THE IMPERFECT SHOW NOTES
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As a leader, it’s my job to find the zone of genius and then use that zone genius to grow the business. But at the same time, when I say use it, I use it in a positive way to help grow you.
Achim Nowak 00:17
Welcome to the my fourth act podcast. I’m your host, Achim Nova, and I have conversations with exceptional humans who have created bold and unexpected lives. If you like what you hear, please subscribe on any major podcast platform so you won’t miss a single one of my inspiring guests, and please consider posting an appreciative review. Let’s get started. I am so happy to welcome Rutherford Pascal to the my fourth act podcast. Rutherford is a seasoned sales leader in the biotech pharma industry. His 35 year career led him to increasingly senior roles, most recently as head of sales at Sanofi for their respiratory and gastroenterology specialty care portfolio. Rutherford is passionate about leadership development and mentorship. For his next act, he launched just last year, glass walls leadership. Rutherford is a certified John Maxwell leadership trainer, coach and a passionate keynoter with his first book on the way as one of the most visible African American sales leaders in his industry, Rutherford was often the only African American in the room. He is passionate about fostering diversity within his teams and the benefits of embracing a diverse workforce. Hello, Rutherford, long introduction for someone that I actually quite know and but I wanted people who don’t know you to know all of this. I wanted to speak with you for many reasons. One is that I just really respect and admire you, but you have made, in a way, a classic pivot that many people aspire to after an illustrious career, people say, I’m going to go out and do my own business and I’m going to be my own boss. And a lot of people I know have that dream, but don’t actually do it, but you have done it. So to get us to that part of the conversation, when you were growing up as a young teenager or so, when you were thinking about your future, did you think biotech and pharma? Or what were you thinking about?
Rutherford Pascal 02:50
I will say I never thought about biotech and pharma. That was not in my my thoughts at all. I thought about leading, owning, to be quite honest, I really thought about sports and getting that industry, and I actually sent letters to my three favorite teams to see if they would hire this young guy who just had, who just had his passion and knowledge for sports. But that didn’t happen. I went in a different direction, but, but I’ve always thought about leading people coaching always, yeah,
Achim Nowak 03:29
I have two reasons for asking you the next question. One, I’m genuinely curious about so how did you end up in sales, right? But the second part of it is because many people in my industry, which are coaches, say, I want to have my own coaching business, but I hate selling, you know, so I hear that in combination all the time. But let’s start with part one. How did you end up in sales? I got
Rutherford Pascal 03:54
a degree in Finance at Arizona State University, and I started out by getting my series six, seven and 63, all that means is it’s a stock broker’s license, that type of thing. So I could be a financial consultant, financial planner, that kind of stuff. So right away that sales. Every part about that is, is selling, cold calling. The most difficult part of sales right, is cold calling on people you don’t know at all. Do don’t know you and never even thought about it. It was never an issue with having the opportunity to meet new people, to having people tell me no. It just was part of what everybody did. I didn’t have this huge thought that, oh, I can’t believe I don’t want to be in sales, because I don’t want to, I don’t want to get the door slammed in my face. I never thought that at all. As a matter of fact, at one time, I almost worked for State Farm Insurance, and I went through every part of their pre hire ordeal, I’ll say ordeal to. To one of it was that you had to knock on 1000 doors and documented it. And I did that. I forgot, I mean, how long it took me, but I was in, I just graduated school, and I really thought about doing that, the sales situation that people go through, that that was never a part of my calculus when I was thinking about what I was going to do in my
Achim Nowak 05:23
life, well, but since you brought up having the door slammed in your face, and I just shamelessly acknowledged how long you’ve been doing this, Rutherford, what kind of advice do you have for people about either handling the door being slammed or engaging with a complete stranger in a way that makes them not want to slam the door.
Rutherford Pascal 05:46
The most important part about selling, to me is teaching and authenticity. Yeah, because if you are authentic and truthful about whatever you’re selling, it shouldn’t be an issue. If you believe what you’re doing is the right thing, you’re basically just teaching that the person you’re talking to about the product service that’s happening, that’s what goes on. In my mind. I don’t think about it as this top of the funnel middle. I don’t you know, people do all this stuff, and they have all these techniques. I want to talk to people, right? I want to talk and listen to people. Part of the reason I think I was successful at a greater rate than most sales people is that I listened very intently. I would talk about being aggressively listening, meaning that I really listened to every word, and then I could ask follow up questions which showed an interest, right? And I think if you do that, you go further, and it becomes about the person you’re talking to, not about you, yeah, if that makes any sense, right? So, so so it’s just about teaching. It’s about being passionate about whatever you’re selling. And by the way, we are selling every day, all the time, no matter what we do, matter what we are, people say they don’t sell. They sell all the time.
Achim Nowak 07:20
I was just remembering a moment in my life that I didn’t think of a selling moment until you were just talking. So I want to run a little story by you and get your take on it. When I was 22 at the end of my college year, early college years, I worked as a rental agent in an apartment complex in the suburbs of Washington, DC. Now here’s the tricky part. The apartments were pretty good, but we knew that there were some, there were, like, some bad floors in the complex. You didn’t want to take people to the bad floors, so you avoided certain things. So the product was quite good, but it wasn’t perfect. And I have, I imagine, in sales, sometimes know where the cobwebs are in what you Yes, yes. How do you navigate around that and are authentic at the same time?
Rutherford Pascal 08:11
Oh, be honest with you. I told people I was very upfront in what differentiates my product or service versus somebody else’s, and when we were equal, I told them we were equal, yeah. And the reason I did that, and the reason I strongly believe in that, is there’s other products I had in my bag I was selling that were better, right? So I would say something like we were I’ll give you the exact situation? Yeah, I was in the pharmaceutical selling my first pharma position as a sales rep, and we were selling an anti fungal product. It had a cream and ointment and solution. Now, what I would tell my customers is, every product in this category works the same, exact same they get rid of the fungus in the exact same time. Now, I know there’s a product out there that tells you they’re going to get it done in six days, but that’s not true yet. You’ll find that if you some, some of your patients are on this, they’ll, you’ll, you’ll see, you’ll get word that you’ll see I’m true, and so you can use mine. You can it’s interchangeable, right? The only difference that I have, the only thing that differentiates me from everybody else, is a solution. Nobody else has a solution. So if the solution is ideal for you, use the solution. Now this product is better than every other one, right? So what I did there is I told them the truth in both situations, I told them we were me too product in one area, and just choose it, and choose it if you want. You’re not going to go wrong with any of the products. They’re stretching the truth that they’re telling you. Faster because they’re all the same speed. But I had another product where it was legitimately better. So as a customer, you probably believe me, because I told you I didn’t sell my both products as this is the best. I just didn’t do that because and what happened was just that, and people would believe me for other products. Let me ask Achim, when you go to a restaurant, yeah, do you ever ask the waiter what’s great at this restaurant? What’s the best meal? Do you ever ask the question?
Achim Nowak 10:31
Just the other day, I was in a restaurant, and I always feel like it’s unfair, but I couldn’t choose between two desserts, and I asked the waiter to suggest his preferred dessert. I’ve done
Rutherford Pascal 10:45
that, and I’ve seen it done in and then tip. Some waiters go, everything’s good, doesn’t I mean, and, but some waiters go, well, the better waiters and waitresses, the servers. They say, these are, these are top selling ones. We don’t get great reviews on this one or two. It’s some people like it, but I get more. And so to tell you the truth, and right? And I’ve had people talk me out of dishes. I said, I’m thinking just like you. I’m thinking about two dishes, and they’ll go, what’s they’ll ask the best question, what do you know us more about? What I’m looking for is it help? Is a hearty meal. And then they’ll go, Well, you should go, that you should. And they’ll give me a choice, and I’ll take it 99% of the time, I’m going to take it sometimes it’s less expensive. So they’re going to less of a tip, theoretically, but I’m going to give them more of a tip because they did that that makes any sense. Well,
Achim Nowak 11:44
I appreciate the nuances and their their layers of psychology to what you just said, but at the bottom line is, I am gaging whether you are trustworthy or not correct. Direct quality of the answer that totally makes sense to me, I want to pivot to I met you a while back at a stage in your career where you were moving into larger leadership roles, where you suddenly had teams. You were the boss. Sometimes there were people who were your buddies, and now you were the guy that they were reporting to. It’s a classic thing that happens. How did you Rutherford have to evolve or change to be able to suddenly be the boss leader? Use the term you want for a bunch of other people.
Rutherford Pascal 12:39
So the way I thought about it, when I was the first line leader, when I was leading my first lead team of 10, we talked about consistency. People want consistency, right? And they want they need expectations, and they want consistency. Those are the two most important things, right? They want to know what’s he going to say, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, this week, and is the same the following week and the following and the following week, right? And so when you go higher, when you have leaders, the same thing happens. You need to be consistent, and you need to be and you need to have a plan. The plan is just more focused, and it’s more it’s different, because these people now are leading other people. And the one of the most important things I tell people all the time when I talk to leaders, the most important thing is this three letter acronym. It’s called Kyp, okay, know your people. So it’s really important to know your people, no matter how big you get. So the last role we talked about, I there was 600 people were boarding. To me, I couldn’t know 600 people, but I could know the 15 to 30 leaders, actually 60 leaders. I couldn’t know that, and I did know that, obviously the people of direct reports, I knew them very well, and I had to, and they knew me, and that’s the most important thing, is you know them, and so you know what to say and how to say it, and what to emphasize and what to not emphasize if you do that because you want people to know that you care. They don’t care what you know. They want to know that you care. If you can do that and know that you care about them, you listen to them like I mentioned earlier, it’s going to be easier when that same relationship a week before they you were their peer and now you’re their leader, as long as you listen to me, because I did that, I went to i i got a promoted. It was two of us going for the position, and my best friend, best friend and I. I were going head to head, and I won and I had and the relationship changed immediately. We used to talk. We used to talk every day for 30 minutes to an hour and a half every day. And now that completely ended, and it was a boss worker relationship, employee relationship. So that took a little bit of adjustment. And what was even harder Achim was when I had to give him feedback on what he was doing and giving year end and mid year reviews. That was slightly difficult, but he knew how he knew me. He knew that I was honest and I cared about him, and I told him a couple things that he just he didn’t he’d never heard anybody tell him before. He trusted me. He did it, and he came back and says that was phenomenal. It worked. And you don’t change those things. Those things don’t work out in a week, even with my this, this person, my friend of mine, Mark, that took probably, like six weeks, month and a half, to for him to get really, to get comfortable and be free to talk again, right? We still never, in that whole situation, didn’t talk every day because we couldn’t. But we never stop being friends. Yeah, we never stop being friends. We just have to. We just have to, we just have to navigate it differently.
Achim Nowak 16:29
That’s such a beautiful example. And the word that keeps popping up into my mind as you’re talking is to, is the word integrity, your own integrity, allowing things to change without giving up your integrity, right? I want to ask you an almost impossible question, but I want to ask you to give it a go. I’ve emphasized the length of your career, if you had to just take us to one moment in your career where you go that moment sort of exemplifies why I love selling that culture highlight so or could be just an intimate conversation with somebody, but a moment that epitomizes for you, this is why I, Rutherford, love what I’ve had the chance to do. Sure, I
Rutherford Pascal 17:19
will tell you, this is actually easier than you think. There was a moment when I was a sales rep in Seattle and I had, I was talking to a physician, and she was difficult. Just say that, and everyone else didn’t. Nobody wanted to talk. Call on her. She was just she was she was difficult. I changed my ways with her. So typically, there’s this you, when you think about calling on somebody, like a doctor, you think of them as this higher being like, yeah, so you, you do, and you start talking to them. And think, I stopped doing that the first month seven of my career, but there’s still some people that have this aura. So you thought about that, and it’s because she was so difficult. Most people, you know, tiny, little, soft steps with her, I went the opposite. I started making fun of her in a joking way in front of her, like to her face, but in a joyful way. She said to me once, she said, How come you talk to my partners? You don’t talk to me? And I said, because you don’t talk to me nice. And I said, they talk to me. And I said, I don’t want to waste your time. This is a relationship you you got to give, and I have to give. And I made and one time she I went up to her. I knew, I knew her favorite basketball team, and I said, I went up to her, this is God’s guys on the street. That’s it. She was the dermatologist for Duke University, and she everything about it. And Duke was playing North Carolina, which is their big rivals. And and I said to her, I said, Listen,
Speaker 1 18:58
I was watching TV last night. The Light Blue team was playing the
Rutherford Pascal 19:03
Dark Blue team, and the Light Blue team won, and I turned around, laughed and walked away. I didn’t even sell her that day. I just that’s all I said to her. Now, what I found out that I was the only person that she liked. Yeah, and I’ll tell you what happened. This is the answer. You come back to your question. So I would do these things for her, and she would laugh and be behind the scenes. Her staff told me that she like I was her favorite rep. And I said, why? But she now became the head of the P and T committee in that the biggest insurance plan in Washington State? Wow. So she says to me, I was in that state office. She goes, rutherf, I’m a very important woman. And I went, I know you’re the most important woman that I know. Like, just like that. And she goes, I. And it was a sarcastic which is, I wanted it to her all the time. And she said, refer, I’m the head of the Oh, right. And so she, she that, Mo that two seconds later, the product that I was that I wanted her to put on the formulary. She said, Of course, I’ll put on the formulary. So all those relationships, all those all those things that I did before, like led to this, and it was easy. I didn’t say a thing. I didn’t have to do anything, and she did it, and that that’s when I knew sales. And I actually this is the truth. I left that meeting skipping, not theoretically skipping, literally skipping. That’s why I’ll never forget it. It was such a such a unique moment.
Achim Nowak 20:51
No, no, there’s so much wisdom in what you said. And I’m just grinning from ear to ear, because I think that’s you’re describing selling, but you’re describing professional success. That’s how it happens. I do want to talk about the fact that I remember when I first met you at Genzyme, which is an amazing company, before it was purchased by Sanofi and sort of submerged into Sanofi, but you were obviously always the only African American in the room, and you were the leader in those situations over most of the people that are not African American. You know that in my own life, I have an African American partner, so in my own life, we discuss these dynamics all the time. But from you, I could see that there is a benefit to you being that visible, and that can be some pressure that comes with it. So what I’m interested in, how conscious were you of this dynamic, and what did you, from a leadership perspective, do with that awareness?
Rutherford Pascal 22:00
So obviously I’m aware when you’re in the room and you’re the only, right? Just yeah, and you go to every room and you’re the only so you have an awareness, and you also have an awareness that you have to be successful, yeah? Because if you’re not successful, there won’t be a second choice, so they’ll it’ll be difficult for the next person to get a position like that. So it’s incumbent on me to be successful for the for the people coming down the line. So it played a role, but it was tertiary. Wasn’t the thing that I leaned on. I leaned on the really doing the job. Well, right? If you hire doesn’t matter the the color, the sexual persuasion, the place that they were born, doesn’t matter if they do well, meaning that they exceed your expectations and they do things well, it’s just easier for others to come behind them. And I thought about that, I will tell you, it hit me. It me. I’ll never I won’t forget this meeting. I was a Genzyme. There was a young black man in the meeting, and he was probably 22 three, something like that. And he he stopped me after the meeting, yeah, and he said, I’m so proud of you. We look up to you. I said, Who’s we and why are you looking up to me? And he’s the one that told me that, that he was watching, and other people watching, and people were happy, right with what was being accomplished by me, just from afar, from afar, right? And so, so that, and that has happened a few times subsequently, that people were happy, and that was that’s important, because it paves the way for other people. You mentioned increasing diversity and and in that which I did, I was very, very proud of that did it by way that people, people, when I tell them how I did it, they don’t, they don’t really understand that. When I said, Oh, I said, No, I didn’t even lower the bar. I actually raised the bar. I said, you raise the bar and you got more people of color. You said, that’s exactly what I did, right? It’s exactly what I did. And the reason is, instead of fishing out of one pond, I would fish out of every pond, and I would get big fish in every line, right? Not just the white male pond, right? Or the white female pond, there would be black male female, you know. So there’s all these different ponds. I I just cast a wider net, yeah, right, but my expectations were high. Higher, which meant I got better people. So then the then these people that came in, the organization went we got really talented people of every ilk, and it was never even an it wasn’t even a thought, because these people were doing very, very well. And that’s what I that’s how I thought about it. There’s greatness everywhere, Achim everywhere, right? There’s greatness in one area.
Achim Nowak 25:27
Without me going to all the details to just substantiate what you were saying, I had the privilege of coaching the head of talent management for a big, big pharma company that, you know, I won’t mention the company, but she said one thing, I we do better than other companies, we have learned to look in different places, and the talent is amazing. So it’s about where you look in making the extra effort. It’s not about diluting standards or all that kind of nonsense, right?
Rutherford Pascal 26:00
Yeah, you know what’s funny about that? People say, Why do you do that? Man, you did that, and the and your sales went up. Your thing. I said, Yeah. I said, you understand, I’m not going to hire somebody that’s going to drive the sales. That’s not, this is not, you know, this is, this is not a not for profit, or we have to make profit. We got to make profit every quarter on a consistent basis. So I’m looking for the best talent. This is by merit. Yeah,
Achim Nowak 26:26
I’m going to take us to glass walls leadership, and we’re going to talk about you launching glass about a year ago. Yes, but also almost like as a case study, if there are other people listening, going, Oh, I’ve had a big career like Rutherford, I might also want to start my own consulting firm. Let’s see what Rutherford has learned. The first thing that struck me glass walls, leadership. You know, there’s a powerful words. They’re obviously intentional. So you chose glass you chose walls. What do those words mean to you, and why did you put them in the name of your business?
Rutherford Pascal 27:09
So everybody knows what glass ceilings are, correct? So glass ceilings are what people put on you. They restrict your growth. Glass walls are what you put on yourself, and what I my entire career, was talking to people about what they could do to break through the glass walls that people put around themselves. People don’t realize how good they are. There’s so many people that I led over the years that I told you, understand the impact you’re making, this organization, this customer, this group, this team, and I believe you can do this in the future. And people would come back and tell me, you’re the first person that’s ever thought that I could do more, and people can do more. The people can do more. And if you just see it, everyone has this gift. I call it a zone of genius, nice, or that terminology. I strongly believe in that. And as a leader, it’s my job to find the zone of genius and then use that zone genius to grow the business. But at the same time, when I say use it, I use it in a positive way to help grow. You help if it get you into spots where you use it even more, because if you use it even more, you’re happier because you’re doing things you like, you do things you’re great at. So that whole glass walls was really about breaking through, getting people to break through their barriers that they put on themselves.
Achim Nowak 29:00
That’s such a beautiful explanation, because I launched my first enterprise in the personal development field 20 years ago, and I’ve had several one thing I’m keenly aware of, and it’s funny talking to a sales guy, is, before you did glass walls, you were the guy from Sanofi, right and you represent this brand right now. You are the brand in this last walls is the brand, and you don’t have, and I don’t mean this in a bad way, but you you cannot take cover under Sanofi anymore. So is selling your own brand different? Is it the same? What should we know about what it’s like for you? Rutherford, to say the offer is glass balls on me,
Rutherford Pascal 29:51
it’s very different. Yeah, it’s with Sanofi or situations like that. We have a defined. Find a customer base. Yeah, right. And the customers know our product, or didn’t generally know your product, and they can look and choose product over product. We were also calling on them at a regular pace, once a month, once every two months, every week, whatever, there’s an expectation from the customer in what I’m doing. These people don’t know me at all like so what I have to do, I don’t have a defined customer base that knows who I am. They know my product. Once I talk to them, they kind of know my product, but it’s much more difficult. The other really difficult thing is, so when you’re in leadership, for as long as I, I was in, I have literally a came in through every situation. Yeah, possible. Really great, great highs, launching products, doing saving lives, doing that and then having to terminate people because of lay laying people off, and sun setting products and all these different situations and everything in between, right? Every HR, every HR situation? Yeah, I’ve had people die who are part of my team, right? So you can, you can basically talk about anything I can, if it’s leadership, I could probably talk, give a good 45 minute speech, talk, presentation on so the hardest thing is to focus into one small area that, that you could own, you could know, because you can’t boil the ocean and grow this business, right? You have to figure out what, what is the zone of genius you want to focus on and your business. Then just work that that’s very, very difficult for people to wrap their arms around for me too. The first three months, I kept saying, Well, I can do anything in leadership. Leadership is industry agnostic, but it doesn’t really, you know, people don’t know what you do, yeah, if you’re so wide. So that’s been the most difficult part of it,
Achim Nowak 32:21
just, again, in my own language, what you’re just, what I heard you say is generalists don’t get hired, you know, for consulting jobs. But I want to test something else with you, because these are the and I’m asking you the question, but it’s really for all of our listeners, I’m blessed to be a successful executive coach, but I always say to Hugo Sanchez, the wonderful man who runs my company, say, Hugo, I’m really good at what we do, and there are lots of other executive coaches who are also really good at what they do. I’m not the only one, so my job is to be able to understand why somebody should choose me over somebody else, right understanding that there are lots of other great executive coaches. So if you were to articulate to me right now, because there are other boutique leadership development companies, there are other sales training companies, what’s unique about you? Rutherford and glass walls that should make me go, Well, of course, that’s who I want.
Rutherford Pascal 33:26
So the thing that’s unique is the 30 years experience, 3035 years experience at this level. What I’ve seen in the marketplace is a lot of people have this type of job, but they don’t have the experiences, yeah, that I’ve been through. And by the way, they told that to me, yeah, so I know it’s true. Typically. I mean, a lot of first line leaders have started companies like this, HR people, they have leadership experience just at a different, different level. So I think the the breadth and depth of experience, experiences really helps, really helps and and the other thing is, I think it’s the one of the things I told you at the beginning is the key, one of the key strengths I had was a sales rep, and I had as a leader, was listening. So everything that I do is bespoke. I now I know what you know the area to focus on, but then now I got to talk to you about what you what your needs are, and then wrap that around what I build for you. Because what I build for you is not going to it’s I’m not going to build for somebody else, somebody else might have the exact same situation. Say it’s retention. I’m going to solve that. Help solve that with you in two different ways, because the people are different, that probably the markets are different the air. I mean, there’s so many differences. One situation could be the leader of top could be the. Reason, right? It’s so different. So that’s the other part about it. When you work with me, I’m working with the situation. I’m not working with these things that off the shelf, change the name, couple of words and and here it is. I don’t do that. I mean, I even when I do leadership training. I talk to people because about what’s happening at their business or in their market, so I can help them in their market. Because I want to speak to them, not this ethereal thing that’s out there. I want to speak to specificity that’s
Achim Nowak 35:39
a very beautiful clarification, and makes complete sense to me, since we’re comparing your own business in Sanofi, when you had Sanofi, you know, and you got to make this up, but you had annual sales targets, so you knew what success looked like. You knew how you would be rewarded financially for success, how you’d be rewarded if you exceeded things. How do you define success for your own business? And I’m you, I’m not asking you to mention numbers or how much money you want to make, but what does success look like for you and this new playground? That’s
Rutherford Pascal 36:16
a good question, and I have a number I want to impact 10 million lives in the next six years. That’s success to me so and when I say they say 10 million, that’s a lot. It’s seemingly a lot. You don’t understand what leaders can do if I do a great job with a leader, and that leader has 10 to 15 people that report to that leader, and something I said, helps them change, evolve and and grow themselves as leaders. We just affected 15 people. Yeah, right. So if I do that over and over again, that’s where the math comes in with and I told you, you mentioned me a keynote speaking. If I keynote speaking with hundreds and or 1000s of people. That’s another word. So it wasn’t a number. I pulled out of the air. I did some thinking about what I wanted to do to be successful, how I wanted to impact people. And I keep my life to work. I like to travel. I want to be where you are right now, in Portugal, doing some talks. And I want to be in Brazil, in Italy and Mexico City, all those diff these different places, you know, impacting people all the world. So, unlike most people, success kind of would be how many times I fly
Achim Nowak 37:43
a month, I applaud you for owning the travel. Nice. I would love to close the conversation with a word that I know from previous conversations is important to you, makes you tick, and that’s the word value. We all have heard the word value, but for you as a business owner, as a salesperson, what does value mean to you, and how does that play out, and the sort of choices you make in life
Rutherford Pascal 38:14
I just talked about, like the niches you know you have to focus and and really that word value is the niche that I’m focused on that word right? And that’s when you mentioned that I have a book that’s coming out, hopefully in the next 10 days, it will be out, and that book is written about how to make yourself more valuable at work, and what I want to show and demonstrate to people is, is you or you have value and you you can improve value by doing these small little things that just highlight the value that you have, highlight what you bring to the organization, and highlight you as a unique individual. Every body has value, every single person. When you hear people say that I’m self made, that is a lie that the people don’t realize the ecosystem around them to make them successful, even the people that that thank all these people, they always they still don’t think about other people that have really impacted their success. And I want people to value everybody in the organization, so I mean your admin, that your custodian, you know, the people who do the you know, mow the lawn. Every single person adds value. Let me say to you this in this fashion, if you’re a janitor, custodian, whatever, at a hospital, right? So. Of the infection rate of the hospital is lower than the infection rate is at a neighbor Hospital. As a janitor, you played a role in that, right? And because of that, that role that you played, and because of the hospital being cleaner, has the infection rates are lower, more people will want to go to that hospital versus the neighboring hospital. So by your act of being, of loving your job and cleaning better, you’re making the hospital more money. You’re making the people happier. Does that make sense? Really does. So the value is So there’s so many people that add value to all these situations, and we don’t recognize it. What I want to do is, is bring that to light, show people how valuable they are, how valuable they can be. And if I can help them and help, help demonstrate and show that to to the other people, I think, I think they will be happy. The company will be happy. And and you’re going to do better, you know, you’re going to do better financially if you want to get a promotion, that’s going to help you get a promotion. You know, I was promoted eight times, and those eight times I tried to figure out why I was promoted, and it was always value. It was always the value that I brought. And that’s when people, people think they have to do something. They have to kiss people’s behind, they have to be disingenuous. They can’t be authentic. And I’ll tell they don’t have to do any of those things. All they have to do is think about how you add value to the corporation or to the customer, client that you serve. If one of those two or both, you’re adding value, and you add enough of that you’ll be noticed and rewarded in many ways.
Achim Nowak 41:55
What will be the title of your book? Rutherford?
Rutherford Pascal 41:58
So the title is the PID system, preparation, intentionality, differentiation, nice, elevate yourself from the sea of sameness and get promoted or just get paid.
Achim Nowak 42:15
I like it, and it has a little sort of subtle diversity message in the subtitle, which I appreciate. Thank you, my friend. If folks want to learn more about you and glass walls, where would you like to send them right now as we wrap up,
Rutherford Pascal 42:36
you can go to glasswalls leadership.com very easily. That’s one word, glass walls, leadership.com, my LinkedIn is, is Rutherford Pascal, it’s easy. There’s only one of me. Gladly, my wife would be very glad there’s only one of me on LinkedIn. So Rutherford Pascal, those two are the easiest ways to get hold of me.
Achim Nowak 42:57
Thank you for the gift of this conversation, thank you for the real nuances around sales conversations you took us into. And I wish you nothing but phenomenal success with glass walls. Listen.
Rutherford Pascal 43:13
I appreciate it. I appreciate the time. It was always great talking to you. Bye, bye. Thanks. Achim. You.
Achim Nowak 43:23
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