Patrick Mulvehill, EVP Operations at Calero-MDSL - Simplified Technology Expense Management

(Intro Narrator at 00:00:03) Hello, my friends. Today, Joel is talking to Patrick, the Executive Vice President of Operations at Calero-MDSL. And they discuss how Calero-MDSL simplifies technology expense management for enterprises, tips for getting to know the culture of a company before getting hired, and how to provide a vision and unified strategy to get everyone on your team moving in the right direction. All of this right here, right now, on the Modern CTO podcast.

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:38) Here we go. This is the Modern CTO podcast. Give me your background story. Like, what's your history?

(Patrick at 00:00:55) Sure. So I am— Are you talking family, or are you talking—

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:02) Life. Like, what's your life story?

(Patrick at 00:01:03) Life story. Wow. That's pretty deep here for a Thursday in 60 minutes. But I would say this. I'll start off with— I'm one of three boys growing up. I'm the oldest. And so it goes myself. My middle brother is two years younger than me, and then my youngest is eight years younger than me. So big gap. Really didn't hang out with the youngest all that much just because of the age span. But, you know, we all landed here in Rochester, and the youngest ended up floating around the country and is now in New York City. So we all keep in touch pretty well. But, so three boys. You know, fast forward through schooling, middle school, high school in Buffalo. And then came to Rochester, New York, went to Saint John Fisher, did undergrad, grad there. And then I jumped into the working world at Eastman Kodak Company and started in information systems. And then from there, your career just twists and turns and you go where the opportunity is. So the past 20 years has been bouncing back and forth between IT and operations. And here I am.

(Joel Beasley at 00:02:28) So my uncle spent his entire career at, I think, Eastman Kodak.

(Patrick at 00:02:36) Did he really? What was he doing there?

(Joel Beasley at 00:02:37) Yeah. He was in charge of one of their facilities, the floors. There's, like, a— They were producing film at the time, and they had these massive machines and this huge industrial process to actually make all that film. And he was responsible for the organization of those machines. At one point, he told me a story where he rearranged the machines, but he went to the company. He said, "Hey, I've got this new way that we could increase production." And so he did some business deal where he got a percentage of, I don't know. But I was like, that's a really smart business move for a team member.

(Patrick at 00:03:19) Here in Rochester, you know, Eastman Kodak Company was an enormous employer. So everyone— Every other person you talk to worked there at some point in time. My grandfather actually started his career there and ended it there too. So he had up to 35 years there. And when I explained it to him when I was there, it was night and day. He couldn't fathom the things we were doing. So it was a great starting point. They were fantastic. But I would say it was a nice introduction to corporate America, being at a company that had everything at its fingertips. When you talk about a vertically integrated supply chain, that's a great place to start because they had it all. Especially here. They got the Kodak Park where they're manufacturing everything from raw material to finished goods and ship it around the world. So great introduction to corporate America.

(Joel Beasley at 00:04:12) I'm curious to learn— Adam was talking about battleships, and he was pretty vague. He said ask him about battleships. And so I'm curious, what's that about?

(Patrick at 00:04:21) So another organization I worked at, which was a lot of fun, it was an industrial pump manufacturing company. So when you think of pumps, you might think of the pump in your sump in your basement, like a sump pump that pumps the water out, goes up to the road. Well, in this organization, it's large, massively large industrial pumps. So they could range from two feet in size all the way up to 16 feet in diameter, 10 feet tall, weigh 40 tons. But the ones in particular with the battleships— If you think about a ship, it's in the water. And when you need the ship to sink or rise, you have to pump water on and off, right? You have to fill up the tanks. We would produce brass pumps for these ships because of the saltwater, right? Saltwater will corrode metal, so you had to do brass or other metals depending on where in the world these ships would be. So it was pretty neat getting these requirements, working with some enormous shipyards as well as government agencies to define specifications.

(Joel Beasley at 00:05:42) Did those have computer systems in them, or were they just straight up motors? How did they operate?

(Patrick at 00:05:47) So those ones in particular— When you think about a pump, those are the world's two oldest components when it comes to mechanical things. You've got a pump. You've had the pump ever since you had to get water out of a well. And then the electric motor. So it's just a pump connected to an electric motor, maybe with some oil systems, and then you go. But eventually, they are hooked up to a computer to do monitoring, throughput, velocity, all that stuff. But this is more on the mechanical end.

(Joel Beasley at 00:06:17) It's very cool. Yeah. I never got too into hardware. My dad, he was an engineer in the Air Force. The Air Force taught him hardware engineering and software, and they put the GPS systems into the B-2 stealth bomber. That was his big project. And so I'm really grateful to the Air Force because he came out of that, got into technology, and then I'd go to work with him because my mom didn't want three kids at home. You know? She's like, "Take one of them." I get it now as a parent. Right?

(Patrick at 00:06:45) Oh, yeah. Yeah. Totally. I got two boys, 10 and 13, so they give us a run for the money.

(Joel Beasley at 00:06:51) Are they having technology-related interests yet?

(Patrick at 00:06:55) Of course. So iPads, iPhones, Alexa— We have Alexas. They'll turn switches on and off. My youngest, he'll wake up in the middle of the night. He's figured out some configuration on his Echo Show where now he's watching YouTube on it in the middle of the night to help him fall asleep, which we didn't know he was doing until he was caught. So my wife took that out of his room immediately. But yeah, they're definitely showing interest in technology. Actually, they're kind of dependent on it with kids these days. That's pretty much from the moment they wake up until they go to sleep. It's technology. It's phones, iPads, right? It's how they communicate now.

(Joel Beasley at 00:07:34) Yeah. So what are you doing these days professionally?

(Patrick at 00:07:38) So I am in an operational technology-type role here at Calero-MDSL. So I lead operations for Calero-MDSL. So we offer technology expense management solutions, you know, mobility managed services, and a bunch of other things. But when it comes to operations, you know, when a customer decides to team up with us, work with us for these technology expense management or mobility managed service solutions, that's where operations comes in. You know, we'll meet with a customer. We'll work with them to get their application stood up, and then we'll support the ongoing relationship with them. So operations here, it's about 550 people, and it's all about the customer. So it's very rewarding.

(Joel Beasley at 00:08:35) Help me understand the hyphen, Calero-MDSL. What is that?

(Patrick at 00:08:39) So about a year, year and a half ago, we merged. Two companies merged. Calero and MDSL merged. Two entities came together, and we have one new name, Calero-MDSL.

(Joel Beasley at 00:08:54) I love it. I love it. Yeah.

(Patrick at 00:08:55) I'm glad you asked because most people just don't ask about it and say, "That's the name," right? But no, it's really remarkable because two strong brands came together with technologies, talent, and we formed this larger company. And we have more opportunity now to offer more solutions, more services, and just the technical know-how in different parts of the globe for our global customer base.

(Joel Beasley at 00:09:23) Well, maybe you can help me today because I've got some questions.

(Patrick at 00:09:26) Sure.

(Joel Beasley at 00:09:26) I haven't heard of mobility managed services before. I don't know what that is.

(Patrick at 00:09:32) So what is mobility managed services? Pretend you're a large multinational global company, and you have a 30,000 employee base, and 15,000 of those employees have mobile phones provided by the organization. So you're providing 15,000 mobile phones in different countries, states, and each of those, depending on where you are in the world, might have different carriers. You know, you might have Verizon, AT&T, Orange, or others. And managed mobility will do many different things. You know, we'll aggregate your billings from all those different vendors into our simplified application solution. We'll handle replacements, procurements, you know, all those types of things, on behalf of the enterprise. So they have one unified experience across the globe.

(Joel Beasley at 00:10:28) That's pretty neat. So you build some software. You build this platform that helps—

(Patrick at 00:10:32) We do. We have a big engineering team in-house that build all of our applications and support them.

(Joel Beasley at 00:10:40) That's pretty neat. And then what's the tech expense management? I mean, it sounds— It sounds high level. It's like, how could you not know what tech expense management? Yeah. Like, how do you offer that as a service?

(Patrick at 00:10:51) So when you— Well, it's technology expense management. When you think about technology, everything we do is technology. From the phones we use— So you have wireless phones that we just talked about. You have wireline, if you still have a physical phone in your office. All the internet lines, the networks going from building to building or building, or state to state, for example, city to city. So anything in regards to technology and how you can be billed for that is what we can support and manage on the customer's behalf. So we'll, again, we'll act on their behalf. We'll aggregate all their billings information into our application, and then we can run analytics on it. We can help them understand what's their usage. You're overpaying here. You're underpaying here. And it's all about getting the most value and paying what you should be paying for the services that you have. So it's all about optimization. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:11:53) So you guys have all this data, and now you can do unique things with data you can see across multiple orgs and what's going on?

(Patrick at 00:11:59) We have a lot of data. Our customers have access to a lot of data, right? The biggest thing is aggregating it all up and providing it back in a simple and digestible manner for our— For ourselves, because we have auditors on staff. So we have a team of auditors that will constantly look at a customer's account and look at what was a contracted rate, what were you actually billed. And then we'll look at trending and say, "Hey, we're noticing a trend going down here. We should renegotiate." Or, "Hey, we're noticing a trend going up. We should look at what's causing that." And we're always on top of it for our customers so they are appropriately paying for what they're contracted for or what they're using. It's all about rightsizing.

(Joel Beasley at 00:12:43) That's interesting.

(Patrick at 00:12:44) Yeah, it is.

(Joel Beasley at 00:12:46) I want to talk a little bit about this CTO operations. Were you a CTO? Did you move to operations? Like, what are you now? Give me the insight on that.

(Patrick at 00:12:55) Yeah, I can give you the insight. So I mentioned earlier in our discussion, I've been in IT and operations for 20 years. So I started in IT. I went to operations, went to another operations gig, went to IT, and then into operations. So I'm just giving you the lineage. And the biggest thing here when you think of operations and IT at any organization is leading with the need. And that's something I really stand by. You have to lead with the need. Throwing technology at a situation doesn't mean it's going to get better, right? If you've ever been part of a team and they're like, "Wow, these processes are broken. We need this new tool, and it's going to fix everything." How often does that new tool really fix everything?

(Joel Beasley at 00:13:46) Never.

(Patrick at 00:13:46) Exactly. It comes down to people, process, technology, right? And you've got to have the processes, and you've got to have the people trained for the technology to work. You've got to practically apply the technology. So what I'm getting at here is— If you have a technology background and an ops background, they complement each other. And you can do so much with that because you can analyze the enterprise. You can understand how it functions. And once you standardize the process and you squeeze out all the waste, then you can start talking about technology and automation. Kind of goes hand in hand. So backing into the question you just asked about CTO, I was a CTO in my prior life in a large health care insurance organization. So, you know, participating in all their cloud decisions, enterprise architecture decisions, API buildouts, and really working with the business, understanding what their strategies and plans are, what new things they want to introduce. And then I'd work back with the architects, the technologists, et cetera, and we back into the technology to make sure we can deliver on their goals, strategies, et cetera. So again, that's leading with the need. Leading with the business need, follow with technology. And so I was a CTO there, and it was very a natural switch over to Calero-MDSL because we are a technology company. We have a huge technology engineering department that builds, maintains, supports our applications. And operations, the 550 people we have in operations, are huge users of that technology supporting our customers. So when you talk about complementing technology, you know, how does technology work? How does it function? How can we make it better? How can we improve it? With, you know, the lean, systematic way of functioning, leading teams, metrics, performance, SLAs, it's a match made in heaven for me.

(Joel Beasley at 00:15:57) Yeah. It sounds like the perfect role.

(Patrick at 00:15:59) It is. I enjoy every single day here.

(Joel Beasley at 00:16:01) And it sounds like to me a lot of the principles and everything, they mesh pretty well over title. I mean, I see you like— When I see people, I'm like, "Alright, they're an executive with a strong background in technology." And I think people that have— I think it's a similar mindset. It's not too far off, right? Because the organizational skills that you need to be a player in technology are similar to the organizational skills that you need in operations. Right?

(Patrick at 00:16:28) Correct. It's all about organizing requirements. What do we need to do, right? Having clear requirements in any position, clear requirements, will help you best come up with a plan or a solution to satisfy those requirements. But it could be technology, it could be process.

(Joel Beasley at 00:16:47) So I liked your leadership stuff. And then I was like, he's a really smart guy. He could go anywhere. He could do anything he wants. You know? Why Calero?

(Patrick at 00:16:54) Why did I come here? And so I came here in January. I started in January this year. And, you know, what really attracted me to this place is the people. You know, we have a lot of employees, a lot of global employees.

(Patrick at 00:17:10) We have almost a thousand employees, and we always lead with the customer. What's in the best interest of the customer? What do we gotta do for the customer? And when you think about that, you're always gonna win. Right? Because you always put the customer first. And we always push the other things aside. And what I mean by that is when you put the customer first, it's whatever it takes to get the customer to where they need to be, and we'll deal with all of the internal stuff after the fact. And the really the why that's inspiring is because you can do so much with that mentality. And when you put the customer first also, it goes into our products and the way we design processes and the way we hold ourselves accountable and the transparency we have. So it's all the way from the bottom to the top. It starts with the customer, and it just lives in our culture here. And that was one of the first questions I asked as I was being looked at or I was looking to come here. What's the culture like? And I gotta tell you, it's one of the best. I've been in a lot of places, and this is one of the best cultures to work at.

(Joel Beasley at 00:18:25) How did you—I guess what I wanna know, like, deeply wanna know is, okay, so I wanna paint a picture for people because everybody has their own experiences. There's a wide spectrum of people listening of various skill levels. For this type of job at this level, can you describe to me, like, what the process was like as far as, like, meeting with people? Like, did you meet with the different heads of the org? Like, how did you find the culture out? How did you get to know them?

(Patrick at 00:18:54) Sure. So you get a sliver of it in the interview process. So an interview is a two-way thing. Right? They're interviewing me and I'm interviewing them. And you gotta, at the very end of an interview when they ask, do you have any questions for me, you never say no. That's when you start going. Right? And you just poke at, you know, what's—you start asking questions of, you know, what's the employee engagement like? How open are employees to raise issues? What's the process for sharing ideas? What's your take on continuous improvement? What is team—you know, how much teamwork is there? Especially, you gotta ask that question especially since we're in a virtual world right now. You know, a lot of remote working. Teamwork is essential. And, you know, how are you doing that? And what collaboration tools do you have? I gotta tell you, video is a game changer. If we didn't have Zoom, if we didn't have Teams, or the tools that we have now to collaborate, it'd be really hard working from home. I don't think a lot of organizations would have been successful because I don't know one job where you don't need to interact with another person in your company. It just doesn't happen. Right? So you gotta ask about the technology, the collaboration, and also ask about, what's the vision? What's the three or five year strategy the company has? What does the company wanna be when it grows up? Or just the next five years. Ask these questions because that will give you an indication of where does the company wanna be, what does it wanna do, and how do we treat our team members.

(Joel Beasley at 00:20:34) So you know my follow-up question is going to be.

(Patrick at 00:20:36) What's that?

(Joel Beasley at 00:20:38) Tell me those answers for Calero. Where are you guys going?

(Patrick at 00:20:42) Where are we going? So like I mentioned, you know, we have telecom or technology expense management. We have managed mobility services, and we're breaking some new ground here with SaaS and UCaaS management. And what we're doing is we're constantly reinventing ourselves. And, you know, a mantra we have is change before you have to. You probably heard that before because it's a famous quote, but that's the way we drive, and that's the way we hold ourselves accountable. Change before you have to. Change is more natural then. It's not forced, and you're ahead of it. So we're constantly looking across our existing platforms. How do we improve it? We source feedback from our customers. We source feedback from our employees, and we're constantly iterating, refining it, teaming up with our product teams and our engineering teams. As well as we're cutting into new space with the SaaS and UCaaS. You ever heard of UCaaS before?

(Joel Beasley at 00:21:38) No.

(Patrick at 00:21:40) UCaaS is the industry term. Unified Communications as a Service. And it's huge. It really is. So think about what unified communications is. It's Teams. It's Zoom. Anything you use or we use, all the things that play in the unified communications. So Gartner is a leading analyst company in the IT world. Gartner coins things. They may have had some input in this. I can't tell you who really coined UCaaS, but UCaaS is what you're seeing on the screen here. It's mobility, audio video conferencing, call recording, desktop sharing, etcetera. Anything to help people collaborate digitally. That's UCaaS.

(Joel Beasley at 00:22:26) Got it.

(Patrick at 00:22:27) And when you have UCaaS, you're thinking of a lot of subscription services. Right? Like, think of Office 365. Think of Zoom. And when you talk about UCaaS management, you're now looking at how do we help our customers understand that they're getting the value out of these services they're paying for. So, for example, let's go back to that exam. Let's go back to the situation. You're a 30,000 employee global national company, but now your 30,000 employees all have Zoom or Teams, whatever it is. You're paying 30,000 licenses a month at $10 a person. Do you need to be paying 30,000 times 10 every month? Because you may have a good portion of employees that are not using Zoom. Or they could be using Zoom in a limited capacity, or they're using Zoom meetings less than forty minutes. In those examples, we can help organizations say, you know what? You're paying for 30,000 licenses. Only 10,000 people are using them. You don't need to be paying for this extra 20,000. Get those out of there. And then for the 10,000 people that are using licenses, half of those are doing thirty minute meetings only. So you can go to the free licenses. Now you're only really need to pay for 5,000. So that's what unified—you know, that's what the UCaaS service and application is all about. Helping provide insights into usage, into that unified communications technologies to make sure you're paying for what you're really using and not overpaying.

(Joel Beasley at 00:24:00) That's pretty neat because, you know, once you build it for the Zoom ecosystem, any of your customers who have Zoom can use that integration.

(Patrick at 00:24:09) You got it. And we just put an app a couple weeks ago in the Zoom marketplace. So it's an app you can load up, install, and then you're off and running using our services.

(Joel Beasley at 00:24:20) Nice. They're pretty cool people. When I interviewed Harry, the CIO of Zoom, he brought his dog.

(Patrick at 00:24:25) Are you serious?

(Joel Beasley at 00:24:26) Yeah. Yeah. I've interviewed him twice. The second time he brought his dog, and he was, like, jumping around. It was so much fun.

(Patrick at 00:24:33) My dogs are eight pounds, and I think they're, like, eight inches tall. So they're—you're not gonna see them on camera right now. I just don't have.

(Joel Beasley at 00:24:41) Some of those small dogs, though, they can jump, like, four feet into the air.

(Patrick at 00:24:45) They can. They're aggressive. They are aggressive. So seeing that—so now you know what UCaaS is all about.

(Joel Beasley at 00:24:51) Dude, I just learned something new. And it was—it was like learning most things new. It's a little bit painful at first, but then you get to the moment. I like what you said earlier, though, about changing before you have to because I was having a conversation earlier today just about that. And, like, when you change before you have to, it's still painful. Like, it's always—like, there's always some amount of pain associated with change. Right? But when you do it when you absolutely have to, when it's too late, you have stress plus pain. Right? So the pain's not optional. It's like a constant. It's like it will occur. But it's like, do you have to endure that pain under enormous external stress as well, or do you just wanna endure the pain while, like, you're even keeled?

(Patrick at 00:25:38) Correct. Correct. Yeah. And when you have that stress, you're rushing. You could introduce quality issues, and you could overlook or skip over necessary steps you need to get it right. So, you know, we take the approach as much as possible. We'll be the ones that drive the change. We'll be the ones that challenge ourselves. I just twenty minutes ago before we got on the phone, I was with our product teams talking about how can we identify and collaborate on opportunities sooner and introduce them into our products, then both our customers and our team members here in the company can get their hands sooner. So this is an iterative process that we're always looking at.

(Joel Beasley at 00:26:24) Back in the, like, eighties and nineties, it was really popular to, like, crack the whip, stress the employees out, like, burn them out. And we're all making this change now. Um, I know leadership is a massive topic. Right? It's so broad. It means so many things to different people. But what do you think about leadership?

(Patrick at 00:26:44) I think leadership is—it's needed. It's critical. It's essential, and it's kind of the rudder on the boat. Right? Without the rudder, the boat floats. It can go in a hundred different ways, but it's not all going in the same direction. We all have to go in the same direction. So leadership is really essential to providing that vision, that mission, the unified strategy, and then putting plans in place to get everyone organized to move in that same direction. And once we're moving in that direction, we support the team members when they need help. And then once we hit that goal or that place we wanna be, we set the next vision and we keep moving. We don't stop. We don't stand still. Right?

(Joel Beasley at 00:27:33) You stand still and you die.

(Patrick at 00:27:35) Well, until then, and then, yeah, you have no choice. But another key is along those ways, stop and listen. You know, what's working well, what's not, take feedback in. Don't be afraid to pivot. Don't be afraid to change your plan. But listening is key being a leader.

(Joel Beasley at 00:27:59) So I'm curious. You're a pretty fit guy. You're well dressed. You're clean-cut. You're well spoken. All of these things are things you can control. Right?

(Patrick at 00:28:09) Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:28:09) And they're not subjective, but you can just do them. And I'm curious, you know, we hear a lot in leadership about, especially like from Goggins. I don't know if you like David Goggins or not, but he's like raising the bar. So he's like always trying to, like, raise the bar as a leader. You're raising the bar. It's almost like inspirational. Like if you start waking up at, like, 4 a.m., people like, whoa, that's so cool. You know, it's weird. But if you raise your personal bar, you get some sort of like respect from doing difficult things from the people around you. And so I'm curious, you being in a leadership position, you got almost a thousand people at this company. A lot of them are looking to you for technology, like leadership and operations and things. How do you raise your bar?

(Patrick at 00:28:51) So I think another important part of being a leader to answer that question, I think you have to be humble. Right? If you put yourself on a pedestal, you could become disconnected with the group, the team, you know, the folks you're working with. So my mantra is be part of the team. I always say we're all on the same team. We just have a hierarchy or roles that create, you know, create a manager, team member relationship. So we're all on the same team. So when you're humble, I'll get on calls, and I'm with my team, and we're talking about issues. And I'll just—it's all about asking questions, not directing. What support do you need? What can I do for you? Right? Because if you have a leader that always has to lead the conversation, make all the decisions, fix all the problems, you are not building a sustainable organization. You wanna have succession planning. You want sustainability. So you can take vacation or you can promote people in the bigger roles, and you're not worried about it. And when the people grow into these roles, you have retention. And it's just better around for our team members and our company. So I believe in just be humble. Be a humble leader, but lead by example. Right? Don't—I would never ask someone to do something I wouldn't do.

(Joel Beasley at 00:30:19) So you've just gotten into these good routines of personal care?

(Patrick at 00:30:22) So I do wake up at 4:30 every day. I do. Yeah. I do. Yeah. I wake up at 4:30. I'll lift in the basement for an hour and fifteen minutes. It's a whole schedule here. Right? I'm an ops guy. You gotta have a schedule. You gotta have a routine. Right? You can edit out whatever you want. But on lift, I'm watching Billions right now. You ever watch Billions with Bobby Axelrod?

(Joel Beasley at 00:30:45) Is it good? What network?

(Patrick at 00:30:47) It's on Showtime. Showtime. It's—if I could recommend two shows, do Billions and do Succession. Fantastic shows. It really puts you in situations of these multi-billionaires who run hedge funds or just have inheritances, and it's just very situational, a lot of drama, very good dialogue. It's very—it keeps you engaged. But, anyway, you do that and that starts the routine of the day. Work out, watch TV, and then move on with the day. But get it over with upfront so you have more time to do what you need to do. I mean, we're at a global company here. Calero-MDSL is a global company. My day doesn't end at 5:00. Right? Even though I get here at 7:45, 7:30, my day doesn't end at 5:00 because it's global. Like, it could go on until 8 p.m. So you just gotta make sure the things I need to take care of are taken care of in the beginning of the day so I have more time for our people.

(Joel Beasley at 00:31:47) Yes. Yes. Yeah. I so I wake up. I do a little run, and then I eat, and then I lift. And then I start my day, and I'm, like, at 110% by the time that the office opens. You know?

(Patrick at 00:32:02) You're wide awake. Right? You're wide awake. Yeah. Yeah. It's fantastic. And then, yeah, I would just say that's a good behavior to have. Don't drop that.

(Joel Beasley at 00:32:11) But you get punched in the face. It's not like—it's like, so let's talk about what I was like before.

(Patrick at 00:32:16) Sure.

(Joel Beasley at 00:32:17) So I would just wake up at, like, a normal time, you know, eat some breakfast, and then go to work. And I would work out after. Right? But what would happen is, like, all this stuff is coming at me, and I'm, like, not—I realized that from the time I wake up till the time I'm, like, fully booted, it's, like, two, two and a half hours of time before I wanna be handling, you know, stress or problems or, you know, doing—you know, working through things. So I figured, alright. Well, I have to be like an athlete if I wanna be better professionally. And so I started training like an athlete. I got a trainer. I started studying, like, nutrition and understanding, you know, the different macros and ratios. And so I just, you know, got nerdy with it like I do. And I was like, this skill will last me for life. Right? Nutrition skill. I was like, I'll learn that, and I'll learn how to work out. Yeah.

(Patrick at 00:33:09) It's gonna help you as you get older. I can tell you that much.

(Joel Beasley at 00:33:11) But so many people ask for career advice, and I wanna tell them, like, eat better and work out.

(Patrick at 00:33:18) You've gotta—if I have seen this, and to your point, leaders who have self-discipline in their personal lives and, like, a routine, and they stick to it, that carries into their professional lives. And other people do ask about it, and it can become contagious.

(Joel Beasley at 00:33:35) Preach, Patrick. Patrick, come on, man. Yes. I was talking about that, you know, before COVID, like, when I could go out and give talks in person. Discipline in your personal life.

(Joel Beasley at 00:33:46) I said that. Like, I love that. I love that you said that. I like you so much, Patrick, because it's true and most people don't see it. You know?

(Patrick at 00:33:55) Yeah. Like, yeah. Agree. Just have the set schedule. Right?

(Patrick at 00:34:00) Even on vacations, you've gotta stick to the schedule too. So...

(Joel Beasley at 00:34:04) Yes. I have, like, a modified vacation schedule, but, like, it's all the same things in the same order for the same amount of time. It's just when I'm going through time zones, it changes. Dude, this is really great. So, I'm gonna share with you really quickly about how I learned discipline initially, and then I'm curious about yours.

(Joel Beasley at 00:34:25) So when I was, uh, when I was 12, I got hit by a car, and I was in a wheelchair for, like, a year and had to go through the process of learning how to walk again.

(Patrick at 00:34:33) Sure.

(Joel Beasley at 00:34:33) I had to have, like, a nurse, like, you know, take care of me and help me bathe and all of that stuff. So that taught me humility pretty quickly. Right? And, uh, so I became a much nicer person through that process.

(Joel Beasley at 00:34:47) But, um, the discipline of, you know, having to sit there and, like, move my ankles and my feet and, you know, when there's, like, no muscles and to get feeling back in them. And it was just such a long process. It just forces you just to be like, boil it down to the moment. Like, today's just gonna be today. I'm just gonna run the routine.

(Joel Beasley at 00:35:04) And so that's where I learned a little bit of discipline, along with my dad being in the Air Force, like, having us make our beds. But, uh, I always like to look back and be like, where are the points when I sort of learned that discipline was important? And so I'm curious for you. When did you learn discipline was important?

(Patrick at 00:35:23) I would say, um, probably college when I had to start, you know, really buckling down. That's really when I started to try. I'll put it that way. Like, I wanted to get great grades, strive for a four-oh, just one semester. Just give it to me one semester. But that started the routine.

(Patrick at 00:35:38) And then, you know, if you're transitioning into, uh, the workout routine, um, I mean, the freshman 15? How about the freshman 30? I gained some weight. Right? They had great food where I went to school. Fantastic food. Not the healthiest, but fantastic. I gained quite a bit of weight, and, uh, my mother's personal trainer, she's like, hey, Patrick.

(Patrick at 00:36:03) You might—it might be time to go to the gym. This is, you know, just getting a little out of control here. So I listened to her, and I went. And in three months, you know, I just started lifting weights, watched what I was eating. Not, you know, no fad diets. None of that stuff. I just watched what I ate, uh, lost 50 pounds in three months, and then built back up, you know, with the weight lifting, et cetera. So...

(Joel Beasley at 00:36:30) Yeah. I wanna bring the conversation back to Calero so we can get people some more information there. When people are listening, I, you know, your company is growing. It's getting big. Right?

(Joel Beasley at 00:36:39) And so that means you're providing a service, and, typically, people will be experiencing a problem, look for the solution. Where is that device count? Like, how many devices do I start noticing? Like, this is a problem. I need to do something, and your customers are seeking you out.

(Patrick at 00:36:55) Uh, I mean, what I've seen since my, you know, with my tenure here, you're talking, you know, around the thousand, uh, you know, device mobility device count is what I've seen coming in recently. But, again, it goes back to spend. Um, and, you know, I think about a cell phone. So, uh, a lot of companies don't do unlimited plans. It costs a lot of money, so they do, like, tiered plans.

(Patrick at 00:37:21) So you'll have some users that are under two gigs, and you'll have some users that tether the phone to their Peloton and stream the app. And, oh my gosh, they have a 50 gig, you know, usage, and their bill's astronomical. And so, um, it really is a balance between device counts and then, uh, what your mobility spend is. Because your mobility spend will help us determine and analyze your account. Where are the savings?

(Patrick at 00:37:48) What can we find you? Because it's not just managing it for you. That's part of the great value add. But, you know, part of the value proposition is we can assess your usage, your spend, um, and aggregate that and make recommendations back to you. We'll make a recommendation back to you, um, Joel, and say, hey.

(Patrick at 00:38:07) You know, we're seeing these users in this state, uh, their data consumption's 10 gig versus two. I think you should upgrade these plans to 10 gig. We've—over the course of two years, we see this saving you X amount. Is that something you wanna do? Yes?

(Patrick at 00:38:25) We got it. We're gonna go take care of that for you. All you have to say is yes, and then we got it. That's it. That's how easy it is.

(Joel Beasley at 00:38:34) Thank you so much for listening. And if you found this episode useful, please share it with a friend or colleague who you think would get value from it. And if you have topics that you'd like to hear discussed on the podcast, either add me on LinkedIn or send me an email [email protected]. Every time I get an email or LinkedIn message, it absolutely makes my day and inspires me to keep going.