From Professional Actor to BDR Director with Andy Gillies

00:03 Hello and welcome to another episode of Revenue Career Ladder, where we dive deep into the career journeys of revenue focused professionals to give you real insights, actionable tips, and maybe even a little reassurance of the journeys you'll find. In this episode, I'm joined by Andy Gillies. I don't know if I got that right. We're going to be chatting about his journey from professional actor to BDR director, which is out of the...

00:27 What's this 13th, 14th conversation I've had? It sounds like it's going to be one of the more interesting conversations. So I'm looking forward to getting into things. But how are you? I'm not too bad. Thank you, Jamie. How are you doing, mate? I'm good. We were just chatting in typical British fashion about the weather. It's blue skies off the back of a horrendous weekend of rain. What would the British have to talk about? What small talk would we have if we couldn't talk about the weather, Well, my team has spread

00:57 all over the place. I've got a Polish woman living in Bali. I've got half the team in Germany, some in Scotland and one in India. And they do always or they do find it funny how the Brits tend to start every call with lovely weather, isn't it? Yeah, it's true. Well, I'm sort of same as you, mate. I manage someone in Romania, obviously the UK, but also in the US. So I manage a few people in sunny California. So that's always a

01:27 It's always a moment of contention when we have calls that it's raining in Ireland and it's beautiful, beautiful weather as always in California. Yeah. mean, Sam, you know, he's out in Spain for the first few months of the year. you know, sunshine, palm trees and surfing, which is, he's getting progressively darker every call that we have. It's just breaking my heart. But it's still that spring is on the way and spring in the UK is lovely.

01:57 It's a beautiful time. I think sometimes in the UK you can forget what a beautiful country it is. it is, if you go up north into some, you know, Yorkshire and obviously down south and Cotswolds, it's a beautiful country. I don't know whether it's an age-related thing, but the older I get, the more I enjoy coming home from traveling. So I love traveling. I absolutely adore it, whether it's work or personal, but I do love coming home now.

02:26 planning a move, you mentioned the Cotswolds there, I'm planning a move back to the Cotswold, which is where I grew up. And I'm very much looking forward to forward to that. Beautiful. Anyway, let's talk about, let's talk about you, not me. So we, we always start these discussions with your first ever job, which you've, we, we touched on at the start, but tell me about your first ever job. So I was a trained professional actor. Really? That's, that's, that's what I wanted to do. That's the ambition that I had.

02:56 Um, and I probably spent the first 35 to 40 years of my life trying to be that, um, ultimately that, that was my MO. Um, uh, and you know, I did okay. I did okay with that, Jamie. I mean, what I would say about any job in actor and really that's all I ever achieved at most was, is that you have to do jobs in the background because otherwise you're not going to be earning money all the time or you're not going to be having a regular wage. Um, and I think that's.

03:27 And I think a lot of actors are quite similar in that actually. It's amazing where that transferable skill set goes. But ultimately that's what I was. I went to drama school a little bit later, the most. And then I got an agent and I started to traverse the acting world, which is a hard world to traverse. It's not the world people think it is, I think, a lot of the time. It's a hard world. You've got to be tough. You've got to be thick skinned.

03:56 You've got to accept a lot of no's and you can't let it affect you emotionally too much. So it's actually quite a good learning grant, actually think, for a lot of jobs. Not just where I've ended up, multiple jobs because it teaches you to be tough, You said 30 to 40 years. Yes, yes. So I first went on a stage when I was about five and I...

04:24 just always done that. did it through college. I then went to uni and done it. I mean, I studied small-scale theatre at university, Jamie, so I'm not really sure what good that was to anyone, but it worked for me. I had a good couple of years there anyway. What is, without asking an obvious question, what's the definition of small-scale theatre? Basically, the course was there to set up actors to set up their own theatre companies.

04:51 smaller scale, not your massive West End stuff, just job in theatre companies. Like as an example, Jamie, you see a lot of actors now that run workshops in business, so businesses go away for a day, they have a company come in that works with them on speaking and confidence and working together as a team. Normally, all of those principles will come somewhere in shape or form from acting.

05:18 Interesting. Okay. So you travel the country, you know, I'm thinking the thing that comes to mind is when I was back at school and you had theater companies come into schools and do something based on history or something. You got something like that. Okay. So you started or you had a passion from age five, you did it at college, university, graduated ballpark 21, I'm assuming. Yeah. And then and then what happened? Then I realized that it's a

05:47 blooming our business to get your feet up into. So basically what I did was I did a lot of little jobs over the years. As an example, I worked in Austria. I worked for Vienna's English theater company. I toured the whole of Austria. Again, in small scale theater, going into schools, teaching them English and working in communities. So I did sort of little jobs like that along the way, And then obviously to supplement that, I...

06:14 I've worked in betting shops. I managed betting shops at one point. I worked in the London Underground as a, when you walk into the underground and normally give someone abuse, that was me. And I did that for a little while. I thought I recognized you. There you go. And I did it at Camden as well, which Camden was always a good fun. lovely place, Camden. It is. It's beautiful part of the world. It's unique, Camden, actually. It's unique.

06:44 So, yes, so I worked there and then basically as time went on, I sort of tried to navigate doing both Jamie and then without going into it too much, I got quite ill around the age of 30 and everything stopped. For two years, long story short, I was confined for a bed. I'm okay talking about this. just, this isn't the point of what we're doing. So everything stopped.

07:13 literally everything stopped. I couldn't do anything. And I slowly then rebuilt things up. I started to learn to walk again. This was over a two year period. I lost quite a lot of weight. I lost about 15 stone because I needed to get some operations to get better. Obviously the NHS were like, no, you're not getting a 30 stone. You got to lose some weight here and play with us. So then I did all of that. And then when I got through that process, I remember just thinking, Jamie,

07:41 I put all of this work into being an actor. I never went to drama school. If I don't do it now, what's the point of getting better? So I did. So I went back to drama school. Then it all started to kick off a little bit more, Jamie. I got a decent agent and I started to do a little bit of work. And yeah, then I was doing job in acting all the time. was, you know, bits and east enders, bits in Doctor Who. Those are the two things that probably most people watching this podcast would click in their brains.

08:10 Yeah, I mean, the accent fits for EastEnders. It would almost be wrong if you weren't in EastEnders. It would, yeah. So we usually, as part of this sort of chatting through the early career, the reason we tend to, or the reason we go all the way back and we talk about it is because what we find is that when you look back over 15, 20 years of your career, you can actually see a lot of things that happened back then.

08:36 that have carried all the way through and until you actually sit in hindsight or retrospect and look back, you wouldn't have known it. So the age is completely different to any conversation I've had so far. So typically you're in your 20s, you're figuring out things, you're making a few mistakes. And then by the time you get to 30, 30 seems to be a point where everyone is like, right, I'm an adult now. This is time for me to properly focus, but that it feels like...

09:04 things were the years that sort of band had was shifted to slightly later. Yeah. And then obviously, because of the health complications at 30, that was a hard reset. So would you say that the 20 to 30 was if you were going to summarize ages 20 to 30 in terms of career in the small scale theater and stuff, what was how would you summarize that that 10 year bracket?

09:34 It was amazing. Good times, good fun, lots of mistakes, lots of failures, lots of nos, but really good fun. I think there's a lot of pressure put on that 10 years, actually. There's more pressure than you think there is to find yourself and to do this and to do all these spiritual things. You ain't going to do that in your 20s and 30s. Well, this is the thing, right? Because I agree.

10:04 Far too much pressure on people coming out of university to very quickly figure out what they got to do in life. You know, found it, found a company, be famous or make a, made loads of money very quickly. That seems to be like, that's what the bar of success is. that 10 year, 10 years is a long, is a long time. So is it that 10 year period? Was it just that you were, you were enjoying every minute of it and you were, you were living, you were like, why would I stop living?

10:33 Exactly. You got live. And I mean, I learned that when in my 30s, when things went bad, you know, that if things had, if I weren't able to turn those things around, at least I had those years. And I know that sounds a little bit dramatic. And I'm not trying to be dramatic. What I'm trying to say is that you have to live every moment because you never know when it's going to get taken away.

11:03 Now, no one realizes that until something bad happens. There's not one person that I've ever met in life that has ever said that statement without having a realisational moment that drives that statement. For me, it was what we talked about there. Others, it could be kids. It could be a seminal moment in your life. It could be all these wonderful things, but you need to learn that. And you need to learn that in your 20s and 30s. So, yeah, I was going say like,

11:31 It's different for everyone in that you might come out of a long term relationship. You might lose a very, very well paid job and beyond, you know, go from earning lots of money to not very much money, whatever it might be. for you, it was the health complications and what I'm interested in talking about is that most most of the people I've spoken with started got into sales, whether that be by choice or accidentally, but they got into it quite young. And for you, it was actually a lot later.

11:59 which I think is an interesting conversation because I think there's two things to this, Jamie. think first of all, you've got to understand that whilst I was trying to do that journey, I was having to do jobs in the background to supplement not acting at times. All of those were always jobs in sales or they was always a customer facing jobs. You get to understand people. If you then put on top of that, the emotional intelligence that

12:28 All actors should have to a degree, which is understanding people that you're speaking with. If you put that on, it's actually quite a good skill set, force outs. And then it was just up to me over the course of time to sort of ascertain whether I wanted to go down that road or stay in the world that I am, which is really about coaching people and managing people and getting people onto that journey of getting them into a sales role eventually, you know, starting.

12:56 the start of their careers and that's something I enjoy more. Yeah. Okay. So there's a piece together, the, I guess, lead up to that transition. And so roughly 30 to 32, sort of health complications took you two years to get back to full health. And then you went to drama school. So you had that huge life event and you were like, right, if I'm going to do it, I need to put a hundred and 10 % effort in and just do it because I'll regret it. So what

13:25 What is drama school? And why didn't you do it before? Honestly, Jamie, I didn't think that someone coming from where I'm from in the way that I came could get into drama school. Right, OK. All I ever saw on TV, think growing up, Ray Winston was the only person that I really saw on TV that was anything like what I could do. One person, that was it.

13:54 I didn't think that there was a road for me to get there. And I wasn't, no one was able to help me. Maybe that's why I'm in the role now as well, but no one was able to help me with a road, a plan on how to attack that. So I just didn't think it was achievable. So I just started to act. And it wasn't really until I got, just before I got ill, I started to audition for drama schools.

14:24 A long story short, Jamie, I got into one and the person who ran that drama school held that place open until I got better because he just said that the audition that I did was one of the best he'd ever seen and it deserved that they left the place open for me. And that's hard to talk about a little bit because it sounds so arrogant, but that's the truth. That's what happened. I don't think it's arrogance at all.

14:54 We've spoken about this on previous episodes, but confidence is built from a series of successful results stacked. Arrogance is confidence without the successful results to back it up. It's just, it's confidence without any proof. Whereas you had proof of being good. Yeah. Yeah. So, so basically that's what happened. So I always had that carrot when I was ill to get better. I knew that if I did, I had the road.

15:23 So yes, drama school in effect, Jamie, it's where you go to learn how to, I wouldn't say learn how to be an actor. For me, was about not learning to be an actor, it was about getting a decent agent. It was planned, a planned process. I can't get a decent agent, where do I get one? Well, I need to go to drama school. Go to drama school, do the two years, learn what you need to be what you are, get through them two years, you get out of it with a decent agent, which is what happens.

15:52 So you're formalizing what you already knew basically. You had done the 10 years and now you just needed a piece of paper almost to... Know what the end game is and know the steps that you need to get to the end game and then just concentrate on the little steps to get there. Yeah, that's a nice one because I can't remember what film... It was a Jason Statham film, that's all I can remember. And he was protecting a child in it like he seems to be doing in every film he's ever done.

16:21 And he basically told the kids like one obstacle at a time. The only thing you could control is the things right in front of you. Solve that problem. Move on to the next. OK, right. So you were roughly thirty four ish coming out of drama school. was thirty four coming out of drama school. Funny enough, I also met my wife there. So we left almost we left drama school as a team of out of work actors, Jamie. So, you know,

16:51 We had to do something. what we ended up doing was working at a call center in London. And then I realized when I was in this call center that I was pretty good at getting people on the phone, having a conversation with them and getting them to talk to me.

17:10 And then that sort of leaded in to me applying for a job, a company called Tech Target. Now, at the time, what they was running was actually someone eventually who ended up being what I would suggest a mentor for me. His name was Tom Walker. He had started to set up a...

17:33 almost a zero hour contract for actors that would come into this company and generate leads that they would then go on as a business and sell. What he found out was that actors are very good at extracting information from people. So we utilized them. So then I started to work for him. And then after a little while, he kept sort of talking to me about, know, very gently. was never done overtly, Jamie.

18:03 But was always about what's the next step? Now, what do you want out of your life? know, do you want to be an actor? And is that what you want for your life? Or is there more for you? Could you do more?

18:19 I think what I realized is that I think a lot of actors have this. I think as actors, you're always, look, you deal with a lot of nos, Jeremy. If you think you deal with a lot of nos, mate, be an actor. And you're dealing with 10 nos a week. You get 10 auditions saying a week, five to 10, you're not getting a lot of them. And it's a personal note. So when you do a job and you don't do well, they're not criticizing you necessarily, they might criticize in your work.

18:49 When I criticize you as an actor, it's more personal. So it's quite a hard space to live in. So I think Tom sort of saw that in me and he sort of saw that I could do other things, but I didn't believe that I could. A lot of actors are the same. They only believe that they can act and they can't see the woods through the trees and they don't understand what being an actor gives you as a skill set that you can take into multiple businesses and be successful.

19:19 So he started to almost show me that journey, Jamie. And then we just started having the conversation. It was like, you you're actually, you're doing more than others around you that have gone to business school. It's because you're better at listening. It's because you're better at, you know, organizing a conversation. You understand what matters to individuals and you allow them to speak. You should coach that. You touched on

19:48 Just quickly, you touched on him making you aware, more aware of this set of skills that you have off the back of acting that actually are very, very transferable. What were those core set of skills that you didn't realize would be transferable to the, I don't want to say the real world as in acting, as in the real world, but a more traditional career. Work ethics one.

20:15 Like as an example, you can't have a sick day if you're an actor. You've to be on the... You can't. You you can't. You can't. You have to do the show. Yes, now there are some people watching this or listening to this would argue, wish you can. You always got to understudy this. That's at the top end. I'm talking about the middle to lower end. You can't have days off. You've just got to deal with it. You've just got to get through it. That helps. That doesn't make you lazy. That makes you...

20:42 Not always, Jamie, there's a fine line here because you can make yourself feel, but you know what I'm saying? It's that whole thing of, I've got a cold today. can't, you just got to do it. You just got to crack on. that work ethic is definitely one. The biggest transferable skill set that I've seen is emotional intelligence. It's how you can construct a conversation with someone, how you can lead a conversation with someone, how you know the hierarchy of business.

21:09 and how you need to pitch at certain levels to the people that you're talking to. That's what I've always found quite easy. And I know a lot of other people have struggled with, and I think that's to do with my time as an actor. In what way? in why... Genuine question, as in just why would acting give you the emotional intelligence to construct a conversation? Because you understand where a conversation's going.

21:38 Because you're writing a script in your head. Well, no, but also if you've played enough parts and you're not just one of these actors that plays the same part all the time. Like J.F. and Stephen. You said that, mate, don't you? I love his films. Well, yeah, but you know, there's only so many Miggledons that you can battle. There's only so many.

22:06 If you understand nuances in human psyche, which means that you could start to find, know, like if someone does something, like speaking with you, you do something, almost I know, or I think I know whether you agree or you enjoy it. You don't have to say yes or no. It's in your face. That's really interesting. So because if you've played hundreds of different lives or hundreds of different people in different moods, in different situations,

22:35 then you start to piece together this diagram in your head of the potential ways in which a conversation could go. then, yeah, that's interesting. I hadn't thought about it like that. Because when I was thinking about acting, it's just like, oh, well, it's all scripted. It's not real. But then it's obviously scripts and writing is based on people's stories or people's experience. I would argue, the best act in Israel, you don't even know how to act it. If you think about it,

23:03 best film that you've seen that affected you emotively, you forgot they were acting.

23:12 That's I'm about. I'm talking about where you can control a conversation to the point where no one knows that you're doing it. And that's easy to do if you're the CEO of business. That's easy to do if you're a VP of the business. It's not so easy to do the further down the line you go because you don't have that natural hierarchy to be able to do that. That's what I'm talking about. And that's what actors, I think, can do very well. Also, look.

23:39 It's very simple. goes back to actors have got thick skin. So hard work, emotional intelligence, was there any other sort of key skill? Thick skin. You see a lot of people in sales that get really affronted by the word no. They can't deal with it in varying ways. It's never been a problem for me. All no is.

24:09 The option to ask you another question, isn't it?

24:13 Interesting. Okay, so you were 32, you went into job and acting, did fairly well. Like you said, you touched on a couple of the more familiar shows or gigs, acting gigs that you would done. How many years did you continue along that path before you reached the point of realization, the next realization point where you were like, yeah, I don't think this is

24:40 what I want to do or this isn't sustainable for me.

24:45 It was quite quick, actually, Jamie. It was about two years. So by mid 30s, just say mid 30s. It was two years. was two years of working at Tech Target. That's when it hit me. I realized that there was other roads that I could go down. And at that time, personally, me and my now wife were in a different space. We were talking about different things.

25:13 And I think we both came to the realization that we had to, you know, we wanted to build a family. We wanted to do different things. And I always said that unless you're at the top of the tree as an actor, do I really want to be going away for three to four months, traveling the UK in little venues away from kids if at that point, if I had them? No. So it was quite an easy choice, actually, when

25:42 the actual when the Axe fell. And I was very lucky. had someone that was able to guide me in the early. It wasn't just guidance. Actually, it was guidance. was. Supporting my mentality to understand that I could make the jump. Did he have a background like it sounds like a brilliant business idea? Right. Yeah, because it's a I mean, it's a fantastic business idea knowing that I was an actor and I needed I needed the

26:12 job. So why don't I go and create a business that sources candidates from that field? I'd imagine he did very, well with that.

26:23 Yeah, think Sir Tom now lives in Australia. He still works for Tech Target, still plays his music. Yeah, look, Jamie, it's that point in life where I had to do something else. I had to realise that, you know, my life is changing and I had to support the people that I loved in my life and acting wasn't going to do that. It wasn't just a financial decision though, Jamie.

26:51 As I said, was it was a decision about for me to be achieving what I needed to. I'd have to be away so much of the year. It just didn't make sense to me. And you would almost lose the choice because you would have to say yes to the gigs for the money. Yeah. Yeah. OK, right. Tech target. So you are SDR. Thank you. But yes, I started as an SDR, basically calling into their database to.

27:20 generate leads for them across their portfolio. And then I moved into a more management role at Tech Target because long story short, I was achieving more than the others around me. So I started to manage that team. Then the company decided that I could be, I suppose, beneficial in a client facing role.

27:48 I ended up moving into a customer success role. So basically what I would do is I would go with the sales team and talk about how to utilize products, how to be successful with products. And then in effect, Jamie upselling and cross selling the products that maybe that they didn't have and stuff like that. So then that's where I went. then ever so slowly, I sort of did a bit more there.

28:13 a bit more there. I had some really great people at Tech Target. It was a great company for me personally to work for. What were you selling when you first joined? Basically, what Tech Target do is they first of all, have their own database of websites and then they track everything on those websites. So it gives them an idea of

28:37 of what's happening on their databases. And they have, think at the time I worked with them, was over 140 websites globally. So they've got a pretty good idea what's happening in the IT space and what's driving intent. So it was up to me to sell them flags. Well, not sell, sorry, let me rephrase that. It was up to me to show clients how to use their flagships all at the time, which was called Priority Engine, which is an intent platform in effect, generally.

29:06 So I used to show clients how to do that. I used to jump on the phones with clients, SDR team, show them how to actually do the job or how to utilize the information that they're getting from tech target, should I say? So yeah, so that's what happened. Then eventually I went into a few companies and then they wanted to try to, I suppose, nab me to work internally for them.

29:34 rather than coming from tech target as a consultant. Okay. So talk to me a little bit about, um, going into sales as an SDR in mid in your mid thirties. Cause again, I, this is the, the, of the interesting parts of me is that I've not spoken with anyone. I haven't come across anyone else who goes into sales, um, in terms of as a junior sales rep at that age. So was

30:04 How was it? It was what it was. I didn't think about it, Jeremy. It didn't. It's what it was.

30:14 It didn't, it didn't. It was just another one of those obstacles. It was another little step.

30:23 And listen, the one thing acting or life has taught me is when you're fearful of something, when something's not the norm, jump into it. You'll probably learn something.

30:36 That's a nice tip bit, I think they call it, don't they? Yeah, just jump into it. Just go with it. We waste a lot of time in life thinking about stuff. So you described your journey there. How long were you in SDR before progressing to a team lead? And then how long were you team lead before progressing into CSM? Well, I'd sort of done it quite a lot. I'd sort of been in SDR whilst being an actor. you know, I'd started that journey anyway.

31:05 I think once I'd actually decided to make the move, it was quite quick before I was managing people. It wasn't that long, I think. I think within two years, I was managing. So in those two years then, I take it that was two years of full time rather than doing it on the back of, right? So in the two years of doing it full time, what did you learn in those first two years then?

31:35 I think what I learned, the biggest lesson that I learned was when I moved from acting to business, I had this thing in my mind that everything that I'd learned up to that point wasn't really relevant. So the biggest thing I learned in the first two years is all the things that were relevant, the things that were going to help me progress in a completely different environment. It was...

32:03 That's the first thing that I really learned. I learned that obviously in business, I think honesty is really key. I think we live in a different world now. think that information is so accessible. Being honest with people or having a level of honesty even if they don't want to hear the words that coming out your mouth.

32:30 I think that it gives you a foot up in their mind because I think if they know that you're being honest, they know that they trust you. And with trust comes conversation and with conversation ultimately comes the next stages. I think the biggest thing I learned in those two years is I didn't want to be a salesperson. As in frontline sales? Yeah, I didn't want to close deals. Interesting. I didn't like it. I could do it, but I didn't like it. didn't pandering to people.

33:01 I didn't like that. I didn't like that whole thing of you're buying off me, so now I've got to be really nice to you. I didn't like it, Jamie. It just didn't resonate with me. want you to buy from you had the skills to act your way out of it, right? Yeah, I did. But I think the point is that I've done that for so many years. I'm sort of at a point in my life now where I don't want to do that. You just want to be yourself, not a character. I just want to be me.

33:30 Um, and a part of me that everyone always said to me growing up was you're honest. You don't muck around. You tell people what you think. And I think that's a real powerful thing in this world. Yeah, there's, we're doing another series, um, called the sale stoic with Jack and Zach. And there's a lot in stoicism about, um, being honest. And the, at every point you have a, you ask yourself the question of, am I going to, like, there's a

33:59 real world example, right? I bought myself a merino wool uh quarter zip and I completely forgot about it when I put it in the wash and I washed it at 40 degrees and it's it's it's shrank a little bit. It's got wrinkles all over it. I've ironed it it looks absolutely fine. Tried it on and it is tight on me and I'm like, right. I could chuck this on vintage. Get twenty, thirty quid for it because it's a a semi reputable brand that people buy from.

34:27 And I literally stood there and in my head, I just said to me like, are you honest or are you are you not? Are you going to pay it forward or are you going to put bad karma out there and it come back to bite you or are you not? Are you going to suck up the fact that you paid 50 quid for it and you're going to chuck it in the bin because it was your mistake or are you going to piss someone off when they get it delivered and just get 20, 30 quid and I'll put it in the bin and it's it's yeah, it's little things like that and perhaps if I hadn't.

34:55 sat in a room with Jack and Zack recording for days on end. I wouldn't, I would have done it. don't know. Jamie, we're, look, look, we're talking about an ideal world. We don't live in an ideal world. There's people that need to make decisions to get through the day that you and I maybe wouldn't make. That's because of the situation that they're in.

35:20 you and I are probably lucky, you know, we've got a fairly good life, we've got fairly good means. We could be everyone always wants more. But what we're talking about is honesty, a certain level in life people, we all make bad decisions. And we will always continue to make mad decisions because humans are fallible. But I do think that, you know,

35:51 We, we, we, we, we should feel lucky. We, we should have an element of humility and, and just say, you know, okay, we, may have worked hard to get here. We may have made some clever choices. We probably got away with a few bad choices. Um, you know, at some point you just got to sit back, smell the roses and just say, you know, everything's okay. Okay. Let's talk about the, um, decided the front line sales.

36:20 the hard sell, whatever you want to call it, wasn't for you. So that was the moving into the CSM role. take it that was the one of the rationales for wanting to move into that area. Yeah, sort of. I'm not sure if I knew that at the time though, Jamie, but I think I think probably you're right. I personally have I enjoy working with people and helping them achieve and then seeing them go on to do good things. It's not.

36:50 The only reason I ask is because I probably had a bad experience in that I was sitting in a room, a previous company that I worked at, which was a startup, there was a sales team, a CSM team, and the VP of sales at the time said that, oh no, I don't think you'll cut in sales, but yeah, maybe in CS, I can see you in CS. So I had this incorrect view of things.

37:20 that those that in CS were basically people who didn't quite make it in sales. Whereas it's the way in which you describe it, which I think is far more accurate is that it's you prefer helping up skilling, you know, building up. It's a different skill set. you send the salesperson in to be a CSM, they're to try and sell too quickly. I reckon if you send a hundred salespeople in,

37:50 to do that job, they, they, they, they, they, they, as soon as they smell the kill, they're going to go for it. Yeah. I think it, I think it works both ways. I think, uh, the best sales reps probably don't make the best CSMs and the best CSMs wouldn't make the best sales reps. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I was always very good at a CSM in dropping little nuggets in and just letting the person use their God given intelligence. Cause I think that's what you do in life. Just drop things in.

38:19 Look, understand the buying cycle is a key thing. think, and obviously I now work at the start of the buying cycle more than the end of the buying cycle. when you work with people like this, if you try to go in too soon, too quickly without giving them the right story as to why they should, it's just going to end up in no business.

38:47 And how long did you do that CSM role? Only for about a year or so, mate. then, but basically what happened was, so at that time personally, my wife and I moved from the UK back to Ireland. So there was a whole load of stuff that was going on. It just so happened that I went to do a session with Tech Target, another company called Bring Central.

39:16 At that point, the head of the UK there was Monica Visconti Patel. And again, this is someone else I think that I would look at. I think you have to understand that all of these journeys, you get signposts along the way. You get people along the way that really, I suppose, give you something that takes you to the next level. She would have been one as well. So she basically sort of said to me,

39:45 look, I want you to come and work for me. I want you to own your own team and I want you to see the benefits of that. So I ended up moving to Ring Central and then managing my own SDR team. And then I did that for a couple of years. And then 8x8 came knocking on the door and they were like, the CMO, when I joined Ring Central, basically moved to 8x8.

40:14 And then he sort of always kept in contact. Then I saw that there was an open role here and yeah, the rest is history. the BDR manager role at RingCenter then, you, because you had moved into CSM because you were sort of done with the frontline sales and then you...

40:42 moved back into a more sales focused role. is it that you, like you said, the signpost moniker, wasn't it? Was it because you believed and you felt something, some sort of connection with that person as you like, you know, I'm going to the role perhaps is a move back in the direction that I moved away from a year ago, but I feel like that's going to be the best role for me to develop. Well, I,

41:12 think if you think, so a part of what I was doing as a CSM was going in with working with BDR teams anyway, Jamie. So I was sort of doing it. I was teaching them how to go to market, how to work on a phone, how to understand what personas you're talking to and what matters to them. I was doing that anyway. And I think she saw that and thought I would be a good fit. So if I...

41:41 I learned a lot from being a CSM that I actually think has made me a good BDR manager. Well, actually it's interesting because it's not a traditional SaaS CSM in the way that I would know it in the SaaS CSM, would go, you would be onboarding, upskilling, doing QBRs on one tool and that one tool might be, I don't know, FinTech.

42:06 that helps you with receipt management and stuff. Whereas you were more of a consultative CSM going in to show people, if I got it right, how to apply technology. to use the tool. How to use the tool that they were buying off us in effect. But in terms of more like go to market stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Which, yeah. So it's a bit of a hybrid role. I always look at that time as me working out where I fit it.

42:38 Where you fit in the sales. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's really what that time was about for me. Was it going to be frontline? Was it going to be more customer success focused or was it going to be at the start of buying journey? And that's where I found my home. Because again, I think there's a lot of transferable skill sets, Jamie. think that, you know, a cold call is the same as an audition.

43:09 I train my teams now with a lot of acting techniques. I bet when they first try some of those techniques, it can be a bit awkward. it's very awkward. I even have one SDR sound, I'm not doing that. But then two months later when they were in the same position and others around them were getting better, they changed their mind. And are they one of the best now?

43:37 They're doing all right now. Yeah. Doing all right. They're doing all right. What's quite interesting actually, I think those that listening or watching should take note of is the fact that you just because you make a decision to move into a CSM role, if we're talking sales specifically, doesn't mean you can't go back. don't don't you're not

43:59 You know, don't it's not like a young player picking an international team. And once you picked it, you can't go back. It's you can move between CSM and sales. It's not right. I'm to play for Wales. I can't play for England now. That's exactly it. And I did this in my thirties. So there's no excuse for you not to do it in your twenties.

44:20 Well, there's got to be some sort of saying or cliche thing about trying things like try a bit of everything before you decide what you like, don't like. It's perseverance. It's it's it's you know, you you but you're right. In effect, you've got to try all flavors before you know what you like the taste of. Some people don't have that luxury Jamie.

44:48 Some people don't. It's going back to what we were talking about earlier on. Some people just have to get a job and they have to work because they've got to provide. And I always keep that in the back of my mind as well. I feel blessed that I've been able to construct that for myself. You know, I think that's a really key thing. I think you always have to stay grounded and a little bit humble. OK, then, right.

45:16 the BDR manager role at RingCentral. How long did you do that for? How many years? years. Two years. Two years. you had two sort of, I like to call like the year is a cycle of that job and you did two cycles. I've always said you don't truly know a job and you can't truly do a job until you've done two cycles of it. Because the first year is like, it's the first time you've done each of the things involved in that cycle. Then the second year you've got to do it over again.

45:43 with the expectation of growth or improvement or optimisation. So two years, I think is the minimum in which you can truly say, I knew I did that job. I knew it. Yeah. So two years. What did you, what did you learn? What good and bad? What did you learn about the BDR manager role or about yourself?

46:06 I learnt that progression is key, not just for me, but for the people you manage. If you can't offer that realistically, I think that's a bad thing. I think that's the biggest thing I learnt there. So it's one of the most valuable currencies is career progression. 100 % it is. And it's not just the progression, it's the conversation around it. When it happens, how it happens.

46:35 And then the trust in that I will implement what I'm talking about or help to implement what I'm talking about. It's a contract, isn't it, Jamie? You know, if you do your 50%, then I need to do my 50%. So I think that that was one thing that I learned without a clear view into progression. None of it matters. It's just being a BDR or an SDR. And that is very few people that get into an SDR role to stay as an SDR.

47:05 Some do and have got really good careers and there's nothing wrong in that, Jamie. I'm just saying that 80 to 90 percent, if not more, of the people that get into an SDR role, they want to progress. So I think that's the real key. What I learned was progression. I think also what I learned there is how to manage difficult situations and personalities.

47:30 Describe to me an example, difficult situation or personality.

47:37 Okay. You know, when you have a situation where you don't naturally gel with a manager that you work with, how do you get around that? What is the best way to get around that? Your manager or a peer manager? okay. Yeah. So basically, long story short, Monica left after six months when I was there. A little bit around that. you know, that was difficult for me to navigate, you know.

48:05 going into a company, looking at someone that you really want to work alongside or underneath, and then that gets taken away. How do you navigate that? So I think what I learned there was how to navigate difficult personalities, how to maybe just to paint, I suppose, a different picture or a fairer picture, maybe how I can limit my

48:34 side of my personality that can be difficult. It sounds like the acting would have come in very, very useful at this moment in It did. It did. It did. It did. It did. did. Yeah. So it was a difficult time. Not always, but it became quite difficult and I had to navigate that. So what I learned at RingCentral was not about making me necessarily a better manager, but it was how to navigate things above your head.

49:04 So helping, I suppose, me then take that journey in my career. In some ways, it wasn't a bad thing if you think about it, Jamie, because I was very focused on what I was doing or looking at the people that I was trying to help raise. think what I learned at RingCentral was how to...

49:23 help myself rise up the ladder. And that's a I've realized that that is a a fairly rare skill. Like there's a lot there's a lot of people people I've worked with friends even family where they they've they've commented on the career progression as if it if it was a political or a tactical. You're obviously good at playing the politics or you're good at

49:52 Oh, you know, you've just got you've just got that head on you. But it's it's it's not. Yeah. It's it's like you said, it's understanding the the the steps. It's understanding the boxes you have to take. I actually I get a fronted sometimes when people say that to me, because I think if anyone talked to you, Jeremy, they'd say that Andy's not good at dealing with politics. Sandy just says what I like.

50:21 so I'm talking about myself and the further person. What I tend to do is just say what I think.

50:30 Well, that's the perception, Jamie.

50:35 Either way it works. It feels like this sort of inception moment where I don't know if I'm having a conversation with Andy or Andy. No, you understand what I'm saying. Yeah. If people think that you're being honest and or and I am actually always normally being honest. But people just think that if I think it, I say that that's not entirely true. But I think that's a good thing. I think that.

51:04 I don't think that's a bad thing for people to think about you. Good at poker then I'd imagine. Terrible at poker. Got no patience. Oh, okay. Right, okay, patience. I was trouble. trouble. at poker for the first hour. And then I'm bored. I just get bored and I'm like, I can't, I can't, I can't. So take my money. Yeah, I lack the patience for that sort of thing. Yeah. Okay then. So you were there two years. Why did you decide to leave?

51:35 Better opportunity. Better opportunity. You looked for one or one presented itself to you? A little bit of both. I'd say 80-20. 20 % I was looking and then one came to me. Yeah, so basically I ended up having a conversation with my old CMO and

52:04 You know, they always appreciated what I did and how I work with people. So, yes, so that's how I ended up at 8x8. Also, it was moving into a director role, which was important to me. And it was really important to me. I was at Ring Central for two years with some good people and it was always a struggle to get that promotion. And I believe that I would have more ownership in this company helping people to achieve more.

52:33 And that's transpired itself in the last few years, three years since I've been here. I've got multiple people promoted. So, you know, I think that it was 100 % the right choice for me. And I guess in a director role, moving from BDR manager into a director role, more ownership and control over the way in which you managed a broader team.

53:00 In terms of structures, career progression paths, whatever you want to call them. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's very, you know, I always say to the team in play, you know, it's almost, it is a contract. You need to, if you perform for me for X period of time, it's up, I have to get you, I have to get you, have to, I have to try to carve out a career path for you or help you get you on the ladder, get you into, get you into the first stage of the sales, whatever it may be.

53:29 That's on me to do, Jamie, because, um, you know, and I think there's a cycle at any organization. think once you start on that journey over the course of five, 10 years, before you know where you are, you've got half of a sales team that you've been a part of helping to grow. Yeah. It's a really, really, um, yeah, you're the first person who's spoken about, um, that contract of, as in it being your responsibility to, uh,

53:59 Provides offer support, create career progression. And I sort of said a similar thing to my team. Like at the end of the day, I want to do well. What's the easiest way for me to do well is for the team to do well. Because if the team are doing well, then that means the broader team, the team that I'm responsible for really good reputation, know, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah, that's really nice. Actually, that I love the way you spoke about it in the

54:29 contractual sense, like you are under contract to provide that for them. I think so. I think so. But you've got to provide your 50%. And you know, that's key for me. That is a contract. I will help you, but you have to help yourself. It's not helping me, it's helping yourself. So I'm really, really keen how I word that, Jamie, because you are right. Ultimately, if my team do well, I do well.

54:58 We live in a commission-based world. But the way I always try to frame it to them, it's not about me. It's about you. If you don't do what you need to do, you're only hurting yourself. Yeah, I may take a hit in a quarter. I may take a hit in a couple of quarters. But ultimately, you're only hurting yourself. So that contracts only with you. I just get involved when you've done the 50 % that you need to do for you. Yeah, I think that's an important clarification there of the

55:28 It's a con. It's as much as you're involved in the contract, they have a contract with themselves as well. They owe it to themselves. Yes, yes, yeah. And I think you have to be open that as we spoke about going back, I manage a lot of people in sometimes their teens, but definitely between 20 to 30, we all make mistakes. It's fine. I had this conversation with one of my SDRs last week. I had a bad couple of days.

55:58 But I had to paint the picture to them that since I've been managing them in the main, they've had great days. So why am I going to look at those two bad days and not think of all the 60 to 90 to 120 good days? you know what I've you've well, the question is whether you've enjoyed the same experience. So I've as I've gone into a management role with a larger team, I've

56:25 recognized behaviors or things that I did 15 years ago, that I know that I did wrong, I made a mistake by learn from it. And I see someone doing that. And I'm like, I'm like, you know what, I'm glad, I'm glad they're gonna learn from this in the same way that I did when I'm saying, right, you've done it now, it's happened. Do you understand why you do it the other way? And I really like looking back looking back and recalling

56:53 the exact same thing that I did wrong, the way in which I, so I know example is I used to choose the work that I enjoyed the most. I buy by prioritize the work that I enjoyed the most. Because it's the thing that I was more most creatively connected with. I've learned very, very quickly that on the whole, the more important things are typically the things that you don't enjoy. And I learned the hard way of you know, leading up to a deadline one or two days before.

57:21 the more important bits hadn't been done, but it looks lovely. Oh, it polished. was lovely. Good colors, know, content. It was very much form over function. Um, but, but I learned the hard way and I've noticed that with, especially with creatives, um, they can get the creative tunnel vision rather than thinking, thinking about it. But yeah, I really enjoy that. I, it depends on the person. Oh, as in, as in whether you want them to succeed. Also.

57:51 If some people can't deal with failure, they can't deal like they just can't, they're not at the right place, they're not in the right space. People like that, I may tend to give them a little bit more of a little bit more of help just to say, you're sure you want to do it this way? Okay. Some people need to fail. It's their personality, they need to fail.

58:21 It's a whole trick of when you, at drama school, it's ultimately what they do is they break you down to build you up.

58:30 And the thought process behind that is that if you're a blank canvas, you can then play multiple different characters. Yeah, you see that quite a lot where they want you to get to the point of being embarrassed so you realize there's nothing wrong with being embarrassed. The feeling is absolutely fine. You're not going to die. No, it's It's not a big deal. Actually, strength comes from that. So, you know, it depends on the person. I don't manage with one.

58:57 I've never managed people with one brush. People need different things from a manager. You need to understand that's your job to understand what the only way you get there is via conversation and trust. So you've been you've been in role for three years, is it now? Yeah, yeah, just over three years. Three months. Yeah, just on three years. And as much as you are, of course, still learning what have been the learning highlights for you in those three years?

59:27 I'm really lucky. I've worked with some really good people in this company, like really clever people that are really giving with their time and, you know,

59:41 that have helped craft me to where I am, even as a director. So I think the first thing I realized on day one is you don't know everything you think you know. And that's not a bad realization to know. That keeps you honest and that keeps you probably grounded where you need to be. I think the second thing I learned is how agile you need to be in this space.

01:00:06 You really need to understand you've got to be agile. mean, everything happens above you that feeds into you. But as an example, one of our competitors has an outage last, say, next week. You've then got to be quick. You've got to be agile. You've got to be able to attack that. And that rings true with a lot of campaigns. So I think that those are the key things I've learned. I've learned that if you don't

01:00:36 put the right kind of structure and process in front of the team, they're never going to achieve what they need to achieve. So it's almost on you to be able to do that. I've learned that the outcome's more important than how you get there. You can focus far too much on activity and not actually what happens at the end.

01:01:02 And I've also learned that if you treat people like adults, they tend to act like adults. And what I mean by that, Jamie, is when I first moved to an outcome-based model rather than saying, need to make this amount of calls a day, you need to do this a day, you need to do this a day, it was a bit of a weird world for me. You can imagine I'm of a certain age where that's what you're done. That's how you run things. You need to do this every day. Why? Because we know if you make this amount of call, blah, blah, blah.

01:01:32 But what I've realized is that the good SDRs out there know the activity they need to do to get to the number they need to get to. That's enough. Yeah, it's the same in marketing. Like if one approach gives you 10 demos of a thousand leads and the second approach gives you 10 demos of a hundred leads, do you really need a thousand leads? Yes. If the outcome is still, yeah, the desired outcome.

01:02:00 We had a previous company, SDR, very good friend of mine actually, I saw him a couple of days ago. And he would book, honestly, some like 10 or 15 demos a week, some weeks, like really good weeks. But he knew there was a mentality of you've got to do 50 to 60 calls a day. He never hit 50 or 60 calls. Very rarely hit sort of 30, 35 calls. But he was still booking.

01:02:29 more demos than the rest of the team. I've got an SDR now. Superb at what he does. Absolutely superb. And he doesn't necessarily have the levels of activity, but you know when he makes a call, it's worth it. He's like a sniper. doesn't just... He knows where he's going in. He knows the conversation that he needs to have. And he knows who he needs to have it with as well. That's just as important as...

01:02:58 exposed for want of a better word, spray and a prime. Yeah, well, very, very familiar with the spray and pray. Now you spoke about structure and then also spoke about it doesn't really matter how you get there. So I absolutely adore structure. Anyone who knows me will tell you that's the probably autistic, undiagnosed autistic side of my brain, whereas I absolutely love a plan, a structure.

01:03:28 A standard operating procedure with SOPs. call them like we have SOPs for every type of content we produce for playbooks. It's 43 subtasks. We'll give you a playbook once you run through all of them, rinse and repeat. I love structure. Um, but then structure can be contradictory to it. Doesn't matter how you get there. It's the outcome that matters. So how do you temper the, there is a structure and the structure works and the structure gives you safety. gives you.

01:03:57 It reduces stress anxiety because the structures there and it's there to help you on the Contradictory side the other side of the thing. It's like as long as you get the outcome. I don't care about this You don't care about the structure. So the structures understanding how you get to the outcome So as an example Jamie If you are just starting in an SDR role probably you need to have a high level of activity

01:04:26 Because you need to build up your pipeline. You need to get on the phones. You need to be having conversations. So you need to be doing different things. It's up to me as a manager to explain that to you and show you the structure of what you need to do in the moment and then back away and let you fly. So I'm still running structure. I'm just saying to them, understand, manage your own business in effect. Manage your own business.

01:04:56 Understand what you need to do to get to where you need to get. That's what I'm trying to get across to them. Understand it's that ownership. If I think back across all of the jobs that I've had, when I'm in the best place, when I've got, when I believe I've got the best focus, it's down to having the structure to know that I know what I'm doing. But being given

01:05:26 the scope to be able to make it my own. So, uh, temp in bowling or like bowling, it's the guard, the rails at the side, but what shot you play doesn't really matter. Yeah. The structure, the rails are there just to help and guide you and send you in the right direction. But what method of transport you pick or what shot you choose to play is a bit of flex. You can score multiple goals.

01:05:55 Say football, you can score goals in a multitude of ways. If you look at patterns of football that most teams play at a certain point, they're the same. But then you need to have that individualism around that to find your way. That's what I'm talking about. You don't want to make a team of robots in South, it's the worst thing you want. We want people to be free. We want people to be able to tell stories and be able to, you know,

01:06:24 really have people that they're speaking to understand that they're the thought leader. You've got to be really careful how you structure that. Because if they're just all saying the same thing, everything's the same. It's a good, I think that's a good nugget to finish on there. As we jump into the sort of round up quick fire questions. So off the back of looking back at the career journey, what would be your top three tips for

01:06:54 career progression, whether that's top three tips you would give someone looking to make the same looking to have the same sort of progression or what would you what top three tips would you give someone in your team now in order for them to progress? Know when to work smart, not harder.

01:07:16 be resilient. But the biggest thing is

01:07:24 You will.

01:07:27 Excuse my language. You will fuck up. It's okay. Learn from it.

01:07:35 Don't fear it. I think Stephen Barlett said, there's a in his probably didn't word it as I just did, Johnny. yeah, 33 laws of business and life. was he said something like you you should almost look for failure because when you when you fail, you learn how not to do something. Yeah. But you might actually learn how to do something better.

01:08:03 Yeah, I think another one is fail, fail, fail often, but fail fast. Like, don't be afraid of failing, but don't do it for two years and then realize you failed. Just found fast, learn fast. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's the yeah. Just like, right. That's not working. Move on. Not now. I'm going to try it. I'm to try it. I'm going to keep going. Um, so that, okay, nice. Uh, any regrets to date career wise? Uh, a little bit. I wish I'd have done it a little bit.

01:08:32 quicker. I know that we've had this conversation about where we learn yada, yada, yada, but I think I would have liked to have maybe made that transition five to 10 years earlier. I think I would just be in a better place now for me personally. terms of you would be further along in your career or just you would be more settled and content in the place you were.

01:08:59 I think so. think it's mixture of all of that, Jamie. So I would like to have pulled the trigger, if you will, slightly earlier. Regrets, I don't tend to regret a lot. No, it's very, very similar to the trigger thing. So my mind tends to be, I wish I started putting an effort in sooner. Because in my 20s, I got distracted by a lot of things. I got distracted by...

01:09:26 social media thinking I could be a friggin influencer or whatever and thinking too much about the gym or stuff like that. And I wasn't putting effort in at work. Work for me was just clocking clock out, earn money, and then piss about outside of work. then I, it was, I can't remember. It was the, when I first moved into SAS, I said, right, this is the line in the sand. I am going to put 150 % effort in every single day.

01:09:53 and I want to finish the day feeling tired. And since then, finally enough, that's when the career progression started to happen. You've got to invest. You've got to invest in yourself. You're not investing in your career, you're investing in yourself. Makes me think, so Warren Buffett, his best advice is start investing, no matter how small, as quickly as you can, to give you as long as you possibly can to compound the interest.

01:10:22 So if you're in your early twenties, if you're watching or listening now and you're in your early twenties and you are, and you know, honestly, you're not putting the effort in, just start doing it now. Cause when you're in your mid thirties, like I am, or in your nineties, like Andy, you will have realized the compounding interest is built up and you will be thankful that you started sooner. Yeah. And you'll, you'll, you'll be better for it. You'll be.

01:10:49 you'll be more agile in your later career, you'll be better for it. And we're not sad to not enjoy your life. We're just really talking about where you put that extra bit of effort in.

01:11:05 What's next for you then on your current, well, in the career that you are building, would like to build, what's next? Well, I want to move into, so I manage multiple teams. I have commercial team, I've got an enterprise public sector team in the UK, but I also manage our install-based team globally. And that's a world that I quite like. And I think weirdly, Jamie, that's,

01:11:36 almost bringing back the customer experience role. How can we work with our customer base? How can we make sure that everything's going okay? can we keep them abreast of what new products that we've got and what would be right for them? That's interesting. That's sort of weirdly bringing everything together over multiple years now. So I think that's what's next for me.

01:12:05 Ultimately, Jamie, what's next for me is that I have to go and pick up my kids from school later on. That's it. That's what's next for me. That's why I do everything I do is for them. Everything. I'm very lucky. I've got two beautiful children. You know, so that's it. That's what's next for me. Making sure that I build something for them and give them a jump in.

01:12:33 a point to jump from that I never had. No, that's that that's nice. The point to jump from that I never had is or, you know, they they're starting from slightly further up the ladder than a little bit. Yeah. And I think I know the answer to this question based on our discussion on dealing with the thing that's right in front of you rather than like be be present. What's the end? Do you have an end goal? Like is there a

01:13:02 top of a mountain you're trying to get to?

01:13:08 No, no.

01:13:12 Yes, there is personal.

01:13:17 What I've realized is that if you take care of that, the other thing will happen. Because I know that I've got the right attributes to be successful.

01:13:27 I know I've got key components to the way I work that mean that I can be successful. You know, I work hard. I like to think that I can be good with people. You know, I want to see people around me do well, which tends to mean that ultimately you will do well. So no, my goals are all personal and they fall into what I do in business. They are so, so closely related.

01:13:56 At some of the lowest points of motivation, personally, it's when work really I struggle at work and when I'm not creatively challenged or motivated at work, I tend to start getting lazy in my personal life. So they're more closely linked than some people might say. Yeah. And that now we all work from home. They're even more closely linked. The lines are really, really blurred more than they've ever been blurred. So, I make personal goals.

01:14:26 that naturally feed into my work.

01:14:33 Yeah, I make sure that all the people around me are successful or I try to make everyone around me successful. If you focus on their success, you will have natural success. And that is a very, very nice point to finish on. So thank you for joining me for it. It was as interesting a conversation as I thought it would be. And I'm glad Sam introduced us. So just want to say thank you for everyone who's watched or listened. I think the first season actually went live.

01:15:03 weeks ago and this is recording for season two and we can already see a lot of people actually listening to the full sort of 85 90 minute episodes which is always always lovely so for those that are still listening an hour and 16 minutes into the conversation we thank you and we hope to see you in another episode thank you very much and and you know if look if anyone ever needs help with anything just reach out to someone take a risk eventually someone will help

01:15:32 And if that's Andy, his details will be in the air. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I'm always, I'm always, if I can help people, I will try to. You can't always help people, but you know, I would always be open to any conversation. So please reach out. And we will catch you in the next episode. Nice one.