From College Club to Sales Success: Connor Delaney's Journey

(upbeat music) - Good afternoon, Connor. How are you doing today? - I'm lovely, Ranya. I hope you're doing well. - I am doing well. It's terrific Tuesday, as I say. - How are we doing? - Yeah. How is the start of your week been? - It's been good. - It's been busy. I was telling you right before we hopped on here together but it just felt like every day is flying by, but no, life is good, things are good. It's busy is not a bad thing, as long as you know how to manage it. - Yeah, so it's good busy. - Yeah. - Yeah. - I'm happy to hear that. I was maple doing. - Maple is good. She's had a fun few days. She's been a lot of napping with us lately as the fall weather comes in. She's been having a great time with it. So it's a, beginning of the cozy season, she's all, yeah. - I feel that's why I have this weird lighting. I'm in Sweden, so it's getting dark. - Very early. - Yeah. And I lost my ring light, so I'm gonna have this weird lighting, but it's fine. Super. - Thank you for taking time to speak with me and all of the listeners on the disruptive leader podcast for everybody listening. Meet Connor Denny. He is the lead sales consultant at Impact and the former director of revenue operations. And so with that in mind, Connor, why don't we start with you telling us about your journey from college marketing association leader all the way through to digital sort of marketing innovator where you're crushing it with impact. - Sure. I'll do the quick and speedy version because I'm sure that we'll dive into the stories. But my marketing journey started in college. I inherited what we'll call a dying chapter of the American Marketing Association at my university, which was Central Connecticut. It's a small state school here in the US. And we had a small chapter that went from pretty much on the verge of no longer being a chapter, just due to lack of membership, to being nationally recognized as a top five chapter in the country over the course of about two years. And I get to say that I was the president of that group for two years, which is pretty cool. But along the way, I had a couple of internships at BIC, if you know the lighters and the pens and the razors. And then you graduate from college and you have to figure out what the world's got for you. And that's how I landed at Impact a couple months after I graduated and five years later, now I'm a head sales consultant here. And it's been quite the journey in between, but that's the quick and speedy version. - It sounds like quite the journey. And what I'm finding the more I'm doing these episodes is like, it might sound crazy to say, but it feels like people's lives and career are built on chance, but in the good way. - Oh, sure. - It's just one thing after another, it leads to another. And I feel, if human beings, at least myself, didn't try control everything and just went to the flow, it always works out. And you mentioned the, so you were tiny college club and then you won this big national award. Like, how did that happen? How did you, what is it you did to like, slip it around? - I think your perspective on luck and chance definitely plays a big role into it. It's amazing how, and I'm a big believer in, luck is a huge component of success, but you have to put yourself in position for things to fall into place. And so as I think back on that journey over the course of about two years, it was, I was a marketing student who wanted to stand out and wanted to make a name for myself in order to, when I graduate, get a great job that I love. And so I had joined the chapter for about a semester, my sophomore year and was just learning where it was at. And it really, there wasn't a lot going on. It was like, we would do a meeting every couple of weeks and people would bring cookies and that was a bit. And I realized that there was just so much more to, that I thought I could do. And I will say I have a little bit of like a confidence or an ego push of, oh, I could make this a lot better than it is. And so as I took over the chapter that following year, I really pushed to become more of a, to make it more of a campus known chapter where I just wanted to build up membership. And so I really focused on how can we get good people who are interested that would commit to maybe showing up for meetings each week, but maybe get a little more involved in like, how can we help the business school grow and make a name for us. And so as things developed, we started to make some connections and build a little bit of traction just because the group went from, let's call it four or five members to about, let's call about 18 paying members a year. And payment wasn't cheap. It was probably about $150, $200 a year. But those are like membership dues. But what really turned it around was we took our association with the American Marketing Association, the AMA more seriously, where we realized they have a lot of resources and tools for chapters to grow. Like obviously their success is dependent on every school's chapter success. And as we built things up, we attended their national conference for the first time in New Orleans, which putting college kids in New Orleans for a week is a wild idea. But you have some fun with it. And we got recognized for like chapter planning. And we had no intentions of winning anything. But that was the, oh my gosh, we're on to something. And so the next year we came back, and that's my senior year of college. And I said, I'm going all in on this. Like classes, I was doing fine. Everything was trending in the right direction. And I said, I want to be, I looked up to some of those small chapters around the country. And just for sake of clarity, like there's the big chapters that have hundreds of members. And then there's the people like us who had 15, 20, 30 people. And we're never going to compete with them because they're working with like Google and Microsoft doing marketing stuff. And we're working with the local pizza shop. And so it just was never going to be, we're never going to be the same, but they treat us differently in terms of they look at us as a small chapter versus a large one. And I looked up to these small chapters, and I was like, we're going to do something great. And so the next year we planned out like a whole year of events. We were going to host a national, or they called it a regional conference. But we had like 10 schools come attend. And we did all these different things. And we show up the next year and we come-- we were one of the top five small chapters in the country, which was like, we came from out of nowhere to a top ranking chapter in the whole United States. And that was just this moment of, wow, we really built something. And what was so hard-- and I'll be honest with you, Ronan-- was graduating a month after that award came through-- was like, I put all this work in. We were doing so much. And now I literally can't be a part of it anymore. So it became very much which sounds ridiculous. But I got into legacy planning mode, which was I built out playbooks for everyone to inherit the president role and every role of the-- and I think for that what it just gave me was perspective on I'm going into the business world now. And there's planning beyond me. Like, everything can't rely on me. But that's its own journey and its own learning experience. But that was the college journey that led me into now the world that I live in today. That was the first time I really felt like I put it all together. And it all made sense like what's possible going into the next stage of my life and in my career. Yeah. I love it when you said you spent so much time and success putting together and winning this award. And then graduating on one later and it's, oh, I have to let this go. It's like getting a job, doing an amazing job about it. And then, oh, it's time to move on to the next one. Yeah, you finish a project and then you move on to the next one versus continuing to work on it. That's a pretty common story I hear for anyone, especially in our world. You do so much great work and then you finish it and go on to the next thing. You don't always get the chance to keep building on something. And I think it teaches us that sort of soft skill, which is the art of letting go. And just really trusting that we can do something even better. Yeah. And you mentioned Bic. Like I always knew Bic is pens when you could put little pieces of paper in them with cute messages and stuff. So what was your story with Bic? What got you there? What did you learn from it? What did you-- what was the most-- whoa, moment in Bic journey? So it starts with and networking is-- and everyone says, you only get a great job as buying the people kind of thing, not the like always the things you do. And for me, that ring so true because every job I've pretty much ever gotten, some kind of networking connection allowed it. And Bic is probably the best story. So I was working-- this was right as I was taking over the marketing association, actually. I was a waiter at a local breakfast spot in my hometown. And this woman named Terrin, who had worked at the restaurant for a long time, lived locally. I had picked up a shift from a-- friend who was it was a Saturday night shift, which is not always the busiest time for a breakfast restaurant. And Karen comes in and is getting dinner and she asked, Hey, what are you up to this summer knowing I was in college and I said, I'm probably going to be here because I didn't get any internships. And this isn't like May. So it's as the semester's ending. And so she comes in, she sits down, blah, blah, blah, we're talking. And she's, so you study like marketing or sales or anything I'm like marketing and like business, blah, blah, blah, like whatever that means, you're two years in the school. And she said, I happen to be a recruiter for the internship program at Vic in Shelton, Connecticut, which is 20 minutes away. And she's like, you should apply. I'll send you more information. I don't know if you'll get it because they're looking for a more senior person, blah, blah, blah, like someone who's just graduating because they want to hire someone whatever it might be. So lo and behold, I apply go through their process and get a call or an email from the recruiter being, hey, you got the position, which was just I literally cried, like I could not believe it. And so then over the next year and a half, I worked in sales analytics and performance on the pen side of things. So they call it the stationary side because it's pens, pencils, mechanical pen, all that stuff. Then I transitioned over to the shaver innovation team. And for those that know Vic, it's like Vic's razors are like the plastic really the least expensive option we'll call it. And they're very much in that space. And so shaver innovation was how do we grow into the next at the time, which is why they look back on people know dollar shave club was really blowing up. Harries was getting huge. Gillette was launching all these new things. And so Vic was trying to learn the next thing. So I spent a year in the sales side and then about six months in the shaver innovation side trying to launch a new product. And what's coolest from an interns perspective, I learned every bit in peace about how to launch a product. I did everything from doing market research, running focus groups. And run you to your question of what was the one while moment. I actually got to work with the production team that works out in crease. So I would have calls either super early in the morning or super late in the day with our team in Greece to coordinate building the products that we were planning to launch here in the US. And that was pretty darn cool because it was not that I was going to get to travel there, which would have been amazing. But just the idea of working with a global team instead of in the past when I worked in the analytic side, it was very US based. And sometimes even like very new England range, rather than getting to work with teams all over the world and launching things in France, because BIC is a French company and then talking about Greece and how we're going to produce everything. That was probably the wow moment for me of working in a global corporate environment is so different than even working at like a impacts and agency that works all over around the world. But you don't have an international team like that at the scale that something like BIC was. Yeah, I can echo in what you're saying like our team were eight nationalities. Sure. I didn't really when I say our team, I like the team I lead with five languages. So it's what do you think like what do you get out of working with an international team? What's different about it? Yeah, I think there's a couple pieces that come to mind right away. The first one is there's certainly cultural differences, which being a college student, you just don't know as much. And I was lucky enough during school to do two international trips, one to London in France, and then one right after we graduated my girlfriend and I went to Ireland and Copenhagen and other places. And I think in working with them, there's just a different perspective on work and how you show up working at a French company. I'm lucky I can work from home in a T-shirt and sweatpants or jeans. But going into the office every day, it was buttoned down and slacks every day. And if you have a meeting with leadership, you wear a tie. Like it was that kind of deal of that's and jean Fridays was like a special thing that you get every once in a while. So there was a little bit of like cultural stuff there, which that's more of the funny stuff. But I would say the other piece was just their their perspective on buyers, I think is really unique. And I remember having a conversation where you think of this flimsy razor where you're like this is a piece of plastic with a metal razor on it. And just the way that certain cultures like look at what that means, it's not the I just need a clean shave. This is an experience. This is what people invest in. And it's what makes them the you wouldn't think I could be so passionate about razors or about pens or whatever it might be. But it's amazing how passionate people are about the brands and the companies that they work within or that they buy from. When I was doing some of the focus groups, it was shocking to see that people were so passionate about the specific brands they bought because of the think of the world of some people buy Audi, even if it's more expensive, because of the perception it gives. And when it goes down even to like buying a certain mechanical pencil, there was a clear differentiation of I buy BIC crystal pens or I buy a certain brand because I know that their qualities higher, I have this emotional connection to it. That was so different than what my perspective was when I started there, which is sell as many things as possible. There's a story that comes with every brand. Maybe that was the long way of answering your question, but that's what always did it. It was how brand loyalty really plays a part in things you don't think of, especially when you're younger, if you go to staples, you buy the thing and you leave. But some people say I only buy this or I only want that because of this or I'll never buy this or that because of something that happened before, even a similar pencil. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And that's probably tied to like you were saying perception, what does this brand, what does it feed me, what does it give me, what does it fill me up with. I'm talking about brands. One of my favorite brands in the ecosystem is impacts and let alone Marcus Sheridan and the whole day asked you answer. I advise all my customers to read it. Your role as director of revenue operations. What led you to there and how is it working in this age of remote work? Like how do you align processes and people and data and teams and which is my understanding of what result? Yeah, it's a remote to get there. And I would say I so when I joined impact, I started as a content trainer and just for those that maybe don't know impact. So we've been in the Hub's body ecosystem, I think it's 11 years now. We've been around pretty early. And at one point, we were like a lot of other agencies and a little more do it for me and we set things up and we manage it for you. And around 2020, we shifted to a coaching and training model where we really focused in on we're going to teach you how to fish and we're going to train you how to do that. So when I got hired in 2019, we were in the beginning stages of that transition and I started as a content trainer and what that meant was helping people manage their websites to publish content and to do some social media stuff. I did some implementation, some strategy, but over the next six months or so, I joined impacts events team and I'm laying out this timeline so you can see that like Revops was not on my radar at all. But I joined a impacts events team about a month before COVID happened or started. So write it. So I'm planning out this big like 500 person event in April of 2020, about two weeks into that role. The world says, no, you can't do that anymore. Things happen. So we shift into virtual events. And so for about a year and a half, I'm helping run virtual events. We did about four a year. Something like, I think it was close to 20,000 attendees over those events. Like it was a lot. We were really figuring it out and we were, I felt like we were ahead of the time there. And then we shifted more into learning community side. So I started building what we call impact plus, which is our online learning community. And running that and being the face of it. And so again, this was like, I graduated from college with a marketing degree and now I'm running this learning community with courses and mastermind groups and it just kept evolving. And then after that, we were shifting our approach where we wanted more of a, we had reset our sales team a bit and we had more of our coaches selling and it wasn't exactly what we wanted. So I jumped into this rev op seat, which really for me, it was, I don't want to run the community for the rest of my life as much as I enjoy it. I want to do something different and I want to develop a skill set. And I make this joke with impacts leadership team that I sometimes think of myself being an endless rotation program where I'm just doing different parts of the business. And I think that's a good thing, especially like I'm very lucky to have the opportunity to jump from marketing to community side to sales now. But I jumped into rev op's not really knowing exactly what that meant. And a lot of the start was I was a sales team of one and a revenue operations team of one. And so it was learning and understanding How do we develop processes and Consistencies in the systems so that I can test it and if it's working we can add a team member and I'll be honest with you Ron it was really hard like I struggled through it and it was not perfect There was probably a lot of opportunities that I just didn't have the knowledge to close or to move forward And then over time what we found is we started to get better at it and then I realized I don't love everything about revenue operations It just it the admin side the really the like getting under the hood like my favorite part of that sales side of things was actually talking to customers and doing some of the selling And a team member of ours named Becca is super into the like organization system like she loves that piece the operation side so she jumped into this more revenue operations role and I jumped into sales consultant role And it was really it was this really fluid shift because I knew what I enjoyed and I knew what I didn't and we were complete opposites like we're in the wrong seats and so we shifted and I'll say this to for those that know EOS We got really serious about running on EOS at the beginning of 2024 and it made a huge difference because that's right around where my role got really firmed up and now it's led me to be way more confident and comfortable in my role I can't say that sales is always fun but it is the challenge that you step into every single day and I know you feel it too wrong you have it's not only the thing you have to do but if you get good at it, it's like a necessary skill to grow into what I want to become which is a leader or a business owner one day, I have to know how to be good in sales and so I really really learned that and that's been my impact journey of just where how we ended up here and really the learning we've had a long way. I love that I then I love how the moving around and trying different things is not only do the impact it's customers but it's also impacted you and talking about sales what do you think is that one sort of super power skill that would be good for you or a skill that would make you really good at a sales role. Ooh, wow that's a good one. I would say the thing that I found most valuable is and it's a little bit of a two-parter but I'll connect it. I think listening is a huge component which I think everyone says but within listening for me it's finding moments of empathy within your sales conversation. So for me, yes you can listen and respond with the perfect question but there's also a moment where you have to like let someone sit in the moment a bit and just let the silence speak for itself the amount of sales conversations I've had where someone becomes really open and they're vulnerable with me of my business isn't going where I want it to go things aren't working I'm concerned about having to let people go. If you just instantly respond to that they shut off and they say I know this sales guy just got triggered into wanting to sell to me but if you let them sit there and you say just for a moment like that's got to be really hard on you. Immediately their guard goes down but also I've seen people tear up where they are like I've never had to think about it this way before and part of that is listening and responding in a way that's going to get them there but part of it's also just acknowledging that what they're doing is really difficult like I speak with business owners every single day who are don't have it all figured out but the expectation is they have to and so when you have someone that says man we've got it sounds like you've got a lot going on it's yeah I'm really struggling with this and so I would say from the sales side finding those moments of empathy that's when you build trust with a customer that's when you show them that you're here to help them not here to help yourself and to sell to them but that you genuinely are thinking about them it's the same thing with being able to say no when the sales conversation and saying you're not a fit for working with us. It's amazing how many people say I've never had a salesperson tell me that before that we're not of it and as soon as you say that they're like so who is a good fit and they're curious and they're excited and they're interested and they want to take the time to speak with you versus I've had people show up to calls and say all right just give me the pitch and I say I'm not going to do that if you're working for a pitch you can read our website and if it sounds good we'll walk again and some people get turned off by that but they probably weren't going to be a fit anyway. But other people really love when you say look that's just not going to be the best use of our time so my answer would be finding empathy and the listening that you do. I love that and that sort of goes back to just being a good human really caring genuinely caring about this individual in front of you that is being vulnerable that is sharing their challenges which is not going to be a good thing. It's a very nice or easy thing to do. And I think what you're saying is by showing them the respect that they need through empathy that's beautiful so that genuine human centric approach and you made it it's because they trust you. If someone to trust you they got to feel and identify you as someone who's there to help them someone that genuine cares about them and unfortunately there's times where you don't always catch that but the moments that you do have I can think of them up top my head if you make the extra phone call if you say hey I felt like something was off today. And when you call that out and you say I just want to make sure everything's good and they say actually this happened today. I'll share a quick example I had there's a company that we work with who I introduced a coach to them and they it just didn't blend exactly right there was just a clear like moment of friction and I called them maybe a day or two after and I'm like hey. It felt things were a little more tense than I expected take me through your at and you. I hadn't shared some of that information with the rest of the team so for them to hear it from the coach it felt a little funny but also we had just let someone go and so I was concerned about hiring your company to come coach us when we just let go someone who was a great culture fit but wasn't doing the job well. I was like I'm just worried about the perception of that like let's make sure that we address that the next time and so like 30 minute conversation about it and now they've been working with us for six or seven months and they're loving the work they're doing and it's. The work we do is difficult I think for a lot of us like we come in and there's usually there are a lot of problems or there's a lot of opportunity but coaching means we have to push and challenge people. We always mean that we have comfortable conversations but it also means that we're all working on the same team it's just our job to challenge you to make this decisions you may not always want to. But that conversation always sticks out to me because we went out of our way to talk about what was actually happening without the context we didn't have at that moment. I love that I love the I love how genuine the try to be. Yeah, yeah, I think that's the right word for it. Yeah, nice super and Connor I was doing a little bit of research as I was thinking what can our conversation be about and you come with an athletic background. And the reason I mentioned this and bring this up is there's a lot of statistics and research around if you want to hire a really good team care hire someone who has an experience or background in sport. And so what's your insight on like teamwork discipline and performance in a corporate or a startup or the entrepreneurial world like how would you. If any. Explain the impact sport has had on your professional career. Yeah, I would say there's a couple stories so for me growing up I played baseball pretty much year round and then as I got into like college or just after college I really was playing volleyball a lot. Because once you realize that you're not going to be a professional baseball player sometimes that spark goes away and sometimes your body just can't keep up with it. And now recently I've become a runner and I run competitively I do races around the state kind of deal. But I would say looking back on all the experiences I think there's probably two lessons that come from it. Number one is that teamwork piece and teamwork means a lot more than being able to work with other people. And it comes down to more of your ability to step up when your team needs it and also your ability to step back when your team needs it. And baseball is a huge example for me like when I was younger I was the starting outfielder for every team I played on I was typically one of the best players on the team and as I got older and started playing with more people from around the state and regionally and I just realized I don't have. And that was as good as some of these players and that was a harsh reality to go from one of the best to like middle of the pack. But what I learned was when I was younger like I really would step up I would be the one that wants to be in every moment in every situation and as I got older I became more of a utility role sports it's like I was more come off the bench I could play a bunch of positions. And I learned like my role on the team was really important even though it was a different role. And so as that transitions into more the corporate side. I'm not always going to be the star athlete or the front runner all the time sometimes my role is to help support the person that needs. to be successful here and to be a part of the team and just know your role to contribute. And sometimes it's to step up, sometimes it's to step back, but you just have to know that you're contributing to the larger perspective. The other piece that I'll throw at you is as I think about like me transitioning into running a lot, it's a lot of patience and a lot of training. Like for me, I ran a couple of marathons this year and you train for anywhere from 12 to 16 weeks before the one race of the year. And that is a lot of just putting in work and effort to get you to this moment of excellence. And when I think of sales in particular, it's I have daily sales meetings, I have weekly sales trainings, once to twice a week. And then I have my sales calls. And like the goal of doing all this practice and prep and training is so that when I show up in front of a customer, I'm at my best and I can perform at my highest level. But the training stink. Like they're not always fun. They're sometimes a lot of feedback. Sometimes it's a lot of, you missed it here. Let's try that again and you get frustrated. But the goal is to mess up as many times as possible with your team so that when you're in front of the customer, you actually have that experience. That's like having a really crappy long run or having a a tough track workout. You'd rather do that so that the day of the event, you show up and you perform at your highest level. So those would be the two big ones that come to mind for me when I think back on my interesting athletic career as I've gotten older now too. I think it's very grand. Did they you came to that conclusion? Hey, wait a minute. There's some people that actually are better players than me. And I think that's that was a weird reality check too. Like even in the professional side. So I'll be honest when I was running that marketing association we talked about earlier. I thought I was top of the world. Like I felt like I could do anything. There was nobody that could get in my way. We were a top thing in the chapter or in the world in the country. I thought we could be the best of the best. But what that taught me too was I thought that I could do everything. Because I wasn't giving other people the opportunity to do everything sometimes. And as I jumped into working at BIC or working at Impact now, there's other really talented great people in the world. It's not just you. And as great as you think you are, there's always going to be someone that's going to challenge you or push you forward and know something you don't. That was a great reality check too. That I think back on. That was the other translation of I didn't know everything. But I thought that I did. And when you realize you don't, you either break down, which sometimes I'll be honest, I did not always take it great. But other times you realize, man, they could really help me get better. And you get the right people around you. That's a great reality to be in. It's really humbling. It's really. It is. But it can, it's all about how you respond to that too. Correct. That's how you take it. It's how you react. Yeah. So like how my therapist tells me, the only thing you can change in this world is your reaction. Yeah. Specific situations. The only thing you can do. It's like, sounds a lot easier than you're really. Yeah. I know. And I asked you at the start of this call, how is maple? And the reason I asked that question is this might sound a little bit crazy. But sometimes there's a, especially for people that are dog lovers, that there is similarity or lessons for these of the word of in having a dog or a puppy and client relationships. How do you think, if anything, having maple has influenced or impacted the way you approach client management, or not only maple, maybe any of the pets you've greeners see on it. Yeah. I, so I grew up with four different dogs before I got my own. We had a pair of labs. We had a yellow and a black lab. And then we had a doxin and then a giant golden retriever. And every single one, including maple, who maple is my dog now, she's going to be turning five this year. We adopted her about a year and a half ago. So we haven't had her since she was born. But every dog has unique personality. And it's the same way with client relation, or even teams of everyone responds and acts differently and also has their own mannerisms and approaches. And for maple, she had some behavioral challenges when we got her. She's a very working breed, high energy kind of dog. And what came with that is she had certain reactive issues with people. Like she just didn't, she wasn't super trusting with everyone, especially early on where she's like, these are my new humans and I'm going to protect them. And she came off a little more like defensive of us. Being her, we'll call her mom and dad. So as learning like her, her personality and her the way that she approaches the world and how can we help her be successful. And we worked with the dog trainer. Her name is Brittany. She's fantastic. And the biggest, I would say the two biggest things we learned with her is number one, put your dog in the position to be successful as often as you can, which was like control the environment. Don't let the dog dictate what you want to do. Like you are still the owner, but your job isn't to force them into things. It's to actually keep them in a situation where they're going to be happy, successful, and not have the reactive tendencies that we might have had. And the second one, which is, it sounds silly, but some dog owners are going to know exactly what I'm talking about. We had a six foot leash when we got her. And in the first one or two sessions, Brittany came to us and she said, you guys should invest in a 10 foot leash because we were having issues where it felt like maple was pulling us a lot. And we had found that she was pretty good on the leash until she wanted to go sniff stuff. And then she came across around and they said, you have, give her the four extra feet. You're not losing control of your dog, but you give her those couple extra feet. And I think you'll never feel like she's pulling you around anymore. And so we invested in a 10 foot leash and it made a massive difference. And that's the other pieces, especially in the coaching and training world, but even in sales. Sometimes you've got to let them explore a little bit more than you think they should, because it's going to help them realize that they can always come back and that they can, they'll always be within grasp. It's not like they're running away off leash. So that was the second learning that we've really had. And again, there's so many other things, but those are always two that stand out as the unique personalities and quirks will call it. And then just giving them a little more freedom and space to explore and discover what they're looking to find. And to just find the world around them, it's amazing how curious she can be now that we give her the ability to be curious. Yeah. And I think the expectation that every dog or every client is this one mold that will be do act react the same way. It's never the case. It's never the case. And that's a big part of it, right? Like in sales, like you have to learn who you're talking to. Some people are going to be hard-nosed personalities. Some of them are going to be super chill. You have to know not only what works with them, but also as you're chatting with them, you're going to learn can if they like to have a more language rich conversation, where maybe you drop a casual curse word or something, because that mixes with how they respond, or you're going to have more of the conversations where it's very buttoned up and more formal. You learn what you're looking for pretty early. And both are okay. And there's no right or wrong. There's no right or wrong. Yeah. Spot on. So yeah, our fluffy friends, dude, teaches a lot. They're great teachers as well. That's for sure. Absolutely. And then my last question for today, Connor, is so you have a lot going for you. You're an athlete and you're doing the marathon and your maples dad and your partner's partner and you have this big roll-up impact and you're crushing it in sales. And it's a lot going on. How do you balance work life or life work integration? Like how are you working so hard, yet having fun and showing up always with this high energy and your big smile? Like what's your secret? So it starts with learning by experience. I was not always, and some people like balance. I like to look at it and there's a book and the titles escaping me. I look at it as work-life satisfaction of it's not always going to be a 50/50 balance between the work, because I'm very passionate about the work I do. And I'll invest a lot of time in it. What I have to make sure of is that I'm not sacrificing satisfaction in my personal life to do that. Which part of that is just learning from experience. When I started it impact, I had no sense of personal balance between work and my life. I was working all the time. I thought that I always had to be online. And that was a difficult thing. But as I've gotten older and just learned what's important, I found a way to prioritize the things that I need to. But a lot of it comes down to communication and communication with my partner, communication with my team, communication with my running group. Like what I can commit to and what I can't. And just having a better gauge for what's possible. Like I'm the kind of person that will work myself into the ground if I'm given the choice. And that can't be the reality if I want to have the life that I want to have. So a lot of it comes from learning how to do that by making mistakes all the time and having to get feedback from people. of it feels like you're not a around, I called you, I never heard back, those kind of things, those happen. But I would say a big part is communication. If I have to, I have a sales role play with a college or a university near me that I'm going to be doing virtually tomorrow night. I'm going to make sure that my partner knows, hey, I need to commit an extra hour and a half to that tomorrow. So I'm going to be working a little bit later. But let's make sure we have a date night on Thursday so that we spend more time. And you just communicated ahead of times that everyone's aware of where my commitments are and why this is important to me. And it's the same thing of asking your partner, asking your colleagues, hey, is there anything that I'm missing that you want to make sure that we spend more time on and having those check-ins more often? That was a game changer for us. I know that it really helped on the personal side for us to just have more of a sit down like, how's everything feeling? How are we doing? And it's like a one on one, but a little more personal than that. But having those like almost scheduled check-ins makes a big difference for us too. That's really why the advice. And again, it goes back to that really genuine approach that really like open, transparent, hey, what's working? What do we need to improve at? And I think that's the only point where you just describe that. And one more. Yeah, we'll call it on this Friday. Yeah. If you were to give other entrepreneurs, people that are, they finish college there in their first or second role in their career. If you were to give them two or three pieces of advice, what would they be and why? This is a good one because I get asked this a lot and it changes as I've gotten older and experienced different things. I think the first one is don't expect everything to land in your lap. This was actually a lesson that I learned while I was in college because we had, so we have a big state school that everyone looks up to. And then we had their smaller state schools. And I remember one of the speakers that came into one of the sessions that we ran for the marketing association. He came in and he said, the thing that I always look at central for is people that don't wait for handouts. And he was looking for, and he was partially recruiting, but also just saying like the lessons he learned from working with people at our university is that we were a group of folks who were really focused just as maple walks into a room who were really focused on like putting in the work and the effort. A lot of people were commuters to school, which I commuted to school. A lot of people had a job and they were going to school at night. And so for them and he said it so well, it was like, these are the people that are doing this on top of the life they live. And for newer folks, as I think about that lesson, it's, if you put in all the work, you will get rewarded for the work that you don't wait to be rewarded to then step it up. Like for me, I've, I wanted to work really hard when I started. And every opportunity I've had to grow and evolve in my career wasn't me reaching out and saying, I want the next role. It was people recognizing my work and saying, you should, you deserve to do more. You deserve a raise. You deserve a new challenge. And recognizing me as a person that could help solve a problem. And I think that's a big difference than me reaching out and saying, I want that role. It was you are the perfect fit to help us figure this out. Can are you willing to jump into that? That would be the first big one. I would say a second big one. I think I'm just going to do two because I'm, I don't want to dig too, too deep and have us here all day. A second big lesson that I'd share is just learn how to communicate your needs and your feelings and where you're at. Find a way to be really honest with yourself as you're working really hard or as you're pushing yourself. I definitely would push myself over the edge to the point where people were asking, are you okay? And something feels off. And when you're having those moments that usually means you probably are way past the moment where you can't bottle it up or hide it anymore. And I was definitely a bottler. I still am a bottler to be honest. I have a way to, I'll say this and this sounds funny, but I had texted my partner earlier today. And here's exactly what I said, just a heads up. I don't know if it's because I'm not feeling 100%. But for whatever reason, I'm feeling a little grumpy or impatient today. I just want to make sure I don't come off short or anything with you, but just know that's just how I'm feeling. For me, that's my way to say, I'm not feeling 100% whether it's physically, mentally, emotionally, but I'd rather tell you that than for me to snap at you and then you find out otherwise. Because that happened way too much and that's not a healthy way to approach things. And whether that's a partner, whether that's a manager, and again, you've got to have the right people in your life in order to be able to feel comfortable doing that. But I know that I can go message my, I could go message my manager right now and say, hey, I'm just feeling off. Like, can I either talk with you for five minutes or can I take a 30 minute step away and just reset myself? That would be the second lesson because I know that feeling of I'm so stressed and nobody gets it. It's because everyone else is focused on figuring themselves out and you're probably just waiting for someone to check in on you so you can explode. And that's not a healthy, I thought the bottle you want to be carrying around because you don't want that cork to fly off and champagne is going everywhere because it's not a healthy way of approaching situations. So run it. Those are amazing. And it's all about finding. It's all about, and I guess this can also go back to athletics, listening to your body, listening to finding to when am I, when am I done? And I, I have the same issue as you. I can work and work and work and work until I find myself cranky and angry. And then I'm like, why am I in such bad mood? And I'm like, oh my god, I'm so excited. It's not just you, but you bring, you can, it's amazing how quickly you can bring others down through that. But it's a great point of, yeah, the athletic tieback is if you over push yourself, that's how you get injured. That's how you don't perform at a high level. It's good to challenge yourself. But it's also the reason people push harder and harder is to learn their limits and try to extend the limits. But when you go over, it's the lesson of, okay, I need to stop here. Or else I'm going to do some more harm than I want to. And even if you show up to, for example, your marathon training, but you haven't eaten well, or you haven't slept well, you're not going to be at your best, even if you want to be at your best. Yeah, you can, you control a lot of those factors and you have to put yourself in a position to succeed. And part of it is knowing when you overexerted yourself. Yeah. And so it's funny because if I tie that to that human centric approach, it might sound crazy to say, we also need to have a ego centric approach. Yeah. Oh, 100%. I completely agree in those. The people who have a little bit of that. It's part of how you win and how you be successful. And I think not only in a sales role, but also in the executives you're selling to like, they're probably running successful companies and coming to you for the next thing. Trying to sell to a sinking ship is really difficult, but you sell to someone that knows they're doing some things right and they have more opportunity. That's when you have really good conversations and the ones that are willing to say, imagine if like you have those, that's when it gets one. And what if I could? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm super, I'm sorry, I went way over time, but this is a great. This is awesome. Ron, this was a ton of fun. I love where we landed at the end too. It brought it all back together. So I'm glad we took that moment to do so too. Yeah, that was super. Thank you, Connor, for your time. And if the listeners want to reach out to you, what is the best way for someone to find you? Yeah. LinkedIn is going to be the best spot. Then in Bronya, I'll make sure that you have my my info for a description of sorts, but you can just search Connor Delaney. It should have a bearded smiling face like this one. That should make it pretty easy. But otherwise, when email is easiest to see Delaney at impact plus.com would be the second one, but LinkedIn's a great way to find me and to follow because I try to post my journey like this conversation as often as I can on there. I love it. Super, perfect. I have a wonderful rest of the day. Sleep well, work well, stay hard. And I'll see you soon. Fantastic. Thanks, Ron. My pleasure. Thank you, Connor. Have a wonderful day. Bye-bye.