The Tech Leader's Toolbox
The Tech Leader's Toolbox
Empowering Through Tech and Values With Chad Burmeister
CEO Chad Burmeister of Scalex.ai talks with Paul Simkins about how he uses cutting edge technology to empower sales teams and how it's true power comes through the values leaders place in front. Chad professes to be a Believer, Husband, Father of two teenagers, and life-long rebel and rule-breaker.
Plus, Chad shares a recipe for a special Salmon Sauce he learned from a historic restaurant in Denver. You can find the recipe, and many more, on the Smoke and Ash Facebook group or by emailing TLToolbox@BoldlyLead.com.
You can reach Chad at chad@scalex.ai. Be sure to listen near the end of the episode for a special offer from Chad you can take advantage of.
You can join the discussions at our Podcast Facebook group here.
You can learn more about Paul Simkins on his website.
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The tech leaders toolbox podcast is brought to you by Paul Simkins and the Boldly Lead program, focusing on helping tech leaders like you, end the frustration of low performing teams, and losing excellent employees, so they can increase productivity by 50%. Go home on time, and sleep better at nights.
Paul Simkins:Hello, and welcome to The Tech Leader's Toolbox. I'm Paul Simkins. And we're here because how you lead today determines how your team succeeds tomorrow, and you are a leader. And you need to remember that as a leader, it is important that you focus on how you grow as a leader each and every day. That's how we have a positive impact. That's how we make a difference with our teams. I always like to bring out occasionally on the show, I like to bring in somebody who lives in the trenches. And what I especially like about our guests today is how they demonstrate how they have focused on taking care of their people, and how they have focused on integrating their values into what they do. I think you're going to like what you hear from our guests today. So are you ready? Let's go. So our guest today is no labels himself as a believer, a husband, a father of two teenagers, and a lifelong rental rebel and rule breaker. He empowers sales professionals to become the best version of themselves by focusing on their mindset, their skill set, and their toolset. Please help me welcome today. Chad burmeister. Chad, welcome to the show.
Chad:Great to be here. I think the barking dogs is something that I cause when I do these conversations. So when you got
Paul Simkins:a Coon dog, that's what happens. That's right. That's what she does
Chad:Welcome to work from home living. Exactly.
Paul Simkins:So tell us a little bit. So your company is called scale x, right?
Chad:scale x, I like to add the.ai because, okay, part of the secret sauce is the powered by artificial intelligence piece of it.
Paul Simkins:Tell us a little bit about what they do about what you do at scale x.ai.
Chad:So I was frustrated running teams of 100 or more salespeople, because a lot of the work that they ended up doing was kind of monotonous, boring, and they weren't very good at it. So I created a technology platform that pulls in data, helps them with digital outreach through email, social paid ads, and a dialing automation platform all built into a service so that salespeople can focus on what they do best, which is selling and they can leave the prospecting to us. So that's that's what we built over the last three years. And we've now deployed it to over 200 customers around the world. Wow.
Paul Simkins:So I I'm a big if you've ever listened to any of my episodes, I'm a big lover of hearing people's stories. I love to hear journeys. So tell us yours. How'd you get here?
Chad:Yeah, I was a competitor since I was a kid. And so the rope climb in elementary school, to beating my brother at anything. And not anything he actually ended up taking in the snowboard competitions. But uh, I'm a better skier. So I just always was a competitor. And so I from a very young age, I always thought okay, what what can I compete in and actually make money at. So in swim team and lacrosse, you know, I couldn't really go make a bunch of money being a swimmer. Although, Amy Van Dyken was in my sixth grade class, and she was a five time gold medalist, so I guess you can make money in swimming if you're really really good at it. But that's that's how I started was being a competitor, I learned to sell also at a young age because I would be that kid who sold suckers on the bus to other kids for a quarter each. And you know, I bought them at a gross, where they're probably a nickel each so pretty good margins at a very young age. From there, you know, you go through high school, went to college, marketing degree, BS in marketing, and then I then I got my first sales job and failed at it miserably. And that was where the spark came to focus on becoming the best salesperson that I could potentially become. And so, I've had a handful of great opportunities in my life with a lot of really, really good mentors. And now I've been running scale x for three years. And now I can see Okay, my next thing is how to help other entrepreneurs become entrepreneurs. So, let's get this one on. You know, this one's off the launch pad. Now it's time to help other people be Be honest. printers as well.
Paul Simkins:Great. So with that you've to like me, you you've had a lot of roles over the years, you've had some opportunities where you've led teams managed sales forces. Tell me a little bit about some of the challenges you face with that.
Chad:I'm early in my career, I felt like I should look for people who were like me. And then over a three to five year period, I discovered that's impossible, because nobody's just like you, right, we all have our individual fingerprint. And so it turns out that a diverse workforce, like a team of Mighty Ducks, is how I always look at it ends up complementing themselves at a really, really good level. Now, that said, I've also learned about a tool called objective Management Group, that helps me map the right individual to the right role in the organization, and gives me the percent odds that someone's going to be successful or not. So before I interview, anybody these days, I send them the link to the OMG, they fill it out. And then I get to see red, yellow, or green. So there's one person that I'm talking to right now that I traditionally would have said, Yeah, I'm gonna pass on that person. I'm just not sure. But the objective management group said, No, no green, green, green, one yellow area. And so now I'm like, I got to get my own biases out of my head and say, Well, wait a minute, this person might actually be amazing. They happen to be from the south and have a pretty thick accent. And so I think it's just my communication style, right, is what's throwing the blocker in place. And, and so I'm getting out of my own head and having this person talk to multiple people.
Paul Simkins:Yeah, that's, that's ideal. I've worked with some organizations that particular one recently, where they use a similar type of thing, a profile that they ask every candidate to take, before they even get an interview. And part of the reason they do it is because again, so many times you have these biases that you get in mind of you looking strictly at a piece of paper, making a judgement. And what this does for them, is it tells them not only their propensity towards certain mindsets and attitudes, but also even makes a prediction on their likelihood to stick around.
Chad:That's right. Yep.
Paul Simkins:So so out of that, so so that's part of how you address that issue is looking at that is using that survey, inevitably, especially working with sales people, you're going to get just so many different kinds of personalities and egos involved in there. How do you deal with that?
Chad:Well, I've gotten good I in fact, I've changed a name of a prior mentor into a verb. I call it and my wife, I think, actually came up with this term, but it's called MJ ang someone because Mary Jane shooty was my VP. And she could walk someone out the door, and they would say, thank you so much, give her a hug on the way out and say this was the best move of my career by leaving your company. Now, luckily, it didn't have to happen very often, it's a few here or there, that maybe there's something going on personally, or it was the bad hire or whatever. But by by really building a performance improvement plan, in a proper, meaningful way, that says, hey, this is the specific behavior that needs to be adjusted. And, and providing that same level of fairness across the board, right? You can I learned that the hard way once too. You can't, you can't say well apply this to you and not everyone else. But when you do that properly, and you sit down and say, hey, look, one of the expectations of this job is to create seven new opportunities a week, and for the last month you created for in a month. So Wouldn't you agree that you're not going to make the kind of money that you want to make? And it looks like this is gonna be tough to turn around. But I want to do anything possible. What do you think we can do? Right? And it's, I learned from Skip Miller early on writing measurable mutual objectives over time. m squared over T,
Paul Simkins:right? And put part of the responsibility for improvement on on the individual employee because too many times we want to dictate it down. That's right. Yo, this is what you need to do. And if they haven't bought into it, if they haven't made a commitment to it, it's probably not going to happen.
Chad:Yeah. So you know, I am Have a ops person on my team if he was here right now. I mean, I'm just transparent as all can be. So if he hears this one day, that'd be totally okay do and you know I, we split the role in two now. So now there's an optional and there's a customer facing client successful. So traditionally where he was doing all the clients success and delivery, now we have a new resource. So I need him focused on the technical side, he gave up the customer facing side. So rather than go in and go, Hey, what's going on? Why don't you deliver these technical pieces that I've asked you for? I went in and I said, Hey, out of curiosity, check this out. 64 meetings, is what this person did. And I've only done 32 that are recorded in chorus. She's done 64. What percentage of those meetings that she's doing that are customer facing? Are you involved with? And I'm just sleuth detecting this, right. And he goes, I'm probably involved in 90%. And he goes, probably 80. More like, I was like, Okay, what do you think it should be? He said, Yeah, maybe 50. I said, Okay, maybe I said, Do you think it could it could be even lower than that? Like your delivery? Now you you may not be need to be on all the customer facing. So yeah, believe me, I have a passion for all the other part. But sometimes I need to hear it firsthand. I was like, Okay, got it. So what if she brought you in when you were needed? Yeah. Okay, so no, I could see this getting down to 30%. And I'm like, Okay, if it's 30% of those 64 calls in a month, so that that means you're giving up 40 hours of work in a month. Now, do you think you could reapply those hours to the other lane of getting the dashboards created for customers, etc. And it was just a, it was like a chiropractic for the mind experience? And we you know, rather than coming in with a hammer, we just went in with the velvet touch. And out of curiosity, how do we align and just let the information be the information? So
Paul Simkins:yeah, I like that it Do you know, what, what I hear out of that is that even the discussion of performance improvement, even discussion of maximizing your time, everything is a collaborative effort. It's not a it's not a dictating down, it's not a putting all the responsibility on the other end, it's a collaborative effort of how can we figure this out together? And let's crunch the numbers. Let's take a look at what we know. And what we think we can do.
Chad:That's right, sometimes, hey, it goes off a cliff, and it's unrecoverable. And that happens to everybody. We all have personal lives and everything and, and at that point, it's okay, hey, we put in the four weeks, the six weeks, the 12 weeks, whatever the timeframe was, and just couldn't get there. So hey, let's let's part ways you'll make the Commission's that you've earned and, you know, I think you'll be better off and you'll be happier. And it's really, it needs to be more about them. You'll be happier. Not will be happier with that. Yeah.
Paul Simkins:Although I heard years ago, a story of of a boss, you told one of their employees, I don't know how we'd ever do without you. But starting Monday, we're gonna try.
Chad:Oh, that's funny.
Paul Simkins:So as an executive and business owner, when you're faced with decisions, what kind of process Do you go through with decision making?
Chad:You know, I had a call recently with a business ethics coach. And he was actually came to that position, because he was arrested and put in jail for making supposedly an unethical decision that led to 100 million dollar lawsuit and all kinds of things. He said, it turns out that whether you actually did make that type of thing, and were part of that, or you were just in the company, and you happen to be around it, he got into this situation where he ended up going to jail for several months. And it could have been several years, he had to plead guilty. So my point of that is that when we started talking about this conversation, and where the world's going around AI and around, you know, all this stuff with Google and with Twitter and Facebook and algorithms, and he said, Really, it comes to the executives need to be value based in their decisions. And so when I hired our CRM, we spent three hours four hours at the firepit and three hours of it was talking about our belief in God. And he said in his 43 years of being a leader with organizations, nobody's ever had that level of values, conversation with them. And so, you know, I think we had one of one of our colleagues printed out a shirt that says Be a good person. I think that kind of summarizes it right. You want to you lead from the front and make ethical decisions. And for me that ethical decisions happen to come from the only book that is truly a truth telling book. And that's where I operate from that system.
Paul Simkins:Yeah, it's interesting years ago, of course, when they first started out Google part of their mantra, and supposedly core values was you it was just the statement of do no harm. Now, that is, since been modified several times over. And of course, there's lots of question about how much Google is actually fulfilled that lately. Yeah, but anything,
Chad:right? It really is amazing.
Paul Simkins:But but it is one of those that but that was just a simple statement that just, you know, again, made a lot of sense. And I kind of wish they had really kind of stuck with that as a core value. Yeah. As a statement, they, again, they got modified over time, it doesn't say the same thing that it used to.
Chad:But well, apparently, this ethics guy that I interviewed recently said, Zuckerberg was quoted as saying, ethics, no, we don't care about ethics, we're gonna push it as far as the law will allow. And it was like, Well, no, you should operate first as a human being, where the other side of that coin is Henry shock from zoomin. He said, hey, there's laws out there. And you could push it to the edge, but we operate from a values based system. And so he said, what we do, what we've done is, since we, since our product is information about where people work, their phone numbers, their LinkedIn profiles, some could be considered personally personal information. He said, we decided to go to every person in our data set and say, Hey, just so you're aware, your informations in our data set. And if you're not okay with that, you can make that decision to not be part of it. And I thought that was that was a interesting way to lead from the front versus being unethical, and on the other side. And I try to operate from those same policies and procedure book.
Paul Simkins:So you mentioned being values driven. So what are the core values of your company?
Chad:Well, it's, you know, what we're actually meeting tonight at 5pm. to, to write down the concrete, it's really funny timing that you say that we're in the process of writing a book called God centered selling, oh, and we want to be the first and then God centered leadership and God centered company. And so we'll be our own case study. And good, you know, start from a start from scratch. We've been in business two and a half years. So we have some clay to play with. But we actually want to redo everything from the ground up with that philosophy in mind. So I'll tell you, and I'll tell you in 24 hours,
Paul Simkins:it's a good thought. I mean, that's, it's the way it should be. And I emphasize that message you because that's primarily what I do is I talk about being values driven. And the problem is, most people go Yeah, I'm values driven, I go, Okay, then tell me what your values are. And, and they don't know and, and they need to be down, they need to be down on paper. Where, and, and put out where everybody can see it so that everybody in the organization knows this is what we are, this is what we stand for. And so that everybody can hold everybody accountable for it.
Chad:Yeah, I think what rich would tell you he's, as he said, He's got six years left on his career. And so he's seen a lot of organizations, he's been SVP, and he has extremely devout faith. His mantra is, and I believe this is what gets into our company core values is for the glory of God. That's it. And what what's the what? And what's the how doesn't matter? What we know is the why. And so the what and the how is all towards fulfilling that destiny? Right? We're just in the lane doing what we're asked to be doing. And we do it for that purpose, then great things will happen for people.
Paul Simkins:Okay, so when you're faced with conflict, men, you mentioned a little bit about this earlier. How do you handle conflict within your team?
Chad:There will be conflict, truth be told, I'm In a small company, because I do not like corporate politics. I've, I believe that someone named Paul once told me about the fascinate, test, which I will be taking later this evening. And I think it's important to understand where, you know, get in where you fit in. So I'm an entrepreneur, I like to create things. And if I'm in too large of an environment, then I can tend to break plates, because I just want to go go go, right. And so, as a leader, for me, since I'm that creator type, I've found that I have to surround myself with people who are great at that skill set. Right. And that's why someone like rich, who's managed multi hundred person, if not thousand person teams, and was brought up through the IBM way for the first 20 years of his career is is a good, valuable person to surround yourself with and work with people like that. But I've found again, I go back to the being curious and just having a conversation. You know, let's figure out what's going on, why is it going on, and then empower people who do what they do well, and don't be afraid to let other people run the roles that they're in. And, as the CEO, you know, there's a lot less involvement in those kinds of things that you would otherwise expect, or is required.
Paul Simkins:Okay, great. Hi. So finally, what's one tip, or one thing a leader can do or apply today to add value to their team.
Chad:I always think of the term lead from the front. So you know, you have to lead by example. So whether that's trying a new technology, or picking up the phone and doing the cold call, right, for the first six to eight months of my business, I ran two hours a day on agent assisted dialing. And I would talk to between 25 and 30 people every single day. And the reps that and my business partner at the time, who would work with me was like holy cow, the CEO of our company is doing cold calls. So you have to be willing and able to wear the shoes of your team. Think Undercover Boss, right? They go out, learn so much. And then they come back and they tear up because they're emotional. And they're like, I didn't realize how big of a deal X Y or Z was two people. So lead from the front end and wear their shoes sometimes.
Paul Simkins:Great lead from the front. Perfect. Chad, thanks so much for being on the show today.
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Paul Simkins:All right now we're into as we always do every week. I love outdoor cooking so I always like to share an outdoor cooking recipe with you here and on this part of the show and like I said I love to do all kinds of outdoor cooking I've got a smoker and grill I Dutch ovens I do all kinds of cooking outdoors under open fire and everything. So again I always like to I like it so much. I actually created a Facebook group called smoke indash and on the Smoke and Ash Facebook group being all a whole bunch of my friends who are also in the outdoor cooking we we share recipes we tell each other what we're cooking this weekend out on the grill or out on the smoker. We share the latest gadgets that we've discovered and everything else and we have a lot of fun with it. And lately we've been doing a lot of quiz questions about barbecue and about grilling and so forth and and see you how much everybody knows about about grilling and smoking and all. But like I said I always like to share a recipe here on the show and we also share it out on that Facebook group and when I have a guest I like to have I invite the guests to share their favorite outdoor cooking recipe if they have one and and Chad You said you had one for something to do with a favorite over there in your area which is salmon.
Chad:I do so this actually started at a high end fancy restaurant in Colorado called h brinkers. If you have ever been to Colorado, it used to be the one with the big windmill on I 25 and Arapaho road and so I ended up working there And this was the summer of oj simpson Chase. And so I remember being in the bar and working at the, at the restaurant I, I was probably 19 or 20, or something at the time. And we ended up shutting down, I think we were purchased or or whatever happened. And then Landry's took over. So the windmill went away. And so the recipes, well, the head chef there, I was friendly with, you know, go figure with my personality. And so I went to him and I said, Hey, can you tell me the recipe now. And so finally, he shared it with me. And so this was at a high end restaurant. And now I do it on my grilled salmon on the grill, you take brown sugar, and lemon juice, and brandy, the key ingredient is the brandy. And you mix it, you can play around with the level of mix some people like it really thick, so that it kind of pours on, my wife tends to like it a little thinner. I think my mother likes it a little differently. So I'll kind of mix and match but you you, you know, you can put it on before you grill it. And then you put a side bowl to the side and you just drizzle that on afterwards. And it's The Sweetest tasting fish gets rid of the fishy fishy tastes for people who don't aren't fans of fish. And what a fabulous recipe.
Paul Simkins:Now, do you do any kind of prep to the salmon before you throw it on the grill? Or?
Chad:Um, it's pretty standard. You can you can put it on a on a plank, right one of those wood planks if you want to see our plank. Yeah, like, and then obviously you want to wet the cedar plank. That doesn't work too well, if it's I've learned from experience if it's not wet, and and then no nothing really that special that you need to do ahead of time. You can drape the the sauce on before or or you can wait until afterwards and that way. Maybe some of your guests require notes, no sauce, they like the fish taste separately, and then others want to actually put it on.
Paul Simkins:Right. So so I don't care. Remember he mentioned What's the name of the sauce? What's the sauce called?
Chad:I don't know if there's a name I call it. Yeah, I don't know if there's an actual name to it. The salmon. The salmon special sauce maybe? Yeah.
Paul Simkins:Yeah. Gotta take advantage of his Chad sauce for Chad's
Chad:secret sauce,
Paul Simkins:or scale x. Awesome. All right. Well, my guest today was Chad burmeister. He's the chief executive of scale x.ai, where he helps sales professionals become the best version of themselves by focusing on their mindset, their skill set, and their toolset. So Chad, what are you working on right now that you're really excited about?
Chad:Well, I may have mentioned this already. And I'll say it again, God centered selling is something that I think I've been bottling up inside of me for 47 years. And the first book that I wrote, took 12 years to write and I just it was about software selling. And then I put sales hack out. That was my very first book. It took 48 days from the time I said, let's do it to the time it was live. And now I've done for four books. So this book is a combination, a collaboration with rich Blakeman, who was a former pastor, in fact, turned entrepreneur turned csro sales leader. And so we are, we are endeavoring to build that the next phase of it, which honestly will start probably even before the book, we're going to build an executive retreat, probably in Beaver Creek, Colorado, will openly buy a house that's eight to 10,000 square feet. That's not cheap. But we believe we can pull together 10 to 20, CEOs, founders, entrepreneurs every single week, and have a mindset transformational experience for these folks. And there's a lot of mindset people that are out there. And we'd like to work with those people who are focused on mindset and transformation, and have them invite their customers to the event. So that it's a win win for everybody. And that way we get to impact the future leaders of America, many of whom I think feel they are not successful. And when you peel back the onion, they're Uber successful. They just don't know it. And we want to get to the bottom of that and help them discover that success is a mindset. It's not a destination.
Paul Simkins:Cool, cool idea. It's hard to go wrong with this retreat. I just love retreats, getting getting them away where you get opportunity to focus everything. Alright, so Chad, so if somebody wants to get a hold of you, what's the best way to do that?
Chad:Well I can be reached at my website and email address chat at scale x.ai SCA l e x.ai. If, if you'd like to get a demonstration, the software platform basically sends out 50 to 100, LinkedIn connection requests a day, it'll do in males, it'll do all kinds of things, we're actually I'll make an offer. And that is, it's typically a $500 implementation fee, and $500 a month for three months, four to two grand. And if I don't get you 100 replies from your top prospects in under three months, then I'll write you the check for the $2,000 back. So we're so confident we can help entrepreneurs grow their businesses, whether you're a rep, a CEO, or someone trying to make a living out of a home office, it doesn't really matter. This technology will help you put your business on steroids and grow faster than you could ever grow before. So check that out, send me an email. I'm happy to help wherever I can.
Paul Simkins:Great. Thank you, Chad. Well, that's it for this week, folks. Don't forget that if you're listening to this on a podcast app to give us a five star rating, and also to share this with you so that they know it's there. And of course subscribe so you know when new episodes come out every week, until the next time, go out and be the leader. You were meant to be