The Survivor, with Scott Leese [Episode 785]

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Scott Leese, Founder of Surf & Sales, Co-Host of the Surf & Sales podcast, and author.

In today’s episode, we learn of Scott’s amazing resilience in combating a life-threatening illness and how he used that experience to launch his successful sales career.

Listen and learn why Scott and I both hated making cold calls and what we did to avoid them! (Hint: It’s get promoted to manager)

For another incredible story of overcoming adversity, check out my interview with Ryan Stewman on Episode 342.

Episode Transcript

Andy Paul: Hey friends, welcome to the sales enablement podcast. I’m your host, Andy Paul. That was Scott Leese he’s founder of surf and sales, co-host host of the surf and sales podcast with Richard Harris. He’s an author, a thought leader. And Scott joining me today on sales enablement, episode  785 to talk about, well, a range of things, starting with his amazing resilience in combating a debilitating illness and launching his successful sales career.

Also digging the story behind why Scott and I both hated making cold calls early in our careers and what we did to avoid them. And also dive into Scott’s five biggest regrets in business and what you can do to avoid similar situations in your career, all this and much, much more. But before we get to Scott, I want to let you know how a whole team of people who work to produce this podcast are incredibly grateful for all of you who support us by listening to the show, telling your friends and sharing it on social media, and most importantly, subscribing to the show and giving us your feedback in the form of a rating and review.

Now, if you haven’t already connected with me on LinkedIn, please do. You can find me to search Andy Paul. I know it was more than one. I mean, it’s LinkedIn slash real Andy Paul. All right. Let’s jump into it with Scott.

Scott, welcome to the show.

Scott Leese: Thanks for having me, Andy.

Andy Paul: It’s a pleasure to finally have you on the show.

So, interesting week. I’m not really sure. Somehow talking about sales stuff seems kind of unimportant.

Scott Leese: Yeah. I’m with you. I had a bunch of events scheduled for this week and. ended up removing myself and then events canceled themselves. And, yeah, it’s, it’s pretty difficult to, they kind of try to attempt any business as usual type stuff, but it’s, it’s been rough.

Andy Paul: Yeah, very much so. Yeah. I mean it’s yeah, very much. So I was gonna say we have some broken windows in our building. We’re on the path of one of the rallies. It was mostly peaceful as almost all of them have been. There’s a couple of people in the crowd that apparently wanted to make a statement, but yeah, that’s been, it’s been a very, very tough week.

So I thought maybe, we’ll talk about sales indirectly. I want to start by talking about you. So tell us the story about if you don’t mind about, you know, you’ve mentioned a little or alluded to, but never really seen much detail about, all these surgeries you went through. A life threatening illness of some sort. So what, what was that?

Scott Leese: Yeah. At 23 years old, I got super sick. And, within two days of being sick, I ended up in the hospital. I had severe GI distress and it ended, it took them a while to figure it out. But, I ended up with Ulcerative colitis, like a really severe form of ulcerative colitis as well as another autoimmune disease.

And it was like, this switch had been flipped in my body and it just was never going to go off. I mean, it was really kind of an overnight, change. I was playing soccer in Arizona. And it just was on about to finish grad school and I’m six two, and I was about 195 pounds in really good shape. At the time, six weeks later, I was hospitalized and weighed 140 pounds and my organs were starting to shut down and yeah.

I couldn’t, you know, move from the hospital bed to the restroom on my own. I needed help. I mean, I wasn’t really bad shape.

Andy Paul: Well, how long, how long were you in the hospital?

Scott Leese: Four years, .

Andy Paul: Four years.

Scott Leese: Four years. I had, I had stints during that four years where I might get out for a week or two, but then I would just, you know, relapse and the meds that they had me on, you know, wouldn’t work.

It was just a mess. I mean, constant. You know, trying new things, different medications here, there, and everywhere. and then just nothing, nothing worked, nothing, nothing calmed it down. I started to get, strictures and scar tissues and in my intestine, my organs started, you know, being at risk of failure.

I started getting, you know, chronic kidney stones, like every couple of days.

Andy Paul: Wait. Every couple of days?

Scott Leese: Yeah. Yeah.

Andy Paul: Holy shit. So, so how would you, how would you treat that or do they have to pass?

Scott Leese: There’s no treating, there’s no treating it, you know, I mean, I had a couple of-

Andy Paul: They have that ultrasound

Scott Leese: Yeah they have the lithotripsy procedures and whatnot, but, you know, during this illness process, I mean had just absolutely excruciating pain.

And so I was pumped full of, you know, Dilauded and Demerol and morphine and Oxycontin and oxycodone and all this stuff. And then I started to get some cancerous growths on my, on my colon and my large intestine, coupled with a severe blockage. And so the doctors came in one time and basically said, we need to, you know, have surgery like later today, or you’re not going to make it.

And, You know, they they’ve tried to perform, I forget the name of the surgery now, but some type of surgery where they removed part of the large intestine and then sew it back up. And so they, they did that surgery and then it sprung a leak. I don’t know how else to phrase it and so I started going sepsis, I think that was  the term. That was Like my first emergency life saving surgery was to solve for that.

So anyways, I’ve had about nine surgeries. I think it’s nine on the button. Four major abdominal surgeries, sort of filleted open from, you know, above my belly button, right above my crotch and, two lifesaving surgeries and a total colectomy. So I have no large intestine. I have a surgery what’s called J pouch surgery where they stretch the small intestine down.

And, and that’s how I function. so I’m, I’m, I’m hardwired a lot different than other than other people. but you know, for me and all the things that I’ve been through this is, you know, as healthy as I’m kinda going to kind of get, and it, it is what it is. And once I started getting healthy enough to get released from the hospital, then I had a whole new challenge, which was getting off of drugs.

Andy Paul: Yeah, I was going to ask about that, but-

Scott Leese: Yeah, so you know, I was, I got pretty fortunate. I didn’t have a real, severe mental side to the addiction. I was just very physically addicted to all the opioids.

Andy Paul: Oh, I can imagine.

Scott Leese: So you know, I, I actually decided to Cold Turkey against doctor’s orders. They were pretty upset with me. But I was just at a place where I was like, I don’t want to take a fucking Advil again, let alone any, any kind of pills or medication.

Andy Paul: So were you home with your family or living by yourself, or

Scott Leese: I was at home. I was fortunate through this whole illness that, You know, my family was able to pay my bills and support me and, and whatnot. so I went home from the hospital and I was staying with my dad and, you know, my, my parents, I joke with my parents, like they’re so far removed from, you know, alcohol or drug culture. I tease them sometimes like, where are you going around during the sixties?

Andy Paul:

Scott Leese: I don’t even know how they had, no idea what was in store, but, you know, I knew what was in store. I’ve had plenty of friends, who’ve struggled with substance abuse and whatnot. But, you know, my mindset was like, look, this is going to be horrible for like two to three weeks and then, you know, things will get better. And after you’ve been through something for years, like I had, you know, two to three, three weeks sounded like a cakewalk by comparison.

Andy Paul: And was it.

Scott Leese: I wouldn’t call it a cakewalk. Some of the, some of the things you read and the stories you hear are pretty true. I mean, I can, I can remember lying in bed and feeling like I was levitating. And it’s moving around and goes, yeah, there’s this pure hallucination and, you know, a lot, a lot of pain and nausea and all that kind of stuff that comes with the territory.

But, you know, it was a, it was a means to an end for me. So it was a hell of an ordeal. You know, it’s not, it’s not like I don’t struggle now with, my, my health or anything like that, but-

Andy Paul: What was the turning point? So what, what happened to sort of say, okay, I’m getting better. Was it the surgeries? Was it the new medication?

Scott Leese: It was the surgeries, you know, The large intestine was the problem and they removed the large intestine. and so things are, have been able to be relatively under control. You know, I have periods of time that are more difficult. I have to watch what I eat. I’ve got 41 food allergies that can wreack haoc on me if I’m not careful

Andy Paul: 40, 41  foods.

Scott Leese: Things

Andy Paul: that you’d

Scott Leese: imagine like gluten and dairy and soy and. sugar and caffeine and things like this. peanuts, I mean, I’m, you know, I didn’t know any of this stuff, right

lmaybe I should have asked what can you eat?

Well, I did, the closest thing is like paleo ish, you know, fruit, vegetable, and protein. try to stay away from. Most other things. So the upshot is like, my regular diet is pretty damn healthy.

Andy Paul: Yeah, I was going to say none of the vices.

Scott Leese: Yeah, no, no. I’m just not allowed. I will suffer the consequences. So it’s certainly not worth it.

Andy Paul: Wow. What an ordeal? I mean, I, on the whole opioid thing, I remember what I felt like after being on opioids for five days, a couple of years ago, I was in the hospital for pancreatitis and extremely painful and they load you up with Dilauded. And so on the first two nights back, it was like, I couldn’t sleep. Cause the hallucinations were so intense. And that’s after five days. I can’t imagine after years.

Scott Leese: Yeah. Well, you know, perspective though. Yeah, yeah. At the time. It just felt like something I had to do. And it didn’t seem like that long of a period of time, you know, if you’ve told me today how you’re going to go through some serious withdrawals, the next three weeks, I’d be like, Oh fuck. That sounds pretty horrible because I’m not in the same, same place. Right.

Andy Paul: So that whole thing clearly interrupted your career, right? Because you were right at the start of your career at that point, or what would have been the start of your career?

Scott Leese: It would have been the start of my career. I candidly didn’t really know what I was doing with my life. I mean, I, I, I was playing semi-pro soccer still  in Arizona. I had gone to grad school basically because I didn’t feel like getting a job and working yet. And this was an acceptable thing to do with yourself to pursue education. So I, I got a master’s degree in learning and instructional technology and at the time, I was really interested in just how people learn and kind of how, how to teach people and get that learning to stick. But I didn’t really know what I wanted to do with myself. You know, my, my dad is a college professor, so I had this college professor thing in my head. I started to get interested a little bit in the idea of corporate training but I really didn’t know what I wanted to do at all. And then this whole health crisis hit me and, you know, I kind of lost all the things that I had studied. I mean, I had an undergraduate degree in psychology. I minored in religious studies. I have this master’s degree in learning theory. But that was, it was all four years since, at least four years, since I had thought about it and I’d never put it to use, I didn’t have a job experience.

So I really felt like I was just completely starting from scratch. I was, I was 27 years old. I really never had a job before in my life that didn’t involve getting paid to play sports or coach sports. So for me, getting into sales was a very, very strategic decision. It was the only thing I could think of where, you know, I could make as much money as possible, depending on how hard I worked and how well I did and I, and I felt like I understood the competitive landscape of it all as an athlete. You know, if you, if you perform well, you get paid. If you don’t, you get cut.

Andy Paul: Right.

Scott Leese: So I, I got that. And I’ve, I’ve always kind of lived for that kind of pressure. So I thought, well, I have no idea how to sell and you know, I’m not really that outgoing of a person but I might as well give this a try here because I got, I got to make up for lost time. Like all everybody’s ahead of me basically. And, you know, I just need somebody to give me an opportunity and when they do, I know what I’ve been through. I know how hard it was and nothing will ever be that hard again. So, you know, I’m going to push myself as hard as I can to get good at this thing.

Well that was what I was going to ask. Was the experience you went through how did that inform your approach once you got into sales and you sort of answered that. Yeah, sellling is really hard, but nothing like what you went through.

Yeah. I mean, it’s this perspective again, just to keep coming back to it. It’s like is cold calling hard? Yes. Is being injected on the phone a hundred times a day hard? Yes. Is the specter of losing your job because you’re not hitting quota difficult. Yes. Are any of those things? As difficult or hard as, you know, defining a life threatening illness? Absolutely not. So I lost some of the reservation and fears that I had in the end and the inhibitions, and I was just able to tap into that. Well, what’s the worst thing that can happen. Right. And resiliency was clearly something that I had in spades. And so I, I got used to very quickly, like not caring about rejection.

I felt very blessed to even be in the office and have a job and even just be outside breathing fresh air. And so I felt like, well, I got this opportunity and I’m not going to squander it. And I can remember walking the sales floor and kind of looking around at all my colleagues who were in various States of distraction or disarray and

Andy Paul: Despair.

Scott Leese: Yeah. Right. I remember very clearly looking around the room, thinking I’m going to destroy all these people. You know, if I can figure out how to sell, like they just seem like they’re kind of going through the motions. I have a very specific purpose here. Like I need to get, I need to get good at this. I need to get paid quick.

I need to leapfrog all these people and I need to make a name for myself. And the only way that I knew how to do that was to just outwork everybody at the, at the time, you know, this is a long time ago, right? This is before. You know, there was all these platforms, there was no podcast to listen to. There was no LinkedIn, there was no blogs, you know, none of this stuff. So it was very difficult to get coaching and consume content. So I didn’t know what else to do other than I just got to practice.

Andy Paul: Well, I, I was laughing right, talking about that because I read something that you had written that resonated with me, which was that you worked with hard to get promoted quickly cause you hated cold calling so much. And I was thinking that’s exactly what was going through my mind. My first year, I got promoted really quickly. That first job. I was working so hard cause I hated it as well.

Yeah. I mean the very first day that I went to work at this sales job.

And you were selling what?

Scott Leese: We were selling online lead generation tools to real estate agents and automotive dealers, this is like 2004. I think it is. So we, I go in on the first day, I’m nervous as hell. It like very old school it’s startup, but like old school, like I had to wear a suit and tie and all this. So I’m, I’m nervous. So we spend the morning kind of learning about the product and. And the industry and this kind of thing. And we come back from lunch and they’re like, okay, it’s time to get on the phone and make calls. And I’m like, you got to be fucking kidding me.

No CRM, no, you know, enablement tools, no leads. I had to source my own leads. I didn’t even have a damn headset. Right. So I can remember.

I’m not, I’m not crying for you by the way. Cause I can tell my story about doing that 20 or 25 years earlier.

But I, I called my wife on the way home. And, I’m like, I’m never going back to this job. Like, I am horrible. The phone weighs a thousand pounds. I’m terrified. I got no training, you know, and, and she, she kind of punched me in the gut and was like, well, if you don’t do this, what are you going to do? And, and that was like a real. You know, it was a real punch in the gut. Like, you know, she’s right.

I have no, no other plans, no backup plan, but that was it like something about that. Just kicked it into high gear for me and got rid of my excuse factory and fear. But, you know, it took me in my second month, full time in the role I became the number one rep in the company. And like, like you just said, I realized really fast that I hated coal car hated it.

And I’m like, I gotta get out of this role. So what’s the fastest way out of this role? Well, I got to get so good at it that I can just teach other people how to do it. No, that was my mindset and my mission.

Andy Paul: Mine too. My first 12 to 18 months on the job sell as much as I can get promoted. So do you remember your first order?

Scott Leese: Oh, absolutely. 9:30 at night. one call closed a real estate agent in Hawaii.

Nice.

I was, I was calling Hawaii, so I was working in Walnut Creek, California. but I think Hawaii at the time was two or three hours behind California. So, you know, it was like six, seven o’clock Hawaii time, which is still pretty late. but I was called cold calling Hawaii to take advantage of the time zone and. And, you know, got somebody that was interested and closed the deal. And I just remember being so happy, like the, it was like a rush of adrenaline, the competitive juices, like kicked in and I’m like, I need this feeling again.

Right. and I recognize that I didn’t close that deal because of skill. I, I recognize that I closed that deal because I was in the office three, four hours after closing on a Friday night.

Andy Paul: Yeah.

Scott Leese: And so I just climbed that kind of, that kind of effort and pressure, you know, I I’d show up at six. I leave at six, I got a couple buddies who surf with me, to who were also working with me there, to show up at like 9:30, 10 o’clock every, every Saturday.

And we’d, you know, make calls and send emails for a few hours to put in extra time. And that was how I learned, you know, it was just all trial by fire.

Andy Paul: Yeah, my first order came because I decided to make one extra call at four 30 on a Friday afternoon in person. Yeah. I was, I was actually in the East Bay of the Bay area and my first job territory is from Fremont to Fairfield’s all the way out to Rio Vista.

And, so yeah, Walnut Creek. I spent a lot of time there. But yeah, selling desktop, adding machines. So sort of our training program. First, we had to sell some desktop adding machines in order to be trained, to sell computers. And yeah, I remember going into this welding shop. I remember it’s called Bucks Welding in Fremont, California, and I was walking this  business park going door to door. So I’d make one extra call. Walk into this place. That’s like soot. Everywhere. And I thought there’s no way they want this calculator. They buy it for bookkeeping purposes and so on. And, yeah, Buck comes out, looks like these pictures of coal miners from the twenties and thirties. Just the whites of his eyes show, covered in grime, head to foot his clothes. And he just sat there. Well, for some reason was interested in buying the product. I think it was a pity sale as in my three piece dark suit with red power tie, white shirt, all that stuff. and I was nervous as hell, but yeah, just wrote me a check on the spot and took my demo unit.

Scott Leese: Hey, you know, the pity sale for your first sale is nothing to be ashamed about.

He was bemused watching me because, you know, man, you’re doing manual work. But he ran a small business. It looked like they’d been there forever. I don’t know what it was, but I took it. But yeah, that now you gotta have that first one.  Never forget Buck.

Yeah. Yeah. I’ll never forget. I never forget my. I end up telling that story quite a bit. It’s it’s a good one.

Andy Paul: So tell us about your most memorable order that you’ve taken.

Scott Leese: It’s certainly not a deal that I close on my own, to be honest with you.

Andy Paul: Good ones rarely are.

Scott Leese: I was the only, I was actually only an account executive for about six, seven months before I moved into sales manager role and I’ve been in sales leadership roles. you know, ever since. I can remember, you know, Staying in the office until roughly midnight with certain teams. Cause we were trying to do an end of the month and the quarter blitz to either hit the team number or help them hit their personal number. And this is when I was like in my late twenties now probably, and some of those times were a blast honestly, kind of missed.

Some of those ridiculous long hour days where the team is like ordered pizza and everybody’s trying to help everybody push across the line. To hit some goal. I just did a deal not too long ago with, a team that I was working with where. It was damn near a two year sales cycle and it was with the state government and it was a low seven figure deal. That’s a very, very memorable sale for me just because. Not just the size of it, but the number of organizational complexities that existed trying to sell to a state government agency. I mean, you talk about building upon, you know, contacts and turning contacts into influencers and influencers and champions and champions into, you know, get you in the door with the decision makers.

I mean, we must have found. You know, two dozen decision makers who felt like they had the ultimate authority to sign the contract or not. I mean, just a mess, a deal I’m probably involved about a dozen or more people, internally, you know, from engineering, resources to product engineering, resources, to. Account management and customer service, strategic sales reps of mind. The CEO helping. I mean, that’s a very memorable deal just because of how long it took and the size of it. And the complexity of it.

Andy Paul: When did the moment strike you? You knew you were going to win.

Scott Leese: Not until it was done.,Andy, not until it was done. I mean, I’m. My family is originally from Niagara falls, Buffalo, New York, Western New York. So I still have this mentality where like, I’m not allowed to have nice things and the sky might be falling at any moment I can’t remove my DNA.

Andy Paul: And your parents aren’t even childredn of the depression.

Scott Leese: so yeah, I mean, I, I, there was signals, you know, signal after signal. This is getting serious and whatnot, but then not until the deal was done and everything was signed where we were like, Holy crap. That just that just happened.

Andy Paul: What’d you do to celebrate?

Scott Leese: Am I allowed to say on this show.

Andy Paul: Well say it. We can always edit it. It’s not LIVE.

Scott Leese: Let’s just say we opened a bottle of tequila a little bit early that day.

Andy Paul: All right. That works. It’s well worth it. As long as you Uber home, that’s fine.

Scott Leese: That’s right.

Andy Paul: So what’s your, you know, you just got promoted pretty quickly to sales management. You’ve been in sales management for a long time. You’ve been a VP of sales. Tell us about sort of the biggest risk you took as a manager and how it turned out?

Scott Leese: You know, I think the biggest, I think, first of all, I’ve taken a lot of risks. Every single time I’ve been an operator I’ve gone to a brand new tech startup. Brand new in the sense that there’s next to zero revenue whatsoever and almost no customers.

Andy Paul: Yeah, me too.

Scott Leese: So every time I left one job, you know, it was a bit of, a bit of a risk, you know, you go from having, you know, good. Good base salary, good making good commissions and building something that you know is growing. And then this new opportunity shows up and it’s like going all the way back to the start with no guarantees for anything, being successful.

So that. I’m a big believer in kind of betting on myself and taking those risks. But the answer to your question is pretty easy actually. 2011, we decided to leave San Francisco Bay area and moved to Austin, Texas. I was working, I had just started working for a company called main street hub. And, the founders and I were kind of chatting through sales strategy and I was just sort of saying, you know, I don’t know that it makes sense to build a sales org in San Francisco anymore.

It’s so expensive. you know, there’s these other cities out there that at the time, They, they were, you know, really kind of up and coming small tech scenes. So we were like Austin, Atlanta, Boulder and Denver salt Lake city Scottsdale. So we, we looked at all of these places and, you know, when we were in Austin, we like, we just really enjoyed it.

And it felt like this is what we should do. So. We relocated the whole company, about 10 of us, from San Francisco to Austin. I didn’t know anybody in Austin, Texas at all. My wife and I went to high school together. Both of our parents. Live in our, in our hometown and Chico, California, still, all of our friends and siblings live in North, in San Francisco, in Northern California.

So we like, we left everything. I didn’t know, Austin was a fairly liberal city. I didn’t know there was a college here. I didn’t know there was a music. I didn’t even, I mean, I was completely ignorant. So that was, that was the risk, the biggest risk, you know, and we sort of said, well, let’s give it a try.

And, you know, if we, if, if it goes South, we’ll just, we’ll just come home. but that was, that was a big risk and probably the biggest one. I think that I’ve, that I’ve taken to leave everybody behind, but it was also. I think the best decision I’ve ever made in my career and, and for my family. So we’re, we’ve been really happy here.

Andy Paul: Yeah. I mean, Austin’s a cool place. I mean, it’s obviously you, you tell us about, it seems the last time I was there year ago, just growing leaps and bounds. I mean, it’s become a big city very quickly.

Scott Leese: Yeah. I mean, arguably it’s. And I would, I would call it probably the third best tech scene in the country right now. But certainly I think it’s in the top five, if not number three. So it’s grown a ton. It’s kind of well known now, but you know, one of the reasons it was attracted to me in 2011 was because it was still kind of small. And I looked at it and thought, wow, I could make an impact here. You know, if I, if I scale a couple of companies here, you know, I might be able to be a bigger fish in a smaller pond.

Whereas if I do the same thing in San Francisco, like nobody’s ever going to hear me or know who I am. And so that was, that was kind of attractive, you know, to me to feel like I might play some small part in building a building a scene out. I feel like I’d done that here. And, I’m pretty proud of that actually.

Andy Paul: Yeah. I felt similar things when I left the Bay area to move to San Diego back in 1990. I mean, there was nothing in San Diego except for this young company called Qualcomm, and a bunch of other young companies. And yeah, my thought was I got recruited to this company and it’s like, you know, there’s so little going on here that. If it doesn’t work out, I’m gonna have to move back to the Bay Are. Cause there was nothing, there was no other alternatives. So fortunately, yeah, the scene grew up so never did, never did return. So you’re a long ways from surfing now.

Scott Leese: I am, but I’m a three hour flight to Costa Rica and a two and a half hour flight to Nicaragua. So prior to all this chaos, you know, I’ve managed to get down to those two countries or to, or to Mexico. you know, at least a couple of times a year, you know, I can, I can catch more waves in a week in Costa Rica than I would all year in San Francisco, probably. So

Andy Paul: And a lot warmer. You’re not wearing a wetsuit

Scott Leese: no. And you know, I, I, I, I created a whole business out of my love for surfing and my love for sales, you know, Richard Harris and I created the surfing sales summit, which is a micro sales conference. We’d take about. 15 to 20 people, a couple of times, a year to, like I said, Costa Rica. And we were going to go to Mexico and Nicaragua in September and October of this year, which might not happen now.

Probably won’t happen now. But, yeah, we. Work through a sales workshops and sales management and leadership workshops and stuff like that. And it’s kinda more about the experience and deeper networking and get a little bit of a vacation out of it. So, you know, I, I’ve found a way to, to combine my passions and get paid to go on a trip, nothing wrong with that. You know,

Andy Paul: There is nothing wrong with that. Why should I need to figure that recipe out somehow combine sales and a trip to see a soccer game or something or bike riding actually as well? The things that we’re we’ve looked at in the past.

Scott Leese: You’d be surprised how many people have reached out to me, Andy and inserted activity and sales and sales, snow soccer and sales. And I’ve had people from all over the world, reach out to me and say, Hey, you should do one here with this sport or this activity. I’m like, yeah, maybe I’ll license it out to you.

Andy Paul: Well, I mean, years ago in San Diego, there was a guy that was doing golf and sales.

Scott Leese: That’s awesome.

Andy Paul: It was less instructional, more networking, but I mean, it was sort of in the title and yeah, they sortof it died out sometime ago, but yeah, that went on for several years. So now it’s, it’s great. It’s a great way to do it. And I think in the small groups, great way for people to network.

Scott Leese: I think even more so now, you know, with everything that’s gone on. you know, micro is, is the way to go. I think the big macro stuff might take a really, really long time to come back. I mean, I don’t know what you think, but I, it feels, it feels to me that people will be very slow to go back to a conference with a couple hundred thousand people, but might be a little more interested in, a smaller, more intimate setting with, you know, a couple dozen people where they can still learn and network and, and work on their skills and, and kind of decompress a little bit.

Andy Paul: Yeah. I think that’s a great combination of things to do. I’ve enjoyed following that, what you’re doing because yeah, A it’s small B as intimacy. Well, we put on events with a partner, I put on an event with a partner a couple years ago for CROS, a SAAS companies, two and half days, and rented a house in the Bay area. You have created this experience out of it. But the thing that was most notable, the takeaway was just how the attendees bonded with each other and seeing them quickly engage and share their experiences. And, and we were, you know, thinking after the fact, Oh gosh, we probably, even though we were nominally presenting topics, we probably spoke. Maybe 40% of the time and the rest was all the participants.

Scott Leese: Yup.

Andy Paul: So I’m with you. I think, I think it’s a great, a great model. Well, tell people how they can find out more about it. You can visit surfing sales.com and sign up for the. Sort of alerts if you will, about when our next events are and we actually ended up spinning out our own podcast to kind of get the word out there a little bit, and that’s been a lot of fun.

Scott Leese: And we thank you for coming on the show.

Andy Paul: My pleasure was a lot of fun. You guys did a great job. Yeah, well, Scott, I run out of time, but appreciate your taking the time to join us and share some information about yourself.

Yeah, no worries, Andy. Thanks for having me, man.

It was a lot of fun.

We’ll do it again. Sounds good. Then if people want to connect with you because other than Surf and Sales and the other way yeah. You reach out to me on LinkedIn. I’m very active there. I also recently started my own Patreon, community. So you can find me on Patreon as well, and I’m pretty obsessive about responding to people.

So if anybody reaches out to me, I’ll be sure to get back to. Alright, Scott, thank you very much. All right. Cheers, Andy.