Nick Sadler - CEO of DOmedia: Making an Impression, Staying Focused, and Getting out of the Weeds

Nick Sadler  00:00

The words "that's not my job." I've never said that. I've never told anyone "that's not my job." I will never say that to anyone. What do you need me to do? I'll do it. Do I know how to do it? Nope. I'll ask. I'll learn. I'll figure it out.

Callan Harrington  00:15

You're listening to That Worked, a show that breaks down the careers of top founders and executives and pulls out those key items that led to their success. I'm your host, Callan Harrington, founder of Flashgrowth, and I couldn't be more excited that you're here. Welcome back, everyone, to a another episode of That Worked. This week, I'm joined by Nick Sadler. Nick is the CEO of DOmedia. DOmedia is an independent technology company on a mission to change the way out-of-home media is bought and sold. Their cloud-based applications connect buyers and sellers to leverage marketplace effects, eliminate labor, and improve reporting and analytics. Nick started out as a product development analyst and worked his way up to CEO of DOmedia. Before DOmedia, Nick spent time at Nationwide Insurance and the Ohio Department of Youth Services. We hit on a lot of great subjects. We talked about getting out of the weeds as a CEO, how to get caught up to speed quickly in a new position, and one of the areas that we spent a good amount of time on is the power of focus. As a business owner myself, focus is something that I often find myself coming back to. And Nick gave great advice on how they leverage goal setting methodologies, and how they ask specific questions to make sure that they're not only focused, but focused on the right things, more than anything. The part that I found the most interesting in this episode was how Nick used his work ethic to get noticed. Every job that he's ever had came as a result of someone noticing his hard work and pulling him into that next position. His advice around this was excellent for any person in any position. So with that, let's get to the show. Nick, welcome to the show.

Nick Sadler  02:19

Thanks. Thanks for having me.

Callan Harrington  02:20

I'm excited to dive in on this. One of the things that I found interesting that I just want to kind of kick it off with, so you were doing pretty well at Nationwide at a young age, and then you decided to go to DOmedia. So Nick, you're the CEO of DOmedia now. But you weren't at that point. What prompted that move? What was your mindset as you were going into that?

Nick Sadler  02:43

Yeah, so a good question. There's, from a context perspective, I was at Nationwide for three years before DOmedia, and I was getting my MBA at Capitol University at night. And one of the things that I loved about Nationwide was that you did have time to have hobbies at night and learn outside of, you know, forty-five hours a week was a lot at Nationwide. The expectation wasn't fifty, sixty, seventy hours. So I was able to do my MBA at night. And that really taught me how much of a nerd I am about business, finance, marketing, how it all works together. So like how a whole company comes together to be a great company. And I just realized that I couldn't possibly get that level of excitement at Nationwide anymore. So I loved the company. I loved my team. I was doing really well. But more than anything, it taught me that I just really wanted to do something more entrepreneurial. Both my parents own their own businesses when I was growing up. My mom owned an insurance company down in Florida. My dad owned his own heating, air conditioning, electrical business in Lima, Ohio. And so I was raised around working hard and getting a lot of benefits from that. Not having a lot of hobbies outside of your work, like I was- I grew up around parents that like literally just worked. And they loved it. They were passionate about it, what it could do for their family, what it did for them. I always wanted that for myself. So I didn't want to go to work, leave work at work, and then have hobbies at night. And so when I was getting my MBA, I was kind of explaining that about me to somebody in my class. And she said, well, there's a friend of mine who works at DOmedia, they're looking for somebody with your type of skill set. And so the next day, I had coffee with Rachel, who hired me at DOMedia. And in that time period, a lot of my friends were like, what are you doing? You have a really good job, you make quite a bit of money for someone at twenty-six. Why are you taking this risk and taking a pay cut to go work for a smaller company who might not be around in three years. And my mentality was pretty much just that I knew long term Nationwide wasn't it. So I had to make some sort of move some time soon. Because it just once you know that your future is not where you are, it's better for both parties to just move on. So my goal was to come in and just say, I don't care if this company goes under cash insolvent in three months- They weren't going to, I asked enough questions to know that. But even if they would have, I was trying to work as so hard that somebody that I worked with in that company, would lead me to my next job, even if I had to be the last one in, first one out. Because that's essentially how I got all my jobs prior to that.

Callan Harrington  05:24

Walk us through that. When you say- was your kind of mentality, like, I will just outwork anybody?

Nick Sadler  05:30

It wasn't so much competitive against a lot of other people. Because I thought that I was coming in- one of the things I loved about coming in to DOmedia was, I looked around, and I saw a bunch of smart people that worked hard too. So it was more around, I'm going to work so hard that people are impressed and can see what I'm capable of. Not necessarily that I'm going to be the best. But I did always tell myself, like, if I'm going to do something, I'm going to try to be the best at it. Not the best person at that company and everything. But whatever I'm doing, I want to try and be the best. So I would if the company asked me to learn how to sell, for instance, I've never sold anything. Seven years ago, I stood up a product, and they're like, okay, well, you go sell it now. So I read every book about the best sales tactics, listened to all the best sales blogs. I just said, okay, well, if somebody was doing this full time, what would they do if they were the best at it. And I just tried to do that really fast. So it's not necessarily about being the best in the company, it was about being the best at whatever I was being asked to do. Because that kind of effort usually pays off.

Callan Harrington  06:33

So what are the results of that? I'm actually curious in particular about, you didn't do any sales, you read all the books, read all the blogs, listen to the podcasts. What impact did that have?

Nick Sadler  06:44

I don't think I'm a very good salesperson still. I think I'm- by learning that, I learned the process of sales, the way to create value, the way to have a conversation transparently, but consultatively. And that helped us with relationships, that's helped the company with hiring salespeople. I think I've hired some really good salespeople, who do it better than me, because I knew what I was looking for and what the type of sales process needed to be. But results wise, I mean, the company's done pretty good. The last couple years, we've had our last month actually, March was our best month of sales and revenue. But I don't think I'm the best salesperson. I think I'm a pretty good salesperson that knows enough about it to hire really good people that are better at it.

Callan Harrington  07:28

I'm curious, how do you think that learning- not so much just sales in particular, but learning an aspect that wasn't a strength? How do you think that that impacted you as a CEO?

Nick Sadler  07:40

I think a lot. I was just saying this to somebody who's also been a CEO in our industry, CEOs are never, or shouldn't be, the smartest people in the room. Because if you are, then you're the reason why things aren't getting done. So the CEO is supposed to be more of an organizer of really talented people, and know enough to ask really good questions, but then everyone else be smarter to solve those questions. And so I think there's an ego thing that if you think you're the best at everything, you're probably not actually very good at a lot of things. And I've always tried to keep my ego out of the chair that I sit in, and always think I can be better, or somebody else can do this better. But my job is to make sure that I get those resources into this company so that it can be the best.

Callan Harrington  08:30

Do you have an example of that, by chance?

Nick Sadler  08:32

So my CTO would probably be a better CEO than I am. And three years ago, we had that conversation, we've had that conversation a lot. His name's Jeff, he's worked for the company since it was founded. He's been CEO of other companies. And he's super intelligent, super good at strategy, but he's also way smarter than me at technology and a vision for this company from a technical perspective. And so I never feel like I have to out-strategy him on tech. But I ask him really hard questions about how is he thinking about this and making sure that he disseminates that vision, or that a thing that's happening or a trend that's going on in our industry, making sure that we convey that to our team and how we're addressing that. So our customers know as well. So I'm definitely not the best. You know, I can't be the the CTO, I'm not the best salesperson, but I learned enough, I pay attention enough, and I try hard enough to ask questions, so that those people that are smarter than me can do the work.

Callan Harrington  09:30

What are some of those tactics that you use? I think that's a great call out, in that you can't be afraid to challenge somebody. But in order to challenge somebody, you've got to be on your game. If you ask a question that just doesn't make any sense, they're going to know that you put no work into this. What are some of the things that you do to prepare yourself for that?

Nick Sadler  09:50

Ton of reading, a ton of- I mean, I don't have as much time as I used to. I've got two kids, and most of my day is spent in meetings instead of reading, but, you know, really just having a lot of conversations, understanding what's going on with our customers, what's going on with our team internally, what our core vision and mission is for this year, and how we're going to try and execute it. And then just paying attention to what's going on outside of our walls. All of that, my job is to essentially find trends, and find information that I think will benefit this company, and ask questions about how we're thinking about it, and make sure that we're constantly striving to do more for our customers. And so I don't know if that answered your question really, but...

Callan Harrington  10:33

No, I think it does. And you know, we were even talking before this about how big of an impact kind of reading is, and just like, being able to model a lot of what kind of other people have done. Because I think one of the biggest things I found, nobody knows what the hell they're doing when they're first kind of taking into these roles, or even when you- like, for me every notch up that I got higher, it was more of a, I have no idea what I'm doing. I just got to figure this out. And I took a very similar approach to you, which I can empathize with. Where did your career start out just in general?

Nick Sadler  11:03

So when I was- I actually got fired at one of my first real jobs. I was doing valet in college for the Renaissance. And I scratched a car on like week two, and got fired. And that led me- so this is kind of a weird story. But that led me to my job doing security for arena football at Nationwide Arena. That led me to- I impressed my supervisor enough with how I did my job, that he hired me to be an intern full time for the summer at the Ohio Department of Youth Services. And so I started working in the MIS office, the tech office, for the Department of Youth Services, who supports all the juvenile detention schools and centers with their technology. And so I did that for a summer job for one whole summer. And I ended up being there for four years. Interned for two years during college, and then after college, I worked there for two years full time on two different projects. And then in that space, the people I worked with, again, this just kind of goes back to like every time I've ever done something, I've impressed somebody who got me my next job. One of my good friends that I met there, he went to work for Nationwide from Department of Youth Services. And then when my grant funding ran out at the Department of Youth Services, I was actually unemployed for a couple weeks. And then he got me into a job interview for Nationwide Insurance. And so he kind of vouched for me, my resume, I didn't even apply, my resume just got to the top of somebody's desk. And they called me and said, oh, we're calling for an interview for this job that you applied for. I was like, can you tell me what job I'm- So it kind of started with, luckily falling into technology, which I was always kind of a fanboy of, like, I did stuff on my own at home. But I learned at Department of Youth Services, how technology drives learning and education and business. And then at Nationwide, I learned even more about how big business, big companies have two thousand applications that run their business. And I just really fell in love with the idea of being able to dive in deeper with technology and how it helps drive businesses and people forward. And so that's kind of how I got into this realm.

Callan Harrington  13:16

So one of the things I'd love to kind of go into a little bit deeper on is, you know, this has been a consistent theme of, you know, I was able to impress such and such, and so much to the point where they threw you in an application that you didn't even apply for. What were the things that you did in order to do that? What were some of those common themes of? Or what were the things that they said to you of, Nick, that was like, I saw that you did that, I noticed that, whatever that may be?

Nick Sadler  13:42

I don't think this is like uniquely me, and there's a lot of people that do this, but I think that I've always tried to do is, if I'm going to do something, just be the best I can at it. So don't just phone it in. If you're gonna go check bags at the arena for security reasons, do it with a smile, make people not hate you, like, just give it your best. Take it seriously, you're there to work, do it well, do it with a smile. And then always say yes when someone is asking for something else to get done. Like, the words "that's not my job." I've never said that. I've never told anyone "that's not my job." I will never say that to anyone. What do you need me to do? I'll do it. Do I know how to do it? Nope. I'll ask, I'll learn, I'll figure it out. So that constant just wanting to learn, wanting to do more, wanting to add more value outside of what I'm currently asked to do, I think is the thing that has always kind of edged me up for people to notice.

Callan Harrington  14:45

I got a question around that. How do you balance that now in your current role? To be more specific, how do you balance getting into the weeds on a specific thing versus working on those higher level items that may not move the needle for a couple years?

Nick Sadler  15:06

Yeah, it's really hard. And we actually, we had a- our leadership team, our executive team, last year, we said- we had a whole annual initiative around scaling up our team, so that we could get a little bit out of the weeds, and start thinking more strategic and doing more of the high level stuff. So I think the number one thing that's helped me get a little bit out of the weeds, and I'm still very much in the weeds and a few things, and I love diving into those and just like owning that for a couple months, and then elevating somebody else to take over. But generally speaking, you have to have somebody who you can delegate to, and to delegate to somebody, you need to trust that they're going to make really good decisions, and know when they don't know what they don't know, to bring you. And we've got a great staff. Our employees are phenomenal. So part of my job when I'm in the weeds is to constantly think about how do I get myself out? So for instance, right now, I'm managing our internal sales team for BillboardsIn. And we met in March as a leadership team for what we're going to do in Q2, and we said, well, Nick's not ready to pull himself out yet, but what do we got to do to get there? And essentially, it's we need to have some consistent results, and then enough delegation available to pull me out. And when that happens, I'll take on the next thing, and we'll have that conversation.

Callan Harrington  16:31

So in this situation in particular is that- does pulling you out mean hiring a sales manager, essentially?

Nick Sadler  16:38

Maybe. I honestly, I much prefer to elevate people, than hire from outside. When you hire somebody from outside, especially for roles that might not be as well defined, or- we're not like- we have thirty-two employees, we're not like 100 employees with everyone's a specialist, and everyone has an exact thing figured out, and all of our processes are dialed in. Like we're constantly tweaking what we're doing on a sales front, and as a support front, for our customers. So I don't feel like somebody from the outside will get that, and be able to take that and run with it, as well as somebody who's been here for a year or two and understands how much we try a thing, see if it works, then change the thing again. And so I much prefer to elevate people from a different role, or operations role in sales management, or a salesperson in the sales management, than hire from outside.

Callan Harrington  17:30

So switching gears a little bit, what did you start out doing at DOmedia, just in general?

Nick Sadler  17:34

So I started as a project manager or product manager. So literally, my first year, my first day on the job was in Chicago with our core customer, having them whiteboard for eight hours, what this new system needs to do to manage their processes better. So we had taken on about half of their workflow was in our current system, and the other half was in a different system, and they wanted it to be all one system. And so it was a natural. It's one of those best things that you can have as a business, which is your customers telling you to do more for them. But my first day, I knew nothing about home media, I knew nothing about DOmedia, I was actually still employed at Nationwide when I jumped on a plane to go to this, because it was such an important meeting for my next year's role. And I started, I just worked all year on turning requirements for our customers into a, what's called a functional spec, for developers to then write the code, and then turning that code and when it got turned over to me to test it, and then trained the customers on how to use it. So it was a whole big year long project to double the size of our technology stack.

Callan Harrington  18:42

Gotcha. So were you in a product manager role before going into the CEO role? Or what did that look like?

Nick Sadler  18:49

At that point, you could call it product owner. We kind of moved me out of the technology and into running the business unit that we call BillboardsIn.com. We started five years ago, this February, I launched it with two other people. But I was like the CEO of that product. Like I had to stand up a team, marketing, manage a budget. It was like being the CEO of that product and reporting to the CEO. And we ran that, I did that for a year and a half. Yeah, a year and a half, before becoming CEO. So I was hiring people, changing processes, working with our suppliers, figuring out how to, you know, build this marketplace of local e-commerce out of home media buyers, connecting with our suppliers and making sure there was enough inventory available in our system to sell. So I was kind of the CEO of that business unit for a year and a half.

Callan Harrington  19:45

How did the conversation about becoming CEO come up? What did that look like?

Nick Sadler  19:50

Yeah, so our previous CEO, Ken Ceylon, he was amazing. He was CEO for ten years, hired me in, and he was looking for a little bit of a more of a strategic role instead of operational. Like we had so much going on, we had three core products, we were launching into Canada, we were trying to raise money. It was just- it was a lot. It was a big job. And he was starting to get a little bit tired of it and wanted to be more of chairman of the board and strategic. So a couple months before the switchover, our current chairman at the time, Rich Langdale, approached me and talked to me about like, you know, what would you do differently? How do you see the vision of this company? And at the end of the day, the biggest thing is, I had a very big passion for what this company could be. But I'm not that big visionary, like, Rich and like other CEOs have these really big exciting, like, they just get really excited about everything, like, they can think ten years down the road, and that's what's driving them. And more than anything, I was driven by, like, here's what I know I can do in the next two years. Like, I know I can do these things, and that this company can be excellent. And Rich said, okay, well, I think he can do this. He knows all of our customers, he knows all of our products, he knows all of our technology, the team likes him. The only thing he's not good at is being like a visionary CEO, who understands how to manage the board and raise money. And so Rich and Ken stayed on in a very active role, to help me manage those things, while I continued to run the business and try and grow the business.

Callan Harrington  21:25

How do you think this went, if you didn't have that support system?

Nick Sadler  21:28

Oh, miserably hard. I mean, there's no way that I could have gotten the turnaround of the company the way it has the last three years, and set us up to be in this kind of dominant position to take on what we're doing, without that very tied into what we're doing help. You know, I say all the time, like there's no way you could be a first time CEO, and first time company. Like to move into a company and be a first time CEO, not understand the industry, not understand the team, not understand the culture, and have to be a CEO who manages the board, the vision, all that stuff, it'd be impossibly hard.

Callan Harrington  22:10

What were some of those early stumbling points for you that were some of those areas where you needed more coaching, and you got great coaching out of it?

Nick Sadler  22:17

I think, when I took over, we were kind of in a little bit of a crisis mode, we had our back against the wall, like we had to do a little bit of- We had a lot of different things that we were trying to do. And we had to stop doing some of those things that weren't working and create this focus. And I think I did a really good job in the first couple of months, six months, seven months, of generating that just like very strict focus. As things started getting better, everyone wanted us to do more, and more, and more, and different things. And the number one thing that was hard for me at that point was keeping that focus. Like what was working for us as a company was that focus and energy on a couple core things that we knew that we could do well. But as you start getting success, and as things start opening up, and you start having conversations with more people, you're like, well, we should be doing this, everyone else is doing this, and they're making a lot of money. Or the industry is moving in this direction, we should shift real fast and put a bunch of money into this. And it was hard for me to not want to do those things, because I believe so much in what our team could do. But then every time we kind of tried to do a little bit too much, it was very obvious that we needed to pull back and create that focus. So I was getting a lot of help on, you know, a healthy push from our board on do more, but also a healthy push on, stay focused, and try and figure out where you can be the most dominant.

Callan Harrington  23:42

I'm excited to dive into this, because I would tell you the number one thing that gets said, and it's something I firmly believe in, as well, is in those early days, it's all about pure focus. And I think what I mean is focus on ideal customer profile, focus on your core offering that you're doing. And in the past, when I've deviated from that focus too early to pursue something else, it's I've slowed down my growth. Do you have any examples of how you balance that specifically? How you how you balance that being laser focused, and also being strategic and kind of building into what that next thing is when that time came?

Nick Sadler  24:22

Yeah, so right now, actually, when COVID hit, our industry went through a major shift that we all felt in a negative way at first, and then realized how that was going to generate positive outcomes for this company because of our focus. And what it was is budgets were getting pulled out, marketers were spending way less money on billboards and advertising. But when they wanted to spend money, they wanted to spend it in a way that they could stop spending it quickly or pull it out. And that brought the realm of programmatic digital out-of-home media, and programmatic digital out-of-home media is like- it's just like buying, or it's supposed to be just like buying Facebook ads where it's like, it's not guaranteed to run, but here's my daily budget. And there was a huge boom for that during COVID, because budgets wanted to be more flexible, and they wanted to turn it on and turn it off faster. But a lot of people were throwing a bunch of money at it, at that time, to try and catch up, just like everyone was spending money on Zoom and other things to try and generate this new digital age. And what we said is, every single thing that digital programmatic, all the value that everyone's going to digital programmatic for, is exactly what our core mission is for all of out-of-home media. It doesn't have to be just digital out-of-home media, it can be static, it can be every single asset should have this, because of our technology. And so one of the challenges was like everyone's like, why aren't you doing programmatic? They literally asked us, every investor, why aren't you doing programmatic out-of-home ? And we said we are, we're just not doing it the way that all these people are, because we're going to win all of out-of-home media, not just a fraction of the market. And at the time, everyone was like, no, no, you should be doing it this way. And so we stuck to our guns, and we said, no, everyone's- there's nobody that has a clear dominant position like we do for the traditional portion of this media to automate everything, to make the entire medium easier to access and to buy. Everyone's focused on just these digital assets, we can do it for every asset. And we focused on it, everyone else got distracted. Now all those people are looking to us and saying like, oh, shoot, we really need to be doing what you're doing. And we're like, okay, well, it's really easy for us to just do what you're doing now. It's really easy to bring that part of what you've been focused on and spent a bunch of money on, into what we're doing. And so right now, it's really paying off for us on staying focused to what we knew was right, what we knew the core, like, path was for this industry, versus that shiny object because things have shifted in the short run.

Callan Harrington  27:02

Where'd that confidence come from to make- that sounds to me like a pretty big bet. Where did that confidence come from to make that bet?

Nick Sadler  27:06

It sounds more confident now probably because we know we're right, a little bit more than we did three years ago. So I would say that I was trying to sound confident, but I was getting questioned even from our own shareholders. I think the confidence kept coming from constantly asking ourselves internally, would another CEO come in and do this differently? Would another leadership team come in and just totally abandon our vision? Or would they say here's our vision, and we're on the right track? And we ask ourselves that every quarter, literally every quarter we meet and we're like, okay, are we doing- are we living up to our vision? Are we doing the right things this quarter to keep going towards a world where all of out-of-home media is easier to buy, easier to sell, and easier to access? And what we said, we kept telling ourselves like, look, we might be all idiots, we might get fired, and we might be wrong. But we keep asking ourselves this question, and we think we're right. So don't listen to everyone else. And at the end of the day, we knew that we weren't taking some big gamble, like what we were doing was going to need to happen. It's just whether or not everyone else would agree, and in what timeframe. So we you know that you have to automate this industry to make it more accessible. You know that there's certain pieces of technology that need to exist to make it a better medium for advertisers. And just do those things. It's hard. It takes a long time. But just do those things. Someone's going to do it. Why not us? Why shouldn't it be us?

Callan Harrington  28:37

So you mentioned looking at this quarterly, annually? Do you have a process in place for how you go about doing that?

Nick Sadler  28:42

Yeah, so we actually, and I suggest everyone follows some sort of process, but we follow the Verne Harnish scaling up methodology, which is one of three major ones. Like there's OKRs, and EOS, are also good ones. But every year in December, we set what our one year goals are for next year to level up the company. Like, there's obviously your standard operating practices, like you're never going to just stop- you typically don't stop doing something that's working. But you need to level up in other ways. And so we focus our annual goals on how we're going to level up what we're already doing. And then we set quarterly goals and themes and a reward around hitting those goals for the quarter. So how do we, in Q1, make a quarter's worth of work towards our annual goal? And then we get together at the end of Q1, and we do the same thing. Do our annual goals still align with our annual initiatives? Anything changed? Any new information? How did we do on our quarter one goals? Now what does that set us up for to do in Q2 to continue to make one quarter's worth of progress to our annual goals?

Callan Harrington  28:56

So you mentioned rewards in particular. I'm curious about this. What do you find to be some of the- this is gonna sound dumb- but what do you find to be the most rewarding rewards? Where people look at that and are like, okay, I want to hit this. And why is that reward important, just in general?

Nick Sadler  30:06

Yeah. So there's a couple of things. One is, I will say that the rewards- I don't necessarily know that it changes everyone's work ethic, right? Like, everyone wants to work hard. We hire only A-players, we want people to be competitive, whether there's like some shiny little thing at the end of the quarter or not. The rewards and the themes are more just to have fun around it, make sure that we're celebrating our successes, taking time to enjoy the team, get them together once a quarter no matter what. So I would say that it's not necessarily a core driver for working hard. But you want it to be nice enough that someone's like, oh, man, I'm upset that I missed that. And so what we found is like, there's a balance between something that you learn, something that you do that's fun, and then something that you can take home and always remember, like, oh, that's from that quarter. So this past quarter, we just went to the Groovy Plant Ranch, north of town, and everyone got to pick out and learn how to pot a multi-tiered indoor plant. And then we did that. And so they got to take a plant home, and they'll be able to look at that plant, take it to their significant others and be like, look at this cool plant that I, like, I did this, and I didn't know how to do this before today. Then we went and got beers, and food, and celebrated, and they all got a book about learning how to plant a vegetable garden at home. So what we've really realized in the last year is that there's something around learning or putting yourself in a position to do something that you would have not done without the company. So last year, we did rock climbing for one quarter. And I was really nervous, because, like, not everyone's athletic. Not everyone cares about rock climbing or like doing athletic things. But we found that everyone leaned in really hard, and tried really hard, even if they weren't good at it. And they just really enjoyed the process of trying something that they would have never thought to try. And then one of the cooler one's last year, we did take the team up to Cedar Point for a day. And that was, you know, they didn't get a lot to take home from that. There's like one t-shirt that we all wore, like looked really nerdy together. But a lot of it's around creating memories, connecting the team in a way that they wouldn't connect normally, around people they wouldn't normally talk to. And just making it something that they can remind themselves why they work so hard and who they work really hard around.

Callan Harrington  32:25

I love that. I never thought about the idea of tying that to something that they can take back with them. The only rule I learned is don't do a party bus. Single handedly. That gave me anxiety for months. It was great. Still talk about it. But I learned don't do a party bus.

Nick Sadler  32:35

Yeah, we like to do something non-drinking, and then incorporate a couple of drinks, and then let people know that okay, we're off the clock now, you guys can, if other people want to, go celebrate even harder. Go do that, Uber home, company pays for it, but like, we try not to encourage like some massive drinking fest.

Callan Harrington  32:59

Yeah. It doesn't always end well. It is a very high risk. Actually, I'm not even going to get into it. So I'm just kind of curious as, so you've been in the role now for four years. How has it changed? How have you changed as a person? And how have you changed as a CEO, having for years now into this position?

Nick Sadler  33:20

So the role has changed almost every quarter for me. I mean, when I started, we had a little bit of layoffs. The first six months was essentially just trying to make sure that we got the company, the people that were still here knew exactly what was expected of them, they were happy, that our customers were happy. And that whole six months was just a blur. Then COVID hit six months into my CEO gig. All the cash, all of our customers wanted to stop paying us, had to figure out a lot of legal stuff. Like I was reading the PPP documents at night, like literally word for word, so I could know it faster than my lawyer knew it. Then lost our first customer, our biggest customer, three months into COVID. So like that first year was just a whirlwind of just reacting. And I think I lost a couple of years of my life that year. But generally speaking, the thing that we kept going back to is the team was just phenomenal. The way that we functioned as a team, and as a group, and how aligned we were on what to do and what was important. You know, during COVID, we said, we can either lay off like 20% of our staff, because cash. We just felt like everyone was dealing with this cash crunch. It wasn't that our business was not functioning well. It's that nobody was paying us for the services that we'd rendered. So it was literally like, how do you make payroll? So a couple of us took almost no salaries in cash for a long time on the leadership team. And then the rest of the team agreed, and, surprisingly, actually thanked me for doing this, but we we cut everyone's salary by 20% and just said, this is permanent until we figure out when this is done. And instead of firing anyone, we kept the entire team, lowered salaries by 20%, and then, at the end of it, I actually had people like, tell me how awesome that was, that they weren't mad about losing 20% of their pay, they would have been more mad if they had to do a lot more work with the same pay, because we had to cut some really good team members that have been here for years. So that whole first year was just a mess. And it was it was a lot. But the core thing that helped us get through that was just that the team was already a team, we were already really well functioning together. So really happy that we could get through that. Year two was more about growth, like just trying to really, okay, year one was survival mode. Year two is like, let's figure out what we can really do now that things are stabilizing. And that was where it was more of a challenge to stay focused and not get too excited about other new revenue opportunities that haven't really come to fruition, or we think might, but they might not. So that one was a lot of like, really just building up a little bit of a team, but doing it slowly, methodically, making sure that we're not getting over our skis. And then year three has been really just a phenomenal year, so far, of taking what we learned, and being able to, like really see the success of the hard work that we put in six months ago right now. So it's always evolving. That's kind of been the evolution of the last couple years.

Callan Harrington  36:25

I love that. If you could have a conversation with your younger self, and that age is totally up to you, what would that conversation be? What advice would you give them?

Nick Sadler  36:38

So I would say the first thing that comes to mind is like when I was in college, and I was I think it was a junior, most of my friends in the business school either knew they wanted to be a marketer, or knew they wanted to be in finance, or knew they wanted to be an accountant. And I never, like at that time, I just kept thinking like, man, I suck. Like, I don't know what I want. I know, I like business. I know that. I want to make a big difference for a business by my contributions. But I just always felt like I was behind, because I didn't know what that looked like when everyone else I knew was like, I got a job. Here's the thing, like I'm going to start one week after I graduate. And so I'd probably tell that person, that was probably a little bit before I realized the convergence of IT in business, and how talking IT but being a business person was like, a really sweet spot for me. I'd probably tell that person to don't worry about it, keep learning as much as you can, engage in as much as you can. And the thing that I would tell them is that no one has ever been passionate about something without being engaged first. And that was the thing where I was- you kept reading these books, like, go do what you're passionate about. Find your passion. And I was like, well, I don't know what my passion is. My passion is like, business. Like there's a lot of things I can do with that. But I think now I realize that by being engaged in IT, doing a bunch of different jobs, figuring out what I didn't like to do, what I did like to do, it was a really cool career path. And so I think just I would tell that person, just keep engaging, keep trying, keep learning new things. Work hard. It'll all work out.

Callan Harrington  38:20

I can't think of a better place to wrap this up than right there. You gave so many good examples, advice on this, Nick, thanks for coming on the show.

Nick Sadler  38:27

Yeah, thanks for having me.

Callan Harrington  38:33

I hope you enjoyed Nick and I's conversation. If you work hard and stay focused, luck tends to find you. If you want to learn more about Nick, you could find him on LinkedIn in the show notes. Also, if you liked this episode, you could find me on LinkedIn to let me know. And if you really want to support the show, a review on Apple Podcast or Spotify is very much appreciated. Thanks for listening, and I'll see everybody next week.