Episode 2 Craig Daly | Qualtrics, Podium
Listen to Episode 2. Craig Daly goes from early Qualtrics sales rep to a top leader of the Utah tech scene.
Apple: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-early-years/id1514713085?i=1000476055292
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Craig joined Qualtrics, one of Utah's most successful companies, as employee 54. Hear stories from the early days and what it was like to be an employee at a such a young company, how he went from sales rep to sales leader, and how he has applied these learnings to another one of Utah's rising tech companies, Podium.
Interview transcription:
Craig Daly:
I think, eh, arrogantly, I thought I would be a good leader right out of the gates. Um, just cause I thought I understood people. And in all reality, like a misconception I had about leadership was be the person with all the answers, uh, be somebody that they can trust, you know? And yes, you need to have the answers. Yes. You need to be somebody that can wholeheartedly trust. But I think something I took away, at least from that initial leadership, uh, run was you're doing everybody a disservice. If you're creating dependencies on you. I think the most confident leaders are much more ones that just ask really good questions, uh, with the intent that it's, it's empowering you to think on your own. Yeah.
Braydon Anderson:
This is the early years. The show about influential early employees, the most successful companies and their stories that have made a lasting impact. I'm Braydon Anderson and on today's show how this early Qualtrics sales rep became a leader at the forefront of the Utah technology scene. Have you ever wondered what the early days of some of the most successful companies look like for most of these companies, process and structure are elementary at best. There's a lot of learning that has taken place. And that typically means mistakes could be made by individuals, simply learning how to grow a business. And this is all to be expected, these learnings, however, it can be instrumental for an organization to grow and ensure they develop best practices for sustainable business. Today we're joined by Craig daily, one of the earliest members of the Qualtrics sales team for those that don't know, Qualtrics was recently acquired by SAP for $8 billion and employees around 3,500 employees worldwide Craig joined Qualtrics as an employee, 54, joining a company that early has given Craig a front row view on what it means to start a business and how to learn as much as you can.
Braydon Anderson:
Craig has always had a knack for entrepreneurship, even going door to doors and eight year old offering his services to knock down hornet's nest and California, where he grew up a conversation with a neighbor that worked at Qualtrics really peaked his interest and set the course for him to get a job.
Craig Daly:
Neighbor of mine had just thrown out something about this company, Qualtrics. Um, and wasn't glowing just in terms of like speaking to it. And again, this was just like casual neighbor talk, uh, one Saturday. Um, but it kind of stuck with me that next day, just thinking like, well, it's interesting, this guy was talking the way he was about work. Like people don't normally talk that way. So, and then, uh, yeah, I shot him a text the next day, just as like stuff with my current role was, was, uh, just overly stressful just to kind of fish it out. And, and then, uh, I went and met, uh, ironically some people there and just seemed like there was, there was some stuff going on that was like strange and uniquely different, compelling, and strange and all the right ways. But that, that, that was kind of like my core introduction.
Craig Daly:
So I've always been in some aspect, uh, you know, working with people and trying to create or solve problems with that slowly finding automobiles or full blown, like enterprise solutions. I like creating businesses and trying to think, um, just of ways to, I don't know, do something that is challenging. Just something that kind of, I dunno, I love the creativity of building. So I think that's where tech again, has that kind of a lure of you don't know what looks ahead. There's something promising you gotta execute just well, and I'm interested, Craig, have you, it sounds like you've always been that way.
Braydon Anderson:
And you've even told me a story from your childhood. That was probably your first intro into entrepreneurship. Tell me more about that.
Craig Daly:
So, uh, we used to go door to door. We had those super soakers that you'd pump and we fill them with water and dish soap.
Craig Daly:
Um, and we would look under the eaves of garages in California where I grew up, but you would always see clusters of wasp NES, and we would just knock on the door and say, Hey, did you know you have these two lostness they're like that one we can knock down for 75 cents. This one's probably 25 cents. You have a dollar 25 one though on the side of the house. And again, we just had like literally a wagon with some soap and water for refills. And one of us would just smoke the nest with a squirt gun and the other one would hit them with a broom when they fell to the ground. So you were doing pest control at the age of eight year old pest control. Yeah. And I totally missed the rush in Utah should have been one of the first founders. No. Yeah.
Craig Daly:
Yeah. Well, I just, I just had my first son about a year ago. And when he's eight, he'd better be negotiating these types of deals or else better. I'm going to be a little disappointed. That's awesome. I know. I'm cool. So you get introduced to Qualtrics, um, then what happens next? Do you, you go in for an interview and you get the job or what, what happens? Yeah, it was kind of strange to my neighbor introduced me to Jared Smith, like right away. I think he was like somewhat in and out of Qualtrics, still working with Google at the time. Um, again, didn't know him, but knew kind of stories of him just given my neighbors. Tell me a little bit about Qualtrics and the Smith family had a really good discussion with him in passing and again, just felt compelled, uh, given like kind of the passion and vision of those guys.
Craig Daly:
And everyone just seemed super sharp and were talking to like anyone at the company just seemed really put together. Right. And then, yeah, so ended up interviewing, it was kind of a weird interview where the, uh, the head of sales at the time would purposely try to push your buttons, um, just to see like what you were kind of made of. Um, and so I got my feathers, I remember a little bit ruffled in one of the interviews and kind of walked out thinking like, forget this place. Um, just cause I thought like, did he, did it go well, he's kind of putting words in my mouth or so I thought so I thought it was like unfair questioning, not knowing he was really just gauging, like, what are you made of, how do you react to these misconceptions? Um, and then, uh, yeah, called me literally like hours later saying, Hey, we'd love to offer you so gotcha.
Craig Daly:
That's awesome. Little hiatus and went at it. Cool. And, and you get started pretty early. You're pretty early employee at the company. Right? I think you mentioned you have employee 54, right? Like, so yeah, around there. Yeah. What was the company like then when you started, like you mentioned the interviewing process, like you met a lot of great people, but like, you know, as you start this new role and this new company, what were the early days like they were, uh, they were really cool, really memorable. Um, I imagine it's pretty similar to how it was in Silicon Valley early on. I think there's just like a weird energy and kind of like huddling mentality around the team. Um, you know, if you saw someone with a Qualtrics shirt at a restaurant that Friday night or something, you kind of gave him the nod of like, Hey, you're a part of something special.
Craig Daly:
It just seemed like we all, we all knew we were doing something uniquely different in this like kind of incognito office. Um, and there, there was some promising future ahead and again, the CEO Ryan was I think very good at just instilling that vision into us and getting everybody really bought in, but it was, um, it sounds really cheesy, but it seemed kind of magical. It was kind of like, it was just new. It was different. Um, again, I felt like everybody was really talented trying to do things that were unprecedented, um, and kind of making it up. Like I think we were faking it, um, early on, but I think when you have that many people in the room, um, you could get stuff pretty dialed pretty quick and see performance tick. And so it was, it was cool. And so what, what are the company consists of?
Craig Daly:
So obviously you started in sales, imagine a product team. What else can did the company consist of at that time? We didn't really have marketing. I think it was just people all kind of on the side there weren't, uh, you didn't have setters. So I was like an account executive. You had a, you had a Mac, not a MacBook, an iMac. So you could only really work when you were there unless you had your laptop just seems so weird. The comprehend. Yeah. Cause this was 2009, 10, 11 or 2011, beginning of 11. Um, and yeah. Yeah. So not a ton of resources. Um, and honestly like thankful for that. Now it was a lot of dialing. Um, you know, a lot of like tuning up messaging, our own decks, positioning, who we were in the market, trying to understand competition, trying to figure out trade shows, events, everything, um, pretty, pretty lean, uh, development team, um, you know, cool product.
Craig Daly:
It was, it was an interesting time too. I mean, cool. So Qualtrics for those that don't know the system, it's basically a survey solution helps help the organizations back in the day have data-driven insights right through the way that they would collect. Um, but at the time of the recession, we were just uniquely positioned because there was a lot of people trying to cut spend and, you know, reduce some of these more costly outlets and focus on how do we have really high caliber research to influence our company's strategy. Um, but not necessarily pay an arm and a leg because we don't have that anymore, given the recession. So I think we hit it at a right time to really capitalize on. Now we've got the product, we got the market, like let's just throw gas on this thing and yeah. Yeah, it was, it was good.
Craig Daly:
And how were cells early on? Right where, so your role mainly with sales, but you did a lot of stuff like you guys selling a lot, like, you know, like, did you make a lot of money during that time or what? No, that's not too personal a question. It was awful compromise. I remember, uh, again, it makes me grateful a little bit for just looking back at it, but, um, I think the base literally at the time was like $24,000. I remember sitting down with Ryan and like my final interview and I think he knew I had a kid and just said, Hey, Craig, like guy, like you, you know, you should be making around 60 K a year. Which again at the time seemed really, uh, like scary in a, in a negative sense. Um, if he thought that was like maybe a higher threshold, I think I negotiated my base up to like 30 K um, just crazy.
Craig Daly:
It sounds crazy looking back at it, but, um, again, they did a really good job of like selling the vision and obviously zero regrets. But yeah, you weren't, you weren't making a ton of money. I think the guys that were like doing well were, um, kind of closer to a hundred, some of the team leaders you saw them doing like one 20, one 50. And again, this was kind of unprecedented, honestly. Right. And it wasn't like in Utah there weren't people throwing down big numbers. Tech was still pretty new. Yeah. Like that's healthy money. Um, in all reality, like, but it was, it was, you were kind of scraping sure. Um, it wasn't, it wasn't too hot. Yeah. So as you start at this fresh company, like, did you like doing sales? Did you like this company or were you thinking like, what did I get myself into?
Craig Daly:
Yeah, probably a bit of both. I think I loved, I loved all the people. I love what we were doing. Um, it was, it was a bit militant about how we approach sales. Uh, it was very systematic, almost robotic. Uh, and I'm, I'm not cut from that thread. Right. Like I mentioned before, I like to be probably a little bit more creative to a fault. Um, and you know, we were pounding 40 to $60 a day trying to get to appointments. Um, we had stack ranking reports that were literally telling you, are you on the 18 B team C team D team F team. Um, so you knew at all times from an accountability standpoint where you sat against all your peers, uh, what you're putting up. And again, a lot of positives can come from that and obviously some negatives, depending on how that's used, but, uh, again, it taught a lot of that rigor.
Craig Daly:
Um, but yeah, it was, it was, it was foreign to me. I, I, I didn't deal a whole lot with rejection. If I had someone in front of me, it was very easy for me to have a conversation and kind of authentically help them, uh, with a car, with a product, you know, it, I think that came natural. It was hard for me to get on the phone and be like, Hey Bob, you don't know me. I'd love to talk about research. And that's kind of like, Hey, stop calling me. I think that was a little bit new, just my first started. But yeah, I think it was good for me to definitely pass through like that, that Hill you were used to selling pest control loss ness with controlling with your gun. Karen never said no wink. And I was the nest down. I like it. I like it. I'm curious. Cause now when you look at Qualtrics, um, they're obviously recognized as industry leader, uh, they were recently purchased for $8 billion by SAP. So obviously a ton of success, like in those early days, did think the Qualtrics would have the success that it's had. Like, could you tell back then, like we're on a rocket ship or you, like,
Braydon Anderson:
when did you realize, like this could be big? I think pretty early on, as weird as it is to say it's easy to say that looking back, I don't, I would never would've guessed 8 billion big. I think that that's ludicrous. But the, uh, I, I think we just, again, kind of, I feel like we keep touting or I keep telling the people that were there. We had a good product. Uh, we had the, uh, market timing in Tam is massive. Um, you know, Ryan was an incredible visionary. His brother's phenomenal product. It just seemed like we had a lot of congruencies to like, not fail. If we just stayed in our lane and executed, and month over month, you saw the revenue uptick, every person, you know, leveled up month, over month, tried to improve their skill set honed in our trainings. It just seemed like everything even early on was dialed and there was just a ton of inertia and energy around it.
Craig Daly:
So to me, it was a little bit of like, this is the snowball effect we're unstoppable now. It's like, how big can we take it? Um, but yeah, I couldn't have fathom back then, like the size that it is now. And even when we saw like some of the venture money early on with Excel and Sequoia, um, survey monkey offering 500, it was, I think we were, I think even then it was kind of like a register on the Richter scale of like, dang we're, we're moving fast. You know, we have three times the people here, so yeah. Yeah, we did. You mentioned the survey monkey thing, which is really fascinating. Cause I remember hearing about that when it happened, like Qualtrics just got, got offered $500 million and I was thinking like, why wouldn't they take that right now? Looking back. It's like, Oh, well of course they didn't take it. I know they made, you know, 10 times, 20 times out of mouth. So it's just nuts to think about. That's crazy. Um, I'm curious, what's one of your favorite memories from the early days? Hmm, man.
Craig Daly:
Yeah, this is a funny one. Um, I, uh, I had a leader at the time. Um, yeah, great, great individual. I think he was trying to figure out a bit in his life as well, as far as like who he was. Um, and he was a little bit like, uh, bipolar and the way that he led our team. Um, I was, I was on the team with a good friend of mine. Uh, James Sukan, who, you know, we still remain incredibly close today, but, uh, he, we, uh, there was a time where I remember this leader sending me a message in the morning and, and James and just somebody there's others on the team saying guys, how was it by 10:00 AM? I'm able to accomplish all this and lead our team and you guys can't accomplish this. It was just, you know, incredibly motivating message maybe really want to get to work.
Craig Daly:
Um, you know, and then, and then it kind of ensued from there of like, Hey, I just saved your job. Uh, you know, so-and-so, uh, isn't pleased with like performance and again, I'm close with a lot of these people. It's a, it's a pretty close circle. Not, not that I was. Um, but it kind of struck me off. Like, I didn't know, I was actually in a predicament. I didn't realize I was on that chopping block. And so I remember in passing, talking to one of the leaders just saying, Hey, I'd love to talk. Like, it sounds like we're kind of off on expectations and we'd love to understand like what you're not seeing. Um, and he, he was kinda like, I don't know what you're talking about. Like, Oh, okay, sorry. I sound like there was a conversation that was happening and he's like, Nope, never happened.
Craig Daly:
I don't know what you're talking about. And you know, push comes to show, we find out this leader is basically just feeding us like a load of horse crap, like a ton of, you know, it's kinda like, uh, just misinformation and then, uh, yeah, he, yeah, we come to find out there's a lot of like made up information in Salesforce. This person actually wasn't working. We ended up having like this. Yeah. Like I come to haze Zeus at like 6:00 AM at the office. It was just one of those awkward scenarios. It was a good memory because it was, I just remember it being like so strange. Yeah. So that's my question is how, how is this your favorite memory? This sounds like, I know, I know. Yeah, this is I'm uncomfortable even telling you I, everyone that was involved, but, um, I think I I've referenced it and looked back at it, um, as just a funny time.
Craig Daly:
And, and I would with that leader too, it's like, we were all trying to figure ourselves out. None of us were perfect. We were all doing like weird quirky things. But like you said earlier, it's kind of like a, it's kind of like a fake it till you make it. And I'm sure this was part of that element. Like you guys are all just trying to learn how to make this grow. Yeah. Yeah. But that's just one, that's just always sticks out as like memorable. It just kinda like, man, that was so weird. What were, what were we doing? Um, but it's funny. Uh, so, so you're an account executive. Um, what happened next? Like how long did you do that role? Yep. So I was in a account executive role for about two years. Um, got tapped on the shoulder to run what was a part of the, basically like a free internship as a leader, um, and just re ran a small team as our team was expanding. Um, so, uh, just had a couple of people on the team and from there just grew into leadership and started expanding the team. So, um, did that for the remaining, you know, four or five years, uh, representing a couple of products basically from their own house. So count executive for a couple of years and then went into leadership two years after that. Gotcha. And what's kind of your biggest takeaways from that experience? Um, you know, going from an individual contributor to being a leader.
Craig Daly:
Yeah. That's a, it's a, I've learned a lot and I'll tell you that. Um, I think, uh, arrogantly, I, I thought I would be a good leader right out of the Gates. Um, just cause I thought I understood people and, and in all reality, like a misconception I had about leadership was either person with all the answers, uh, be somebody who they can trust, you know, and yes, you need to have the answers. Yes, you need to be somebody that can pull heartedly trust. But I think something I took away, at least from that initial leadership, uh, you know, run was, you're doing everybody a disservice. If you're creating dependencies on you,
Craig Daly:
in the sense of like, if they're always coming to you to answer questions, to improve check emails, to consider pricing, you're, you're not empowering them or developing them. And I think there's so much incredible, you know, byproducts of that development. If Braydon is becoming more and more powerful through his ability to make his own decisions and just, you're the one kind of play in Japan a little bit in the background, helping them grow and arrive, um, that fulfillment has multiples well above you just be in the person with the answers. Like no one, no one cares for that. It doesn't scale. You'll never advance in your career. So I think in my mind, as people are now asking me questions, I do reference that back at that time of, yeah. And before I answer it, tell me a little bit about how you're thinking about this.
Craig Daly:
How do you think we should price? Or how do you think, what message should we share? I think kind of putting it back on them, forces their brains to become self sufficient. Yeah. Craig, I've, I've actually gone through that same process myself. Cause I used to think like, Oh, if they're coming to me like that, that's good on me. Like that makes me look better. That like, that means I'm super valuable, but it's like, no, like you're holding people back. You're holding yourself back when you're not enabling people to grow and to learn how to do these things and removing yourself, like it's, it's kind of contradictory, but like the more you remove yourself from something actually the better it makes you, it feels like, would you agree with that? A hundred percent? Yeah. I feel like at the root of it, it's like insecurity.
Craig Daly:
Like it's almost like you need those little deposits of people asking you questions so that you feel valued or, or you need to convey that, that you're good. But yeah, I think the most confident leaders are much more ones that just ask really good questions with the intent that it's, you know, it's empowering you to think on your own. Yeah. That's so cool.
Braydon Anderson:
Uh, so at some point you, you actually made a pretty big shift at Qualtrics from selling like their core, like survey tool, right. We'll call it to a different solution, a different offering. I'm really curious about how that transition took place. Like was that a hard transition? Because I think a lot of people can likely go through that in their career where they may need to make, make a big shift, even if it's selling a completely different solution. Like that's challenging. So I'm curious what that experience was like for you.
Craig Daly:
Yeah. Yeah. And I'm trying to recall back, like what was the catalyst for that? I think, I think at the time that side of the business was kind of at the, at the bottom of the hockey stick, where they had been crushing their numbers. I think we were trying to throw some gas on that fire. Um, I had been in my role as representing that product and that team probably for three years at that time. Um, so I would imagine, and this was probably a case where I was probably looking also for some kind of new new venture. So I ended up running with that team, that product, incredible culture, that a lot, lot going for them. Um, but yeah, the product was pretty similar to, to what we were doing. It's just more instead of externally focused with customers, uh, we primarily focused with like HR professionals for internal evaluations, with employees and assessments.
Craig Daly:
Um, and again with that, that kind of a constant draws of people that obviously spoke to me, like understanding the psychology of how people think, what motivates them, how you assess that, how you, again, how you empower people to do something bigger. I think all those things kind of fulfilled me professionally in terms of the product and representing that. So was it hard for you to try to solve a different problem or do you feel like it was similar enough that you could take your experience from what you'd been doing to this new solution? Yeah, I think I probably got my teeth kicked in a little bit for the first three months. Again, the leaders that were over there were really good about kind of breaking down some of the nuances, but they're there first year was a change. It wasn't, it wasn't just apples to apples.
Craig Daly:
Um, so, and that's to be expected. I think if you're doing any kind of meaningful change in any org, like there probably should be some learning curves where you're restarting a little bit, um, the talk, track, the value, how that, how they, how do people actually think so you can communicate properly? So it took a good three months for me to get transitioned. Any advice you'd give to someone that's in a similar situation, just listen. You know, my dad always said, you know, you have two years and one mouth listen twice as much as you speak. And here I am just blabbing there. I am sorry, dad. I love it. So, so Craig, you you've worked at Qualtrics for a long time. Um, you've actually been fortunate to work at, you know, Qualtrics is arguably one of the most successful companies in Utah, um, at least in the last decade.
Craig Daly:
Right. Uh, right. So since switched to a very, another very successful company in Utah, Podium, um, how big was putting when you joined and kind of tell me about that evolution and, and kind of what you're doing there. Yeah. Yeah. After about six years at Qualtrics ended up joining with Podium, they were about 120 employees at the time. Um, you know, really interested in trying to have some more rigor and uh, you know, around process and kind of scaling the team, uh, had incredible success with their team up to that point. Again, similar to Qualtrics, I think they just had like a really good vibe with their team. Uh, they seemed unstoppable, they're having a lot of fun doing it and they were really looking for some muscle on standing up like the strategic sales side and that, that kind of vision of how do we go upstream.
Craig Daly:
Um, and yeah, so, um, I knew Eric and Dennis, uh, the founders through, uh, their, their wives ironically were recruiters at Qualtrics that I worked with a ton for all the interviewing and sourcing of candidates. So I kind of already known them from a distance, um, and kept some tabs on, on Podium just through that small ecosystem and Utah tech. Um, and, but yeah, I was super intrigued ironically with what Podium actually is today. So I, um, I was sold on the vision of like this whole interaction solution, you know, making more frictionless, um, communication between a customer and the actual business entity. I think that that appealed to me because of all the, all the consumer experience background from Qualtrics, every single enterprise was just looking distinguish themselves. What is our unique differentiation farmers versus state farm? Apparently it gives the same products. Like how do you guys stand out from a unique differentiation standpoint?
Craig Daly:
I think when Eric pitched that vision of like, Hey, we can actually bring to life like a very proactive change in that customer experience. I think it just triggered it where I'm like every, every executives looking for something like this. Um, but they, yeah, for the most part had this incredible reviews product still to this day, it's a phenomenal, uh, incredibly lucrative product, not only for the company, but for those actually using it. And, uh, so it's been cool to watch in the last three years I've been there. Uh, just, just this thing take off it's nuts. And you're leading a team there, correct? Oh yeah. Yeah. Most recently I was leading our, just our entire health care practice. I still am doing that to an extent, but now I'm way more hyper focused just on our enterprise, go to market
Braydon Anderson:
Coming up, Craig shares how he's applied his experience from Qualtrics to Podium. At first, it seems from an upcoming interview
Jake Thompson:
first, like probably five months. I was still a student. Um, I remember actually stepping out of classes to take sales calls. There's this one specific bench outside the econ building at BYU that I remember stepping out of my class. Cause I saw a call coming in from the president of this bank and going to sit on this bench and take a call for 15, 20 minutes to hash out pricing. If you went and told these conservative banks in Iowa and Nebraska and whatever, that I, that they were being sold software by a student that was like 21 or whatever at the time, uh, I don't know how they'd feel about it.
Braydon Anderson:
So I'm curious. Um, how have you been able to apply your experience from Qualtrics to Podium?
Craig Daly:
Hmm, man, there's not a day that goes by that I don't, to some extent. Um, again, I kind of alluded to Qualtrics, not having a lot of the resources outside of a computer and some guidance and just a ton of mojo. Um, I think as I look at Podium in general, as I look at a market, as I look at the story, we need to tell, um, even literally like the products that we're choosing to develop, um, I think it's, my brain is trained still not same way of like, how do we mitigate risk and capitalize on market opportunities? I think poet or Qualtrics kind of forced you to think and understand almost be a CEO or be a founder, like we'd say. Um, so I definitely brought that same kind of mentality into Podium. Um, but it is literally helped everything from the interview, the type of candidates we bring in, how we assess the candidates, how we lead, uh, how we set up territories.
Craig Daly:
I mean, we had horrendous issues at Qualtrics with account management. I mean, it was, it was the dark ages for a few years back there. Um, and so how do we not make those missteps again? Um, and I, I think something fascinating I've learned just with Podium, which you would expect just given the maturity of Utah tech is people had different iterations now you've, you've seen incredible things that certain startups you've seen the negatives also at others. Um, I think Podium and other, other tech companies now have these, these people that have they're on their second or third tech run. And I think I've been able to apply obviously all my experience, but having all those, those cohorts and peers around me that are kind of bringing their collective experience of the good, bad and ugly just makes you hockey stick in terms of performance. So it's cool to be cool, to be a part of a, uh, even, you know, faster growing startup now that's so cool. Yeah. Well, Craig, this has been awesome. Um, really have appreciated your story and your insights. So I guess the final question that I love to ask everyone is what piece of advice would you give to someone that's currently in the earlier sort of startup? Hmm.
Craig Daly:
Uh, I would say you've made the right choice to be in the early years of a startup, uh, cause it will kick your butt. It will crush you and if it's not crushing you, you're not probably giving it. No, you're all. Um, I think tech in general is super hard. It's fast paced, uh, there's high expectations. Uh, you're typically working with people that are pretty bright and you constantly feel pressure to perform and like be in the front of that wave and be the obvious choice for, you know, additional opportunities if that company's growing. So I think the biggest thing I would say is, uh, learning to be comfortable with being uncomfortable, uh, kind of like that military phrase, like embracing the sock. Hmm. Um, I look back at the, the low compensation at the time. Um, I look at, uh, not having the resources needed to succeed.
Craig Daly:
It trained me to just figure it out and then just take complete ownership. Like any, any one of us can just make an excuse for why they're not performing or why they should give up. Um, but I think once you figure out kind of who you are and who you aren't life becomes a lot easier and your ability to, to really do something meaningful because you're controlling kind of the fate is, is huge. So in summary, I would say you're supposed to be uncomfortable and embracing the sock and really taking extreme ownership of, of what you can control. And then just making sure you are maximizing your output, like leave it all on the freaking field techs hard, but it pays huge dividends if you really apply yourself and like do not hold back. So, um, I've had many times that I've, I feel very blessed and fortunate to have made the deposits in my career and in the people around me to be where I am today, not to say that I've been have arrived by any means, but I also have times of like regret where had I applied myself in that stretch for six months.
Craig Daly:
Maybe I'd be further, maybe I'd be here. So I think the, the, the idea would be don't live with that regret. Like how do I, how do I make sure I'm leaving it all here? And you know, just, just embracing the uncomfortable stage that is early on in tech.
Braydon Anderson:
That's Craig Daly, the guy that has been instrumental in driving the sales at some of the Utah's most successful companies. Thanks for listening to today's show subscribe wherever you get your podcasts fill. If you know someone that you think we should interview, email me at braydonta@gmail.com . I'm Braydon Anderson, and this is the early years.