stickers and they're like hey, they're labels.
• 19:33
  Speaker 3: I'm like they're actually stickers.
• 19:35
  Speaker 3: And I was just you know, the immature 22 year old seller.
• 19:37
  Speaker 3: I was like but they're stickers, what are you talking about?
• 19:39
  Speaker 3: And uh, I giggle because, but when you believe, what you do matters.
• 19:43
  Speaker 3: Hence your dad did like there's a difference.
• 19:45
  Speaker 3: And when you believe it and you speak it and you say it, it becomes reality, you know.
• 19:58
  Speaker 4: So shout out to him for Roy up in heaven.
• 19:59
  Speaker 4: I love it.
• 20:00
  Speaker 4: Exactly, exactly, it was funny.
• 20:00
  Speaker 4: So my dad's dad, he was an interesting cat.
• 20:02
  Speaker 4: Like I said, he lived to be 98.
• 20:05
  Speaker 4: He was a bit of a hoarder I think it wasn't like the gross hoarding that you see on Discovery Channel, whatever those shows are, but he bought up everything and then he would go sell it at flea markets.
• 20:20
  Speaker 4: So you know, as my parents my mom passed, my brother and I were over there last weekend just kind of going through some of the old stuff in the basement and there's boxes filled with keychains, satin, like old collections of magazines that like nobody would have bought back then.
• 20:40
  Speaker 4: I can't like there's just like all of this stuff there that is everywhere, but they're all in boxes and the funny thing is growing up.
• 20:49
  Speaker 4: You know, my dad taught me how to fold them and then we would have contests, me and my brother, about who could put together the box fastest, right and like.
• 20:56
  Speaker 4: So even today you give me one of those moving boxes.
• 20:59
  Speaker 4: I'm like there you go, right and it's.
• 21:02
  Speaker 4: It's one of those weird skills that are just developed by being around a dad that was just ear deep in boxes all day long and you work for the same company for over 40 years, so things are so different now.
• 21:15
  Speaker 4: But there's certain things like that that you walk in there and now that we have to clean up the house and figure out what we're going to do with it, we're putting together boxes again and we're still competing.
• 21:25
  Speaker 4: So good.
• 21:27
  Speaker 3: If you think about like stories, so the story mindset, but think about like the core values that your, your mom and dad's taught you when you guys were younger.
• 21:35
  Speaker 3: You and your brother like what were the things that they were like?
• 21:37
  Speaker 3: These were like the must haves in the Caponi household that when you got married, you and your wife said, okay, these are the.
• 21:41
  Speaker 3: These are the things that I learned, that were important for me and I saw the impact and now these are the things we're going to teach our kids.
• 21:46
  Speaker 3: Tell me what comes to mind.
• 21:47
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, there was always the weird.
• 21:49
  Speaker 4: You probably had this right, when there's certain things that your mom taught you when you were younger that just turned out to not be true.
• 21:59
  Speaker 4: That continues to stick with you, right, Like you know, we would walk around and we'd cross our eyes and like, hey, if you keep doing that, they'll stick that way.
• 22:06
  Speaker 4: I remember I was.
• 22:08
  Speaker 4: I grew up being a massive Mike Schmidt fan, philadelphia Phillies third baseman.
• 22:14
  Speaker 4: I just idolized that dude from like the age of four.
• 22:17
  Speaker 4: I don't know why I just did.
• 22:19
  Speaker 4: I still am a big fan.
• 22:20
  Speaker 4: I've got all kinds of stuff of his still but I used to wear my Phillies hat all over the place and then, you know, I wanted to wear it to bed and I remember my mom saying, hey, you wear that to bed, you're going to grow up with no hair, right, like your hair is all going to fall out if you wear a hat to bed.
• 22:39
  Speaker 4: I'm like, oh crap, right.
• 22:39
  Speaker 4: So like there's all that kind of wacky stuff which is kind of funny, like I'm trying to think whether or not I've passed any of those weird things on to my kids.
• 22:47
  Speaker 4: But yeah, I mean, I think at its core is that, hey, we're here, we've got to make the most of it and we got to have fun, We've got to see things, but we've got to surround ourselves with the people that make us happy too, and so it took me a long time to find my wife right and again I'm at literally like the last 10 years has probably been the happiest 10 years of my entire life right, and that's what I've always tried to saw it, and I saw it in my parents, and I think that's probably the core thing that I take away from them is just that relationship and finding that person that makes you happy, and then you're a team forever right, like that's it.
• 23:38
  Speaker 4: That's it, and I couldn't be happier with that.
• 23:41
  Speaker 3: Well, your kids are watching.
• 23:42
  Speaker 3: Yeah, oh yeah, absolutely.
• 23:44
  Speaker 3: I talk about this a lot with dads.
• 23:45
  Speaker 3: Well, your kids are watching.
• 23:46
  Speaker 3: Yeah, oh yeah, absolutely.
• 23:46
  Speaker 3: We talk about this a lot with dads and now that with a kid in college and a daughter in high school, it's not always much what you said, it's what they see, and that's the same thing in sales leadership or sports leadership.
• 23:59
  Speaker 3: You could say all the right things, but how you act in the locker room, how you act in the field, if it's not what you say, then you're full of you know what, and If it's not what you say, that you're full, you know what.
• 24:05
  Speaker 3: And that lack of transparency, hence what you're passionate about you ain't going to follow you.
• 24:09
  Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly, and you mentioned the word transparency, right, like I'm the biggest transparency nerd of all time.
• 24:15
  Speaker 4: Like the first book, the Transparency Sale, was just all about that, and I think that's part of it.
• 24:20
  Speaker 4: Like I probably knew too much about my parents and like you know just everything, and uh, I think that helped too is that I didn't really feel like there were secrets.
• 24:31
  Speaker 4: Um, I felt like we were all like kind of a cards face up family together and uh, that's what I've tried to be too.
• 24:38
  Speaker 4: It's like I'm not trying to be somebody, I'm not uh with my kids too, and, um, I think that's important too, because part of being a good parent is being a trustworthy parent to your kids, right, and that transparency breeds that kind of trust and, as a result, transparency also begets transparency.
• 24:57
  Speaker 4: And that's one other piece that maybe I didn't learn from my parents, but I probably learned more from my wife maybe I didn't learn from my parents, but I probably learned more from my wife is that, from what I can tell, my kids are extremely transparent with us, and I think that comes from us being transparent with them too.
• 25:16
  Speaker 3: Well, I, when you, when I, when I met you, and then I read transparency sales, the transparent sales leader.
• 25:22
  Speaker 3: As a fellow author, I wrote an entire chapter about setting expectations and how setting expectations it solves so many problems and a lot of times people don't think to over-communicate, they don't think to, which, to me, is common sense.
• 25:35
  Speaker 3: For you it's common sense.
• 25:36
  Speaker 3: I'm realizing, at almost 50 years old, that's not common sense to most people, which is why you and I have jobs tongue in cheek.
• 25:43
  Speaker 3: But like, tell me, where do you think the impact of trends?
• 25:47
  Speaker 3: Because you were doing this before you met your wife and you were, and you've obviously written about it, you've experienced it.
• 25:55
  Speaker 3: Can you think back like where and why it became such a a thing that you are passionate about?
• 25:59
  Speaker 4: Yeah, well, let's, I'm going to take a step back.
• 26:01
  Speaker 4: I'm going to answer a question that you didn't ask here first, and then we'll come back to this.
• 26:06
  Speaker 4: I don't know what it is but, like I joked about earlier, I was a B, b plus sales rep.
• 26:14
  Speaker 4: You know, the first few jobs out of college I did pretty well.
• 26:17
  Speaker 4: 1999, I sold for a company called SAP Probably heard of it Massive company ERP space headquartered out in Waldorf, germany.
• 26:29
  Speaker 4: I worked for them on and off for about five years.
• 26:32
  Speaker 4: 1999, I did over 800% of my number and it's funny that beginning of 2000, I looked around and I was like I'm pretty awesome, right, I was in full Dunning-Kruger effect.
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: Hi, this is Kathy Orton.
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: I'm the director of talent management at CoWorks Staffing Services.
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: Coworks is one of the largest staffing firms in the United States, with operations in all 50 states, over 60,000 temporary field talent.
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: We are devoted to the success and growth of our employees and our clients.
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: We are celebrating our 50th anniversary this year and are proud to have a legacy of treating people the right way, doing the right thing, supporting our communities and putting field talent first.
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: Our team places candidates in administrative light, industrial, call center, distribution, third-party logistic positions with additional opportunities through our executive search, creative staffing and luxury, beauty and fragrance divisions.
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: We had the pleasure of having Casey Jaycox deliver a keynote presentation and training workshop to our sales team this year and I have to tell you it was exceptional.
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: Casey is funny, he is engaging and he is approachable.
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: What sets Casey apart is that he really walks the walk.
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: He lives what he teaches.
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: He spent time with us outside of the workshop, really taking the time to get to know our people.
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: He shared information about his personal life, about his family, creating the foundation for authentic relationships, one of the core elements of the strategy he teaches.
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: Casey left our teams feeling motivated, energized and armed with the actionable tools to transform their sales performance.
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: I cannot recommend Casey enough to any or any organization looking to grow and unlock their full potential.
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: If you want to learn more about Cowork Staffing, please visit our website at CoworkStaffingcom.
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: Now let's get back to the podcast at coworkstaffingcom.
• 28:25
  Speaker 4: Now let's get back to the podcast, where I had high confidence but actually low competence.
• 28:34
  Speaker 4: Because in 1999, for anybody who's old enough to remember the Y2K crisis everybody thought that when the dates on all the computer systems would go from 1999 to 2000,.
• 28:43
  Speaker 4: So many of those computer systems were coded with only two character year instead of four.
• 28:49
  Speaker 4: So the thought was that all of those systems would go from 99 to 00.
• 28:54
  Speaker 4: And, as a result, everything would get erased.
• 28:57
  Speaker 4: Planes would fall out of the sky, bombs would blow off, we're all going to die.
• 29:02
  Speaker 4: That was the concern back then.
• 29:04
  Speaker 4: Sap really messaged around that saying hey, listen, instead of having all these point solutions and you don't know where all those issues are, we're going to bring in this whole enterprise resource planning solution that's going to cover everything from your accounting to your HR, to your manufacturing processes, across everything.
• 29:22
  Speaker 4: We're going to rip out what you got.
• 29:23
  Speaker 4: We're going to put in this massive foundation.
• 29:25
  Speaker 4: And people were like where do I sign up?
• 29:28
  Speaker 4: And in 1999, I joke that when I look back at it it was like I was working at a drive-thru window where people would pull up and say, hey, I need this.
• 29:38
  Speaker 4: You're like, all right, come to the window.
• 29:39
  Speaker 4: And then they would throw a million dollars into the window and I'm like I'm a great salesperson.
• 29:44
  Speaker 4: That was stupid.
• 29:45
  Speaker 4: And so 2000, 2001,.
• 29:48
  Speaker 4: The bubble burst, the tech bubble burst, so you go into a recession.
• 29:57
  Speaker 4: And then September 11th happened, 2001,.
• 29:59
  Speaker 4: That sent it into a double dip recession.
• 30:00
  Speaker 4: I lost my job.
• 30:01
  Speaker 4: I'm sitting out there going wait, what am I going to do with my life?
• 30:05
  Speaker 4: I went in 2001, 2002, back to SAP.
• 30:10
  Speaker 4: I was miserable.
• 30:12
  Speaker 4: I went to another company called Hyperion, which sold basically financial accounting, data warehousing, financial consolidation tools software, and I was like consolidation tools software and I was like I've never been so bored in my whole life, like selling this boring crap to you know.
• 30:34
  Speaker 4: No offense to accountants and all that, but I kind of felt like they were not the most exciting people to sell to either.
• 30:37
  Speaker 4: And I had to find something.
• 30:38
  Speaker 4: I remember we had a sales trainer come in.
• 30:42
  Speaker 4: This guy from value selling came in and taught us and he was teaching us about behavioral science and decision science as a part of it.
• 30:50
  Speaker 4: He was injecting this stuff and I was like that's cool, that's amazing.
• 30:55
  Speaker 4: I've always viewed sales as being I'm supposed to do this, then this, then this, then this.
• 30:59
  Speaker 4: It was a trigger for me that hey, wait a second.
• 31:02
  Speaker 4: The role is actually to focus on customers and buyer outcomes and understand the world through their eyes and help them on their journey to making the right decision for where they're trying to go and what they're trying to achieve.
• 31:20
  Speaker 4: And that switched everything for me and so I started to just kind of as a hobby, started to dig into this and I began to get excited and interested about selling process as it relates to buyer journeys and buyer behaviors, learning theory, decision science.
• 31:39
  Speaker 4: And that was when, in 2003, I sold everything, bought a sales training franchise and it gave me the opportunity.
• 31:44
  Speaker 4: It was kind of like getting an MBA, in that it cost me a lot and I didn't get an ROI from it, but I learned a lot on the process.
• 31:52
  Speaker 4: And then, coming out of that in 2006, when I shut that down, I ended up going back into the tech world and my career took off after that.
• 32:02
  Speaker 4: But it really all started with hitting that Dunning-Kruger effect.
• 32:06
  Speaker 4: For anybody that doesn't know, look it up.
• 32:08
  Speaker 4: But Dunning-Kruger is you have a one-time success, that's massive, and internally your brain goes I'm awesome.
• 32:16
  Speaker 4: High confidence, but low competence.
• 32:19
  Speaker 4: Right, because you got one experience and it turned out, it was a rocket ship that you just happened to be on.
• 32:25
  Speaker 4: You'll hit what's called a valley of despair, which is when, all of a sudden, you realize wait a second, that wasn't me, that was that I need to do something because I can't be on this roller coaster forever.
• 32:40
  Speaker 4: And suddenly it triggers this thing called the journey to enlightenment.
• 32:46
  Speaker 4: And that's what I went on, and that started in 2001 and 2002.
• 32:50
  Speaker 4: And it led me through to what I'm doing.
• 32:51
  Speaker 4: And that started in 2001 and 2002.
• 32:52
  Speaker 4: And it led me through to what I'm doing here, you know, 22 years later, but that was it.
• 32:56
  Speaker 4: Like that was the trigger that started this whole path towards transparency, clinical empathy and decision science.
• 33:04
  Speaker 3: Well, I still, I love that you have.
• 33:06
  Speaker 3: Hopefully there's a question that I'd love getting called out and coached, so like, if there's a question I didn't ask, coach me, todd, I want to hear it, but and if you think about it, interrupt me.
• 33:14
  Speaker 3: But what I love that you even in your, even in the book, the one I read, transparency Sale Leader, the example of the car salesman and the example of oversharing, and for you like that to me is common sense, how we get to the truth.
• 33:30
  Speaker 3: And you, you, you made me when I was reading that, um, you made me think there's a time and I've said this to other people before I came here if I told you this, so check me if wrong.
• 33:39
  Speaker 3: But I, I was on stage speaking and, um, one of the worst pieces of advice I think people can give is fake it till you make it.
• 33:46
  Speaker 3: I hate that advice because it teaches you to not be yourself Right, and there's a VP of marketing that told, right before I'm about to go on, he's like all right, everybody, like you got to fake it till you make it.
• 33:58
  Speaker 3: I'm like, oh God, like there's a slide in like 25 minutes that says exact.
• 34:01
  Speaker 3: I'm going to teach them to do the exact opposite.
• 34:04
  Speaker 3: Two 300 people in the room.
• 34:05
  Speaker 3: I'm like, what am I going to do?
• 34:06
  Speaker 3: What am I going to do?
• 34:06
  Speaker 3: So I use my sarcasm and humor and I'm praying it's going to work.
• 34:10
  Speaker 3: I go hey, anybody seen the movie?
• 34:12
  Speaker 3: Old school.
• 34:12
  Speaker 3: And a couple of people laugh, a couple of people are like what the hell is this guy talking about?
• 34:16
  Speaker 3: I'm like there's a part in the in the movie where they say earmuffs.
• 34:19
  Speaker 3: I need everybody to just put earmuffs on, except for the vice president marking.
• 34:23
  Speaker 3: I need to apologize to you because I am going to teach them, your team, to do the exact opposite and I'm going to teach them to not fake it, to make it, and he's like what?
• 34:31
  Speaker 3: And anyway, this whole thing.
• 34:32
  Speaker 3: We kind of joked about it, but I was transparent with him.
• 34:34
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and it truly it.
• 34:36
  Speaker 3: It.
• 34:36
  Speaker 3: It shocked people, but then it like brought giggles and then at the end he's like one.
• 34:40
  Speaker 3: I can't believe you did that in front of everybody.
• 34:41
  Speaker 3: B I respect going to tell you.
• 34:43
  Speaker 4: Okay, good, and you just added to it too.
• 34:59
  Speaker 4: So there's so much here, dude, this is fun.
• 35:01
  Speaker 4: So what you had mentioned before, you had asked me about where this whole spark of transparency and decision science came from.
• 35:06
  Speaker 4: You were talking a lot about expectation setting and expectation setting to me.
• 35:09
  Speaker 4: So I read that chapter in your lot about expectation setting and expectation setting to me.
• 35:11
  Speaker 4: So you know, I read that chapter in your book on expectation setting and it relates so much to not only sales but parenting, right In that expectation setting.
• 35:23
  Speaker 4: You see a lot like on LinkedIn and people talking about that.
• 35:27
  Speaker 4: We're in this era today where you've got to create incredible experiences for people.
• 35:32
  Speaker 4: It's all about customer experience and I'm like not quite why, because it's not about creating great experiences.
• 35:41
  Speaker 4: It's to your point, casey, it's about setting accurate expectations that you consistently meet.
• 35:48
  Speaker 4: That is transparency, but it is the thing that leads to overall satisfaction.
• 35:55
  Speaker 4: If you look in just the world that we shop in, for example, like Costco, right, you walk into a Costco, you don't think twice about the fact that you had to pay to walk in.
• 36:07
  Speaker 4: Right, you had to have a subscription card.
• 36:09
  Speaker 4: You go in.
• 36:10
  Speaker 4: Let's say you're looking for ranch dressing.
• 36:12
  Speaker 4: The place isn't pretty, it's floor to ceiling boxes.
• 36:16
  Speaker 4: You find the ranch dressing.
• 36:17
  Speaker 4: You got to buy almost a gallon, right?
• 36:20
  Speaker 4: You want some toothbrushes.
• 36:21
  Speaker 4: They come in packs of eight, like what am I going to do with that?
• 36:23
  Speaker 4: You check out, they don't bag anything.
• 36:26
  Speaker 4: They offer you a dirty box from under the cash register if you want it, but there's no bagging.
• 36:31
  Speaker 4: And then when you walk out there's a woman there checking your receipt to make sure you didn't steal anything.
• 36:35
  Speaker 4: Yet their renewal rate on those subscription cards is like 98%.
• 36:40
  Speaker 4: I think the two people that don't are dead right.
• 36:42
  Speaker 4: I just think it's Ikea and Southwest Airlines and all of these different places where they're number one in their space over and over again.
• 36:52
  Speaker 4: Like IKEA is the number one furniture retailer in the world for 14 straight years, and it's a nightmare.
• 36:57
  Speaker 4: But people know, hey, I'm going to go there and find modern Scandinavian design furniture that I didn't pay much for, but I'm going to have to find it in the labyrinth.
• 37:05
  Speaker 4: I'm going to have to pick it off of a shelf onto a cart that doesn't have brakes, jam it into the back of my car and assemble it at home.
• 37:12
  Speaker 4: 150 parts, and the only word on the work instructions is Svarta or some weird Scandinavian name.
• 37:18
  Speaker 4: That's what we're talking about in terms of expectations.
• 37:23
  Speaker 4: It's not going to all be cotton, candy and lollipops.
• 37:25
  Speaker 4: It's got to be transparency, saying hey, listen, this is what the bad news is, this is the good news, and if you're cool with that, we're going to really get along well, because I'm not all things to all people.
• 37:37
  Speaker 4: I'm not selling something that's all things to all people.
• 37:40
  Speaker 4: And the exact same thing happens with parenting.
• 37:42
  Speaker 4: It's about setting expectations, right that, hey, when we signed him up for football, I told him that hey, listen, day one, look outside, it's 75 and it's sunny and it's perfect.
• 37:54
  Speaker 4: But when we get to the end of October, I just want you to be prepared for the fact that it's probably going to be raining sideways and 38 degrees for some of this, and you're going to be running through the mud.
• 38:04
  Speaker 4: Are you sure you want to do this?
• 38:05
  Speaker 4: Let's expose that now.
• 38:08
  Speaker 4: And then, when it comes and we get to October 30th and he's out there on the Wednesday night before you know, the day before Halloween, and the weather is fricking awful and he's running through the mud, he's like I knew this was coming, I was ready for it, right, and now I'm not mad.
• 38:21
  Speaker 4: And that's what expectation of setting is about for me, not only in the selling world, the leadership world, the parenting world.
• 38:30
  Speaker 4: I'm not perfect, I'm not all things, but even when you're trying to encourage anybody to do anything, especially your kids, you've got to expose what's given up for the greatness and if you're cool with that, you're going to love this.
• 38:44
  Speaker 4: But let's decide now before we jump into it, because otherwise satisfaction goes in the toilet.
• 38:50
  Speaker 3: Well, I think what you just did, a did a couple things.
• 38:51
  Speaker 3: One, you, you expose humility, which I think is one of our superpowers we have, and you expose vulnerability.
• 38:56
  Speaker 3: That was one of my, one of our superpowers that people have.
• 38:59
  Speaker 3: That usually stays dormant.
• 39:00
  Speaker 3: People don't unlock, which is exposing the fact.
• 39:02
  Speaker 3: And regardless of how successful todd is or suzy is or billy is, we still have gaps as humans.
• 39:08
  Speaker 3: We're still flawed, like you, and we still can get better each day.
• 39:11
  Speaker 3: And then I also love the fact that you and what you just said spoke to me is like so I was lucky enough to play college football Uncle Rico moment again, right there everybody.
• 39:20
  Speaker 3: But there's a mountain.
• 39:21
  Speaker 3: I guarantee I could throw it over it.
• 39:22
  Speaker 3: But I'm at.
• 39:24
  Speaker 3: My kids are at the stage now where I'm having to say you mentioned earlier, like you're like the value-based selling.
• 39:29
  Speaker 3: Well, there's value-based parenting.
• 39:30
  Speaker 3: It's not giving them the answers, it's, it's telling stories, it's asking questions to make sure, do my kids even give two shits about what I'm about to tell them?
• 39:36
  Speaker 3: If they don't, I'm wasting my time.
• 39:38
  Speaker 3: Yeah, just like a seller would be wasting a client's time Like make sure someone's ready to hear what you have to say, and so like now I'm like my son's in college playing golf.
• 39:47
  Speaker 3: My daughter wants to play basketball in college.
• 39:49
  Speaker 3: Instead of me telling her, hey, you got to go out and do this, I'm like, hey, tell me, have your goals changed?
• 39:54
  Speaker 3: No, dad, tell me, do you want to play in college?
• 39:56
  Speaker 3: Yes, great, tell me.
• 39:57
  Speaker 3: I know I shared this with you before.
• 39:58
  Speaker 3: You might not remember it.
• 40:00
  Speaker 3: Tell me, would it be helpful if I shared.
• 40:09
  Speaker 3: I'm going to go that second, third level question to truly make sure that's again.
• 40:13
  Speaker 3: Curiosity is a superpower if we use it.
• 40:14
  Speaker 3: And they're like yeah, dad, I want to hear it.
• 40:16
  Speaker 3: So now I'm saying Riley, dad got up three days a week at 6am and lifted weights with the offensive lineman before school.
• 40:23
  Speaker 3: I stayed after school Monday, wednesday, friday to lift weights and then on Tuesdays and Thursdays I'd throw the ball to anybody a band member, head of woodshop, the glee club, spanish teacher I don't care who was going to get someone's going to catch balls.
• 40:34
  Speaker 3: Yeah, like that's what it took.
• 40:36
  Speaker 3: So if you don't want to do that, then don't tell me you want to play sports in college.
• 40:40
  Speaker 3: If you do, you know, let's, let's, let's work together to develop a plan on what's.
• 40:45
  Speaker 3: What will help you get there.
• 40:46
  Speaker 3: What will help you get there?
• 40:47
  Speaker 3: Exactly that's awesome.
• 40:49
  Speaker 4: Yeah, that's so right.
• 40:50
  Speaker 4: That's all right, and I'll tell you one of the other things that I find really interesting is if you read my first book, the Transparency Sale so many of the analogies and lessons that I teach in it are actually things my kids taught me, because kids are just smaller, louder and more like outward adults, meaning the things that you see in your children teach you so much about what it's like to be an adult.
• 41:20
  Speaker 4: And so one of the stories that I tell is about expectation setting in terms of one day.
• 41:29
  Speaker 4: My wife and I.
• 41:29
  Speaker 4: We were out setting in terms of one day.
• 41:33
  Speaker 4: My wife and I, we were out shopping with the kids and it was mid afternoon and this was 2021, when there were labor shortages in a lot of different places.
• 41:38
  Speaker 4: But it was mid afternoon.
• 41:40
  Speaker 4: My wife leans over and she's like, hey, should we go get some ice cream?
• 41:44
  Speaker 4: And my kids, with their Hawk hearing in the back, are like ice cream Culver's.
• 41:48
  Speaker 4: So I'm in the Midwest, we're Culver's fans.
• 41:50
  Speaker 4: So Culver's so I'm in the Midwest, we're Culver's fans.
• 41:52
  Speaker 4: So Culver's for anybody that doesn't know, it's a fast food place.
• 41:55
  Speaker 4: They're known for their butter burgers and their frozen custard and the frozen custard's pretty fantastic.
• 42:01
  Speaker 4: So we're as great an inbound need to Culver's as you can have.
• 42:06
  Speaker 4: All four of us are in.
• 42:08
  Speaker 4: So we got consensus purchase right, we got the means right.
• 42:15
  Speaker 4: We can pay for it.
• 42:16
  Speaker 4: We drove over there Like we showed up, we're ready to buy, we are there.
• 42:18
  Speaker 4: Problem is, the drive-through line was 14 cars long and the inside was closed because of the labor issues, so it was drive-through only.
• 42:25
  Speaker 4: And so we get there and we pull into the line and we're sitting there and my wife and I kind of look at each other like what are you going to do?
• 42:33
  Speaker 4: The kids want their ice cream, right?
• 42:34
  Speaker 4: Well, not so fast.
• 42:36
  Speaker 4: Within about two minutes, my daughter leans forward and she's like, hey, can we just go home Really?
• 42:43
  Speaker 4: And my son's like, yeah, I just want to go play some Minecraft, let's get out of here.
• 42:46
  Speaker 4: Craft, let's get out of here.
• 42:52
  Speaker 4: And we pulled off and we chose the status quo over the ice cream.
• 42:53
  Speaker 4: That still would have tasted just as good, still would have cost just as much.
• 42:55
  Speaker 4: There was nothing different about the solution.
• 42:57
  Speaker 4: However, expectations were we'd be able to get in and get out of there.
• 43:01
  Speaker 4: Reality was different and, as a result, we chose the status quo.
• 43:05
  Speaker 4: It's one of those things that when I sat there thinking about my kids, you know, if you're in sales, your buyers are doing this all the time.
• 43:14
  Speaker 4: Right, there's an expectation.
• 43:16
  Speaker 4: Hey, I know the journey is going to be fraught with bump A, bump B, bump C.
• 43:20
  Speaker 4: But if you add D, e and F, I'm out and I might not tell you right.
• 43:24
  Speaker 4: It's not like the Culver's employees are in there going.
• 43:27
  Speaker 4: What the hell is with those people?
• 43:28
  Speaker 4: They ghosted us.
• 43:29
  Speaker 4: They didn't even tell us they were leaving.
• 43:31
  Speaker 4: That would be stupid.
• 43:32
  Speaker 4: Right, it's not you, it's not you, it's them, and so we've got to think through that.
• 43:37
  Speaker 4: But you can spend time with your kids and just realize that there's another story we can tell another time about.
• 43:43
  Speaker 4: Like shopping at Toys R Us and then being overwhelmed with the options, to the point when we walked in, they're all excited because it's Toys R Us.
• 43:50
  Speaker 4: When we walked out, they each had a toy and they're both crying in our drive home because there's too much choice and our buyers go through that all the time.
• 43:57
  Speaker 4: So there's so many things that if you just look at your kids, I'm trying to teach them stuff, but they teach me just as much, maybe more, than I teach them, and I think that's a pretty amazing thing too.
• 44:08
  Speaker 3: I teach them and I think that's a pretty amazing thing too.
• 44:12
  Speaker 3: So good, what is the if you had to say the best lesson your kids have taught you?
• 44:16
  Speaker 3: Tell me what comes to mind.
• 44:19
  Speaker 4: Oh man, the best lesson my kids have taught me.
• 44:21
  Speaker 4: Oh man, I wish I had a good answer to that one.
• 44:29
  Speaker 4: My daughter, she's 13.
• 44:31
  Speaker 4: She'll be 14 here soon.
• 44:33
  Speaker 4: I was in my late 30s when she was born, like 38, 39.
• 44:37
  Speaker 4: And so I lived 38, 39 years of my life with no kids.
• 44:41
  Speaker 4: Kids is just so much different and so much more rewarding than I would have ever thought and I would have ever guessed like.
• 44:51
  Speaker 4: I always wanted kids, but I was certainly in no hurry.
• 44:52
  Speaker 4: But, man, having kids just changes your perspective in such a dramatic way around what is actually important in life.
• 45:02
  Speaker 4: And that's me right.
• 45:03
  Speaker 4: Like I, you know no complaints about anybody who didn't have kids chose not to Like one of my best friends, he and his wife they're in their late fifties, no kids, and they've had an incredible life and it's so rewarding and that's awesome.
• 45:16
  Speaker 4: For me, though, the lesson was, I didn't really know what happiness and life was until my daughter was born and then my son was born, and watching them grow up and turn into human beings that, you know, I can be proud of, I can teach and they can teach me that's probably the biggest one for me.
• 45:35
  Speaker 3: Love it.
• 45:36
  Speaker 3: You mentioned earlier too you did not grow up with a silver spoon, but your pops was obviously successful with the martini lunches and the golf trips and you probably didn't know how successful he was.
• 45:45
  Speaker 3: Maybe you did, maybe you didn't.
• 45:46
  Speaker 3: And so like I think about like my life, we didn't.
• 45:50
  Speaker 3: Like my first plane ride was like an eighth grade.
• 45:53
  Speaker 3: I didn't go on our, our vacations were camping and now I was, I would say, right time, right time, right place for me and my corporate career.
• 46:00
  Speaker 3: I had more success, you know, business-wise, than I thought I would ever have.
• 46:03
  Speaker 3: And I still look back and like God, how did I do that, you know?
• 46:07
  Speaker 3: But but like my coaches around me, my college football coach, he used to always tell me Casey, if you have to tell me how good you are, you're not that good.
• 46:14
  Speaker 3: When you're great, I'll tell you.
• 46:15
  Speaker 3: And it just kept me grounded.
• 46:17
  Speaker 3: And so, like, how do you as a dad with I mean, you've sold shit, tons of books, you're speaking all over the place, you're probably done some things that you're maybe you didn't experience the kid, Maybe you did, Maybe you didn't Like tell me, how do you keep your kids grounded and how do you keep yourself grounded through that journey as a dad.
• 46:38
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it's funny that well, first of all, our vacations growing up, where we would get in the car and we would drive anywhere where there was a baseball stadium.
• 46:48
  Speaker 4: And so, growing up as a kid and I don't think I appreciated this enough I think I went to 24, 25 different stadiums growing up, so we would always plan our vacations around there.
• 47:00
  Speaker 4: So you know, I've gotten to see games in the old Houston Astrodome and Exhibition Stadium in Toronto, riverfront Stadium in Cincinnati, all these, like the original Tiger Stadium in Detroit, all these places that are no longer there, and man, I look back at that just like that was the coolest way to grow up and do vacations.
• 47:20
  Speaker 4: We spent a lot of time in the car together, but being able to go see all those baseball stadiums and do that growing up was pretty amazing.
• 47:29
  Speaker 3: Remind me what the question was the question is how do you keep yourself grounded and the kids grounded?
• 47:35
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I think the challenge I probably still have and I could use some advice is, since my kids have gotten to the conscious age, I call it conscious age.
• 47:45
  Speaker 4: They don't remember anything after the age of five or six.
• 47:48
  Speaker 4: We took them when they were I think they were five and three at the time.
• 47:52
  Speaker 4: The long story, but the short version, is we had a foreign exchange student that lived with us from Germany and then when he left we took a trip over to Germany and did the whole Germany, Austria, and just a few weeks ago we were like hey, remember when we went to Germany.
• 48:07
  Speaker 4: And they're like we went to Germany, Like like don't remember any of that.
• 48:10
  Speaker 4: So that's like that's the unconscious age, the conscious age where they get to see me when I'm not going to an office every day.
• 48:19
  Speaker 4: You know it's been six years since I commuted an hour, 20 each way, and I would come home frazzled and stressed out.
• 48:24
  Speaker 4: I was CRO of the fastest growing tech company here in Chicago Sounds glorious, right Like.
• 48:30
  Speaker 4: I was stressed all the time.
• 48:31
  Speaker 4: I had kidney stones, I was popping Advil every day.
• 48:34
  Speaker 4: I was not going to the gym, I was not smiling like this, I wasn't healthy like this, and all they've seen for the last six years is this happy, smiling guy that hangs out here at home all the time and then gets on planes, goes and talks to audiences and does workshops and training and all that, and then I come home and then we get to go to our lake house, Like it sounds.
• 48:55
  Speaker 4: It's hard for me to keep them grounded, realizing that this didn't just happen, and so that's one of the things that I think I struggle with is really teaching them that all the work and all the effort that went into this and you know, when you're our age, if you want to kind of have this, this life, it's going to take some work and tribulations, and you know a couple of kidney stone surgeries you know, to get there and, you know, to really find this, and so I guess I don't have a good answer, other than I'm still seeking the answer.
• 49:28
  Speaker 3: Well, I love it.
• 49:28
  Speaker 3: I love the honesty in that, because if there's a dad at home that's listening, or a mom or a grandpa, whoever's listening, it's like listen.
• 49:33
  Speaker 3: Todd's a very successful author and speaker, but he's still asking for help.
• 49:38
  Speaker 3: He still has gaps, and that was one of the goals.
• 49:40
  Speaker 3: Everybody started this podcast five years ago.
• 49:42
  Speaker 3: Which still feels so crazy to say but so cool to hear is, regardless of your uh.
• 49:48
  Speaker 3: Play-by-play announcer for the Kraken, who I've interviewed, the play-by-play announcer for the Mariners, who I've interviewed, to a stay at home dad, to a teacher, our kids don't give two shits what we do, dad.
• 49:59
  Speaker 3: We think we do because our ego's in the way and we're so proud of what we do when you should be.
• 50:02
  Speaker 3: But don't make it your kid's identity, like.
• 50:06
  Speaker 3: What they care about is can we go to Culver's, hey.
• 50:08
  Speaker 3: Can we go to the lake house?
• 50:10
  Speaker 3: Can we go to Billy's house?
• 50:11
  Speaker 3: Can I go have a sleepover, like and so like.
• 50:14
  Speaker 3: If we can, as dads, remove our ego, stay curious, be vulnerable to share where we sucked or where what it took for us to be what we achieved, I think that's our job as dads and job as dads and I think that's the gift we can give them to create this awesome generation after us?
• 50:34
  Speaker 3: Exactly, exactly, yep.
• 50:34
  Speaker 3: So, all right, I know we're getting close on time here, so I want to make sure I and if you had to summarize everything we've talked about into like two or three kind of actionable ways dads can take from our conversation, hey, these are two things I took from what Casey and Todd talked about that I'm going to try to apply in my own life to help me be a better leader or quarterback in my household.
• 50:47
  Speaker 3: Tell me what comes to mind.
• 50:48
  Speaker 4: Well, I think number one is, you know, just understanding human behavior first of all, like that's an area that I've spent so much time studying for the business world, but I can't believe how often it translates.
• 51:00
  Speaker 4: And so, you know, number one being that idea that transparency begets transparency, like, if you want to have kids that are going to be open with you, you're going to have to be open with them.
• 51:10
  Speaker 4: Transparency is not, hey, I'm perfect and you do what I say.
• 51:13
  Speaker 4: It's hey, listen, here's where I'm flawed right, here's where what we're going to take you through is going to have some like they're setting proper expectations and building on that.
• 51:26
  Speaker 4: I think that that's such an important way to create that connection, create that trust.
• 51:30
  Speaker 4: But I think if you're going to be a successful parent, you've got to have that transparency, and that doesn't happen unless you're transparent first.
• 51:36
  Speaker 4: And so I think that's probably number one for me.
• 51:40
  Speaker 4: And then number two is just the realization that you're not just there to teach your kids.
• 51:47
  Speaker 4: They teach you so much and for me, I've learned so much from being a parent but just in all the ways that they act and the way they make decisions, the way they grow up, the way they think about things, the way that their lens to the world is just such an incredible opportunity for us as adults to learn and just be better human beings as we enter our elder years here too.
• 52:12
  Speaker 4: So those would probably be the two things Transparency begets transparency, and let's not forget that our kids can teach us as much as we teach them.
• 52:20
  Speaker 3: Gold.
• 52:20
  Speaker 3: How can I make sure people learn more about Todd?
• 52:23
  Speaker 3: How can they find you if they're interested in your books, your courses, your speaking Like?
• 52:28
  Speaker 3: Tell me how.
• 52:29
  Speaker 3: What's the easiest way people can find you and learn about you?
• 52:31
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean toddcaponecom is probably the easiest way I've written the two books, the transparency sale, the transparent sales leader.
• 52:38
  Speaker 4: I do keynotes.
• 52:39
  Speaker 4: I do workshops for revenue organizations, kind of mid to larger organizations all over the place.
• 52:45
  Speaker 4: I also my hobby is the history of sales, so I've got a podcast called the Sales History Podcast where I'll dive into a research, the crap out of a subject, and then I'll just teach you about it for 12 to 20 minutes.
• 52:58
  Speaker 4: There's about 50 episodes so far that I post daily at Sales Historian on Instagram and Twitter X just quotes and interesting little things I find and I do that as a hobby.
• 53:09
  Speaker 4: I don't get paid at all for any of that, but I just love the lessons that can be learned from history and the real founders of the modern sales and business profession.
• 53:21
  Speaker 3: Gold, everybody I hope you're picking up on.
• 53:23
  Speaker 3: He said he did not get paid for that, but he learns in every quote.
• 53:25
  Speaker 3: He reads, every quote he posts, which is being curious and being a lifelong learner.
• 53:30
  Speaker 3: And surrounding yourself with people like Todd will help you stay curious and keep learning, so I love that.
• 53:36
  Speaker 3: Todd, it's now time for you to go into lightning round, which is where I go completely random on.
• 53:43
  Speaker 3: You show the hits of taking too many hits in college not bong hits, but football hits.
• 53:46
  Speaker 3: Your job is to answer them as quickly as you can and my job is to hopefully get a giggle out of you.
• 53:53
  Speaker 3: All right, cool, okay, true or false.
• 53:54
  Speaker 3: You once wrestled Keith Waitman in a WWF match.
• 53:58
  Speaker 4: That is false.
• 54:00
  Speaker 4: That would be interesting, though We'd have to see how that would go, but I've never wrestled Keith Waitman.
• 54:06
  Speaker 4: I actually have never met him in person.
• 54:09
  Speaker 3: Great dude.
• 54:10
  Speaker 3: Um, true or false?
• 54:12
  Speaker 3: There's a secret scratch and sniff page in your book.
• 54:15
  Speaker 4: That's none of your business.
• 54:16
  Speaker 4: Um, you're going to have to get the book to find out.
• 54:18
  Speaker 4: Um, but uh.
• 54:20
  Speaker 3: I have the book I've.
• 54:20
  Speaker 3: Just, I always tell my, I always tell people I wrote a book that's it's a pop-up book and I wrote a book that's a pop-up book.
• 54:24
  Speaker 3: And I wrote a book to prove that football guys can write sentences.
• 54:27
  Speaker 4: There you go, and I'll tell you, though the funny thing is I've got so behind me for anybody that can see I'm building basically like a sales history museum.
• 54:34
  Speaker 4: I mean the stuff that's just come in.
• 54:37
  Speaker 4: I got another stack here.
• 54:38
  Speaker 4: It smells like the far reaches of grandma's basement in here.
• 54:43
  Speaker 4: Sometimes Love it, basement in here, sometimes so from a scratch and sniff perspective.
• 54:47
  Speaker 4: If I you know, when I ever write a third book and a fourth book, I'll make sure that I get a little of that smell in there.
• 54:53
  Speaker 4: Perfect.
• 54:54
  Speaker 3: If I was to come to your house for dinner tonight, what would we have?
• 54:59
  Speaker 4: So I do like to cook.
• 55:00
  Speaker 4: There's my.
• 55:02
  Speaker 4: I think my favorite thing to cook is it's this fusion of Asian and Italian.
• 55:08
  Speaker 4: It's a gochujang pasta dish that the kids love, my wife loves, and they want me to make it all the time, and it's like a spicy tortellini type of pasta dish that would blow your mind.
• 55:25
  Speaker 4: I think that's a really good one.
• 55:26
  Speaker 4: I might need the recipe.
• 55:28
  Speaker 4: There you go.
• 55:29
  Speaker 3: Yeah, if I was to go into your phone right now, what would be the one song that you listen to?
• 55:34
  Speaker 3: That would surprise me and all your buddies.
• 55:37
  Speaker 4: I'm a bit of a closet headbanger, that's a go.
• 55:41
  Speaker 4: Yeah, like Gojira.
• 55:42
  Speaker 4: There's a couple of bands in there that I think you'd be like.
• 55:46
  Speaker 4: I can't like Taproot.
• 55:48
  Speaker 4: A little bit of Korn System of a Down, so there's a little early 90s rock, but I like the intense stuff, maybe a little Slipknot or Static X thrown on top is this your walk-up music when you go, speak just some acid rock.
• 56:06
  Speaker 4: I'm a huge grunge fan, and so for one of the keynotes that I gave in Amsterdam a couple of months ago, they actually had me provide walk-up music, and I chose Alice in Chains.
• 56:18
  Speaker 4: It Ain't Like that.
• 56:19
  Speaker 4: Check out the first 20 seconds of that.
• 56:23
  Speaker 4: It just got a really cool riff that you feel like energized walking up on stage with.
• 56:28
  Speaker 3: So good, tell me the last book you read.
• 56:31
  Speaker 4: The last book I read is I don't even remember the name of it because I just read it over the weekend.
• 56:40
  Speaker 4: It's from 1913.
• 56:42
  Speaker 4: It's from the Andrew Shaw Company.
• 56:43
  Speaker 4: It actually was a book that was written from System Magazine.
• 56:48
  Speaker 4: There's three volumes.
• 56:49
  Speaker 4: I just read the third volume.
• 56:50
  Speaker 4: It's on closing like sales closing skills.
• 56:55
  Speaker 4: I can't remember the name of the book, though, but you'd find me every weekend I'm reading a book that is at least 75 years old, and, in some cases, 120 plus years old.
• 57:07
  Speaker 4: That's just my hobby, my nerdery.
• 57:10
  Speaker 4: I love it, and in that book that I read, though, I found the origin of why they call closing and sales closing.
• 57:18
  Speaker 4: I posted about it on LinkedIn, so anybody, whenever you're listening, go scroll back and see if you can find it, because the story is amazing.
• 57:25
  Speaker 4: It has to do with 1800s in the circus.
• 57:27
  Speaker 4: There we go.
• 57:31
  Speaker 3: If you were to go on a vacation right now, you and your wife, no kids, where are we going?
• 57:35
  Speaker 4: New Zealand.
• 57:35
  Speaker 4: So back in that first VP of sales job I took was in 2008.
• 57:42
  Speaker 4: I went to a company in 2006, coming out of the failed franchise, and then I stayed there for four years.
• 57:50
  Speaker 4: I got promoted to be SVP of sales.
• 57:52
  Speaker 4: It was actually headquartered in Auckland, new Zealand, and once I took over I used to go there once a quarter and I never really got a chance to spend much vacation time.
• 58:02
  Speaker 4: That is the greatest country ever, even what I saw and I'm dying to go to spend a couple of weeks there exploring it, because it is freaking amazing from what I can see.
• 58:12
  Speaker 3: Wow that's on my list.
• 58:13
  Speaker 3: If there was to be a book written about your life, tell me the title.
• 58:17
  Speaker 4: Todd Caponi the Nerd Behind the Nerd.
• 58:20
  Speaker 3: Okay, now that catchy title, Todd Todd Caponi, the Nerd Behind the Nerd is now Hollywood wants to make a book out of it, and this is, I mean, everybody's fighting for it Hulu and Instagram and Netflix, they're all fighting for it.
• 58:33
  Speaker 3: But we need to know, as you are the casting director, who's going to star you in this new, critically acclaimed hit movie.
• 58:38
  Speaker 4: Well, I did a talk a few weeks ago in San Antonio and I call it an interactive keynote and so I encourage people to ask questions.
• 58:48
  Speaker 4: Yell at me, call BS Some guy as he's sitting there I guess he couldn't remember my name and he said, hey, kimmel.
• 58:55
  Speaker 4: And I was like, did you just call me Kimmel?
• 58:58
  Speaker 4: And he's like, yeah, you look just like Jimmy Kimmel.
• 59:00
  Speaker 4: I'm like, damn it, because people tell me I look like Jimmy Kimmel all the time.
• 59:05
  Speaker 4: My wife doesn't see it, but maybe it's the voice, maybe it's the look, I don't know, but apparently Jimmy Kimmel is the one that's going to have to play me in whatever movie comes out.
• 59:17
  Speaker 3: There we go, okay, and then last question Tell me two words that describe your wife.
• 59:23
  Speaker 4: Oh man, Gorgeous and strong.
• 59:26
  Speaker 3: There we go, gorgeous and strong.
• 59:27
  Speaker 3: There we go, gorgeous and strong.
• 59:27
  Speaker 3: Lightning round's over.
• 59:28
  Speaker 3: I think I laughed more at my own jokes.
• 59:29
  Speaker 3: Another loss for the host of the quarterback dad cast.
• 59:33
  Speaker 3: Todd, it's been a fantastic opportunity learning more about you.
• 59:35
  Speaker 3: I'm inspired by other people trying to make positive impacts in the profession of sales and creating better customer journeys.
• 59:44
  Speaker 3: I think there's so much aligns with just relationship building and dads and leadership, and there's so much so kudos to you, dude.
• 59:50
  Speaker 3: Keep doing what you're doing.
• 59:51
  Speaker 3: I can't wait to read your next book, transparency Sale, which I will be leaving a review as well when I get done, but I'll make sure everything is linked in the show notes and I want to say thank you for everybody for listening, taking time to leave us a review or share this episode with others.
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 3: Please do, let's help other dads become better quarterbacks or leaders of their house.
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 3: Todd, appreciate your time, brother.
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 3: Great spending time with you today.
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 3: This was fun, dude.
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 4: And again I've done a lot of these.
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 4: This has been a blast talking about this stuff, so thanks for having me, you bet.