Bridging Generations in Sales and Outreach

E14 with Andrew Brummer - Out of Options? Try Being Useful

• Butch Nicholson • Season 1 • Episode 14

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How One Leader Rebuilt His Business and His Confidence through Service and Digital Networking

In this episode of Bridging Generations in Sales and Outreach, host Butch Nicholson sits down with Andrew Brummer author, coach, and fractional COO to discuss how he bounced back after a business collapse by transforming his mindset and embracing digital relationship-building.

At 53, Andrew found himself with no local network, no safety net, and no clear next step. Instead of scrambling for a quick fix, he invested in intentional outreach and service, eventually building a trusted network of 5,000 new contacts and forging deep connections with over 500 of them.

What you'll learn in this episode:

  • How Andrew rebuilt his brand through volunteering, coaching, and deliberate relationship-building
  • The exact digital tools and strategies he used to scale his outreach without losing authenticity
  • Why mindset not just tactics is the foundation for sustainable success in modern business
  • How his philosophy of “planting seeds for trees you’ll never sit under” drives his networking style

Whether you’re a CEO nearing a transition or a seasoned leader looking to build a stronger digital presence, Andrew’s story is proof that generosity, strategy, and persistence pay off.

Bridging Generations in Sales and Outreach is hosted by Robert (BUTCH) NICHOLSON and produced by Fist Bump

Helping Gen X and Baby Boomer leaders turn their reputation into revenue—without losing the human touch.

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(Speaker 2) Hey, everyone. Welcome back to Bridging Generations in Sales and Outreach. I am your host, Butch Nicholson. And today I'm really excited to be joined by Andrew Brummer. Andrew has a great story that he's going to share today, so I don't want to put too much out right now. But he went through about as bad a business situation as you could have. He's come out of it stronger than ever. He's written two books, which he'll talk about and make available to you. And so without, I'll just tell you a little about what he did. He really started connecting with people, and he's definitely a servant leader.(Speaker 2) He is a giver, and he'll talk about that today. And if you have any question in your mind, or you have any fear that this digital space we're all in now with LinkedIn and AI and all that, Andrew's got his story is a great example of how to appropriately use that and rebuild your network. So Andrew, I'm really(Speaker 2) glad to have you here today.(Speaker 1) Thanks a ton, Butch. I appreciate the invite.(Speaker 2) So Andrew, I had an experience during the crash of 2007, 2008. When that happened, all my clients were financial services company, American Express, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, list went on. My business went to literally zero. I'll have to tell you, it took me years to pull out of it. I did a very poor job So I'm gonna let you share your story about you know, what happened and then we'll dive into what happened next(Speaker 11) Yeah(Speaker 1) so I'm the privilege of serving With a very close friend and CEO in a company called life key Great environment great product that they're busy building. The investment market collapsed, the courtesy, you know, all the things that were going on over the past two years, the investment market dried up. And we were very much a research and science company, engineering company,(Speaker 1) so we battled to get product out. So we were more focused on the side of it and and the leveraging and being able to figure out what you can harvest out of the human body than we were actually taking you know getting getting things aggressively. We're very focused. So in 2020 we swiveled and then at last year because of the investment challenges we've had, CEO came to and said Andrew you, there's a chance we'll get the company through, but there's a really good chance that things are gonna not make it through.(Speaker 1) And being at that stage, a 53-year-old male, no university degree, new to the US. I arrived in 2003, but I spent most of my time traveling through the rest of the country. And I found myself looking in the mirror and I did what you know I(Speaker 1) Realized I'd not built a network in the Atlanta area and I kind of looked in the mirror and said what on earth to do With myself now and I did what most all of us to do is I went into I feel sorry for myself mode Sulk mode kind of wonder with myself mode It was a wicked night of non-sleeping, woke up the next morning and went into action. But a tough time, a humbling time when you take stuff that's been really built well, put together beautifully, and you look in the mirror and say, now what?(Speaker 1) And you know, I got comfortable. I just got comfortable in the jobs and the work that I had. And I was not looking after myself. It was like I'm in trouble. I have no network. I have no contact base. I'm a servant pleaser.(Speaker 1) I've not spent the time looking after my brand and creating relationships. So I was like, what do I do? And Saturday morning, woke up and got going.(Speaker 2) It's a bad place to be in. But you know, action is the way out of it. And I admire the actions that you began to take. In building anything, there are two parts to it. There's the strategy and there's the tactics. So tell our audience about the strategy that you came up with.(Speaker 1) At first, I did what most of us do in the Dear Johnny moments where you realize, oh, you know, there's trouble here I mean a big pot of trouble and I scrambled and I started reaching out for help and Try to contact people and started getting out there and at the same time I don't know what made it made it happen But I got involved in volunteering and it was more was accidental and when I say volunteering(Speaker 1) I was volunteering directly in my space that I am a professional. And I know a lot of people say you shouldn't be doing that. But I got involved in it. And I started doing a lot of coaching and mentoring for people, ranging from US, Canada, India, Iraq, Georgia, the country Georgia, Uzbekistan, Botswana, Kenya, all over the place. So I started putting those pieces together. And then I started to put together a strategy , I started to put together a strategy , I started to put together a strategy , I started to put together a strategy(Speaker 1), I started to put together a strategy , I started to put together a strategy , I started to put together a strategy , I started to put together a strategy hub. It is what it is. It is where people go to verify jobs to put their profiles down, put their history down. And I started selling myself and selling myself hard on LinkedIn. And I learned fortunately quickly within a month and a(Speaker 1) half, I learned that that was a big mistake. And I kind of had to hit the pause button, regear and figure out what do I do(Speaker 10) moving from here.(Speaker 2) So your strategy was to begin with LinkedIn. What you did initially didn't work. What I found in the last few years working here at fist bump is 99% of the time when a CEO or sales leader tells me that LinkedIn, you know, doing stuff on LinkedIn didn't work. It's because, with all due respect, it's because they didn't do it right. So the second part of any business plan along with strategy is tactics. So tell us about the(Speaker 2) tactics that evolved for you in using social media, LinkedIn in particular?(Speaker 1) Yeah. So I had a, when I was doing, when I was doing my, my sales campaign, I was also doing a friendly outreach to some people, just a very, I wasn't selling myself. I was just like, Hey, I'm in the same space. We'd love to connect. And I met probably 15 people a week, brand new people that I didn't know, brand new people and I started networking. And one of the guys, Brian said to me, Andrew, let's have a look at your campaign. What are you doing differently on the one that's working, the one that's not working?(Speaker 1) And then it took him half a second to say, well, that's why it's working and not working. He said, the one that's not working that is working you're not selling yourself you're just getting out there and you're meeting people and you're helping people and you're paying it forward and you're giving and you're sharing and you're learning and having great discussions and that was true so literally six seven weeks into the campaign I hit the pause button and said right I've got to swivel this around and I started the the adjustments and I moved away from(Speaker 1) selling myself and in moving away from selling myself. And in moving away from selling myself, I actually ended up selling myself. And the net result of that long journey to where we're at and why the process works is in a 12 month window, I have 6000, 5000 new LinkedIn contacts, irrelevant number, only the algorithms care about that. Um, but the important number is I have 593 people that I'm in active dialogue with. I have a hundred people that have done something for me, introduced, help me edit a books, introduced me to people. And I have about 13, 14 people that have fundamentally changed my life. Now, the important thing is these 593 people out of the 5,000, I did not know 12 months ago.(Speaker 1) And the 14 people that have put their names, their credibility on the line for me, I did not know 12 months ago. And they engaged with me and helped me through situations without me asking for it. Just them meeting and because I engaged(Speaker 1) and in a giving, in a natural serving way, it just evolved itself. And the opportunities are where, you know, Joe reaches out to Bob and says to Bob, Bob, you need to chat with Andrew. Bob calls me up and says, hey, Bob, Andrew, Joe told me to chat with you and said, I need to put you in. And it grew from there.(Speaker 2) I've never heard like results like that. That's amazing.(Speaker 6) And I'm sure there was a lot of hard work in that.(Speaker 1) There was, and what I realized is that, you know, I manually hand touch a whole bunch of people in my LinkedIn network and I did it manually and I found that it's not sustainable. Out of, you know, every person we do it diligently, you do homework and you do the notes and you contact them and you(Speaker 1) get involved with them and you send them a really caring intentional note and I'm a deliberate person so I don't do things just just for the sake of doing them. It's probably another problem worth chatting about. But in reaching out to the people, if I took 40 people that I reached out to and spent about 20 minutes per person, I would get maybe 0.5, maybe one response back. And the problem is that's not scalable(Speaker 1) when you're in a boatload of trouble and you're trying to figure out what to do with yourself. It's not scalable. So I then started learning the technologies and I learned that there are automation technologies, not AI, so it's not doing it for me. There are automation technologies that I can use to help me do what I was doing at scale(Speaker 1) to get through the numbers so that I can find the people that would then engage with me. And at first I was really skeptical that this would work, but persisting in it, it took about three months to see the results start. It took about four and a half months(Speaker 1) before I was inundated, six months before I was up at 2,000 connections, and another four or five months later, I'm up at 5,000 brand new connections and a whole bunch of people that are helping me.(Speaker 2) So let me ask you this, Andrew. I was listening to Brandon Lee, who's the founder of Fistbump. I was listening to his show on Tuesday and I had never thought about it this way, but he made a great analogy. He said, you know, I can go to a local network meeting and I certainly encourage that. I'm not saying anything bad about local network(Speaker 2) meetings, but you know, there may be 50 people there and there may be three people there that are really somebody I need to know. And you've got to go through all, you've got to drive there, you've got to park, all the stuff you have to do to go to a live meeting. And the analogy he made is LinkedIn is, all LinkedIn really is is is a big networking meeting That you can get in in front of a whole lot of people a lot faster(Speaker 1) Spot-on you know the analogy I use if you pick the conference that you pick a vertical whether you're a musician a plumber a Technology and executive whether you go to a Gartner event, whether it's a financial event, you know, no matter where you go to, there's at least 100,000 people in your vertical that could go to that event. And that's being very minimalistic, right? There's maybe, and given it's a four-day event, there's maybe 10,000 people that want to go to the event, maybe 2 to 4,000 actually go to the event. If you have the joy of being in a booth and you're meeting people in that four day conference,(Speaker 1) it is not physically possible from a time point of view. It's not physically possible for you to meet more than 160 people in four days. It's just not possible. And out of that 160 business cards you get, probably about 20 people will engage with you(Speaker 1) after the conference and out of the 20 people is probably about five that will actually be an opportunity and you may close one or two and LinkedIn is exactly the same it's a numbers game you just don't know when you're in the conference you don't know which of those two three people are actually going to be a commercial relationship with you be it a job, be it an opportunity, be it a business, be it a musician looking for a record label, be it a plumber trying to create partnerships with other utility providers.(Speaker 1) You just don't know who those people are that are going to engage with you that resonate your energy, your passion, your work ethic. You just do not know. So LinkedIn is exactly the same. It is an absolute numbers game and the beautiful part about LinkedIn, as you said, it's 24 7.(Speaker 1) It's always on, there's always people there and people are always active and they're turning there's a high volume of people that are engaged and the people that engage today are different from the people tomorrow. So it's a high volume environment. So to not be inside of the LinkedIn ecosystem and(Speaker 2) being active in that is a mistake. So another thing came to mind, Andrew, when you were talking about an event or like a trade show, for example, you know, in a trade show, there might be 5,000 people there, but you can't choose who's going to come to your booth. But on LinkedIn, even if it's 5,000 people, you can choose out of that 5000 people, the 100 people you want(Speaker 9) to target.(Speaker 6) Absolutely.(Speaker 1) And time is money, right? Imagine you walked around a conference and you try to say hi to all 5000 of those people. That was just that would just not be scalable. What LinkedIn allows you to do is there, the tech is there for you to go and find out of those and given us a 5000 number out of those, and given it's a 5,000 number, out of those 5,000 who are connected with me,(Speaker 1) who are close to me, who have changed jobs, who have, where have they been? I can do homework on how I'm connected to them. Are they in a vertical that I'm interested? So I go in, I can get in pre-armed. And the key of this is now not doing it when you're in trouble or when you're needing that emergency turn, it's doing it persistently.(Speaker 1) So if you're in trouble, like I was, and you look in the mirror like, what do I do now? You scramble and you go at mass pace, high velocity and you move fast. If you're smart and you do this when you come out of college and you do it for 30, 40, 50 years of your life, or you start at 40 and you do it for 10, 15, 20 years of your life. When you get it, when you, not if you, when you get to that point of the, the Diyajani, the scrambling, because you've spent the time to curate the people out of those 5,000, vis-a-vis the 100 you've mentioned, and you've now spent years developing a really good relationship with those people. So now you need help. You reach out to 100 people that know you, not just the equivalent of business cards in your drawer, but you actually know them and they know you because you've spent time(Speaker 1) augmenting LinkedIn. You spent time going to virtual conferences, you've spent time getting to face to face conferences and you found people that are worth going to a lunch with or a coffee with where you can develop the relationships where it gets beyond just this notional piece of cardboard, electronic cardboard that I've got that makes a reference to somebody.(Speaker 1) But it is about being deliberate and knowing that you will, not you may, you will need a network around you that are gonna help you at that point in time. And out of all the people I've met, the six, seven, 800 people I've met in the last year, 80% of them got(Speaker 1) surprised with the Dear Johnny note. And to see people scramble is difficult.(Speaker 2) My dad was a great salesman and he used to say, the great thing about sales is the one right person can make your year, even your career.(Speaker 8) Spot on.(Speaker 1) I mean, it's amazing, right? 5,000 people that I've touched in the past 12 months. There are 14 people. They're in the book, You Decide. There is a time graphic there with their icons. In respect of them, I've left their names out.(Speaker 1) But, yep, in the book, You Decide, thank you. There is a timeline map there of the 14 people and how they've affected me and the forums, the bodies, the groups, the executive councils, the pro bono work, the volunteer, the investment community, the authoring of the book,(Speaker 1) just everything, there's a whole map there. It's fantastic to think that 12 months ago, these 14 people didn't even, had no idea I existed and vice versa. And I've progressed thus far and have ongoing, some of them are even turned into personal friends where I'm engaged.(Speaker 1) It's fantastic when you stop selling, you start networking and actually be human with people with no agenda. Don't go to stop having meetings for the sake of getting something out of them.(Speaker 3) For sure.(Speaker 2) So Andrew, you mentioned some of the tools that you were using, some tools without getting into the nuance of any of them. What tools were you using in addition to LinkedIn?(Speaker 1) So I use LinkedIn, I use Sales Navigator. Sales Navigator is part of LinkedIn. And the reason I use that is because it's a time saver. It gets me down from the 5,000 to the 4,000 to the 3,000 to the 100. I use that. I use a tool called Drupify. There are many tools like Drupify out there, like Apollo.(Speaker 1) There's a whole bunch of them. I use Drupify and it allows me to do automated activities. So trying to touch those 5,000 people and instead of me now doing it manually using a tool to touch those 5,000 people to find out of the 5,000(Speaker 3) the(Speaker 1) You know hundred two hundred that are going to respond to you And so and when I find those 100 200 then I turn it into manual and manual engagements I leverage Calendly as my Calendar resource and the reason I use a calendar URL, if you don't have one, I strongly encourage you to get one, is it gets the bartering away. Are you available this time?(Speaker 1) No, I'm available this time. It gets that out of the way because you're often when somebody does respond to you, you want to make it easy for them to say yes, to actually have a meeting with you. Using a calendaring tool that you send them a URL and say, instead of doing this tit for tat(Speaker 1) and trying to find a time slot that matches, give them your calendar and let them run with that. CRM tool, I use GetDesk for my CRM, GetDeck, the reason I use it because it's tightly coupled with LinkedIn and I can port directly to and from LinkedIn(Speaker 1) to be able to get the data. And that's it, and then I use Zoom as my, Zoom, Google Meet, Teams, and the phone for when people actually meet with me. And then I've got two local areas that I go meet if people wanna meet face-to-face,(Speaker 1) I give them option of two. I'll probably expand that in east-west direction as well. So I've got a north-south direction from me. And then get into the meeting the people and leveraging the technology to automate it.(Speaker 2) You know, you mentioned calendar, hard for me to say, but let's just say a booking link. And I had somebody reach out to me recently who wanted to wanted me to, they wanted to, at the bottom line, they wanted to sell me something. But it was it was something I wanted to know about. And I said, Yes, just(Speaker 2) send me your booking link, and I'll book a time that's convenient for you(Speaker 3) And he didn't have a booking. He didn't have a booking link(Speaker 6) And I and you know, my first thought was is this guy really a professional? He doesn't have a booking link. Yeah(Speaker 7) Yeah, a lot of people look and say well, how do I create a booking link when I'm also gonna charge for money(Speaker 1) for some coaching and mentoring and those sorts of things, but you have your free stuff, and then you have people that are trying to sell you stuff. How do you separate that from executive networking? And the way I've done it is, I use Calendly for my executive networking and my free time, and I have three options to select on there.(Speaker 1) One is a 20 minute executive networking slot, another is a 20 minute executive networking slot. Another is a 20 minute business networking slot and another one is an hour face to face. And I found those three helped me then navigate what level of energy I apply to the person that's engaged with me. Because the person that is trying to sell me something is not going to book themselves as an executive(Speaker 1) networking slot. It just helps me separate. I know when I'm going into the meeting, what to expect from the person I'm(Speaker 2) engaging with. You know, I was just making a note to create at least two booking links that are different. That's a great idea.(Speaker 1) Yeah, and 20 minutes is important because an executive will give you 20 minutes. Because if they, if it's a great discussion, they'll extend another 10 minutes. But if they give you 30 minutes, they know there's a probability(Speaker 1) it's going to extend to 45 minutes. So 20 minutes is a healthy number to put out there to, and most people will book a 20 minutes. They'll see it, it comes up on their calendar. And when the calendar goes in, it's really cool because it sends them my LinkedIn profile, says, this is what we're going to talk about. This is who we are. my phone number if you need me. So when they open it up, they don't have to try and remember who it is they're meeting or(Speaker 1) why they're meeting. And the most important part is they initiated the meeting with me. So the dialogue changes a little bit because they're they're asking for the meeting with me. And so when we start talking, they know that so the dialogue changes and the defensive nature is not there to say, well, what do you actually want out of me?(Speaker 2) Yeah, that's a great idea, too. So, Andrew, what I know you've talked about doing, you know, being a giver. You've talked about doing some charity work, working with others.(Speaker 6) Tell us how that fit into your whole strategy of meeting the people you wanna meet.(Speaker 1) Completely accidental, as I mentioned earlier, but what I gained out of it, I don't know that I could have paid for. In all of the volunteer stuff I did, in all the people from around the world that I was volunteering, what I ended up doing is I ended up giving knowledge,(Speaker 1) time and energy to people who had no ability to repay me in any way at all. And I have no expectation. I'm not a person who builds up a book. If I do something for someone, there isn't an IOU that I keep in the back of my mind.(Speaker 1) You know, if I help someone, I help them and there's no expectation of return. And what I got out of it is I heard my voice and I found the people that I was coaching that turned into more long-term coaching. So instead of just being a one-hit wonder where somebody comes on and they're like, well, it's not what I was after, I found what the patterns were of where I was impacting(Speaker 1) and affecting people's lives. So that helped me find my voice. It helped me find my product, helped me realize my brand. I then took the one-on-one coaching that I was doing on the two websites I was using is ADPList.org and PushFar.com. Both of them are listed on named in the book and I then got involved in Thai Atlanta. Thai Atlanta is a non-profit entity focused at minority startups and I got involved there taking what I'd(Speaker 1) learned about what I was drawing people in and how I was affecting people's lives and I got involved with Tiny Atlanta and AXIS Foundation which is also Atlanta based and started working with founders and that's where I found I am fantastic at drawing out the founders helping them get their why get their energy get their mojo so I work with them as part of these two organizations to build their decks,(Speaker 1) get themselves ready for go-to-markets, their pitching, their financials, their revenue forecasts, how they're messaging, how they present, how they represent themselves. And it turned out that out of all of the background I've got, I've done everything from process(Speaker 1) to development, to data, to IP, to HR, to outsourcing, ERPs, I've done a lot and I learned that this broad experience that I've got from South Africa into Europe into the US, Canada, Central America, it's applicable ubiquitously and all of these people are all looking for knowledge on how do they run a company, how do they make smart business decisions, smart life decisions and I learned that my client is a CEO and my skill is to help figure(Speaker 1) out how do I help that CEO get their time back, how do I help them figure out where some of the limitations are, why they can't, if they want to get to the point of making themselves dispensable in the company, i.e. getting themselves ready for an exit event or a purchase or they want to run the company and go, you know, go tour the world while the company is running.(Speaker 1) I'm a fantastic resource to help those people figure out how do they get this done? How do they empower the team? How do they transfer autonomy to the team? And I learned this starting, the volunteer stuff helped me glue all of these storylines together(Speaker 1) where I eventually got to the point of being invited by Vistage to be a Vistage chair, and in that I'm creating a Vistage group of CEOs in the Atlanta area, five million plus that are, you know, I recognize that they need a coach, one, they need a peer group, two,(Speaker 1) and they need an operating model if they're going to progress themselves. But you have to want to, you know, as with anything, as with any change, you have to want to do it. So there is a select audience of people that go there. But I would not have got there, honestly, without, I probably would have got there eventually, but not as fast and not as soundly, not as, I fundamentally believe and know where my strengths are. I asked it's visceral. And I feel it's like(Speaker 1) that because of all the all the volunteer work I did.(Speaker 2) That's great. I admire you for that. You know, most people, probably me included, if you lost your job, and you've got a family to take care of, you're just rushing to find a job. And you didn't do that. So what gave you the trust and the patience to do this the way you've done it?(Speaker 2) Which I would say is the right way.(Speaker 1) Yeah, so I would say I was very fortunate that it's a soft landing into this. I did not end up with a hard landing. If it was a hard landing, I think my story would be I was very fortunate that it's a soft landing into this I did not end up with a hard landing if it was a hard landing I think my story would be very very different and the difference between hard and soft hard is when you get told you have 30 Days and it's done or one day and it's done. I had 30 days and the CEO Continues with the company life key continues and it looks like we are making it through as a company. CEO and the team have done a fantastic job(Speaker 1) of getting the stuff built, getting the product built out there. It's a health and wellness product, and we've got product now that we're now finally shipping. The CEO has just been fantastic at getting investors to stay the course,(Speaker 1) scaling the company down effectively, getting the right resourcing. So that gave me the soft land. It gave me the time to, while I was helping him as much as he needed me to help keep things moving forward, it gave me the time and the bandwidth(Speaker 1) to go do what I was doing. Now, not everybody's gonna be able to do what I did because of the timescale and the soft landing, and which is why I recommend, it's never too early to start aggressively networking to create a brand for yourself,(Speaker 1) to create work colleagues, LinkedIn, remote friends, so that when you need a hand, they are there for you. So you're not scrambling when you need it, but when you get to that point that you need it, that's to go there. So, you know, Butch, I was just very fortunate.(Speaker 1) I was dealt a very fortunate hand and the CEO helped me through and has just done a fantastic CEO of life. He has just done a fantastic job of keeping things afloat. If not for him, I would have been in a very, very, very different boat.(Speaker 2) You know, one thing you said made me think of this and I've heard this in different ways and it's not new, but and this is easier to say than it is to do, but I know it's been true in my life, is if you're a giver, you'll always get back more than you give. And it may not be from who you gave to, but it'll be from someone else. It just seems to be almost a universal law.(Speaker 1) It is. I mean, what are the odds that I would meet someone who introduced one person and Josh part of the CRO forum. He spent 30 and I embarrass him every time I meet with him because I throw him under the bus and I thank him every time I see him.(Speaker 1) He spent 30 seconds with me. It was a five minute discussion. He gave me 30 seconds of words, pressed me in a direction. That pushed me into a couple of people. I would never have authored the book if I didn't meet a lady at a Fractional United event(Speaker 1) who said to me, Andrew, stop being so full of yourself. Just wake up 30 minutes early, put your thoughts down on paper and a topic you love, which is leadership, write a book, and you'll eventually start writing a book. I'm like, I can't write a book. He said, Andrew, stop with your excuses.(Speaker 1) Just wake up 30 minutes early and start writing a book. And that's where Leading Magnanimously came out of. I have another person who introduced me to Kettering, which is the Atlanta executive network. I would never have found them without finding this person blind and them bringing me in. I'm part of four fractional executive groups, all different focus and different go-to-markets.(Speaker 1) They have different target audiences, which has resulted in a fractional COO opportunity in Venezuela. So I just tell people, you just never know what you don't know. You don't know what you're gonna say to people(Speaker 1) that is going to fundamentally impact them, that's gonna change their life. You know, I was saying this on my LinkedIn and I still do not know where I found it, so I cannot claim any credit to it. But my life is about planting seeds that will grow trees that I will never sit under.(Speaker 1) And that is, I mean, it's the foundation of my philosophy of life. And paying it forward, I just, you know, I've been gifted with all the people that have shared with me, looked after me, introduced me, drawn me into things.(Speaker 1) There've been some things I've learned and I've decided to steer away from because they're not part of what I wanna be part of. But, you know, it's been fantastic to see how the giving world recycles itself back.(Speaker 2) Yeah, the cool thing is you don't have to understand it to know it works.(Speaker 5) Nope.(Speaker 1) And the important thing is going into it and not expecting anything back. So if you go in expecting, you're always going to be disappointed because it'll show up in ways that you can never expect. So you've got to go in with a gifting nature. Even my website, if you go to the website arduinan.com, what I've done in that and the two books, the U Decide, which is(Speaker 1) about LinkedIn and how to maximize, it's a book about everything I've learned around how to leverage LinkedIn, these tools, how to network, the messaging is key, vital, vital, the words you use, how you set the stage for the discussion, what you ask for, what you give, absolutely vital and that's the you decide book. My website, yeah, thank you, which that's the you decide. My website Arduinon is a there's so much information out there. Where do I start?(Speaker 1) What on earth do I even get my head wrapped around? Where do I go? And my purpose for the Arduinon website is to say to people here, it's not the perfect answer, but out of all the noise, I'm a quick study on things and I quickly discern whether something is useful or not. And if it's useful, I use it. And if I've used it, I've put it on my website. And the goal of that is to help other people that get to a similar stage where they say, geez, what do I do now? Is a place to go and say, this is my first step.(Speaker 1) And the goal is just to give someone, just nudge them in a direction. Cause as soon as you nudge people in a direction and they can start seeing, oh, okay, I got this worked. I'm doing this.(Speaker 1) I can see, I can feel this is drawing me out. And that's what I've done. It's just passed and paid it forward. Anything I've learned goes into a book. I've got another three I wanna write to create the whole collection. And just pass it forward. And I recommend anyone get involved in Volatint,(Speaker 1) no matter whether it's a food bank, whether you get onto ADP list or Pushfar or one of the other websites that are out there, get on there and start mentoring, start coaching, start helping people who can never give anything back to you.(Speaker 2) Well, Andrew, you gave us a good one minute on, you decide, give us one minute on your second book.(Speaker 1) Yeah, so Leading Magnanimously, this is my heartstring. This is, I'm just, courtesy of my mom, I've been gifted with the ability just to, I learned to work with and understand and interpret people. And I didn't notice it until the last five, six years, but I just have a knack of creating teams(Speaker 1) and energy of people where the team becomes one of those teams that you remember and your next job is like, well, jeez, I wish I had a team like that. And I've got a teardrop of, you know, a breadcrumb of teams that I've left behind me that are like that.(Speaker 1) And in the last, when I got to the ODIHR moment, I started writing a book, it was about leadership, and I love leadership. And what I tried to do is, I wanted to write a book that was a dog-ear book that somebody could hold in their hand and go through and say,(Speaker 1) how do I, in today's day and age, how do I lead differently? How do I empower people? How do I actually cross the divide and have a 55 year old and a 35 year old in the team and lead and manage them in the way that they,(Speaker 1) they can be maximized? How do I do that? So I took that, put it down into the book. And the goal was to pass on a concept where your team goes to bed at night on a Sunday night, looking forward and wanting to go to work on a Monday morning.(Speaker 1) Or in the extreme example, in the last two years, when we've had to scale down enough, had to sadly move people out of the team, I've had team members that I have had to let go who are scrambling to try and get back into the organization, who are waiting,(Speaker 1) they're on a wait list, they wanna get back into the company. That doesn't happen by accident, that happens through hard work and very creative leadership. And that was, I put that down in the leading Magnanimously book.(Speaker 1) And that is actually available for free. If you go to my LinkedIn profile on one of the posts there, there is a URL there right now. It'll be free for the foreseeable future. Looking to just hand and give that book away to as many people that want to download it.(Speaker 2) So if you said an interesting thing, and I'll say this as a plug for our show, the 55 year old has the old school wisdom, the 35 year old has the new school tools, and they can both learn from each other. And I think that's a place that companies are missing, that if you start pairing up the 55 year old with the 35 year old, and that'll more, pairing those two up. You'll get way more than(Speaker 1) double of what they're doing. Yeah, it maximizes if you can so first of all, you know there is a this this quote unquote ageism thing that's on the go but the ageism thing that's on the go is pretty much people not communicating with one another. You have people who think they know it all and all the have all the wisdom and you have people who think they know it all and have all the wisdom, and you have people who think they've got all the tech and the other group has no idea what(Speaker 1) they're talking about, they're disconnected from reality. And the problem is, the answer is in the middle. You have, I mean, there's another group that I participate in called Generalist World. It's run by a millionaire out of the UK, fantastic operators, and the reason I enjoy it is because they bring in operators, operations people at a level that are doing what I'm doing, but they're using current technologies, they're using words and approaches that have helped me grow as a human being.(Speaker 1) So I try to make sure that I spread my knowledge growth across the board, I interact as much as I can, and the book was meant to be a utility to help people to say it's not about the age of being 35 or the age of being 55 it's about how we engage with one another it's about the small words we do it's about the role of the eye when you're on zoom or somebody you know when I start talking you start typing and you're not listening to me so small little things that broadcast just that broadcast doesn't get that create a sense of,(Speaker 1) you're not fit for the team, I don't want you here. And that creates this perceived ageism divide.(Speaker 2) So Andrew, as we get near the end of the show here, there are a couple of things that you may have noticed I was writing a little bit during your talk. Because one of the big things I get out of being the host of this show is being able to talk to a lot of different people and learn a lot of different things.(Speaker 2) But if I had to say my takeaway on you is you had a plan. You had strategy and tactics to build long-term relationships. You used generosity and patience and fortitude to make that plan happen. Does that sound about right?(Speaker 1) One thing I would add there is mindset. Mindset is everything. If you have the wrong mindset, you're the only one that puts your, whichever side of the bed you get out of, left or right, you're the only one that puts that foot down on the ground.(Speaker 1) You're in control of your mindset. You're the only one that can decide how you take today on and how you get yourself moving forward. We can all allow ourselves to be victim, we all are justified to be victim or to live in the whole of the moment and that's the choice we make. The choice I make is to have a great mindset every day and to get out of bed and do something(Speaker 1) constructive. I have a very long life history that has put me in a position where mindset, positive mindset, is just natural for me. I just, I don't have to work hard to work on mindset, but whatever you need to do, put things around you that allow your mindset to come straight. Once your mindset is in control(Speaker 1) and it's forward facing towards an outcome, everything else is easy. The networking, the tools, the strategy, the approach, the creativity you do, the things you do, the networking, the conversations you'll have, the people you'll meet, the dialogue you'll be open to,(Speaker 1) the lessons you will be open to in terms of critical commentary around what works and what doesn't work, or how you're overselling or underselling, or how you are too fragmented in what you're thinking. You'll meet people who will engage with you.(Speaker 1) You just have to have a mindset to be open, to be engaged with. So I would add mindset on there, but for me that is, it's the number one. And my mom always said to me, from a very, very young age, just because of the life journey I've been on, she said to me,(Speaker 1) Andrew, no one's gonna make things better for you. You need to decide what today looks like. And if you're going to allow the people know to define what today looks like, you lose. And that will be the rest of your life. So decide, get out of bed, decide and take ownership of the day.(Speaker 2) I agree with that a hundred percent. And one thing that I kind of my thing that controls my mindset, the saying that controls my mindset is if you can be happy today with whatever you have, you have all you need to be happy.(Speaker 3) Yeah. If you can be happy today with whatever you have, you have all you need to be happy. Yeah, yeah.(Speaker 1) And don't stop dreaming, right? The future is built on dreams. There's nothing wrong with dreaming about a grandiose future and a grandiose revenue, income and all that. Keep dreaming, because if you don't dream,(Speaker 1) you become complacent. And once you're complacent, then you get happy with status quo. And if you're happy with status quo, that's fine. There's nothing wrong with that. But then don't allow yourself to get into salt mode and then do the things that you need to do(Speaker 1) to make sure you're protected. So that when you get the Dear Johnny discussion,(Speaker 4) you're ready.(Speaker 1) Come up with your dream I'm still working towards my dream. I have a very very defined very clear dream I'm working my tail end off to to get them my family know the dream everyone that knows me knows my dream I look forward to attaining that(Speaker 2) I'm sure you will so Andrew. Where's the best place for people to find you?(Speaker 3) Yeah(Speaker 1) so on my website Arjunan.com, and also on my LinkedIn page, Andrew Brummer. So both of those places, the books are available on Amazon, and you can also navigate to the books on the Arjunan website. And if you did not get the QR code or the LinkedIn code, the free code on the banner that ran across.(Speaker 1) You can go to my profile and in my posts, there is a post there that has the leading McNamara book and the first comment has got the link for you to get the book.(Speaker 2) Really appreciate you being on the show today, Andrew. If you need to reach me, it's butch at get fist bumps. com or you can reach me on my LinkedIn page. And I want to close with this. Whether you're just going to our analogy we had before, whether you're the 35 year old or the 55 year old or the 65 year old, this isn't about start starting over. This is about evolving what you have, what the abilities you have are great and people need those abilities, but if if if you're the the new school guy, learn(Speaker 2) the old school wisdom. If you're the old school guy, learn the new school tools and appreciate being on the show today. We'll be back next week with a highlight show because it's the 4th of July. And then we'll have guests starting again in two weeks. And oh, I wanna thank Fist Bump(Speaker 2) for sponsoring the show today. They did all the marketing, promotion and production of the show. So many thanks to them. I hope everyone has a great week and we'll see you next week on Bridging Generations in Sales everyone has a great week and we'll see you next week on Bridging Generations in Sales(Speaker 2) and Outreach.

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Robert (Butch) Nicholson

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