Live from Sales HQ with Cameron Long
We are live from sales HQ. I'm Vince Speezy, your host and the founder here at Sales HQ. And before we get to our esteemed guests, Cameron Long, for those of you that are looking for a flex space, a place to provide you more energy outside of your remote environment, sales HQ is a perfect environment for that. Most members will tell you they didn't join because of, buying a desk or going into an office. They did it because they wanna be on around others that do what they do, which is this thing we do called sales.
Vince Beese:So if you're in the area of the Raleigh Durham area, please check us out at saleshq.co. And even if you're not, we have lots of events that are also virtual. You'll see we have we have an event tab on the website as well. So that's my little plug for sales HQ, and, please check us out when you get some time. So, Cameron, I want you to, share with us a little bit about your what you're currently up to, and then we're gonna dig into your how you got started in sales and sales leadership and kinda go from there.
Vince Beese:Sure.
Cameron Long:Sure. So right now, I am working at a startup that I co founded with 2 other gentlemen. We have a couple more staff members, some contract folks doing engineering, but the name of the company is called Vernica and we are creating restaurant tech using very, intentional AI tools to create a better customer experience when you're placing orders. And the whole idea is to help restaurant tours take more orders, get better margins, that sort of thing, but also to create a better experience for the people that are placing their orders. You don't have to wait on hold.
Cameron Long:You don't have to hunt and peck if you would rather call. It's meeting the customer, like, with, like I said, intentional tools so that there's no friction when they're buying that.
Vince Beese:That. A user experience. Like, I'm the customer. What do I get?
Cameron Long:Yeah. Like, you know how normally everyone places an order, they go to ecommerce site like toast or something for the restaurant, they hunt and peck. Well, if you're driving, for instance, right, the modality of hunting and pecking Hard to touch. It's either dangerous or impossible. Yep.
Cameron Long:Right? So what do you do? You either pull over and do it or you call. And if they're busy, you might be on hold. They might not answer the phone ever.
Cameron Long:Or you might just have to drive to the restaurant, order there. Right? So the whole idea of Wernicke is to meet people with whatever modality is the most convenient for them in that moment. So if it's hunting and pecking with your fingers, if it's using voice commands, whatever, but you're taking the human out of the loop there because of the friction point Mhmm. And a bottleneck in restaurants.
Cameron Long:Everyone's hungry from 6 to 8 PM. Right? Right. When's the last time you didn't eat between 6 and 8 PM for dinner? Right.
Cameron Long:Most people do. So if you have to staff everybody available to help take orders in a restaurant Yeah. 6 to 8, you have all this collateral, like, And
Vince Beese:it's inefficient. Right? I mean, humans make mistakes.
Cameron Long:They do. Computers are very good at not making numerical errors.
Vince Beese:I'm curious. I'm I'm collaborating with you, like, brainstorming, but I I I find unless I'm at a fine dining, experience, if I'm at a family type restaurant, I honestly would prefer just to have a tablet in front of me to go dip dip dip dip dip. Here's my order. I'm done. I'd rather not wait for the waitress to come over and put my order in.
Vince Beese:I'd rather just do that and and then, you know, have it be served. Isn't is that where we're is that where the technology is going in the restaurant industry as well?
Cameron Long:I don't know if the technology is going that way. I think that's just where humans have gone. Yeah. Right? And, I feel like I'm just gonna look at you instead of about the camera.
Cameron Long:Okay?
Vince Beese:You can do both.
Cameron Long:You're much prettier than the camera, okay.
Vince Beese:He's not lying.
Cameron Long:Yeah, yeah.
Vince Beese:The camera doesn't lie.
Cameron Long:Yeah, so yeah, I think it's a lot of different things that have converged, but technology, sometimes people want to fill their bellies and they just want to transact and they want food, right, and sometimes they want an experience. And if, if you want the experience, you want less computers, right? You want more of just a transaction, maybe you don't want to talk to people, maybe you don't want to interact with people because it's less efficient. So we're just sort of going where the people are going, and there's a lot of reasons that that's happening, but COVID definitely made that more of a thing.
Vince Beese:And did your you and your cofounder have specific experiences that said you had that eureka moment of, like, shit. We need to create this thing, solve this problem that just happened?
Cameron Long:We've been in the hospitality business for I've been my whole life, honestly, in the hospitality business in some capacity, and, staffing has just been more expensive, harder than ever before for you go talk to a restaurant owner, it's hard
Vince Beese:to staff.
Cameron Long:It's deceptively, like, complicated business to be in the first place and staffing is harder and more expensive than ever. So we were really starting out trying to fix the, the, like, margin problem with staffing. Right? You know, it's just expensive and, you know, razor thin margins in restaurants. So we're trying to ameliorate that situation for them, and, we had a couple of things that we did that were terrible ideas.
Cameron Long:And we sort of landed on this, and we've stuffed with this for about the last year now. And we we launched an alpha program a few months ago, and, yeah. So we are just now getting product out. So I'm not even gonna tell you where it is because I don't wanna mess up the data that we're collecting.
Vince Beese:Tell me where I can call to see how this works.
Cameron Long:Yep. They have pizza.
Vince Beese:Oh, it's a pizza place. Okay. Let me see it. I didn't
Cameron Long:say that. So they have pizza. Okay. Yep.
Vince Beese:I was just thinking when you're talking that pizza places would be the best example of this because it's Friday. Right? It's to your point, 5:30. Oh my god. We even do we have to order.
Vince Beese:You call pizza place anywhere in the triangle around that time on a Friday, you probably get a busy signal or can put you on hold for a minute. Right? I mean, it's Yeah. Yeah. It's rocking and rolling.
Vince Beese:That's how they make their money.
Cameron Long:So Yep. Yeah.
Vince Beese:Anyway, it sounds like you guys landed on a phenomenal idea and solving a big problem. I wanna go back now a little bit and I love this question because everyone's response is different, which is how did you get started in sales? Did you grow up and just all of a sudden as a baby start crawling, selling stuff?
Cameron Long:I have a bachelor's degree in selling. Just kidding. That does not exist.
Vince Beese:I think some universities you can I don't know if it's a bachelor's degree in, you know, but you can major in sales? Okay.
Cameron Long:I didn't know that. That's interesting. Okay. So my story, I grew up in poor. My family's been farming here since the revolutionary war.
Cameron Long:I am not even kidding.
Vince Beese:For real?
Cameron Long:Yes. We still have the deed. Years too? So we're probably related.
Vince Beese:It's true.
Cameron Long:So who
Vince Beese:In North Carolina?
Cameron Long:In North Carolina. Whereabouts? The Henderson, Franklinton area.
Vince Beese:Okay.
Cameron Long:So we actually still have a piece of the original farm that my great great great great grandfather got after the war, and we still have the original deed and a plaque and Oh, wow. It's really cool. That is cool. Yep. Not a a local local
Vince Beese:I assume Cameron is probably
Cameron Long:a family name as well. Long is, but, yeah. Cameron's
Vince Beese:It's not through Denton.
Cameron Long:I think my mom just liked it. Okay. Mhmm. Yep. Okay.
Cameron Long:Yeah. So, what do
Vince Beese:you wait. Wait. What did you guys grow on the farm?
Cameron Long:Everything. They were mostly growing food and then cash crops. It was it was all tobacco. Yeah.
Vince Beese:Yeah. Yeah.
Cameron Long:It was just growing it was like a community kind of thing. There were no, like, most of the plantations as we know were actually, a little bit farther east of Vance County.
Vince Beese:Okay.
Cameron Long:And so most of the farmers, at least in our communities, were growing, like, food and, like, a community. Someone grew the corn and someone grew, you know, these vegetables, someone grew cattle, someone and then like a 100 years ago it was all like tobacco. We missed the cotton farming. We didn't do any of that. I don't know if it grows well up there, but it was tobacco for the longest time, and now it's just, soybeans.
Cameron Long:Yep.
Vince Beese:Now it's just a solar farm.
Cameron Long:Yeah. True. Yeah. Alright.
Vince Beese:Cool. So how does that lead to how does that lead to,
Cameron Long:Yeah. So, I think the thing is what I wanted to get is, agricultural community. I grew up poor, right? There was just, yeah, you know, as we know it, I didn't, it's not like I had, you know, doctors or parents or that sort of thing, low education level. And, so I actually was happened to be a pretty good musician, like, in high school and stuff.
Cameron Long:So I got, a scholarship to go to University of Kentucky, for music performance. Then I chased a girl to another university and got a bachelor's degree in music therapy. So the reason I'm talking about we grew up poor is that, like, I always had this, like, I'm not going to be poor mentality my whole life. Like, I refuse to be poor. And we weren't poor in every sense.
Cameron Long:Just Yeah. Money. Financially poor. But, yeah. So I did that, and I worked with, you know, restaurants all through college, and that was I'd sort of never left the industry.
Cameron Long:It pulls you back in. Have you ever worked in a restaurant? Yeah, it's fun. It's terrible and fun. It's hard work.
Cameron Long:It's very hard work. It's fast. Yep, yep. And back then, people were still getting yelled at all the time. Okay, Don't miss that at all.
Cameron Long:So anyway, music therapy degree. So I primarily worked as a music therapist in maximum security hospitals. So I was in California, and I worked at a hospital called Atascadero State Hospital. And basically when prisoners in California are deemed too mentally ill to be in the prison, their status changes to patient and then they go to these maximum security hospitals. So my job was to keep these folks from reoffending if they ever got out.
Cameron Long:So you create use music as a way to build some rapport, and then you work on coping skills for these folks so that if they get out, which they're probably never getting out Mhmm. Okay, if they're in that hospital, hopefully, they don't reoffend and they just have a better quality of life and, you know, that sort of thing.
Vince Beese:So you using music to rebuild them, or are you teaching them to play an instrument? What does this look like?
Cameron Long:It could be lots of different things. So, sometimes, like, you know, you're using music as a tool. Maybe you're in a group setting, and everyone's playing in a drum circle. Okay, cool. Well, you know, the drumming's helping them.
Cameron Long:Well, that might be what you're doing, but why is to help people understand that you can be together with other people in a room and have a pleasurable experience in a group setting. Yeah. So it's like, okay, I don't have to be on high alert. I don't have to, you know, like the therapy is the sitting with other people and the music is how they are able to tolerate it. Right?
Cameron Long:So that's just one example of using some sort of music and some sort of setting to help build a coping skill. So maybe the next time they're sitting at the lunch table with a bunch of people, they're less on edge. Yeah. Right. Things like that.
Cameron Long:So there's lots of different things you could do. And I work with other populations too. Kids with autism. I worked in, nursing facilities, a little bit of hospice work, and
Vince Beese:That doesn't sound like it's an occupation that gets you out of being poor. It doesn't. It doesn't.
Cameron Long:Yeah.
Vince Beese:What was it? What the what instruments did you master?
Cameron Long:I haven't mastered any. What what instruments did you play? Yeah. So I would say that I'm very good at some wind instruments like the trumpet.
Vince Beese:Yeah.
Cameron Long:I'm better than most at the piano and I'm okay with guitar and drums and singing and that sort of thing.
Vince Beese:Yeah.
Cameron Long:I will not be singing on this podcast.
Vince Beese:Well, needless to say, you're you're better at all those things than I am, so You never know. No. I know.
Cameron Long:I know. Yeah. So I did that. Yeah. Where are we going with this?
Cameron Long:ADD. Yeah. I have that too. Yeah. So, yeah.
Vince Beese:So I
Cameron Long:was doing that, and then, you know, 2008 happened Yeah. And there was, like It did happen. What's the first thing that gets cut? Right? Things that that don't owe any wealth whatsoever.
Cameron Long:They cost money.
Vince Beese:Things that help people.
Cameron Long:Yeah. Exactly. So it was hard to get a job. Yeah.
Vince Beese:I bet.
Cameron Long:So after that, I I, you know, put in, like, I don't know, 6,000 applications, and I got a hit with US Foods. And US Foods is a fine company. They are, their training program is great, and, it really is.
Vince Beese:A fine company. They are You mean that in a positive way? Positive way.
Cameron Long:Yes. Yes.
Vince Beese:You weren't being sarcastic?
Cameron Long:No. Not at all.
Vince Beese:They're a
Cameron Long:great company, and, it was in hospitality. I was selling food and equipment to restaurants. That's your Yep. Yeah. I I fell back into this.
Cameron Long:It was very comfortable with something that I sort of already knew, and I spent 7 years there, and then I I did a little bit of consulting work.
Vince Beese:What roles did you play at US Foods?
Cameron Long:Yeah. So I was, basically a sales rep and unofficially, I worked with, like, other sales reps that, you know, were were newer, you know, mentored a few, that sort of thing, but really I was just, you know, a individual contributor. Mhmm. So no, like, true leadership other than, like
Vince Beese:But you mentored other people. Yeah. Of course. And, who are you selling to? Who are your customers?
Cameron Long:Restaurants, hotels, butcher shops. Let's see. A little bit of retail, but but mostly just in the You're
Vince Beese:selling to the owners of those businesses. Yeah.
Cameron Long:Yeah. Restaurants mainly is the product.
Vince Beese:What did you like selling to that audience?
Cameron Long:What did I like selling to them?
Vince Beese:No. No. What did you like about selling to them? So because I you know, some people like selling to them, some find it really challenging.
Cameron Long:That's a good question. I think, yeah, I think restaurant owners, they're if if you're in a high-tech sort of industry, like, there's this this rumor that's unfounded that goes out that restaurant owners are unsophisticated, and I think that's wrong. Like, there's of course, there's some unsophisticated restaurant owners, but it's deceptively hard and I think people confuse rigidity, which many restaurant owners have, with a lack of sophistication.
Vince Beese:Everyone's trying to sell them something.
Cameron Long:Yeah, like, the doors are always open. People can walk in and talk to a restaurant owner all the time, okay? So, rigidity is not a lack of sophistication. It's very different. So I like the the the chase, you know, but I also like the fact that when you sell something to someone at US Foods, you're not selling to them once.
Cameron Long:You don't sign a contract for a year. Yep. You're selling to them every week. So it's about building a very high quality, empathic kind of relationship with them, and you become like a not just a salesperson, but you become like a a conduit between them and your company. Like, sometimes I felt like I was working more for the restauranteur than I was working for US Foods, And you start defending your your own customer against your company sometimes.
Cameron Long:It's a strange thing, but that's sort of what I liked about it is that, meaningful relationships. Yep. Yeah. And long term relationships. So
Vince Beese:yeah. So you're there for 7 years.
Cameron Long:Yep.
Vince Beese:You leave. You go where?
Cameron Long:I go to a little small solar company for, like, 6 months. And, this is gonna make me sound like like I'm trying to brag, but this was right after, you know, COVID, and I just won the president's cup for US Foods 3 years in a row.
Vince Beese:Which is the top seller, I assume?
Cameron Long:Yeah. They're the top seller. They they get on this really cool trip. Yep. And I was kind of like, you know, like, I got to make a decision either.
Cameron Long:I'm going to keep doing this and just try Keep
Vince Beese:winning, you mean?
Cameron Long:Yeah. Or I'm gonna, like, have to go take it to or take a, like, a a financial hit to go into management, be a people manager. So I was like, I don't wanna do that. I should probably just take this time to jump ship while, you know, I'm doing really well and I have all this, like, momentum and inertia behind me and then go to a company in a different industry. It was a tactical move for sure.
Cameron Long:Let me go to a different industry because, you know, that'll give me, better positioning in the future.
Vince Beese:Yeah. More experience.
Cameron Long:Yeah. With a different industry. So I did that. I got to manage a lot of people, did a lot of sales, individual contributor, and leadership roles, and then I got approached by Takeout Central. Takeout Central, another fine company, much smaller.
Cameron Long:They are probably the 2nd largest local independent restaurant delivery service in the country. You might know them as Tar Heel Takeout, 919 Dine, they did some acquisitions Oh,
Vince Beese:so they have no multiple brand kind of
Cameron Long:Well, it used to be, now it's all just under Takeout Central. Okay.
Vince Beese:But but so So competes against, like, DoorDash and stuff?
Cameron Long:Kinda,
Vince Beese:yeah. Yeah.
Cameron Long:DoorDash is hard to compete with, for sure, but yeah.
Vince Beese:But same thing, I'm ordering food from restaurants
Cameron Long:and they're delivering. Yep, and they're 27 years old this year, so back then it was a very niche market, like maybe 1% of all sales were delivered if the restauranteur was like, okay, I'll do that, right?
Vince Beese:I think COVID can.
Cameron Long:Yep. And it was actually shifting before that, but COVID accelerated it. So I got to manage people there, and that was the first time that I had managed people in different locations. Like, so there was, like, this virtual aspect of things, and I'm a huge proponent of, like, in person, you know, mentorship and that sort of thing, and I had to learn to do it, you know, on the web. It was an interesting dynamic.
Cameron Long:But, yeah, I did that and I actually still advise there. Right? I have a small stake in the company.
Vince Beese:Yep.
Cameron Long:And, yeah, and then, like, we saw this opportunity, and that's how we I shifted away from takeout central to vernica, and that's the whole story. So Starting
Vince Beese:your own thing. So here's 3 thin 3 themes throughout your professional career. Music, food, sales.
Cameron Long:Yeah. Yeah. I I would I wouldn't even say necessarily music. I would say, or sales. I would probably just say, like, like, humans, like, very, very, like, relationships, if that makes sense because, yeah, we can get into that later, but, you know, sales.
Vince Beese:But that's why you like sales. Right? Because you like the human element of you. Like the relationship building. You like the contact and communication and is that right?
Cameron Long:Yeah. I mean, it's an interesting problem to try to solve and, like, you know, you have your own prerogatives and then you're, like, trying to solve problems for other folks and it's, like, you know, weighing those 2 things all at once and becomes, like, a philosophical conundrum sometimes. But, yeah, it's it's, sales is very, very intellectual
Vince Beese:Yep.
Cameron Long:In my opinion.
Vince Beese:Yeah. So yeah. Some people can make it intellectual. Yes. Some people, not so much.
Vince Beese:That's true. But you you obviously go into it with truly trying to solve a problem and wanting to solve a problem. That starts early in your career, obviously. You don't get into music therapy and helping, folks that are institutionalized, quite frankly, that unless you wanna help them. Right?
Cameron Long:Yeah. So you
Vince Beese:come through very empathetic.
Cameron Long:Yeah. Yeah. It's, empathy is a is a very, very hard thing to do. Like, a lot of people say that they empathize, but they really don't. I'd say, like, 1% of 1% of folks actually spend time and what I do what I would say empathize or listen with a capital l.
Cameron Long:Like, I've got, you know, experience doing it because I have a degree in it. Right? But it I think it's helped me more than anything else in my sales career is, like, really sitting and trying to feel what another person is feeling.
Vince Beese:So what does it mean to you to be an empathetic leader? Because you see a lot of sales leaders now on LinkedIn. I'm an empathetic leader. You know? Like, I agree with you.
Vince Beese:Sometimes they are, sometimes they're not. But what does it mean to be?
Cameron Long:Yeah. I I think it it's it's it's kind of hard to what seems very natural to me can be kind of hard to, like, quantify sometimes, but what I think is if you have practice on a regular basis, where you try to step into someone else's shoes and imagine, like, what they're going through and not try to connect what your needs are or what your wants are in relationship to that experience, right? If you can try to, like, disconnect yourself and try to feel what they feel and not taint it with your own, like, your own goals or whatever, then, like, I think that's how you empathize. It's easier to say how you do it than it is to do it. Like
Vince Beese:I just it's I just find it hard for sales leaders because you have to make hard decisions every day. Some of those hard decisions are letting people go. Mhmm. And if you're to me, to be an epiphytic leader is leading up to that point, you felt that you've done everything you could to make that person better at this job to get them on the path to success. And when it just doesn't happen, having a thoughtful conversation says, what do you think?
Vince Beese:It's not working out. Mhmm. What do you think in the good next you know what I mean? Like, in the old days, by the way, it wasn't done that way. Right?
Vince Beese:It was I told you you weren't hitting your numbers. And today's, unfortunately, not a fun day, but you're you're gone. Yeah. I do find that most leaders today take more of the approach I explained. Yeah.
Vince Beese:But that's why I that's why I think that an empathetic sales leader would handle that situation. But that also depends on the company they're at because that company's culture may not be like that.
Cameron Long:That's definitely
Vince Beese:true. The bandwidth to do that. Right?
Cameron Long:Yep. Yep. Yep. Because
Vince Beese:that means you're probably giving somebody a good 2 to 3 months kind of advanced, hey. Here's what's looks like happening. Mhmm. So get mentally and prepared.
Cameron Long:Yeah. Right? Yep. I I mean, I would say so. And it's, empathy in the situation that you just verbalized is is trying to experience what that person is experiencing, but it also educates you about how you can help them.
Cameron Long:Right? If if you're you can always ask too, but empathizing and trying to feel someone else's experience educates you, like, okay. This person's not hitting the numbers. They think that I'm that they're on the chopping block. Okay.
Cameron Long:If I know that they feel x about this, what is the best approach that I take now Yep. To get what the company needs? Yep. That's not the same as, hey, you have to do this or this is going to happen. It's what do they need to hear, how do they need to hear it to increase the probability that they actually excel.
Cameron Long:And and I don't know, it's just like optimization of of people. So yeah.
Vince Beese:I think it's understanding the person. What's what's the things you need to to do with that specific person knowing how to react to certain words and conversations. Right? Yeah.
Cameron Long:For sure. And some people are just it's not the right fit for them, and that's just the way it is. And sometimes and I've had to do this once where someone was actually trying really hard, and I was doing my best, and it just was not working. And I had to fire someone that, frankly didn't deserve to be fired because of effort. They just didn't have the skill set And, it sucked.
Cameron Long:Yeah. You know?
Vince Beese:That's not fun for either either person. That's for sure. But, unfortunately, it's a a necessary part of the job, isn't it?
Cameron Long:Yep.
Vince Beese:So what are some some things that you've done throughout your career that really, you know, put you on the success of, this path of success? What are some things that are fundamental that
Cameron Long:you really believe in? Finding a great mentor. That is
Vince Beese:that's a theme we have on this podcast all the time.
Cameron Long:Yeah, like everyone Do you have one right now? Absolutely, I have 2 right now.
Vince Beese:Do you?
Cameron Long:Daryl Hall from US Food.
Vince Beese:Daryl Hall, I love him, the hall, though, she's awesome.
Cameron Long:He's the
Vince Beese:one with the longer hair or the dark hair.
Cameron Long:Yeah. He gets he would love to hear that joke.
Vince Beese:Yeah. He never hear never heard that one, Yeah.
Cameron Long:And the other is, so he is a business development manager at US Foods. Yeah. And my other mentor is Will Brawley. He is the, owner of Schedulefly and also the host of the Restaurant Owners on Court podcast. It's a hugely popular podcast, like, top 5 in the whole world, actually.
Cameron Long:Really? Yeah, for hospitality. Awesome. So, yeah, and I think it's a theme. Everyone talks about getting a mentor, but the truth is, there's work for the mentor and the mentee, and you go to some place, there's always a person that you would love to be your mentor.
Cameron Long:Yeah. But if you ask Daryl Hall right now how many people he's mentored at US Foods, he'll tell you to Me and another gentleman, how many people have asked him to be their mentor? 100. Mhmm. Right?
Cameron Long:And the difference is, like, when you ask for someone and they say, I want you to read this book this week, and I want you to I want to talk about it as you're reading it, if if you take a month to read that book or you don't read the book, that's gone, right? So you have to do all the things that they tell you to do and, like, don't if you've already found from other folks that you're talking to a person of high integrity, right, and they're not gonna tell you to do anything wrong, like, you just do the things that they tell you to do, even if it's uncomfortable, then you develop a relationship and that's the difference. So mentorship is important. That's number 1. Yep.
Cameron Long:I would say, you, I don't even know if you could teach this, but being okay with being uncomfortable, right? Like that is critical, Right? How many people do things that feel good? What do you mean by uncomfortable? Like, do things, I think some people are languishing in life.
Cameron Long:Like, they they they they get a job. They wait for a promotion. They wait for their pay raise, they go home and they watch football or basketball and then they're not trying to level up, they're not there's no hustle there.
Vince Beese:You
Cameron Long:have to be doing something like yourself working on your own game in a way, even if it's like, honestly, even if it's video games, like, I think there's a way to, like, to, like, excel as a person by playing video games.
Vince Beese:So basically challenge yourself.
Cameron Long:Yes, And to to do to take risks, to take chances, not with your just career, but with other stuff. Like, if if you're unwilling to do things that are uncomfortable Yep. It's hard to grow.
Vince Beese:Yep. And I I a 100% agree with that, and I I've always done it just because it comes naturally me to take risks.
Cameron Long:Yep.
Vince Beese:Not one time did I regret taking a risk even when the most times doesn't pan out because most risks probably don't. But you at least try, and that's the satisfaction you get from that, and you've learned at minimum something from taking a risk or challenging yourself, whatever. But when you get complacent, you just get in this rut and it becomes the same
Cameron Long:Oh, yeah.
Vince Beese:Every day and every week and every month. So it's not a good place, especially if you're in a sales career. Right? Like
Cameron Long:Yeah. Absolutely.
Vince Beese:You gotta continuously be learning. That's one of the benefits of being in a place like this is that you're learning from other people around you that don't sell what you sell and probably have a different role than you, but you can still learn from each other, right?
Cameron Long:Yeah, yeah. Like, there's the other things that you're challenging yourself at is is kind of the same how is it it's the same path to maybe learning something perspective, right? You do things like I love to garden. I garden really hard, really well, right? Random stuff, like, I I go fly fishing.
Vince Beese:Hard core gardening.
Cameron Long:Yeah, yeah, you it is, it is. In Raleigh, it's hard, okay? So, so yeah, things like you'd be surprised how much I've learned by failing at gardening and starting seedlings and random stuff and how much that makes me creative. Yeah.
Vince Beese:And
Cameron Long:it's the same sort of path that can be taken with coming here and listening to other people's perspective. Yeah. Yeah. But the third I think this is really important, and I I just thought about it. The third thing that I would say, and I learned this from Daryl, is you got to avoid negativity.
Cameron Long:You have to avoid toxic like, you find yourself in a in a sales position somewhere. There's a there's very few folks that are not in the mud. Right? They're like, oh, the company's doing this, blah blah blah. Who cares?
Cameron Long:Like, that's just wasted breath, like, talking about that, so, like, just disconnect yourself from all that stuff if you can. There's, like, text threads where everyone's bitching about the company directives or HR or whatever it is, like, just don't respond. Maybe you need to save face and you stay in the chat but, like, don't engage because if it's not advancing your career then or advancing you as a person, avoid it.
Vince Beese:And if you're that impacted by it, leave.
Cameron Long:Yeah.
Vince Beese:Right? I mean, if it's bothering you that much to your complaining that much, then guess what? Yep. If you can't change it, then leave.
Cameron Long:Broken culture is a broken culture. It just is. And,
Vince Beese:I find a lot of people will stay in a broken culture, though, meaning, like, they'll complain about it, but they'll still stay there.
Cameron Long:Yep.
Vince Beese:Most people don't just leave.
Cameron Long:And most people would never try to change the culture. Right? That's hard. Right? Like, changing it from the inside.
Cameron Long:There's some people that are just good at that, but, usually takes new blood at
Vince Beese:the top.
Cameron Long:Yeah. Certainly does.
Vince Beese:Alright. One last question I have. It's my staple question that you need to think about this a little bit. So what's one thing that's really interesting about yourself that most people don't know?
Cameron Long:And most people don't know?
Vince Beese:Most people.
Cameron Long:Pretty vocal about these things.
Vince Beese:Well, the the 3 of us here don't know. How about that? Yeah,
Cameron Long:I would say that, I'm an investment coach, yeah, so I, another thing is, like, giving some of your time, you know, with not expecting anything in return. So I I'm a coach for Rule 1 Investing, which is, sort of like an investing strategy, by Phil Towne, who is one of the people that predicted the 2,008 housing crisis. Alright. Yep. So he teaches, like normal regular folks, the the basic principles about financial markets, how to manage your money, what an options trade is, sort of get past all of the the the lingo that Wall Street wants to make you believe is more complicated than it really is.
Vince Beese:So You do this for free or you do this
Cameron Long:for free? Absolutely.
Vince Beese:Yeah. I got 2 people I wanna introduce you to that they're called my daughters.
Cameron Long:Yeah. Yeah. But, I mean, like, everyone the the the most amount of money you're ever gonna have in your life is your retirement, and you give it to someone else to manage.
Vince Beese:You should be in charge of that.
Cameron Long:Yeah. Or at least have an I yeah. Okay. If Yeah. Yeah.
Cameron Long:So that's how I feel about that.
Vince Beese:That's pretty cool. Now I'm curious just to follow-up on that. Like, is how did you get started? You didn't obviously, you didn't go to school for that. We know that.
Vince Beese:Like, why did you decide to do that?
Cameron Long:I went to Fieldtown Seminar in Atlanta, like, I don't know, 10 years ago or something like that. And I expected someone to sell me something and they never did. And he's one of those few people that I've interacted with that has every reason to monetize something but has chosen not to. Interesting. So high moral fiber character in Filtown and every one of the volunteers that's there it's like 40 volunteers, every seminar they do, they're all unpaid.
Vince Beese:Really? Yeah, all unpaid.
Cameron Long:And it's fun too, it keeps you sharp, right, when you're teaching someone else. Yeah. Right? But, I don't know, it's it's fulfilling.
Vince Beese:Yeah. That's interesting. Good job. Yep. Appreciate it.
Vince Beese:Well, thank you for coming on. Yeah. It's a great view. And those of you out there, we'll see you next time. I was told
Cameron Long:this this lady was gonna ask me some questions, the hard questions.
Vince Beese:Do you have some questions, ma'am? Where did their name Wernicke come from?
Cameron Long:Wernicke is a play on words. So there is a section of the brain called Wernicke's area of the brain. It's a German doctor, and that part, I learned it as Wernicke's area of the
Vince Beese:brain too, by the way.
Cameron Long:But it's actually Wernicke's area of the brain. That is the part of the brain that, that dissects audio speech that we hear and synthesize it in a way that we understand it as language. K? So the idea for Wernica is a play on words. It's a lot of it's voice commerce, so it's using, you know, cyborgs to, interesting, to synthesize human speech and, you know, interact back and forth.
Cameron Long:So real nerdy.
Vince Beese:That wasn't her. That could have been your interesting story too. Best answer.
Cameron Long:Yep.
Vince Beese:Well, thanks for coming on. We appreciate it.
Cameron Long:Appreciate you.
Vince Beese:Yeah. Till next time, sales HQ. See you, everybody.