Carl J. Cox 9:24

Well, yeah, as you were talking there, there’s like a 25 questions that I have in comments, because I love it. First of all, how you have found a way to get connected with your past. That’s one of the things you’ve mentioned, multiple conversations we’ve had, you’ve talked about, you know, I grew up in this, I grew up knowing about manufacturing, and I had this innate joy of trying to build things but you also had this software side right, which is not super common, right to kind of like to build things and then the software side insurance. There’s a reason why manufacturers are arguably the worst when it comes to having a digital presence because they’re really, really good at building things. And I, for those who don’t know, I work with the Oregon manufacturing extension partnership. So I get the opportunity to see so many different organizations, and what they’ve done and hear about what they’re happening. But a digital presence is lacking for so many of them. And their sales channels they it’s remember the movie Field of Dreams by Kevin Costner it’s kind of like, they there’s almost this feeling of if you build it, they will come. And that just Unfortunately, the sad part is that couldn’t be further from the truth if you don’t get out and see things and then you add on to it. I don’t know the 10x 100x. Explosion now of online due to COVID. Right due to the Coronavirus, which is forcing people to be more online than ever before. Having a digital presence could be more important than ever. So how do you get that when you go onto somebody’s website, and there’s barely a presence on there, and there’s probably even some that you can’t even put your name and to get connected right with it. How? And then there’s Amazon where the same people are probably buying from Amazon and a daily basis, but they can’t they don’t connect that they should be having this for their own manufacturing website. How do you have those like preliminary discussions with them? To become aware?

Dusty Dean 11:26

Yeah, yeah, I think one of the things that’s been very helpful for me is, I like to talk about an in terms of like your best performing salesperson, like what are what are they bringing to your operation? And then do they have you have some kind of expectation of them, right, that they have they bring some leads, or convert enough leads? You may be my monitor, you know, there’s there’s a sliding scale here of how complex you can get from there pipeline analysis, lead conversion rate, but we’re already with that. So I tried to find out, I’m thinking, Okay, that’s really interesting, I now kind of have a baseline of where we are with, with how you, you know, measure your your best performing salesperson that’s now how can we take those same measurements and apply them to this investment that we’re thinking about making into an online platform? digital strategy? Yeah, that’s the other thing too, that it’s always frustrated me, it’s everybody. There’s I, I grew up programming, I know a lot about technology, and I hate jargon. So it’s like online, digital, whatever you want to call it, how do we turn this this magical code into something that can be measured, like your best performing salesperson? And then I start to share some things with them? You know, it’s like, yeah, we can, okay, so leads are important to us. Okay, well, let’s let’s, let’s imagine a formula where we know how much it costs to get x lead. And then let’s, let’s let’s model out how much what percentage of those leads are going to convert. But but with manufacturers always start, everybody’s afraid to put anything out there. There’s still this very conservative mindset that your competitor is going to stay on your website all day long. Download your PDFs. Examine your prep, reverse engineer your operations. It’s basically nobody wants to say it, what they’re fearful of that. And of course, it’s so ridiculous because someone could be at work. And their boss says, I need we need this piece of machinery, and I need an answer on Monday. And so what does that person do on a Sunday evening, they get on the internet, and they try to find it. And whoever has the path of least resistance that gives them that information. It’s so far along in the buying process, that the fear of putting your competitor information out there is irrelevant. That’s a little sidetrack there. I mean, ultimately, it’s like how do we take the measurements that we apply to some of our best performing selves employees, and put those into a digital asset, and we start there, and then we build a strategy on top of that, that is an ongoing strategy. Oftentimes, it starts with leads and then eventually we get to ecommerce because you know what, when you analyze an operation, a lot of the Salesforce spends a significant significant percentage of time on parts orders that nobody particularly enjoys. Okay, what a great opportunity for self serve. Login as your customer, self serve yourself on a Saturday morning, when you realize it broke. The plant manager is talking to the maintenance gentlemen, and they’re like, Okay, we got to figure this, we got to get a part ordered, okay, well, let’s just take care of it ourselves. And then that’s kind of the gateway drug into more of a full self serve experience. But with manufacturing, you have to work at their pace. And the pace is really about the pace of change and the pace of change management. Because, you know, not to get too much into manufacturing, but it the admin side can be very tribal. And for many times for good reason, because when orders were slow, You know, that particular group of employees, we’re there for you. And, you know, but as you scale up operations and grow, unfortunately, that tribal pneus has to be standardized and ultimately automated as much as possible. And

Carl J. Cox 15:18

I loved when you were talking through this, you mentioned this huge fear, that’s pretty much unfounded. of the very beginning, why isn’t it out there in the first place, is because they’re actually literally afraid that somebody’s going to be able to copy their secret sauce and remake it, and then therefore, put it up on you know, and then therefore make it and take away the competition. And that’s one of the problems like we always think we can make anything, right any any, any engineer with the sauce, I could, I could figure that out, I can do that. But that’s not the point, the real opportunity is getting to somebody who didn’t know you existed. And they have a problem, an unmet need, and you can solve it. And there are a secondary part you mentioned, which is so huge, which is your your valuable value adds salespeople, instead of spending time on a part, right? That that can take as much time as a, perhaps a core system on ordering, they can focus it on their high value added clients that are looking for the more customized solutions, create relationships with them. So they’re more likely to buy, right, because it’s not a common, right, see that somebody’s gonna look at three to five websites, and still get quotes from multiple people. Isn’t that fair to say? Yes. So So let’s talk about a little bit of the traditional success that you end up seeing with your clients. Give me some metrics that you’re typically measuring, helping them to measure. So they’re like, why didn’t I do this? 10 years ago? I did this five years ago, I didn’t know this yesterday. What are these things that are just like this bang, typical metrics, that that they get so happy to see.

Dusty Dean 17:08

Yeah, I think one of the first thing is I want to dispel the idea that it just like you just, you do a bunch of work for for months, and then you turn it on, and then their success, it doesn’t work that way. You start small. And oftentimes, not always, but more often than not, it’s typically a manufacturing firm who is thinking, you know, we have distributor, and maybe dealer sells, maybe mass merchant, we also get a direct sell component. I haven’t had a tremendous amount of success with it. But we haven’t also invested a lot in it. How can we grow that? And of course, it’s just a setting, you know? Yeah. Level setting. I’d like to say, Well, why do we want to grow it? Let’s listen to make sure we fully understand why. And of course, it’s typically what we have better margins, and we have more control. And there’s also some other ancillary benefits that you may get to in a minute, but Okay, so let’s just say we’re, our direct sells are now, you know, maybe two to 5% of our overall revenue, we’d like to increase that to a higher percentage. But we need to do this in a way that is affordable for us. Because you know, what, we’re a manufacturing operation, we care about getting the product out the door, high quality, making our customers happy, we don’t really have any understanding of how to do this, from a sales and marketing and admin transformation point of view. But that’s obviously what my team and I have a lot of experience with. And we help with that. But, you know, we look at how they’re processing their customers, their leads today, you know, typically, it’s a lot of spreadsheets, a lot of PDFs, a lot of emailing a lot of back and forth. And we look at that from a time consumption point of view, like how long does that take? How do we take some of that and build this nice, interactive form that sharing information along the way for a customer online? And we start with that process, which ultimately ends up getting more leads, okay. Any firm can only handle a X amount increase in leads before there’s problems. And so we start to discuss that early on, Okay, first quarter, second quarter, we’re going to get x increase in leads. Can we handle that? Well, we only have one person in house cells. Okay, let’s plan on getting another person. Let’s let’s, let’s grow it this way. And so we start to increase those leads by X amount, in a, let’s say, in a quarter, start to scale the internal team to support it. And often what happens at some point in this journey, it’s usually around nine months. The creation of the leads exceeds the capacity of even the extra two were three folks that were brought in. And then it’s like, Okay, we’ve got to rethink this model. How can we allow the customer to get 90%, complete with the transaction or even 100%, complete with the transaction themselves. So we start to take even what what everybody thinks that their product is incredibly unique and hyper customized. And it’s, you know, can’t be made into some sort of configurable experience. I disagree with that. Our success at versity, the company, you mentioned in my bio, that I’m a former president of and I work with the advisory board there now. It’s a, we we design custom buildings, to your local snow and wind loads, unlimited width, length and height, possible combinations. You know, it’s not, it’s not too complex. It’s just a matter of the willingness, which we’re going to take to do this. But the point is, is that we start to, we start to bring some of these complex products into configurable experience to take the pressure off of adding 50 new salespeople. And this also meets and exceeds the customer expectation of that employee, who as I said, on Friday evening, the boss said, we got to have a solution next week. Well, they were able to configure it design, it got a price. They can even check out if they wanted to. And they take it on a Monday morning. And they say, Look, I’ve got the answer here. Here’s the specs. Here’s the price. Here’s the lead time. Well, most other firms, they’re employed, Joey, we’ll get back to you Monday afternoon. And you know, what, then he’s going to interrogate you about?

Dusty Dean 21:46

Yeah, I don’t want to be I know what I want. Don’t, don’t ask me if I’m sure about it. So that’s the point is, it’s a journey usually starts with lead generation I mentioned parts earlier, then we get to configurable experience could take two years, could take longer, the way that my company gets paid, it’s performance based, if we’re not producing those leads, we’re not producing ourselves, we’re not helping measure that along the way from from whether it’s the traffic to your site, what percentage of that traffic is converting? What percentage of the people who did convert are actually turning into customers? Sometimes that can take a long time, because some big companies are big companies, but some firms have, you know, cell cycles that can be eight, nine months to a year, we start tracking that information. And if we’re not demonstrating our success, you know, obviously, everybody knows it. We’re the first people to know. So, yeah, it’s a it’s a, it’s a, it’s a huge problem. A huge part of this is change management along every step of the way. You can’t just overwhelm, you can’t oversell, you can’t overwhelm you have to set the right expectation every step of the journey.

Carl J. Cox 22:59

Yeah, I appreciate you saying that the change management part because the you know, I could go in verse two minute like, I want that configurator today. And unfortunately, the the manifest that your client doesn’t understand all the different back end part that happened, I was with a company and we were very successful company, and it took us 40 hours on a receipt of a purchase order to process it to bring it out to the manufacturing floor, like literally for you know, it didn’t actually take us 40 hours of time, but by the time we receive it to deliver it was took 40 hours because it was a completely manual process back in our old day. That stuff’s still happening today, I was working with a manufacturer, a successful manufacturer. And it takes some time, sometimes two to three weeks to get a quote out. Well, what they don’t know is the amount of deals that they’ve lost because they haven’t responded within two days or a day or two hours. Right? You know, and, and that’s, there’s, there’s like the true ROI, what I’d call of which you could probably tell us it’s three four or 510 x you know, whatever the investment they have in you, but then there’s also the unknown known losses. What we don’t know what we ended up losing, because now we could respond to things that we had no idea that we were losing in the first place. And that that’s the scary stuff like like how big could we have been? If we’ve done the right thing now, does he This is that this troubling part of we could probably turn this into a six hour conversation that we don’t have time for six hours. So I’m gonna flip this now to you just recently we’re married. Congratulations. I recall you said that you were supposed to get married last year and then of course, couldn’t because of restrictions and and you’re now married you you got you just had your honeymoon. So now let’s talk about your personal life a little bit. You are involved in a ton you know, I go once again a link thing you’re like involved in 758 clubs. I’m just halfway joking there. But I mean, you’re very, very active you really believe in the community and helping to give back you also are helping out with with startups and incubators. Tell me how you help yourself. How do you define success on a personal level? Yeah, yeah. But

Dusty Dean 25:26

it’s a it’s a, it’s a difficult question. One that I take very, very seriously. I, I moved here from Memphis, where I was serving as president versity. And

Dusty Dean 25:43

I,

Dusty Dean 25:45

I grew up, I grew up in a tiny farming community, 4000 people in West Tennessee, but I was always connected with people on the intro, I was kind of a geek and connected with people on the internet and knew there’s much more out there. And so I’d always kind of wanted to move out west and kind of start a serious effort to invest in, in my community, and in my career, as well. And I found, as I’ve transitioned, no, I know, what I 2017 is, when I, when I moved to Portland, I found that when I moved out here, at first, I was just working all the time, like I was previously. And

Dusty Dean 26:37

I just kind of felt this emptiness that I’m I don’t,

Dusty Dean 26:46

I’m really I can, I can get a lot of calls, I can meet with a lot of people, I can do the zoom before zoom was the COVID, you know, poster child. And that’s when I started to realize that my involvement with my community and my friends and my family is, is what enriches me and makes me very, very happy. And I know for a lot of people that like, that sounds so simple. But for me, you know, my dad, he worked all the time. And he taught me that the way that you become successful in life is to work all the time into put, you know, side jobs, extra jobs, and everything else. And so that’s how I started the first part of my career. And then I realized that that’s not that’s not the answer, no, it’s not just throwing yourself 100% into work all the time. It’s about building enriching relationships, all around that and sometimes, you know, sometimes they might turn into work. But other times it, they want it. And that’s okay. So I lately I’ve been measuring my success in how much effort I’m putting into non work. Relationships is sometimes in that gray area between someone I might work with, I don’t know, we’re not really in any kind of adjacent industry, but I don’t really care because I value the way in which they approach their, their career in their their work life, their work life balance, they have a little bit of humility, that’s always a big deal for me, I I’m extremely discouraged if I meet someone who, you know, is spending a majority of the conversation talking about all the great things that they’ve been able to accomplish without any acknowledgement to the adversities or, or are just luck, that they, that they’ve, you know, had along the way. And so yeah, that’s been that’s been one of the big things I look at lately. And, of course, this revelation, you know, came just prior to COVID. And uncovered, you know, was it’s difficult, I missing, being in a room full of people and walking around and talking to them and, and, and picking up on the interpersonal mannerisms and knowing how to respond to them.

Carl J. Cox 29:20

And so first of all, thank you that I appreciate you sharing that piece. I think what’s so fascinating is right, we can we can accomplish so many different things and still still feel this bit of emptiness, right of like what matters, you know, and then there were there. There was a story I heard one time of a very, very successful businessman who he had passed away and at the getting ready to pasture to the eulogy, and then the two sons show up, and they talk to the pastor ahead of time. They’re like, hold on a second. What are you planning to say and of course, he was claiming to say all the things he was familiar with, right that he’d saw from the outside perspective. And the two sons, they went on to say, Don’t you dare talk about him in this way cuz he was not a good husband, he was not a good father. He was not present. He didn’t, you know. And I don’t know about you, but that’s like a sum of all fears for me. You know, nothing would be more dangerous. Yes, I accomplished X, Y, and Z. But I was a stranger in my own home, right. And home is a broad definition that doesn’t have to be your physical home, it could be what you consider your your community home, it could be your global home, whatever that is. But if we aren’t making a difference, ultimately other people’s lives, it can’t be reciprocated in some way, there isn’t true connection. Of course, this is different for each human right, you know, depending on what our own personal strengths are, what matters. But I appreciate that you share this this other element in what’s interesting is your own upbringing of working hard. Right. And, and and that was driving you if the first part of your career is like, wait, wait, there’s more. You know, there’s more than just reciprocating what I thought my father told me to do. Right. And and so you easily accomplish that. But there is more, which is great, you know that you’ve been able to see that. So you are really involved and you do different things. What do you do on a daily basis to keep energy? You know, is there something that you do to help keep you focused, and so you are still making sure that all you’re doing all your work stuff, but you’re staying connected with the community and you, you still have the motivation to get up each day to do these things? How do you how do you do that?

Dusty Dean 31:34

Yeah, yeah, great question. I just want to add to what you just previously said, it just for the listeners out there, this is an ongoing journey for me, I have not I do not have it figured out. I don’t want people to listen to this and say, Wow, I, I, I, I don’t do anything. I’m not active at all, like, Look, I wasn’t either until recently. So it’s fine. You know, we’re, it. Sometimes I listen to podcasts, and people talk and I’m just like, this person’s on another level than me, I am not. I just want people to know that I am really working and trying to do this every day. And some days, it’s really hard. And some days I don’t, and some days I do. But what what fuels me, I mean, for me, not necessarily fuels me, but what part of my daily discipline, it’s so much of the stuff that we hear about. And we know about, you know, one thing for me is I absolutely don’t compromise on sleep. I fight very hard to make sure that I get enough sleep. And in some examples of that could be if I know that I’m not, it’s I’m going to be unable to get my normal sleep routine. Try to shift meetings away from the next morning so that I can calm accommodate an extra hour or so of sleep, trying to get those eight hours. You know what I eat, how I take care of my body, incredibly important. And that could be from just, you know, doing your best to eat as healthy as you can. And sticking to a daily workout meditation, routine. journaling has been incredibly helpful for me. To keep myself grounded, I reached a point recently, as many people do at various different times where you’re feeling burned out. And you can I can look at my I have a habit tracker. And I can I can see in my habit tracker of the things that I tried to track whether it’s you know, getting enough sleep or working out or journaling, I can see that there’s been a stretch of days where I don’t have checkmarks. Well, that’s a that’s a good reason for why I’m feeling I’m feeling burned out. But you know, it just really starts with taking care of myself, if I don’t take care of myself, I’m going to be terrible at so many things, whether that’s being on a call or or going to a physical networking event or trying to solve a hard problem. I’ve also tried to be more aware of where my energy levels are. So when it comes to meetings, where I don’t feel like they’re going to be particularly challenging for me, I have them in the afternoons to keep the morning open for more harder, creative task. But I’ve really spent quite a bit of time over the past couple of years trying to understand how small changes to my diet and my body affect my energy level and my ability to be productive. I haven’t quite got it all figured out yet. But it’s been an interesting journey.

Carl J. Cox 34:31

As you’re awesome. I appreciate you sharing all those parts and retell up this roundup this interview. What’s kind of your favorite book podcast that you would recommend for our audience, either it could be something you’re currently going through or just something that you just have this tendency to recommend to people on a regular basis.

Dusty Dean 34:54

Yeah, it’s a good Carl. No, go ahead. Yeah, So I read a lot, and I start multiple books. And I know really, really quickly, I’m not going to finish this one because I just don’t like the author’s style. So when I when I think about this question, I think about more along the lines of what kind of group themes of books I keep going back to and reading over and over again. And for me, the past couple of years, I’ve been really intrigued with books on stoicism largely because it’s one it’s involved in a lot professionally with multiple different accounts and groups and life is busy, so busy and it’s so easy for the voice in your head that we all have that that tries to plant doubt or just slow you down to to bother you. And I found that stoicism is offered some nice little tips and tricks for helping with that so book I’d recommend that stoicism and the art of happiness by Donald Robertson I found that to be a good introduction book into stoicism within the modern lens. So don’t think about your this is going to be something where you’re just going to be reading you know, classic literature and in its raw form now, you know, it’s it’s interpreted through a modern lens and in particularly helping people become more productive, and to kind of silence some of those voices that we have that can slow us down at times.

Carl J. Cox 36:40

Great, great. Thank you. That’s a excellent suggestion that you provided there so dusty. Where can people connect with you and what would be the best way to connect with you or because

Dusty Dean 36:55

yeah, I think the best way if you want to learn more about me, bitcadet.com. You can also add me to LinkedIn, just search for Dusty Dean. And if you want to just reach out to me directly dusty@bitcadet.com.

Carl J. Cox 37:09

That is a perfect, thank you. So that’s the this has been a real treat to truly have you on the show. And, and with that we want to make sure and I just want to thank you so they give so much Dusty. And to everyone else who’s listening. Thank you for listening to Measure Success Podcast, wishing you the very best at measuring your success. Have a great day.

Outro 37:34

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