Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
OhHello - Brad Copeland
70 Plays2 years ago
OhHello!
And welcome to Episode 46 of the OhHello Inc. 🌞☕️ OhHello.io pod/vod!
This 'Hello' is ecstatic to be a mentor on our platform! A father of 3, a husband, and a seasoned sales leader who surrounds himself with risk takers everywhere he turns (at home and beyond - just👂); known for his passion for mentorship and team building, this 'Hello' has consistently demonstrated his ability to drive sales growth and foster a culture of success. His extensive leadership experience at Productsup (where he leads NA), Phenom, Qlik, and Oracle has equipped him with a deep understanding of the tech landscape and growing people.
Some 💪 excerpts during the convo:
1) "Take the risk - if you have the opportunity, take the risk!"
2)( I really appreciated this dialogue as there's been a glaringly obvious takeaway that few others have touched on -->) "mentorship is equally about figuring out who, along with the kinds of behaviors, you don't want to replicate."
3) "Mentorship is critical to everyone's success; it's about creating and fostering a tribe."
Some of the tribe mentors that have helped this featured 'Hello':
Personally- his wife, father, and uncles
Professionally- John Capaldi (friendtor), Lars Björk (former CEO of Qlik, has always helped frame different POVs), and Bill Binch of Battery Ventures (a good friend that has gone on to do great things)
Excited to have you on the OhHello Inc. 🌞☕️ OhHello.io platform when we 🚀 in September, Brad Copeland! Equally excited to have your brilliant go-getting son, Austin Copeland, be a part of the OhHello.io tribe, too!
(did you like this pod? great! please subscribe and toss us those ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ reviews: https://tr.ee/k-74ivdVNr)
Recommended
Transcript
Reconnection and 'Oh, Hello' Platform
00:00:12
Speaker
Oh, hello, Brad. How are you, Jeremy? Good to see you. It's great to see you. Great to see you. Good reconnecting. Wonderful conversation. Conversations, plural. Since we reconnected, I have the pleasure of knowing you. But those that are watching, those that are listening of our Oh, hello community and within the Oh, hello platform. Why don't you tell us who I'm speaking with right now?
00:00:41
Speaker
or first
Mentorship and Sales Experience
00:00:42
Speaker
of all, I love the Peanuts Jay-Z intro and I'll tell you, life and mentorship is like Lucy holding the football and you're not sure if she's going to hold it there, if you're Charlie Brown or not, and it's just being prepared for doing it. So it's a pleasure to speak with you today and be part of the Oh Hello
00:01:02
Speaker
conversations. I think mentorship is critical in anybody's success. So, you know, as we've talked about previously in working together, just about what sales is like. And for me, I'm a
00:01:19
Speaker
classically trained salesperson from Xerox, but more importantly, I love building things. I love building teams, building culture, building relationships with customers, with colleagues, and where that will take you is probably the best byproduct of being in sales. Well said, Brad.
Family and Entrepreneurial Beginnings
00:01:39
Speaker
So, Brad, you and I met a couple years back. You are
00:01:44
Speaker
You're in the the greater Philly area. You're you're also a Husband a father tell us a little bit about you personally and then we'll jump in into the professional realm great
00:01:58
Speaker
Thank you. It's funny, I was at an acceptance speech and my wife won an award and she talked about her background. And when she got back, I said, it's funny, we both think in terms of being professionals, but we're husbands, we're parents, we're children, we're grandchildren of families. And I think that at the end of it all, that's the most important piece.
00:02:21
Speaker
I'm a father of three. My wife's an executive. We come from a long line of entrepreneurs. And I think that's kind of in our DNA. So I think we naturally default to always business as a conversation. And it's just something that we talked about at the dinner table. But yes, father
Sales Philosophy: Human Connection
00:02:38
Speaker
of three, I have an entrepreneur son, an avid golfer, teener, and a young daughter who's just going into middle school. Amazing, amazing.
00:02:49
Speaker
And by default, you've spent the majority of your career as a top sales leader, as a revenue leader, a builder, a connector. We'd love to have a little bit more insight as just how you would characterize your skill set as someone who has a few grays in their beard, as I do too, as I'm going like this.
00:03:13
Speaker
But I genuinely appreciated getting to know you when we were partnering in a previous life. And I think you have so many great professional and personal insights through your experiences. But we'd love to have a better understanding that we can pass on to our community of just your skillset that sets you apart. Yeah. First of all, I've always been, I think, in sales, whether it was on the
00:03:41
Speaker
the playground and buying bubblegum and selling it for markup, renting things out on the playground or just being an entrepreneur in college. And so it's, I think in my DNA, but when it's all said and done, it's connecting with people. People buy from people, respect, humanization,
00:04:05
Speaker
all the things that you teach your kids, you know, everything that you learned in kindergarten, so to speak. And I think that that's at the core of who I am. I believe in doing the right thing and in treating people respectfully. But with that, when it's all said and done, I'm a connector. I love
00:04:22
Speaker
I get endorphins, I get a rush out of bridging people together. Because it's the way that I could give back to somebody by saying, oh, you have this problem. I know someone who's solved this. If I could help you put that two together, I could get you to the solve faster. And so
The Value of Mentorship
00:04:38
Speaker
for me, that's what I try to do in business and in my personal life and in kind of how we met. Absolutely, Brad. What excites you about mentorship as a dad of three, of three kids?
00:04:51
Speaker
Funny enough to share this with the community, your son and I know each other, and we've spoken now, and he's a budding entrepreneur, and just as a 19-year-old budding entrepreneur who's already starting to crush it, getting a million plus views on TikTok, creating SaaS bundles for computer speeds and video game technology.
00:05:17
Speaker
which is very impressive, having a parent or parents, plural, who are pushing the entrepreneurial feats, who are basically there to convey to their kids like, hey, you're doing a great job, keep on going, keep on going, take some swings. When you look back at your career, what excites you about mentorship? And just tell us a little bit more about what you would tell your younger self, your 35-year-old self, your 25-year-old self,
00:05:44
Speaker
Well, what excites me about mentorship is knowing that there's somebody on the other end of a call, an email or a conversation, a phone call that could provide you advice or just listen.
00:05:59
Speaker
And I think that knowing that you have that community, I refer to as a tribe. You collect people throughout your professional career that become your friends, your working professional friends. And that tribe is there to help you when you're trying to solve a problem, whether it's about compensation, challenges in the market, creative things that they're doing.
00:06:23
Speaker
And the fact that you could turn to that and that's the resources that you build over a career is what I love about mentorship because I received that from mentors and I also received from mentees. I get so much from mentees.
00:06:37
Speaker
in inverting the relation the conversation. So for me, it's that connection, as I mentioned earlier, but it's also processing something and sometimes like in a therapy session, you you may never even hear the answer. It's just the fact that you processed it and you solve the problem in your gut or in your instinct that I think is so important about mentorship.
00:07:00
Speaker
So for me, I
Encouraging Risk-Taking in Kids
00:07:01
Speaker
think that's what excites me about what you're doing. As far as my kids are concerned in pushing them, I really believe that it's a great opportunity. When you're in your teens and twenties, you should fail. You should fall down. You shouldn't get the trophy. And in those experiences of failure comes great
00:07:21
Speaker
Adjustments in how to be successful and I think mentorship provides that I mean it gets you to solves faster or allows for you to build connections with people who've plowed that field before or charted that path already. I love that Brad who were who were some mentors that had had a profound impact on on your life that have helped you get to where you are today. Yeah.
00:07:47
Speaker
I think about this often, and I will say my father. My father is an entrepreneur who has had many different careers. He was a professional photographer, professional artist, professional business entrepreneur. Now he's in technology.
00:08:01
Speaker
So he was a fantastic mentor of things to do and things not to do. And by the way, mentors are also that sometimes glaringly that you
Influence of Father and Wife
00:08:11
Speaker
would not want to replicate. Even though that person's a mentor, there are certain attributes that you know, that doesn't, that is not who you are. If you're a Ted Lasso fan, you know, Ned, who went over to a rival team sees that he's becoming something that he's not. And that was the mentorship he needed because it didn't feel right for him.
00:08:31
Speaker
My wife, I have a group of uncles who were all successful entrepreneurs who forced me to ask and speak up and do things in a way that as a young kid may have felt unnatural, but it really forced me to be someone who advocated for themselves to get to do, to be an entrepreneur. I think that's just building of confidence. And those were the mentors I have. And then lastly, I have to say my wife,
00:08:58
Speaker
who is a CEO and entrepreneur. And her style of leadership is, I think, very inspiring for me as I develop the type of leader that I've become. Awesome. So two
Traits to Avoid from Mentors
00:09:12
Speaker
things about that, Brad, first and foremost, you're the first guest on the pod at this point.
00:09:19
Speaker
that has mentioned through mentorship and through connections, it's okay and it's good to figure out who you don't want to be like. So I really appreciate that you pointed it out like that because so many people
00:09:33
Speaker
look at different individuals that have done well in their career, and they want to emulate, they want to be just like them. But it's okay to not be like some of those people as well. And it's okay to be able to differentiate oneself. So I really appreciate you calling that out, like the fact that you have to learn through that to experience that. Another thing is just you mentioned, obviously, your family members, your father, some uncles, your wife, are there any other professional mentors that have played a profound impact over your career?
00:10:03
Speaker
Yeah, I have three. One was a contemporary. He was actually younger than me, but he was my boss, a gentleman by the name of John Capaldi, who I worked with for many years. I worked with him at Xerox. I worked with him at Click. He's been a remarkable resource as a peer, but also as a mentor. As a friend to all.
00:10:23
Speaker
He's a friend tour, exactly. And we process things all the time. It's a safe space, by the way. I think that's also something to really carve out, is find a mentor because you can process heady conversations that are safe rather than maybe processing them internally in an organization where, listen, not that there's ever retribution, but it's just a matter of that you could have these conversations that you might not talk about internally in an organization. My former CEO, Lars Bjork from Click,
00:10:53
Speaker
He's a friend. He's a mentor. I still stay in touch with him. We talk about many different topics, both business and politics. And he helps me frame a different perspective of things, which I think has really been helpful. And then lastly,
00:11:08
Speaker
Someone I worked for at PeopleSoft, a gentleman by the name of Bill Bench, who's now part of Battery Ventures. He is my contemporary. He's gone on to take Marketo public and has worked at Pendo.io. He's a remarkable mentor and friend as well. And I think what happens from mentorship
00:11:29
Speaker
friendship develops. And I think that that's probably one of the most beneficial aspects of all of it because that person's there for you, not just in a transactional way, but there when you just really need to kind of talk through something. I
Charities and Giving Back
00:11:43
Speaker
love that. Well, thank you for calling out all three of those gentlemen. Really appreciate that, Brad.
00:11:48
Speaker
As a hello, you know this, we've spoken about it. Part of the beauty is have an opportunity to give back, not only through each session, but we are integrated in between 40 to 50 different non-for-profit platforms, where after each session, when you're helping someone, you can say, hey, I'm gonna donate one to 100% of my proceeds to charity X, charity Y, charity Z. What are some causes that are near and dear to your heart and why?
00:12:17
Speaker
Yeah, you know, it's interesting. I read through your list American Red Cross and the animal shelter were two that stood out. And then I wrote boys and girls clubs or big brother. And so I'll stay with the list that you provided me American Red Cross because
00:12:32
Speaker
No, none of us expect something terrible to happen to us. But Red Cross is always there. And it doesn't matter who you are, where you are, they're there to support you. And I think that's a really impressive organization. Animal Shelter because I think people
00:12:50
Speaker
can be cruel and animals aren't. And the fact that you could support animals that didn't choose the situation they're in. So that's something I always felt like if animal lovers could rule the world, we'd have a much better place. So those two stood out.
00:13:05
Speaker
analogous to, you know, your platform is the Boys Club or Girls Club of America, where people go into a big brother, go in there to mentor. And it's a way that you can kind of diversify the support of your mission. And I think that that's something that stood out. So those would be the charities that I would do. Nice.
Taking Calculated Risks
00:13:24
Speaker
Well said, Brad. What any other parting advice, parting advice for those listening and watching?
00:13:31
Speaker
Yeah, take the risks. We always wake up, right? Sometimes the night can torment us and you wake up with your to-do list or the anxiety or the self-doubt. What I would say to you is if you have an opportunity to take a risk and you can do it
00:13:49
Speaker
I just know that in doing so in my career, it has served me well. And as long as it's thought out and you talk to your mentors about the risks, I think it's one of the best things that you could do as a young person, even as someone in my career. The risk was probably the most important thing that I always assessed and dove into, at least eyes wide open. So take the risk, because if you don't, you're just going to regret it.
00:14:15
Speaker
Take the risk. Thank you, Brad. Appreciate you. Thank you everybody for watching. What's the name? Thanks, everybody. Take care.