On the Edge

Stephen Brown (00:01.39)
Welcome to On The Edge brought to you by Elite Sales Edge with your host, Stephen Brown. In the series, Getting to Know Your CXOs, we'll be diving deep into conversations with various C -level executives. We'll explore the formidable challenges they encounter, the critical decisions they make, and the lessons that have left a lasting impact on them. Sit back and prepare to gain some insightful knowledge from the leaders who shape the business world.

Stephen Brown (00:38.222)
Welcome to On the Edge. This is another episode of Getting to Know Your CXOs. I'm here with Teresa Karagol. Teresa is the founder and CEO of Achieve Unite, Inc., a strategic consulting and education firm that provides channel, partnering, and business acceleration services to leaders in global enterprises. With Teresa's leadership, Achieve Unite offers partner and channel development, go -to -market strategy and channel integration. crap, I screwed up.

Theresa is the founder and CEO of Achieve Unite Inc, a strategic consulting and education firm that provides channel, partnering, and business acceleration services to leaders and global enterprises. With Theresa's leadership, Achieve Unite offers partner and channel development, go -to -market strategy, and channel integration, as well as executive education forums. Ms. Karagal is a sought -after influencer with more than 20 years of experience across over 50 countries.

building and managing multi -million dollar indirect channel teams and strategic alliance programs from inception to sales success. She's developed numerous executive advisory boards and think tanks and co -founded the Baptie Women's Leadership Council. Ms. Caragol has received numerous IT industry channel accolades and is a member of the CompTIA channel faculty.

Ms. Caragel has received numerous IT industry channel accolades and is a member of the CompTIA channel faculty curriculum development. Prior to founding AchieveUnite, Teresa held several senior executive roles at Extreme Networks, Sienna and Nortel. She holds a bachelor's degree from Virginia Tech and an MBA from the University of Wisconsin and an executive master's in leadership from Georgetown University Business School. Welcome, Teresa. We are so glad to have you on the edge. Thank you.

to be here. And I'm in the midst right now of finishing my NACD board certification. So that's my next big, I have to take a proctored exam soon. Wow, that is awesome. Well, that is quite the impressive resume. I really appreciate you spending time with us here on the edge. Just a little bit about this series for the audience out there. This is Getting to Know Your CXOs, and it's an educational forum aimed at helping sales professionals understand how CXOs think.

Stephen Brown (02:59.214)
because being in sales for over 35 years, I don't think most sales folks really get how C -level people think. We think we do. But when we get in there, it's a whole different story. So just getting down to earth, talking about real topics in business and sharing different C -level insights is, I think, is very valuable. So welcome. Thank you. And it's also a matter of...

I thought when I was leading channels and partners at Extreme Networks at Sienna, I understood partnering and I understood what it was like to be a small business in North Dakota and Light River and all of these companies. I didn't have a clue until I became a CEO myself and a founder what it is like to be on the other side. So I think it's also CXOs and it's different sizes of businesses and stages of evolution of companies.

I agree. So that's actually a great segue into the first question I have for you. You've secured your first C level position. So you're that new CEO coming in. What do you think are the most important things for that CEO to do in the first 30 to 60 days to make sure they get off on the right foot? my goodness. So I have an unbelievable religion in this. In the first 30 days, it's incredible.

incredibly important that you are trust building and I talk about relationships understanding people understanding motivations building the relationships putting chits into the depositing chits and carrots in so that down the road when you have to have hard conversations you've got a stable foundation of Which to build on so that's one the second thing is you have to listen you have to assess you cannot

offer your opinions. You cannot say, well, when I did it this way, none of that, right? It's all about assessing curiosity, effective questioning, and getting an accurate picture of what the landscape is and what's really happening. And it's only after you do those things can you then form in the 60 to 90 days, your strategic plan and your go -forward plan and your priorities. And where are you today? And we call it the North Star, the joint.

Stephen Brown (05:18.798)
North star, what's the timeline? Where do you want to be? What does that look like? And then what are the stair steps to get you to that? And that's what I would call the 60 to 90 day piece of it. You know, you just made me think of something about your, when you, you said it's a coming in building trust, which is key. And that's a common theme I'm hearing across, across most folks. but the other thing that, you just made the, you just like, boom, the light went off.

Just because it worked somewhere else doesn't mean it's going to work here. It's the worst thing that you can do. And I see so many leaders who fail because they did that early on and they came in thinking they know it, thinking there's a better way, thinking, you know, and so the how you do things really matters when you come into a new organization. That's funny if you think about it, right? If it was that simple.

You know, if it was just like, yeah, here's the CEO playbook step one, here you go. Yeah. It's just, yeah. So that is, that's enlightening. So being a, being a leader, is, is an honor privilege, but like in order for us or anybody to be successful is, is the team that's around you. And that's the second question I have for you is it's kind of two parts. One, how do you go about building a team? Yeah. And then the second part of that is.

for you, what's your belief or definition or attributes around what makes a good leader? So one, how do you go about building a team? Actually, let me start with number two about what makes a great leader, because I have a lot of religion on what makes a leader in this day and age. In this day and age, in this era, I truly believe the best leaders are genuine, they're authentic, they...

care about the people. They have the ability and the knack to build relationships. We have the widest generation in the workforce right now, right? Age 20 to 75, 80 years old and everything in between. And we as leaders have to be able to build relationships and trust and guide all of those. And so you need really strong muscles in what I call partnering trust building. And

Stephen Brown (07:39.79)
We have a whole psychometric index that measures that and we can get into that another time. But that is a really important part of leadership. Leaders have to have, in any good organization, leaders have to have a strategy. They have to have a plan. And it isn't about your plan, it's about all of our plan. And everybody's gotta believe in that plan. And we've gotta get marching to the same drum. I see so many organizations where silos are broken and...

Not everybody is marching to one strategy and there's this incredible power when you can break down those silos and you can get everyone marching to a plan. So I think that's another important part of this. And that's both the vision, the North Star vision, and that's the execution step. So it's this, I call it like the seesaw of balancing the strategy and the execution. And there have to be equal skills or you have to put someone around you. If you're really strong on strategy, you gotta have somebody on execution or vice versa.

So I think that's really important in leadership. The other thing that I think is super important in leadership is, this book that we're authoring and publishing soon is all about partnering success. I fundamentally believe the best leaders look everywhere for win -wins. They look at how they can create, Stephen and I can create a win -win together. And it becomes a part of their DNA. It becomes a part of how they operate. They genuinely want to do business to create win -wins.

And so I believe that this next era of leaders are true partners in every sense of the word. And I think leadership is changing a lot right now because of all these other factors. And that's just a key attribute that comes through that I've seen for good leaders. I'm just, I'm curious on, because it kind of leads into the next question I have for you, which is around decision -making. Decision -making is tough enough. Then.

You add a global pandemic on top of that. So leaders today have had an education that they weren't planning on. Nobody said, Hey, by the way, you know, a global pandemic's coming. So I'm interested in your thoughts on that. And then if you could just share with us the process that you use when you have to make tough decisions. First of all, decision -making is indecision is a decision. And I, as an entrepreneur.

Stephen Brown (10:04.75)
I have been guilty of indecision is the decision. And I see that and I realize how important it is to make a decision and not leave it up to chance. I've watched many leaders spend too much time analyzing, too much time looking, especially when you're a small business, when you need to decide and you need to move forward and you need to move quickly. Because speed is really important in small businesses, as you probably know.

And so I think that's one thing is, you know, breaking down the indecision and making the decision and making to make the decision. Then the second thing is, as you decide, you know, I am a decision maker who seeks a lot of input, sometimes too much input, to be honest. And I am a very collaborative decision maker. I like people to be part of the process. You know, that's a strength, but that's also sometimes a weakness. So I have to know when.

to make the decision. Sometimes it's not the time to make the decision. So knowing when to actually commit is a really important thing. Actually, Dan Mondor, who is a friend of both of ours, 100 years ago taught me about the funnel is open, and then as you come to a certain place, you close the funnel and you go. And knowing when to close that funnel is the art of decision making. And I still remember Dan as it comes into my mind a lot.

when I think about, because sometimes the funnel should stay open and you made decisions too fast. And so you have to balance when to make the decision. And then the other thing is you don't need to make every decision. I, as an entrepreneur in this organization, I need to not make all the decisions. And you get into the spot where you think you have to make all the decisions. And so that's another area I'm working on continuing to develop and improve is empowering all the other folks to make the best decisions to grow the business.

Wow. That is so true. So Dan is actually going to be a guest on the show, coming up over the next couple of weeks. yeah, he's, yeah, I've, we both worked for him. He's a great leader, great friend, great colleague, probably one of the best coaches I've ever worked for. And, and he's got a great blend of humor, right. Which really, yeah. Really just helps, help this kind of stuff. Great leadership quality as well. You know, humor light.

Stephen Brown (12:26.67)
fun. You know, I think that's something we didn't talk about earlier, but that's really important in leadership. It is. Yeah, it is. And because, you know, business is serious, but it's not that serious. You know, there's a lot of things going on that are, you know, really a lot more important than that. One of my good friends who is a CEO, she says, you need to take a break. We're not saving lives here today. Right. Yes. Yeah.

I want to pick up something you said there about sometimes getting stuck and as leaders, sometimes we do get stuck. It's like, man, you know, is this the right thing? You know, do I have enough input, too much input? And that's why it's so important to have great people around you that can tell you, Hey, Steve, you know, let's go or not. And this, this person, this gentleman that used to work with me,

He came up to me one day and he says, Hey, he goes, have you ever read this book? What got you here? Won't get you there. So now I've never heard of it. And he goes, no, you should read it. It's great. So he hands me the book. I'm like, awesome. And then he goes, Hey, pay particular attention to this chapter. It's on adding too much value. I'm like, all right, what are you trying to tell me? He goes, I'm not nothing. Just read the book and I'll tell you. But as I read the book, that was one of the things that, I didn't realize I was doing as a leader. And it's so important when people come to you with an idea, like, Hey, here's what I'm thinking about doing.

Don't let our natural inclination is like, that's awesome. Well, what about and what if you well now it's not their idea anymore That's a great point and I was like That's the best piece of feedback I've ever gotten in my life and I just I appreciated that but the importance of that That team that's around you. Well on the other extreme of that is shutting it down, you know So one trying to expand it trying to put all your wisdom on it. The other one is that's just not a good idea and right

You know, so there's middle ground that you have to find in ideation from others that is really important. And I think in high collaborative cultures, people are empowered to bring ideas and they are empowered to, you know, it becomes part of the culture and part of the environment, which I'm really proud we have at our organization. And some of our best things came from innovations and ideas from others. And I'm also a big fan of one idea.

Stephen Brown (14:49.582)
But then when I never put on an engagement one person, we always have three people because three makes one plus one plus one equal 50 or a hundred. And the amazing power of a high degree of collaboration and innovation when you put more than one brain on something. yeah, for sure. And AI, because we can't have a conversation without AI and all of them. Well, speaking of AI, you must be reading my mind because that's where my next topic is. So.

It's a broad topic. It is. So we could probably spend an entire afternoon talking about AI, but I would love to hear your thoughts on AI because it's coming into it's here. It's coming into businesses. And if you're not embracing it, I mean, that's my opinion. I'll be quiet, but I would love to hear your opinion on AI and how you think it's going to impact business. And as a C level, what should you be thinking about around AI?

So first of all, AI, I couldn't agree more. AI is everywhere and you have to decide where you want to leverage it. We are doing a lot in the AI space right now, both with our trust building psychometric index, as well as our solution, our own solution offerings. And we're taking AI to the market with our partner in the AI space with private knowledge banks. So we're really focused in our segment. And I think that would be my advice is to decide what you want from AI.

Do you want AI to improve your own processes? Do you want it to improve your own products? Do you want to make it your own product that you're taking into the market, right? And those are three different swim lanes that don't have the same requirements. And so being really careful about how you're gonna use it. And then obviously all of the security and the intellectual property and the private knowledge and that is a big deal. People think, well, if I go ask Chachi PT or I go put something in a Chachi PT, I still own that.

Not anymore, you know, because you just put it into the chat GPT world. So this privacy, like it's completely changing how we approach our intellectual property, how we retain intellectual property and that whole domain, which is going to become really, really important for companies. And I think as you get familiar with it, I think it demystifies it a lot. It's going to create more jobs. I think now it might change some jobs. It's going to change a lot of jobs and it is automating processes that you don't.

Stephen Brown (17:11.021)
people for. I mean, I think it is it is going to eliminate jobs. It is going to stimulate other jobs and there will be new opportunities for people. But I think that we would be naive to think that it's not. Yeah, you're right. You're right. That's a better way to put it because if you just sit still and you don't embrace this technology, yeah, it will pass you by. It will pass you by. Absolutely. And your organization, you know, because too many companies are gonna are embracing it and we're disrupting how we do business and we have to.

You know, we're gonna stay competitive. Yeah, yeah, it's good stuff. So, I want to talk a little bit about you now. So, you've worked at some really cool companies and you've started some companies. So, tell us a little bit about those experiences. You know, maybe pull out one or two things that stick out to you, you know, that really you carry forward with you.

You know, you learn something from it. And then the other thing that I always like to talk to people about, because I love like, and I've only been an entrepreneur here for about, you know, not very long. And I've always appreciated people that step out there and do this because there is nobody else. Right. But what I, what I like to understand or what I appreciate is the passion. What, what drove you to do what you're doing? Right.

Well, so I can, a couple of things stand out in my mind to start with that. One is the day that I went from a solopreneur consultant to becoming an entrepreneur. And that was probably a year, 14 months into my journey of making that shift. And that was a very deliberate shift. And I said, wait a minute, if boys can build companies, I can build a company. And I'm going to go do that and create a picture. And then you manifest it and.

During that process, and even over the last six years, I've learned about happy accidents. My friend Bill Rozier talks about happy accidents, and happy accidents are not really accidents. And you watch, and sometimes they don't turn into things, but I've learned to always play them out, because oftentimes there's something magical there that actually becomes something that then builds on something else, and it's just this incredible way that it works. And I don't.

Stephen Brown (19:31.758)
I think I paid attention to the universe and how it impacts business and how you manifest that in the world. And then it becomes a reality. And so that is something that I've learned being an entrepreneur. I, you know, the other thing that I, I have the most incredible mentors. I would never be sitting where I'm sitting now if it wasn't for these mentors, Bob O'Malley, Ron Roener, Karen Slatford, even Dan from a hundred years ago, you know, these people.

I was vulnerable. I have been extremely open and honest and transparent and they've helped me learn and to become better. You know, Jim Richings who, you know, he'll be really hard on me sometimes, but you know what? That makes you better. And learning how to handle that and how to deal with that is really important. So these mentors are amazing. And then learning how to accept hard feedback and to accept hard input to get yourself to another level.

That's what hard for me, but we're getting there. It's a journey. That's cool. Well, it's important. Like it's one thing for somebody to be hard on you, but you know, when it's coming from a place of when it's coming from a place of love. Yeah. Right. Right. And they know that you're better than that and they know you've got it in you and they find a way to challenge you in a way that makes you go. Yeah. I know that is, I can do this rather than just yelling and screaming at you, which helps no one. No.

And yeah, I've never liked bullies. I've never dealt with it very well. I've always stood up for those who can't stand up for themselves. So I think my kids that too, I say you have to stand up for people and you especially have to stand up for people who can't or won't or don't exactly. Exactly. Exactly. So that is, that is awesome. So I have one final question for you. All right. All right. And it is what advice would you have for the modern salesperson?

dealing with when they get the opportunity to meet with a C level, what should they do? my goodness. All right. So I have some very critical advice. One, don't do what I used to do, which is just go and talk and talk and talk because they hate that. I hate that. Very succinct. So one is succinct. Two is know what you want.

Stephen Brown (21:53.806)
What are you trying to inform? Are you trying to ask for action? What do you want out of that conversation? And then ask for it and be deliberate about it. Plan the conversation whenever possible. And then the last thing is relationships, relationships, relationships. So take the time and the energy and learn how that person builds trust. If you know PQI, you know not everyone builds trust the same way. So whether we see them, they might build trust.

is different from the way Teresa builds trust. And so understanding the language of that executive and how they build trust so that you can adopt yourself to become better at trust building and relationship building. That is awesome. Yeah, it's funny. One of the things that when I work with different sales organizations and sales folks, you know, and they've all, and what I try to pull out of them first is their bad habits.

And I just talked to them, right. So tell me, tell me how do you approach a sales opportunity? How do you learn about a company? I mean, typical stuff. It's kind of simple. And then like, well, number one, I've got to get to the CEO. I'm like, okay, is that your first stop? Yeah. If I can get to the CEO, everything else figure out. I'm like, really? Hmm. I said, most CEOs I know that I've worked with, they have a team around them.

Right. Who were they? And they're, and they're working on all kinds of things and are running projects and they're, they're actually managing this stuff that you're going to be deploying. So you're actually doing yourself a disservice because you haven't gotten to know his team, gotten to know the challenges. So when you do show up to that CEO, it's like, Hey, I've met with your team. They've outlined this problem. Here's how we think we can solve it. We'd like to talk to you about it.

Now all of a sudden it's like, so you're going to help me drive sales by X percent. You're going to help me get more efficient here. So yes, getting to the C level, the ultimate decision maker is key. But, you know, open up that notebook a little bit when it says do your homework, you know, you really got to work hard. Sales is hard. But it's also a lot of fun. You need to know not to go to the CEO. Sometimes it's not, you know, sometimes you're better to go to the CFO or the CPO. Sure.

Stephen Brown (24:10.51)
you know, someone else. So I think it's just as important to know when, know when to hold them, know when to fold them, know when to go, know when not to go. Yeah. Awesome. Awesome. So before we wrap up, I would love for the audience to know a little bit about Achieve Unite. So please let's tell them a little about Achieve Unite. Well, Achieve Unite is the partnering success company. We specialize in everything related to partnering success. So our people development, the most important thing is people have to develop partnering muscles and skills.

And so we focus in PQI, trust building, in the hard skills of partnering. Our fastest growing programs are our partnering success methodologies and teaching that to sellers and teaching that to partner managers and the partner executives. So that is one. And then the second part of our business is all about the business acceleration. So how do we help the companies that want to be good at partnering, that want to leverage channels and distribution networks and franchises and.

all these different partnering models, how do you excel in that? And we have some incredible assessments and just a science to how to do that right. And yeah, we have a book coming out that teaches everything we do in the book as well. So. I'm waiting on my copy that I can read and will definitely, definitely want to have you back on the launch of that book. That would be so great. So Teresa.

Thank you so much for your time. I know how valuable it is. It's been great having you and I'm sure the audience is going to love this. So thank you again. thank you so much.