All right. Welcome back to another episode of Sales Transformation brought to you by Ledium. I'm your host, Collin Mitchell. And today we've got Kate O'Neil on the show. She's the CEO over at Teeming. Kate, welcome to the show. Welcome back to the show. What are some of the things that you saw that were challenging in Yeah, they'll edit and fix it. So kind
of shifting gears here a little bit. I'm just curious to know in your experience as a leader, what were some of the challenges that you had that gave Sorry, all I heard was for teaming. Oh, It seems like your internet is maybe struggling a bit because it's giving me like a little note. It looks normal to me. Okay. Now you can hear me? Okay. Of course it's working now. As soon as I ask the question, it's going to start struggling. Okay. Minute 13. All right. I'll make a note.
They'll fix it. Don't worry about it. So kind of shifting gears here a little bit. It felt like an appropriate time to talk about what a lot of people have seen on the internet. It was very much in line with the topics that we're talking about today. But what I'm really curious to find out is, what were some of the challenges you had as a leader that gave you the idea for Okay, yes. So you know, fast forward 15 years, and I got to I was promoted from director to
VP. And it was a really unique situation. So I had was recruited to this company by the head of marketing to run demand generation. And so I would be reporting to her. And then I you know, for lots of reasons that I won't get into here. She was asked to go run partnerships, basically to leave her role in marketing. And so I was promoted, and I, you know, it's
it was it was it was 200 people at its height. So you know, a decent amount of folks and the CEO would occasionally, you know, pop in and ask me a question or he's preparing for a board meeting and wants to know this thing or whatever, right? There's like little reasons for us to connect sometimes. And I didn't realize that was my little job interview of whether
or not this person can be the next head of marketing. And so when they sat me down to say, hey, here's what we're thinking, I tried to convince them that I wasn't ready for the job, which is a learning. Would not recommend doing that. Thankfully, they, you know, the CEO and the co founders of the company were like, I think you're ready. I think you're selling yourself short here. And not every leader is
going to do that. So that would be learning number one. Learning number two, I just didn't realize all the amount of change that was going to happen. So I was taking over someone else's role that was still going to be in the company. I was going to be managing my former peers. So that's a weird situation. I would be managing managers for the first time. And lucky me, they decided to roll rev ops into marketing at the same time. So So yeah, I got it was a team of 22 people. And,
and I it was like a weird structure, right? Because it wasn't just marketers, like the, the sales ops person still needs to serve sales. But now they're kind of reporting to me, right. So it was my first situation with a dotted line structure,
if you will. So so much change. And you really need to take stock of that, I would say, like, if I just sat down and thought about that for a minute, you know, you wouldn't necessarily feel so much like you're drinking from the fire hose, like, Oh, this is new, you know, try to try to anticipate the know those changes, and then anticipate what what they might feel like, or ask people like, Hey, this is the first time I'm doing this thing. You know, what's that
like? Um, So those are probably the changes and mistakes that led me to realizing that this is a massive job and there really aren't very many resources to help. So I was instructed to read management books, which Um, there are some great ones out there. But the problem with management books is you read them. And then on Monday morning, you're like, Okay, how should I apply this to my team? Yeah, right. And
that's really hard. And then, thankfully, it this job, I was given the opportunity to have actual management training. It cost, and I think this is relatively inexpensive, it cost $5,000 for the company to train me to be a manager. And when you think about it, I've been managing for 10 years before I got any training in it. Like, that's absurd. And, but it is so common. And it's ridiculous, really, when you think about it, that we don't do this $5,000 is
a lot of money. But to the amount of mistakes you can make that would cost the company way more than $5,000. There are many mistakes you can make as an untrained manager that would cost $5,000. For instance, if just one of your direct reports quits because they don't like you, or they can't get along with you, right, that costs more than $5,000. To me, it is a absolute no brainer to invest in that. But companies just can't stomach it because it's not just $5,000, right? It's $5,000 times
all of the managers in the company. And Still a pretty small price tag to people that you are entrusting to lead and manage your people, which are your most valuable asset as a company. Yeah. Supposed to be anyway. Um, and, uh, and so I really wanted to make that coaching more accessible, right. To, to make the, the cost of entry way Wow. And what are some like big wins or things that you can share that teaming has been able to help leaders Some big wins of teaming. Yeah. Is
that right? Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, big wins of teaming. One is, you know, you can take a disk assessment, which is kind of like, it measures your work style or your communication style at work. And one thing we learned about our co-founding team is we struggled to celebrate wins together. We learned that through teaming. So that's, Right like that it's a win getting that in there and learning about yourself right sort of eating our own dog food if you will so
that that's exciting it sounds ridiculous but. Staying alive through a global pandemic feels. uh, great. Um, you know, we didn't, we didn't, we didn't run out of money. We didn't, you know, go out of business. I do think that's an accomplishment. Um, I think, uh, you know, from a, from a customer perspective, I, um, the most meaningful wins to me is when we get a message or a post or something that says like, this was invaluable to me. I learned something about
how to lead better. And I got feedback from my team about how it's helpful to them. And it made me a better leader. And that is like, not only are you impacting the life of the manager, right in the career of the manager, but also of their team. So that is like, man, I just, that makes my day. So like, you know, over the moon, it's, it's pretty awesome. Um, so Awesome. Well, it's been awesome having you on the show again. Really appreciate it. Any final thoughts as we kind of wrap
Um, good question. Uh, final thoughts. Um, being a manager is really freaking hard. Um, don't, you know, the stress we have is a lot, and the value we get is very little, right, we don't get a lot back. And so and, by the way, burnout rates of managers are higher than they have ever been right now. So if you are feeling that way, one, ask for help. And two, You know not everyone needs to be a manager if you if this isn't for you. you know, it's okay to say, I'd
rather be an expert in something else. And that's, that's a really positive, awesome realization to come to. So that would be my final thought. Connect, please connect with me on LinkedIn. If you're, if you want to check out teaming, it's at teaming.com, the typical normal spelling of the word teaming. And, and Awesome, we'll drop all the links there in the show notes as well as the
link to the last episode that we had Kate on as well. If you enjoyed today's episode, please write us a review, share the show with your friends, help us reach more sellers and sales leaders to transform the