60. Why Your CRM Strategy Will Make or Break Your Business | Clint Oram, SugarCRM

Karthik Chidambaram: Hello, everyone. Welcome to a new episode of the Driven
by DCKAP podcast. I'm your host, Karthik Chidambaram, CEO of DCKAP, joining
you from Nashville, Tennessee. We make systems talk to each other for
distributors. And we have a very special guest with us today - the
Co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer of SugarCRM, Clint Oram.

SugarCRM is not just a leader, but a pioneer in the CRM space. Clint, it's
an honor and a privilege to be chatting with you. Welcome to Driven by
DCKAP.

Clint Oram: Thank you. Thanks for having me here today.

Karthik Chidambaram: So Clint, before I start, I just want to let you know
that I was watching one of your interviews yesterday. And you run your own
podcast-

Clint Oram: That’s right.

Karthik Chidambaram: Which is awesome. And one of the suggestions or advice
you had given on how to run a podcast was, hey, listen more. Don't think too
much about the next question you’re going to ask. So I'm going to follow
your advice. I'm going to try to listen more. I'm not going to think about
the next question. And I'm very excited to be chatting with you.

Clint Oram: Well, my pleasure. Yeah, I've been enjoying doing the Fuel
Growth podcast now for a couple years. It's fun. It's a fun thing to do,
isn't it? Get to interview a lot of really different, interesting people.

Karthik Chidambaram: Thank you so much, Clint.

Clint let's get started with your early days. I mean, you were at Epiphany.
You started SugarCRM with a couple of other people, you were a co-founder,
you know,with two more co-founders. Tell us about the early days of
SugarCRM.

We didn't even know what a CRM was, but then Sugar was a CRM company. Tell
us about the early days of how Sugar CRM started.

Clint Oram: That was 20 years ago. In fact, our 20 year anniversary as a
company is June 1st, and today is May something, May 20-something, so we're
coming up almost exactly on 20 years.

So looking back 20 years ago, Three guys working together at another CRM
company called Epiphany. Two of us were in product management, one of us was
in engineering. And we had a vision for doing something different with CRM.
Back 20 years ago, CRM was really a technology that was Only available to
the largest of companies, the richest of companies.

And we wanted to make CRM available to everybody around the world. And
that's why we embraced the open source development model around launching
SugarCRM. In fact, we were the first open source CRM company to ever get a
launch. We took the market by storm - the right product at the right time.
Just really took off out of the gates.

Had the idea in January of 2004. Quit our jobs in March, started working on
the idea in April, incorporated in June, raised 2 million in financing in
July, hired our first 10 employees by August, started selling software in
October and between October and December, we sold 250, 000 worth of
software. That was our first year, 20 years ago. It was an exciting time.

Karthik Chidambaram: That's very interesting. I love it. And I love the
purpose too, in terms of making CRM available for everybody.

Clint Oram: Yeah.

Karthik Chidambaram: I can vividly remember, you know, way back in 2007 when
DCKAP was looking for a CRM software. I didn't even know what a CRM was. And
I was doing sales for the company and it was getting a little too much for
me to handle with spreadsheets and all that.

And I thought, hey, there's got to be something which is going to help solve
this problem. And then I was researching the different CRM softwares out
there. There were not that many. And then I ended up finding SugarCRM.

I implemented the software myself, and I was also taking some courses at
Stanford, and SugarCRM was also used as a use case at Stanford, so it was
really, really interesting, you know, using the product those days, and you
had, you know, everything there. It was very configurable and all that, so
it was a fun experience working with the SugarCRM product.

Clint Oram: Well, thank you. And thank you for being a customer of SugarCRM
back then. We've always been focused on helping companies deliver growth.
That's the thing that we, ultimately, that's the purpose of CRM, is to help
companies gain and retain customers, drive growth through customer
relationships.

And it's been a fun journey for me these past 20 years. I've got to do all
kinds of things over the time. In fact, I started off as one of the original
developers of the product. Jacob and I wrote the whole first several
versions of the product. I then went on to lead all of our customer facing
activities around customer support, service, community professional
services, training.

Then I moved my family over to Dublin, Ireland in 2007 and we- I launched
the Sugar offices for Europe out of Dublin, Ireland and was there for
2007-2008. At that point, I was GM of the territory. I carried a sales
number. I shifted gears from being a developer to being a salesperson. Built
out our channel partners there, came back to the States and picked up the
reins of products again.

And so I ran products and was CTO of the company for several years. Then I
was CMO of the company for several years. And now I'm Chief Strategy Officer
and I focus on driving growth through acquisitions and alliances. So for me,
I've had the opportunity to, frankly, do almost every role in the company,
and I enjoy that. That's a lot of fun.

Karthik Chidambaram: That's one question I want to ask you. Today, you're
the Chief Strategy Officer, but then, like you said, you were the Chief
Technology Officer, Chief Marketing Officer. You went to Ireland, set up the
Europe business there, you know, you've done all sorts of things in terms of
CRM. That takes a lot of guts, you know, and sometimes I can even call it
crazy, but that also provides a lot of exposure.

Can you tell us the thought process behind that?

Clint Oram: I love it. You call it a little bit crazy. It seems like that.
Yeah. I've always had a ridiculous belief in myself, despite not knowing
anything about these roles, I would jump in and just do it. You know, if you
look back over the last 20 years, for me, it's been the same job over the
last 20 years.

But when you look at it from the outside, it's been a very different job.
And what I mean by that is my focus has always been driving growth, whatever
it takes to drive growth for the company. If it means building product,
writing code, if it means writing data sheets and talking to customers. If
it means signing up partners and managing partners, whatever it takes to
drive growth in the company, that's what I've enjoyed. That's what I love
doing.

And along the way, I've had the opportunity to learn the hard way, every
aspect of running a business. It's been an exciting 20 years and I look
forward to the next 20 ahead of me.

Karthik Chidambaram: No, I love that. I mean, this is long term thinking,
right? You know, you already did it for 20 years and you're also looking 20
years, so go on a 40 year journey.

I mean, I love that. I can totally relate to that, too. Even at DCKAP, I've
done all sorts of roles, right? Right? From picking up the phone…

Clint Oram: That's what you do as a founder, right? As a founder, you,
whatever it takes. Chief Janitor Officer. It doesn't matter. I'm at events
like the event we're at today and I'm looking to make sure that the booth is
set up right.

I'm looking to make sure that, you know, everybody who walks up to the booth
is getting personal time with people. I'm just- whatever it takes to grow
the business and for me personally, a big part of that has always been
checking my ego at the door. It's not about me, it's about the company and
it's part of my philosophy of leadership is to be a servant leader, to focus
on delivering value to my customers, to create a great place to work for my
employees, to have real open, transparent relationships with my partners.

That's how I approach doing business, and I've been lucky in that I've been
able to create that environment for the past 20 years here at Sugar. And
despite some changes along the way, we sold the company to private equity in
2018, and I was lucky that we were able to choose a private equity company
to acquire us that had shared beliefs, shared philosophies of that same idea
of servant leadership.

So, it's been a great journey. I've been enjoying every step of it.

Karthik Chidambaram: Talking about servant leadership and even leadership a
little bit, right? You talked about setting up a booth. I can totally relate
to that.

Clint Oram: Yeah.

Karthik Chidambaram: So let's say, you know, when we set up a booth and
let's say if something is not right, I get a little, hey, you know what this
needs to be better, right?

Clint Oram: Yeah, I'm the same way.

Karthik Chidambaram: But one thing I've read is, hey, you know what, don't
expect perfection in leadership. You know, it's okay. If it's not perfect,
it’s ok. Just let it go. Do you agree with that?

Clint Oram: I do agree with that because it's really about forward momentum
in the end. If you're trying to micromanage every single step of the way,
you'll never get out of the gates, right?

You have to have forward momentum. You gotta have, you gotta remember that
while you're seeing all the details, not everybody else is seeing the same
level of detail. And also, I think it's very important to empower the people
around you. There's one thing I've learned in my career, and this is not
just in my career, this dates back to when I was a kid and my dad was a
founder of a software startup in the early 1980s.

I learned that you have to hire great people and then you step back and let
them do their job. And if you're trying to micromanage them, you're never
going to be able to scale the company. You're never going to be able to
focus on the fun things that you like to do as the founder of the company.
So you need to hire great people, give them tools to be successful, then
take a step back and let them do their job.

And so even though I might get a little focused on the details at times,
sometimes I just need to tell myself to shut up and let them do their job.

Karthik Chidambaram: Yeah, hire great people and leave them alone. Well
said.

So Clint, you started SugarCRM way back in 2004 and you were the leader and
the pioneer of not many CRMs in the space. But today, there is- every other
company, in a way, is a CRM company.

Clint Oram: There's a lot of CRM vendors out there. There's over 140.

Karthik Chidambaram: 140, yeah. So, what do you think has changed, right?
Between then and now, and how is Sugar different and what's your competitive
advantage?

Clint Oram: What’s changed? Well, certainly the internet changed the world,
right? It flattened the world. So Silicon Valley is no longer the center
point of everything to do with software development.

You'll find great software development shops around the world. In fact, a
great deal of our development of sugar happens now in Romania, right? Some
of the best developers I've ever met are being trained and living in Romania
today.

So the internet flattened the world and, and developing software has become
easier and easier. In fact, gen AI has completely changed the game to
building software. You can just tell ChatGPT that you want a certain type of
function to be developed and it just builds it for you, right?

So building software is nowhere near as hard as it used to be. So you got a
lot of companies. Now, what you need to do is, you need to take that focus
that you might have been on becoming a technology expert and make it become
a customer expert.

Cause in my mind, what's the purpose of a company? Why does a company exist?
A company exists to create customers. Company exists to create customers.
Technology might change. Your go-to-market might change. The people involved
might change. But if you stay focused on creating customers, you're going to
be able to weather any change out there.

And so, for us, we've always been focused on creating customers. That's
mission number one is to create customers. Mission number two is to keep
those customers, right? And so if you stay focused on that you can weather
every and any change, as I said, and there's been a lot of changes in the
industry. So, since we started Sugar, open source, cloud, mobile, social,
now we're in the age of AI.

These technology waves kind of come and go, but we stay focused on solving
those business problems for our customers, helping them gain and retain
customers, helping them solve their marketing challenges, their customer
service challenges, their sales challenges, and the technology may shift
along the way.

We've shifted along with it. Now, we haven't always done that in the most
adaptive ways. When open source kind of came to an end as a technology wave.
To be honest, we were a little lost for a while. We were, for several years.
Our whole identity as a company was built around the open source technology.

And I really had to lead the charge of saying, No, our identity is not about
the technology that changed us. Launched us. Our identity is about our
customers, right? Our focus is around our customers. And we had to really
shift gears from being an open source company that happened to do CRM, to
become a CRM company that happened to do open source, to ultimately becoming
a CRM company.

Karthik Chidambaram: Yeah. They say don't do the same good thing for too
long. Even if you're very good at it and you just keep changing things.
Right. Well said.

Clint, can you talk about some of the mistakes you did? You have a 20 year
long career with SugarCRM. You have the ups and downs. Tell us about some of
the highs and lows of SugarCRM. And what could you have done?

Clint Oram: Oh, boy, the one that really stands out for me, I think probably
is that shift away from open source that happened in 2014. That was 10 years
ago. In fact I wrote what was a pretty famous or maybe infamous blog post on
the sugar forums back in 2014 saying that we're stepping away from open
source.

And we did that because- first, just open source wasn't relevant to our
customers anymore. It just was nowhere near as relevant as it used to be. In
fact, open source was mostly relevant to the IT buyer. But anybody who's
bought business applications recently recognizes that IT does not have the
same level of control or the same voice in the selection process that they
used to have.

Now it's the business leaders that are choosing the technology. Why? Because
the technology is much easier to find. The technology is much easier to
use. You don't have to be dependent upon your IT team to guide you through
every step of the way. So IT is, frankly, less relevant in the decision
making process that they used to be. And open source was really relevant to
the IT buyer.

And so we felt it's time for us to shift gears and focus on the line of
business buyer, the VP of Sales, the VP of Marketing, the VP of Customer
Service. But we made a really critical mistake. We didn't have that new
focus, that new north star right in front of us.

We didn't. We stepped away from something that, frankly, broke our lead
machine without having something clearly thought through to replace it. And
we spent some time finding that, and we found it in the form of
manufacturing distribution customers. So we specialize probably better than
anything else in manufacturing.

We have customers across a variety of industries. We do extremely well with
companies in software and technology, as well as business services, as well
as financial services. But 40 percent of our customers are in manufacturing
and distribution, and that's an area that we've got a great deal of
expertise, a great deal of knowledge that we're able to convey to those
types of companies in manufacturing and distribution, how to drive growth,
not just with technology, but people process and technology together.

So we had to- we had to replace that north star with a new north star, and I
wish that we had that figured out sooner.

Karthik Chidambaram: Did the revenues drop, you know, when you guys made the
shift?

Clint Oram: No. Revenue never dropped, but it slowed down.

Karthik Chidambaram: Slowed down, yeah.

Clint Oram: Yeah.

Karthik Chidambaram: Cool. And I think distribution is a great market to be
in, and I'm glad, you know, 40 percent of the revenue is coming from that.
You know, it's a great market, and we also work a lot in that market. We
love serving the distribution market, you know, it’s really-

Clint Oram: High velocity business. Very demanding.They’re looking for
software that can be configured directly to their business, but they need
software that is not only easy to use, but doesn't get in the way of getting
transactions done quickly. So that's, if that's one thing I've learned, it's
that.

Karthik Chidambaram: So what is your role as a Chief Strategy Officer? What
does your day to day look like, and how do you define strategy for Sugar?

Clint Oram: Sure. So I look after corporate development and alliances for
the company. So what that means is mergers and acquisitions, as well as
working with our partners. If you look at the three main levers that you're
going to pull to drive growth for a company and drive your product roadmap
and your go-to-market roadmap, it's going to be through a buy, excuse me, a
build strategy, a buy strategy, or a partner strategy. Right?

And most companies, of course, put a lot of energy into building killer
products or services and taking them to market. More sophisticated companies
will also understand that they can buy companies to accelerate the road map.
And they can also partner with other companies to accelerate the road map.

And frankly, that's what distribution is all about, is partnership, right?
And so I look after the buy and the partnership side of things. So,
companies that we're looking to ultimately fold into the Sugar portfolio
will often start off as a partner. And then if it makes sense for the two
companies to come together, then I'm in charge of making sure that we can
find that path together. So, I look after buy and partner.

Karthik Chidambaram: Let's stay on the buy. And you have big news today. You
guys acquired Sales-i.

Clint Oram: That's right.

Karthik Chidambaram: Yeah, the revenue intelligence platform. Tell us about
that. I'm really excited. I was just reading about that. Tell us about that.
You know, it's big news today, and this is the first time you're talking
about this, on this podcast.

Clint Oram: It is my first time talking about it publicly. We announced the
acquisition today. The company is called Sales-i, a company based out of the
UK, out of Birmingham, or a suburb of Birmingham called Solihull. They also
have U.S. offices in Chicago. We've been partners with them for the past
year.

And what Sales-i does, is they take all of the data that's locked up inside
of your ERP system - all the customer data that's locked up inside of your
ERP system around the financial purchase history - pulls that data out, puts
it into a data warehouse, does all kinds of analysis against that data to
tell you what customers are buying, what they're not buying, what's been the
purchase trend history compared to other customers.

What are the products that this customer is buying that other customers are
also buying? What are the products this customer is not buying that other
companies are buying and gives recommendations directly to the salesperson
in the form of tasks. Talk to this customer about these topics.

Maybe it's a churn risk topic. Maybe it's a reduction in spend topic. Maybe
it's a cross sell, up sell, link sell, switch sell topic. But we put those
exact tasks in front of a salesperson so that they can have a really
meaningful conversation with their customers from an account management
perspective.

We call this intelligent account management. Sales-i does this incredibly
well. They're a- let's see, 2007, they're almost, you know, 16-17 year old
company themselves. And they became partners of ours a year ago. We started
reselling their software, and it just took off when we started reselling
their software.

We've already signed up a couple dozen customers together. We've got another
hundred in the pipeline that we're working on together. And both companies
decided it made sense to come together and join forces. And so we've been
working on that. I've been working on that project with several others in
the company over the last couple months, and today we're announcing publicly
that Sales-i is now a SugarCRM company and part of our portfolio.

Karthik Chidambaram: How did you discover Sales-i? Was it you or your team,
or how did that happen?

Clint Oram: Funny, that's a great story, right? So how did we discover
Sales-i? It was through a joint partner. So, a reseller of Sugar was also
reselling Sales-i. And said, hey, you guys should work together. And this is
a company called CRM international. Neil Saviano was suggesting this and,
you know, I said, okay, I get a lot of suggestions in my role.

There's a lot of companies who are trying to sell themselves to me all the
time. So I- every day I'm getting emails, I'm getting suggestions. And a big
part of what I do is I sift through all that. And I find the gems inside of
all of the noise.

And Neil pointed this company out to me and they caught my attention. I
wasn't really entirely certain what they did at first, right? And I think
that's one of the things that will, the two of us coming together, is we're
going to be able to take their core capability and really tell that message
out to the marketplace much louder than Sales-i was able to do before.

But I wasn't entirely certain what they did. And then my VP of Sales, Dennis
Smith was saying, no, this is really cool. You’ve got to look at this.
Clint. I said, okay, I've got two people I respect and I know and I trust
telling me that I really need to pay attention to this. And I did. And we
started the journey that has concluded into them being part of the company.

I was in their Chicago offices yesterday, welcoming the Chicago team to be
part of the Sugar family. It was a really neat thing to do.

Karthik Chidambaram: Very interesting. So, Sales-i is now part of SugarCRM.

So, obviously, you know, a lot of AI gets into it. Tell us about the role of
AI. You know, I think that's a low hanging fruit, in a way, for the CRM
business like you talked about, right? So automatically create tasks and
tells the sales rep, hey, do this, do that, right? Tell us about the role of
AI-

Clint Oram: Well, I think of AI in two different ways, right? There's lots
of different types of AI. So if you go to Wikipedia today and you look up
artificial intelligence there, there'll be talked about the six different
disciplines of Artificial intelligence and we're focusing very specifically
on predictive analytics and generative AI.

So, predictive AI, leveraging machine learning, finding those patterns in
the data that when compared to when you're looking at one data set a
customer and comparing to a larger data set all your customers, what are the
patterns that come out of that? And those patterns ultimately are telling
you from the, looking at the ERP data, that a certain customer has churn
potential, has growth potential, is not taking full advantage of all the
products that you're selling, and how do you focus that in? You're looking
at those patterns in the data. That's the predictive AI side of things.

Now where we're going next is generative AI. Generative AI, the way we're
leveraging it immediately out of the gates, you've got this vast sea of
data. How do I summarize it quickly? How do I take all this data and
summarize it down into just a couple of paragraphs? For instance, what's new
with my customer? Have you ever asked that question? What's new with my
customer? And you go and you look at your CRM system, and if you're an
expert CRM user, your eye scans across the screen.

Look here, look there, look there, look there. Okay, this is what's new.
There's new emails. There's a new opportunity. Oh, look, the renewal's
coming up in just a few weeks. That's what's new with the customer.

Imagine you just take all of that data in your CRM system, pass it through
an AI API, right, and get a short summary back. This is what's new with your
customer. This customer is generally very happy. They're coming up for a
renewal in a few weeks. There's a high likelihood that they're going to
renew. There's been 20 emails with them in the last month alone, and you've
got five open opportunities. Things are looking good, right?

Or we haven't heard anything from this customer, in six months, usage of the
software is down. There's a high likelihood that they're not going to renew.
Now, of course, I'm giving some examples within the context of a software
space, but you can take those same examples and map them out to the
distribution space as well.

Karthik Chidambaram: Yeah, I mean, I also love how the AI works in Zoom,
right? Even on our calls, you know, you put the AI in, it summarizes the
entire call for you.

Clint Oram: That's right.

Karthik Chidambaram: And then just gets you the exact action items. It
definitely saves a lot of time that way.

Clint Oram: So all kinds of great ways of leveraging generative AI, you
know, and in the end generative AI like predictive AI is about finding
patterns in the data.

In this case, the data is words with predictive AI. You're looking for
patterns and numbers and generative AI. You're looking for patterns and
words, similar concepts, but in generative AI you're looking for those
summaries to tell you what's going on.

Then of course, the next best thing that's coming with generative AI is, is
next best action. What should I do next with my customer? Alright, this is
something that we also have in Sugar. Is, of all the things that are
happening with this particular deal, what's the thing I should be doing
next? What's the next piece of information I should be uncovering? What's
the next value connection I should be making for my customer?

So, this is what we're doing with AI. I spent a lot of time thinking, the
last five years, about predictive AI and machine learning and how to apply
that to making sense of the numbers and now generative AI. And how do you
turn all those numbers and words into meaning as well?

Karthik Chidambaram: Generative AI, predictive AI, machine learning.

Let's shift gears a little bit, Clint. So, I mean, you talked about getting
a lot of emails and, you know, skim through all the emails. Do you work with
an executive assistant? How do you make your day very productive?

Clint Oram: Me? Yeah. No, I don't work with an executive assistant anymore.
I used to, but now I, frankly, I'm finding that I'm able to keep track of
myself. And keep my day organized. I, there are some- no, that's not true.
Okay. Fabiana and Samantha would probably give me a hard time. We do have a
couple assistants who help out the entire executive team, but I don't have
an assistant directly assigned to me, but there's usually-

My challenge is I will overbook my calendar. I will forget to schedule a
hotel or a flight for coming up and Fabiana or Samantha will get me out of
the mess there. So yeah, I do have some help, but not as much as I used to
in the past.

Karthik Chidambaram: Okay. Give us some productivity hacks, you know, are
there any tools that you use to keep yourself more productive?

Clint Oram: So I'm a big user of the Microsoft Suite, so certainly OneNote
in Microsoft to do, I, I think my, my, my single. For me, it's about lists.
So I'm ADHD, a hundred percent have ADHD. For me, I have a tendency to
forget to keep track of the tasks. And so I'm opening up Microsoft to do
every day and just adding in to-do notes.

So lists are probably the most important thing for me. Then of course I'm
living by my, my alerts popping up out of outlook looking for the alerts
popping up out of sugar as well. Yeah, I, I actually. I love trying
different productivity technologies, but I'm always trying something new and
throwing it away and trying something new and throwing it away.

So name a technology and I probably used it at some point. I'm trying out a
new one right now called Ohai O H A I. And I think I'm pronouncing it
properly. I'm not certain, but it connects directly into your email and it
reads your calendar and your email. And it prompts you through the day and
it gives you a voice interface for managing your calendar.

So that's the new productivity technology that I just started trying out in
the last couple of weeks and starting to get used to it. Frankly, I think
that's the future of a lot of technology is going to be voice or
typewritten notes interface.

Karthik Chidambaram: That’s super cool. I should try it as well.

Clint Oram: Yeah, you should check it out. I looked around at a few
different ones and that's the one that really caught my attention.

Karthik Chidambaram: So let’s talk a little bit outside of work, right? I
mean, you do some great work, in terms of you’re also on the board of
schools for children with special needs. Can you talk through a little bit
about that, you know, when you go outside of work?

Clint Oram: Yeah, so, outside of work you know, I mentioned that I have
ADHD. So, in my family we're a family of ADHD. So myself, my wife, my two
kids, both my kids, also have learning differences in the form of dyslexia,
so that was a whole journey there, and for any family that's on the path of
learning that their children have dyslexia, it's a tough journey.

It can be a very emotional journey. It can be a very draining journey. When
you're a child, you're love, you're the future of your, you know, of your
family, that the person that you're putting all this energy into is telling
you, Dad, I'm stupid. I'm the dumbest one in the class.

When homework is- It's the worst thing ever because everybody's screaming at
each other because the kid is just having a hard time with doing homework
and you're trying to teach your child to read and you decode a word. And you
get to the very next page and the kid is acting like, from your perspective,
that they've never seen the word before.

And you say, the word, we just decoded that same word on the previous page.
And the kids looking at you with this lost look on their face of, I don't
think I've ever seen that word before. These are all some snippets of what
the life of a parent with a child with ADHD is like. And it was- it really
shaped our family for a long time when both our children, both of them have
dyslexia.

And there was a point in time where we didn't think either of them would
even go to college. Right? We didn't know what the path forward was going to
look like. And now both my kids are in college, and they're getting straight
A's in college. They both go to great universities and are doing very well,
but they work hard. They work really hard at it. They work three or four
times harder than any other student to keep those grades.

And so, for me, it became a passion. It became a focus that I had to put my
energy into, is to help create a school environment where kids can be
successful. Kids with learning differences can be successful. So I'm on the
board of trustees for a high school in the Bay Area called Mid Peninsula
High School. Go Dragons!

And so I spend a lot of my time making sure that school has the resources,
and to be successful. We just- in the process of raising 10 million to
build a new building where we're about 7 million into that campaign. The
people that are driving that effort are doing a fantastic job, and I'm just
really proud to be part of that.

Karthik Chidambaram: That's very inspiring. And thanks for doing that.

Just a follow up question on that. When you have kids with ADHD and
different disabilities, right? How do you keep yourself motivated and also
the child motivated, right? Like you said, you know, sometimes, you know,
the situation is not easy. But how do you motivate your kids? You know, how
do you motivate your kids, you know, when they were young?

Clint Oram: How do I motivate my kids? I'm not sure I know that answer. My
kids are very self motivated. They're very, very driven individuals much
like their mom and dad are. So, motivation I, you know, I think it really
comes down to a couple things. It's about patience. It's about love.It's
about understanding. It's about creating an environment that's safe.

It's about creating an environment where the kids, when they leave home, it
will often feel different. They will feel less. Because the whole school
system is telling them, you're broken. You're less. And, and when they're at
home, you gotta be certain to not carry that same negative energy into the
house.

Instead, you wanna tell your kids you love them. And tell your kids that
they're great. And tell them they are smart. Because they are smart kids.
They're, my kids are incredibly intelligent. They had a hard time, when they
were younger, reading. And that was just a skill that their brain was not
wired the same way other people's brains are to learn how to read the same
way.

So they had to learn a different way. And, so, in there, resilience is
probably the most important topic to think about for a child with learning
differences. And, frankly, I think that's true for everybody. I think, you
know, regardless if you have learning differences or not, if you live in a
home environment that's positive, that's loving, that's caring, that's
supportive, you can achieve more than an environment where you're getting
yelled at or ignored or things like that.

So, I think the- I guess maybe I did answer the question. How do I motivate
them? I motivate them with love.

Karthik Chidambaram: Love. Yeah. Love and patience.

Clint Oram: Yeah.

Karthik Chidambaram: So you talked about the word being flat and you don't
have to be in the Bay Area anymore. I used to live in the Bay Area. I was
there for a long time.

So tell us how the Bay Area has changed. Do you see a lot of change
happening in the Bay Area? Or is it still the same? You know, it's still the
place to be? Any thoughts around that?

Clint Oram: Well, it depends on how you look at it. If you look at the
housing prices, they're still going through the roof. They have not slowed
down at all. People are still moving into the area. You know, people talk
about the people flooding out of the Bay Area. There's certainly been a lot
of people that have left. I know a lot of people who have left the Bay Area,
but also a lot of people who have come back, or come to the Bay Area.

So the Bay Area is always been an area of change, and it's an area where
people come to make their mark, and I think the people who've been
successful at making their mark stay, and others, you know, different
priorities take them in different directions, but you've always got people
coming into the Bay Area.

But it is different. I got to tell you, people are not, the office culture
is not there anymore. People are working from home. I think, yeah, I think
the pandemic has changed the Bay Area in a way that I don't know if it will
ever be the way it was in the late 1990s. I'm not seeing as many young
people coming to the Bay Area.

Maybe it's just because I'm old now and I don't interact with young people,
but I think the Bay Area has changed. It's not quite the same. I think it
was at its peak probably in 2005-2010. But even as I say those words, you
know, anybody who's looking for a new home in the Bay Area is finding it a
very competitive environment.

So the thing you got to remember about the Bay Area, it's got beautiful
weather. And people like to live where it's got beautiful weather. So it's
just going to always attract people. And it's a cultural melting pot.
There's people from all walks of life there, all corners of the world.

And so if you like an environment that, with smart people that are driven to
change the world, that enjoy nice weather well, that's, Bay Area is about as
good as it

Karthik Chidambaram: On this podcast, we interview a lot of leaders. The
question we ask them is, what is the next question you would like to ask the
next guest we interview?

And we recently interviewed Brad Feakes, the President of Estes Group. And
the question he wanted to ask is, how do you motivate the team? Because the
team has different aspirations. Everybody has their own aspirations. How do
you keep the team motivated? How do you meet the expectations of the team?
Many individuals in the team-

Clint Oram: You didn't tell me this question in advance. This is a tricky
question.

Okay. How do you motivate the team? Well, it's not really that tricky. I
think motivation for any team is very simple and straightforward. It comes
through clarity of purpose. So one of the hardest things for a leadership
team to do is to take that idea, that North Star, and be able to articulate
it very clearly in a way that every person in the team understands.

If we're all aligned as a team to the same goal, motivation just comes out
of that. Everybody is excited to accomplish that. And it also gives you the
ability to very clearly say if this person isn't focused on that goal, then
maybe they shouldn't be part of the team. Right?

So I think clarity of your mission, vision and values really drives
motivation and keeps everybody focused and excited.

Karthik Chidambaram: Yeah, you can meet everyone's aspirations, but like you
said, have a clear purpose and that will glue people together. Yeah, really
well said.

So what is the question you would like to ask the next guest we interview?

Clint Oram: And it needs to be a leadership question.

Karthik Chidambaram: Yeah, it could be any question. Anything you’d like.

Clint Oram: Okay. I would say the next question is how do they fuel growth
in their company? What's the definition of growth, and what's the fuel that
they put behind that growth?

Karthik Chidambaram: That's a good question. We'll make sure we ask the next
leader we interview.

Clint Oram: It's also the question that I seek to answer in my podcast. So
it's an easy one for me to think about, right? The name of my podcast is
Fuel Growth, right?

Karthik Chidambaram: Fuel Growth, yeah, yeah, yeah, totally.

Clint Oram: So how is that next person fueling growth in their own company?

Karthik Chidambaram: Cool. Thank you, Clint.

Clint, you read a lot of books, you know. I mean, you read about 50-60 books
a year. Tell us about- how did you build that reading habit? Because that's
a question a lot of people have. You want to read, but sometimes one thing I
hear from a lot of people is, hey I want to read, but I’m not able to,
right? So how did you pick that up?

Clint Oram: Well, I do read a lot. And that’s- I’ve always been a book nerd.
My entire life. I have a huge library at home. I’ve got an entire wall
dedicated to books. My family laughs at me because I don’t think I’ve ever
thrown away a book. I just do nothing but collect books.

For me? I don't read a lot of business books. I'm not the guy who's going to
the next business book. I read a lot of science fiction. I like to be
entertained. But I also like to think about what the future looks like.
Science fiction just always captures my imagination because it's, what's
coming next?

If you look at the world in a different way, what would it turn into? And is
that something that we want? Is it a dystopian future? Is it a future that
we're excited about? So for me, it's also the only way I can stop thinking
about work. Video does not engage me, watching TV, watching the latest
Netflix series. My mind starts wondering, I'm picking up my phone. I'm doing
email. My wife is getting annoyed with me.

But when I pick up a book, my focus becomes complete and I can stop thinking
about work. So, it's my way to relax is to pick up a book. And so, yeah, I
go through about a book a week.

Karthik Chidambaram: That’s amazing. Do you have any advice for people who
want to build their reading habit? What can they do? Let’s say I don’t have
a reading habit today, but I want to pick it up? Any advice?

Clint Oram: Well, I would say you probably do have a bit of a reading habit.
Do you read the news? I think, I think everybody, there’s- you got to find
the thing that you're interested in and then read about that. For me,
reading is a way to satisfy my curiosity.

So if you're a curious person, if you want to learn about different topics,
whether it's reading or watching videos on that topic, I don't really, I
don't think that the exact format really matters as much as follow your
curiosity. That's really what it’s meant to me, my entire life, is to follow
your curiosity. And then from that, I happen to read a lot.

Karthik Chidambaram: Yeah. Start with things you like. I think that's good
advice. Yeah. I mean, I read more business books. Maybe I should do more
science fiction, yeah.

So I would like to end with this question. What book are you reading right
now?

Clint Oram: I'm- boy, what was the name of it? I just looked at it a few
minutes ago. The object.

Karthik Chidambaram: Object, yeah.

Clint Oram: There you go. I'm horrible with names. That's why I started a
CRM company. I'm absolutely horrible with names. I have to have them written
down.

I’m really into the topic of first contact right now. If you're a little bit
of a sci-fi nerd, a little bit of a conspiracy nerd, but even have you
followed in the news over the last few years of the unidentified aerial
vehicles, the UAVs, that the U.S. government has acknowledged is there?

Karthik Chidambaram: A little bit, but not a whole lot.

Clint Oram: I personally believe - okay, this is me going out on a limb -
that first contact is going to happen in our generation. I think we're being
prepared for first contact and so I've been enjoying reading a bunch of
books about first contact. Okay, this is, it's a little conspiracy theory. A
little bit out there. I might need my tinfoil hat, but I've been reading
about that topic.

So Peter Crawford has got a series of about 26 books that just, that dig
into the topic of first contact from a bunch of different directions. And
now I've branched off to another author and reading the book called, The
Object.

Karthik Chidambaram: I’m actually reading a leadership book, Multipliers. I
think it’s written by Liz Wiseman. It’s a good book in terms of, hey, how
can you be a multiplier?

Clint Oram: See, look, you’re reading books about how to grow your business
and I’m reading books about little green men. Whose reading habits are more
valuable? I don’t know. I think it might be yours.

Karthik Chidambaram: No, no, no. I do read. I mean, I do read. But I don't-
I mean, I average about one or two books a month. I'd say more like 15 books
a year. I'd love to get to 50,, but I'm nowhere close. But I really want to
build on that, yeah.

Clint Oram: There you go.

Karthik Chidambaram: Cool. Clint, thank you so much. I really enjoyed having
you on this podcast. Thank you so much for joining me today and joining
Driven by DCKAP. We are very thankful to have you. It's been a great
conversation. Thank you everyone

Clint Oram: Well, thank you, Karthik, for having me.

Karthik Chidambaram: So Clint, tell us about your podcast. I mean, you run a
podcast as well. I mean, I've browsed through the episodes. Tell us about,
where can we learn about your podcast?

Clint Oram: Fuel Growth podcast. It's on Spotify. It's on Amazon. It's on
every podcast channel out there. Fuel Growth is unlocking the secrets to
sustain revenue growth. We're interviewing CXOs across all the different
industries and learning from them about how they drive growth in their
company. And it's a really fun topic to dig into.

Karthik Chidambaram: How do you get guests on your podcast? I mean, that's a
question I want to ask you.

Clint Oram: Just networking. So, you know, part of it is my customers. I
love interviewing my customers. I love talking to them. I love asking them
who they recommend to talk to. So I think if there's one thing- finding the
next podcast guest is a lot like finding the next job. You tell people that
you're looking for a podcast guest, and you'd be surprised by the number of
recommendations you get.

Karthik Chidambaram: Yeah. Thank you so much for agreeing to be on our
podcast. It's an honor. Thank you so much.

Clint Oram: My pleasure. Absolutely. Thank you for having me.

Karthik Chidambaram: Thank you.