Mike Birdsall: 10:15
We literally designed the first website we ever did with no internet connection.
John Corcoran: 10:21
Wow. Did you design it in HTML? How did you design it?
Mike Birdsall: 10:25
HTML one. Wow, an HTML one.
John Corcoran: 10:28
Wow. So this is super, super early days.
Mike Birdsall: 10:30
Super super early days. We had a 28 eight modem. And then we got a big leap up to an ISDN line. And you know, we’re feeling like we were. We were hot stuff. But yeah.
John Corcoran: 10:41
And you start so you start designing and then after that you start selling websites. And so you’re, you’re. And by the way, I think we skipped over something here because this is after you left the printing company and you started your own. Yeah. Okay. Tell us why you left the printing company.
Mike Birdsall: 10:58
I left the printing company for a couple of days. Well, one, they. The real reason is that they messed with my comp plan. I was their number one sales guy doing 30% of their revenue. And they decided that the commission checks that they were writing for me were too high. And I kept telling them, I only get 8%, you get the other 92. So I’m not really sure why you’re angry with me. I’m making a lot of money and you’re making a lot of money. Once they started messing with my comp plan, I’m like, I want to have more control. I want to control my destiny. So then that sort of was the impetus of, yeah, you know, going there.
John Corcoran: 11:36
And so your wife was basically like the production? You were the sales when you started?
Mike Birdsall: 11:41
Yeah, she was the design and creative and I was the sales and operations side of things.
John Corcoran: 11:46
Okay.
Mike Birdsall: 11:46
Super clear lines of division.
John Corcoran: 11:49
Yeah. Okay. So we got that. So Burdsal Designs was the initial name of the company. And you’re selling websites. Once you figured out what a website was, you started to turn around and start selling them. Any other interesting Silicon Valley companies in that era that you worked with?
Mike Birdsall: 12:06
Oh, I mean, we were, you know, Sony, Adobe, HP, you know, we had done work for British Airways. We had some really, really great customers. And just being around Kleiner Perkins, you know, they were the number one private.
John Corcoran: 12:21
Firm.
Mike Birdsall: 12:22
VC firm that was investing in and all these companies. So it was just, you know, it was a fun time. You know, people were coming to us, grad students from Stanford coming to us with an idea on a website. And, you know, we were just seeing all sorts of stuff. So, yeah.
John Corcoran: 12:35
Any other memorable ones there or any other, you know, famous iconic entrepreneurs that you.
Mike Birdsall: 12:41
We did E-Trade, the first website there, Kleiner Perkins First Web.
John Corcoran: 12:44
That’s crazy because you think about like billions and billions, trillions of dollars probably goes through that website. Yeah, yeah.
Mike Birdsall: 12:50
Yeah, it’s. But, you know, we decided we weren’t going to take equity on stuff we didn’t want. You know, we were offered board seats. We were offered all sorts of stuff in lieu of cash.
John Corcoran: 12:59
Do you regret that?
Mike Birdsall: 13:00
No, not at all. Why? Well, our business was designing websites. My business wasn’t selling stock. Yeah, I had no control over how well ETrade did or how well, any of these others.
John Corcoran: 13:10
I mean, you probably have 30,000 shares in Pets.com right now if you’d if you’d made the decision, I guess.
Mike Birdsall: 13:15
Right. And so we’d be we’d be, in my opinion, we’d be out of business. You know cash is king. So, you know, we would take some pieces in equity if we were allowed. But no, we always wanted our. Yeah. Money up front.
John Corcoran: 13:27
Now you also developed an app called Fan Connects, which you sold to the San Francisco Giants and the A’s Other professional sports teams. What was that? That was. This is the early days of the apps, right?
Mike Birdsall: 13:38
This was the early days. It was 2004. The Giants had San Francisco.
John Corcoran: 13:44
That’s actually really before apps because apps didn’t come on really until after the iPhone, which is 2007.
Mike Birdsall: 13:51
Yeah. So we were building which was the hard part to sell because everybody was like the Wi-Fi network. Why do I need a Wi-Fi network? But the Giants were AT&T Park at that point. And so AT&T put in a Wi-Fi network. And so they were trying to figure out what we can do with that and how to build it. So my idea was to enhance the fan experience when they were in the venue and only allow them to get certain content if they were in their seats. So we were doing instant replay. There was food that you could do.
John Corcoran: 14:22
There was this pre iPhone then or it was an iPhone. Yeah, it was okay.
Mike Birdsall: 14:26
You’re talking about your Treo or you’re talking about some of the palm Pilots. Some of them.
John Corcoran: 14:30
Those. Yeah. Yeah. Whatever they made back then. that.
Mike Birdsall: 14:32
Now, obviously when the iPhone came out, it just blew that up. And it was great.
John Corcoran: 14:37
Yeah. Do you recall was there a moment kind of like when you saw that first website at Silicon Graphics? Was there a moment when you saw the iPhone came out where you were like, oh my God, this is going to explode?
Mike Birdsall: 14:47
Yeah, a couple. I mean, the wow moment of Silicon Graphics was, I need to be part of this. The wow moment of the Giants was like, okay, now we’ve removed one of the roadblocks in this application. It was great. Unfortunately, the Wi-Fi networks weren’t up to speed at that point. You know, we’ve come a long way.
John Corcoran: 15:07
Yeah. Sluggish back then. Yeah.
Mike Birdsall: 15:09
Really brutal. And how many people were on each Wi-Fi you know, device and all that access point, all that kind of stuff.
John Corcoran: 15:15
So I mean seeing replay seconds, you know, in 2004 or 5, seeing a replay on your phone, like, I’m sure it was not very quick or very high resolution.
Mike Birdsall: 15:25
Yeah. It was fun though. It was kind of a novel. And yeah, you know, I’ve been to 210 opening days for the San Francisco Giants. And I’ve only seen two games.
John Corcoran: 15:35
Because you’re behind the scenes.
Mike Birdsall: 15:36
I’m behind the scenes somewhere.
John Corcoran: 15:39
Yeah, that’s not fun. And so. But that app didn’t exactly end too well, unfortunately. Tell us the story.
Mike Birdsall: 15:47
No. For good or bad, the Giants went to the World Series in 2010. My app was running because Major League Baseball owns the World Series, not the local teams. And so when they came in and sort of planted their, you know, their stuff and started working, they saw what was going on. They saw the people on devices using my app, and they decided that that was something that they should be doing. I remember they called me and asked me to spell the last name and you know, the company name, and then I got a cease and desist about a week later.
John Corcoran: 16:20
Oh, jeez. Oh, jeez.
Mike Birdsall: 16:22
Yeah. I was trying to be friendly and say, hey, let me help you and let’s work together and all that kind of stuff. But at that point, You know, they were they they were going to do it themselves.
John Corcoran: 16:31
So that’s too bad because, you know, sometimes these stories end with, oh, we’ll just acquire you, we’ll buy your technology, we’ll, we’ll turn it into our own. But instead they’re just like, well, we’re just going to throw our weight around here.
Mike Birdsall: 16:44
And they could, you know, have the teams and they had the funds and the revenue. And so yeah, I mean, I still have great friends in sports all all over.
John Corcoran: 16:52
So yeah, yeah, we glossed over this. But you’re running Birdsall Designs or Birdsall Interactive in around the time of when nine over 11 happened in 2001. And that had a big impact on your business. Talk a little bit about that.
Mike Birdsall: 17:10
Yeah.
John Corcoran: 17:11
We that and the.com meltdown.
Mike Birdsall: 17:13
Yeah. It kind of came hand in hand in our opinion. Yeah. We were at 25 people I don’t know, maybe four 4 million in revenue doing great. 911 happened. All business dried up for us I mean I think zero business, you know. Everything dried up for us. We had no debt. We had cash in the bank. We had a full business line available to us. And, you know, in my opinion, made the fatal mistake of saying it won’t last that long. And we love all of our people, so we’re just going to hang on. And so, you know, I think at the end of six months we were out of cash. We were in debt. And we started layoffs at that point. Way too late. So I’m a firm believer and quick and hard. And so at the end of that we laid off all but six. And then we came in and said, hey you six. We can only pay you 50% of what we’re paying you now. And here’s the numbers. We were super transparent. Here are the numbers. You know, they knew they weren’t working on any project. And then a month later, we came back and said, we need to cut your salary. Another 50%. that? Oh, and no one left. Now, would they have gone somewhere else, or could have? I don’t know, but nobody left.
John Corcoran: 18:31
Probably no one’s hiring at that point.
Mike Birdsall: 18:33
Right. But we’re still all friends. There’s, you know, we still are in contact with, you know, those six, even 20 years later. So.
John Corcoran: 18:41
And did things slowly start to turn around after that?
Mike Birdsall: 18:46
They did. They turned around. But we were, you know, we were in debt. We felt kind of burned. We felt like we already built it. We already did it. We were already successful with it. My wife on the creative side was like, you know, I’ve done this. I’ve seen 2000 websites, I’ve seen websites. You know, this isn’t fun anymore.
John Corcoran: 19:05
Yeah. It’s hard to get inspired when that changes, when dramatically.
Mike Birdsall: 19:09
Inspired by that. So, you know, she started to wane and say, I just, you know, we need to do something else. We need to do something else. I was still having success going out and selling. People that wanted it. But the average price of a website dropped substantially. You know, introduction to WordPress and all those types of tools, Wix and all those types of tools really brought down the pricing of websites because people could do more of it.
John Corcoran: 19:36
Right, right. Yeah. There’s kind of a technology curve with that sort of thing. And you actually had a pivotal dinner with a group of your old forum. You had dinner at one of the member’s houses, which really helped you to think about what you wanted to do next. Tell us about that.
Mike Birdsall: 19:52
Well, we had been struggling, Maureen and I, about okay, what are we going to do? What are we going to do next? She is an ideal person, so she’d come up with a whole bunch of ideas. I’m the no person because I would look at it and go, that’s not a good idea. No we can’t. There’s no way we can make money at that. So we had a couple of different ideas. My old forum got together, the guys that were all together back in. I joined EO at seven. And so we got together at Gabe’s house in San Francisco. We went around and said, give me an update. What are you doing? How are things going? Everybody was super positive till it got to me.
And I’m like, yeah, we’re still struggling. We’re still trying to figure out what we want to do. We’re not happy with doing websites anymore. We know we need to pivot and, you know, same old, same old. And I had carpooled with one of the guys, Darren, and we got in the car and Darren like, it’s like, dude, you say the same thing every time you give an update. Just pick something. Doesn’t matter if it’s wrong, just pick something, do something different. So at that point, I went home and said, okay, let’s just here’s the five ideas we have on the table. Let’s just start running with this one.
John Corcoran: 21:05
And so you and actually this was a different model because you were kind of doing B2B sales before. And Date Box Club ultimately was more of a D2C play. Right. So was that.
Mike Birdsall: 21:15
Direct to consumer D2C?
John Corcoran: 21:16
Kind of a bit of a pivot for you?
Mike Birdsall: 21:18
Yeah, we felt like we knew how to build websites. And so, hey, we can build websites. Why don’t we build one for us? And why don’t we get something that’s recurring so we don’t have to constantly hunt? Yeah, that was the logic. I think that logic ended up proving to be not right or incorrect.
John Corcoran: 21:37
Because there’s still attrition.
Mike Birdsall: 21:38
There’s still attrition. It’s a whole different way of selling. The consumer is way different than a business customer. But we decided, okay, let’s do it. Let’s make a subscription box. And what could we make? And we picked a date night for couples.
John Corcoran: 21:57
And how was the first few years of getting that off the ground?
Mike Birdsall: 22:02
So we were still doing some websites and kind of straddling the fence, some websites and, and then trying to build, you know, we had two orders the first month, thanks to my sister in law and a good friend of mine. and then we had 100% renewal rate because they also got a box the next month. And then we sort of, you know, milestones of 102 hundred and 500. But it was slow. And difficult. And we were coming up with new dates, date nights every month. So that was difficult. How we were going to buy that was difficult.
John Corcoran: 22:39
And I guess if you have a customer who stays for years and years, then you gotta keep on coming up with new themes and ideas, right?
Mike Birdsall: 22:48
Yeah, we had decided at that point we were going to come up with new themes and ideas every month, so they were really month based. So February, Valentine’s, March, spring, April, Easter, May, Mother’s Day, you know, we were sort of planning that out. We got to a point as we grew and realized that that was very difficult to sustain. Because we had a lot of extra product, or we didn’t have enough product because we had not gotten the, you know, estimates right on what we thought we were going to sell.
John Corcoran: 23:16
And then you’re stuck with a bunch of Easter eggs and you’re like, crap, we can’t send these in May.
Mike Birdsall: 23:20
Yeah, and I can’t send them next year because people are around. They got them last year. So yeah, I’ve got to wait two years.
John Corcoran: 23:26
Yeah, yeah. So eventually did you move to a model of, like, every new person would get the month one box, then the month two box. Okay. Yeah.
Mike Birdsall: 23:34
Yeah. We finally went to that. That was a great decision. But that was probably the decision that really pivoted our company in a whole different direction, really very heavily.
John Corcoran: 23:45
So how so?
Mike Birdsall: 23:46
Well, Maureen is creative. Maureen loves to do, you know, build websites and create things. And so she was creating all the books and all the games and all the crafts and all that kind of stuff, and coming up with what the date night was when you set down. When we went to box one through 12, there was no need to be creative. It was really just a reorder point. Yeah. And so she was like, well, what am I doing now? Yeah. Now. So yeah.
John Corcoran: 24:10
She got more bored again. Yeah yeah Yeah. And tell me about it. Not after 2020 after Covid hit. How did that affect the business?
Mike Birdsall: 24:20
Covid was great. We’re doing okay at 19. We’re like, okay, this is starting to pick up and we can stop doing websites. So we stopped our last website in 2019. Covid hit really picked up. 2021 was just going nuts. We were having fun at our house every month. I think our high watermark was 5000 boxes a month. We did that all out of our house.
John Corcoran: 24:43
That’s crazy.
Mike Birdsall: 24:44
My living room was full. My dining room was full. My driveway was full. We had a pallet mover that I was moving pallets around in the driveway.
John Corcoran: 24:52
Our neighbors like reporting you. I mean.
Mike Birdsall: 24:54
We would go drop candy and we would do all sorts of stuff to kind of, kind of keep track. But it was tough. We were doing 20,000 steps a day around tables in my house and multiple days, and we would have crews come in, you know, people we found next door that would come in and, you know, get to know.
John Corcoran: 25:11
And during Covid, like people wearing masks to do the stuff.
Mike Birdsall: 25:14
You’re trying to go outside. Oh yeah, it was a lot of logistics.
John Corcoran: 25:19
Yeah. Now, I’ve interviewed a lot of companies that have a big growth spurt like this, and then they overcommit. They lock themselves into big real estate or something like that, or hire too much or something like that. You’d been through other boom and bust cycles before. So how did you react to that? And looking back on it now, were there any overcommitments.
Mike Birdsall: 25:42
Oh, that’s a funny question. You know, I think hope plus ego equals entrepreneurs. Yeah. We thought that this was what we were finally doing. We thought that we were finally, you know, on the rise at 5000 boxes a month. That, you know, 40 bucks a box is a pretty good number monthly. And so we were cranking, you know, supply chain was an issue there too. So there was a product that we had ordered from China that sat at the Port of Long Beach for a year. And so it made it really hard to try to plan what we were going to ship out. And, you know, it really affected the cash flow. So yeah, we definitely over ordered. We definitely overbought based on supply chain issues. Ultimately that made kind of our downfall because it was just the cash flow was just really difficult. We had debt to service, credit cards to service based on all the products that we bought. And so it made it really hard. So yeah, I still have a lot of different products in the warehouse still.
John Corcoran: 26:41
Really? Wow. And so you get to the point where, you know, as we teased at the beginning of this episode, you have to make this decision about what we do, where do we go going forward? Do we sell? Do we close up shop? Tell me through that decision making matrix for you.
Mike Birdsall: 26:59
Yeah, I think, you know, it’s for me. It’s like. Well, have I given 100%. Can I do more? So no, I haven’t given 100%. Let me try to do more. Let me try to learn E-marketing. Let me try to figure out, you know, ads. Let me try to figure out Instagram. Let me try to do that. Yeah. Maureen had gotten to a point where she’s like, well, you don’t really need me. And the revenue is going down in the business, so I’m going to go do my own thing. So she left and got a job. So here I am running a relationship business by myself. We had also not only ordered a whole bunch of products, we brought them to a fulfillment center. And so there were tons of costs with that fulfillment center. So I was able to bring that back.
John Corcoran: 27:44
Was that on the East Coast? If I remember.
Mike Birdsall: 27:46
It was in Cincinnati.
John Corcoran: 27:48
Cincinnati. So you had this fulfillment center that’s three quarters of the way across the country, far from you. Right?
Mike Birdsall: 27:54
You know, it seemed like a great idea when we were scaling and moving and, you know, had the cash. But when the numbers started to drop, there were too many fixed costs that began to really pinch the cash flow. So yeah. So I think the whole concept was like, you know, I realized at some point that I didn’t have the skill sets to be able to do the direct consumer. Ultimately, a subscription box is an acquisition business. People are really going to stay on for three months or six months. Some will stay on for 12, maybe longer, but not many. It’s really a pure acquisition, and I realized I couldn’t learn and did not have the skill set in order to, you know, get all that going on.
So it was a hard decision to shut it down. What do we do? You know, can we tighten it up? Can I outlast it? And so. With EO you’re in a forum I was in, with ten other people, and I brought that to the forum group and said, you know, transparently, here’s my QuickBooks file. I’ll, you know. What am I doing wrong? What am I doing right? Do I even have a business? Can you really dig into my numbers and tell me what’s going on? And the time that, you know Dave Richmond and Sean Barr and the other people in there helped me really understand my numbers? You know, you’ve heard the moniker. Hey, you need to understand your numbers. You need to know your numbers. I thought I did until I didn’t, and then I’m like, okay, I really need to know. Here’s the cash flow, here’s why you’re not making money. And the only way to correct that was to either shut it down or see if I could sell it. And it was harsh. But then once I made the decision, I understood and made the decision. It was fine.
John Corcoran: 29:46
And as a guy who has a lot of experience with business development and sales, was it hard to sell your own business?
Mike Birdsall: 29:53
No. You know, in retrospect, it was, you know, the hardest part was to come to the decision to sell it. To me, that was the hardest part. You know, it’s.
John Corcoran: 30:01
Because.
Mike Birdsall: 30:02
Ego is, I can do it. I can work harder.
John Corcoran: 30:05
I can get through this.
Mike Birdsall: 30:06
I can get through this. You know, I’ve had four other three other businesses. I’ve done it before. And so I got to the point where I’m like, well, my first of all, you don’t really have the skill set to do this. Second of all this, you’re good at direct sales. I’m good at picking up the phone. I’m good at networking. I’m good at hunting. I’m a hunter. I’m a sales hunter. Yeah, and this business did not use my skill set. It did not use my superpower.
John Corcoran: 30:32
Yeah.
Mike Birdsall: 30:32
I’m like, well, it’s the wrong business for me. It’s not going to ever make me happy. Yeah. All I’m doing it for is the revenue. And that’s not there.
John Corcoran: 30:39
Right.
Mike Birdsall: 30:40
So let’s. It’s time to move.
John Corcoran: 30:41
So to me, it must be even more hard by the fact that a couple of years earlier, it was doing much bigger numbers. So. So you’re like, counting what you could sell it for at that point. And to think, you know, oh, man, I wish I’d sold it a couple of years earlier.
Mike Birdsall: 30:56
Yeah. Well, you know, a couple of years earlier, I wasn’t on the table because we’re like, no, no, this is going great. Look.
John Corcoran: 31:02
Yeah. No one wants to sell. Then look at us. No. Of course.
Mike Birdsall: 31:05
So once we made the decision to go, yeah, we’re going to sell it then. Then the rest of it actually went pretty easy. We listed it on a marketplace. We had a couple of different people interested. Went down the path of doing that. And it officially sold in October.
John Corcoran: 31:20
So I got it. And talk to me about how you are doing business development for Doxa Talent. Talk about those relationships, how you developed those because I know they came through. Your EO connections and then also what red cloud is.
Mike Birdsall: 31:34
Yeah, the red cloud was a friend of mine. Audio. Guy as well needed some help with Biz Dev. I was trying to supplement revenue because revenue was down at date. Box. And so he gave me a chance to try to sell a new product for him. So that was great. Once I connected with Doxa, that had to end because now I’m full time with Doxa. Doxa is an off shore near Shore talent solution company, right?
John Corcoran: 32:03
In a sense, you’re going back to your roots because that was what you were doing when you were doing the marketing and everything, right?
Mike Birdsall: 32:10
Yeah, I’m going back. My first job was at an employment agency. Yeah, I went back to technically an employment agency, but yeah, started by two guys, two people that I just have adored for years.
John Corcoran: 32:22
David, Michael and David are both great guys. Yeah.
Mike Birdsall: 32:25
Excellent guys. And so if I was to work anywhere, I would definitely want to work for those two. When Maureen left Datebox, she became Doxa’s global marketing director. And I was jealous, like, hey, gosh, you know, you’re working for these two guys that are so awesome. Yeah, really great company. So now I’m at Doxa. Also, don’t lose the visual of now. Maureen and I are back working together. Yeah, because I’ve been married 37 years and we’ve been working together 34. Wow. 37. So it was hard when she left and we weren’t working together anymore. So now we’re back to working together at the same company. So it’s kind of serendipitous. Yeah, in that sense. But yeah, I’m having a great time. In my opinion, nothing’s easier to sell when you believe in doxa. I believe in their mission and their culture and what they’re doing for people. And I just, I think it’s a great business and I’m just having a great time selling it.
John Corcoran: 33:22
So, you know, you, you were with a staffing firm during two different downturns last year and in the early 90s. In one instance, it ended really poorly. Right. And now, by all you know, signs that what I can see as an outsider, companies like Doxa Talent are growing by leaps and bounds.
Mike Birdsall: 33:49
Right? Yeah.
John Corcoran: 33:50
How is it different now?
Mike Birdsall: 33:51
This is going to end up better. Well I think it’s better now because the Doxa are run by very smart people who are very focused on where they’re going, and they’ve got a plan and they’re executing on the plan. I just feel very honored to be part of it and be kind of attached to it and have the opportunity to be attached to it. So for me too, you know, it’s the same kind of feeling I got when I was selling web design. I’d go out and they’d go, well, how do you guarantee this is going to be great? And how do you guarantee this is going to get done on time? I’m like, well, because my wife’s doing it and I know that she’s going to get it done and I know how talented she is. It was an easy sell. Yeah. This is also an easy sell. You know, Dave and Michael are running the business, and I know it’s done right. And so it’s it’s. I’m not selling. I’m, you know, I’m, I’m informing. I’m consulting. I’m letting you know that there’s an opportunity out here. I’m letting you know that there’s a great company out here. You decide what you want to do with it, but, you know, it’s. You know, I’m back to my 100 calls a day, not quite 100 calls a day, but I’m ramping up to that, you know.
John Corcoran: 34:58
And, you know, I know every company’s kind of different in terms of its embrace or lack of embrace of global talent, if you will. And it’s been a big movement. A lot of companies have been embracing global talent. We certainly have with our company. We find amazing people regardless of where they were born in the world. Right. You know, it’s interesting because you were selling websites at a time when people didn’t understand the value of it, and now there are some companies that don’t understand the value of like, why would I not hire someone, you know, I want someone down the hallway from me. Why would I hire someone that’s on the other side of the globe, and how would I do that? And so where are companies in terms of their understanding of this, you know, resource or this way of doing business, especially compared to when you were selling websites?
Mike Birdsall: 35:45
Well, I think it’s different because of the pandemic. I think most people get remote work. And so remote work could be, you know, somebody in San Francisco or somebody in Manila, right? It doesn’t really necessarily matter where there is talent. Secondly, it’s more about explaining why docs are versus someone else and what docs are doing that’s different from other people. We’re a remote first company. We don’t believe in call centers and all that kind of stuff. We want people to stay where they’re at. And we also pay, you know, top dollar for people. So our retention rate is 88%. So we’re finding people that are learning and working singularly for you and doing a great job for you. And the cost savings is, is the talent in other parts of the world than it is in the US. So yeah, to me it’s a no brainer. It’s just, you know, it’s something that people should look at. So it’s easy to do. I would rather talk to people that you know are doing it a little bit. And let’s talk about how we can optimize it. Because they all. They already understand.
John Corcoran: 36:51
I get it. Yeah, yeah. Mike, this has been great. I want to wrap up with my last question, which is my gratitude question. I’m a big fan of practicing gratitude, and I’m also a big fan of giving my guests a little bit of space and opportunity to thank some people that have been with them on that journey. And you mentioned a few names along the way, David and Michael from Doxa Talent, of course, Dave Richmond and Sean Barr, both of whom I know are amazing entrepreneurs. Anyone else you would want to acknowledge or thank for helping you?
Mike Birdsall: 37:20
Yeah, I think that for me, when the stuff hits the fan, right, you, you kind of reach out to your network. And what I find is that 70% of your network goes, oh, bummer, right? 29% of your network goes, hey, you know, let me know how I can help you. And then there’s that 1% that goes, let me. Here’s what I’m going to do for you. Let me give you something. Let me help you out. So Red Cloud, Mike Givvin Red Cloud. Who allowed me to help him do that? My forum, who literally looked at my books at, you know, no judgment and decided to do that. TJ Van Voorhees has been there. But finding those gems, those 1% people to me, is like just eye opening and just the gift that we need to hold on to when we find them for sure.
John Corcoran: 38:13
Definitely. Mike, this has been great. Thank you for sharing your stories. And where can people go to learn more about you, connect with you, learn more about dogs and talent.
Mike Birdsall: 38:23
Me at LinkedIn. So easy to find on LinkedIn or doxatalent.com.
John Corcoran: 38:29
Excellent. Thanks so much.
Mike Birdsall: 38:30
Appreciate it.
Outro: 38:34
Thanks for listening to the Smart Business Revolution Podcast. We’ll see you again next time and be sure to click subscribe to get future episodes.