Our most recent Influence interview with Rob Jeppsen and Gary Rhoads, the co-founders of Xvoyant, made me think of the lyrics of David Byrne…
Rob Jeppsen is a sales and marketing genius who starts and grows companies like Allegiance Technologies and Xvoyant. And he’s a card-carrying expert at helping big companies like Valvoline, Waste Management, and Adobe win more clients. In short, Rob collects national sales awards—15 Stevie Awards, SAMY Awards, etc.—like Boy Scouts collect merit badges.
Gary Rhoads is the revered and highly decorated Steven Mack Covey Professor of Marketing & Entrepreneurship at Brigham Young University. Far from being a typical marketing professor, Gary is one of only two or three marketing PhD’s in the U.S. who wrote his dissertation (Texas Tech University) on sales, not marketing. In his spare time, Gary likes to start and grow cool companies like Allegiance and Xvoyant, then sell them to huge corporations like Computer Science Corporation and Maritz Holdings.
This is an amazing conversation with Rob Jeppsen and Gary Rhoads. “This ain’t no party, this ain’t no disco, this ain’t no fooling around." We hope you enjoy it!
Kory Stevens, the founder and CEO of Taft Clothing, always leads with his heart! It’s the first thing we noticed when we interviewed him and one of many things everyone he meets quickly appreciates. So, when Kory had a dream of starting his own company with his wife, Mallory, it became an obsession. They named their company “Taft” after their son and their shoes after Taft’s friends.
Taft began in the living room of their small apartment with a successful Kickstarter Campaign for “no-show socks.” It wasn’t long before Kory was designing and selling high-end men’s shoes, exclusively handcrafted in Spain and Portugal. Small investments from friends and family soon followed. Taft started to grow fast!
Kory takes the time to have heartfelt two-way interactions that make Taft’s followers feel special. He works 70-hour weeks as one of the best designers of shoes in the world. Kory and his team are obsessed with design and quality and running Taft with a personal touch. He finds true meaning in his family, his personal connections to Taft’s customers, and designing shoes and boots millions of men want to wear.
Taft now has thousands of Facebook Likes and multitudes of Twitter followers. And venture capital firms continue to line up. But other than Kickstart Seed Fund, a relationship Kory describes as “a group of friends,” they still haven’t taken any outside funding.
Now Taft is a multi-million dollar company with a culture and reputation that is priceless. It’s an inspiring company with a soul, led by Taft's CEO, Korey Stevens, who leads with his heart!
Jonathan Johnson very modestly describes himself as “a recovering lawyer.” A lawyer by training, Jonathan was Overstock.com’s general counsel before becoming president. Jonathan and Patrick Byrne, Overstock.com’s founder and CEO, took Overstock from a private startup to a publicly traded company with over $2 billion in sales and 2,000 employees. They have been good at seeing new opportunities.
Overstock.com has never been afraid of making moves. In 2014 they were the first major online retailer to accept bitcoin as a payment, and in the first 22 hours, they received over 800 orders worth $126,000 in bitcoin. Jonathan Johnson (and Patrick Byrne) jumped into the blockchain mosh pit four years ago because they saw big potential in applying the blockchain to financial systems. Jonathan became the president of a new Overstock subsidiary that was created to manage and oversee company investments in innovative companies building blockchain solutions.
They called the new company Medici Ventures, named after Medici Bank of Florence, the most successful European bank in the 15th century. Medici Bank was an early disruptor in 15th-century Europe that invented, among other things, the double entry system of tracking debits and credits, deposits and withdrawals. The name seemed appropriate and Medici Ventures was born!
Under Jonathan’s leadership. Medici Ventures has made big investments in companies with innovative blockchain solutions. Jonathan, along with his friend and mentor, Patrick Byrne, believes that “blockchain is going to change the world more than the internet has.” We think you’ll enjoy our interview with Jonathan Johnson, a bright, articulate “recovering lawyer” who is making bold moves in an uncertain world!
Shawn Moon is fully present and fully engaged. He’s not a multitasker. And when you meet him, you quickly sense that you are talking to a very disciplined, very different kind of leader. Part psychologist, part strategist, part Zen Ninja, Shawn is the author of several respected books on leadership, among them The Ultimate Competitive Advantage and Talent Unleashed.
He spent most of his career helping Fortune 500 executives get better results. And, before that, Shawn was a Principal with Mellon Financial Corporation, one of the world’s largest money management firms. He now leads a once-obscure carpet cleaning company called Zerorez, perhaps the most innovative, high-growth carpet cleaning company in the world.
Zerorez is not a glamorous company. But then Shawn Moon is a different kind of CEO. His franchise partners are fiercely loyal and are willing to follow a new formula for success as they disrupt the home restoration and carpet cleaning industry. They want to be successful, and many of them are becoming millionaires as they reinvent Zerorez and themselves. We hope you enjoy this Influence podcast!
Todd Davis, the Chief People Officer of Franklin Covey, believes “feedback is the breakfast of champions!” More than just a good quote, you can tell he really believes in feedback, feels it in his bones and eats it for breakfast every day. He sets a high personal bar and asks questions out loud that most people seldom dare to think about. “How extraordinary am I in my key roles?” “What are my most important roles?” “Family member, friend, colleague?”
One can’t listen to Todd without sensing a genuine humility. His book, GET BETTER - 15 PROVEN PRACTICES TO BUILD EFFECTIVE RELATIONSHIPS AT WORK is a national best seller, yet he is refreshingly modest and compelling. It’s obvious that Todd is not a poser or a pushover. He lives what he teaches and gently encourages us to change the way we see the world so we can live better lives. We hope you enjoy this podcast, where Todd encourages us to “start with humility and intent” and to “carefully calibrate our weeks” so we can live happier lives and find new success is helping others. “Greatness lies within each of us!”
Bjorn Espenes and Eric Maas met in Park City in 1999. After working together for 10 years to build a successful SaaS eCommerce company, they were frustrated that no one had the ability to provide consistent paid search solutions for their customers. And they began to believe they could somehow build a platform that could predict the profit of any “click” before a customer bought it. They decided they didn’t want any investors and boldly named their little company “Finch” in honor of the small birds that, as Charles Darwin discovered, proved to be the most adaptive species in the world.
In little more than a decade, Finch has become one of the fastest growing private companies in the United States. Their customers include the Fortune 500 and high-growth middle market companies that found Finch while searching for the most profitable paid search advertising solutions they could find. Finch is now a global company but has only one KPI, a company that attracts the best people, has virtually no employee turnover, and “doesn’t care about haircuts”. We hope you enjoy this fascinating interview with Bjorn Espenes!
We recently had the pleasure of interviewing Ragula Bhaskar (“Bhaskar”) the visionary co-founder and CEO of FatPipe Networks. Over twenty-five years ago when networks as we know them were just beginning, Bhaskar and his wife, Sanch Datta (co-founder, President and CTO of FatPipe) had the determined vision to start a company that is now widely regarded by Gartner and other industry experts as the market leader for software-defined wide area networking (SD-WAN). Simply put, Bhaskar and Sanch built FatPipe from the ground up to become the most reliable and secure software platform for many of the largest networks in the world.
We live in a time when tech CEO’s are treated like rock stars and have huge egos and expensive penthouse offices. Bhaskar and Sanch represent so much more. They saw an opportunity no one else saw in the late 90’s, then worked for many years to build a mission critical enterprise platform that is now acknowledged as the very best. We need more determined visionaries like Bhaskar and Sanch!
You may not expect a pest control company to have a full-sized NCAA basketball court and a golf simulator inside their headquarters—but then, you may not expect a lot of things about Aptive Environmental’s unique culture and amazing vibe. Modeled after the slick beauty of leading tech companies, Aptive has been a disruptor in the pest control industry by offering the best technology and solutions to a stable and professional sales team and introducing an element of fun. At the helm of this juggernaut company’s beginning is David Royce, Founder and Chairman, and Vess Pearson, CEO. David describes himself as a “serial entrepreneur,” and is always looking to make the world a better place with each business he starts or influences. He has been featured in several articles by Forbes magazine and other national publications and continues to dazzle the world with his intense curiosity and tenacious creativity. Vess brings his passion, drive, and energy for building successful sales teams and creating a fun culture. Vess continues to propel Aptive forward as the CEO, as David has transitioned to a less hands-on role. With a clear aptitude for connecting with people, Vess’ energy in moving a group towards a goal compels those around him to join in and become invested.
David and Vess are committed to the healthy culture and sustained growth of their company, and the sincerity of their intentions towards employees and clients is absolutely apparent in all that they do. New sales reps hired at Aptive see a 60% average increase in their sales. When we asked about this, David attributed that success to “a lot of simple stuff done extraordinarily well.” This notion permeates every idea they talked about with us, every plan and structure they have put in play: the small things add up.
Aptive’s successes continue to add up and achieve new heights with every passing year, with Vess and David continually contemplating new approaches. We are grateful for the time they spent with us in our office, and are excited to see what milestones they reach in the coming years!