SPEAKER_01 0:18

And welcome to the Info Tech Podcast. I'm your host, Jimmy Huber, as always. The InfoTech Podcast, we explore the info the intersection of business and technology. I've got a wide array of guests on this platform, and today is definitely no exception. My guest today has been called the Godfather of CRM. He is the co-founder and creator of the ACT software, which I'm sure many of our audience will know. And he's taken the time to be on the InfoTech Podcast today. So his name is Mike Muni. Mike, welcome to the podcast.

SPEAKER_00 0:57

Jimmy, delight to be here. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 0:59

You bet, you bet. We were chatting before we started recording today. Mike has a vast background. We could probably split this into several different uh podcast episodes. But Mike, I want to give you um just the chance to kind of share a little bit about your story. Most people probably have heard of ACE. That's kind of the cornerstone. But you've got quite a journey that we were talking about through your career to get you to this point. So I just want to give you the floor to kind of tell us a little bit about that story and how ACT came about and kind of what brought all that together.

SPEAKER_00 1:32

Okay, I appreciate it. And I will kind of keep this uh pretty short because it is uh long and detailed. But uh I was born and raised in Chicago, poor family. Uh I went to um University of Illinois in Champaign, Urbana, and I started my career with IBM in the mainframe era as a classical uh IBM trained uh mainframe sales guy. The interesting thing about the sales school that we all had to go through for six months, and this is important in the eventual creation of ACT, was that they did not really teach us how to sell as much as they taught us principles on how to connect with people. Because you can't sell successfully if you don't connect with people successfully, right? And they knew that. And so the training was very focused on people connection. I say that to say that what I didn't know at the time was they deposited in me that DNA that uh when I and I had a great career with IBM, uh, but but I left IBM uh to start a company with my best friend Pat Sullivan, who was also a sales guy and in the high-tech industry uh at that time selling uh PC computers at a computer store, which we one time, a long time ago had to go to to buy. And uh we created a company based on a product that we created for salespeople inside of the computer store. All it did is it basically configured the equipment and the software uh and the accessories that you wanted to buy. You could back salve a margin, line item a discount, but I could I could give you a printed out quote of what you said you wanted to buy. And you would go and compare that to my competitor, who would probably just give you a price, but no document. And what we enabled the salesperson to do was to look more professional, i.e., to make that connection professionally, right? And bring that person back to them. Uh we raised $100,000 from an angel out of Boston. We're headquartered in Dallas, Fort Worth. Uh, I still live in Fort Worth. And uh $85,000 later, Pat and I literally said to each other, This dog ain't gonna hunt. It's over. We failed. And the angel was coming down from Boston in about, I don't know, four to six weeks, and he thought everything was fine. One of the other principles that IBM taught me that's important here to the creation of app is that IBM taught us to always call at the top, the CEO. The bigger the company, the more likelihood you might get delegated down. But the point is start at the top, and if you do get delegated down, that person in that company will know that their boss wants them to talk to you.

SPEAKER_01 4:24

Oh, that's really good. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:26

Okay. So that was my DNA. So one of the computer stores here in uh uh was headquartered in Dallas called Coffee Shop, 54 stores. That would have been a decent sale for our product that was called Margin Maker. Um so uh the I did get him to see the CEO. I earned my way into him. He was interested in the product. He did ask me to talk to purchasing, but he also said, keep me posted. That was the open door. Well, the the week that Pat and I said this dog ain't gonna hunt, we we have failed. And the only option we thought we'd get we had left to us was to give the $15,000 remaining back to the angel investor. Um, but that week was a the annual publication of an industry newspaper called Computer Reseller News. Uh, for the older people listening to this, we once had to go to stores like Business Land, Computer Land, Micro H entre to Bytes uh PC stuff and get training and all that. Well, it so happened that the annual edition of the 25 most influential people in the entire PC industry was the CEO of Coffee Shop. And here I knew the guy. So I called him up and I said his name was John Fertell. I was calling him John at this point. John, we're in trouble. We have failed. Uh, we're no longer gonna be able to stay in business. Uh, the angel's coming down. Can we come and talk to you and see if you can give us any advice? He said, Come on. Uh, he sat and listened to our story, and this is what he said. Very simple, but extremely profound. He said, Look, you two guys are smart guys. Next week is July 4th, which is about ready to happen, right in a few days. Yep, yep. 1986. Why don't you go to a restaurant booth from eight o'clock in the morning until noon and brainstorm and see if you can come up with another idea before you throw in the towel? Well, we could still afford coffee and toast. So on July 4th, 1986, Pat and I were in a booth, paper and pencil, and we said, we're sitting here no matter what till noon. We said, what we have a blank sheet of paper, and we began with this thought. What do we need ourselves? What do we wish existed that we could use ourselves that doesn't exist? And it was that question, along with giving each other some guide guardrails, if you will, on how to contain this and not go crazy. Um, and and we began a discussion. And we were looking at our day timer, a paper system back then that most people used, right? And we looked at it and we said, you know, the interesting thing about the day timer is there it's all about scheduled activities. You know, uh what you have scheduled for today, next week, next month, uh, and maybe even what about. But all of those activities, first of all, are not connected. They're spread over all those days, weeks, and months, and years, right? But all of them point to a person that they're for or with. Why don't we focus on the relationship rather than the activity? So all we did, if you think of it, Jim, if you think of a coin, all we did was flip the coin to the other side and said, let's look at that side, the personal side, the relationship side, and not the activity side. And with that, yeah, with that, we started designing the um uh menu system, and I still have the original Naphton. And when we left that, we knew we were on to something. Long story short, in preparation for the uh angel to come down, we wanted to completely architect this product that I codenamed Yes, coming from IBM, Akron and Rich Company. And yes stood for yes. Everybody sells. I don't care if you're a doctor, lawyer, engineer, accountant, pastor, everybody sells because everybody has competition, right? Okay. So we were ready when the angel came down. We picked him up at the airport, took him to lunch, and after lunch, we his name was John McNair. John McN John Partell was the CEO that said, have this breakfast. John uh, we were sitting with John McNair, told him why Margin Maker failed. What we had said was we have bad news and we have good news. He said, What's the bad news? Margin Maker failed. We told him why, we answered his questions. Thankfully, he was a patient guy, and he said, Okay, so what's the good news? Well, we have this idea, and we told him the idea, and this is what he said. We had no idea this was gonna happen because this was do or die. He could put a thumbs down uh and say, Yes, give me the $15,000 that you guys have left of my money and good luck, you know, whatever. So when we were done, he said, Look, I didn't invest in margin maker, I invested in the two of you guys, and I like this idea better. Do you need any more money? It's like, oh, we didn't expect that. And we said yes, and he said, How much? And because we had asked for $100,000 before and basically wasted it, uh, we didn't have the guts to say $100,000 again. So both Pat and I simultaneously said $50,000. He immediately opened up his sport coat, pulled out his checkbook, and right there at the restaurant lunch table wrote us a $50,000 check. It's like, oh my gosh. Well, he went back home the next day. I called up John Pertell, the guy that said have the breakfast, and said, John, we got to come and talk to you. You're not gonna believe it. So we went and talked to John. We took your advice, we had the breakfast, we came up with an idea, we architected it. The angel loved it so much, John. He put in another 50,000. And here's what John Pertell said. I'd like that idea too. As a matter of fact, there's two of my friends that might like to look at this. Why don't you come to my house later in the week in the evening, do your pitch, and we'll see what happens. Pat and I went to his house that week with the other two guys. We did our pitch and we left that house that night with $400,000 in cash. And nine months later, a product by the name of Act was on the market in the shelves. I mean, we went from getting ready to shut down a business with our former idea that we thought was big but failed. The market didn't accept it good enough, right? Uh, to now having a life. And by the way, with ATT, at that time in the PC industry, there was no category for a product like ACT. So not only did we have to invent ACT, we had to invent this category, and that category was known and today still is known as contact management. What's contact management? Software design for people who deal with people. Do you deal with people? Yes. Well, it's for you because you need to remember everything you can about people to distinguish yourself from competition. So that's the that's the high level of the act story.

SPEAKER_01 11:38

Wow, that's fantastic. I could, boy, there's a lot to delve in there, but let me just try to grasp a few pieces of what you just said there. Um I think it's important for people to realize that a lot of times you only see people's successes and what people are known for. You don't see the failures and the road that that came about. And I think a lot of times, you know, our school system's really good about um punishing failure, right? Like if you get something wrong on a test, that's wrong. No, you're just you're just learning, right? So failure is a natural part, I think, of most people's success. Um, and and you're you're not immune to that. So what what would you tell people that maybe are in one of those failures and don't know where to turn next? Because you guys were even, I sense a little bit um you weren't as confident in yourself as some of these investors and other mentors of yours, right? So it's correct. Say to somebody that's in that spot, whether they've got somebody that they're talking to or not, to kind of move them forward if they're inside of what they consider to be a failure.

SPEAKER_00 12:38

Well, I mean, that's a good question. Uh, and you know, there's probably infinite answers and angles to that per uh uh question, and from a perspective standpoint, from my own experience to me, I would say that uh number one, looking back, I think we had a an unaware sense of naivety. We didn't know what we didn't know, and we didn't know some things to be afraid of, on one hand. On the other hand, though, when you become an entrepreneur, and in today's world, there's a whole lot more entrepreneurs than there were back then, even, right?

SPEAKER_01 13:14

Yeah, oh yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:14

Um you have to accept the fact that it is a highly risky endeavor and highly likely, not only likely, but probably will fail. I don't say that in any negative way, other than statistics prove that you know, the number of businesses that survive one year, I I forget the last statistic I read, you know, is whatever, 50, 60 percent. But after five years is below 10%.

SPEAKER_01 13:42

Oh, yeah, it drops like a rock. Sure.

SPEAKER_00 13:44

It drops like a rock. Okay, so uh, do you have the courage to persevere? That's though what does make you the entrepreneur is that you did have the courage to persevere. Uh, that's number one. You have to have the a sense of awareness at the risk, but the courage to persevere. The second thing is I think that you need to understand right from the get-go that you cannot achieve success without its corresponding uh component called failure. They go together, they are inseparable. I know of no entrepreneur successful, and obviously I've known a lot, uh, and still know more today that happened. But all of their successors also had failures. They all had to change, you know, the perspective, the pivot, whatever it is they had to do, uh, the business model, it doesn't matter. They had to uh uh uh take accountability for this didn't work and I need to change, or I throw in the towel, and they weren't willing to throw in the towel. Uh and so that that's basically my advice. You know, there's uh I don't know how many people might be familiar with um the Wolinsky family. They're the they're the famous uh generational family that did tightrope walking, like across the Niagara Falls. Okay. One I forget which one it was, but he said the most important step, uh, so think of him standing on a skyscraper, you know, and no neck below it. Uh and this is what he said. The most important step is not the first step because your other foot is still on the ledge of the building. The most important step is your second step because now you're committed. So you got to take that second step, and now you got to stay committed to however the outcome uh occurs.

SPEAKER_01 15:34

Yeah, it's it's definitely a mental game. I mean, I think a lot of business owners are kind of isolated because there's only one owner, one CEO usually. And yeah, an employee can't give you generally that that kind of insight that other people can. And I think failure is, at least in my experience, I've learned way more from my failures than somebody, you know, maybe telling me what to do. Like my head will process it, but unless I actually experience some of that stuff, it doesn't stick as much. Uh, that that's probably a failure of mine in a lot of cases. But yeah, to be able to pick yourself up and recognize hey, I started this, I got here by by some, you know, by God's grace, by my own, you know, intuition, or just like you said, we didn't know what we didn't know. It's almost a blessing when you're first starting out, right? Um let's tap into that to keep going and to get to the next you know spot. So in your case, uh, I was thinking of the Shark Tank show. I mean, you you had Shark Tank uh type experiences before that was even a thing where people were buying into you and your partner, not necessarily the current thing you're working on. I think that's a huge theme because most people that start one thing, they're gonna start something else too. There's gonna be more ideas and better execution, and they're playing the long game. So how did you, I guess, capture those things? Because you are you ironically making uh software for the relationships, but you already had some yourself. So, you know, in our the tech industry, I feel like there's a lot of introverts, technical people that are fantastic at fixing problems and dealing with technical issues, but it's the relationship and the people side that they struggle with. You guys, it seems like had both of that because you were creating the product, but also working these relationships with all the guys named John. So, how did that come about, I guess? Because you know, there's different personalities, there's different situations, markets. I mean, there's so many factors there, but you're right. To dilute it down, you have got to develop relationships to, or at least you're extremely limited. Um, how do you push through that?

SPEAKER_00 17:41

Well, um, so again, keep in mind that Pent and I were both salespeople. And as a salesperson, you need to be uh, you know, gregarious, if you will. You need to be uh sociable, you need to have a persona uh where you captured what I call the likability factor. Uh, you know, one uh here's another principal IBM taught me in sales school. They said to us one day, so when you meet that executive for the first time, keep in mind selling mainframes, we were calling on C-level executives. These are seasoned people. I'm in my young, you know, early 20s calling on seasoned executives, right? How do you connect with that age gap difference? Well, uh, so in in sales school, all of us said, Well, we want to convert them into becoming a customer. And the instructor went, You are all wrong. The most important attitude you need to have when you first meet somebody is to approach them as if they were or could become a friend. Why? Because you treat friends different than you treat a business transaction, right? You just are more warm, you're more friendly, you're more interested in them. Hey, what's going on? How you been? Right. And they said, now keep in mind, those executives aren't looking into you as a potential friend. That's not the point. The point is your behavior and your attitude and your approach will be different if you look at them like that. And hopefully, by doing that, when you leave that first meeting, that they just might have the attitude about you along these lines. You know what? I like that person. I can even see having a beer with them. That likability factor. That's a key principle, as funny as it sounds. But here's another thing, Jimmy, that they taught me in sales school. In the first 15 minutes of sales school, uh, that was going to happen for the next six months, and we were ranked and graded. Uh, and I graduated at the top uh 10% of my class across the country, but uh they said, Welcome to uh to IBM, we're glad that you're all here. You know, uh, we want to let you know that there's only two kinds of salespeople in the world, and you know, we're all sitting there eager. I'm talking first 15 minutes, right? And and they said, There's jackasses, you can kit their butts to get them to work, but you constantly have to prod them. None of you are jackasses. The only kind of salespeople we hire, which you all are, are wild stallions. Now imagine you're sitting there just out of college, and and you have probably never thought of yourself as a wild stallion. So they implanted in our mind a vision of wild stallions that we've seen in movies, you know, determination, persistence, power, influence, right? Running through the hills, you know, unencumbered. You think, oh my gosh, I'm a wild stallion. But here's what they did. They didn't even give us two seconds to absorb that. And so they took us from here, seeing myself as a new sales guy, to here, seeing myself as a wild stallion. And they said, But by the time we're done with you in six months, you're no longer gonna be wild stallions, you're gonna be thoroughbred racehorses. Holy cow, they took us here. The whole point of that was it's important how you see yourself, because how you see yourself is how you carry yourself. How you carry yourself is how people perceive you. How people perceive you is how they think about you and talk about you, and that becomes your reputation. And if it's a good one, even better than most, you're gonna get referral business. So there begins the attitude of how you approach a single person, carrying that with everybody, and then let that start to feed back to you because of that behavior and attitude.

SPEAKER_01 21:46

Yeah, that is not taught in school. I really wish it would be, because that's a that's a masterclass right there in not just sales, but in just general people. Yeah, any uh career, I think, needs that skill set. Um, and you know, if if you jump forward a little bit, I feel like you know, you you started in the 80s, it sounds like there was a buildup of tech in the 90s and definitely the 2000s, you know, you got the dot com boom. But you fast forward to the 2026 when we're recording this, that human touch and the relationship. I mean social media, I think, changed a ton of that. But now we have AI, Mike. There's a lot of fake things out there. There's a lot of garbage information. I think there's a lot of good strides and efficiencies that are gaining. But I think people crave, like in their heart of hearts, that interaction and that relationship piece. And it seems like over the last you know decade or so and it's it's accelerating, but that is being eroded away. Do you see that in in your own career like that you've had? And how do you deal with that? Because uh businesses still need salespeople to talk to. I mean, they still need those relationship pieces, but it seems like our culture is really pulling back from it.

SPEAKER_00 23:00

Yeah, let me let me just make a quick correction to what you just said. And I don't mean to correct that.

SPEAKER_01 23:05

But yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:05

Yeah. Um businesses need salespeople. That's true. Nothing happens without a sale, but go back to that code name uh for apps. Yes, everybody sells. The CEO, the CFO, the administrator, the receptionist, everybody that works for a company is a representative of that company. And how you treat people, are you courteous? Are you kind? Are you friendly? Everybody is selling the brand of the company too. So don't have this attitude. Don't let your company, your listenership, have this attitude. Yeah, you know, I've got the salespeople who are gregarious, I'm a little bit more introverted. I don't care. If you're the CEO of the company, you are the main salesperson. Don't forget it, right? Because the final decisions rest with you. And you're the you set the culture of the company. So everybody needs to have that attitude. Um, so uh social media, you know, it's like the internet. We all can't today live without the internet, but we also know it's got a very dark, dangerous side. You can't you can't get rid of that dark underbelly, sadly. Uh thank God that most people have a sense of uh integrity, uh common sense, whatever, and they they don't go there. I do believe social media in many ways has ruined relationships to some capacity. I don't I've never liked the fact that Facebook calls them friends just because you want to link up. You're not a friend of mine. I never am gonna encounter you. I don't know the first thing about you. Yeah, let's say so. We have we have bastardized the word friend, number one, because of social media and Facebook. Having said that, it social media does enable me to connect to more people more rapidly and more broadly globally than before the internet happened in social media. So it's how you treat it. Social media cannot replace a real relationship. And a real relationship today doesn't mean that we have to physically meet. I mean, Jimmy, I don't know that you and I will ever physically meet. It'd be great if we do someday. Sure, sure. If I ever go back up to U of I, I might find my way to you know blooming tip over normal. And yeah, but the point is things like virtual meetings with Zoom or you know, Google meeting or whatever, FaceTime does enable us to connect. I mean, just seeing your body language as uh and you say mine, uh it you know, kind of helps draw people together, right? Oh, for sure.

SPEAKER_01 25:44

As if we're gonna help ramp that up, I think. But yeah, even at InfoTech, like we require cameras to be on. Like you gotta, even if you're not you're working at home, you're not there, yeah. That visceral connection is huge. I agree.

SPEAKER_00 25:56

Yeah, but getting back to your question. So here's one of the most important lifelong things I can recommend to anybody, young or old, about in business or not. I don't think as a student, go back to your your grade school and high school and then college maybe afterwards. You have always got to network. You have to. Your your network ultimately is going to become your net worth. Without a network of people, you're not gonna get anywhere. I could, you Jimmy, I could come up with the world's cure for cancer. But if I don't network with people that can help me in in bringing that to market, it's not gonna go anywhere. We depend on people. You never know somebody you meet today that two years, ten years from now, uh, you're going to encounter again. And maybe they were moved up and promoted in a business where they're the decision maker now or they're a they're a government official that can get has influence. And I mean, you don't know where other people can go. And so I want to give your audience uh something that I've used myself uh called a relationship statement. This is how to see people and how to continue uh developing relationships through networking, which is a lifetime endeavor. Okay. So a lot of companies have a mission statement. Most employees can't tell you what it is, but they have one, right? That's okay. But I, because my focus has always been on relationships and building tools to help people like you and your readership do better with relationships, uh, is the is this following statement. I I Mike Munie. Excuse me, I'm getting over cold. I Mike Munie believe in the infinite potential, keeping the infinite potential of closer relationships. Now you can adapt that as your company relationship statement. We as a company, Info Tech Solutions, we believe in the infinite potential of closer customer relationships. You can say it that way, right? Sure. Okay. Um and here's my perfect example. Pat and I, the other co-inventor of ACT, who I'm in business with again today at our later age and stages in life, um, he and I serendipitously moved after graduating from college to begin our careers in Chicago, uh, two apartment doors away from each other. And we just uh met one night, you know, as we both were going into our apartments and we hit it off. And who would have ever guessed that he and I, beginning with that serendipitous encounter, would not only create a software product that's still on the market after 39 years and tens of millions of users, but it would create a software category, an industry today known as CRM, that's a multi-billion dollar industry. Oh, don't tell me that there's no infinite potential. You just don't know how far your relationships can go, but don't let them fade away.

SPEAKER_01 29:09

I mean, that is another masterclass, I feel like. Uh the ripple effect of uh, yeah, you don't know what you don't know. But if you put yourself out there, I mean, I feel like God gives us all gifts that are instilled in us, and it's up to us to kind of explore and learn what those are and then use them. Um, and I think he kind of can do the rest. We were speaking about that you know a little bit earlier. Um you mentioned that you know you guys are are still working on things. I mean, act I assume you're not an act anymore. I mean, that's grief, that's worth billions. I mean, you've got the whole industry, like you said, you got the hub spots, you got every every company has a CRM now, they have to, right? So it's become a lot more mainstream. Um, what are you doing these days, Mike? I mean, you're you seem to be a mover and a shaker. I mean, we were joking earlier that you you do golf every once in a while, but um what what gets you going in the morning these days?

SPEAKER_00 30:01

That's a good question. So uh let me comment on CRM quickly. So, yes, the industry decades ago dubbed Pat and me the godfathers of CRM because ACT is the catalyst that created the whole industry. So uh, you know, that was a bestowed tagline on us, which we're capitalizing on. Having said that, and this is gonna sound ironic, I don't believe in CRM. Why don't I believe in CRM? I don't believe in it from the standpoint of relationships. CRM is about the data, it's about pipeline management. When are we gonna close business, with whom, and how much? That has nothing to do with the relationship. It should be called CDM, customer data management. Content management, conversely, is about the relationship, as I shared, right? And so they can coexist because the person out there talking to that person that they're trying to sell to, and again, everybody sells, right? The CEO that goes to a network session, he's trying to get business to come to the company, he or she, right? Um the whole purpose is that you need to um I kind of lost my train of thought, I'm sorry. Uh yeah, is uh is to develop the relationship. So if you are a salesperson giving the data to the company when something's gonna close, you still own the relationship. If you get fired, if you uh if the company, if you quit, it doesn't matter. The relationships always stay with you. So contact management is a software product that enables you to maintain lifelong relationships and everything you've learned and accumulated about those people in that journey. All right, so that's number one.

SPEAKER_01 31:51

Got it.

SPEAKER_00 31:52

Yeah. Um so what are Pat and I doing? We we uh were very dissatisfied, and I'm saying that as an understatement, with how CRM did erode the value of the relationship in what it's designed for. It really is designed for enterprises. A lot of people using CRM are using it uh because that's all they think uh they can use for relationships, whereas it really doesn't, right? Uh and so it's overkill and overpriced. Uh uh and so we thought we got to restore in today's social media, impersonal, AI, fake world that is being created as we speak. We got to bring the relationship back to the forefront. So he and I got together a couple years ago and we started another company called Cantata, and we are in the process of uh, and soon to be released, uh, a product that is focused on the relationships that is gonna surpass the standard that we even set with ACT. Okay. Uh, but we're bringing yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 33:03

Yeah, I mean, you you're uh definitely a pioneer. And I hope people listen to this episode can kind of sense, you know, from your journey that um it's not that you're never satisfied, but you're continually learning and evolving, and then you know, producing things based on that to make things better, right? It's not that ACT is bad or even CRM is bad, right? Hey, as you've evolved, I mean I I see this in some authors that are out there, like oh the book I wrote 15 years ago is trash. Like this is my new well, it wasn't trash, it's just you've grown, right? And I gotta believe that most professionals that are in business have their own growth track themselves. So I'm I'm the shiny object guy a thousand, right? That's like one of my weaknesses because I can always see these new things that come out and want to grab it because I could relate to that too. But you've got a way of doing it that I think with with your track record and the the way you can articulate that to people to really uh connect, I think it's super powerful. Um yeah, go ahead.

SPEAKER_00 34:05

Yeah, you know, going back to your earlier question about the social media, Jimmy. I mean, yeah, you know, how do you how do you think about people? The way I think about them, first of all, I can summarize my entire career and everything I've done and the tools I've built with Apt and now come, you know, with Cantata, et cetera, uh, and everything in between comes down to two words of my attitude, and that is people matter. That's the end of the subject. People matter. And if they matter, then you know, how do I approach them, et cetera, which I kind of shared. But but you know, relationship people are uh press, they're they're precious, they're purposeful, relationships are purposeful. None of us would succeed in business without relationships. Come on, right? But here's the goal of how to see and treat people attitudinally and through your actions, they are priceless. So people matter, and with that foundation of belief, uh, I view that what I might be able to achieve with people, and I don't mean get from them, I mean the impact I can have on them too, what I give as much as I get from people, right? Yeah, is that I want to have my relationships as many of them that I have, and I've had tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, in my career. I want as many of them as possible to be priceless. And so what am I doing to, you know, what am I uh uh equipping myself with mentally and physically through the tools I use to get relationships to a priceless uh uh level? Yeah that's my quest.

SPEAKER_01 35:46

You know, Mike, I love that. If if you keep your nose clean, you know, you could maybe be a really good speaker. I could see a lot of this content coming coming through well over stage. I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 35:55

Oh, thank you. I do I do do a fair amount. Yeah, no, I am a public speaker and I'm listed with an agency. I've spoken all over the world because of basically because of the ACT credential and the focus on relationships and the impact it's made economically in the world, creating the industry. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 36:12

Yeah. Well, thank you so much, Mike, for for taking the time to come on. I hope that our listeners were inspired by your story. Even the small time we've had together today. I mean, the ripple effect that we all have, whether we know it or not, is is immense. And I think uh to to recognize that um you do affect other people, the the the mentality that you have, your willingness to learn and grow, it it affects people. It doesn't matter if you're working at home in your basement or if you've got 10,000 employees, those principles carry through. Um so thanks for reminding us of that. Um, Mike, if people want to get a hold of you or contact you up, I'll link all everything in the show notes. But what's the best way for people to reach out if they want to connect with you?

SPEAKER_00 36:55

I appreciate that. And before I answer that question, Jimmy, I want to compliment you because one of the things that um I was attracted to when I learned about your company was your tagline. You know, uh, people first, technology second. So you inherently and intuitively already have that attitude in you. So continue to build on that. Uh, as far as getting in touch with me, uh, people can uh email me at mike at cantata.com. And that's spelled C-O-N as in Nancy, T as in Tom, A T T A. C-O-N-T-A-T-T-A. Cantata is an Italian word that means make contact.

SPEAKER_01 37:37

Oh, I love that. Yeah, we'll we'll definitely link that as well. I think you've got some early access um information there.

SPEAKER_00 37:44

I lost your hearing.

SPEAKER_01 37:46

Oh, am I back? Check one. Yeah, you're back. All right. A lot of that we'll fix in post. Um, I found that if you miss it, the platform didn't. So I'll clean up some of that later. That's no problem. But um yeah, I believe Cantata's got you know a landing page that we'll link people to. Um I definitely want to stay in touch with you, Mike. I mean, you're you're definitely moving on, and and I've I've looked at Cantata you know with you, and it's I can see a ton of potential there um for people that need meaningful relationships and to be able to track and grow those um and continue to nurture that in a way that just naturally humans need, right? I think that fills a huge spot. So um yeah, thanks for being on and we will definitely stay instead of really appreciate it.

SPEAKER_00 38:26

Uh I'm looking forward to it, Jimmy. I appreciate it very much.

SPEAKER_01 38:30

You bet.