Brian Nichols  0:00  
Well, hey there, folks, we're back. Welcome back to another episode of CX without the BS, I know I'm excited. I know my co host, my forever co host, Tom Milligan, HSG, he is joining us here on the program. Tom, I am so excited for today's episode, but more importantly, I'm just so excited to have the show back and rolling. We've been a little busy. A

Tom Milligan  0:22  
Oh, this has been, you know. And the thing is, we never consciously said, Hey, let's take a break from the show. We just said, Holy crap. When are we gonna record this? We don't have time. So much is going on, and it's all good stuff, and that's the good thing. I mean, it could be worse, right? 100% well, and

Brian Nichols  0:40  
by the way, again, elephant in the room. So I think our last episode, Tom, was right before you and I were going down to Nashville for the talaris Partner Summit that first week, I know, first week of August. And here we're recording the last week of November. We're recording right here before Thanksgiving, right? So it's been cool, right? Because in that little bit of a hiatus from August to today, Tom, I don't know about you, but I've been able to see a lot of BS over the past few months, especially as we're talking to more of the providers, but also talking to some more partners, which is actually a really cool segue to today's conversation. We're sitting down with Daniel Vaughn. He is the CEO and founder of Emerson ROI, and he's doing things differently in the channel. Tom as a TA,

Tom Milligan  1:28  
yeah. And you, you were just on his show, right? You? Yeah. I

Brian Nichols  1:32  
was just on his show. Yeah. He gave me a shout. He said, Brian, we got to talk about what sharpens doing with CX for the SMB, and specifically creating contact centers that don't suck. So, yeah, I was just over there. We'll make sure we post that in the show notes there when it goes live.

Tom Milligan  1:46  
That's awesome. Yeah, I mean, I haven't met this guy. I'm really looking forward to it, just based on your what you've told me about him so far. I'm excited to meet him. Great

Brian Nichols  1:53  
energy, and he's doing things right Tom, you know, we talk about all the time, good people. Bring out the good in people. Daniel is good people, so I'm really excited to have him on the show here. You ready to get started? Let's go all right, rock and roll. So with that being said, on to today's episode, Daniel Vaughn from Emerson, ROI, here on CX without the BS, all right. And with that joining us here on CX without the BS, I had the pleasure of being on his podcast. Really excited to have him on ours. Tom. Daniel Vaughn from Emerson ROI, Daniel, welcome to the program. How you doing?

Daniel Vaughan  2:27  
Thank you, Brian. I'm actually very good. We did chat a few minutes prior to this. I'm on very little sleep. I probably can hear him. I have a six month old little boy, and he's my first and he is screaming while my wife is trying to get ready for her first call for the day. And unfortunately, it's raining down, pouring so we can't deliver him to my in laws quite yet. So that's going to be interesting hearing him throughout the whole conversation.

Tom Milligan  2:54  
Well, I can't hear him. I don't know about the rest of you, but I can't hear him. So Daniel, nice to meet you, and if we do hear him, nice to meet your kid.

Daniel Vaughan  3:01  
Thank you very much. It must be the I'm in my basement office that I made over the course of three weeks, ripped out the whole ceiling, put in the noise canceling insulation. So maybe that's doing the job. Yeah,

Brian Nichols  3:15  
that and then the noise canceling technology, right? And that's hitting the air wave there.

Daniel Vaughan  3:20  
My Fancy microphone must be isolating my voice. Perfect. Yeah,

Brian Nichols  3:24  
there you go. It's the fancy microphones. It's the fancy technology. It's almost like we're here to talk about tech and stuff, Daniel, but before we get there, you got a pretty cool story. And like I said, I was on your show, we got to really talk about what we do in the the world of contact center. But you do a lot more than just contact center and customer experience. You're going out helping entrepreneurs, you're helping technology folks and all that in between. So let's before we go into the meat and potatoes there, give us a little background, kind of, what's been your history in this over arching CX world? Give us the Daniel Vaughn version. Then what led to being the CEO of Emmett ROI,

Daniel Vaughan  4:02  
yeah, it's been, I mean, I'm an accidental tech sales guy, you know, I got into tech actually was a sustainability and business major, and I found out pretty quick after college that it didn't matter what your grades were, you know, I graduated with High honors and whatnot from a good school, but unfortunately, the political climate at the time was not permitting of economic and environmentally focused jobs, so I struggled really hard to get that I was actually slated to move to San Diego. Unfortunately, my father lost his house, and they moved all the way out east on Long Island where I'm from, and I stayed to help him out, help pay rent, while he got back on his feet. And throughout that time, I spent seven months after college trying to find a job, and I could not get one. You know, offering free work, sending out resumes every day, didn't make a difference. Couldn't get anything. So I had nine years of retail experience, retail sales. So. Selling and fixing barbecues and fireplaces, building custom islands, big $30,000 things for wealthy people. And I applied on zip recruiter for entry level sales jobs. Ended up getting picked up by GTT and had a seven hour social experiment interview with 30 other people, where they put us in a room and watched us from all angles and put us into seven hours, seven hours. Yeah, yeah. They had asked us, I knew nothing at all about tech, not, not a thing. I didn't know anything about network architecture, infrastructure, you know, voice data, IP, nothing at all. But they asked us four things. They said, Tell us why GTT, why technology, why sales and why me and we had to give that presentation in what I assume was a very deliberately cramped room for to test our our composure and pressure situations and the ability to communicate. Thankfully, the whole thing worked out very well. It was a great experience, and they were a great organization to work for. We spent two weeks in a very immersive role playing in the boardroom in one pen New York City with a dozen others in the New York division. I had three of them across the country. It's about 36 on the team, and Scott abelman, who's a man I look up to, and I'm very grateful for that. He was the SVP of marketing at the time, now retired, but he put together two weeks of intense boot camp of training and for sales development representative, which is where I started. So learning about value props and the personas and what people cared about, cold calling, emailing, you know, the whole deal. So I did that for about a year. Got to the point where I needed to make a move, and they didn't really have the space for me there, so I ended up moving over to BCM one on a referral from a former colleague. And I started out as a BDR there as well. And then it really started to accelerate, because concurrent with the advent of the COVID 19 pandemic, as well as me moving in with my then girlfriend, now wife, I also made a jump into account management for the arena one UCAS acquisition at BCM one, so I took over about 400 accounts under the SMB, mid market accounts, under the the arena, one UCAS label, and then, after about four months of doing so, I was doing very well, and got sniped by Andy Steinke over at BC, and one to bring on, to take on the channel partners as well, because I was kind of indirectly working with them. So that's how I got into the channel. Now, as you can imagine, this was sort of a pressure cooker situation where I am now locked into a new technology, new role, new everything, as well as moving in with my then girlfriend and again, now wife. So luckily that all worked out. I think it was like a make or break year for everybody, right? It worked out very well for me and her and I proposed that summer, but

Tom Milligan  8:04  
congratulations, she said, Yes, yes, yes,

Daniel Vaughan  8:07  
she did. I'm still wondering how, but she was talking with David McLeod, actually on my podcast with with coro, and I told him she made a list before meeting me of exactly what she wanted, and she basically said that she wanted the boy version of her, and apparently I fit that bill. So we're like the same exact person, so and it works out for us. But anyway, throughout that time at BCM one, I ended up being offered a role that I would have loved. Unfortunately, you know the the comp plan just didn't work out at the time. It wasn't the right fit. They kind of knew that they didn't have the right place for me again. So I made a jump over to Nextiva, where I was again, very involved in UCAS and CCAs and the CX. And unfortunately, that did not work out. After about 13 months, I got laid off, along with a large, large portion of the company. This was during the peak of the 2022 2023 layoff. So I was not alone. I ended up taking about five months in between that role and my next really trying to figure out what I wanted to do. And the UCAS market was a little bit shaky at the time, we'll say so, I took a referral from a former executive and jumped over to a Cybersecurity Awareness Training Company, which, yet again, unfortunately, did not work about work out. About four months later, I was laid off again, so it was a bit of a rough road for a couple of years there. Unfortunately, I struggled to find a role, regardless of being, you know, top performer, company wide, demo competition placings as well as, you know, channel builder awards, being involved in every company initiative, you can name it. So I started to realize that I needed to figure out something different. So I ended up consulting for another former. Executive for about four or five months on equity from December to April, and helping build out, or really driving, rather, the channel consulting as well as technology consulting company. Throughout that time, I learned a lot about, you know, what I'm capable of, and a lot of business aspects that I was not familiar with, but it was exceptional experience and very instrumental in building the foundation that I have today when building this company, which I started shortly after my son was born at the end of May, and I got turned down after seven interviews for another company based off of what they called a culture interview, and I cannot understand what it was about. So I was just at the end of unemployment, to be honest, and I was just like, I have no choice here, and I can keep trying to get into an industry that clearly, for whatever reason that God has put in front of me does not want me. So I started, you know, Emmett ROI. It's named after my son, Emmett. And I got really excited right away, because I kind of figured out myself. And I was like, You know what? I get to do this. Get to do it the way that I want to with the principles that I want to with my ideas, and I get to execute on those things without anybody telling me no, anybody slowing me down? And that's where we are today, before I start going into all the details of the company. Holy

Tom Milligan  11:27  
cow. What a story. First off, you know, and Brian, I don't know if you want to jump in, but I'm going to say kudos to you. I mean, yeah, life punched you in the face. I mean, in fact, I'm going to use a phrase when, when life hit me literally five years ago this week, life hit me pretty hard. And I called a friend of mine, who also happens to be a podcast host, and I said, Dude, you're not going to believe what just happened, and his phrase will live with me forever. He said, Dude, that's a kick in the dick.

Daniel Vaughan  12:06  
So, yeah, that's a good way of putting it, yeah.

Tom Milligan  12:08  
So, yeah, wow, dude, you got kicked in the dick. Little South Park,

Daniel Vaughan  12:13  
little Shambo by uh, by fate, I guess.

Tom Milligan  12:15  
Yeah, congratulations for for rising above Yes.

Daniel Vaughan  12:20  
Well, thank you very much. It's, it's, it's a lot of, you know, there's pros and cons, right? There's, there's a lot of reward. It's a tremendous amount of risk. I'm not in this sort of half ass, right? I cashed out my 401, KS, and invested everything that I have into it. And I'm, I'm not in a position where I'm in my early 20s and I've got all this time, and I'm doing great, you know, I have, I got a we rent a house here, and I have a lot of bills to pay. I have a newborn son to take care of and build a future. But luckily, as I said, my wife and I are a tremendous team, and she backs me 100% I mean, when I get real personal about it, she just sent me a text when I woke up to the just two days ago, and it was just her telling me how proud she is of me and how she knows that I'm giving 1,000% of every day, you know, is to what I'm doing. And I may may look make things look easy to her, because she doesn't, you know, understand this part of the business and whatnot, but she just wanted to remind me that she's here to support me. So it means a lot. That's,

Tom Milligan  13:23  
yeah, she's a keeper. Congratulations.

Unknown Speaker  13:25  
100%

Daniel Vaughan  13:26  
Yeah. Well, and

Brian Nichols  13:27  
one thing I just want to, like, just emphasize Daniel, right, is that your your story, it gave us from a kind of cultural perspective, right? You got to really dip your toe into a lot of different arenas, both, both the big players, you know, some of the smaller players, and then some of the players in between. And I mean, talk about blessings in disguise, Daniel, because I genuinely think, as much as you mentioned, there's definitely some negatives and some stressors. I think you're gonna find, and you're finding right now that because of all that, that that adversity, it gave you the chance also to see, though, where they maybe weren't the best of fits for you, and now it gives you the flexibility to avoid the BS, right? I mean, our whole show is about avoiding the BS and calling it out and, I mean, elephant in the room, Tom and I have have, we've worked with a lot of these companies, whether for the companies or tangentially, with these companies, and we see the good and we see the bad and the ugly, right? So the fact that you now kind of can play this independent role where you get to go after the folks, where you have a lot of the commonalities with and focus on the things that you care about, right? And not necessarily have to be, you know, presenting a solution or presenting a company that you're not 100% invested in, because you see the culture behind the scenes, right? Like this is where Tom and I are sharp, and selfishly, I feel we're in a really good spot, because it's kind of that startup mentality where we get to do a lot of the things that we know will work, and we don't have to go through the countless red tape and like that is a huge blessing and value add for us. To now you as a an independent business owner, who you get to pick and choose who you do business with. Like, yeah, kind of the world's your oyster, right?

Daniel Vaughan  15:09  
Oh, good, yeah, no, I'm good. Now, I had a little bit of a bandwidth issue, but we're back,

Brian Nichols  15:15  
yeah, like, the world's, well, the world's your oyster, right now, right? Daniel, I mean, like, you get to choose whatever direction you want to

Daniel Vaughan  15:21  
go. And it's very, very, very exciting. It can be also, at times, intimidating. You know, that's the honest truth of it. There's waxing and waning of complete delusional, I you know, this is the best thing it's ever going to happen. And then all of a sudden it's just like, like Tom said, you kind of get kicked in the dick once in a while, but it is really great. I can say that you're absolutely right. You know, blessing in disguise. I was put through what I like to describe as, and this is maybe a very nuanced reference, but the Dragon Ball Z hyperbaric time chamber, where you go in and you train and time is accelerated. So like 10 minutes in there is actually, like 50 years type thing, and that's what it was. And I accelerated through a bunch of roles, you know, by no means into some, you know, great. You know, a high ascension in rankings or whatnot. I really, I like to tell people I really could not give a shit less what my title is. You know, it's founder, because that's what it is. But you could make it peasant and give me what I need to support my family and my goals and find satisfaction what I do. And I would, I would change it. I don't care. That's but that leads to, you know, the way that I like to do things. And I've had great fortune with a lot of mentors that have taught me a lot of things, you know, from the actual technical aspects of, you know, engineering with with telecom and SAS, to the sales mentors that I've had, as well as just people who, you know, taught me business. Because, as you can tell, I'm on a podcast called CX without the BS. And this is kind of the tone that you guys set, which I think is awesome, but unfortunately, I don't really possess the ability to turn that off, so I find myself in the position of being this way pretty much in every conversation, though. So that presents a little bit of the challenge sometimes in the the office politics, which I'm glad I'm not a part of. So I had people there to sort of guide me and protect me in some ways. Yeah, that's it's a great opportunity for me, and I'm trying to seize it with everything I have. That's

Tom Milligan  17:32  
great. So, hey, I want to get into, you know exactly what Emmetts and ROI does and why it's different. But I wanted to, as you were talking about your journey to get here, and how you never meant to get into sales or become a salesperson. And I think that's a fairly common thing, that a lot of people become sales people accidentally. And in fact, my favorite business book of all time is called the accidental salesperson, written by a guy named Chris Lytle. If you have not read that, Daniel, it is, it is kind of your life.

Daniel Vaughan  18:07  
I will jot it down. And after I watch the recording, yeah.

Tom Milligan  18:12  
And by the way, I did a, I used to do a book club with my team, and so once a week we would say we would read and discuss a chapter of the book, and, and, you know, some it was, you know, I would have one person lead the conversation each week, and when it was my turn, I actually had reached out to the author, and I said, Hey, would you mind jumping on my team call? And he was gracious enough to actually jump on the call and actually lead the discussion about his own book, nice and. And he has become a decent friend of mine, actually. And so I It is seriously one of the greatest books you will ever read. And it I just thought about that when you were talking about how, you know, no, none of us, I didn't, actually, I kind of did, unfortunately, because my dad is a sales guy, and I just kind of followed in his footsteps. But most people just kind of, well, I tried to do this, and it didn't work out. And so

Daniel Vaughan  19:01  
yeah, here I am. Yeah, that's very much in line with my thinking on career. It's I don't think anybody in third grade when asked to walk up to the front of the class and give the report on what they want to be, I don't think anybody said I want to be a telecom sales person, right? There's always, you know, kind of tailing back to some other thing that they wanted to do, and that's centered around communications, right? It's either it's talking and listening and learning and teaching, and that's what sales is. You have to listen to what business problems are and find out a way to solve them. That's sort of why I'm successful, and what I do to my modes degree, because I am a voracious problem solver. Called myself, sort of like an intellectual power trooper. You just dropped me into something, and I just, I don't. Have the ability to not want to figure it out, you know, I just, I just need to order chaos. When I when I see something happening, so when I sit in front of a client and I'm asking them questions, and I'm trying to understand, I don't see money, I really don't I see people, and I see problems, and I think about, you know, their families and what they do, and I built Emmett and ROI to reflect that in the qualities that I want my son to to really embody, and for him to see a documented version of the things that I plan to teach him. And it's not going to be an easy road with parenting, nor is it going to be the business. But what we're doing today is it's going to be true, rounded Technology Advisory, and I'm stepping into one particular area, in managed services, and it's very deliberate. I thought about, you know, my experience being mostly in UC and networking, SD, Wan, internet connectivity and that sort of thing. But I branched out into some other areas. And I started to realize, as many have, that the whole UC game is sort of aged right. It's moving on to a different aspect. I think there's an older, uh, probably get myself in trouble with this one, but I don't care. There's an older generation of telecom folks out there that were doing all the spiff hunting, and that might have worked out for them at the time, you know, kind of right in the wave of technology as it comes in. So good on them. Nothing. Nothing wrong with, uh, being successful do the times or doing the effort. But I think today, you really can't call yourself a trusted advisor if all you're there to do is to find out what phone system they have and try to sell them the one that makes you the most money. So I don't do that. In fact, I don't even really focus on on UC. I do focus on CX as a more overall, well rounded approach, and that includes things like sharp and like CX across various different verticals and different market segments. But also, you know, kind of, I want to say ancillary, but these kind of tangential solutions out there, like maybe it's a cinch with message media, that you can bolt onto a UC, or maybe it's infinite wireless, though, you can set up your backups that can provide you with the ability to do, you know, customer payments on the road and remote areas or whatever it is. And these are, you know, just very vague and sort of limited examples. But I do that my entire advisory across cybersecurity, IoT, advanced networking, mobility, as well as UC and CC, and I tried to get involved with as much as I can. So when I'm sitting in front of somebody and they and I asked them, hey, what's bothering you? You know, what is your biggest business challenge today? And when they answer and the response isn't, oh, I have poor, you know, call quality. I have more to talk about. I have more to answer. And that came to fruition very shortly after, after I kind of set it in motion, because I did close my first deal, which I only got a referral from a family member on, because I'm not actually looking for business right now, which is ironic, and I'll explain that at a later, later time here, but I ended up closing an IoT deal. And I was there just talking about, you know, what their issues were, and ended up closing an IoT deal. So that was two weeks after I learned about the technology that I ended up selling.

Brian Nichols  23:37  
I love it. And just, I want to go back to something, Daniel, you mentioned the different areas that you're able to dip your feet in here, right? And I love the fact that you can approach it with very much an agnostic perspective, but also you can layer in your non BS perspective, right? And Tom, and I will preach this all day long. We're talking CX. Specifically, there's a lot of BS in the industry, right? But that's true across the industry, into the other areas of tech, that's into the IoT world, that's into the telco world, that's into the UC world, that's into the cybersecurity world. There's so much white noise that's out there. And I guess when you're talking to specific SMB types of prospects or customers, for that type of customer, they really need the no BS, right? Like you are their trusted advisor. When you're a large entity, right? Like your IT team is more or less your trusted advisor. And then you're you're delegating to them to find the right fit. And usually it's based on their industry experience, their network, what have you. But in your case, a lot of these technologies, and I, you know, I do a lot with SMBs as well, but you see that a lot of these companies either A, they don't know what's out there, right, or B, they know what's out there, but they don't know how to see through the BS. So yes, I say all that, like help paint the picture when you're sitting down with a customer. Right? What? What is the Daniel Vaughn approach like when you're trying to truly understand what are the main problems that this customer has, and how do I align them with a vendor that's going to not just check the boxes, but not bring BS to the table?

Daniel Vaughan  25:14  
So there's really two questions there, right? There is, how am I identifying the opportunity, how am I bringing the value, and how am I opening up those conversations? And then there's, what do I do once that is discovered, right? So start with the first one, and the way that I go about, and this is one of the reasons why I'm not actually looking for business right now. The way I go about bringing value to clients is because I'm an extremely information based person. I'm really just a nerd at heart. You know, it was going to go for my PhD to teach. Unfortunately, that's not going to pay off my student loans, because you just don't make enough money. So I ended up sticking with sales, and that's why I'm still here. But I educate myself to the utmost degree that I possibly can. It doesn't mean I know everything. It doesn't mean I'm an expert in anything. It means that I'm in the pursuit of becoming an expert, and that's why I started my podcast. So I thought about how I'd go about that demand gen and generating opportunities. Then I thought about, why would anybody want to talk to me? Now, I know there's reasons why I can help people, but they need to know that as well, right? You need to be able to have that sort of upfront, open the door value. So I thought about having that podcast where I can learn. I give the opportunity for suppliers to represent themselves, to bring awareness while I'm learning. So instead of me doing individual sessions where I'd go to learn, I have those conversations with the either executives or another leader at the company. I then take all that information and I internalize it through various different means. Now, when I'm walking into a client's office, I've also done research on them. I have a list right now of over 500 prospects throughout the Long Island area that I'm doing personalized research on. That is everything that I can see from the outside about their business, from, you know, customer reviews, anywhere from glass door Google, you know, information there about what their employees are saying, what customers are saying about them, what I can tell from the outside of how they make money, how they lose money, and what sort of features and functionalities they may be missing from website research, and are they using various different tools. I mean, I'm focusing on transportation, service industries and and financial and a couple others right now, but the first two are really the primary and I see a lot of folks, and this is why I got into the I'm getting into the managed CRM, sales and marketing and automation, because I see a lot of people that are smaller businesses, that are using disjointed tools for CRM, and they have, quite frankly, very shitty marketing. And it's not their fault, because they're busy out there running their business day to day, and they don't have the resources. And perhaps, like you said, the know how, or the the awareness of what's out there, they're not tech people. These are blue collar salt of the earth dudes and girls that are just out there working. You know, they're getting it done. They don't do strategy. And this is not a intellectual comparison. Has nothing to do with, you know, white collar, blue collar comparisons and what people are capable of. It's just what their day looks like. You know, they're not out there doing research. They don't have a huge IT team that's doing all this. They don't have C suite members that have MBAs from these colleges, or whatever it was, or the experience to drive business direction. They're just out there winning business, helping people, hands dirty, getting stuff done. And I have experience with that, because I mentioned I had nine years of retail sales, so there's a personal connection that I have. But once I get in there and I establish that there is a problem that I can solve, or maybe it's as simple as they're getting completely ripped off and paying $40 or $35 for a UC seed, or their internet hasn't been checked in five years, and the rates have come down significantly while the bandwidth has gone up. Or they're having internet outages. Maybe they're a restaurant, they have 15 TVs and they're streaming the UFC fights, and they don't have the capabilities to, you know, get their Internet back up, and they're losing dozens of customers every time that happens, and they're never coming back, and they're telling all their friends about it. A simple SD Wan player with a with a with a provider that's priced right and positioned properly to actually help that market segment is something that I can help pair them with and explain the benefits for so that's how I go about pairing suppliers that satisfy the needs of the technology that solves the business problem to drive an outcome that's meaningful for the client. And I have a wide variety of options to suit that. And you guys fall into a very specific category. Your CX for SMB, you know, there's a, I mean, you there are providers, and we talked about this in my podcast, but it's no secret, there are providers that will not service five agents. They're like, well, that's just not worth my time to bring on. We don't have the operational. Support for that. We don't have the the customer support for that. You know, we're going to charge them more than what it costs on a three months MRC, just for customer onboarding and training and things like that. But you guys put it together to actually help people. And I appreciate that from a visceral level.

Tom Milligan  30:17  
Yeah, you know, I used to, I've been in this business for a very long time, and I spent, I don't know, 17 years working for one of those other providers. And it was one of the original C cast providers, long before anybody coined the phrase C cast, for sure, that's for sure. And and it I what I'm we started out begging we would take anyone because we were changing the world. This was, you know, Avaya owned 80% of the market at that time, and Genesis owned the other 20% pretty much, and and so for us to get in, we had take five seat deals. But as we grew, just like you pointed out, it became almost how's this for a religious phrase anathema to to take anything under 50 seats, and, and, and, and it's grown from there at this point, you know, I'll use the phrase we use here At sharpen. Wouldn't it be nice if they actually took on smaller clients? Yeah, the problem is, it's just not profitable for them. As matter of fact, the same organization, which we shall not name, actually paid me after I had left. They paid me a consulting fee to spend. I spent a whole day in their office and and talked to them about because I had left the company and I was working for another C cast provider. And and they asked me how this other provider was able to service smaller clients profitably. And, and I had, I had left that provider as well. But anyway, so I went back there and consulted with them, and I said, this is how you have to do it if you guys want to stop losing in this, in this SMB space. And at the end of the day, literally, their entire team said, Yeah, we're not going to do any of that, right? And, you know, which is fine, which is great for me. I got paid to consult, which is fine. And here at sharpen, you know, it's not that we won't take the bigger customers. We have bigger customers, but we that's we have found a niche, or a niche, depending on who you are, that is that mid market space that it seems as if none of our competitors, I mean, I don't want to say they hate them, but they do. They hate small customers?

Daniel Vaughan  32:42  
And I'll tell you, that leads into another question that directly addresses the BS portion of things, and again, a statement that maybe not everybody would make, but I like to think about how a channel manager will treat me or an advisor, and you know, you're talking about profitability. So there's kind of a synergy of those two concepts I'm trying to tie into here. Let me see if I could do a good job of it. But high potential versus low potential, and worth your time versus not worth your time, right? I'm small time. I'm a single man shop with big ambitions, and I I believe in myself and my capabilities and the way I'm doing things, but I am not the guy who's going to walk into your your Zoom Room and say, I'm bringing my book of business to you today, and based upon when I deliberately say that after telling all of my plans, right? And I'm open about those, I sort of gage the way that the channel managers react and what they're willing to do, and now I'm not looking for them to give me business or to throw out 1000s of dollars here and there, but I'll be quite honest, I'm pretty shocked at how low effort and really high expectations a lot of These channel managers have, and the people that do not respond or invest any energy into people who are trying to build a foundation that will last in the future are, quite frankly, not going to get business, because I'm going to sit in that office when I'm talking to that client like you said, and say, Yeah, this person, you know, this company, Rather, they can solve your problem, and they actually might be okay, but I'll be honest, based off of the way that they treat me, you know, and I can't say for sure, because I don't have experience with them, but I'm not confident that they're going to treat you properly, either, and that's a reflection of of the company, and There's a lot of people who do the exact opposite, and I believe align with the way I do things. And Brian, you're obviously one of those. You're out there really trying. You're we're on my podcast, which I'm still editing now, but every word that you spoke had meaning, and it wasn't bullshit. And another one that I'll throw out there is. As Michael Curtin, I'm adaptive, and there are a lot of others. But you know, I see the two of you putting in effort and giving attention to people who are like you, and I think that's very important, whereas if some others, you know, they don't really respond to anything, because I don't have anything to bring them, and then they'll email you, like, Hey, I love to close business with you. When can we get that done? And I'm like, when you start giving a shit, you know, like, when you know, like, I don't, I don't understand what you're expecting, and it's the and I can't. I'm not just saying that as a partner, because I live that role, you know, I did that sort of thing, and my best partners that I worked with were the ones that were involved with their clients and appreciated somebody like myself, who put in the effort to be responsive, to educate their clients, to take care of them, even if you can't solve the problem that the client's emailing you, from account management perspective, or whatever it is, reply and say on it, read, heard. We'll get back to you in in 12 hours. If you don't hear from me, I'm still working on it. I'll update you, you know, just just being there and responding. And I think that's the, you know, the level of give a shit that is missing in a lot of the business. And I can't point to exactly why that is. Maybe it's personal, maybe it's business. And, look, I don't know everything. Maybe the organization has some major problems, and they're the ones that are underwater, struggling with it too. But either way, the end result is not a good look on the company and not getting my recommendation. You

Tom Milligan  36:29  
know, if I could jump in, it's interesting, because as you Brian and I have this conversation internally. We, you know, we deal with the TSDS and at sharpen, we are not the biggest fish in the sea. We know that we'll go to a show and spend X dollars, and our competitors will spend 10x and their sponsorship at the TSD level is going to be far greater than ours and but and I, I determine, or decide who, which TSD gets our attention and our limited investment based on how they respond to us as the small guy, just like you just said. So it's a it's an interesting business that, yeah, we're not the biggest but we what's nice. Give us an give us an opportunity.

Daniel Vaughan  37:18  
I think there's a vast difference between popularity, followers and, you know, likes on social media, versus what's behind the scenes and the marketing dollars. It's not the same. Everyone who has a large marketing budget or is a larger company doesn't, you know, provide value and take care of their customers, because they certainly do. There are, of course, exceptions to the rule, and I think there's a lot of bullshit and marketing. But I think to Larrys and I people will think that I'm paid by them or have some sort of backdoor underhand deal, I really don't. I just I had worked with talaris at BCM one, as well as at Nextiva, and they've always done a very good job for me. I've worked with some others, and they there was nothing against them, but talaris was always the one I work with the most. They provide me with everything that I need. They're there. They're responsive. They they make, they made the recommendation to speak with you, along with other, some other folks and some other channel managers that made the recommendations to you. So to your point, maybe while you're not feeding them the most money, you know, maybe bring them the most deals, which is, of course, everyone has an end goal, which is, they're, you know, they're benefiting from from your sales, and that's their role. They're still representing you as a top tier solution that matters to me and that matters to my market segment. They did make a recommendation for somebody else that doesn't fit. They gave me the right answer that I was looking for. I said, Hey, who is the top players that I need to learn about, about this, this and this, and I got those recommendations. So they are advocating for you. That's

Tom Milligan  38:53  
great to hear say

Brian Nichols  38:54  
that makes Tom happy. Makes me happy too. I want to flip this a little bit, Daniel, because on so we're talking mostly right now on the provider, TSD side, right? But also, let's kind of go back towards the the actual TAS right, the technology advisors, because I have found right folks like you, and I'm gonna say younger folks, and just in generalization, here are, are really the the disruptors in the industry in the best of ways. And I'm just, I'm kind of thinking here, as you were talking there, like some of our top producers and Tom can can verify this, like they're all pretty much under the age of 50. They're doing things differently in the channel. It's not to say if you're over the age of 50, you're not doing great, but you kind of see, and we Tom like this too. We talk about in sales, we have your zoo bears, right? So the folks who they're fat and comfortable, right? They're in the zoo, they're the bears are getting fed that the big stakes every day. They're not really going out and going above and beyond, right? And you can kind of feel that as a channel manager. Or when I'm talking to TAS like, Are you are you into this? Like, are you invested, not just in our conversation? Are you invested in your own business? Because a lot of these folks, they get that residual check, it starts to compound all sudden. You know that the one or two deals that you've built now that's maybe 10 or 15 deals, but those deals are a little bit bigger, and maybe you don't need to work as hard. And I feel that right, like, I can feel the you're not gonna work as hard. So when I see someone like you who's hungry and you're doing it right, like, of course, I'm gonna spend more of my time, energy and efforts with folks like you, because I know that you're doing things the right way, versus folks who are the zoo bears.

Daniel Vaughan  40:41  
Yeah, I think there's probably a lot of reasons to consider why someone may not give the, I'm not going to say the effort, because there's a lot of different situations that people are in, right? Maybe you are extremely successful, and you've been doing this for a long time, and your focus is warming your your nest egg, right? You're just sitting on it. You're making sure that that's taken care of. You're not looking to to branch out into something else. And I think that would chalk up to what I would say is relationship dominant. Sales, relationships are incredibly important. In sales, I form authentic relationships, not high quantity relationships. I'm not there to create fans, small amount of fans. Not seek popularity, and I'm there to really find out what's best for them. Not serve a particular supplier because I like the person and feed them all the business, which might have been back in the day. And I think part of that is possibly for the folks that are doing that, because back in the day, and I'm talking maybe even just 10 years ago, I don't think things were as technically diverse and in depth and changing as rapidly as they are today. So perhaps, in their defense, maybe it wasn't the biggest deal that they sent them to x supplier versus y supplier. But now there are major differences in the way things are going, and there is a lot more technical knowledge that you need to have in order to be able to be successful and trusted advisors. And maybe, and I'm not just talking about today, I'm talking about in two years from now. I mean, AI is going to absolutely destroy our comprehension of what things are today. And I'm not going to spend the entire time talking about AI. I don't want to at all, but starting next year, I think there's going to be a tremendous difference. And if you are not knowledgeable on technical differences, having the knowledge as value, rather than being able to talk about the Yankees and the weather and all that other stuff that I don't give a shit about because I'm out there trying to learn to provide information that these people don't know about, not because they're not competent or capable to but because they have jobs to Take care of every day. My job as an advisor is to learn, is to present them with information when I find out the information that they need. And I don't think everyone is equipped, or even every organization is equipped to support that type of effort, because they're built on legacy structures and organizations, including the sales aspect and how they go about generating leads. You know, I learned throughout my time building companies, not companies like I've been doing it for so long, but the first time I did it in the past several months, I knew coming into this I wasn't going to be able to do everything I'm doing here, building a website, doing legal, doing billing, forming relationships, learning and doing all that while also making 200 you know, cold calls and 50 emails and 50 LinkedIn messages while also doing the prospecting. You can't do it. So I thought about not only how I would generate that, we'll call it evidentiary reputation via the podcast, while also learning. And that sort of solved two of the problems, then it's, how do I get in front of clients? Because no one's gonna watch my podcast, some director of it at a 300 person organization and be like, hey, that's the guy I gotta talk to. No, that's not what it's for, but what I'm doing, and I'm openly able to talk about this for the aforementioned reasons, and I hope I'm trailing logically here not rambling, but one of the reasons why I'm okay giving away the things that I'm doing is a because I truly want to help other people. Long Term Goals is actually to support an agency where I function as sales enablement for agents that don't have a home and they don't want to, they don't have the resources to build a presence and a reputation and manage that sort of thing. And they're just sales people, not business people, and that, you know, to that aspect, and they just want to go do it. So I want people to see the way I do things. Two is, I don't think people are set up to actually do it based off of the the way their systems are are set up, and the way that their their roles are, are. Structure. They just don't have the resource allocation, and it's not their responsibility to do it the way that I'm doing it, and I'll explain why. And then the third reason is I don't think they're willing to put in the effort just like retailing off the last time. I don't think that they're willing to do that. It's not that they're not capable of it. I just don't think they're positioned well. So to that point, the way I'm going about things is entirely based off of three ways, which is direct mails, events and through enabling agents, through complimentary business services that don't have conflict of interest. So individuals with relationships at businesses where I can empower them with information as well as marketing materials to leverage those relationships and make introductions, but the direct mails is where I'm working right now. Currently, I'm in the process of developing a direct mail for January to a very large portion of customers. And again, this is also financially draining because I'm taking the teleris Tech Trends Report, which is valuable to the core values that I have based off of facts and information that's valuable cuts through the noise, not all the garbage out there, all the bullshit talking about hype and everybody's trying to sell you a ballpoint pen that now has AI. It's based off of what's happening, right? I'm taking that, that report, I've completely restructured it and rebranded it without diminishing the integrity of the data into my own branding and into my book. I'm open about it. I'm not, you know, claiming it's my research. This is hilarious. This is what they do, is Constellation Research and red point and presenting it to clients in an actual printed book, along with the insights that I have proprietary to my own research, as well as through my podcast. So I take everything I learn and I compile that and do my own analysis and put it into a report, which I'm you know, falls into line of the category of something like Accenture, Gartner avant or something like that. Whoever's making these these industry reports, obviously too much lower scale based off of my limited experience, and I'm presenting that tomb in a printed book very deliberately with personalized, individualized research on everything I can see about the company. I have three tabs on my other monitor right now that are open, three ESG reports from financial reports on an environmental posture and stature and whatnot for an organization, I'm reading through 120 pages of their ESG reports and looking for everything that I can. And guess what? I found the decision maker's email, but I also found everything that they've done in terms of implementation on technologies to improve this, this, this, that I know what their goals are. I know what they're looking for, and I know who I'm going to go to to learn about how I can help them, or what I think I can do from the outside. And I can approach them with, Hey, this is who I am. This is what I do. This is what I can tell about you. This is how you make money. This is how you lose money. This is where you're at. This is your competitors. This was the last article that you posted. This seems to be your priority. If I have this right, would it be worth a 30 minute conversation just to get confirmation and hear about what I missed and then start talking about it? I'm not walking in the door and saying, Hey, you have 450 employees. I love to close that deal so I can make $40,000 on spiffs. That's not what I do.

Brian Nichols  48:21  
I'm just gonna say it, Daniel, your main differentiator in my book is that you give a shit, right? Like that. It that is it. It is. But

Daniel Vaughan  48:29  
you know what? I'm not here trying to talk all high and mighty by myself. There's a tremendous amount of risk in that. I may dedicate a few solid days to doing that research, and I could get totally shut down. It could be a total waste of time. But I don't find satisfaction in a cold call based off of nothing that turns into something. There's a couple dollars. If I was just doing money not say this is the type of podcast, I guess you didn't get away with it, but I would just go out there and I sell crack. You could make tons of money. Anybody could, right? But that's not in line with what matters to you. And that goes back to the earlier conversation of like, you know, how'd you end up where you are? And then it tells into the type of organizations that I'm going to help, that I want to help, and that is the highest I want to go, to be honest, if I reach into something that's higher than 500 employees, it's out of my realm of where I can confidently say, Hey, this is where I'm the expert happy to point you in direction of someone who may be able to help you or a supplier. But in reality, I'm not coming across in conversations with a a, you know, 500 billion, trillion dollar, you know, Citibank. Like, Citibank comes to me. They're like, help me. I'm like, What are you crazy? Like, happy to talk to you, but you're, you're barking up the wrong tree. But you got 500 a little bit more employees. You have, you know, a couple of dozen locations across the country. And you have, you know, complex customer needs. And. Uh, you know, a lot of different things going I can definitely help you with those things, and that's because I have the diverse sort of range of information that I have, and I won't steer you wrong. That's just it. I will. I will, flat out tell you on a relative basis, not the actual numbers, what the top three suppliers, what I will make and bring home to feed my son and my family and provide her with that my wife with the house that she that she wants and I want, and the dreams that we're after. I will tell you on a relative basis, 123, this one I make, 1.51 whatever, not the actual amounts, but again, and this is the one that I'm recommending, which is almost always going to be not the highest paying one, because the highest paying one is typically the one that's not built to serve that market. Preach, Yeah, unfortunately, that may not be true in your situation, because, full disclosure, you guys are, I don't understand it how, but you guys are one of the higher compensation suppliers out there. So folks who are in the channel listening to top it off and all the other reasons we talked about here, maybe you should give them a bit of attention. Yeah,

Tom Milligan  51:03  
well, I appreciate that plug, Daniel, because I think I think it. I think I can say this without any reservation whatsoever, the sharpen up program at sharpen is the most lucrative channel program there is. I bar none, and I dare anyone to show me one that pays more so with that, hey, as we wrap this up, I have the final question that we always ask every guest before we wrap this up, and that is, you've been through it. We've talked about your your journey and your what you're trying to accomplish, and your, you know, hats off to your integrity and your transparency, which is very rare. It's very refreshing to see this, but so you've seen it all, and so I'm gonna ask the big question, and that is, what is the biggest crock of bullshit that you have seen in the CX space this year? Or, you know, whatever, just what's rock of shit?

Daniel Vaughan  52:00  
It would be between two things that I'm trying to dance around, legal matters in my mind, talking about, because I'm not here to talk about people or organizations that talk about ideas. You know, there's that quote out there that's like, you know, small minds talk about events or people or whatever. And like, you know, bigger minds talk about ideas, and that's what I try to lean into. I would say mission statements that are absolutely full of shit. I would say everyone trying to focus on this. Oh, empathy, empathy. And, you know, like they don't give a shit. You can tell who does and you could tell who doesn't. Your mission statement is very clear to help SMBs in this in the CCA space, with reasonably functional, purposeful AI, without all the bells and whistles that nobody else gives a shit about, where they can't use. You know, I think that's a clear, valid and not full of shit mission statement. And I think a lot of companies out there are trying to play the apple game when they have a bunch of, you know, dancers running around and don't even show the air pods in the newest commercial, whatever it is, right? Like, like that is absolute bullshit. Like that is nonsense. That is the anticipates of everything that I want to be a part of. I don't, I don't want to be invested in that at all. And you know, when you ask, like, what does empathy mean? Empathy doesn't mean saying, Oh, we support X and X group or whatever this and that we donated $1,000 because we have a $5 billion marketing budget. Empathy is giving people what the fuck they need in order to help customers having information that matters and preparing yourself when you walk into the room of a client, whether you're at an organization or you're an independent ta like myself, and being able to help them, and then being able to look them in the eyes when you sign on a contract and you start collecting money from them that You're not screwing their families out of benefits because you made money. That's what Empathy means to me. Daniel

Brian Nichols  54:05  
Vaughn emmetson ROI, this has been an absolutely incredible conversation. Thank you for joining us. Do us a quick solid as we wrap things up. Give us a quick shout in terms of where folks can go ahead find you learn more about Emmetts and ROI, and if they want to schedule a meeting where go ahead and do

Daniel Vaughan  54:23  
that, yeah, you could always reach out to me on LinkedIn. My website is going through a complete redesign by the time the direct mails go out, so check that at January 1. Hopefully you could always reach out to me at Daniel at emmetson ROI, that's E, M, M, E, t, t, s, O, N, R, O, i.com

Brian Nichols  54:42  
Awesome. Daniel. Thanks for joining us. How am I going to wrap things up here on the other side of the break? So with that, we'll talk to you later.

Tom Milligan  54:47  
Nice to meet you. Daniel, yeah,

Daniel Vaughan  54:49  
great meeting you. Tom, thanks all right. Tom, it's

Brian Nichols  54:51  
going to wrap up our conversation with Daniel Vaughn from emmetson ROI. I really enjoyed the conversation. What were your thoughts? Right? Well, I

Tom Milligan  55:00  
got to tell you two things. Number one, I don't think he ever mentioned the name of his podcast. What is the name of his podcast?

Brian Nichols  55:05  
I think it's you keep going. I'll give you the answer, ROI. I

Tom Milligan  55:12  
want to make sure we give him the shout out, because I know you were on the show. He hasn't released it yet, but want to make sure we give him that the exposure, if we can? Yeah,

Brian Nichols  55:21  
I'm pretty sure it's the Emerson ROI podcast, but I'll put that in the notes for sure. Okay, perfect.

Tom Milligan  55:27  
So I will tell you at the risk of alienating certain people, he Daniel's a breath of fresh air. I've been in this business a very long time, and there are certain people in the channel, and I'm going to very specifically call out the channel as a breeding ground for man, I'm going to sliminess. I'm sorry to say it, guys, but there, there is a reputation in the channel of slime balls. Some is deserved. Some is not. But there, there is some, some something to it. And it is so nice to see people like Daniel making their way in the channel based on integrity and transparency and and doing it for the right reasons. Now, obviously they've got to feed their family. And I hope he makes a billion dollars, but, and I hope he makes a billion dollars, because that's not why he's doing this, and I love it.

Brian Nichols  56:30  
So I have mentioned many a time here on CX without the BS, which, by the way, Tom great to be back in the saddle with you. By the way, I forgot to mention that. But like my old CEO, Mike Dlug. He was really big into quotes. And one of the things that he had for quotes going around his office, which, by the way, we were in the channel, right? We were a TA and one of the quotes was, good people bring out the good in people. You've probably heard me say that a million times. Tom, I bet you wish you had $1 every time I've said it like but that quote, I didn't realize how true and how impactful it would be for me going into this channel manager role, as I kind of, you know, switched hats here at sharpen, because I was in the TA perspective, so I got to see, kind of like the TAs viewpoint, but now, being in the channel, as a provider, getting the other side of the aisle, it definitely is eye opening, right, because you're right. There are a lot of folks who aren't the greatest of folks in the channel, and I've heard from partners and TAs that I sit down and talk with them, and I'm not trying to, like, fluff myself up here, but one of the things I've heard is people like, Dude, you're just different. Like, you're just, you're different. You're approaching this differently. Your your energy is different. And I guess I'm approaching this through the mindset of, when I was in the channel, what were the things that we were looking for? And it wasn't just like the best provider, it wasn't just the best comp plan. It was genuinely good people to do business with, because I don't like as in the TA role. I didn't want to bring a provider to the table that, yes, they could do all the amazing things, but they were pains in the asses to work with, and they are just genuinely gross, slimy people. And as a matter of fact, I remember Mike doing many code blacks, you'd call it to those types of organizations, saying, Nope, full stop, we're not selling them. And that now is somebody in the channel trying to talk to different partners and TAs and show them the value of sharp and specifically right like, I guess I I'm not even doing it consciously. I'm just trying to emphasize that we're not like everybody else. You know, we're not trying to be the big players that are our big competitors out there, but we are uniquely us, and with that, we do things uniquely in our own way. And I think, you know, Tom, you and I, we've done things very different in the channel now we bring Jay onto the team, you know, doing the west coast and South Central. We're all doing things very differently, but in the best of ways,

Tom Milligan  58:55  
absolutely. And I think a bottom line is, you know, we started this podcast, whatever it was, four or five months ago, CX, without the Bs, and we have, and we came up with that because we, I think you and I both, and again, like you say, our new teammate, Jay, but we just don't, we see through the bullshit, and we refuse to live within it. And so, you know, we're trying to change the way people see our industry. But we can't change our competitors. We can't change how certain people do business. We can't change, you know, the marketing messages. What was it the Daniel said that your ballpoint pen now has AI and so perfect. And that's about it. I mean, it's all bullshit. Now, 90% of it is bullshit. So we've got to help people see the CX without the BS.

Brian Nichols  59:45  
Preach. All right. Tom, well, I think you know, with that, we're going to go ahead and put a pin in today's conversation. Folks. Tom and I are back. We're back in the saddle here for CX without the BS. I know I'm excited. We're going to be making sure we have episodes coming out on the frequent I do want to give a special shout out to. An upcoming guest, but also a long time listener, Kate Nelson, I was talking to her. She's from connects AI, and she was telling me how, like, they go out of their way. She goes out of her way to share the show with folks. She's like, Hey, you're in the CX industry. You got to listen to CX about the BS. So Kate, I appreciate you giving us a shout and share on the show. And by the way, folks, if you're getting some value, yes, we air these shows over on YouTube as well. So head down below into the comments. Let us know your thoughts. What is the biggest piece of BS you've seen? Or join us over on LinkedIn. You can find yours truly and Tom, we will also be sharing some clips there. So please go ahead share those clips. But I think with that, Tom, we're gonna go ahead and wrap things up. So with that being said, Brian Nichols, signing off for the Great. Tom Milligan on CX without the BS, we'll see you next time later you.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai