Welcome to Elevate with Elsner. Join us for inspiring conversations with individuals who have transformed their lives and are making a difference through the work that they do. And now, Welcome back to another episode of Elevate with Elsner, where passion meets purpose and stories meet strategy. Today, I'm sitting down with someone who's helped countless entrepreneurs shape how the world uses technology to communicate and to connect. Dean Curtis, the CEO of Ingage, from his time at Apple, helping drive iPhone and iPad adoption across the United States, all the way into the Fortune 500, to now leading a company, redefining how teams sell and tell their stories. Dean's career had lived at the intersection of innovation, leadership, and impact. So if you ever wondered how tech can Elevate not just business, but trust, culture, and connection, this one's for you. Dean, thanks for joining me. How's it going, my man? I'm doing great. Thanks so much for having me. I appreciate it. Absolutely. So I was kind of talking to you off camera. I wanted to kind of jump into your early side of the career things and kind of the Apple era. I guess take us back, you know, Apple, Fortune 500, the rollout of the iPhone, the iPad. And what did that like whole moment in history feel like from the inside? And you can introduce yourself as well, but go ahead and kind of jump into that, because that I know is. Yeah, sure. the Yeah, it's interesting because when I went to Apple, I was in I've been in tech for a large amount of time, right? I've been in a dozen years or so. And my first job actually was as a classroom teacher. And I always wanted to work for Apple because we had tons of Apple tech in our in our building. And I took a bit of a circuitous route to get there by going to some other tech companies beforehand. But it was 2007 when the iPhone launched, and I was actually working at a company called Palm. I don't know how many people remember Palm and the Palm Pilot and the Palm Trio. And in 2008, they hired a business team because so many people on the original launch of the iPhone really wanted to use it in business, but it wasn't ready, technically, in order to use it in business. Didn't have the same security as the The technology of the day was the BlackBerry. Everybody had a BlackBerry in their pocket. It was well trusted by IT departments. And they brought me in with a bunch of other people to build a business focus team for the iPhone. And what's really interesting is when you are at the tip of something, you don't realize that you're in the middle of it. So sure, you realize you're at a big company, Apple, you're doing this thing with the iPhone, but what we didn't realize at the time was how quickly we could actually overtake an incumbent like BlackBerry. And we had long-term goals of multiple years. And within a year and a half, we had done a really good job of gaining momentum within the enterprise space and in the Fortune 500 to make That's pretty neat sound. Now going back when you said Palm pilot that like really through a whole like wrench into my mind because I'm like, oh my gosh, I used to take up, you know, the Palm pilot from my uncle or my dad and I'm sitting there. I think I would play like snake on it. Like I don't even, you know, with the little stylist, right? Yeah, I mean that, that was right, you know, after the beeper, I guess, you know, during the beeper, right? So what, what, what did that, did that like spark The thing people forget is in the late 90s, mobile computing in general was a new phenomenon. Laptops were becoming more available to average people. The idea of being mobile and doing anything with technology, the cell phone was, the T9 text messaging was something that was becoming real. But mobile computing in general was not something until the late 90s, early 2000s, that was even something that was mainstream. If you had a tablet computer in your business, It was a rare thing, right? And there were multiple companies, Fujitsu, Microsoft, et cetera, who had come out with tablets, but it really wasn't widely adopted. But mobile computing in Palm, I think, was instrumental in changing the accessibility of mobile computers. Apple obviously was as well with laptops. But the idea of a personal digital assistant, a PDA, which is what a Palm Pilot was, a disconnected device opened up a market that we all take for granted today. I mean, everybody has a supercomputer in their pocket today. Back then you had contacts in your calendar, but only if you connected it to a cable and synced it with your desktop computer before you went. I mean, it's crazy. So now we And that and going back to like the whole mobile computing that now I think about like AI in a way, like, I mean, I don't want to say it was a form of AI at all, but in a way, like you're saying, like you had this little handheld admin, you know, like admin with you. And then, you know, you have an iPhone that becomes even more of an admin. Right. And now here we are in a whole, you know, AI, AI, AI world. But no, that's, it's really interesting to me that, you know, all those connect like that. And from like, did Oh, of course. Yeah. I mean, I remember getting my first Palm Pilot when I worked at Oracle and I was, I was, I've always been a technology person. I've always been an early adopter of technology. I think I had the first disc. portable CD player that skipped all the time because I was like, I have to be on the forefront of what's going on with mobile. It was just who I was. I remember getting my first PalmPilot and I wanted to learn the little alphabet that was required in order to do text entry into the PalmPilot. I literally brought up my paper address book and I hand wrote every single person into my PalmPilot rather than connecting it to my computer and synchronizing it over. Because I had that desire to learn the text input of a palm pilot. I don't know. I'm a nerd at heart. What can Wow, that's interesting. No, that obviously, as much as like it's old school, it's definitely helped, I'm sure, with technology. And I think about Oracle, a perfect example. I'm no finance expert. I'm sure you're not a finance expert either, so we can all put that to the side, right? But Oracle is one of those companies that is in the whole AI cloud computing space, and I've watched their stock. I was high on it last year because I think out of all companies, obviously Google has been dipping into AI. They're just not telling a lot of people. Oracle, in my opinion, is light years ahead of a lot of people. I don't know if that's your same opinion. Do I'm going to go back to your point earlier about AI and its comparison to something like mobile computing. Oracle is going to be at the forefront. Oracle is one of the most powerful back-end systems that most average people would never understand how complex and how powerful it actually is. But yeah, Oracle has a huge role to play in the AI world. Google has a huge role to play. Apple has a huge role to play. Microsoft. What's interesting though is if you compare it to mobile computing, you compare it to the iPhone, there were a group of people, and there will always be, in my opinion, in technology, when a new technology comes out, that there's a level of fear that's just ridiculous, and there's no reason for it. They're afraid of it replacing them, they're afraid of it being, More importantly, not secure enough for what they do. We had this back in the Palm Pilot days, back in the introduction of mobile community. Well, what happens if I lose it? What happens if you didn't have it and you weren't 10 times more productive? There's always been fear with technology. How many people, when email first came, said, I'm never going to do that? Or when the web came, I'm never going to put a credit card in there to buy something. Now they have seven packages a day showing up at their house from Amazon. So it's like any new technology. AI is new. People are going to have a level of fear. But I will tell you, the people who adopt it earliest and learn and maybe fail along the way will reap the most benefit from it, no matter what industry you're doing. And the same thing was true with mobile computing as it is with AI. The people who adopted it early and learned and failed quickly and learned and failed and learned and failed and learn, they consistently got better. And before you knew it, they were using mobile in That that is true. I mean, I I look back on when I was younger and my uncle worked for WorldCom for that all blew up and he was the first one that I knew had a Palm Pilot. You know, they were way well ahead of the technology train until all the books blew up and all that went to. you know, shit in a way. So, you know, I think about back then, like he's no longer with us, but like thinking about people that had like yourself that had that early access, like you're saying, you're just continuing to put yourself in front of the eight ball every, you know, every new advancement of the I think it's important in any business to stay ahead of the tech curve or at least at the front of it. I'm glad there's people who want to stand towards the back of the line in adopting technology because it allows those of us who want to stand at the front and take our lumps and really understand what works and what doesn't work. It's not all going to be roses. You're going to make mistakes along the way. But man, what an opportunity to have the first mover advantage in technology if you're just simply not afraid to try. Super It's just like, yeah, it's just like recording, picking up your phone and getting on a podcast, right? If you don't, don't just pick up your phone, you know, and try like, yeah, it's not, it's not going to feel right. It's going to feel uncomfortable. And I think you're right. That's a lot of, you know, and I think also one thing I always talked about with AI is like the common myth of. You don't have to have a business to use AI like there's so many things in your life that where you buy back your time or learn or et cetera. I joked that I was sitting at dinner one time and I had three bottles of wine to choose from. I have no idea about wine. Took a picture with a chat GBT. I'm like, Oh, what's this taste? What's this price? Tells you in a second, like you become a wine expert in a matter of 30 seconds, right? Stuff like that. I feel like, you know, you can become a lot smarter in a way, but not to get off on an AI tangent, but that, you know, in the tech world, that obviously is, is pretty much the top headline. So what's going on inside? Uh, I guess you would say your world right now. Um, about what you're doing inside the tech world to, um, with engage, like to basically, you know, advanced people's own, um, tech knowledge. I know, I know I like to call it tech Yeah. I mean, what's interesting, the. In the tech world, when you have a problem, or in the business world, let me say it differently. In the business world, when you have a problem, you go searching for an answer. Sometimes that answer is just more knowledge. Sometimes that answer can be a piece of technology that can improve what you do within your business. If you look at the basics, most companies out there employ, I say employ, a CRM to track their customers. Very simple. It's a problem to know who are my customers, what have they bought for me, when's the last time I talked to them, all of that. So I always look at any piece of technology in business as doing a job for you that you can't do on your own. Right. So if you're a real estate agent, like you are, there are certain pieces of technology that help you be super Blake, because Blake alone would not be able to do and keep track of and manage because without the technology or you could, but you wouldn't be nearly as good with it. Right. You mentioned the word buy back your time. What can i buy in order to have a rate of return where my time is way more valuable spent doing the things that are most critical that i'm an expert that i'm genius at. And what we try to do in our business is we help people with their sales conversations so. Typically, customers who are using our platform are sitting at a kitchen table or one-on-one or one to very few with a prospect selling something extremely complicated, that has a high value, where there's a great deal of education for them to understand. So if you think about the home buying process is a perfect example of that, right? When you go to sell and validate this for me, maybe I'm wrong, but like when you go to sell somebody or when somebody is going to sell their home, most of the time they don't have any idea what they're really into. in terms of getting it ready for sale, dealing with prospective buyers, going through the inspection process, et cetera. Am I right or wrong on that? Yeah, spot on. Right? So in our world, we focus on the home improvement industry. And we didn't choose it. It kind of chose us. When you're building SaaS software, this idea of product market fit, we had a few customers come in. And before we knew it, we were like, wow, this is a really good market. We should go focus on it. because if you're going to buy a new roof or you're going to buy new siding or gutters, you don't buy those every day. It's not like you're going to the store and buying chicken. Like everybody knows the kind of chicken they want because it's the one that they bought before. But if you're buying a roof, you don't understand the idea of decking and underlayment and soffit protection and ridge vents and like all this stuff. So what we do is we enable those sales teams to be amazing and confident in presenting all the things that go into buying and selling a roof so that the person they're talking to really understands and trust that person at the kitchen table to really get the job done for them in I like that because yeah, you know, if somebody just walked up and said, Hey, we're going to put a new roof on for you and not, you know, explained, Hey, like you're saying, like, Hey, we might need to replace some boards. If we're up there, if there's some rotten boards, you know, certain, like you're saying, underlay flu caps, different, all that, all that stuff. I'm sure if you go in and you go, Hey, this is all this stuff we're doing. Sounds a lot better. As you know, I'm sure people like to be educated. They don't like to be sold. That's one of my favorite things to say. And I'm sure if you keep educating and educating like you're doing with these sales teams, then the odds of landing that sale are just excruciatingly higher. When you think about it, and I talked earlier about the fact that it's a high value item. If I'm going to spend $3 on something, how much time am I going to spend thinking about it? Probably a lot less than I'm going to spend $30,000 on it. And a new roof costs tens of thousands of dollars. You need to build trust, you need to build rapport, you need to make sure the person that you are selling that roof to or whatever the home improvement project is, these are the places we live. We don't want rain coming down on our heads in the middle of the night. We don't want our kitchen or our bathroom to be gross and ugly. We want to have beautiful things and we're going to spend a lot of money on it. I need that comfort that you are the person that's going to solve this. What's one of the most, I don't want to say disrespect is probably the wrong word, but one of the most untrusted industries around. Contractors, I mean, ask any of your friends if they've had a good or bad experience with a contractor, and I bet you someone's had a bad experience. So a lot of times, the people we work with are coming in on the heels of a bad experience for someone else. And they need to make sure that they can build that trust and build that bond with the prospect so that they trust that they're actually going to get the work done in Yeah, that's so true. And I joke, like I've had to. not in a way train our vendors, but we have vendors that we trust and I can call them within, you know, 20 minutes most of the time, get somewhere out there in about 10 minutes to whether it's plumbing, sewer, but it's, that takes years and years. And those people are, you know, like you say, they're actual individuals that train at their craft and they educate. And then, so when I send one person over there, I know that, hey, he's gonna say, We need to do X, Y, and Z. And if he can't, he's going to say, hey, Blake, I can't do that. Right. And then but he's going to have somebody else for you that can do it. And then that next person will come over and do the same explaining. So I, I think. the way you keep a well-oiled machine is by doing what you're doing and training these sales. Just like roofers, I think that's a major, major part. Not just actually roofers, but like you're saying, homes are lighting. I'm sure you do like Christmas. Do you do Christmas light? We have customers in all different spaces. Our whole idea internally is every project, every home. If you have a home and you have a project, our goal is to help support the people who come to your house to educate you and sell the services that they offer so that they can articulate the value of what they're going to bring to you and deliver on that promise. Because there's nothing worse than a promise Yeah. And that goes back to trust. You're, you're spot on about that because, you know, like you're saying, they're not, they're not necessarily buying the product. They're, they're buying you, like, you know, they're buying the experience. Um, and people will pay more money to know that it's going to be done, right. It's going to be done by somebody I trust. Um, because like, I, I see this all the time where, you know, people will pay more money. for some individual to do the same exact job that somebody else was willing to do all because of that individual build trust and you know that it's no different than the brand story of luxury goods why do people pay more for an you know, versus something different. Why do people pay more for a Brooks Brothers suit versus the off-the-rack one at Men's Wearhouse? Nothing wrong with the Men's Wearhouse suit, but they trust the brand because it's Brooks Brothers. Now, maybe a bad example, who buys a suit anymore? But the same idea is that you trust the brand. And these companies, all companies, have a brand. And if you can't trust that brand, you're not going to buy from them. So you're not selling roofing. You're selling the service and the loyalty and the trust and the ability, most importantly, to solve a problem that someone has. We sell software to solve problems for businesses. Roofers sell No leaks. They don't sell a roof. They Yeah. You're selling the, the, the gap between the salesperson and the sale, because that's, that's where everything goes wrong. And you're filling that gap, which is massive because like I said, I see roofers all the time or lawn or landscaping to where they, they, they're good at getting the leads. You know, they can do the job, but in between is where everything gets lost. And I think that's exactly a great spot of where you come in. That's right. So what's the future hold? I know, gosh, this is such a big, big question about tech, but I guess in terms of your, um, you know, envision about where we're going in the future. You know, obviously AI is not going to take people's jobs like everyone thinks. Like, you know, I, I joke, I go back to, uh, you probably remember that's the talking house radio. Do you ever remember that? There was a machine back in the day where you, you could put a for sale sign out in front of somebody's house. You go down to the basement on a little, you know, recorder and you record Hey, three bed, two bath, 1800 square feet, lovely school district. And as you drove by the house, you type the number in and you push the address number. And this was years and There's like a low frequency, just F A M station. Correct, correct, amazing, right? That's it's exactly what it was. Or yeah, yeah, I guess it was the tune to this. It's almost like still to this day at some of these Christmas lights, right? You drive through Christmas lights and they tell you to turn your radio to 94.6 to listen to the the soundtrack, which is so interesting because it reminds me of the whole Palm Pilot and the technology and all the advancement. It's like we've almost kind of forgot that we've come a long way, like you're saying. I Technology will advance. Is that news? It's not news, right? It's not news. Everybody treats it like it's news. It's not news. AI, here's the challenge with AI. It is advancing so quickly that you have to stay current in what's going on or what you do has the ability to be disrupted. End of story. I have four children. We talk all the time about their future. So I have one who's out of college, one who's about to graduate college, and two who are in high school. And I'm most concerned about the two who are in high school and the choices that they make for their post-high school decision. Are they going to go to college? Does that actually make financial sense in the world that they want to go into? Both want to enter business. Part of me thinks, why don't I spend that same amount of money Let's just round figure. Let's say it's a hundred thousand dollars. I wish it was only a hundred thousand dollars to educate somebody these days, but let's say it's a hundred thousand dollars. And we look at that, that spend or that debt that someone's going to go into what's better debt. Starting a business that is future-proof against something like AI or going to college and getting a degree that you don't know four years from now, what that world is going to look like. It's You know, that's spot on. I mean, it really is true because I don't want to say like when I went to school, I studied criminal justice and the whole thing. I'm from St. Louis and the whole world turned crazy. And we had the whole Ferguson riots. And guess what? That changed my whole decision on my after my four years of college. Right. Then to that, I'm like, well, I don't want to. go be a police officer for this amount of money. And I just spent this amount of money in college and that just doesn't add up. And I'm going to try to have a fan. Like, like you're saying, that's a perfect. perfect example, like you have to figure out like what is the best option for you to take this money to go start a business like you probably should. But like our minds, until that mindset shifts, how, you know, till more people get on that boat or take on, you know, becoming plumbers, electricians. Like I tell people all the time, go to trade school. I wish I would've Uh, that's a, there's a massive need for skilled labor, massive need. As we look at our younger two children, the calculus is changing for sure. It's just changing. I think going into these decisions with your eyes wide open, but if you don't understand the technology landscape, you're just going to do what everybody else did and you're going to go and live the life that everyone else has chosen to live. That's where I think you can truly differentiate yourself. whether that is going into the trades, whether it's starting a business, whether it's, hey, one of the, probably the most profitable ways to make money right now is to build a business, helping people put AI in their business. Talk about a meta, right? I now could, I could teach my son in a weekend enough skills that he could go and build a business and make decent money off the, out of the gate, just doing small business services for around AI. What's better, I know, right? That's one of those. I mean, it is a question that just my mind becomes a pretzel because you're, you're, you're right. Like it makes 100%. more sense to start a business. It's tough to think like that because like you said, so many year after year after decade, we've thought so differently. Having a five-year-old and a two-year-old, I guess I'm really in Well, I've changed the question that I ask adolescents. I don't ask the question, are you going to college? I always ask the question, what are your post high school plans? What are your plans for after you graduate? Because A, I don't want to lead them. If they choose something other than college, the college is the only decision that they should be making. Right. If I say, where are you going to college? And they say, no, I don't want to make them feel like less than because they're not going to college because I don't believe every kid should go to college. Matter of fact, the majority probably shouldn't because they're just going to spend money and not really get an education. Totally different conversation. I always ask, what are your plans for after you graduate? Because I think it's perfectly acceptable to. go travel, I think it's perfectly acceptable to get a job and understand, go to trade school, learn a skill, start a business. There's so many other options besides college that are viable and actually, I think, the right choice to make for I think you're spot on. I look back and I go, what was I doing? I could have just jumped right into sales. you know, what I'm doing now, still 11 years later and had saved all that money. And then, you know, but then you get the old school aunt that says, well, they can never take your education away from you. And I'm like, OK, you're right. But at the same time, There are certain things that you still miss out like dealing and living with other people, having a bad roommate, having bad professors, like there's still things that you do miss out on the whole college experience. I also think there's jobs that I wouldn't hire a financial, I wouldn't hire a controller or a CFO without credentials in accounting. I wouldn't hire a doctor without the right degree, but do my sales team members have to have some four-year degree? It doesn't tell me that they can sell. Salespeople can sell. We actually have zero requirement for college degrees on probably 95 percent of our job applications because I don't care Yeah, because the rest can be taught. That's just kind of- So no, I agree with that. That's and and certain things like you're saying, like you can. Being a leader of so many companies like you have, like with just Apple, what Palm, Oracle, you know, all these different incredible companies. I got a quick question for you. What did, what would you say, like the human side of leadership that most people just completely Very timely, very timely question. We're, we're talking a lot about this across our leadership team. And this might be, it might be controversial for some. There's, there's some people that say you should bring your whole self to work. I actually don't think that. I want you to bring your professional self to work so that you can be the best at what you do for us, where we compensate you very handsomely for that value that you bring. And I want professionals that I work with. And I think that's lost a little bit in today's culture where we are very, hey, I care if your mom or your dad has cancer. I'm not saying I don't care about the people as people, but I want professionals in the workplace. I think as a leader, it's hard now more than ever because of the way our culture is to have that level of expectation that people are the professionals that you hire them to be. Just like I talked earlier, you hire software to do a job. I hired team members to do work and to build a company that makes money for us and for our shareholders. That's what we do. Any distraction to that is a distraction. Like I said, it might be controversial because it says you lack empathy, but I don't think that at all. I think it's a great show of empathy that I want somebody to be amazing at what they do. I also want to give them the freedom to go home and be who they want to be at home. But give me everything you got while Yeah, I like how you just kind of twisted that. Now, if I throw this little wrench into this, like, you know, you hear people, some leaders, they'll go, hey, you know, if Susie or John or Billy or whoever can't or, you know, they're having issues and, you know, you go up to them and you say, what's wrong? You know, Billy, you know, well, I can only, you know, X, Y and Z is going on in my life and. And you say, hey, how much can you give me today? And they say 20 percent. You just say, do you say just give me all 20 percent? If that's all you got, just give me all 20 percent. If the next person comes, says I'm about 80 percent. Give me all 80 percent that you can give. Do you believe in that type of I do. I mean, you have to remember, we're dealing with human beings that have real lives. I mean, we've been through many seasons with all of our children and all of our family where – I read a really good book back in the day by this guy Andy Stanley. He's a pastor at a church down in Atlanta, and he calls it Choosing to Cheat. Now he ended up changing the title of it to when work and life collide, because choosing to cheat was a little controversial in the church. But when you look at that, work and life will collide. I think the best leaders understand that and don't hold hard lines. At the same time, it can't be 20% or 80% over an extended period of time. There comes a time where we need 100% or at times we need 100 plus in order to meet the things. As long as people are willing to have that give and take, I'm totally fine with it. We have a situation just this week. One of my direct reports is having a family end of life situation. It's like, well, yeah, go be with them. We'll be fine. Next four days, totally fine. Do what you need to do. I know that person is fully committed to our team. That's what I really need to know. That, that gives me the opportunity to bring grace to the situation when it's needed. What I can't deal with is the habitual over and over and over, I can only give 20%, I can only give 20%. There comes a point where we both have to agree that work and life are colliding too much. And we either have to have all of you back, or we need to find another member to, for our team to serve that job, to I like that because you give them the time you say, hey, here's the grace, here's the empathy. But at some point, like we have to get back to, like you're saying, where work and life glide, you have to get back to work. Like, I mean, it just is what it is. Like, you know, you might be 20 percent for four days is fine or maybe even eight days, you know, but at some point, like you're saying, the habitual, you got to get back into the end of the game. Yeah, totally. I like that. I really do. And, you know, that's that's got to be tough as a leader to go through all those conversations. And like you're saying, you got different types of people. You got, you know, every personality is different. You know, you can go through the different types of, you know, people there are and you got to deal with, you know, gosh, I can't, you know, as a as a leader, you know, you just you know, like everybody's different. Some people cry, some people don't. So, you know, it's just like, It's, it's very complex and I think part of that is, you know, where, when you, when you get into like I'm not sure if you get into like the disc assessments or certain types of, you know, assessments to where you figure out people's human design that We, you know, we've toyed with the idea of doing that both during the hiring process and then across the team. I think it's something we will do eventually. We have not invested in that. But it's definitely, I have all my profile, so I know where I stand on a lot of the different things that I've done over the years. We've done it on our leadership team. We have not pulled the trigger to do the whole thing across the whole team. But I do see Yeah, I do too, because then it kind of goes, you know, I've seen where people will do this stuff and then they go, well, that person's actually should be in this role. Now, no wonder why it's not working. So we got to shift this person, you know, flop to people. And then all of a sudden it's like it unclogs the drain. Right. So that's right. I agree. I think at some point it's all good, but from the leadership, it always starts at the leadership. It's just like some of these, you know, companies that. You know, it's never like you see these employees and they're like, Oh, my district managers, you know, in a bad mood. And I'm like, well, who do they report to? Another manager branched off to another manager. And what it does is it comes from the top. You can't do anything with these managers, whether it's got to go all the way to the, to the leadership. So at least from a leadership standpoint, you already have all that because that's the main trickle down for sure. Yeah. I really appreciate that. And tell me, tell me all about this. Any final things? I know you got kids that you got to make decisions for, you got a team you got to make decisions for. So you're always, you know, having to make decisions. And that's kind of the, I guess the fun part about being Well, yeah, I'll tell you this. You try and set the rules. You try and set the rules in your home for your children. You try and set the rules for your team members at work. I coach on the young kids, and you try and set the rules for the team. But the reality is, sometimes there's different rules for different people. And you've earned the right to a certain level of grace over others. And as much as we as leaders want to apply a blanket set of rules across the board, I don't think that's possible. I think you really have to read situations and make sure you're making the right decision at the right time with the person in mind that you're working with because that's the ultimate sign of empathy. I could very rigidly apply a set of rules across my business. I just don't think that's the right thing for the people, the humans that are a part of our company. I also don't think it's the right thing for our company because sometimes we have to, I think one of the greatest things is you have to change your mind sometimes. It's one of my favorite things to ask in a social circle. You get that situation where it's like dead time and no one's talking. What was the last time you changed your mind about something and what was it? It's a That is a good question because you're going to have a lot of blank faces and going. I'm sure a lot of pondering because even myself, I'm thinking to my, yeah, it's, it's one of those questions where, yeah, it's a, that's a great question from a leadership standpoint, because you're going to open up doors. It's kind of like having the quietest person talk first, right? Never want the quietest person to talk last. Cause they're just going to agree with every, with the loudest people talked first. So that's great. Yeah. Right. That's how I always say I have to quiet people talk first. Then you'll know their true opinion and then they won't just agree with everybody. The majority. That's great. No. Yeah. No, I know. That's Dean. Dean, I appreciate this is it's been a powerful, powerful conversation. But to look back on everything that that you've built and the people that you've impacted, I know you got you know, kids, that's, that's massive impact already right there. Um, Hmm. Um, that I cared deeply. I definitely care deeply about the things that I spend my time doing. And then I, my hope is that others see that deep care, and that attention to detail. But most importantly, that I not only cared about the things, but I cared about the people that were a part of what I was able to build and what we were able to Hey, that's powerful, man. I, you know, and I'm sure from a leadership standpoint, everybody underneath you sees that and I'm sure your clients see that and it obviously reflects on your work that you do for, you know, a lot of home service businesses to where you get that education part of from the sale to the close and, you know, get the roof on and explain properly and, You know, all that good stuff, because like we said, people like to be educated. They don't like to be sold. And eventually you educate them enough, they'll buy. That's right. I love that. So, you know, that's what it's all about. Right. You know, I always say legacy over like and impact over image. So. Dean, thanks for sharing your wisdom and coming on here. And I think this story, to be honest, is going to resonate with a lot of people. And I know a lot of businesses that could probably benefit from you here in St. Louis. Just myself here in St. Louis, I know companies that could bridge that gap with your help. So we'll go ahead and we'll have all that Dean's info in the show notes. So you can go ahead and get ahold of him if you want to. You can also go to engage.io and see how their platform is changing the game, which that also will be in the show notes and show how, basically, like I said, how he's changing the game for sales teams everywhere. I'm Blake Elser reminding you that mindset wins first, execution follows, Any last words for us? I'll tell you this. My journey on social media has been very interesting over the last little bit. I've been encouraged by a couple coaches in my life to do a lot more. So I'd love to connect with anybody who's on here who wants to learn more on Instagram. I'm DeanCurtis23 on Instagram. It's been a great learning opportunity for me. I was very against social media for a very long time. But I can tell you this, I've used my feed to feed my mind in greater ways than I ever thought possible. If you do connect me on there, just drop me a DM with Blake and I'll know that our conversation here might have had an impact. I'd love to meet anybody who's on that platform. Yeah, absolutely. And this will actually be coming out real soon here. And actually, I think, uh, next few days. So from where we're recording it, this is, this is going to be about as live as an episode as you can get. So, um, you'll be able to see Dean's profile. We'll drop some content as we always do, and you'll be able to connect with, with Dean. Awesome. Thanks Blake. All right. Appreciate it again. Once again, continue to Thanks so much for tuning into this episode. We sure do appreciate it. If you haven't done so already, make sure you're subscribed to the show wherever you consume podcasts. This way you'll get updates as new episodes become available. And if you feel so inclined, please leave us a review and tell your