Bill Tingle - CTO at Pods

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(Joel Beasley at 00:01:30) Now get excited because today we are talking to Bill Tingle, the CTO at PODS, and we discussed the importance of communicating your value, when to lead and when to follow, and why holding on to certainties is limiting and dangerous. All of this right here, right now on the Modern CTO podcast. Here we go. This is the Modern CTO podcast. This is fun.

(Bill Tingle at 00:02:05) Have you done any other in studio?

(Joel Beasley at 00:02:06) We did, yes. We've done one other one with Clickbooth. They're like a marketing company.

(Bill Tingle at 00:02:13) No.

(Joel Beasley at 00:02:14) They happen to be number one in the world and they're in Sarasota.

(Bill Tingle at 00:02:17) Oh, great.

(Joel Beasley at 00:02:17) For their niche. Whatever. Yeah, they do CPA marketing.

(Joel Beasley at 00:02:23) But they're really popular for it. And Janice had moved from another country over here as a CTO. He'd been CTO there for a while, and then he was driving in his Tesla. And the first week he was here, he just put in the word CTO into his podcast and up came our show.

(Joel Beasley at 00:02:42) And then he noticed that we were actually from here. And so he reached out and we ended up having him on the show. And then I find out he lives like a street down from me.

(Bill Tingle at 00:02:50) Isn't this a wild small world? Yeah. That's great.

(Joel Beasley at 00:02:53) Walking through my neighborhood, I'm like, that guy looks familiar.

(Bill Tingle at 00:02:55) Well, when I got the note from Chloe, I was like, what? And then I saw your LinkedIn. I'm like, where are they from? And then I'm like, I'd rather go there than do a Zoom session. Right?

(Bill Tingle at 00:03:08) I mean, there's something about being present with somebody. I mean, it's great that we have the capability to be remote and do video conferencing. I think that's wonderful, but it's not the same.

(Joel Beasley at 00:03:19) It's not the same.

(Bill Tingle at 00:03:20) It's not the same just because we're, biologically, whether it's limbic resonance or just the way that the energy with people when they're together, it's very different.

(Joel Beasley at 00:03:29) That was one of the things that stood out to me when I was reading through your notes.

(Bill Tingle at 00:03:33) Uh-huh.

(Joel Beasley at 00:03:34) I was just thinking, I think about a week ago, the physics of leadership, right?

(Bill Tingle at 00:03:41) Uh-huh.

(Joel Beasley at 00:03:41) And when I was reading through some of your stuff, you mix a lot of that in there. I really enjoyed that.

(Bill Tingle at 00:03:48) Yeah. I've been for years studying leadership. There's this great history of research and books and things around leadership. But probably since 2000, introducing sort of the biology, the human part of it, right?

(Bill Tingle at 00:04:06) And, you know, Daniel Pink had A Whole New Mind with left brain, right brain, which was interesting. And then I've always been interested in the brain and the mind, not at the scientific level necessarily, but just how it works because it's who we are, right? And then the other part of that is we live in language, and I think we take that for granted. And I remember years ago, I don't know if it was Napoleon Hill or someone. There was a book, The Power of Words, I think is what it was called. And I'm like, well, duh, you know, the power of words. But I started thinking more and more about we actually have language and we exist in language and we trigger each other in language. And if we didn't have that, what would life be like, right?

(Bill Tingle at 00:04:55) I mean, we give things names and we create—you talked about you're interested in electricity. Well, imagine what would that be like if you didn't have a language to talk or learn about electricity? So, yeah, there's a whole range of studies out there that I've brought to my own practices that have just been extremely helpful.

(Joel Beasley at 00:05:16) I always found—and I always say the word wrong—it's like anthropomorphism. It's basically when we assign inanimate objects personality types, or we imagine that they're like us, other objects, but they're not. Like, we do this with animals a lot.

(Bill Tingle at 00:05:31) Oh, yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:05:31) Right?

(Bill Tingle at 00:05:32) Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:05:32) And after I heard that, I guess that was one of the first things that started to open my mind to learning, because you can leverage that information, and it actually will help you in relationships and in the real world.

(Bill Tingle at 00:05:47) Mhmm. Yeah. I was just thinking about my dog. You know, I love to walk my dog in the morning and late at night. It's sort of one of my ways of relaxing and reflecting. And I watch my dog, how it operates. You know, it responds and it does certain things, but it doesn't have language. Now it understands my commands because it's a sort of pattern-recognizing creature.

(Bill Tingle at 00:06:13) But if I start having a conversation and saying other things, the dog's not going to do anything. He's just going to kind of tip his head and look at me. But it has similarities in its organization as we do. I mean, it has a stomach and ears and, you know. But then if you looked at the brain, clearly, the brain structure is organized. And so you say, okay, well, what's the structure of that and how can I work—how can I be with my dog, but I can't be the same way as I can with my wife or my children or anything like that because the prefrontal cortex isn't structured the same?

(Bill Tingle at 00:06:37) And then you look at humans and how we're structured and you think about, wow, it's amazing why, A, why we need each other to help each other, and B, what we're able to accomplish because of the way we're structured. And you start thinking about that. It's like, well, what are the limitations to what we can do?

(Bill Tingle at 00:07:06) And you've seen it over the last century and even more so over the last twenty years. It's just the acceleration of change and what we're able to accomplish as human beings working together. Because if we're all working in isolation, nothing's going to happen.

(Joel Beasley at 00:07:23) Yeah, the first time I became a team leader, I was real geeky. I love to build things, right? And I saw you have the coding background as well.

(Joel Beasley at 00:07:33) And so there was something so engaging about being able to solve the problem. It was addictive. I very much enjoyed it, getting the results, putting the work in. And then when I found out that you could work with a team and now you've amplified—

(Bill Tingle at 00:07:48) Oh, yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:07:49) And now you've got five, six people who are amazing and what you can do when you can motivate that team to achieve an outcome, now it's like all of the greatness from that but multiplied.

(Bill Tingle at 00:08:02) Oh, yeah. Yeah. It's far greater than the sum. I mean, what you can—and you've probably seen this—what four people can do even spread out throughout the world compared to an entire company at times, right? Where it's all about coordination and having intentions around what you're trying to produce and what your vision is and having the capabilities and the way that you interact together, it's amazing what can be produced versus alone. You know, I see some people—and nothing against that—I see people who are doing a startup and they're going alone. And there's no network.

(Bill Tingle at 00:08:43) There's no interconnection with anybody else. And you just see the loss of power because it's one person trying to do it. And I'm not disparaging that. I mean, I think all the power to that person who is writing that first set of code to create the next great, you know, the next Facebook or whatever. But at some time, Mark Zuckerberg did have other people that he worked with, right?

(Joel Beasley at 00:09:04) And, you know, I'd say for myself, I resonate with what you're talking about right now because I had built technologies and done it by myself. And then I had built technologies with a business partner, and he was running all the CEO type stuff. And then I realized through that that not only is the engineering side very dependent on relationships and people, but the sales and business side of actually getting what you built that's cool into the market is 100% dependent on your network and relationships and people. And so going at it yourself, it's like I enjoy the mission that I'm on, and I want to bring other people into it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:09:44) So this is very real to me because back in March of last year, it was myself and Jake, the producer. And we had this show, and then we ended up doing this leadership company, and now we have 11 people.

(Bill Tingle at 00:09:58) That's right.

(Joel Beasley at 00:09:58) And this is the first time that I've worked with people outside of engineering.

(Bill Tingle at 00:10:02) Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:10:03) So I had to learn sales. I had to learn all of this. And what I realized is that the money to be able to bring in people is so powerful and beneficial that I just severely underestimated what I could do with five people versus what I could do just working sixteen hours a day. It's hard in my mind. It would be hard if I even went back in the past to try to convince myself of how much of a multiplier you get and then how much you're going to need beyond that to serve the market.

(Bill Tingle at 00:10:37) Yeah. That's really good. And the thing I think about a lot is if you try to go alone and you're trying to do sales and marketing or finance accounting, whatever, well, what do you know about those domains? And how effective are you going to be and how long is it going to take to learn versus find somebody and pay them and be a follower of their leadership in that domain when you need to? This is one of the things about leading people in general. If as the leader, you think you have to know more than they knew about every domain, you're going to fail or be really ineffective versus, you know, I've got a head of security and I'm not a security expert. I know the fundamentals of what I need to know.

(Bill Tingle at 00:11:24) But in the moment, I'm following him because he understands it, right? And I think his interpretations are far better than mine in that regard. And so I choose to follow him in certain situations. In other situations, he follows me, and it's like a dance back and forth, right? And so for you, I would imagine it's the same thing where you've got a content person or Jake or whoever that knows what they know, and you're following them at any point in time. But at the end of the day, you're the one that constitutes the business mission and the purpose, and you're making sort of the higher level interpretations and driving the company, I would imagine.

(Joel Beasley at 00:11:56) Yeah. I had a conversation with my CPA, I think, the day before yesterday, and he was asking about some of the earlier entries because it's tax season.

(Bill Tingle at 00:12:08) Fun. Fun.

(Joel Beasley at 00:12:08) Yeah. Yeah. And so back when we started, it was just me and Jake. So he was saying, I think I see what you're trying to do here. And I said, look, I had no idea. I go, I saw a button that said book asset and put the computer in.

(Joel Beasley at 00:12:21) And then I realized that this whole accounting thing, it's like its own world.

(Bill Tingle at 00:12:25) Oh, yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:12:25) Like, you can't just buy QuickBooks like it's an app and just use it. Like, there's this whole entire profession behind it. And he laughed so hard. He's like, yes, there's an entire profession of accounting, and all we do is deal with how we book things and do accounting.

(Bill Tingle at 00:12:41) It's a whole different discourse. Yeah. You know, and it's funny how we think we can pick up a book, read it, and we got it, right? I talk to my team a lot about understanding versus knowledge. You know, it's like, well, yeah, we can all read a book over the weekend, but come in Monday morning, let's see how well you can write a Perl script or, you know, whatever it might be, right? It's like, well, yeah, you might be able to pass a test or regurgitate the information, but knowledge is the ability to produce an act and produce an outcome and how effective can you be.

(Bill Tingle at 00:13:10) And so that's where, well, that's why we need help. That's why when we pay people who've been through those discourses, like for you and your accountant.

(Joel Beasley at 00:13:17) Yes.

(Bill Tingle at 00:13:18) I get that. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:13:19) That's why the executives from Airbnb, Uber, or Twitter are so highly sought after. Because when you hire an early employee from there or someone that was in, you know that they saw it. You know that they went through it.

(Bill Tingle at 00:13:33) Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:13:33) They didn't read about it. They didn't study it in a master's program. They did it. And so now they come with a premium, this experience premium.

(Bill Tingle at 00:13:40) Yeah. Exactly. Good.

(Joel Beasley at 00:13:42) You started young. Your father was in business. You started working with him?

(Bill Tingle at 00:13:46) Yeah. That's kind of a funny story. I talk about it. It's sort of for me like a romantic story. And it wasn't a glamorous thing. My father, he was raised by two deaf parents. Okay. So, you know, definitely poverty. I mean, the things they could do to make money, very minimum wage. And so he saw early on that he wanted a better life.

(Bill Tingle at 00:14:07) And so he played college football. He got a scholarship because he was on a winning team, got a degree in chemistry, became a scientist. And he made pretty good money, but he knew it wasn't going to be enough, A, to buy company stock when it became available to him, and B, he was thinking about our college. And so he started a janitorial business. And so during the day, he worked his job, and at night, we would go and clean buildings.

(Bill Tingle at 00:14:38) So my first job was picking up cigarette butts. But over time, as he hired crews, I actually was running cleaning crews at a pretty young age. I couldn't even drive. And I remember.

(Bill Tingle at 00:14:54) And that was a really—I didn't have the distinctions back then, but I look back at how I was demonstrating leadership because I understood what the rules were and the practices and the requirements for what done was. And my dad was a stickler. You know, he would actually put on a glove and wipe down surfaces, and if there was anything, you had to get it clean, which I learned a lot about detail. But I learned at a very early age how to lead and how to coordinate and how to make interpretations of situations and know what the criteria was to be like, okay, the customer's gonna be satisfied. And again, I didn't use those words back then. But so that was sort of the beginning. And I think over time, I've always sort of gravitated to leadership just because I learned how to look at what's a situation and how to coordinate people around it. And in fact, I love software engineering. I love to code, but I kept getting put in management positions. And for a while, I thought, well, I must be really bad at writing code because they keep putting me in management positions. Maybe I was. But I really enjoyed it, and I finally surrendered. And I said, okay, enough's enough. I'm gonna be a manager or a leader. And then I was trying to use my common sense and all that I learned, and I realized, you know, like anything, you gotta study it. You know, just because you're in management, just like marriage, right? We were never taught how to be a husband or a father. Right? And it's like, well, there are places you can get help. And so anyway, that's sort of my little background and how I developed some perspective around it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:16:22) Yeah. Just like accounting, it's a field of study. And when you go in there, there's unbelievable amounts of resources, and then you start to notice trends between the different authors and sort of develop your own leadership style.

(Bill Tingle at 00:16:35) Mhmm.

(Joel Beasley at 00:16:35) One of the things that I really enjoyed that you said was you understood what done meant. Because that is something that software struggles with. It's the definition of done. Right? So what is the definition of done at Pods?

(Bill Tingle at 00:16:52) Well, with regard to what? Software?

(Joel Beasley at 00:16:56) Software. Let's say that.

(Bill Tingle at 00:16:57) Software. Oh, okay. Well, so right now, we're building a new system.

(Joel Beasley at 00:17:02) Okay.

(Bill Tingle at 00:17:02) And it's massive. You know, it's a new—it's a new ERP system, but I wouldn't even say it's bigger than that. I'd like to think of it more as a new ecosystem. You know, so the foundation, we clearly have criteria that we can measure against for what done means on the initial launch. And it's quite a long list. You know, in fact, I would say there's probably 500 lines of checkpoints and criteria that we're gonna look at. But I think, you know, it has to start with a human who's gonna be touching the system. Right? I think that's one of the things—early on, you know, I mean, early on, I worked in real-time embedded software so that there were no humans involved. But the first time I was involved with human-centered systems, it all starts there. It's like, you know, how easy is it to use? Do they have to think? You know, I love the Krug book, Don't Make Me Think. And, you know, it all starts around user experience and no friction. And so I think the definition of done has to start with a human—who's getting utility and significant value from it. And then there's who's supporting it. And so done means, you know, does it—is it sustainable? Does it operate? Is it autonomous? Is it self-correcting maybe? So there's quite a bit that goes into that. But then—I was looking through your book, which I didn't realize you had a book for a while, and then I bought it on Kindle, by the way. So yeah, I'm a customer. And, uh, yeah, there's some good stuff in there. I thought it was great.

(Joel Beasley at 00:18:36) My first product.

(Bill Tingle at 00:18:38) Yeah. I did a pretty quick read and then some—there were some chapters that really just gripped me. Like the one on MVP, you know, and spaghetti code. I was like, oh, that's great. But the one—I think you had a section there around, which I totally believe in—I think you talked about perfect is the enemy of good or something like that, which, you know, that's kind of a popular phrase. But, you know, that's something you have to think about when you think about done because in some cases, you'll never get done. And there's always that last, what, you know, 10% or 15%, whatever the number is, that the return on the investment and the lost opportunity will just eat you alive if you don't really look out for it. So, you know, I probably didn't get as detailed in an answer there, but I do think, you know, done has to be criteria and good enough has to be there. And certainly, whoever's touching, in the case of a software system, whoever's touching it has to be satisfied. And it's not just the customer, but you start with the customer.

(Joel Beasley at 00:19:37) Yeah. So when the program is providing value to the end user. Right? It's not like when it just hits the development server.

(Bill Tingle at 00:19:45) Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. And I've seen some MVPs—what people call their MVP before—and my first thought is where's the utility? And so, to me, unless you just wanna build the infrastructure and the sort of the backbone and make sure that you have—if you want that approach of, you know, having a scalable infrastructure first, that's fine. And I think that's admirable. But if there's no utility, I don't see where the done is for my criteria. Now for their criteria, maybe that was done. You know?

(Joel Beasley at 00:20:18) Pods. How did you get involved? How did you find Pods?

(Bill Tingle at 00:20:22) Yeah. That's a great story. What a great company, and they've got just a wonderful history. So I was in St. Louis for about twenty years. Worked at Enterprise Rent-A-Car, family owned company. Just—people just have no idea what a phenomenal company that is and the culture and the growth and family owned and just—it's just a great story. So I had worked in about every area of IT there and I was not the CIO. They have a marvelous CIO there. And I was at that point where I had run every area and I was like, well, I'm ready to go run the whole thing myself. You know, I wanna go and, you know, Enterprise got pretty big. It was $20 billion in revenue when I left, and they had over 1.5 million cars in their fleet. And anyway, this is more about Pods. I decided after twenty years I was gonna go do something else. And I also—you know, my dad worked at the same company his entire career, which was admirable, but I wanted more variety. And so I decided to go out and started—I started talking to executive recruiters and networking and reaching out. I made a trip out to San Francisco and just started going up and down the valley. And I had some connections out there, and I thought, you know, maybe I'll—because my wife's from San Francisco.

(Joel Beasley at 00:21:43) Oh, okay.

(Bill Tingle at 00:21:44) Yeah. And so I thought, well, she'd like to move back out there. And then I realized this is a young place, and I don't—you know, I think age discrimination could be really alive and well there. And I don't know if that's true or not, but, you know, I did make some good connections. And then when I returned, my mom passed away, which might resonate with you. We have a similar background there. And it was—she had been ill, but it was a sudden death. And so I kinda put everything on hold. I just got kinda oriented, and I said, okay, I need to take care of my mom's estate, and this one's complicated. And I ran into a friend of mine who said, hey, you know, we're at this little software company we're working on, and it's a startup if you're interested. And I was like, well, you know what? For where I'm at right now, that'd be—I wouldn't mind doing that. And so I did that for a while, which was fun because I went back to writing code. I learned Swift and, you know—

(Joel Beasley at 00:22:38) Oh, nice.

(Bill Tingle at 00:22:39) And it was when I realized how rusty I was. You know? But it was fun. And I got my mom's estate organized. And then, of course, the St. Louis weather is brutal in the wintertime, and I was ready for someplace warm. And I kept getting these phone calls from companies in Minneapolis and Northern Wisconsin. And I'm like, I said I want some place warm.

(Joel Beasley at 00:23:01) Yes.

(Bill Tingle at 00:23:01) And I was walking down Central West End one day in St. Louis, and I get this call from an executive recruiter. And all I heard was Clearwater. And then I pictured sunshine. And then I said, now wait a minute, who's the company? And she said, Pods. And I said, oh my gosh. I know Pods. I love—I've used Pods. I love Pods. And so I interviewed—you know, came down to your—to—we're neighbors. Right? So I took Clearwater a couple interviews and learned their story. And I, of course, I knew about the—I had rented containers before, which was a great idea. But once I, you know, learned their story and their culture and met the leadership team and the people and, you know, it just felt really good. And, you know, it was sort of an entrepreneurial feel. And so I moved from St. Louis. I've been in the Midwest my whole life and have lived in the Tampa Bay area now for three years. Just had my third anniversary. So that's what brought me here.

(Joel Beasley at 00:24:03) I love it. I'm a native to Sarasota.

(Bill Tingle at 00:24:05) I heard that. Yeah. Sarasota. Yeah. So you grew up with Ringling Brothers and, you know?

(Joel Beasley at 00:24:10) Yeah. Yeah. And then my parents—or my father right now lives up in Clearwater.

(Bill Tingle at 00:24:15) Oh, nice.

(Joel Beasley at 00:24:15) Yeah. They have a weight loss clinic, bariatrics type thing.

(Bill Tingle at 00:24:19) Oh, very good.

(Joel Beasley at 00:24:20) Yeah. They exploded. They started three years ago. His new wife is a physician, and they opened this up. Now they have, like, 30 doctors and, like, they bought, like, a warehouse and renovated it to make it office space.

(Bill Tingle at 00:24:34) Very successful.

(Joel Beasley at 00:24:35) I know. I was like, that's so fast. They, like, do personalized medicine type stuff, and it's all very interesting.

(Bill Tingle at 00:24:45) Yeah. I think people, you know, society are just becoming more and more aware of the importance of health. And my wife and I are very conscious of it. Of course, we've both been very interested in nutrition and fitness and health and the brain. Now the brain—we've been really looking closely at the brain. My father died of Alzheimer's. And so ever since that, you know, of course, there can be some genetic markers there. And so I thought, okay, I'm gonna, you know, get in front of that and, you know, read a little bit about epigenetics and—you know, I'm not an expert on that, but I know that you can trigger genes. You know, you can trigger the genetics to on or off. And so take care, you know, take care. So, yeah. So I can see where that would take off. So good for your dad. That's awesome.

(Joel Beasley at 00:25:32) Have you done the, like, the ancestry DNA?

(Bill Tingle at 00:25:34) I did. Where are you from?

(Joel Beasley at 00:25:35) Where are you from?

(Bill Tingle at 00:25:36) You know, I did 23andMe. Yeah. And what I found puzzling is it asked me where I was from first.

(Joel Beasley at 00:25:44) I don't know.

(Bill Tingle at 00:25:44) I didn't understand that. Like, I—it's like, well, I'm not gonna tell you. You first tell me. Right. And, you know, and I'll tell you where I'm from. But I—it was validated that my family's from Wales. Okay. So a lot of European descent, a little bit of German. You know, I'm most certain I have Native American Indian. I mean, I remember spending time with my great-grandmother as a child in Oklahoma, and I just—I mean, it was very clear visually. She was, you know, Native American Indian, but that didn't show up. So I was surprised. Yeah. Same thing. How about you?

(Joel Beasley at 00:26:17) I was, like, 99% from Europe area. There was, like, two spots. They were really close to each other. And then 1% American Indian. So my grandmother looks like Pocahontas. Like, she looks like Indian. It just came out real fast apparently. So I don't know how it went from, like, her being all in—very Indian looking to to me being 1%, but it did. My—it was enough though for my brother—is actually when he went to med school, he registered. He has, like, a registered tribe and everything.

(Bill Tingle at 00:26:48) Oh, wow.

(Joel Beasley at 00:26:48) That's nice. I didn't go through the registration process.

(Bill Tingle at 00:26:50) That's really cool.

(Joel Beasley at 00:26:51) Yeah. Yeah.

(Bill Tingle at 00:26:52) That's—I find that fascinating. You know, my dad studied genealogy. It was fun to watch, like, pre-IBM PC. He did all this by hand and by mail. He would write letters to the Mormon church in Salt Lake City. And he would, like, reach out and, like, use U.S. postal mail to communicate with, you know, family members and relatives and build this family tree. And then he got the IBM PC in 1980, and he got this family tree software. And we used to treasure this database, like, oh my gosh, what if anything happens to this disk, you know, so we back it up. And then when, you know, because he had passed away and the family is like, well, who wants the PC? And I'm like, seems to me we can get at that data with, you know, the Internet and all of the sources that you have now. It's amazing what's available now.

(Joel Beasley at 00:27:49) Did you copy or transfer it over to, like, an ancestry type thing, or did you just leave it on the computer?

(Bill Tingle at 00:27:55) Nah. We just left it on the computer. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:27:57) You are the most well-prepared guest I've ever had.

(Bill Tingle at 00:28:01) All right. What do I get?

(Joel Beasley at 00:28:03) You get a copy of the book. These notes—I felt like you just sent me the outline for your leadership book. Like, this is—

(Bill Tingle at 00:28:11) All right. Let's work on it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:28:13) Is what—

(Bill Tingle at 00:28:13) Can you help me get published?

(Joel Beasley at 00:28:15) Yes. Yes. Learning, building a learning culture. Knowledge is different than understanding. I loved that. Right? I like how you separated this idea of, you know, book studies are accumulating knowledge. People feel like I read the book on rockets and now I'm a rocket scientist.

(Bill Tingle at 00:28:35) Yeah. Or it's entertainment—

(Joel Beasley at 00:28:38) Yes.

(Bill Tingle at 00:28:38) —which is okay. You know, I mean, if we say we're gonna—you know, say we're gonna get together, we're gonna read a book, and it's gonna be for pleasure, and that's our intention, I'm fine with that. But if you and I are—if we're gonna start a business and there's a certain book that's gonna give us some background understanding that we're gonna try to put to action to help us, well, that's different. Right?

(Bill Tingle at 00:28:57) And so, I mean, that's money. Yes. It's not just play.

(Joel Beasley at 00:29:02) You used a word I didn't know, so I always ask this.

(Bill Tingle at 00:29:05) Uh-huh.

(Joel Beasley at 00:29:06) What is this perturbation? Yeah. What's that?

(Bill Tingle at 00:29:09) Yeah. So perturbation is, biologically, it is your nervous system's response to an external interaction. Okay. So right now, you're getting perturbed by the light that's hitting your retina, right? And I don't, I'm not going to pretend like I'm a biologist. I mean, I—

(Joel Beasley at 00:29:34) We're going to put you on the show.

(Bill Tingle at 00:29:36) Yeah. No.

(Joel Beasley at 00:29:36) No biology.

(Bill Tingle at 00:29:37) No. So I take, you know, just like I'm interested in the brain, I take what I can from things. But so, like, you know how if you trigger somebody and they get upset with you, and like, you say something and they respond and they're upset, that was a perturbation against their nervous system.

(Joel Beasley at 00:29:52) Yeah. My dad used to say perturb.

(Bill Tingle at 00:29:54) You perturb me. Yeah. You trigger me. We live in perturbations all day long. I mean, that's how we—

(Joel Beasley at 00:30:03) It's like being affected by the world.

(Bill Tingle at 00:30:05) Yeah. I mean, yeah. So there's a group that I study with out in California that, just amazing people. But one of the books that we study is called The Tree of Knowledge. And I'm leading my management team. It's optional. They don't have to do it. I do have things I say are mandatory, but this one's optional. And I've got most people who are coming. But it's one of the most amazing books. I've read it four times, and I still don't feel like I know it. And it's one of those that'll, in fact, I'm on my second copy because the pages are falling out of the first one. It's just a classic. And it's a book on, it's a book on biology, but it's got biology. It's got linguistics, which gets into language. It's got Heideggerian philosophy, and it forms the basis for a lot of how I think and how I work. And, you know, if you take Daniel Pink's Right Brain, the whole new mind, it takes that concept, but it explodes it out from a biological perspective.

(Joel Beasley at 00:31:10) You're the third person that's brought that book up to me. Oh, really? So now it's going to go on my list.

(Bill Tingle at 00:31:14) You have to read it. Yes. You have to read it. Yeah. And it's, the thing about reading it is if you, as you read it, think about it as a business person.

(Joel Beasley at 00:31:23) Okay.

(Bill Tingle at 00:31:24) Not as like you're studying biology.

(Joel Beasley at 00:31:26) Got it.

(Bill Tingle at 00:31:26) Because it's, and then, like, the last chapter is just amazing. You know?

(Joel Beasley at 00:31:31) And you can use the analogies and the structures to apply to other things.

(Bill Tingle at 00:31:35) Yeah. And a lot of it is, like, one of the things that talks about this, and those people that have studied with me, the one, if there's one thing, one of the, like, say there's five things that they really hold on to and remember and use, one of them is that where people hold on to their certainties about things, and it's very dangerous and it's very limiting. And it's one of the things that I work to make sure I'm not holding on to. So, like, a certainty a long, long, long time ago was that the Earth is flat. Yes. Right? And we held that for a long—

(Joel Beasley at 00:32:09) And we were the center of the universe.

(Bill Tingle at 00:32:10) Right. Exactly. And there's, so then if you start thinking about that, it's like, well, where else are people being certain about the way things are? And so all day long, you know, I'm looking out for my own certainties. Like, where do I think I know? Like, one of the things the book talks about is they have, there's an early on, there's a little exercise you can do. And on the page, there's a plus sign and there's a dot. And if you stare at the plus sign and you bring it close to your face, at some point in time, the dot disappears. And what it's revealing is, and as you're reading it, the light, you know, is perturbing your eye. At some point in time, there's a spot in your eye where the optical nerve attaches and you can't, it's not sensitive to light. And it's basically, so when we talk about blind spots, I don't know if you knew this, but you actually have a blind spot because your eye is not possible. So then it's like if you say, well, as a human being, if that's the case with my eye, where else do I have blind spots?

(Joel Beasley at 00:33:16) Yeah.

(Bill Tingle at 00:33:16) And just being aware of that keeps you sort of nimble and open to what things might not be as they seem.

(Joel Beasley at 00:33:23) Yeah. It's like when we go somewhere for the first time, it feels like it takes a lot longer because it's all new data to us. Yeah. And when we go somewhere again, our brain's backfilling the surroundings and everything so that—

(Bill Tingle at 00:33:35) Yeah. Yeah. That's, I was just talking to somebody. We were in a meeting one day, we were like at the, a little chitchat at the beginning of the meeting. We were talking about how, you know, somebody, yeah, the older I get, time flies. And he said, you realize what that is. And I said, well, what is, why does time fly? He goes, because as you age, you experience less newness. And so it feels like time flies. As a child, every, you know, you've taken all these things in and it just seems slower. And so I don't know, I don't know about that. I'm pondering—

(Joel Beasley at 00:34:01) I have a better math one for that.

(Bill Tingle at 00:34:02) Yeah. Yeah. Because I was pondering on that. Like, why is that?

(Joel Beasley at 00:34:05) I thought you were going with my favorite one that I—

(Bill Tingle at 00:34:07) No. I'm interested in this.

(Joel Beasley at 00:34:09) Okay. So when you go from zero to one, and then you go from one to two, you relived a hundred percent of your life. But when you go to two to three, it's a less percentage. So every year is a less overall percentage of your entire life. And so it mathematically goes faster because of the amount, the way it's your perception of time. And so I actually built, when I was trying to, I was trying to stand out because I wanted some really cool job. This is probably about five years ago. And it was a job that was, like, better than I should be applying to. But to be creative and stand out, I built a time perception calculator because you perceive time differently than your children.

(Bill Tingle at 00:34:50) Uh-huh. Oh, yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:34:51) That's why everything seems so long and they're so impatient. Yeah. Because to them, they, for them, they just relived a larger portion of their life than you did in a day.

(Bill Tingle at 00:35:01) That's interesting.

(Joel Beasley at 00:35:02) Their day seems longer.

(Bill Tingle at 00:35:03) Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:35:03) And if you think back to your memory as a child, those days seem really long.

(Bill Tingle at 00:35:07) Yeah. I know. Yeah. You're like on and on forever.

(Joel Beasley at 00:35:09) Yeah. You just—

(Bill Tingle at 00:35:11) Wanted. But they haven't, the time hasn't changed a bit. It's still twenty-four hours.

(Joel Beasley at 00:35:13) Right. It's just our perception.

(Bill Tingle at 00:35:15) Well, yeah, the perception. You know, people say perception is reality, but that is so true.

(Joel Beasley at 00:35:19) Yeah. Yeah.

(Bill Tingle at 00:35:19) It is.

(Joel Beasley at 00:35:20) One of the things that stood out to me that instantly positioned you as one of my favorite leaders is that you put on your notes here, you help employees rise above this cloud paycheck mystery. Make it clear. You make it clear what the value is.

(Bill Tingle at 00:35:38) I try to. Yeah. And, you know, one of the challenges I find myself in is speaking to people's background, like, when I talk to people in a way that they really understand what I'm saying. And that sounds obvious. But, you know, so for example, let's say I knew nothing about computer science or computers at all, and I come and you're talking to me, you're going to speak, because you know I know nothing about computers, you're going to speak to me in a way that so I can kind of get it. But this concept that I'm talking about is challenging because I think we were all raised, unless you grew up an entrepreneur or you've actually been an entrepreneur. Like, when I was younger, I did all kinds of things to make money and somebody actually gave me cash. So if I wondered what my value was, it's like, in like one year, I sharpened people's skates. I used to work at a skating rink and I bought this device and I'd sharpen skates. And they would give me $20 or whatever it was. And I knew what the value was I offered because they felt like the sharpened skates were worth $20. But if you think about the corporate environment and you get, everybody's working, customers are buying product, revenue's coming in, we're spending money on new containers, money's going out. And at the end of the day, there's a surplus of cash, and then some of that's used to write paychecks. And, well, how do you know, so if I give somebody a paycheck, how do I know what the value is? I mean, how do I calculate the value of what they produced or what their offers were, or as like an entrepreneurial world. And so the one that, so I talk about that and talk about there is the market, and there is, you know, what Java software engineers are going to make or business analysts. But if you start thinking about yourself as an entrepreneur, even though you're in the corporate world and you think about the broader marketplace, like, forget the company you work at. Think of yourself as I can go make offers anywhere. What's the value of what you're doing? And how does what you're doing help the company? Because, like, one of the things I tell people is if I said, if you're in an elevator with the CEO and he asked, hey, what do you do? If you say I'm a business analyst or I'm a software engineer or I write Java, yeah, that's true from a tactical perspective. But what do you really do for the company? You know, oh, I write software so that our customers can get their containers as quickly as possible and the most easily way to take care of their needs around their moving or, you know, John, I'm helping you increase revenues for this company or I'm working on reducing our costs so that next year, our EBITDA is going to be better. That's what they care about. That's where the value is. And you're not getting a check because you're writing Java. And I think, and one of the things that I used to do, I did it at my last company, was, because one of the things we heard on employee feedback from employee surveys was, I don't know how I fit into the company. And I thought about that. I'm like, okay. How do I help people know how they fit in the company? Well, it's their value. Well, what's their value? And we actually had some breakout sessions during an all-hands where we all created value narratives. It's like, okay. You need an elevator speech and it's not I write Java. It's, you know, I am helping the company. I am helping customers take care of their transportation when their car is wrecked, you know, at Enterprise or whatever. And because, you know, if you think about the difference between money and currency, you know, currency is cash. And, yeah, you get a paycheck, but money is the value. Money is an exchange of the value. Right. So, anyway, I don't know if that makes sense. But that's, those are the, but it's, and a part of it is to get people to think out of the busyness of the workday and then more into, like, the actions that they're in to take care of whatever commitments and obligations that they have.

(Joel Beasley at 00:39:52) It's like with Pods, right? A lot of reasons people, or recurring reason, is moving their family. So you can almost build the story of the family who's going to, you know, they're upgrading, taking a more prosperous job and taking a big step in their career and you fit into that life cycle. So it's like I may be doing something with GPS coordinates, right, of tracking our pods as an engineer. But what that's really helping doing is reduce the cost of lost pods so that we can allow it to be more cost effective for families to take opportunities and be able to move across the country and improve their lives. And so if you connect your scripting back to that happening as a mental image, that it's not nonsense. It's reality. Like, that's why you're doing it. And so connecting your work back to the value that you bring the customer is incredibly important. It's motivating.

(Bill Tingle at 00:40:48) Yeah. And we often talk about, I think our mission statement, a big part of our mission statement is giving our customers peace of mind. Because if you've ever had anything in a container and you don't know where it's at, it's a little nerve-wracking, you know, especially—

(Joel Beasley at 00:41:03) You track containers? I just made that up. Yeah. Okay. Cool. Yeah.

(Bill Tingle at 00:41:05) And they're called containers, by the way. Right?

(Joel Beasley at 00:41:08) Not Kubernetes. Not pods.

(Bill Tingle at 00:41:09) Not, not pods. No. Yeah. Right. But yeah. And so if a customer cares about their belongings and knowing where they're at or they care about the driver showing up on time, then we need to take care of that customer concern.

(Joel Beasley at 00:41:25) Now you've said, you know what just triggered in my head. You've said that when you handed me one of these little toy containers.

(Bill Tingle at 00:41:32) Yes.

(Joel Beasley at 00:41:33) Right, that have the Pods logo in them. And now it's running, what can't stop looping through my mind is how Google kept asking people to stop Googling it because they were going to lose their trademark on it. Do you guys not want people calling the pods pods?

(Bill Tingle at 00:41:46) No.

(Joel Beasley at 00:41:47) Okay. Is that, is that, it's the trademark thing. Right?

(Bill Tingle at 00:41:50) It's the trademark thing. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:41:51) Because Google made this—

(Bill Tingle at 00:41:52) A lot of our competitors call their containers pods.

(Joel Beasley at 00:41:56) Do they really?

(Bill Tingle at 00:41:57) Well, legally, they don't know.

(Joel Beasley at 00:42:01) They don't know. Yeah.

(Bill Tingle at 00:42:02) Yeah. And because the pods stands for portable on-demand storage, and it's just coincidental that it's on the side of a white box container. And so people just naturally call it pods.

(Joel Beasley at 00:42:15) Got it.

(Bill Tingle at 00:42:16) Yeah. Which makes sense. I mean, you know, it's, you know, I think for years, people called Band-Aids Band-Aids.

(Joel Beasley at 00:42:22) Right. But—

(Bill Tingle at 00:42:22) It really was an adhesive strip.

(Joel Beasley at 00:42:24) Oh, wow. Yes.

(Bill Tingle at 00:42:25) Right? So, but from a branding perspective, it's wonderful. I mean, I think, you know, we've got a couple hundred thousand billboards moving around the country.

(Joel Beasley at 00:42:33) Right. Oh, that's something you think about that.

(Bill Tingle at 00:42:36) Yeah. My brother called me once. He goes, he goes, I'm glad you guys are doing good with your business, but I hope somebody will just take that white box off the, across the street that I have to look at every day. I think somebody's living in there now.

(Joel Beasley at 00:42:48) Oh, no. I saw one at Synapse. You were at Synapse then? Or did you know that there was one out front? Big container out front?

(Bill Tingle at 00:42:54) Yeah. Yeah. We also do commercial applications now. Oh, okay. We're getting, you know, we've been in it for a while, but that's kind of a focus area is focusing on commercial.

(Bill Tingle at 00:43:04) So, for example, a Walgreens might want to remove all of the fixtures in the cosmetic section, and over a weekend they can—we can put all the new fixtures in a container. We have steel containers. We're buying more steel containers and fill that in, prepare it with a kit, and then they can do it for a whole bunch of stores. And then all those containers can go out in the parking lots.

(Bill Tingle at 00:43:28) And over a weekend, Monday morning, they can have a whole new finish on the inside. And they take the old ones out and put them—we take them back. So that's just one application. But, you know, we're showing up at concerts for merchandise.

(Joel Beasley at 00:43:42) Oh, that's so nice.

(Bill Tingle at 00:43:44) And as the concert touring committee or groups move around, they run out of merchandise. And so the containers can always be filled with merchandise and sort of act as a staging inventory and mobile inventory.

(Joel Beasley at 00:43:58) Yeah, that's right.

(Bill Tingle at 00:44:00) Smart. I was explaining to somebody else where I work now, and they go, "Oh, you sell space and time." And I'm like, "Yes, we do, actually."

(Joel Beasley at 00:44:09) That's nice.

(Bill Tingle at 00:44:09) When you think about it. And then you start thinking about the different form factors that you can get into around that because it's convenience. I mean, we used to have pretty nice patio furniture back in St. Louis. I thought it was nice. You know, I spent a lot of money on it. And I didn't want to leave it outside over the wintertime because the mice get in and things. And there was a couple years I'd go get my son. We'd rent a U-Haul truck, go to the U-Haul, come back, load up, go to the fixed storage, come back, and just logistically, it was tough. And then I thought, you know, I'm going to try PODS and get containers. And it was wonderful because they brought it and put my patio furniture in, and then they took it and moved to put it in the storage center. It was just so much more convenient.

(Joel Beasley at 00:44:50) What's the size of PODS' technology organization?

(Bill Tingle at 00:44:56) We have about 70 employees right now, and we have about equal number of consultants, contractors right now because we're building a new system.

(Joel Beasley at 00:45:07) Oh, so you leverage them outside to build a new system?

(Bill Tingle at 00:45:10) Yeah. And then since I've been there, I think for a long time, it's been about half and half—half employees, half contractors.

(Joel Beasley at 00:45:17) So about 70 in IT, but then with your new systems, like 140?

(Bill Tingle at 00:45:21) Yeah. And then once this new system's done, it'll probably ramp down to—we'll probably always have about 20% contractor consultant, either because, you know, just flexibility or anytime you get new technology, you always want—I always want to bring help. Right? Anytime you do something the first time, it can be rough. And so—

(Joel Beasley at 00:45:39) I know.

(Bill Tingle at 00:45:40) Leverage the vendors. Right?

(Joel Beasley at 00:45:41) Leverage vendors. Leverage consultants. Find people that know what you don't know and bring them in.

(Bill Tingle at 00:45:45) Right. Yeah. And to do it right the first time, get the help. And so, yeah, I think that's why we'll always have some level of consulting or help in that regard.

(Joel Beasley at 00:45:55) I like the SCARF. I hadn't heard that before.

(Bill Tingle at 00:45:56) Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:45:58) David Rock. I haven't heard that before.

(Bill Tingle at 00:45:58) Heard of him?

(Joel Beasley at 00:45:59) No. But I'm going to look up all of these people now.

(Bill Tingle at 00:46:01) He's got a—I can't remember how I discovered him. He was key to forming a group called the NeuroLeadership Institute. And it was kind of a brain-based leadership. And he talks a little bit about this. He has a handbook. It's about that thick. I bought it and it's really interesting, really good. There's really good stuff in there. But what I like about what he and that group do is they don't discard what's been done. So Peter Drucker—

(Joel Beasley at 00:46:32) Oh, I love it.

(Bill Tingle at 00:46:32) You know, all of the greats around just historical traditional management leadership—this timeless fundamental, all good. You know, they're part of like the platform of leadership and management discourse. And then you have, you know, Daniel Pink comes along and there's the emotional intelligence. Daniel Goleman. Right? I think it's—

(Joel Beasley at 00:46:57) The emotional intelligence is like 2.0.

(Bill Tingle at 00:46:58) Yeah. I think it's Goleman. I can't—

(Joel Beasley at 00:47:00) I took it.

(Bill Tingle at 00:47:01) So you had this new layer on top that started getting into like the right side of the brain and emotion and conceptualizing. And for me, in addition to some of this other discourse that I'm in, the neuroleadership, they're bringing brain-based. And so SCARF is—I don't claim to be an expert in it, but it's been very helpful for me to know that we talked about perturbations. When we're triggered, and I'm sure you know this. When you're triggered, you can be triggered to fight or flight. I mean, that's primitive in our being. People can be triggered into fear, flight, or fight or engagement. And so in the workplace, if you think about motivating people and encouraging people and mobilizing people, you can shut them down or open them up to action. And SCARF stands for status, certainty, autonomy, relating, and what was the last—fairness.

(Joel Beasley at 00:48:07) This was not a quiz.

(Bill Tingle at 00:48:09) Yeah. Yeah. It's been a while since I looked at it. But it's just true. I mean, you know, people care about their status. They want certainty. Like, that's why people are like, "What's our vision? Where are we going?" And if they don't have that, they're uncomfortable.

(Joel Beasley at 00:48:24) Oh, fun point with that. It's a lot like taking a shower. You have to do it every day. The vision—just because you—it's not like a check mark. Like, "Oh, at this company, I have communicated the vision. Check. I've done my leadership task." It's like a constant thing.

(Bill Tingle at 00:48:45) And we forget that as leaders, don't we?

(Joel Beasley at 00:48:47) Yes.

(Bill Tingle at 00:48:48) One of my teachers says that if you don't—if you can't hold your vision statement in your mind and you don't have it like on the tip of your tongue in language, it doesn't exist. Yeah. So as soon as you lose—soon as you lose it, it's like goals or anything. You know, you write them down and you put them on the wall so you don't forget them because as soon as you forget them, they don't exist. And same thing with the vision. And if we don't—it's one of the reasons politicians say the same thing over and over again in their lobbying or their party or whatever they're doing or running for campaign is because they keep it in existence.

(Joel Beasley at 00:49:25) They keep it simple so it spreads.

(Bill Tingle at 00:49:26) Yep.

(Joel Beasley at 00:49:27) Yeah.

(Bill Tingle at 00:49:27) And that's what we have to do as leaders. Right? Autonomy. You know, if we don't empower people, they don't feel like they're in control and we're micromanaging. They're going to shut down, and they're not going to be as effective. Relating. You know, there's a lot of talk today that millennials need to be in groups and communities. That applies to everybody. We're socially oriented as human beings. It does not apply just to millennials. Right? It's like why?

(Joel Beasley at 00:49:57) They want to be in groups and tribes. It's like—

(Bill Tingle at 00:49:59) Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:50:00) That's what we do as people.

(Bill Tingle at 00:50:02) Yeah. And fairness—fairness to me is about consistency. Right? It doesn't mean equal portions for everybody. It just means I'm fair in the way I approach, the way I work with my team, and it's consistent. And then that builds trust too because they can trust that you're going to be consistent. You're going to do the right thing.

(Joel Beasley at 00:50:20) Yeah. That was the topic of this morning's conversation. I was down at the Ritz for chamber. It was like the annual chamber event, and they had a breakfast and this guest speaker who had built up Nextel—

(Bill Tingle at 00:50:33) Oh, wow.

(Joel Beasley at 00:50:33) As the COO and—

(Bill Tingle at 00:50:34) Oh, nice.

(Joel Beasley at 00:50:35) Some other companies. He's built two or three multibillion-dollar companies. And I was like, "Let's go listen to that guy."

(Bill Tingle at 00:50:41) Yeah. That's accomplishment.

(Joel Beasley at 00:50:43) Yep. Let's go listen. His first name is Joel. So somebody actually—a lawyer that had heard me speak at like an Ivy League event—messaged me and said, "Hey. This guy's name is Joel, and he's got the whole billionaire thing going on. I think you'd want to hear him speak. I have an extra ticket. Do you want to come?" And I said, "Yep." She's like, "Does it—do you—does it mind that it's like at 7 a.m., it's a breakfast?" I'm like, "Nope. I'm up at four or five in the morning."

(Bill Tingle at 00:51:05) It's about like—

(Joel Beasley at 00:51:06) I can be there. I'm an early person. Are you early?

(Bill Tingle at 00:51:10) I know. I really listened to one of your podcasts. You said you're early, and I think I was walking my dog listening to your podcast. And it was 5:30, and I thought, "Oh, Joel's already run by now." Because he says he runs in the morning.

(Joel Beasley at 00:51:21) I do. Yeah. I run in the morning. And when it's too cold, I have to go to the gym and run. Yeah. I prefer the outside run. Yeah. I like the outside run.

(Bill Tingle at 00:51:27) Yeah. When you get to see things and you get the fresh air. Yeah. And the only time I—I like—I don't mind—I don't run a lot. But if I do, I like to do—it's called—well, there's different names for it. What I'd heard it is Peak 8.

(Joel Beasley at 00:51:40) Okay.

(Bill Tingle at 00:51:41) And so I like to do that on treadmill just because I can get it over with quick. But it's basically like eight wind sprints for 30 seconds, but you take like 90 seconds in between.

(Joel Beasley at 00:51:52) That's cool.

(Bill Tingle at 00:51:53) It's like interval or there's other names for it. But—

(Joel Beasley at 00:51:53) Yeah. When I—for a while there, I was going to a spin class.

(Bill Tingle at 00:51:56) Mm-hmm.

(Joel Beasley at 00:51:56) And they have that concept of like, it's a lot of intensity in the whole first week and a lot of—

(Bill Tingle at 00:52:00) Good for your heart. Good for your brain.

(Joel Beasley at 00:52:02) Yeah. Yeah. I'll tell you what. I feel alive. Yeah. I feel really alive after my morning workouts.

(Bill Tingle at 00:52:07) You got a great story, by the way. Your car wreck? Do you ever talk about that?

(Joel Beasley at 00:52:12) You know, I don't talk about that on the show a lot. But did you see the video?

(Bill Tingle at 00:52:15) I haven't seen the video. Is it okay if I bring it up?

(Joel Beasley at 00:52:16) Yeah. I mean—

(Bill Tingle at 00:52:17) I just—I'm always—I mean, I'm fascinated by people's story, especially adversity and what they go through. And, dude, that's huge, what you went through and like how you went—like, and that's just—I mean, that stuff shapes you.

(Joel Beasley at 00:52:30) Yeah. So it was a garage sale day, January 20. And I was about like 10, between, I think, like 10, 11, 12-ish. And this girl sort of lost control of her car and hit me, and—

(Bill Tingle at 00:52:45) Oh, man.

(Joel Beasley at 00:52:46) My back—like, my legs and stuff went like under the back tires. And then I woke up, and they were drawing chalk around me because they were going to put me in the ambulance. And for the investigation, they have the tire marks and where the person—but like when they were drawing chalk around me, I was like, "Am I dead?"

(Bill Tingle at 00:52:59) Did you remember that?

(Joel Beasley at 00:53:00) Yeah.

(Bill Tingle at 00:53:01) You remembered?

(Joel Beasley at 00:53:02) I remember that. Yeah. Yeah.

(Bill Tingle at 00:53:04) Sometimes a shock of situations.

(Joel Beasley at 00:53:05) I wasn't in pain. That was the thing I remember most. Because I woke up and I just like, I was fine. And they—I saw them draw a chalk around. I was like, "What's going on?" And then they put me in the back of the ambulance and started driving. And it wasn't for probably like 10, 15 minutes before I felt the pain.

(Bill Tingle at 00:53:24) Oh, wow.

(Joel Beasley at 00:53:24) And they were putting like drugs in me because they're like, "He's going to feel it. Yeah. It's coming." They like tap on me like, "Are you feeling that?"

(Bill Tingle at 00:53:30) Isn't that amazing? The body and you couldn't feel it?

(Joel Beasley at 00:53:33) Like shut it off.

(Bill Tingle at 00:53:34) It's—I wish—that's creation's way of protecting—

(Joel Beasley at 00:53:37) Yeah.

(Bill Tingle at 00:53:37) You know, for the moment at least. Right?

(Joel Beasley at 00:53:39) Right. And so I was like, "Okay. Cool." People call it the word shock, but I wasn't like—I wasn't shocked. Like, it moved my nervous system that did something for me because I was like very conscious. Like, "I just got hit by a car, and I'm in the ambulance right now." So then I started rehab, and I was in the wheelchair for a while. Halfway through—I don't know if this is in the book—but halfway through my rehab, I fell and re-broke my leg.

(Bill Tingle at 00:54:05) Read that. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:54:05) Yeah. Okay. So I did put it in there.

(Bill Tingle at 00:54:06) Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You put it in there.

(Joel Beasley at 00:54:08) Yeah.

(Bill Tingle at 00:54:08) That was in there. Yeah. I got that part. I'm like, "Oh my God. Poor kid. You're going through this."

(Joel Beasley at 00:54:14) Yeah. So then, fell, broke my leg, got through it. It was really humbling, you know, having—going through puberty and then having like a nurse have to take care of you. Yeah. Like, that's—it's not like fantasy style. It's like embarrassing. Right? Like—and so doing the showers and all that stuff. Mhmm. So that taught me not to be a jerk. Right? Be nice and humble. And then, you know, I got fat.

(Bill Tingle at 00:54:41) I don't know—

(Joel Beasley at 00:54:41) If that was in the book. It was.

(Bill Tingle at 00:54:44) Yeah. So I got really fat. Weight?

(Joel Beasley at 00:54:45) Yeah. I put on a bunch of weight and then decided that, you know, it's high school, you know, late high school, and everyone was doing the dating thing, and I wasn't dating because I was big. And so it's like, "I want to experience that side of life." So I have this friend Caleb who was thin. And so I started mimicking him, mimicking his eating behaviors. I tried diets, but it was crashing and like it just wasn't working. Now I understand it's discipline. Anything works if you work it for long enough—

(Bill Tingle at 00:55:14) Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:55:14) With consistency. But at that point in time—

(Bill Tingle at 00:55:16) Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:55:17) It's like, "Let's just follow Caleb." And I did, and it worked, and it was great.

(Bill Tingle at 00:55:20) So—

(Joel Beasley at 00:55:20) That's great. Yeah.

(Bill Tingle at 00:55:21) That he was there for that. Right?

(Joel Beasley at 00:55:22) Right.

(Bill Tingle at 00:55:22) Yeah. I saw when I downloaded your book, there was a Beast audio. Is that yours too?

(Joel Beasley at 00:55:26) Oh, yes.

(Bill Tingle at 00:55:26) That's right there. What is that?

(Joel Beasley at 00:55:28) Well, I don't have a—fucking—get this. Okay.

(Bill Tingle at 00:55:30) Yeah. Yeah. Hopefully, Jake—Jake, if you're out there, you might—

(Joel Beasley at 00:55:34) No. You just brought it to the office.

(Bill Tingle at 00:55:37)
No, I didn't. I wasn't gonna talk to you first before I remember that. No.

(Joel Beasley at 00:55:42)
As a matter of fact, let me say I did this project as a consultant for this company, and they did some government work.

(Bill Tingle at 00:55:48)
So there—

(Joel Beasley at 00:55:49)
So there was, like, a lot of background investigation and stuff. It was a big project. And it's actually, like, two years ago, so probably a year after I did it. And they ended up replacing the conference line hold music with one of the tracks. And so when they had me come in to do one of this, like, conference call with some military, like, whatever, and it was the pre-music for it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:56:11)
Okay.

(Bill Tingle at 00:56:13)
And I—

(Joel Beasley at 00:56:14)
I was like, that's hilarious. I loved it. I have a brother-in-law who's a famous music producer.

(Bill Tingle at 00:56:19)
Oh, really?

(Joel Beasley at 00:56:19)
And so there's a song called, like, "Best Day of My Life." It's like—

(Bill Tingle at 00:56:23)
Do do do do do do.

(Joel Beasley at 00:56:23)
It's like, it was—who is the author? Oh, man. Now I don't know. I forget.

(Joel Beasley at 00:56:31)
Yeah. American Authors.

(Bill Tingle at 00:56:36)
Yeah. Yeah. I just played that last year at my niece's wedding. Oh, you did?

(Joel Beasley at 00:56:40)
You played it on the guitar?

(Bill Tingle at 00:56:42)
Yeah. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:56:42)
Oh, really? Yeah. So the banjo whole thing. So he made the song. He's the producer.

(Bill Tingle at 00:56:47)
Oh, nice.

(Joel Beasley at 00:56:48)
Yeah. So they found American Authors in Boston at some bar, and they had gotten together and they said, "Hey, you know, why don't you come up to Westchester where they live in New York and we'll record some stuff and we'll try to work it out."

(Bill Tingle at 00:57:03)
I—

(Joel Beasley at 00:57:03)
I found out the way they actually do these recording sessions is they come to his house, right, or their studio, and they spend three or four days together and they write an album. They put down the first version of the album. Then they slowly let people come in and do different parts and, like, the sort of—

(Bill Tingle at 00:57:18)
Start layering. Start layering.

(Joel Beasley at 00:57:18)
Yeah. They start layering it, having, they'll have, like, guest drummers—

(Bill Tingle at 00:57:22)
Come—

(Joel Beasley at 00:57:23)
Come in just to put it down or something. Yeah. And then they start—he adds a bunch of instruments, and he's like, the art is taking away. So they start taking away different parts. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:57:33)
Over at—and they couldn't get the song right. And then they were, like, stressing out about it and they're like, "Why don't we just flip that one to be a banjo?" Right? This, like, specific style of banjo. And they flipped it into the banjo, and they're like, "That's it. That's what's gonna make the song." That was something that, you know, wasn't—it wasn't originally in the song. It was in post-production. They switched it to a banjo. And, you know what's—

(Bill Tingle at 00:57:55)
Also interesting is—and we're, I know we're off-topic here.

(Joel Beasley at 00:57:57)
No. It's fine.

(Bill Tingle at 00:57:58)
What else is interesting is I have—I played guitar with a friend of mine. He was a country artist and working, you know, doing CD and that sort of thing. Went to Nashville and I didn't record on the CD, but I was in the studio with him and, you know, there's all these different musicians, you know, Carrie Underwood's fiddle player and all these people. And we were talking about how they record the core song and then they'll have tracks with instruments for country, like a fiddle and a steel guitar, a banjo. And then they'll do—they'll end up—they'll do additional tracks for the pop stations. You know? So electric guitar and a keyboard.

(Bill Tingle at 00:58:38)
And then so they do a track for the pop stations and they take out all of the sort of the country pixie dust. And then they kind of flip it for the other. And I just thought that was fascinating, just the way they're thinking about it's the same song.

(Joel Beasley at 00:58:52)
Yeah.

(Bill Tingle at 00:58:52)
Right? But it's two different sort of arrangements and for two different genres.

(Joel Beasley at 00:58:57)
Yeah. They and then they make—another fun fact that I like is, people who watch TV when they do, like, the little promo for a show that's gonna come out, it's like "Saturday, Saturday"—

(Bill Tingle at 00:59:07)
Yeah. Whatever.

(Joel Beasley at 00:59:08)
They actually have to make that, like, a song, and then they clip it out because there's, like, some licensing issue. So they actually will write a small song—

(Bill Tingle at 00:59:16)
I wondered about that.

(Joel Beasley at 00:59:17)
And specifically make it like that.

(Bill Tingle at 00:59:19)
Oh, yeah. Because I was wondering, like, "They're ripping off something here."

(Joel Beasley at 00:59:22)
Yeah.

(Bill Tingle at 00:59:22)
How are they doing it?

(Joel Beasley at 00:59:23)
Yeah. So you make it a song, and then they just clip that section of it. You can't just make the fifteen-second clip.

(Bill Tingle at 00:59:29)
Okay. And I—

(Joel Beasley at 00:59:29)
And I was like, well, that's cool because—

(Bill Tingle at 00:59:31)
Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:59:31)
They do stuff like Pepsi commercials. Yeah. It's also very—like, any area I go in life, I realize this, it's very relationship-driven. So there's great songs that they make, some songs that are better than others.

(Bill Tingle at 00:59:42)
Mm-hmm.

(Joel Beasley at 00:59:42)
But because of the relationships as the world is turning, people, favors and friends and like—

(Bill Tingle at 00:59:49)
It's all networks.

(Joel Beasley at 00:59:50)
It's all networks. And so sometimes the network is busy and they have a great song. And so it just doesn't—it doesn't happen. Yeah. Because having a great song and then having it get on the end of the consciousness of, like, society, two different things.

(Joel Beasley at 01:00:03)
Yeah. Yeah. So he was hanging out with me and we were like, "Hey. Let's—" I talk a lot and people, like my family and stuff, they'd say I'm very motivational, like, when I'm talking.

(Bill Tingle at 01:00:16)
So he's—

(Joel Beasley at 01:00:16)
Like, he's like—and I was writing at the time. I was just writing these motivational things for myself. Like—and he's like, "Oh, we should—we should record them. Like, let's just record a song." And I was like, "All right, cool." I was like, "I've never done this before." He's like, "Yeah. He's like, just take some of the things that you write." And, like, I think it was like a grandparent or some farther removed relative had passed away. So he flew down. So, "Let's just record some stuff." I'm like, "Okay. Let's do it."

(Bill Tingle at 01:00:36)
Oh, that's great.

(Joel Beasley at 01:00:37)
Yeah. And so it was fun. And so we just—we did that. And it comes up on my AirPods sometimes because it's in my Apple Music.

(Bill Tingle at 01:00:46)
Uh-huh.

(Joel Beasley at 01:00:47)
I make, like, $2,300 a month off of that.

(Bill Tingle at 01:00:51)
Well, I'll buy that too. I wanted to make sure I knew what it was before I bought it. Well, I didn't know if it was you. I mean, it had the same name. Right?

(Joel Beasley at 01:00:56)
Yeah. No. It's me.

(Bill Tingle at 01:00:57)
I figured it was.

(Joel Beasley at 01:00:58)
Oh, it's motivational, like, speeches, essentially. Like motivational things. Yeah. Yeah. And I would write them, like, while running on the treadmill or something or—

(Bill Tingle at 01:01:07)
Nice.

(Joel Beasley at 01:01:07)
Cooling down on the treadmill. But you gotta find ways to stay motivated. Because motivation is, like, it's ephemeral. Right?

(Bill Tingle at 01:01:13)
Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 01:01:14)
You know, one of the things I was actually—I started to do some writing about this. In fact, one of the things I was thinking about, probably three or four months ago, was the importance of bringing creativity, passion, art into the corporate environment. Like, if you watch an artist, whether it's an actor or a painter, musician, and you look at the passion and the intensity with what they do, if everybody in the corporate environment worked with that kind of passion and intention and creativity and discipline, can you imagine what the output of the company would be? And I'm not saying people aren't doing that or they don't intend, but it's kind of a concept. And so I was even thinking about—this, in fact, I actually bought the URL. I was thinking about playing around with this concept of the corporate artist. But when you hear that, it could—you might think, "Oh, somebody paints for company." Like, the way—well, how that perturbs somebody, like, "Well, what does that mean? Maybe not be it," but I was thinking there's something there that I'm interested in talking about.

(Joel Beasley at 01:02:23)
I believe that people have it inside of them.

(Bill Tingle at 01:02:25)
Mm-hmm.

(Joel Beasley at 01:02:26)
Often, they almost—it's like they need permission to express it. Like, I think more people feel like that inside.

(Bill Tingle at 01:02:32)
Mm-hmm. Well, there's something shutting them down. Yeah. You know, I talked about the SCARF model. I was like, "Well, what is it, fear? Is it belief you have to bridle it or filter it or whatever?" Where if people would just be their authentic self and be able to flourish naturally within the ethics of the—

(Joel Beasley at 01:02:52)
Yeah.

(Bill Tingle at 01:02:53)
Of the company or whatever. But that's the hard part.

(Joel Beasley at 01:02:57)
There's always advice and then there's the way people misinterpret. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No. But I liked when I was reading your notes about—if you create—one thing I do with my team is, like, specifically, I have Courtney. And she was reaching out and getting quotes from people and for this book we're putting together, like, 365 days of technology leadership quotes. And some people were writing longer stories and I was like, "Oh, just cut it down and find a good line—"

(Bill Tingle at 01:03:23)
In there—

(Joel Beasley at 01:03:23)
That you can use. You don't have to publish—

(Bill Tingle at 01:03:25)
The—

(Joel Beasley at 01:03:26)
The whole story. She's like, "But then I'm editing their work. Won't they be upset at me?" And I said, "If they do, I will take ownership of it. Like, you can say I did it or whatever. But by—" By constantly taking, and that happens a lot in little different situations.

(Bill Tingle at 01:03:39)
By—

(Joel Beasley at 01:03:40)
Letting them know that, "Look, if this comes back, I'll own it for you. It will not come back to you. I will—"

(Bill Tingle at 01:03:45)
You got—

(Joel Beasley at 01:03:46)
Your back. That creates the environment that they can do stuff.

(Bill Tingle at 01:03:49)
Yeah. That's really good. That's really good. And that's safety—

(Joel Beasley at 01:03:53)
For them. That's what I like about your writing.

(Bill Tingle at 01:03:55)
They can be freed up by that. That's really good.

(Joel Beasley at 01:03:57)
Yeah. It creates that environment. It's like, "Hey. You can make mistakes." Yeah. And it will never come back on you because that's what—

(Bill Tingle at 01:04:02)
People are so scared about. Yeah. That's good for you.

(Joel Beasley at 01:04:04)
Yeah. Yeah. This is—you're fantastic.

(Bill Tingle at 01:04:07)
What? You want to call my wife and tell her that?

(Joel Beasley at 01:04:10)
Yeah. I'll write a—

(Bill Tingle at 01:04:11)
Letter. My children. No. I was looking—I was looking forward to meeting you, and I, like, listened to a few of your podcasts and just your energy and your passion, your enthusiasm. It's contagious for sure. I'm sure you've heard that before.

(Joel Beasley at 01:04:25)
I love it. I just like getting to talk. Like, this is my job. And for me, that's unbelievable because I thought that I would have to, like—because I thought that I would have to pursue an—I didn't see it happening like this, and I thought it was a lot farther away than it was. And I stopped thinking about it. I stopped imagining it and instead took the time I was spending imagining it and just started taking one step, like, closer to it. Right? And so that is—I think my takeaway from this experience is that it takes less work and time than you would imagine. I know everyone says the opposite, like, it takes way more time. But if you replace all the time you spend daydreaming of a different future—

(Bill Tingle at 01:05:06)
Mm-hmm. And—

(Joel Beasley at 01:05:06)
Just replace that with taking action towards it.

(Bill Tingle at 01:05:09)
That's really good.

(Joel Beasley at 01:05:10)
It just happens.

(Bill Tingle at 01:05:10)
That's really good. You need to write that—get that off the cord. I think—

(Joel Beasley at 01:05:13)
I recorded it.

(Bill Tingle at 01:05:13)
Yeah. Yeah. You got that. Hopefully Jake didn't have the machine turned off. That was good.

(Joel Beasley at 01:05:19)
Oh, man. No. But that's what it was and it's changed everything and my entire life has changed in the past two years. Yeah. And, like, I like it. And so I'm excited about what's gonna happen over the next twenty years.

(Bill Tingle at 01:05:29)
What's your number one purpose for what you do?

(Joel Beasley at 01:05:32)
Right now?

(Bill Tingle at 01:05:33)
No. Just in life. Like, if somebody said you only—you have, like—I'm like, I'm not—I'm—it's my podcast. Not what I'm asking.

(Joel Beasley at 01:05:40)
Yeah. No. Bill Tingle Podcasts.

(Bill Tingle at 01:05:41)
No. Yeah. No. What—like, what—if somebody said you only—you can only say one thing, your, like, you're just your purpose in life, what would it be?

(Joel Beasley at 01:05:49)
Yeah. Helping, teaching people.

(Bill Tingle at 01:05:51)
Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 01:05:52)
It's by far the most selfish thing I can do. I get such a biological chemical reward from it. Yeah. It's—

(Bill Tingle at 01:06:00)
Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 01:06:00)
It's like, selfishly altruistic.

(Bill Tingle at 01:06:02)
Yeah. Yes. It is. I'm a huge fan of that concept because it's—you would think it's—I used to cringe at that when I would hear people say that. Like, "No." I used to be very dismissive. I used to be negative. I used to think the self-help stuff was nonsense and garbage.

(Joel Beasley at 01:06:17)
Mm-hmm.

(Bill Tingle at 01:06:17)
And it's because I grew up in this environment, and I don't know, no one specifically said it to me, but the feeling—

(Joel Beasley at 01:06:23)
Mm-hmm.

(Bill Tingle at 01:06:24)
Was that they're, you know, the not-good salespeople. Right? The motivational speaker is always just garbage. They're just gonna sell you stuff that's not true, and they're just there to sell books. They're just saying that hype.

(Joel Beasley at 01:06:36)
Mm-hmm. So I have this negativity about it, and I guess I got frustrated enough with not getting what I wanted out of life. I have a natural drive and I'm like, "Let's go try the one thing that I haven't tried in thirty years." I'm like, "Let's see if that works. Let's start taking the things that I'm certain about and questioning them." And I real quick found out that all that self-help stuff, incrementally improving yourself over time, that works.

(Bill Tingle at 01:07:04)
The real test is in the outcomes. Right? That's—I mean, if it's—if you say—because self-help's gotten a bad rap. Yeah. And there's probably a seeming cheesiness with some of it, I suppose.

(Joel Beasley at 01:07:16)
Mm-hmm. But for me, the real question is I'm open to all of it. The question is, what's it gonna produce? Unless it's entertaining, and that's okay.

(Bill Tingle at 01:07:23)
Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 01:07:24)
So if the end is I wanna be entertained, then okay. I've accomplished what I wanted to accomplish. But if, no, I wanna produce something and I can produce it, then call it self-help, call it knowledge. It doesn't matter. Right? It's like I'm producing something with this.

(Bill Tingle at 01:07:40)
Yeah. You just get frustrated enough to where it's like results. It's like I will—I even remember those moments. You know? I was thinking to myself, "What? Just—I just need to find something that works. Just, like, show me—show me something that works on, like, a physics level in business and in life. Like, I need something real." And then I started, you know, following some of the, like, Jim Rohn's people. Like, he was—I listened to Tony Robbins, like, "That's cool." But then I heard in one of his speeches that his mentor is Jim Rohn.

(Joel Beasley at 01:08:12)
Yeah. I don't—

(Bill Tingle at 01:08:13)
I'm not—I'm gonna put Tony Robbins over here. I'm gonna learn from his mentor. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 01:08:16)
And then—

(Bill Tingle at 01:08:16)
I learned Jim Rohn's mentor is this guy named Earl Nightingale. Oh. And then I started listening. He doesn't have much content because of it's—

(Joel Beasley at 01:08:23)
Dated.

(Bill Tingle at 01:08:23)
Yeah. Yeah. It's funny. I got—when I was—how old are you? Can I see you?

(Joel Beasley at 01:08:28)
31.

(Bill Tingle at 01:08:28)
31? Gosh. Gosh. I have to be 31 again. That's awesome.

(Bill Tingle at 01:08:31) You guys have done a lot at 31. That's congratulations for you. But I remember my late twenties and probably early thirties, I'd go to the library and I'd check out this package of cassettes. And it would be like Jim Rohn cassettes or, you know, the whole Nightingale Conant, right?

(Bill Tingle at 01:08:49) And I wasn't in sales. A lot of them were meant for salespeople, but I'd go check them out because there were ideas in there about how to get organized and how to treat people and what people's needs are and how to interact and how to, you know, like, whether it's influence—not manipulative influence, but just how to, I would say now, how to trigger people to action. But I remember I'd put those cassettes in, you know, and then I'd take them back and get another set of cassettes.

(Bill Tingle at 01:09:18) Of course, now you just download it off.

(Joel Beasley at 01:09:21) Every morning. Every morning. Yeah. I'm not kidding you. My alarm clock goes off.

(Joel Beasley at 01:09:25) I use this thing called Sleep Cycle that tracks my sleep and everything. And AirPods go in, and it's like, either Jocko, who's a Navy SEAL guy that has a podcast talking about discipline, or it's Jim Rohn or it's Les Brown. It depends on my day. Yeah. Sometimes I need some rah-rah speeches.

(Joel Beasley at 01:09:45) Sometimes I need some tactical things. And so I have my different people for my different things. And so, I mean, yeah, the word "self-help" does kind of have like a cheesy thing to it, but it works. And the moment you start getting into that orbit of that class of people, it's the rule.

(Joel Beasley at 01:10:04) Like, all the really successful people do it. Like, they all are reading those types of books and they're all, you know, it's just—it's like that's what works.

(Bill Tingle at 01:10:12) Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 01:10:13) Advice to your past self. Like, let's say, for like first-time leader advice, we have a lot of technologists that they're engineers. They've maybe been in the job for, you know, three years. They're pretty good at their technical craft. They want to make that transition to team lead. What would you tell them?

(Bill Tingle at 01:10:32) Find those people that are doing what you aspire to do. Make an assessment of if they're truly great or they're accomplished. Like, look for their accomplishment. Look for the person they are. Are they humble?

(Bill Tingle at 01:10:48) Are they open? Are they appreciative? And then on a nonstop basis, look for ways to help them and ask, you know, like, offer to help them. Look for what they need, the help they need, and just help them. Help them.

(Bill Tingle at 01:11:04) Help them. Help them. Help them. And not worry about what you get in return because, by coupling and interacting with those people, it's gonna shape you just like if you're listening to self-help. You know, it shapes you because you're coupling to that and do it with sincerity.

(Bill Tingle at 01:11:22) And, you know, I have people at work that do that, and they're always offering help. Sometimes it's, hey, can I get you a power strip and some flip charts on the way down to your meeting? And it's like, yes, thank you so much for doing that.

(Bill Tingle at 01:11:36) And they're—you know, sometimes it's not technology help or software help. It's just help. And to me, that would be one of the things.

(Joel Beasley at 01:11:46) That's what has made everything for me. Like, I do these helpful calls with people all the time.

(Bill Tingle at 01:11:52) Mhmm.

(Joel Beasley at 01:11:53) We call them micro-strategy calls.

(Bill Tingle at 01:11:55) And so,

(Joel Beasley at 01:11:56) I mean, I've got three of them today.

(Bill Tingle at 01:11:57) Yeah. Okay.

(Joel Beasley at 01:11:58) So I get on the phone with these people, CTOs of all shapes and sizes, and I let them ask me questions. And then I'll share if I have insight there. And if I don't, I'll connect them with someone in my database who would know that area. Like, for example, one guy just finished a round last week for $100 million.

(Bill Tingle at 01:12:20) Wow.

(Joel Beasley at 01:12:21) And he's like, oh, I asked around, and like, they said go talk to Joel. I was like, what?

(Bill Tingle at 01:12:26) I was

(Joel Beasley at 01:12:26) like, that's cool because the people that they asked didn't have experience at like a higher level. I have a couple people that I know that have been at that level. Joel Beasley has not been at that level. But I shared the general topics of what they talked about with their struggles, and then I connected them to each other so that they can, you know—

(Bill Tingle at 01:12:45) That's great. One of the things that that made me think about is we were talking recently about how we value ourselves and how we value others. And we often forget that the value of Joel isn't just Joel. The value of Joel is Joel's network. So, like, you are your network.

(Bill Tingle at 01:13:05) You have to be today. And, you know, a long, long, long time ago, it would have been you at a machine, you know, whatever you do in the factory. But today, Joel's value isn't just Joel, it's your whole network. It's your team here. It's, like you said, it's that person who just got the $100 million round.

(Bill Tingle at 01:13:23) It's all your reach. And then so that's why when people say, I need a network, it's like, well, why do you—do you know why you need to build your network? Your network is money. I've had people—I had people who they set up an appointment with me to network. I'm like, that's fine. You know, it's just gonna be a social session unless you know why you wanna network.

(Bill Tingle at 01:13:44) And if you say, no, I wanna network because I need help, and how can I help you first? And then how can you help me and be conscious of who you're networking with?

(Bill Tingle at 01:13:54) Because you are your network from a capability and value perspective. It's huge.

(Joel Beasley at 01:13:59) Yes. And then when I'm listening to these billionaires speak and their speeches and everything like that, you've learned so much because they share. Yeah. They want to help other people because it comes down to who's willing to do it.

(Bill Tingle at 01:14:09) Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 01:14:10) And so, to your point, there are specific ways to ask for help. Like, for example, if I want help in, let's say, sales from a popular salesperson that writes books and stuff, I'm not just going to Google a popular salesperson just to send them a question. I'm going to find them, read every piece of content they've produced on sales. Look at two or three other people that are their peers in the space. Come up with a question worth asking because 99% of my questions are going to be answered that I have right now from that one-on-one content.

(Joel Beasley at 01:14:43) Come up with questions worth asking and then send them that because they validate you based off of the questions you're asking.

(Bill Tingle at 01:14:50) Yeah. When

(Joel Beasley at 01:14:50) people are asking me one-on-one questions, I'm like, just Google it anyway.

(Bill Tingle at 01:14:53) Yeah. The way I think about that is in terms of cost and money, in terms of time, energy, in that there's an opportunity there that you say, okay, if I want to learn or get some helpful information, you know, what cost can I take on to get as much of what's available already? And then what's not available, that's the part I wanna—that's—I'm playing back on what I heard

(Joel Beasley at 01:15:20) from you.

(Bill Tingle at 01:15:20) The other thing that you just triggered me to think about is there's a group of us that study together across the country. And one of the things we talk about is—and it goes back to offering help. If somebody says, how can I help you? There are some times where they're putting the cost on me. They're putting the burden on me to figure out what do I need to do to help versus if you can spend enough time figuring out what my needs are, what my concerns are, and make an offer, like, have a plan of how you're gonna help me, then I don't have to think about it.

(Bill Tingle at 01:15:57) And you've given me a gift. And that's to me, that's more valuable because I'll have sometimes people say, hey, what can I do to help you? I'm like, that's too—that's gonna take my time and energy to figure that out. I don't know right now.

(Bill Tingle at 01:16:08) Now if it's, hey, could you take the flip charts and the extension cord down, that's different. But if it's complex and there's a strategy behind it, that's, you know, go do the work.

(Joel Beasley at 01:16:19) Yeah. It's like if they're being lazy about trying to be valuable to you. Yeah. Yeah.

(Bill Tingle at 01:16:24) So that goes back to the thing about, if you're—go back and teach, you know, if I could tell my younger self something, it would be to just continually make offers of help to people who are influential and are in situations I wanna be in, but not just say, how can I help you? I would be looking for ways that my help is valuable to them. And I would design it, not ask them to. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 01:16:47) You would act as a consultant. You'd figure out—

(Bill Tingle at 01:16:49) Right. Yeah. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 01:16:50) I love it. That's great advice. Yeah. This is fantastic conversation. Yeah.

(Bill Tingle at 01:16:53) I enjoyed it. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 01:16:54) I'm so happy that we did the in-person podcast.

(Bill Tingle at 01:16:56) Yeah. It was fun. A nice drive down. It was funny. I was on the bridge coming—you know, I don't think I've—I think I went to Sarasota once since I've been here for over three years.

(Bill Tingle at 01:17:04) Yeah. So this is my second time down this far. Funniest thing though, I recently got a new car. I'm still not used to it, and I've been busy. And I'm going across Skyway, and I look at my gauge, and I've got eight miles on my tank.

(Bill Tingle at 01:17:18) Oh no. And I look for gas and it says nearest gas station, 11 miles. And I'm like, that can't be true. I'm gonna have to call Joel and have him come get me. But I did manage to get off and get some gas before I got here.

(Bill Tingle at 01:17:34) So, yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 01:17:34) That's a tough one. Yeah. Yeah. Because I know exactly what you're talking about.

(Bill Tingle at 01:17:37) You come

(Joel Beasley at 01:17:37) over the skyway and there's not gas working.

(Bill Tingle at 01:17:39) Yeah. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 01:17:39) Yeah. There's one exit too that's bad because if you take that exit, you can't get back on.

(Bill Tingle at 01:17:43) Oh, really? I managed to do okay then. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 01:17:47) This is fantastic. Are you done? Yeah. We're done.

(Bill Tingle at 01:17:49) Good. Yeah. Time flew right by.

(Joel Beasley at 01:17:51) So, yeah.

(Bill Tingle at 01:17:51) Hopefully it was—

(Joel Beasley at 01:17:53) It was best. It was amazing.

(Bill Tingle at 01:17:54) Well, thanks, Joel.

(Joel Beasley at 01:17:55) Thank you.

(Bill Tingle at 01:17:56) Enjoyed it. Yeah. It was good to meet you finally. And so—

(Joel Beasley at 01:17:58) This is fantastic. Thank you so much for listening. If you'd like to help, please take a moment right now to open up the iTunes app and leave a review of the podcast. If you take a screenshot of the review and text it or email it to a friend who needs to listen to the podcast and then cc me, [email protected]. If you cc me on the email, I'll send you a copy of the Modern CTO book or give you a shout-out on the podcast, whichever you prefer.

(Joel Beasley at 01:18:29) We're trying to get listed on the top 100 for iTunes, and I need your help in order to do this.