Why CTOs Feel Isolated and What To Do About It with Scott Smeester, Founder of CIO Mastermind

(Intro Narrator at 00:00:00) Today, we're talking to Scott Smeester, founder of CIO Mastermind, about the isolation that CTOs feel and what to do about it. You're listening to Joel Beasley, Modern CTO.

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:18) I've been following you for a little bit on LinkedIn, seeing you pop up here and there. You know, LinkedIn stalking you, right? Of course.

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:26) As I do. That's what we do. That's what we do. There was a quote in there that said, you know, you became driven to end the isolation technology leaders are often experiencing, that you had a frustration about that and then use that as like a driving factor for your life.

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:42) Why do CTOs feel isolated?

(Scott Smeester at 00:00:46) Why do they feel isolated? It's because they are a lot of times. You know, coming from our backgrounds, we're stuck in cubicles or in server rooms, and we didn't, we weren't forced to go out and network. We weren't forced to go out and prospect and find new business and have to be the person that has the gift of gab, blah, blah, blah. We didn't have to report our sales numbers to a CEO, and when they're not good, how to bullshit your way through that kind of thing or whatever else.

(Scott Smeester at 00:01:23) We were generally introverts, and we feel more comfortable behind our keyboard and our monitor than we are out in front of people, right? So that tends to, that tends to have been what creates the initial isolation. But the other thing is that, you know, as a leader, if you're a CIO or a CTO, you're in a company, you're busy, you've got a lot of demands. You're automatically isolated because there's nowhere for you to go to get information.

(Scott Smeester at 00:02:02) You can't go up. You can't go down. You know? If you go down, you don't look like the leader you, well, in either case, you don't look like the leader you need to be. So you're not gonna find it within your company.

(Scott Smeester at 00:02:15) You're not gonna find what you really need in your company, so you gotta go out. And I know that a lot of CTOs and CIOs go to things like these conferences at AWS and things like that. The reason we created it is because we wanted to have a place where they could have conversations about their specific challenges and problems with a group, a group that's already been vetted too, for that matter. So that's what you see a lot of. You know?

(Scott Smeester at 00:02:44) They're isolated because they're in this position now, and they just don't have, and they haven't created, you know, a network that they can go to. Maybe if they did, it's still hard to manage that, to manage, you know, like, what are you gonna do? Put together a meeting? You're gonna become a CIO Mastermind and vet people, always finding new good people, always having, you know, the meetings scheduled and taken care of.

(Scott Smeester at 00:03:15) Our people just show up and go through their two hours and then they get away. So that's kind of what I, you know, what I've seen.

(Joel Beasley at 00:03:27) I like what you said about you're not gonna find exactly what you need in your company. It's like you can find the right question within your company, talking to the people above you or below you, figuring out what the right question to ask is or what the right outcome is that needs to be achieved. You can do that without looking silly. You can just be professional and inquire about it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:03:46) But you can't, you you, you know, you gotta be careful about how you ask them for the answer. If you do ask them, you'd be like, what do you think the answer might be? And then they might say something, but you definitely can't ask them like, hey, I need the answer.

(Scott Smeester at 00:03:59) Yeah, right. Right.

(Joel Beasley at 00:04:01) You wanna go do that with your peers, right?

(Scott Smeester at 00:04:05) Yep. Yeah. Indeed. Indeed. It's not what you say. It's how you say it, right?

(Scott Smeester at 00:04:08) That's right. That's right. That's too funny. That's good.

(Joel Beasley at 00:04:12) Where was there a time in your life when you realized, oh man, the way I'm operating right now isn't working out. I need to learn to become a better listener.

(Scott Smeester at 00:04:26) Wow. Be a better listener. It was, well, gosh, there's so many different times that that's happened. You know?

(Scott Smeester at 00:04:37) It's not just one time where I've had to. I got my start in about 1997. I created a company called The Internet Design Firm, tidf.com. I still own, I own two four-letter domain names, .com, one of them, tidf.

(Scott Smeester at 00:04:57) Yeah. That's pretty cool. .com. And that was in '97. That was during the kind of the Internet bubble craze.

(Scott Smeester at 00:05:09) And I started a company, moved to downtown Denver. I was in my mid to late twenties at the time that I did all this. Needless to say, I wasn't making very good decisions and things like that as far as a business owner is concerned, and I was caught up in the Internet bubble. There's no end to money, you know?

(Scott Smeester at 00:05:32) So anyway, I ended up making all kinds of bad decisions and got office space I didn't need. I had employees I didn't need. And then the Internet bubble burst. I find myself, you know, needing more business. And at that time, I was looking to hire a salesperson.

(Scott Smeester at 00:05:54) I'd failed at hiring salespeople. That's one of the hardest things to do, really. But I ended up hiring a sales coach at the time. This was in about 2002, and I paid her a bunch of money, and I got a lifetime seat to the sales training thing.

(Scott Smeester at 00:06:15) And we'd meet, we'd like, she'd have things once a week, and you could go and work out. Well, that's when I pretty much learned that, you know, I learned questioning techniques. I learned all different kinds of things to sell, learned sales processes and things like that. But I didn't actually learn really how to listen. And when you learn how to listen, that is selling, by the way.

(Scott Smeester at 00:06:44) Like, that is the core of selling is listening. And so when did that come about? I don't know, but I'm in my fifties now. Probably came around 49, when I was 49. I'm just kidding.

(Scott Smeester at 00:07:02) I don't know.

(Joel Beasley at 00:07:02) This week. It was this week.

(Scott Smeester at 00:07:05) Yeah, it was. I'm, you're reminding me right now. No. So I mean, I value, yeah. It's, there's just something I think for me, I matured into it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:07:18) Yeah. Listening for that one moment where you can figure out the one thing that they actually want. I found that people often in conversations, for example, we sell podcast production services, right? So companies come to us and they talk about making their show.

(Joel Beasley at 00:07:35) And so the first thing I'm trying to figure out is like, what do they want? And like, what do they care about? And are we at the point where they know what they want and what they care about? Are we at the point where they're trying to articulate what they want and what they care about? Because that shows like two different paths for the sales process and the line of questioning.

(Joel Beasley at 00:07:55) So yeah, it's about listening. And then the hardest part, here's an, alright, so I started to get some experience. I said, oh, this is good. And then obviously, everyone always has things to work on. So the thing that I had to learn that cost me a lot of money before I learned it was not talking through the sale.

(Joel Beasley at 00:08:13) So the moment that someone's like, yeah, we're doing it, I shut down that conversation as fast as humanly possible. Because after someone's agreed to do it, the only thing you can do is say something. Yeah. Yeah. Because if you don't shut up, there's only one option. It's you're gonna say something stupid that loses the deal.

(Scott Smeester at 00:08:31) That's it. Yeah. Oh my god. That's a big one.

(Joel Beasley at 00:08:35) Yeah. It's like, oh, I'm so glad. This is great. I'm gonna have an awesome weekend. I can't wait to go play for the team that no one likes.

(Scott Smeester at 00:08:42) And then they're like—

(Joel Beasley at 00:08:42) Wait, what? You like that? Like, let's go—

(Scott Smeester at 00:08:45) Have you ever been on the other side of it when you're dealing with somebody who's serving you, and they got you sold, and you're like, yep, I'm in. Let's go, let's go. And then they keep talking?

(Joel Beasley at 00:08:57) Mhmm.

(Scott Smeester at 00:08:57) And then you start at, wait, do you really understand where I'm, then you have those doubts again, right? Yep. Actually, I think you go to deeper and darker doubts after you've been sold.

(Scott Smeester at 00:09:12) You're ready to go, and then they keep talking. You're kind of like, wait a minute. It doesn't sound like you know what I'm talking about. So—

(Joel Beasley at 00:09:22) Yeah. Is my judgment messed up now? Did I make a bad decision? Right. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:09:25) Right. Yeah.

(Scott Smeester at 00:09:27) Is this the decision—

(Joel Beasley at 00:09:28) I should make too? Did I make a bad decision? You can go there real fast.

(Scott Smeester at 00:09:32) That's right. Really.

(Joel Beasley at 00:09:34) So tell me about CIO Mastermind.

(Scott Smeester at 00:09:38) So CIO Mastermind is something that I created about six years ago when I was doing a lot of CIO, CTO type consultation work, whatever, fractional work, if you wanna call it that. And I just started getting bigger and bigger deals come along, like freight company came along, $215 million freight company. You know, and I started to think, you know, how can I do this the best? How can I actually make a difference in this company or any other company that I'm talking to and working with? And we still are.

(Scott Smeester at 00:10:18) But what I needed at the time, I started thinking to myself, what I really needed at the time, and I still think the industry needs it really bad, is a place where we can go to help eliminate the noise in technology and in what we're doing and becoming a better leader. And so I started floating that around to a lot of my contacts. Now I am a CIO and CTO. I have a degree in engineering. I call myself a geek with executive tendencies.

(Scott Smeester at 00:10:48) I love the technology. I love programming. I'd rather be the introvert stuck in my office programming, or not program, I don't program, or I used to, but I don't that much anymore. But I've always been kind of in my own business.

(Scott Smeester at 00:11:05) I've always had some type of a company in the technology B2B space. And so I have contacts, and I have people that I know that I just started floating my problem with. I'm like, I really need kind of some help. And one guy was like, you ought to just put together a mastermind, or you ought to put together a peer advisory group. Try to get some people here in Denver to sit down with you.

(Scott Smeester at 00:11:29) And I was like, that's it. That's exactly what I need. Because if I can eliminate the noise, if I can have some time with another unbiased professional, unbiased subject matter expert that's not surrounded by a vendor-sponsored event. It's not a forum talking at me. It's not, you know?

(Scott Smeester at 00:11:53) And that's the other thing is I was always getting talked at in all these things. So I'm like, you know, if I had a place where I could spend some time going into the challenge and the problem that I'm going through, have somebody listen, a subject matter expert, one would be great, three to eight would be the best because then I could have people thinking and talking back and forth and even, you know, working with each other to help me make sure that I'm like on the right track. And so I was like, that's what I need. I need somewhere I can eliminate noise and just really help me get the information I need.

(Scott Smeester at 00:12:32) Because if I could do that, then it's something that I can take to the bank. I can trust it. I can work with it, and I believe in it, and I'll go hard at it. I won't need to doubt what I'm doing because those people took time to hear me out, ask me questions, understand the context of what we're doing, and then give me advice. And it's in a forum that's vendor-free.

(Scott Smeester at 00:12:57) It's not sponsored. There's no, you know, we're not talking technology. Most of the time, we're talking concepts. And I'm like, that's what I need to do. So I started CIO Mastermind, and it's about that.

(Scott Smeester at 00:13:09) It's literally about bringing IT leaders or technology leaders together to work out their own problems and challenges and to make sure that it's done in a way in which they have a number of voices to listen to. They've got the time, forty-five minutes to an hour in the, quote-unquote, you know, hot seat type of thing where they can explain what they're going through, the biggest challenge they're going through, get asked questions to make sure everyone understands, and then they speak into it. And then they have some really good information. So that's what CIO Mastermind is all about and why I created it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:13:49) That is pretty cool, man. I was a part of a business group a little bit ago. It was a Christian's business group called like C12, and they were that format. And I thought it was unique when I ran into that format because it was less about topic of the day. This month, we're talking about this, and we're gonna all share our story.

(Joel Beasley at 00:14:07) And it was more centered around like, holistically, is your life in alignment? And then in your business, you know, what are you experiencing, and what's the big thing that you can do? And then, you know, you had business leaders. But yeah, I like that. And is it only in Denver, or is it—

(Scott Smeester at 00:14:23) Nope. When COVID hit, we went national. Our meetings are online. We started for the first year and a half to two years before COVID hit. We did meet in Denver in person downtown, but then, I mean, COVID allowed us to go national. And then on top of that, after COVID, we were just like, how could we ask, you know, the very first two people that signed up, one's in Greeley, which is almost an hour north, and another one is in Centennial, which is about thirty-five to forty-five minutes south of downtown Denver.

(Scott Smeester at 00:15:01) And so we were asking them to come once a month to this, so they'd have to spend that much time on a road. That's not fair to really ask their company to send them on, you know, to do that. So we just were like, we're just gonna do our meetings online. They are formed all, you know, we got members all over the country now. So—

(Joel Beasley at 00:15:21) Nice. How many people are in a group?

(Scott Smeester at 00:15:23) We cap them at twelve. You know, we are busy, busy CIOs. A lot of times, someone can't show up. So normally, what happens is about nine, eight to nine people are showing up to a meeting, and that's about the perfect size.

(Joel Beasley at 00:15:39) And then do they each get an hour at that meeting?

(Scott Smeester at 00:15:43) Oh, no. What we do is we find two individuals who would have challenges and problems that we can work on, and then they get one hour per.

(Joel Beasley at 00:15:53) So if I'm having like a really difficult, like, I'm CIO of IBM, and I'm having like a crisis moment. I might, you know, get that answered that week either.

(Scott Smeester at 00:16:03) That's right. Yep. And we find, you know, we allow people to say, hey, to raise their hand and say, I would like to be, I'd like to get the group's attention this week. Or, you know, we get together, and then we just go around the table and, you know, we say, what's going on in your world? What's going on in your world?

(Scott Smeester at 00:16:24) And we can always find some challenge to work on. So yeah, it's never hard to find a topic.

(Joel Beasley at 00:16:32) So what's the themes right now? You obviously, you've got multiple groups. You see these leaders, these CIOs, CTOs across all these groups.

(Scott Smeester at 00:16:40) Mhmm.

(Joel Beasley at 00:16:40) There's gotta be some trends that you're picking up on on what they're talking about and thinking about.

(Scott Smeester at 00:16:45) Well, beyond like the problems and the challenges that they have for AI, right, or AI or any new technology that's coming or, you know, a year or two ago, remote work. Well, actually, when COVID hit, remote work. After a year of COVID or two years when people were going back, return to office type of things. The topics that we talk about are not typically really about technology. CIO Mastermind is not the place where you're gonna go to learn about new technologies.

(Scott Smeester at 00:17:19) I like hitting use cases and things like that to find how AI and to look at use cases and things like that. But that's not, again, me. I don't deliver content to the groups. The groups bring up what they need. A lot of times, though, what they're bringing up is, when if it is AI, it's how do I educate my constituency on AI?

(Scott Smeester at 00:17:45) How, what are the use cases for AI? When should we be bringing it in? What kind of security things do I need to be thinking about with AI and confidentiality and all the different things that, as a CTO or a CIO, you know, you're in the C-suite. And CIO Mastermind, on that note, works with anyone with any title, as long as they're the highest person within that company reporting into the C-suite or CEO or whatever it is, hopefully not the CFO. But anyway, so a lot of topics are about, you know, kind of leadership and getting buy-in or, you know, just working better maybe with your executive team, or with, you know, how to work better with your team, the team that's below you, you know, and that kind of stuff.

(Scott Smeester at 00:18:42) So it's not necessarily about one specific topic about technology.

(Joel Beasley at 00:18:49) Yeah. So how do you get buy-in? Like, if I come to you and I say I'm a CTO, CIO at a company, and I'm trying to get buy-in for my leadership team, what type of ideas do you have for that?

(Scott Smeester at 00:19:00) Well, I have to understand a little bit more first. Like, who are you having problems with? Who are you trying to sell first? Right? I'm gonna have questions.

(Scott Smeester at 00:19:08) Who is this? Or at least this is what I hope this is where we give time for our members to spend time. So they're going to have five to ten minutes to explain their challenge. So they might be saying, "Hey, listen. I can't get the board to bite off on a budget item, a budget line item for, I don't know, let's just say it was AR research or AI research. You know, we want to really delve into that, and I'm not getting them to buy in on that." A lot of times what happens is that CIOs and CTOs, based on their background, they come from programming. So they're stuck in a cubicle their early lives, and likewise with, you know, CTOs or network administrators or anything like that. They come from a background of definitely not sales, if you know what I mean.

(Scott Smeester at 00:19:56) So they really have a hard, they've had a hard time understanding, you know, how to approach something, how to approach it from a business standpoint as opposed to technology. How do I approach this sales situation with my, quote unquote, prospects' intentions and their desires? Well, that's where a lot of discussion comes up. What does the board want? What has the board talked about? What have they bid off on in the past? So it really, you know, that's kind of where there's no one pat answer at all on any of that because you kind of have to look at situation by situation. But for the most part, when they're not able to get buy-in, they're usually presenting technology.

(Scott Smeester at 00:21:02) They're usually presenting a solution that doesn't make clear to the person, quote unquote, buying, how that aligns with the business strategy and their desires. That's where they miss it usually.

(Joel Beasley at 00:21:17) Well said. I missed it for quite a while. The first 17 or so of my career. I just was engineering, and I would think that people would do things because they're logical. That was my argument. Oh, we use logic. Yeah. It's logical to do this.

(Scott Smeester at 00:21:33) Like I said, I have a degree in civil engineering. Engineers are taught to answer the question.

(Joel Beasley at 00:21:39) Mm-hmm.

(Scott Smeester at 00:21:41) If you're trying to sell, you don't answer a question. You ask questions.

(Joel Beasley at 00:21:46) And once I realized, obviously people have these points, like I'm sure you did and I did, but we're trying to get what we want and we're failing, and then we start asking questions. Like, why does this keep happening? The moment I realized that I had a deficit in sales ability, I started reading and watching sales guys, right? Like Grant Cardone, like even the old ones from the seventies that are up on YouTube talking about selling encyclopedias.

(Scott Smeester at 00:22:13) Oh, wow. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:22:14) So I started learning from these sales guys about how to sell and how people think during the sales process. That helped me far more than just work. That helped me in my relationships, which eventually became my wife. It helped me to understand that, A, that there's a whole magical beautiful world called sales and training, and it's got its own rules and regulations just like engineering does. And then to understand when to flip my mind into the, "Okay, I need to realize that if I'm trying to get someone to agree to something, that I can look at this through the lens of sales skills that I have." And it's not because when you're an engineer, you see it as like shifty or bad or you're trying to convince people or used car salesman. That's how I know your experience level's low. Because when you start to actually get into sales and learn it from these sales assets, it's you have a problem. How can I get you a solution? How can I be useful to you?

(Scott Smeester at 00:23:10) To you.

(Joel Beasley at 00:23:11) And if I can't be useful, there's no reason to continue. Like, I'm gonna go find someone else who I can be useful to. And that made life a lot better for me.

(Scott Smeester at 00:23:19) Yep. If you think about it, it is a form of engineering. You have to understand all the barriers, the farthest. You know, how far can I go until it's a no? And then that gives you that barrier. It kind of tells you which direction you can go if you're asking the right questions.

(Joel Beasley at 00:23:38) That is exactly correct. And so, aside from the sales aspect of just specifically getting a budget item approved, I think we covered that pretty well. When you meet the CIOs and CTOs, what kind of disputes are they typically having with their executive team or the team below them? Like, what type of problems exist a lot there?

(Scott Smeester at 00:24:02) You know, probably most likely a lot of it. I know that there's a lot of contention, obviously, with risk, cybersecurity, which I hate that word actually because there's no such thing as cybersecurity. There's business risk, and there's a certain amount of business risk that is associated with some type of a digital initiative that we have. And then I think it's funny when, like, boards and whoever, like, "We need, we want to do this technology thing, but we need it to be secure." And you're like, "Well, it's built in. Security is built in."

(Scott Smeester at 00:24:49) I mean, I don't even think about it anymore. It has to be. Yes, I will look at security and make sure, you know, we'll, no, actually, what we'll do is we'll find out our risk level. We'll find out our risks. And so anyway, contention between CEOs and CIOs. Here's what I find a lot of, actually. Like I told you, a lot of CIOs or CTOs report to a CFO, which I think is completely wrong, completely backwards, because a CFO basically exists to keep costs down.

(Scott Smeester at 00:25:24) You know, keep that bottom line good for the CEO. Well, technology usually is more of a, you know, it has more risk. It's an investment. So I don't like that, but I see a lot of CEOs holding technology at arm's length. Still, they still have the CIO report to a CFO or some other distant relationship down there.

(Scott Smeester at 00:25:51) And that, no wonder this company isn't really leading with technology.

(Joel Beasley at 00:25:56) Reporting to the CFO, you see that happening a lot still today?

(Scott Smeester at 00:26:00) Less now. Yeah, less now. But yeah. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:26:06) Is it typically at the bigger companies that are maybe owned by private equity and things like that with the founders gone?

(Scott Smeester at 00:26:13) You know, personally, I see it more in midsize. And when I say midsize, we're talking 2,500 employees down to smaller, meaning 250. We don't really work with anyone below 250 employees. Usually, that's kind of the minimum. But you'll see that a lot at those types of companies.

(Scott Smeester at 00:26:40) A lot of times, a CEO will also promote the wrong person just because the person was the most, you know, this person was very gifted technologically, but, and then that was the reason to raise this person to a C-level position. A lot of times, I see the wrong person in the spot. You know, just maybe they're not the wrong person, but they don't have the skills to navigate the leadership position. And that's when you see a lot of those types of situations where the CEO then pushes back and doesn't want to make the big decisions on technology.

(Joel Beasley at 00:27:27) Yeah. So if you're in that position, join a group and catch yourself up to speed before they realize they're incompetent.

(Scott Smeester at 00:27:36) Yeah. I mean, if you're not, I would just say to any technology leader, you know, if you don't have people that you can help eliminate the noise and, again, get to the trusted, get to the information that's going to help you move the ball forward. And to me, that's eliminating as much noise in our industry as possible right now. So I would just say anyone in that situation, that would be a good opportunity for group. Coaching, we offer coaching as well, executive coaching.

(Scott Smeester at 00:28:07) So maybe that person, like you said, like yourself, who has no idea on sales, has never been in the C-suite and literally does come from the cubicles or the server room, get a coach. Get some help. You know, every time you're going in to meet with one of your executive team, get a little bit of help. Get an idea of what you should be doing, and then that just becomes kind of a routine. But a coach is really important too.

(Joel Beasley at 00:28:40) Yeah. Who's the coach? Is it your business partner, Joe?

(Scott Smeester at 00:28:44) Uh-huh. Joe comes from coaching. He's a fantastic executive coach.

(Joel Beasley at 00:28:48) Oh, that is awesome. It's a good partner now.

(Scott Smeester at 00:28:49) Doug. I have another guy, Doug, who we're working with, and he is a very good executive coach as well and advisor. So we have a lot of those kind of in our stable.

(Joel Beasley at 00:29:04) If I'm new to this and I'm considering a coach, what should I be spending? What's a good coach going to cost me?

(Scott Smeester at 00:29:14) It depends on how much you need or how much hand-holding you might need. You know, if there's a lot, it's going to be more. But you could get away with a couple hundred. I would invest, you know, at least a couple hundred a month. That's what I used to do back in the day, and I still do now. Actually, I invest a lot more of that now in various ways. I belong to business, I get business coaching now. I get business peer groups. And so, you know, and those are a lot more expensive. Yeah.

(Scott Smeester at 00:29:51) So, yeah, yeah, yeah. So—

(Joel Beasley at 00:29:53) What should someone spend? Someone's making, you know, a couple hundred K a year. What should they be spending on coaching? Like, 10% of that? 5%?

(Scott Smeester at 00:30:01) I'd say, let's say it's $200,000. I would say a fair number would be about $10,000.

(Joel Beasley at 00:30:08) So if you're out there making 200K a year, and let me tell you what's going to happen right now. They're going to hear $10,000. They're going to say, "Well, I pay $2,500 to go to Amazon's AWS conference. I pay $1,000 in books." That is not what we're talking about. We're talking about, like, straight coaching. Because going to AWS and seeing what's there, that is not the same as progressing your skills as a leader forward. Correct?

(Scott Smeester at 00:30:31) Right. Right. Yeah. I would argue. You know, I mean, I like the conferences. You get, there's something you get by going to something like that that you can't anywhere else, except for you can get the knowledge anywhere. I mean, those types of things are a dime a dozen.

(Scott Smeester at 00:30:53) You know, but what's really going to help you out and what's really going to help you navigate some of the intrinsic things that you just can't find, like, you're not going to get at these, the people part of what we do, which is probably as important as anything else, as far as the technology. Again, see, we're not about technology. We're about the people part of business, literally, and the tech people side of things.

(Joel Beasley at 00:31:22) Some of these guys that I know are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars a year on coaching.

(Scott Smeester at 00:31:27) Yep. Yeah. Think about it like this. I mean, if you're a professional athlete, your coaches are what make you. Like, that is true, and coaches are really important. Really important.

(Joel Beasley at 00:31:43) It's funny when I'll see executives, and they'll say, "Oh, I got myself here. I can, you know, I'm doing just fine. Like, I can do this. I can get myself to the next level." Then you see professional athletes, and they're just like trying to get the best coaches to surround them as possible to get that extra 1%. And then I see in business, the people who are making tons of money are just surrounded by absolute ninjas, straight assassins—

(Scott Smeester at 00:32:08) Right.

(Joel Beasley at 00:32:08) —of what they do. Yeah.

(Scott Smeester at 00:32:10) You, you've heard it probably. You become what you surround yourself with, the type of people you surround yourself with, and where you get your information from. I mean, that, over my career and over my life, I understand more than anything. About eight years ago, I joined a Rotary Club. I went as a guest to this Rotary Club. And at the time, I'm like, you know, I looked around. I'm like, "Well, what can I get out of here that I'm not currently getting in my life that I want?" Well, I didn't have any seniors in my life. Like, not just, and we're not talking coaches, but just senior professionals. People who are retired, not old, but just in that phase.

(Scott Smeester at 00:33:01) And I didn't have any of that. My father had passed away, and so I was like, that would be something. And I'm not saying Rotary is old. Rotary is really cool. We had some in our group. We had a number of people. So I was like, that would be really good. The other thing is that this club, you know, international travel, that was what they were talking about. They were interested in that. They were doing projects over in Africa, over in Thailand, and all. And they sent the president every year to the Rotary International Club. I'm like, I want more international travel in my life. Well, lo and behold, that's what I got. I became the president of the organization. They sent me to Hamburg, Germany. It was amazing. It was amazing. It was really cool. And I was just really excited about that. Yesterday, in my business peer advisory group, I'm looking around. I'm like, you know, I had just joined a couple months ago. I got back into this. And I'm looking around the group, and I'm looking around the table. And when they went around, they're all talking about, I swear every single one of them either talked about how they're running marathons and getting into, I mean, I'm, like, one of the guys is a bodybuilder. He goes on stage, and he, you know, they show the, you know, what do you call that? I can't remember. Not just a bodybuilder, but they perform, and he's—

(Joel Beasley at 00:34:23) Josh does that. That's Josh's hobby. Really? No. But if you meet Josh in person, he's like huge and jacked. Yeah.

(Scott Smeester at 00:34:30) Yeah? Okay. Yeah. And so I was talking to myself, health has been something, I mean, I work out a lot too, but I am carrying a little bit more weight than I want to at this point.

(Joel Beasley at 00:34:43) Now I don't need—

(Scott Smeester at 00:34:44) to be a marathon runner. I don't have no desire to run a race or like that or compete, but I'm surrounded by really healthy individuals. They all take that very serious. And every one of them was talking about how they're going on a trip to Italy or to something else. And I'm like, this is a good spot for me to be again because I'm going to get healthy just by being around these folks and going to get, because that's what they find important.

(Scott Smeester at 00:35:13) And I know that. I was so, I was excited about being in that group.

(Joel Beasley at 00:35:18) Nice. Yeah. How often does that group meet?

(Scott Smeester at 00:35:21) Our peer group meets once a month, but the group that I'm involved in, the larger organization as a whole, also meets once a month. So I'm kind of getting around those folks twice a month. One on a big meeting that we meet up at the aquarium downtown in Denver for once a month, and then another one for our peer groups as well. And then I'm going to consider getting on committees and stuff like that too.

(Joel Beasley at 00:35:48) Oh, nice. Well, my family makes it out to Denver about once a year. So when we're out there, yeah, we like to, we do the RV camping thing, and they've got some nice campgrounds out there. We're in Tennessee, like Nashville.

(Joel Beasley at 00:35:59) And cool.

(Scott Smeester at 00:36:00) Love it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:36:01) Yeah. And we like to go out there in the summer because it's like 50 degree nights, you know, in the sun. Here, the summer is a little bit hotter. So it's a nice place to be.

(Scott Smeester at 00:36:10) Let me know when you're coming out. We'll hook up.

(Joel Beasley at 00:36:12) Yeah. For sure. We have like five minutes left before we do a wrap-up recording thing. What is the most—

(Scott Smeester at 00:36:18) I have four minutes on my camera.

(Joel Beasley at 00:36:20) Okay. Four minutes on the camera.

(Scott Smeester at 00:36:23) I looked at the time.

(Joel Beasley at 00:36:24) In the next four minutes, what's the most valuable, potent information we can knowledge transfer to the next generation of technology leaders?

(Scott Smeester at 00:36:35) Learn how to deal with people. People are going to be where the money is at in the future for one thing. AI cannot be human. That's just, no. I mean, it can act like a human, but it can't be human.

(Scott Smeester at 00:36:56) So learn people. Learn what makes people tick. Understand how to, like you said, I like how you brought up listening. That listening is just key. And also asking questions, asking good, thoughtful, open-ended questions.

(Scott Smeester at 00:37:14) It's one thing that drives me nuts about, you know, one of the things that I implemented to our groups was we have a questioning round for the guest to go around and ask the person who's asking for help. They sometimes will, do you have this in place, or have you, you know, it's a yes or no close-ended question. And that, again, that shows me how much—so I told Joe, our facilitator of the groups, I'm like, Joe, I want you to try to keep them, try to get them to ask open-ended questions. Help me understand a little bit about what you, you know, you can always take a close-ended question and turn it into an open so that somebody else is going to, they go more into what they want to talk about. That also helps, by the way, bonding and rapport.

(Scott Smeester at 00:38:09) It really helps make a connection. And then when you're listening, there's nothing more important than that. So that's what I'd say. Literally, just how to deal with people.

(Joel Beasley at 00:38:22) I like that. I think that's a really important aspect, especially with my transition. When I first went from individual contributor to team lead, you're interacting with the computer all day, issuing it commands, and it's explicit on its issues when the command doesn't work. Then you go interact with people, and that is not how people work. You could transmit information to people, and then you don't know how to process the response and what type of response you're going to get.

(Joel Beasley at 00:38:51) So I learned that really quickly with my wife. Right? I tell a computer one thing, it never forgets. Right?

(Scott Smeester at 00:38:56) Right. That's right.

(Joel Beasley at 00:38:58) It tells me when there's a problem. My wife, she tells me, but it's not, it's not an error code that's so explicit. I know what to do with it. I'm getting better.

(Scott Smeester at 00:39:06) Sometimes you have to figure that out too. Sometimes, yeah. I mean, sometimes you make mistakes and stuff, and people just, they don't say anything. It doesn't even bother them. But if it continues, it can become a problem.

(Joel Beasley at 00:39:20) I know. Sometimes I'm looking through the documentation. I'm like, I am a teapot HTTP error. That doesn't even make sense.

(Scott Smeester at 00:39:30) Right. That's funny.

(Joel Beasley at 00:39:31) 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.