In this episode, Brad Burrow sits down with Nick Giuliani as he discusses his background in baseball, his passion for Kansas City and giving back to the community, and his current role as the Head of Sales at Cyphr – a startup focused on helping financial institutions deploy more capital to small businesses and underrepresented communities.
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-Transcript-
Brad Burrow (00:01):
Welcome to In a World With Real Media. I’m your host, Brad Burrow. In this podcast, we’ll dive into the lives of the most successful people in business. We’ll learn how they overcame adversity, took advantage of opportunities and learned from their experiences. Learn from our experts. Get inspired, then go live your story. It’s in a world with real media. Hello and welcome to The Inner World with Real Media Podcast. I’m Brad Burrow. Today we have Nick Giuliani with us. Lemme tell you a little bit about, I’m just going to read a little bit from your LinkedIn, your LinkedIn page here. It says, be humble, be grateful, and be present. I love that. I think that’s awesome. It says, all you need to know about me is that I’m heads down, that I’m heads down and working my tail off. Something you don’t see all the time these days, huh? I love networking, connecting with people, working to help bring awareness to nonprofits and assisting others in reaching their goals in life. That’s awesome. Which we’ll kind of get into some of that and says, I’m passionate about Kansas City and the great people in the city. We do have a great city.
Nick Giuliani (01:12):
We do.
Brad Burrow (01:13):
It’s really amazing. So because of that, you created the shout out series. We want to talk about that, where you do a feature on fantastic people, nonprofits, women owned businesses in Kansas City on LinkedIn, and you have a blog. It’s Casey shout out series.com. So we can go up there if we want to. So thanks for being with me. I’ve been kind of looking through your LinkedIn profile and stuff, and I’ve got some pretty cool stuff that I wanted to ask you about, but a little bit. Give me the 4 1 1 on Nick.
Nick Giuliani (01:47):
Yeah, that was a great intro. So I thought about changing it and every time I do, I’m like, I like the simplicity. It tells you exactly where I’m at in life. Yeah. So originally from St. Louis played baseball in college. I actually went to three different colleges in four years.
Brad Burrow (02:04):
Okay. Wait, let’s stop right there. Where’d you play? My son played at Avala. He was a pitcher at Avalara,
Nick Giuliani (02:10):
Jefferson County Community College, which is outside St. Louis Johnson County for a year, and then finished in Pittsburgh at Pittsburgh State.
Brad Burrow (02:17):
Okay, awesome. Well, so my son played for the club, the Johnson County Club team.
Nick Giuliani (02:23):
Nice.
Brad Burrow (02:23):
And ended up going NAIA and pitched at Avila for three years, but was a starting pitcher. He started all, he was at another school his first year, but Covid hit that messed up. So many kids in college. I know. So what position did you play?
Nick Giuliani (02:39):
Started in the outfield for most of my college, but by my senior year, we had lost some people. We ended up having to actually have tryouts for shortstop
(02:48):
Because
(02:48):
We lost so many kids in the fall. But I split between outfield third base and first base my senior year. We weren’t the most winningest team in Pittsburgh state history, but an amazing experience. Great teammates. And I got out of college with no student loans, so I will take that as a win all day long.
Brad Burrow (03:06):
Yeah, that’s amazing. So my son Riley, his coach was Daryl Cronk, who, he’s was an alumni Hall of Famer at Pittsburgh State. He ended up passing away from Covid, believe it or not. But anyway, so there’s some ties to Pittsburgh State
Nick Giuliani (03:26):
There.
Brad Burrow (03:27):
Pretty awesome.
Nick Giuliani (03:27):
Yeah, it’s great school.
Brad Burrow (03:28):
Yeah. Did you grow up in Kansas City?
Nick Giuliani (03:30):
No, I originally was from St.
Brad Burrow (03:32):
Louis. St. Louis. That’s right, you said that.
Nick Giuliani (03:33):
But when I got out of college, it was 2009, it’s middle of May, and I’m like, I’d only had one real job, which I sold tickets door to door for a marketing company that represented the Cardinals. So I walked door to door in a suit and I was selling tickets for the Tuesday through Thursday games with promotional stuff, and I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I always thought I was going to play baseball. That’s my career path. But when that doesn’t happen, you all of a sudden are like, well, what am I going to do now? So thankfully, my brother lived in Kansas City since 2000. I called him and I was like, I need a job. It’s 2009, not the best economic situation. And he was like, come up to Kansas City. I’ll get some interviews scheduled. So went through a couple interviews.
(04:15):
By the time I got home to St. Louis, I got a call from Freight Quote, and they said, do you want the job? And I was like, salary benefits commission. Yes, sign me up. So I ended up working in freight for about five years as a freight broker through both Freight Quote and Ryan Transportation. But I really wanted to get more into tech sales and true hunting sales. So I took a leap to a government tech startup and then got back into logistics. So the previous 10 years I spent in sales and sales leadership at a logistics auditing company and then a transportation management software company before now joining Cypher, which I’ve been at three months as their head of
Brad Burrow (04:55):
Sales, three months.
Nick Giuliani (04:57):
So still figuring it out, but it’s been a great and great 12 weeks so far.
Brad Burrow (05:01):
So one thing I didn’t even know about the baseball, which is this is awesome. Kevin Seitzer is one of my best friends. Great. I have three boys, and they’ve all played baseball. Riley was the one that went on to college and played, but we did club and all that stuff. But one thing I’ve found, and I think employers are finding this too, is that baseball players specifically are really, really good at sales and at handling rejection and coming back and not letting them beat him up. Would you agree with that? I
Nick Giuliani (05:37):
Would. Yeah. I think when you live in the world where Hall of Fame or a great season is failing 70% of the time,
Brad Burrow (05:44):
Isn’t that crazy?
Nick Giuliani (05:45):
That’s pretty similar to if you look at the statistics of sales closing, depending on industry, it’s about 15 to 30%. So you’re going to get told no a lot. Not only just in the deal cycle, trying to set introductory meetings or discovery calls, getting someone to a demo. You’re selling the entire process. And so yes, I would say that the amount of failure that baseball and the amount of adversity you have to slumps, you go in hot streaks. I think it does translate really well to sales athletes in general. I think in college, just that discipline of having a full-time job of being an athlete and going to school, I think that translate well to the business world.
Brad Burrow (06:24):
Not to mention all the work, I don’t think a lot of people realize how much work that college athletes put in, even at D two and AI level. I mean, it’s pretty much year round, and you better be working if you want to have success.
Nick Giuliani (06:39):
Oh yeah.
Brad Burrow (06:40):
You can’t take a couple months off and come back and expect to be where you were.
Nick Giuliani (06:44):
No. And the JUCO level, there are not any regulations on practices. So NCAA has rules. You can only practice so many hours, so many days a week. That’s not the rules. In juco, we’d be up at 5 30, 3 hours before school, six hours after. Sometimes it was seven days a week and tournaments in the fall. So it’s a full-time and you go to school.
Brad Burrow (07:06):
And Johnson County is a legit JUCO program, isn’t
Nick Giuliani (07:09):
It? It’s a phenomenal program, and it really started around that. Oh 7, 0 8 teams, those just continue to grow. And now, I mean, they’re nationally ranked all the time they’ve been to multiple college World Series. So yeah,
Brad Burrow (07:23):
There was a kid that Riley played with that went to juco, just got signed by. Oh, the Astros.
Nick Giuliani (07:30):
Very nice.
Brad Burrow (07:30):
Yeah. Pretty cool. I mean, seeing kids that you’ve watched grow up and stuff are kind of working their way through the system. Johnson County’s known as a feeder for D one,
Nick Giuliani (07:40):
Isn’t it? Yes, very much That. And a lot of draft picks. A lot of people go right from there to the draft. Draft
Brad Burrow (07:46):
Straight to the draft B. Pretty cool.
Nick Giuliani (07:49):
Yeah,
Brad Burrow (07:50):
Baseball’s awesome. We watch. It’s been fun. Are you a Cardinals fan?
Nick Giuliani (07:55):
I am.
Brad Burrow (07:55):
Okay. Well that’s okay. We won’t hold it against
Nick Giuliani (07:58):
You. Yeah,
Brad Burrow (07:59):
Not
Nick Giuliani (07:59):
As much to root for this year as the Royals,
Brad Burrow (08:01):
That’s for sure. Yeah, it’s been a rough year for the Cardinals this year. It
Nick Giuliani (08:04):
Lasts a couple of years.
Brad Burrow (08:05):
Well, obviously we’re Royals fans here and it’s hit and miss for us usually, but this year was kind of fun, real media. We got to do some spots with Bobby Witt. He was a really awesome, really guy.
Nick Giuliani (08:22):
Well, as a Kansas City lover, one, the Royals are good, the city’s doing better. So I’m all for a good Royals team.
Brad Burrow (08:27):
Yeah, so that’s interesting. Let’s talk about that. How did the affinity for Kansas City come about? I mean, being a St. Louis Guy, a lot of St. Louis people really don’t like Kansas City and Kansas City. People don’t usually like St. Louis. It’s like this kind of thing, the I 70 World Series and all that stuff.
Nick Giuliani (08:44):
Yeah, there was definitely, it’s so funny because I get asked that a lot, but ironically, growing up in St. Louis, we thought more about I was hating Illinois than we were in Kansas City. But the transition of the two cities, even from when I was born to now, St. Louis is down, Kansas City is on the rise. I think what really drew me to Kansas City over the last 15 years has been the people, the generosity, the kindness, and I think the openness that the people have to meet and have coffees and mentorship and all the things that you could possibly want in a business community, in a nonprofit community, and just the supportive is really what has driven my love for the city and the people in it.
Brad Burrow (09:27):
Is it noticeable? I mean, can you really tell a difference? I mean, I’ve always been told St. Louis is more like an East coast type mentality where we’re probably a little bit more farm, Midwest, Midwest type. So you would agree with that?
Nick Giuliani (09:41):
A hundred percent. St. Louis has a very interesting cork that when you meet somebody, you get asked where you went to high school, no matter how old or how long you’ve been out of high school, they ask where you went to high school. They want to know where you’re at on the scope of the world. Did you go to a fancy private school or did you go to a public school? What public school did you go to? What private school did you go to?
Brad Burrow (10:04):
That makes a difference, huh?
Nick Giuliani (10:05):
Very much. Wow. It’s a very different city than St. Louis. I’ve had friends go there seven, eight years and be like, I didn’t make hardly any friends. And in Kansas City, they’ve met their group of people in a much shorter amount of time.
Brad Burrow (10:17):
Yeah, that’s awesome. So one of the things that, as I’m getting prepared for today, I was looking at, and it’s a very, very clear that you’re a person that wants to help people. I spent a day with Zig Ziglar. Do you know who Zig Ziglar is? Yes. Okay. Some people don’t know, but one of the things that he said, it was doing interviews with him, and one of the things he said is, if you want to be successful, help somebody else be successful. You’re kind of like that. I say, you want to help people. It’s very evident. Where did that come from?
Nick Giuliani (10:52):
I think it came a lot from my family and my upbringing and just how I was raised. And then once I started really having success in the business world, it was just this weird innate thing where I’m like, well, I want to now give back and mentor and shine a light on others and just do what I can to try to help uplift as many people as I can. But I do think a lot of it started from just the way that I was raised and having that generosity in my family.
Brad Burrow (11:19):
Were your parents like that or,
Nick Giuliani (11:21):
Yeah, my mom is just this caretaker where she is going to go out of her way to do whatever she can. So she kind of instilled that. And then the work ethic stuff came from my dad. I mean, he would work 80 hours if he had to make sure I had the gloves, I needed the bats, I needed the tournaments that we played in. He was going to do whatever it took for, I had the chance to play baseball. So between the two of them, there was just this work ethic and giving back, and they always just had that mentality.
Brad Burrow (11:51):
So they instilled all of, I mean, that’s the thing, kids growing up, you were watching that happen.
Nick Giuliani (11:56):
Yeah. And then my siblings are 11, 16 and 17 years older than I am. So my brother’s always kind of just been my natural mentor and my best friend. And so seeing his life trek and what he’s done has given me a lot of just kind of look ahead for how to handle things the right way. So very thankful for all of my
Brad Burrow (12:15):
Family. So were you guys traveling every weekend? Baseball season,
Nick Giuliani (12:18):
Every weekend? So from the time I was 12, we played 60 games a year. We started practice in February lot. We played 60 to 80 games a year. We went to Japan my first year. Did you? Florida all over the country. And then by the time I started playing Showcase Ball, it was either Monday or Tuesday through Sunday, every week, all summer long. It was intense,
Brad Burrow (12:39):
Man. It’s like I don’t think people realize the impact that that has on a family cost wise, me running a business trying to do that at the same time we even bought an RV so we could go watch games.
Nick Giuliani (12:55):
Yeah, I’m sure you experienced that if your son was playing showcase ball and then in college at least he was nice and close at Avalo.
Brad Burrow (13:01):
Yeah. It’s interesting. I kind of want to get into the whole mentality of the baseball players a little bit more, but he got a job working at Northwestern Mutual, and they specifically said that they wanted to hire college athletes because they knew that they’d been through the commitment part of it, that the hard work, the adversity, all those things. So isn’t it interesting, it’s like they’re looking specifically, I mean, they’d almost hire you on the spot if you were a college athlete.
Nick Giuliani (13:35):
I think a lot of businesses are looking at that just because of the amount of time you’re balancing class and you’re balancing life and you’re balancing seven days a week in schedule. So yeah, I think it translates really well to the business world.
Brad Burrow (13:49):
So what are you doing in baseball now? Anything? Are you No. You don’t have kids yet, probably, or do you?
Nick Giuliani (13:54):
No. No kids. Yeah. Well, when I got out of school, so my brother-in-law actually coached at Macin sites, so that’s how he knew Kevin.
(14:02):
Okay.
(14:03):
Yeah. Awesome. But I coached for three and two and did private lessons and did a team out of Lawrence for a couple of years, but kind of went to the wayside. I haven’t really done a whole lot in baseball in a long time.
Brad Burrow (14:14):
You got to do that for the love of it. It’s like you’re not going to, even at Mac and sites, you’re not going to make a lot of money doing something like that. That’s more of a giving back.
Nick Giuliani (14:24):
Yes, very
Brad Burrow (14:24):
Much. And just love of the game type thing.
Nick Giuliani (14:26):
Yeah, a hundred.
Brad Burrow (14:26):
Even Kevin and I would talk about that. Mac and Sights never made a lot of money, but him and Mac did it when they got, and they’re finished with baseball and said, well, we’re going to do this and take our kids through there and all stuff. It’s pretty cool.
Nick Giuliani (14:41):
And look what they’ve built. It’s
Brad Burrow (14:43):
Legacy
Nick Giuliani (14:44):
Stuff.
Brad Burrow (14:44):
It’s still around. It’s still around. Kevin is looking for a job right now. He was with the Braves for 10 years, not to get on too much of it. Oh yeah. Alright, so you were raised that way. I love it that you want to help people. I want to talk about, so let’s go to the founder Spotlight. Tell me a little bit about that. I mean, you have a lot of a
Nick Giuliani (15:11):
Hundred of ’em. Over 200 now.
Brad Burrow (15:12):
200. Amazing.
Nick Giuliani (15:14):
So it’s interesting. So you’re asking why I was passionate about Kansas City. So when I look back on this kind of trajectory, so I get a new job in 2018. I am just heads down trying to figure this out. I’m employee 23. We got big goals. I’m coming in as a sales
Brad Burrow (15:33):
At Freight quote.
Nick Giuliani (15:34):
This is at Dynamic Logistics.
Brad Burrow (15:35):
Oh, okay.
Nick Giuliani (15:36):
So this is in 2018. So this is my last job previous to where I’m at today. All of a sudden Covid happens and all of a sudden that separation of your friends and family and you’re kind of gone. And I had to almost look at myself in the mirror and say, I say, I love this city. I want to give back, but am I really doing what I say I feel? And I honestly had to say I was helping with nonprofits, but I wasn’t doing enough. And so coming out of Covid, I had got to know some friends who were really active on LinkedIn, and I was like, well, I want to start writing on LinkedIn, but logistics and sales are not super passionate projects or topics that I wanted to spend time writing about. So I had just finished Tools of Titans, which was a gift from a friend of mine, Michael Keenan. It literally changed my life.
Brad Burrow (16:22):
Tell me what that is.
Nick Giuliani (16:23):
Tim Ferriss’s book. So he wrote this eight, it’s like 600 pages, but it’s all of his interviews with billionaires and health people. So it’s broken up between health, spiritual, and financial. So a lot of entrepreneurs, investors like Arnold Schwarzeneggers in it for the health side, and it’s his podcast interviews. And I was like, well, he wrote a whole book just transcribing his podcast and took the biggest nuggets of how to help other people with habits, tactics, things that these people seem to have in common. And then in between the chapters he would write about stuff too. And I was like, well, I can talk about cool stuff that’s happening in Kansas City. And so on November 21st, 2011, I put out my first post and I used the phrase, I’m going to change how I approach LinkedIn for the next couple of weeks. Well, now we’re coming up on
Brad Burrow (17:08):
13 years,
Nick Giuliani (17:09):
Three years.
Brad Burrow (17:11):
Oh, 21st
Nick Giuliani (17:12):
Year, sorry, 2021.
(17:13):
So it’s going to be the three year anniversary in a couple of weeks. Mitch Case was my first founder, shout out. And then March of 22, I’m like, oh, it’s Women’s History Month. How cool would it be if I shined a spotlight on women business owners? Stupidly thinking, oh, I can do that all in one month when I realize there’s thousands of incredible women owned businesses. And so that then became a series on Thursdays. So every Tuesday is an individual leader in Kansas City. Wednesday is a nonprofit, and then Thursday is a women-owned feature. And so I think there’s 200 and probably 220, 230. And then when I realized, and through listening to a Tim Ferriss podcast, James Clear, the author of Atomic Habits, made a very good point and said, I have my website and I have my email list because I own those. I don’t own what I post on Instagram and Facebook. And I was like, oh, I post on LinkedIn. That’s a third party. I need a place to house. So I created the Casey Shoutout series website. What’s that? 23? So that’s where if you can search by, if it’s women owned nonprofit people, you can kind of very, very 1 0 1 website, but it houses all the posts and be kind of came that centralized place to ultimately try and spread positivity out into the kind of Kansas City ecosystem.
Brad Burrow (18:32):
Yeah, amazing. That’s a hard, three times a week.
Nick Giuliani (18:36):
Three times a week.
Brad Burrow (18:37):
That’s not easy to keep up with.
Nick Giuliani (18:39):
No, sometimes it’s more work, but I joke, my wife knows Sunday mornings my writing time. So that’s what I’m doing Sunday mornings is writing those posts.
Brad Burrow (18:49):
And so do you plan out your calendar who you’re going to be highlighting and contact people
Nick Giuliani (18:56):
More now? I didn’t use to. I kind of just used to wing it and that didn’t work. So I try to plan out 12 weeks at a time now.
Brad Burrow (19:03):
I see. Very cool. So that thing’s going, you’re going to just keep going and keep going.
Nick Giuliani (19:08):
Yes. So I took a break. We went on a trip in September and I was like, I’m going to give it a couple of weeks now having this new job. I’m like, I’m going to let it sit for a couple of months. But I do have plans to bring it back in January, and at least I kind of take it one year at a time. So I want to do it again in 2025, and then we’ll kind of see where it goes from there.
Brad Burrow (19:29):
So we’ve been around since 97 and for the first, well, I’m trying to think, the first 15 years of Women Mean Business. We did the video.
Nick Giuliani (19:39):
Oh, nice.
Brad Burrow (19:40):
So I would do an interview with the 25 women every year. It would be Do Joyce au, do you know that name? I don’t. She was the predecessor to Stacy Prosser.
Nick Giuliani (19:52):
Oh.
Brad Burrow (19:53):
So Joyce called me one day and said, Hey, would you help me with this? I’m like, yeah. So we ended up doing it, but it was amazing just seeing the top 25 women every year and kind of opens your eyes to really that side of business, what’s happening in Kansas City and we’re just Kansas City. That’s not even other places.
Nick Giuliani (20:12):
Exactly. Yeah. So
Brad Burrow (20:14):
It’s pretty cool.
Nick Giuliani (20:14):
I think every city that has a journal has something in that impact.
Brad Burrow (20:18):
So that’s a very vibrant community that you’re highlighting. Is it on Wednesdays? Is that Thursdays. Thursdays, okay.
Nick Giuliani (20:25):
Yeah, Wednesdays is the
Brad Burrow (20:26):
Nonprofits. So yeah, that’s really cool. Alright, so let’s switch gears. One of the things I did have written down here is I looked 6,527 followers on LinkedIn. I can’t tell how many people are actually on the other metrics, but man, that’s incredible. That’s worth something.
Nick Giuliani (20:48):
That was unintentionally. I think just part of creating the series and just people, whether it was a single person, like, oh, I know that person. What’s this person doing? And then they kind of follow along. But it’s very interesting to run into people that are like, I love reading your shout outs. And I’m like, I know
Brad Burrow (21:06):
You don’t know him.
Nick Giuliani (21:07):
I don’t know him. And I’m like,
Brad Burrow (21:07):
You’re a celebrity man.
Nick Giuliani (21:08):
Yeah, I don’t know about that. But it is fun to hear stories about like, oh, I had a story where somebody was supposed to give a referral to a business owner, and they literally took my post and said, I can’t tell any better why you should use this person as your marketing agency. And they sent my post to that business owner and says, you should work with them. Or My post has brought new clients or donations or awareness that you just didn’t get. I don’t always do the best job of doing a follow-up on some of that impact, but it’s fun to hear some of those stories on some of the impact it drove for the features.
Brad Burrow (21:43):
Do you have any interest in monetizing that at all? I mean, have you ever thought about that? It’s probably, I don’t get that from you, but I mean honestly, that kind of connectivity is in the business world. That’s a big deal.
Nick Giuliani (21:55):
And I’ve actually had other people would be like, well, how much is this thing? And I’m like, nothing. I just do this as a nice side.
Brad Burrow (22:02):
They would pay you to be
Nick Giuliani (22:03):
Creative. One nonprofit was like, oh, what’s the cost of this? Because you get email all the time. Oh, we want a feature. You’re like, well, what’s it cost? I’m like, no, this is just something I enjoy doing. It’s a creative outlet. I like the writing piece and the networking that has come out of it. The spider web of people I’ve got to meet and other nonprofits that I get to feature and the boards I sit on and everything else that it’s kind of led to is worth more than I think ever being able to monetize. And I’d rather just keep it the way it is now.
Brad Burrow (22:31):
Yeah, that’s great. That’s great. So Top Gun, tell me about Top Gun.
Nick Giuliani (22:35):
Top Gun. So me is a nosy, curious person. So this is in 2018, again, maybe three months into my tenure, our chief growth officer, he was a consultant, was sitting outside with Scott Havens and another mutual friend, Scott Lippert, just sitting out on the patio. I poked my head out and I was like, Hey, how are you? And introduced myself and sat down and started talking to Scott Havens and he was like, oh, you should come out. You should interview for Top Gun. And I’m like, what is top? I’m like, I have no idea what that is. What are you talking about? And so October of 2018, I walk into a room at what was now Hub, but was trust at the time, 14 people are sitting around a table for an interview to get into this networking group for millennials. I was never as nervous in any other setting as sitting here in front of these very, very involved, very successful people. So they let me in. I’ve been in the group for over six years and last March, Scott comes to me and says, what would you think about taking over? And I was kind of taken aback and very humbled by the fact that he would want to hand off something that he’s built for over 10 years,
(23:46):
Allow me to take the day-to-day reigns of it. So ultimately Top Gun was started as a way for millennials. So it’s plus or minus seven years in 1986 is the age of the group. So if you fall in that range, and really it was to try to grow, do business together, help support each other as we go through life, because we’re all going through very similar stages being in that same age range. So
(24:09):
I love it.
(24:09):
We do 10 events a year. We take off July and we take off December for obvious reasons. Everyone needs their vacation in the summer and winter. So we do a combination of morning, afternoon, or after work activities. Sometimes it’s a speaker. So we went to Dimensional Innovations and their president, Tom Collins, spoke to the group. It was amazing. Then we went to bowling and we just had some pizza and we bowled and we just kind of let everyone kind of get to know each other. So combination between some fun activities and then professional development type stuff with different speakers coming in and talking to the group. So this has been my first full calendar year along with the board. So we brought on 31 new members,
(24:51):
And
(24:52):
So it’s about 133 now, I think
Brad Burrow (24:55):
Officially. Yeah. That’s awesome.
Nick Giuliani (24:57):
Yeah.
Brad Burrow (24:57):
So I know Scott, we were trying to do a video pilot called Real Talk with Real Media. I dunno if you remember that. Jessica Seitzer was part of it, and I don’t know if you know her name or not.
Nick Giuliani (25:08):
I do.
Brad Burrow (25:09):
But it was pretty cool. Joel Goldberg would interview, we’d bring in business leaders and then we’d do an interview with them, but more in the back. I’ll show you that area later, but more of a television show type type thing. But Scott was, he’s like, oh, we should work on this. We should do this. So I love him. He’s got just this kind of infectious energy about him and it’s awesome to see. So pretty cool. So it’s still moving forward and
Nick Giuliani (25:38):
Still moving
Brad Burrow (25:38):
Forward. Are you looking for more members still? How’s that go?
Nick Giuliani (25:43):
So once we get our next meeting done, which is next week, it’s then sit down and figure out what the board, what went well this year we let in a lot of people, it was the most people we had let in since before Covid, a lot of people did leave as well too. So really the only thing that’s asked of the members of Top Gun is show up. You show up to five of 10 meetings. So what I have to do is sit down and say, do we want to get bigger or do we like the kind of more intimate group? I think it was 2019, we got up to a couple hundred members, and that’s a lot. And so I do want to make sure that we have the right,
Brad Burrow (26:19):
It kind of loses that small
Nick Giuliani (26:21):
And it’s harder. It’s like if you only run into someone once a year, it’s hard to develop real relationships. And so that’s something that I have to sit down and think of is what went really well this year? What were the events that were most attended? What was the value? So talking to some of the new members, older members, getting that feedback, and then starting to figure out mid to late November, what is 2025 going to look like? I don’t believe that we need to personally do another 40 or 50 big interview type thing. I think we can just pick and choose as we go along the year, people that are a good fit.
Brad Burrow (26:53):
Do people move out? I mean, is there a course to kind of being a part of Top Gun? Once you’re in, you’re always
Nick Giuliani (27:01):
In. Once you’re in, you’re in as long as you’re actively showing up. So there’s no aging out because we’re all in that same kind of millennial age group. So the goal for Scott is for this thing to go on as long as humanly possible.
Brad Burrow (27:12):
No, that’s awesome.
Nick Giuliani (27:13):
Yeah,
Brad Burrow (27:13):
If I was a little bit younger, I might apply. No, I love networking groups like that. I mean Vistage, and there’s some probably not similar, exactly the same, but where you’re getting together with your peers because it’s hard. Business is hard.
Nick Giuliani (27:30):
It’s hard and
Brad Burrow (27:31):
It’s great being able to have a group of people where you can say, Hey, I’m struggling with this, or I need help with this. Can you introduce me to this person? That kind of thing. That’s huge.
Nick Giuliani (27:40):
Yeah, it was honestly one of the bigger, you asking about some of the reasons I love Kansas City, like Top Gun, I think between Top Gun and really actually taking my career seriously, which sounds silly, but it is. You really have to be intentional with your career. All of a sudden you start surrounding yourself with the Scott Havens of the world, the people that are in Top Gun just getting introduced to some of the top connectors and networkers and business leaders. And all of a sudden you’re surrounded with those kinds of people and it makes you want to then be like, well, how do I keep giving back? Or how do I take that Go Giver mentality? And so I’m so thankful to have Top Gun for me personally and professionally. And so I really am so thankful to Scott that he allowed me to have this chance to keep leading the group into the future.
Brad Burrow (28:23):
That’s awesome. What’d you guys do in Covid? I mean, that was tough for everybody
Nick Giuliani (28:28):
Stood in the creative planning parking lot six feet away from each other. Oh,
Brad Burrow (28:33):
Is that right?
Nick Giuliani (28:33):
We didn’t do as many events, but we did a few here and there. But we tried to respect everyone’s if they didn’t feel comfortable. I think I would say by mid 21, we were back at a not as frequent of a cadence, but by 22 it was basically back to normal.
Brad Burrow (28:51):
It was a challenging time for everybody, obviously very. But we did a lot of remote events, actually remote editing. I sent my whole staff home and we went out and bought huge hard drives so they could all take their footage home and worked from home
Nick Giuliani (29:11):
Crazy. It was a crazy
Brad Burrow (29:12):
Thing. So I would be the only one up here. Well, my son
Nick Giuliani (29:14):
Actually,
Brad Burrow (29:15):
The guy that was pitching, they got shut down his first season. They shut down 10 games into the season and he never went back there. Ended up coming to Avila after that. Crazy.
Nick Giuliani (29:29):
Yeah, I couldn’t imagine going through that. I mean, there’s still kids that this is the last year still the Covid
Brad Burrow (29:34):
Have been in college for 14 years. It feels like he had two years of eligibility left and he just didn’t want to play anymore at that level.
Nick Giuliani (29:43):
Easy to burn out for
Brad Burrow (29:44):
Sure. Yeah, it’s a hard work. So one of the things I wrote down, I wanted to talk to you about sales, and I can give you a little bit a background for us. We’re a digital media company. It used to be back in the early days that you would have a staff of salespeople, they’d make cold calls, we’d do brochures, we’d do a lot of videos, we’d send out videos, things like that, videotapes, whatever those things are. But today, sales is changing completely. Much. So ZoomInfo for example, I don’t know if you’re familiar
Nick Giuliani (30:28):
With ZoomInfo,
Brad Burrow (30:30):
We have that and it’s really expensive, but it is amazing how much information we can find. So now I know when somebody’s going to my website, I don’t know who the person is, but I know a company has been there. I have an automated email system that goes out to somebody, Hey, thanks for checking us out. The way we sell sale, the way we sell now is completely different than ever you being in sales. What are your thoughts on that?
Nick Giuliani (31:04):
So very familiar. ZoomInfo used it for my previous two companies, so almost 10 years using it. I actually switched to Apollo.
Brad Burrow (31:12):
Really?
Nick Giuliani (31:12):
Yeah, because it’s a contact tool.
Brad Burrow (31:15):
Anybody from Apollo listening to this right now?
Nick Giuliani (31:17):
Yeah, exactly. Free. So yeah, it’s a ZoomInfo database thing, but it’s also an outreach tool. So I can build sequences and it has a gong like recorder. So it shows up to meetings and records and transcribes everything that happens in it. So it’s kind of a combination of a lot of different systems. And for a startup, you got to be a little more efficient in some of that tech stack type stuff. The landscape of sales right now is very unique because the buyer has never been more educated
(31:47):
Ever.
(31:49):
Let’s say when you first started in 1997, you might not even have had a website for them to come and check out. You had to cold call ’em to bring that awareness. But now websites and podcasts and articles and everything that you can think of, they can do all that research on you.
(32:05):
So they’re coming to you if they’re interested, a lot more ready to buy than if you’re just cold calling them. So I think there’s definitely much more combination between marketing and sales has to work together. I think another piece that a lot of companies will start to hit on too is like business development. Used to be you hire a bunch of BDRs, you have a bunch of account executives, and you just let them go. Predictable revenue, old Salesforce model, that was a big book that drove the early 2000 tens. Now the shift has to get to finding partnerships. And what I mean by partnerships is instead of just cold calling for me, I can’t cold call a bank. They’re not calling me back. I’m not cold emailing a bank. So I have to find partners who are selling into that bank with no overlap in our offerings, but we’re both going up to the same targets.
(32:53):
We’re both trying to get net new revenue, but offerings are complimentary to each other. So you can set up those kind of referral partnerships to drive business development. Instead of picking up the phone 400 times, having two conversations and having an open rate of 10% on your cold emails, you’re trying to get more of those warm introductions to people who have those relationships. And I think that is going to be the biggest shift, especially in tech sales going forward, is that there’s going to be much more partnership driving business development and less of that just pure cold calling, cold email. And even the LinkedIn, just the cold messages, they’re not working anymore.
Brad Burrow (33:29):
No.
Nick Giuliani (33:30):
The success rate, did
Brad Burrow (33:31):
It ever work
Nick Giuliani (33:31):
Version rate? Well, yeah, it didn’t. And there’s no way to combat any of it because you can’t market as junk. It’s very different on LinkedIn. So that low conversion rate is causing a lot of people to think differently on how do we drive net new top funnel revenue? And then once we get ’em in there, you have to take a consultive approach. You have to listen and listen and listen and listen and really understand what are the needs and challenges and pains of this person, and does what I do even solve that? It might not, but you have to really take that kind of consultive approach. Once they do get into your funnel, understand everything about them, you need to really understand their business more than they do because you have to drive that. Can I actually help you and solve your pains and
Brad Burrow (34:17):
Challenges? One of the things that I’m looking at, a lot more keywords, pay-per-click. Even things like Google My business, if you’re not paying attention to some of the new things that are happening out there, and that’s not really new, but when people are finding you on search or they’re a map or whatever it is, you can’t not pay attention to any of those things. And I think that most small business owners don’t know anything about, I don’t say don’t know anything, but they’re just not like me. I know how to make videos, I know how to make content, but I’ve had to learn pay-per-click, had to learn SEO, I’ve built our website myself, but now I’ve got somebody going through it and fixing all the stuff that I didn’t know how to do, that kind of thing. And I just think that in sales you have to be more than just a cold calling salesperson, B2B world
Nick Giuliani (35:22):
Very much.
Brad Burrow (35:23):
That’s not going to work anymore. No. And do you think employers are really understanding that?
Nick Giuliani (35:30):
So it can work. There are systems out there that are allowing more conversations, but it has to be a part of your approach. So cold emailing, cold calling cold, LinkedIn partnerships, marketing, it all has to work together. And so I don’t think that it’s not going to work. It just has to be strategic. And like you talked about under really understanding, I think your ideal client too, understanding what they’re looking for, why I’m calling you, because I literally work with seven companies identical to you. These were some of the things they were struggling with. If you are, there is still a world where cold calling works, as long as you’re being strategic, you’re researching, you’re understanding, you’re calling people that do fit what you offer, but the spray and pray, just dump everyone in that you hope could be a client and just calling through and emailing them is not going to work. It’s that kind of strategic outreach coupled with partnerships, marketing, all the different things that you kind of talked about.
Brad Burrow (36:27):
Yeah, I find a lot of people, not to get into our side of it too much, but I think a lot of people on the content side are kind of the spray and pray type of approach. And what I like to do is talk about strategy. It’s like, okay, you have a specific target that you’re going after with specific messaging. We know based on who that target audience is, how we need to say that message in a way they’re going to respond to it. And I don’t think a lot of people on our industry really even pay that much attention to those details. But the strategy is a big, big part of it. Huge. So are you guys, I mean, do you spend time on SEO and stuff like that and and all this stuff in your new business? I know it’s more of a startup. I
Nick Giuliani (37:16):
Do that. Yes. Our CEO does.
Brad Burrow (37:18):
So
Nick Giuliani (37:19):
Her whole background is data and marketing, so she kind of focuses more on that. And some of the partnerships stuff, I’m more focused on the direct sales and net new partnerships and things like that.
Brad Burrow (37:30):
Now are partners open to that message? I mean, when you go to ’em and say, Hey, we’d like to partner with you to reach this bank, or that would seem kind of a hard sell to me.
Nick Giuliani (37:40):
It’s sometimes a little bit more of a foreign concept.
(37:43):
I was on a call with somebody the other day and they were like, you keep using this term referral partner. What does that mean? It’s becoming more common. But a lot of people think about partnerships like Pepsi and the Fiesta Bowl partnering up, and it’s like, oh, Pepsi is the official sponsor of whatever. That is part of partnerships in the tech space. There are so many clients within a defined ideal client profile. So if I have 1200 people, I’m going after, again, I’m not going to be able to pick up the phone and call them. So it’s what are the other people that are going after those same people? And it’s a reciprocal thing. I want to also refer my clients to them because this is an offering that’s going to help them in another area. So it builds more trust in me that I’m trying to help solve other challenges that I can’t do Now I’m making the introduction to somebody else who can help solve that challenge. You’re helping that client continue to grow and evolve. So I think it’s from a coal perspective, sometimes people are like, well, what are you talking? I don’t understand. And then once you get into it, it’s a lot more appealing because it also helps with their business development and their sales because they’re getting warm introductions, warm leads. And that’s really, it has to be reciprocal though. It has to be that it can’t be a one-sided lead generation. Just send me all your clients. That doesn’t work. It needs to be a reciprocal back and forth
Brad Burrow (39:01):
Helping each other. Yep. Yeah, that makes sense. That makes sense. Do you have a program that you present in a situation like that? From a salesperson
Nick Giuliani (39:11):
Standpoint?
Brad Burrow (39:13):
One of the things about our business has been tough. It’s not easy to go into a meeting and sell the upside of creating content. Everybody knows they need it, but getting somebody excited about how we’re going to do it is a certain level of skill. And a lot of salespeople that I’ve had in the past have wanted me to just give them, here’s what you say, here’s what you do, and you’re going to get deals. And it’s not really like that for us.
Nick Giuliani (39:40):
It’s not, no, I don’t think that sales in general is going to, there are still some industries where you can just follow a script and it’s going to be successful. But I think there’s a misconception that extroverts, and if you’re familiar with disc profile, the high eyes, those are our best salespeople.
(39:59):
Ironically, there’s actually statistics out there that talk about introverts. They’re better listeners. And so I think that that shift to the consultive sales approach, it’s all about listening, asking questions, and truly understanding the need of that. And so I think in the partnership world, we don’t have something like official, official, it’s going to be different. Some people, it’s just going to be a handshake type thing where it’s like, you send me people, I send you people. There’s going to be other that it is a reciprocal referral partnership. So you refer somebody over, you get a portion of that revenue. If I refer somebody over, I get a portion of that revenue. So there are more formalized things you can do to kind of incentivize those things. But ultimately, if you have somebody that you have complimentary and you’re going to have the same industry, it just makes sense to kind of help each other.
Brad Burrow (40:44):
You do anything every day to stay on top of what’s happening in sales. I mean, are you reading, what type of stuff are you reading? Where are you finding information?
Nick Giuliani (40:53):
Typically? I have specific thought leaders that I like to follow. The tough part about anything, books, podcasts, LinkedIn. It’s like you have to take in the theory of what they are saying and then translate it to your own. It’s not just blanket advice where I can just take what,
Brad Burrow (41:11):
Go do this and you’re going to be
Nick Giuliani (41:12):
Successful. And that’s the tough part. LinkedIn though, the thought leadership offers a lot of really good foundational stuff. And then you have to take that and figure out, okay, how do I now translate this to what I’m doing? A lot of where I find is I just have a lot of friends in sales and I’m like, what do you think about this? Or what if we try that or is this working for you? And so a lot of that comes from just having that team that I’ve around for so long too.
Brad Burrow (41:34):
What do you think about LinkedIn from a sales standpoint? I mean, to me, I’ve told people this in the past, what an incredible tool. I remember when LinkedIn first came out, I was like, eh, whatever.
Nick Giuliani (41:47):
It’s a job.
Brad Burrow (41:47):
Do it. Search tool. Yeah. But now, I mean, kind of ZoomInfo is a lot, Apollo, whatever, you can dive a lot deeper into organizations and people and stuff. But still, LinkedIn is pretty, it’s a pretty amazing, you can do a search on LinkedIn and find every marketing director in Kansas City, for example. What an incredible tool.
Nick Giuliani (42:11):
Incredible tool. I am hoping it doesn’t shift to every other social media site if you,
Brad Burrow (42:18):
It’s kind of happening, isn’t
Nick Giuliani (42:19):
It? So one thing I’ve noticed more recently is I’ll get onto LinkedIn, suggested posts, add videos, collaborative article. It takes me three or four scrolls just to get to my feet of people that I follow or I’m connected to. And so I do worry a little bit about that piece of it where some of the value of the thought leadership or connections or people using it to try to drive value is going to get lost a little bit. And some of the promoted ads, the videos that they keep pushing. So it is an incredibly powerful tool, and I think it’s a way to bring awareness to your ideal client profile better than any other social media out there.
Brad Burrow (42:59):
Yeah, I would agree with that. Even we’ve thought about doing ads on there and stuff. They’re really expensive. It’s not cheap, but it is something that you look at daily and that’s power when you think about that. We’re doing podcasts a lot more now, and we’re actually putting shorts on TikTok, and our TikTok numbers are amazing. And we’re not promoting anything. We’re just putting it out there. And we have one, I think one of our shorts we just recently did. I’m doing a podcast with a guy, it’s called Digital Disruptors, and it’s talking about all the things that small business owners don’t know about digital marketing and 1800 views just threw it up there. 1800 views just like that. Pretty amazing. It’s powerful. And I don’t know that you can do that on LinkedIn or maybe the algorithms don’t work the same or something like that, but it feels like LinkedIn is a place every business owner or every business person should be.
Nick Giuliani (44:06):
Yeah. Oh, the ever-changing LinkedIn algorithm, honestly, the best way to combat it is just consistently post it doesn’t matter. Don’t worry about your impressions or your likes just consistently post. Well,
Brad Burrow (44:18):
You’re doing well.
Nick Giuliani (44:20):
What’s funny though is now that I stopped with the shoutout series for a little bit, I don’t have as many posts because truly I don’t find a lot of joy in some of that thought leadership. I don’t mind writing some stuff. But really when it comes to content creation, I do want it to be about others or promoting different events or nonprofits or whatever. I find a lot more joy kind of zigging where everyone else kind of zags when it comes to just content creation. So actually now that I’ve taken this break, I’m like, I’m ready to get back to the series and kind of showing the greatness of Kansas City instead of just some of the stuff I’ve been talking about in the last couple of weeks.
Brad Burrow (44:56):
It’d be really cool to understand is taking a couple weeks off, how has that affected your ability to show up in feeds and things like that?
Nick Giuliani (45:06):
I think it does.
Brad Burrow (45:07):
It’d be nice to know that, wouldn’t it? Yeah.
Nick Giuliani (45:09):
Yeah. The analytics aren’t the best on the backend for LinkedIn, but
Brad Burrow (45:14):
Alright. So that’s a really good transition to giving back. Obviously that’s a part of your DNA very much. That’s very, very clear. So let’s talk about a couple things I wrote down as Casey can tell me about that.
Nick Giuliani (45:26):
Yeah, so Kansas City Children’s Assistant Network, it was founded in 1999 with the goal to take in grants from other nonprofits. And then we give and fulfill those grants through the fundraising that we do throughout the year. So every year we throw an auction in October, all the money raised for that will go to the following year grants. And then end of March to end of April, we have a grant window where we’re taking in different grants from nonprofits.
(45:54):
Oh wow.
(45:54):
So within the board, there’s over 36 all volunteer, no employees. So all of the work comes from the board members. So we have a grants committee who’s taking in those grants, they’re evaluating them and they’re picking their top 10. And then in June we host an event called Giving Day. And on Giving Day, the nonprofit executive directors or an employee comes and presents their grant Shark Tank style to us. We decide that day if we’re going to fulfill their grant, a hundred percent, 75, 50, whatever, and then we announce the amount that they’re getting at that event. And there is no more pure joy in the world than watching the look on someone’s face when you’re like, we’re going to give you $20,000 just to see that. So I’ve been on the board, I started in 22, so this is finishing up my third year and the Giving day is one of my favorite days of the year. I actually had the Committee for Giving Day, so I do all the planning to get it my favorite. Being able to see those reactions to the grants and the impact that it then has going forward. It’s pretty incredible. And we just had a record year in our auction raising, so I don’t know the final number. I’ll find out Friday, but it’ll be a lot more than we have done in previous
Brad Burrow (47:07):
Years. So give me a typical range.
Nick Giuliani (47:09):
So 1 21 40 was a previous, I think we’re over 200. So it’ll be the first time in Casey Can History that we’ll be able to give out over $200,000 in next year’s grant window. And that could be instead of nine, we might end up having 12 finalists. Or we can do bigger grants if we want to stick to it.
Brad Burrow (47:28):
Same amount but bigger. Yeah, sounds like a documentary in there. Man.
Nick Giuliani (47:33):
It’s an amazing board of, again, of course
Brad Burrow (47:35):
Came
Nick Giuliani (47:35):
Through Scott Havens. He reached out and was like, do you want to join the board? And I was like, what is it? And he told me, I’m like, I’m in. Don’t even tell me anything else. I’m like, I am in. And that exposure, I mean, I would say in the three years we’ve done 20% of, I’ve recognized who the nonprofits were beforehand, and so it’s given me a chance to really understand how deep the nonprofit community is. There are 10,000 of them in Kansas City.
Brad Burrow (47:57):
Yeah, isn’t that amazing?
Nick Giuliani (47:58):
It’s a lot for a 2 million population
Brad Burrow (48:01):
In Metro. They’re all allowed raising money and trying to make it.
Nick Giuliani (48:03):
And it was because of that, why I did the nonprofit, because every executive director I met, it was Money is First, but Awareness was second. And I was like, huh, well there’s a new series. And so that’s kind of where the nonprofit piece of the Shout out series started was to help drive some of that awareness, whether it was just of them or an event coming up or some of the other raising I’ve done for other organizations like Band of Angels or Newhouse or whatever. So
Brad Burrow (48:30):
Yeah, I saw Newhouse on your LinkedIn page as well.
Nick Giuliani (48:34):
Yeah, so I’ve raised,
Brad Burrow (48:35):
What’s the director’s name of Newhouse? It’s
Nick Giuliani (48:37):
Courtney.
Brad Burrow (48:37):
Courtney,
Nick Giuliani (48:38):
Yeah. So yeah, I’ve started with Band of Angels with their art that blows. I raised money for them in July of 22. Then I went to most Wanted and raised money for Big Brothers Big Sisters, and then generated an Income for Tomorrow, which is an amazing nonprofit. And then Newhouse was the last one that I did
Brad Burrow (48:55):
So most wanted, I see all the people on LinkedIn saying, Hey, can you help me raise some money?
Nick Giuliani (49:01):
It’s intense.
Brad Burrow (49:02):
That seems a little, I mean, I’m like, I don’t know if I want to be picked on. Most Wanted.
Nick Giuliani (49:07):
It is definitely an intense couple of months. But the impact and why I ended up joining my other board, which is part of Big Brothers Big Sisters, the thrift operations board is the impact that that money directly has back into the big program and just what they do. It’s amazing. So it is a big lift. It can be a little bit stressful as you’re putting together your live package and trying to get silent auction. But the team at Big Brothers Big Sisters is so supportive. They let you tap into previous honorees to help and to
Brad Burrow (49:38):
Raise money.
Nick Giuliani (49:39):
Yeah. So do
Brad Burrow (49:41):
They give you a goal? I mean, you have a number you’re trying to hit. You
Nick Giuliani (49:43):
Do. Yeah. Yeah. They give you the goal and then you do everything you can in your power. So you get credit for tables, your live auction that happens that evening, any silent auctions that you do, and then donations that just come in through the whatever. It’s three months.
Brad Burrow (49:59):
So talk about Big Brothers Big Sisters. That’s an awesome group as
Nick Giuliani (50:03):
Well. Yes.
Brad Burrow (50:05):
Are you on the board there or
Nick Giuliani (50:06):
Something? So the Thrift Operations board is one of five boards that Big Brothers Big Sisters have. And so what it is, it actually technically is a business board associated with the Big Brothers Big Sisters. So Big Brother says a partnership with Savers. So if you were going to find a bunch of clothes in your closet, you don’t wear anymore. If you drop off six bags of clothes to Savers, a portion of that money would back to Big Brothers Big Sisters. So the thrift board is responsible for donation bin locations, trying to set up clothing drives, lunch and learns. We’re trying to drive awareness of the fact that this saver’s kind of Big Brothers partnership. And so it’s about, it’s over seven figures of money that goes back into the Big Brothers Big Sisters budget line to help continue to drive their mission forward. And the COO Erica and the team that is a part of the thrift board at Big Brothers is incredible. And Michael obviously is very involved in it too. But it is been my first year and I’m, I’ve been thrilled to be a part of it and keep driving the mission forward for Big Brothers
Brad Burrow (51:08):
And the need, talking about high level stuff here, but as you get down to the feet on the ground kind of need that they’re meeting, that to me is,
Nick Giuliani (51:19):
And there’s always bigs needed. So if anybody out there listening is always thought about wanting to be a big, you can reach out to me and I’m happy to make those introductions. They’re always looking for good bigs to partner because the wait list for littles is just always going to be longer than the amount of bigs
Brad Burrow (51:33):
That are. Is it big?
Nick Giuliani (51:34):
It’s probably over a hundred I would say at this point.
Brad Burrow (51:36):
Is that right? Tell me what a big does. Give us a quick
Nick Giuliani (51:40):
Explanation. So the big is assigned a little, it’s very rigorous selection process, interview process before you get paired. And then really it’s just about spending time with that little, the bigs that I’ve known. Sometimes they take ’em to the movies or they go to a Royals game or they’re like, what is something you’ve never done? Well, I’ve never got to go to Worlds of Fun. Let’s go to Worlds of Fun. So usually it’s three to four times a month you spend time with them doing whatever they want to do. Or they might have a list of, these are the 20 things I want to do. But I mean, there’s relationships that are 9, 10, 15, 20, 25 years long. You really do become a part of that littles family, and you kind of watch them grow through adolescence to teenage, to high school, to college. So the stories, I mean, it just, it’s impossible that they’re not start crying because you just hear the impact that the little has had. And the big really too, it’s not just the little that gets that impact the big, it’s a lot out of it too. Maybe
Brad Burrow (52:34):
More than the
Nick Giuliani (52:35):
Little it might be. Yeah.
Brad Burrow (52:37):
Alright, well, we’re getting pretty close to wrapping up here. The one thing I wanted to ask you just, well, we didn’t talk about Cypher too. Let’s do that. And then I have kind of a final thing. I want to get some advice from you, but tell me about Cypher.
Nick Giuliani (52:52):
Yeah, Cypher. So yeah, joined three months ago as their head of sales. Cypher has a big mission to try and help capital deployment for additional small businesses and entrepreneurs are looking to get loans from different type of organizations. So
Brad Burrow (53:08):
If I needed capital, I could reach out to you guys.
Nick Giuliani (53:10):
So we actually are going after the financial institutions themselves. So those would be our clients. They would use our loan origination on onboarding software to allow the borrower to do all the work that they need to do on the front end to apply for that loan. And then on the back end, we’re giving them all the information they could possibly want to make that decision if they should approve or deny. But we’re also providing tools to that institution and the borrower to say, if they’re loan ready, if they’re not loan ready, well what are the areas in which they could improve? Or how are they scored and what could they do to keep getting better? And so ultimately we’re trying to give the institutions the centralized tool to make those decisions quicker, get more capital deployed. And we do focus on mission-driven organizations. So like A-C-D-F-I, which is a community development financial institution, a lot of the times they’re nonprofits, they’re serving underrepresented communities. And so we want to be able to help them deploy more capital out, but ultimately we want to make sure the institution’s also protected as they’re giving out loans and deploying those funds.
Brad Burrow (54:08):
So where did the IDF for an organization like that come from?
Nick Giuliani (54:11):
So one of our co-founders, Janae ga, she had sold her previous business and was working for the SBDC as a consultant and then started working with the chamber on their access to capital. And they were trying to find a software that could handle the onboarding and origination piece so that they could deploy this capital.
Brad Burrow (54:28):
There’s a hole right here that we can fill.
Nick Giuliani (54:30):
Exactly.
Brad Burrow (54:31):
Yeah.
Nick Giuliani (54:31):
And so after about a year, her and her co-founder, who she came from Citigroup and literally built the risk model for Citigroup.
Brad Burrow (54:38):
No kidding.
Nick Giuliani (54:38):
They came together and they started trying to figure out where are the biggest hangups in this origination onboarding process? What is stopping money from going out? And that’s where they built Cypher. And so the offering that we have now is our initial offering. And then they’re building even more stuff on the back end to continue to try to drive that kind of financial tech ecosystem that they’re looking for.
Brad Burrow (54:59):
So that’s where the partnership idea comes from, is you talk to somebody who’s already working with the bank, Hey, I know these guys. They have this incredible tool. So that’s probably fairly easy to sell.
Nick Giuliani (55:12):
Yeah, it’s warmer and nothing’s easy. Definitely help. But there’s all kinds of different partners. We have partnerships with really big banks who support CDFIs. We have partnerships with other tech companies that are selling to CDFIs, CDFI consultants. So there’s a long list of different types of partners that we can find to kind of help us really go to market and get our demos and everything in front of these institutions. Fairly new, a couple of years
Brad Burrow (55:37):
Old. Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. Alright, the last thing I wanted to ask you. So there are a lot of people that are coming into the market right now job wise, don’t understand the impact of social media, networking, working. I mean, you’re very, very good at that. What advice would you give to somebody maybe coming into the market, maybe just graduated from college and is a year into their career? What would you tell ’em?
Nick Giuliani (56:07):
Find a mentor and I would also just work or a sales plan. Networking can get really overwhelming and it can get really time consuming if you don’t have an actual goal in mind. And so if I say I want to have three a week with somebody new every week for a year, I would task ’em with saying, what am I trying to get? Am I trying to build my network bigger? Or am I trying to get more high quality people? Am I doing this for work? Am I doing this for personal relationships? Am I doing it for professional development? So really understanding what am I ultimately trying to get out of the networking I’m doing? And then kind of build a plan backwards and then kind of set those goals. I want to have coffee with two new people a week, but I want them to be in my industry,
(56:55):
One with a person that I’m trying to get to where they are. And another person that could be my client or whatever it might be. If you just start setting coffees and meeting people, you’re going to look back in a year and be like, well, I met a lot of people, but I’ve never met ’em a second time. I don’t know if I’ve ever talked to ’em again. And I kind of feel like I’m just lost here. But if you can take a step back and figure out what am I ultimately trying to accomplish? And then kind of work back on how to easily get to that
Brad Burrow (57:19):
Point, what would be a typical goal that you think would be a good goal for somebody coming out of college? Tough question now.
Nick Giuliani (57:26):
So I think to split it into two buckets, kind of like I just said a second ago, find somebody who, if I had a career path that I’m trying to get on, who is that person? And I want to meet that person and hopefully be able to find them to be my mentor or someone like if I really want to be involved, how did you get here? And then the other would be within the industry that you’re working in. So whether that be other professionals that are doing it, potential clients, potential partners. And really you do want to tie it back to business. Not every networking has to be business related, but always leading with what can you give? What can I give first? Always look to give, give before asking for something
Brad Burrow (58:04):
That’s Zig Ziglar 1 0 1 right there.
Nick Giuliani (58:07):
Yeah.
Brad Burrow (58:07):
Yeah. That’s awesome. Well, I really, nick, I thank you for coming on. One last thing. Okay. I dunno if you’ve listened to any of our podcasts, but we have to have you do the movie voice at the end.
Nick Giuliani (58:19):
Okay.
Brad Burrow (58:20):
So you have to get really close to the mic and say in a world like that. Okay. Okay. So just what I’d like you to do is say in a world with real media, but give me your best movie voice.
Nick Giuliani (58:31):
Okay. What am I supposed to say? In a world with real
Brad Burrow (58:35):
Media,
Nick Giuliani (58:37):
In a world with real media.
Brad Burrow (58:41):
Awesome. Awesome. Well, thanks again for joining us. I really appreciate it. Thank you. It’s been great to meet you. Feel free to join us for all of our podcast episodes, but subscribe, share, do all the fun stuff. Let’s get the word out and we look forward to seeing you next time. Thanks, Nick.
Nick Giuliani (58:59):
Thank you so much. Appreciate
Brad Burrow (59:00):
It. This has been in a World with Real Media. Thanks for joining us. And be sure to subscribe on iTunes and follow real media on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. So you never miss an Episode.