Live from Sales HQ with Oz Merchant
We are live from SalesHQ. I'm Vince Veazey, your host and the founder here at SalesHQ. And our guest on this episode is Oz Merchant. Welcome to the show, Oz.
Oz Merchant:Thank you, Vince. Thank you
Vince Beese:for joining us in this. I think will be bad weather today. Who knows? Hurricane hitting the North Carolina area or tropical storm or depression, whatever it is. Before we get into more about your background, what are you up to, love to talk to the listeners and watchers out there a little bit about sales HQ.
Vince Beese:And by the way, if you are watching this live on LinkedIn or streaming live on our YouTube channel, feel free to ask us questions and we'll get back to you in real time or near real time as much as possible. But back to sales HQ, you know, it's a community we launched. It's going on close to 5 months now. And, I really had this idea a couple of years ago. I wanted to replicate what it was like to work on a sales floor.
Vince Beese:I think that's what we really missed for a lot of folks that have been remote either as an individual or part of the sales team. It's hard to replicate that energy when you're working a 100% remote. So that's the first thing we're really doing here. So those of you that are remote out there, you can come to sales HQ and this could be your home base for work, but we're way more than that. We are a community and being a community, we put on lots of events whether they be career development wise like our master class series that you've been to before and or, just networking events.
Vince Beese:I find that salespeople and people in the sales profession love to be around other people, so we put on lots of events. So check out us at saleshq.co for more information or sign up for
Oz Merchant:our newsletter. And most importantly, there's a bell here. So if you're in sales
Vince Beese:You know what's funny about the bell, by the way, of all the videos I post on LinkedIn or YouTube, guess which gets the highest views
Oz Merchant:when the bell goes off? We did.
Vince Beese:1 of our members last week rang the bell, put it on there and within, I think, a couple of hours, we had 370 views on on YouTube. Like, for us, our channel is not big. That was like, wow. So short videos work on YouTube. Put it that well.
Vince Beese:They gotta be entertaining. Yeah.
Oz Merchant:But, you know, when you work in remote, it's, like, bells just feels good. Yeah. It's like, you know, whether you're getting to ring it or somebody else is gonna ring it, it's just like, okay, things
Vince Beese:are happening. His name's Chris. He was sitting at his desk. He closed the deal. He was like, yes.
Vince Beese:And I was like, what's that? He could say, I closed
Oz Merchant:the deal. I go, well
Vince Beese:I go, but wait. Let me get my camera at first, and then he went over there, rang the bell. Nice. It felt good. Like, it it's Yeah.
Oz Merchant:And then it gets the whole, you know, the whole environment, everybody in the office. Yeah.
Vince Beese:Well, I have to tell you, it's way better than a Slack emoji with Yeah. Just something's input. It's it's cool. You have to do something, but it's not the same as a live bell. And, by the way, have you noticed that the Olympics, after the athletes on the track and field, they win their event, there's a huge bell on the field and the track track and field events at the Olympics.
Vince Beese:I was like, see, even athletes, premier athletes wanna ring the bell. So, anyway, it was a good riff about ringing bells. Tell us about yourself. What are you up to these days? I know you're doing a lot of different things.
Oz Merchant:I am. I am. So
Vince Beese:Keep busy.
Oz Merchant:So most recently, I launched a company called Ecom Sellers HQ, which is really targeting, ecom sellers, who are whether they're selling on Amazon, Shopify, and then helping them connect to all the different resources they're looking for, whether that's software, whether that's money, whether that's agencies, consultants. So, basically, you just have everything you need from an ecommerce standpoint to kind of launch, scale, and exit the marketplace?
Vince Beese:It's a marketplace to bring all that together under one roof. Interesting. What size sellers are you talking about?
Oz Merchant:So since it's really going from launch, scale, exit, really everybody from, hey, I'm trying to figure out, how to get started on this, to, know what? Need some exit planning and need to find some m and a folks. So to have all those people on one platform just to
Vince Beese:make that journey a lot easier. That's pretty cool. You have a big background in ecommerce. Correct?
Oz Merchant:Yeah. I mean, I've started on the kind of the retail brick and mortar, wholesale side, then got in e commerce, the last few years. Yeah. So it's a good kind of culmination of
Vince Beese:And plus your last name as well. Makes a
Oz Merchant:lot of sense. And living you know, it's funny. I I every time I go to these events, everyone just assumes that's the company name. And every time, I have to be like, no, no, That's me. The company is the counselor to educate.
Oz Merchant:So it's it's become a a running joke.
Vince Beese:I I when I first met you and saw your name on LinkedIn, I assumed it was some affiliation, or you started the business the time anyway.
Oz Merchant:Yeah. Or people think I'm in the, like, a merchant service Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Or something.
Oz Merchant:So I'm
Vince Beese:like, nope. Nope. Let's just Change your name. Oz, the merchant. You know what I mean?
Vince Beese:I always like to ask my guests because because everyone has a different story and this is really what this podcast is about is understanding your your history, your story, and your journey in the sales profession. So how did you get your start in sales? Did you want to do that? Did you kinda fall into it? What what's your story in getting started?
Oz Merchant:So I started in the the world of, well, actually, copiers and stuff. So that's kind of the Selling copier? Selling copiers, again, hitting door to door. In fact, this whole area wasn't my territory.
Vince Beese:Oh, really?
Oz Merchant:Yeah. So it hit into all of our
Vince Beese:What brand?
Oz Merchant:It was we did Canons and Konica Minoltas. Okay.
Vince Beese:So top of the line, they're good stuff. But how did you get in Heidelberg? How'd you find that job? And like, why did you say, like, I wanna go sell printers?
Oz Merchant:Because, when I so I studied textiles in university, and by the time I got out, NAFTA passed, WTO passed, and pretty much everybody I was talking to was saying, hey. Are you willing to relocate to Honduras to Mexico, and do you speak Spanish? So, NC State's textile school, when it started, had a 93% placement rate. So meaning by the time you graduated from May August, 93% of graduating class had a job in the field. Oh, wow.
Oz Merchant:By the time I left, it was down 70%, and you better know Spanish
Vince Beese:and
Oz Merchant:you would be willing to relocate. So I was like, yeah, that's not gonna happen. My wife wasn't too crazy about that idea. So, we I started looking into kind of this tech sector.
Vince Beese:Yeah. So and and I'm curious. I I've heard pretty good stories about, the copy business back in the day of, well, Hewlett Packard, some of the others that got really good sales training. Did you find that as a good experience for you?
Oz Merchant:Yes. So, you know, they because everyone's trying to compete against kind of Xerox for the the the training.
Vince Beese:Yep.
Oz Merchant:And they had, you know, kind of really renowned training program. So I was fortunate that, yeah, we got a really extensive training. And if you know who Sara Blakely is from Spanx, before she got her started in Spanx, she was my sales trainer. Come on.
Vince Beese:So I
Oz Merchant:got For real?
Vince Beese:10 days with her. You just gave away your most one of the most interesting things about yourself Yeah. Right in the beginning of the podcast.
Oz Merchant:And that was the year she launched Spanx. Really? Yeah. So she got done trading, and then that the last email I got from her is, hey, I'm going to be on Oprah. Come watch me, because she was on the Oprah's Oh, wow.
Oz Merchant:Christmas thing. So everybody got Spanx under their seats, and she took off from there.
Vince Beese:She certainly did. God, what an entrepreneur she is, and she's now investing in companies. Yeah.
Oz Merchant:I think
Vince Beese:she was, wasn't she on Shark Tank? She was
Oz Merchant:on Shark Tank
Vince Beese:in the market. So Wow. You stay in touch?
Oz Merchant:I'm I've tried to reach out over the last 20 years, but,
Vince Beese:she's a little busy.
Oz Merchant:She's gonna yeah. Yeah. So
Vince Beese:but it was just a great experience.
Oz Merchant:Was she a good trainer, by the way? She really was. Really. She knew her stuff. And if you know kind of her history, like, the hustle it took to get started in a business like the business she was going into, talking to factories, being a woman with an idea that was so radically different.
Oz Merchant:It's like, to find somebody to take you seriously
Vince Beese:Well, that must have been interesting to you since your background education wise, right? Like
Oz Merchant:Yeah, so I totally gut what you do, and I knew the challenges she's coming up against, because it's like, you know, you're talking hosiery and stuff, and, and the world had changed. There wasn't that much hosiery left in, like, a place in North Carolina, because I think the first prototype she found was somebody a factory that was still left in North Carolina.
Vince Beese:Is that right? I find it interesting she came from a sales background, sales training specific. I don't know if she's sold directly, but I bet you that she probably equates a lot of her success to having that discipline, that process for sales being the entrepreneur of selling products you're selling. It wasn't technical. It was more about messaging and value proposition and classic sales type of things.
Vince Beese:Right? It was just the hustle and, you
Oz Merchant:know, getting all the nose. In fact, I remember hearing that, you know, when she first launched, because it's new products and stuff, she got a Nordstrom, But the only way to make that successful was she was hustling at every Nordstrom store. She was kind of making the rounds and basically talking to customers, saying, oh, hold on. Let me get you The
Vince Beese:customer talking to the customer service reps, whatever they were called there, right?
Oz Merchant:Yeah. Yeah. So it's like she was living, you know, in the stores Yeah.
Vince Beese:Trying to kinda push her product. And buying some too, probably. Exactly. That's pretty cool. So you went from copiers.
Vince Beese:Where where did that lead to for you?
Oz Merchant:From there, I got into hardware sales, so selling computers, basically, name it. Anything that touched computers, I'm selling.
Vince Beese:So Were you doing that door to door as well, or were you No. That was through a global computer. So if you ever heard
Oz Merchant:of Tiger Direct back in the day,
Vince Beese:I'm yes.
Oz Merchant:They may be still around, but this was their b to b side. So it's only talking businesses. So Emerson, appliances with customers, different municipalities. Mhmm. So that was just focused on, hardware software licensing, like, you know, you'd still have Microsoft, like, back in the day, I can't even remember the terminology that they used back in how do you sell licenses back in those days?
Oz Merchant:Perpetual licenses? Yeah, but it was like, you know I can't even remember. There's, like, a specific term for it back in those days. So that was kind of the only software that's touching until, one of the new companies that approached us to start selling was a company called US Data Vault. Mhmm.
Oz Merchant:And this is probably end of 2004 ish or so. And they were selling this thing called well, you know, we're gonna store stuff for you. Now, it's like 5 gigs for $25. Okay? Somewhere out there.
Oz Merchant:And everyone's like, what is this thing? What do I know? What do I do? And I remember selling this and, you know, nobody kind of got it, didn't know how to position it until 2005 kicked in and Katrina came. And when Katrina hit so if anybody kind of does you know, sold any type of storage stuff back in the days, it was like all, if you remember, like jazz drives Mhmm.
Oz Merchant:Or tape drives? Yes.
Vince Beese:So
Oz Merchant:everybody would basically back stuff up to your tape.
Vince Beese:You take the tape, you put
Oz Merchant:it in in the bank vault. That was how you were, saving stuff. Well, when Katrina hit, not only was your business gone, but the banks where you had the backups, they were gone too. So immediately, the concept of, wow, I can store something that's not in the bank, in that time, they were doing Atlanta and then redundancy into Vegas. And I could have something stored that way.
Oz Merchant:That made the difference, Which is, you know, when it comes to sales, it's always about, like, how do you find the right story for people to connect to? Yes. And the moment I could tell that story Yeah.
Vince Beese:Yeah.
Oz Merchant:You know, people started getting it.
Vince Beese:That's pretty relatable. Anyone in this country knew about Katrina. Exactly. In any business, certainly, that would be eye opening. Yeah.
Vince Beese:Imagine you woke up one day and all your data's gone.
Oz Merchant:If you're, you know, IT, that that's that's your job. Your whole thing is to basically make sure you preserve What was the
Vince Beese:name of the company you were working for?
Oz Merchant:So the company was Global Computer, but we were kind of reselling all different products and services. So US Data Vault at the time had just partnered with, Global Computer.
Vince Beese:So I needless to say, I assume in 2,005, 'six, you made your quota.
Oz Merchant:We but what more importantly is it gave me a taste of, like, wow, the margins on this thing that's not physical Mhmm. Were far, far better than the commissions. And everything was so much better than this hardware trying to push product. So that was kind of the first thing they gave me.
Vince Beese:So, your sales cycle was shorter, probably?
Oz Merchant:With that story, it made it much easier just to sell. And there's no, you know, physical aspect of it. You're immediately getting kind of the on the books, you're kind of
Vince Beese:I always I think it's just a great reminder, again, to to sellers out there and and leaders quite frankly that the story always sells. You know what I mean? I was at a company years ago called called Cheetah Mail and I when I first joined, I was kind of embarrassed by the name, like, you work for a company called what? It's named after animal. But, eventually, I woke up and said, well, instead of, you know, saying, like, Cheetah Mail, tell us tell the story behind why we were called Cheetah Mail.
Vince Beese:So the the simple reason was the founders, back in the day, early 2000, for commercial email going out, the most important thing that was that was going out fast and was reliable was going to get delivered to the inbox right at the end of the day, and you're gonna be able to report on it in real time. So what's the fastest land animal is the cheetah. So cheetah male. Right? So people, oh, I get it.
Vince Beese:Then they would say, like, oh, I thought it was something more interesting than that. But needless to say, it started off the conversation and a lot of our pitches started with that. Right? So, but I think that's important because no one wants the boring beginning of a a pitch deck of, like, number of employees and all those facts. It's more like
Oz Merchant:Tell the story.
Vince Beese:Founders the founders vision, the company's vision, the direction of going, the problems you're solving, the story around that. People remember those things. Right? People are gonna remember your Katrina story and and, it resonating with very powerfully. Fully.
Vince Beese:Right?
Oz Merchant:Exactly. And, you know, the mo the more you can it's gonna personalize
Vince Beese:the story related to kind of the the problem of solving, the the better it is. Yeah. So So I did see on your LinkedIn profile, you, like many of our guests that have been on show, part of the share file, mafia for a little bit of time. Right? So we've had gosh.
Vince Beese:You name it John Rosar. Ari was on not long ago. List goes on and on. Grant was on, like, so Yeah. How did you find an opportunity at ShareFile?
Oz Merchant:So when I so I was living in Atlanta. When I moved here, I I started, you know, reaching out, I was like, I wanna get into software because I've done the hardware thing, and I started talking to a number of different companies and one of those was ShareFile. So Jess still teases me about this because I was technically employee number 1. Really? And that turned him down.
Oz Merchant:Ah. So, and then come back till about 2 and a half years later. Okay. So I started with another company, and then after move I got some experience under my belt in software and then reached out to Jess and started, like, within a few days because he remembered If
Vince Beese:you were employee number 1, were you gonna be in a sales capacity? What was gonna be your role?
Oz Merchant:It was everything. I mean, it was me.
Vince Beese:Whatever he needed. Right?
Oz Merchant:Yeah. Because it was basically a desk in a hallway. Right. It was bad days early. It was in Brooks' kind of office at the time.
Oz Merchant:She still had her agency. It was just a desk in a hallway. It was like, you know, I've got this idea, this thing we're doing, culture. Yeah. And then it's like, yeah.
Vince Beese:So you say to your wife, hey. This guy wants me this this really interesting person wants me to sit in this hallway with a desk, and it's not gonna pay that much. It's gonna be really excited.
Oz Merchant:Yeah. But, you know, startups were still so new. It was, like, nobody you know, this is still kind of mid 2000s. Right? So it's like I didn't have any point of reference for for startups and stuff.
Oz Merchant:It's like, okay. We'll
Vince Beese:we'll we'll
Oz Merchant:see where it goes. Yeah. And, now it's like, you know, after I'm on start number 7, it's like
Vince Beese:It's still crazy, though. Yeah. But I don't think
Oz Merchant:I could ever go back to, like, a giant company. It's just Oh, that's it.
Vince Beese:You figure out kinda That's it.
Oz Merchant:Are you the person because, you know, when I was telling the, the copiers or stuff, I was one out of over a 1000 sales reps. That's just the sales organization. That's not included in the rest of the organization. So it's like, you wanna be in that type of company, or do you wanna be in a company where you can just contribute a lot more, be part of, the overall process and stuff? So once you get a taste of that, for me at least, that was kind of the I
Vince Beese:agree a 100 percent. And I think it's a caution for all founders out there, quite frankly, as they're hiring their first salespeople that someone who was at a bigger organization that did really well at a bigger organization doesn't necessarily translate to start up sales. So that's the thing that the mistake I see all the time, I'm sure
Oz Merchant:you do as well,
Vince Beese:is whether it be the sales leader and or the individual contributors. They've until you're at your 1st startup, you don't know what's gonna happen. Right? Until you walk in that door and you realize that this is a blank canvas, And guess what? You've gotta go out there and sketch and draw and paint and do whatever it takes to build your pipeline or whatever it is.
Vince Beese:It's a different beast. So you either enjoy that or you're you're like, nah. It's just not for me.
Oz Merchant:Yeah. And that's the thing. If you're looking for give me the playbooks and so I can be successful, yeah, startup is not where you wanna go. Because startup is all about define and create and iterate and figure out the playbook yourself. So it's really about being this kind of all arounder.
Oz Merchant:I can because, you know, you're you're not only selling, you're a feedback loop to product, you're figuring out the right messaging for marketing, you're wearing so many different hats, and you may be performing the performance you're looking at at sales, but the function is so much greater. Yeah.
Vince Beese:Yes. I think people out there should try both big corporations, see if that gets you. Yeah. Start ups to to really understand what the difference is. I I went from AT and T to a 10 person start up, and soon as I got to the startup, I knew that was for me and that for the rest of my career, that's what I went down the path.
Vince Beese:So it was very interesting. You eventually became an entrepreneur. What made you decide decide to go from sales to sales leadership to being more an entrepreneur and an owner of a business? What was the catalyst for you?
Oz Merchant:Well, background wise, family is all entrepreneurs. I had my first kind of retail business. Cousin and I opened that back in the mid nineties. So I'd done several kind of stints of different entrepreneurship. So it was just a matter of, like, Okay, let me go explore the job world, and then come back to entrepreneurship again.
Oz Merchant:So that's why I think the whole startup I gravitated towards that just because it's entrepreneurship, it's contributing to something that can make a big impact and difference, versus just being a cog in a very giant machine. Yeah. So it very much just kinda made
Vince Beese:sense to you. So what was the first entrepreneurial thing you did after your your sales career or during your sales career? Well, like I say,
Oz Merchant:I mean, just being a part of a startup is I'm always thinking that way. So and I think a lot of it is just having entrepreneurship mindset. When you're even hiring early on as a startup, you wanna be thinking about, you know, am I bringing on somebody that thinks that way? Because it's gonna be very different than somebody that it's like, okay, just give me this to do, and I'll go fulfill that function. I mean, when I was this manager, early days, I was writing some of the blogs.
Oz Merchant:I was, you know, handling some of the the marketing stuff, doing all the sales stuff, customer service, sending out the invoice. It was just so many different hats to be wearing because that's what was needed to
Vince Beese:get the business going. Managed, were you there through the acquisition? Right in Betilda, a few months before the acquisition because
Oz Merchant:they knew that was kind
Vince Beese:of, coming in. It's like, well, I've spent a good amount of time there, though.
Oz Merchant:Almost 8 years. Yeah. And I was pretty much employee number 1 there as well for the US market. Yeah. So and then got to kinda see that journey into management.
Oz Merchant:That's you know, go overseas for that as well Oh, cool. And manage, I mean, in Asia Pacific. So it was a a great experience just to see this, company go from Yeah. Kinda start to get into the 1st round of funding, you know, seed rounds into, all the way to a series d. Yeah.
Oz Merchant:That is very cool.
Vince Beese:Yeah. It's very rare. Right. Yeah. We take it for granted when it happens, but it's you know, starts have a very low percentage of success.
Vince Beese:Exactly. As we all know. Yep. Same thing with, investment funds. We all think that VC funds are all big and successful.
Vince Beese:It's very small percentage. So but it's exciting when you take something from the ground level or something in the beginnings to, in that case, to the end of its first life into its second life. Right?
Oz Merchant:So Yeah. It's, you get to see kind of all the the growth pains along the way. You know, and that's the way I look at it is, like, you know, there's a constant for any, I guess, startup, it's like there's a movement of traction, optimization, and then suddenly breaks. So and then you start the cycle over again. Okay?
Oz Merchant:So you get the next set of traction with whatever kind of changes you made, start optimizing and then you get to the next kind of milestone and then you things break again. Yep.
Vince Beese:Or a pandemic happens or Yeah.
Oz Merchant:That's the kind of deal.
Vince Beese:Goes bad or interest rates go up. I mean, that's the you know, if you're looking for a pay if you're just looking for a paycheck, don't go to a start up. Right? That's the that's the point. Wanna switch topics a little bit now and get into one that's top of mind for, I think, most people quite frankly is AI in particular specifically, the potential for AI to potentially benefit sellers and or harm sellers.
Vince Beese:I hear more about, taking away jobs and other things like that, but let's let's tackle that first. Do you see any potential dangers in the near term with AI?
Oz Merchant:So a couple of things I've noticed over the last few years. It's so one is just and I think probably more so since the pandemic, that the world has kind of opened up and has gotten smaller for everybody in the sense that, you know, we're seeing it here, from the standpoint of people are going more remote. And as a result of that, you're also seeing companies say, okay, well, do I need, even if I'm a US company, do I need American sales staff or can I have people overseas? So the concept of remote workers from other countries, which is also helping kind of mitigate some of the costs, there's a big increase of that over the last few years. The next iteration of that where I see it, and I'm starting to see more and more companies moving in that direction, is, okay, well, well, you were sending folks, you know, that that function to folks in a different country, but now you don't even need to do that.
Oz Merchant:You know what, I can have 10 James operating the same time in the same minutes, talking to different customers, and it's the same persona that, you know, that, okay, we've tried 5 different avatars of, like, AI, and we know this person this AI gets the best results. We're going to replicate this and just have that person talk to 10 people at the same moment and at the same time. Yeah. And it's wild to think that's where we're at and headed. Of course that comes with its own set of implications, okay, what's going to happen to the staff, you know, what happens to jobs?
Oz Merchant:You know, we saw that for the last 20 years with a lot of customer service stuff, lot of stuff moving overseas, and, you know, it becomes a race to the bottom. You know? Where where can I get it the cheapest? Well, now it's like, is there anything cheaper that you can do from a call standpoint for them than an AI, and kinda control potentially the output? Yep.
Oz Merchant:So what does that do to, you know
Vince Beese:what you're describing with the the live avatars, right, the chat bots, I think what you're saying is for some sales motions, for some sales processes, that might work. Right? Starting the conversation, asking questions. But do you really believe that they can close something, that they can actually do the job of a seller of closing a deal? So I think it goes to kind of how you segment the type of business.
Oz Merchant:Enterprise, I don't think anything touches enterprise. Enterprise is enterprise. It's gonna
Vince Beese:be it's a people They can answer questions and get conversations
Oz Merchant:started and get the information. Right? Yeah. It can get business conversations going. If it's a a product led journey, for the most part, you can supplement that within AI to kind of complete and probably take it to closure.
Oz Merchant:All the nuances that you know, it's still early to tell. Maybe just future iterations in the next 5 years. Yeah. Maybe it can get so sophisticated that you know your kind of sales cycle so well that you could train the, the, the LLMs to deliver that kind of experience. Is it possible now?
Oz Merchant:No. But is it possible in 5 years from now?
Vince Beese:I'd love, AI to I've seen some of this, like, to write my weekly newsletter in my voice. And I've seen some others and heard others creating GTP GTPs to in their voice Yeah. To do then. I think that's really cool stuff as long as it stays authentic. Right?
Vince Beese:Like, I don't ever want it to be using my voice in a non authentic or, just a very commercial kind of way. I think that's that's the area where I've seen the most benefit. And, for example, for for me with the podcast, one of the nice things I do is I can take the whole transcript from this and throw it into a GTP GTP and get a good summary that otherwise would have taken me quite a bit of time. And then I, of course, edit and tweak it. So I I see huge productivity things.
Vince Beese:I just I guess what I don't buy into, I'm biased, is that it doesn't replace salespeople. It makes them focus on the things that are more important in regards to relationship building, and activities that really are meaningful, like meetings that need to take place and have to happen and prepare for. I think those are great things. But I'm curious, what what what have you found personally for your businesses that's been helpful for you as an as an entrepreneur or as a business owner?
Oz Merchant:From an AI, I'm just trying to just dabble with it now. I have been using folks from overseas for a number of years now just because, you know, it the the quality of people you can get, the ability for them to communicate in English, it's just rapidly increasing.
Vince Beese:But that's not AI. That's not AI, though.
Oz Merchant:So what can potentially happen with AI? I'm just keeping my eyes on it. Because one of the things that's shifting is, you know, when so I remember this, like, about 10, 12 years ago, hired some folks and they were millennials coming right out of college, you know, and noticed in their communication, first it was, like, just very kind of like I'm texting. So it's, like, no. It needs to be more professional than that.
Oz Merchant:And then the next thing I saw was You mean it's
Vince Beese:texting for for professional reasons?
Oz Merchant:Yeah, it was just basically in their business email. So, you know, they kind of, guys, you need to be more professional in this. And then the output SL was like, wait a minute, this is not going to your professor. It was, like, dear, this
Vince Beese:Oh, I see.
Oz Merchant:And I just realized, like, they don't there's, like, a generation that didn't have email in a way a, they didn't really communicate through email, and so they didn't have this perspective of, like, business communication through this this medium. So they knew, basically, like, texting with friends, and they knew how to talk to professors in a more formal thing, but they had no this middle area of just business communication. So, it's like just teaching them how to kind of communicate in a business fashion. I'm curious to see where this goes with the next generation where I, you know, talk to, you know, my nephews and stuff, you know, who are also coming up, you know, from an AI standpoint. Is like, who's doing computer science?
Oz Merchant:I was like, well, where things are headed, computer science may become irrelevant for unless you're the cream of the crop. And I think with anything, if you're the top in your field, you're fine. It's everything that's mediocre or somewhere in between where it's kind of you're in jeopardy. But for that generation, communication, they don't do email. Some don't even do texting.
Oz Merchant:They're just DMing through different social media channels. And they become the next generation. Because we were still selling to boomers and gen xers. Even millennials were selling to boomers and gen xers. Gen z, those buyers are gonna be potentially Gen x and millennials.
Oz Merchant:Yeah. So who may be a lot more tolerant of different
Vince Beese:I don't think we're that far off from seeing our first social media personality being an avatar, being a bot, being not real on either LinkedIn, on TikTok, or whatever it is. I think we're there's probably, obviously, there are some out there right now that are generating interest in getting a lot of clicks and views and all that stuff. But it's gonna happen. Yeah. And people are, monetizing that.
Vince Beese:Right? And I think that's where the shame because I mean, I don't want to read a book that was generated by AI. As weird as it sounds, even if it was a great book. Because it's like part of reading a book is that someone put a lot of time and effort and thought and creativity to it. The same thing like looking at a painting could be a phenomenal painting that was painted with use of AI or technology.
Vince Beese:It's not as interesting to me because we're all human beings and I like to see what human beings can accomplish. I do think we are moving down that path that especially in social media and entertainment, that a lot of this is gonna be computer generated. Right? And the
Oz Merchant:question is, how would you know? Because if the persona and everything else on the back end How would you know? Also gets completely generated, you have a whole back story that may not fit.
Vince Beese:How did we find out about Milli Vanilli?
Oz Merchant:And the part of that
Vince Beese:We weren't too disappointed when you found out, right? I'm sorry. Milli Vanilli Google it.
Oz Merchant:You'll see. Yeah. But I think part of it, to your point, is a generational thing, meaning that we have because we can see both sides of that kind of change over, we have a bias and a preference for 1 over the other. I guess. You can see the next year.
Oz Merchant:I think of my daughter in Steph, who's, like, 10 now. If she grows up in this world and she doesn't have any other points of reference, would she care?
Vince Beese:Yeah. I don't know.
Oz Merchant:Or the next generation. So it's just that just becomes their reality. True.
Vince Beese:So you're they're all entertained by AI?
Oz Merchant:By AI, machine learning. Just because that's the only thing they've ever known. Isn't that crazy? It's wild.
Vince Beese:We can have actors and
Oz Merchant:So if you remember, there's an old once again, Google it, movie called Simone with Al Pacino. The whole thing was just Simone was never real person. Okay. That was very I think that was, like, a maybe '90s movie. Really?
Oz Merchant:Yeah. It was really ahead of its time, which also seemed just kind of like a farfetched thing, and I was
Vince Beese:like Was it Machina? What's the other one called?
Oz Merchant:Ex Machina? Ex Machina.
Vince Beese:Ex I was close. Ex Machina. Yeah.
Oz Merchant:I mean, it's, yeah, I
Vince Beese:don't think we're that far from that. I think we're closer to that than, fully autonomous cars. I'll tell you that.
Oz Merchant:It's funny enough you say that because I've been I always told my daughters, like, don't worry about it. You're never gonna have to drive. Because we're still she's about 6 years away. Unless a lot of things change, she's most likely gonna have to get a license. But I really thought when she was more, like, she'll learn how
Vince Beese:to drive the way things were headed. Elon Musk has his way. Your daughter won't be driving. Well, she'll have an autonomous Tesla driving her around, for sure.
Oz Merchant:So, a friend of mine who just posted on on, like, this LinkedIn as well, he was in Phoenix, and from the airport to the hotel was a driverless car that took him. So no one in
Vince Beese:the front seat?
Oz Merchant:No one in the front seat.
Vince Beese:Someone was in the back seat.
Oz Merchant:Just in the back seat? Just That seems
Vince Beese:like a
Oz Merchant:a cab.
Vince Beese:A scene from Silicon Valley, the show. Remember? You get stuck in a cargo container.
Oz Merchant:Give me But it's exactly that that thing. Could you do that?
Vince Beese:Did you sit in a car, driverless car?
Oz Merchant:I just saw him do it. So I was like, you know, and he got him from point a to point b.
Vince Beese:I'd be freaked out, I'll be honest with you.
Oz Merchant:Depending on how fast it's going. I guess if it's going at 60 miles an hour on the highway
Vince Beese:I just think something jumps out in front of them, person more specifically, like, then what happens? Definitely putting a
Oz Merchant:seat belt in the
Vince Beese:back seat. Wait. Besides that, you it the autonomous car hits a human being, doesn't know maybe it hit a human being or whatever it is, and then keeps moving on. And you're sitting in the back seat, like, are you liable? You know what I mean?
Vince Beese:Like, there's a whole anyway, I'm going down a path that has nothing to do with our audience or sales whatsoever. We're getting close to end, Oz, and I wanna ask you something at the end, what I ask a lot of my guests, but I think you really had an interest point, which is, what's one thing about Oz that's interesting that most people don't know? Certainly, your connection to the founder of Spanx is is pretty interesting.
Oz Merchant:Interesting that most people so, you know, I think so if people ask, you know, are salespeople born, are they, made over time? And I think there's certainly certain things you see growing up that maybe lend itself to inclinations.
Vince Beese:Yeah.
Oz Merchant:So one of my first, let's call it, transaction happened when I was probably around 6 years old. And there's a kid that, you know, he's playing in the woods and I walk behind where his woods are. And he's like, hey, you know, you can't play here. This is kind of my side of woods. I was like, well, I mean, I don't see how that's possible.
Oz Merchant:He's fine. I was like, what if I buy it from you? He's like, okay, if I have 50¢ in my pocket, I gave him 50¢. So transaction was kind of done. So next time I was kinda playing back there, he comes out there.
Oz Merchant:I was like, hey. Wait a minute. I bought this from you. You can't be here. If you wanna play here, it's a dollar.
Vince Beese:Come on.
Oz Merchant:So I got $2 out of that transaction over the course of whatever, a month or so, so a forex return. But, you know, the fact that that happened around, like, 6 or 7, it's like That's scary. Maybe there are concerns Did your parents
Vince Beese:know about it?
Oz Merchant:No, no. And I didn't have to pay taxes on it either, so.
Vince Beese:Now you do. Now I do. So You owe a tax on
Oz Merchant:on $2. Or $2 on well, about $2.50. From Yeah. Your expenses. Yeah.
Oz Merchant:So who knows what the back taxes are.
Vince Beese:That's a crazy mindset for a 6 year old. I will tell you. That's it tells me a lot about you.
Oz Merchant:But, you know, it makes me think is, like, you know, maybe there are some Yes. I understand. Information that you see, you know 100%. If you just get exposed to that, it's like, okay. There's a potential path there.
Vince Beese:Yeah. And a lot of times, the guest will talk about an early experience getting into sales, whether it's starting their own newspaper route or whatever it might be. There were some inclination that they had a gift for, convincing people to do something, whether it was money or just in general. Right?
Oz Merchant:Because
Vince Beese:that's what it's about.
Oz Merchant:Well, I
Vince Beese:wanna thank you for coming on. It's a great conversation.
Oz Merchant:Appreciate having you. Yeah.
Vince Beese:Yeah. Thank you, SalesHQ. Until next time.