In this episode, Jamie sits down with Bradon Rogers, Chief Customer Officer at Island, to talk about what it takes to build trust, lead teams, and deliver technology that actually serves people. Drawing from more than 25 years in cybersecurity and enterprise software, Bradon shares how his path from engineer to executive shaped his approach to leadership and customer success. They explore how Island is redefining the browser for the enterprise, the balance between technical precision and empathy, and why government could benefit from a true customer-first mindset. Whether you lead a team, build technology, or work with customers, this conversation will change how you think about trust and leadership.
Every company says they put the customer first. But for Bradon Rogers, it’s not a slogan, it’s the job.
In this episode, Jamie sits down with Bradon, Chief Customer Officer at Island, to talk about what it really takes to build trust at scale, lead with empathy, and deliver on every promise in a fast-moving tech landscape.
With more than 25 years in cybersecurity, enterprise software, and cloud technology, Bradon has led technical and customer teams at some of the biggest names in the industry. Today, at Island, he’s helping redefine what it means to build technology around people.
Together, they dig into:
If you’re a leader navigating growth, innovation, or just the challenge of building trust in complex systems, this is a masterclass in how to do it right.
About Bradon Rogers
Bradon Rogers is the Chief Customer Officer at Island, where he directs the technical aspects of all customer interactions, leveraging his vast experience in cybersecurity, enterprise software, and cloud technology. Bradon's career in cybersecurity spans over 25 years, during which he has played an executive leadership role for some of the largest firms in the industry.
Guest Quote
“ At the end of the day, the role of chief customer officer is to drive an outcome. Buying a piece of software is not an outcome. Making a piece of software pivot to be used to solve a problem that you stated at the beginning of the journey with a vendor, that to me is the role of the chief customer officer.”
Time Stamps
00:00 Episode Start
01:22 Bradon Rogers' Career Journey
06:10 Leadership Lessons and Trust Building
19:29 Explaining Island’s Vision
21:44 Role of a Chief Customer Officer
31:22 Building Trust Through Relationships
35:02 The Importance of Compensation Alignment
56:45 Empowering Public Sector Digital Transformation
01:02:56 The Enterprise Browser Debate
01:03:45 AI's Role in Future-Proofing
01:06:30 Balancing Security and Innovation
01:08:25 Bridging Security, Innovation, and Leadership in the Public Sector
01:12:52 The Roundup
Sponsor
Ever To Conquer is brought to you by RedLeif, a digital agency focused on accelerating the modernization and security of public sector data. Visit RedLeif.io to learn more.
Connect with Bradon Rogers
Connect with Jamie
Follow the Show
[00:00:00] Jamie Grant: Sales is really good at walking into the bar and getting dates. Marriage is different. And when you're in that chief customer officer role really the purchase order is kind of the beginning of the relationship almost.
[00:00:11] Bradon Rogers: Trust is a two-way street. As they earn your trust, you have to earn their trust as well as a leader. And part of that is, I try not to ask the people that work around me to do jobs that I'm not willing to do myself.
[00:00:33] Jamie Grant: All right, y'all. Welcome back to another episode of The Ever to Conquer. My name is Jamie Grant, your host, uh, thrilled to be with you again today. Uh, super excited again, continuing the trend, uh, of having a friend. Uh, with us today, Bradon Rogers, who is the Chief Customer Officer at Island, uh, Island.io if you're looking to do some homework. Bradon, thanks a ton for coming to join us today, man. I really appreciate it.
[00:00:57] Bradon Rogers: Of course, Jamie, always good to be with you.
[00:00:59] Jamie Grant: So, you know, this podcast touches kind of the whole ecosystem of tech policy procurement really kind of aimed at the public sector. But if we're gonna make partnerships happen in the public sector, it means bringing really talented experience, people from the private sector to say, you know, how do we align the needs of these two groups and how do we figure out if there's a fit and if there is a fit, how do we get all the way through that funnel?
so I, I like to kind of start just a little bit about your background, right? So we've got some folks that'll listen to this that are trying to figure out one day what they wanna do corporately, they're in the private sector and they're trying to figure out where they're trying to go. Um, or folks that are in the public sector, they're gonna spin out.
Uh, we'll get into, and I'm really excited to have the conversation around what a Chief cus customer officer is, why it matters. Um, but will you give just a little bit of your background so folks understand, uh, your history and then kind of how you become a, a Chief Customer Officer?
[00:01:50] Bradon Rogers: Yeah. So I, you know, I, uh, first of all, thank you for having me, Jamie. Uh, I really appreciate it. And, uh, you know, it's a, it kind of goes all the way back to my days, you know, our shared days, I guess at Auburn.
I was at a junction point in my, my college journey trying to decide what the major's gonna be, and I wound up.
Getting an MIS degree and, uh, I don't know that I had any real particular interest in tech. I had to find a path and it, and I knew that obviously, you know, when I was going to school, you know, the, the internet was, was a baby. And, um, it just seemed like, it seemed like it obviously was, it was a really good place to be, future-proof.
And, uh, you know, I, I was very fortunate to have some jobs right outta the gate, uh, in development, doing engineering work, writing code, and. Um, and I found my way in, uh, via some relationships via Auburn relationships. Actually. I went to work for Oracle and got my first taste of working in a, in a technology company, in a software company.
And, uh, and in part and also got my first taste of touching large enterprises and starting to understand the demands of an organization, you know, how they operate and what, what they expect of their technology providers. And, uh, you know, I kinda spent a lot of time with a lot of the biggest companies on the planet when I was working for Oracle.
And, uh, you know, one thing led to another, the people that I knew at Oracle went to work in at another company. I went with 'em, and next thing I know, I'm in cybersecurity and I've spent a nice 20 plus year career in cybersecurity and working for some of the largest orgs on the planet. But I've, I've been, you know, found a really pleasant journey where, you know, I love, I'm a technologist by heart.
I really enjoy the tech I like, I like, I like trying new things. I like the, the challenges that they, that it presents to you. I like the intellectual stimulation. Of, of the technologies. And, uh, that's always kind of been my, my thing when I work at, at the companies is to stay on the technology side of the house.
And, uh, you know, as, as I continue to grow my career, you know, working my way around in the sales engineering role, which is great 'cause it's kind of this balance between. You know, a selling role where you're, you're, you're spending time with customers and helping them understand and demystify the technologies and speak the language they speak so they can actually understand it, but also being deeply technical on the other side of the fence.
Again, be able to help dissect some of these things and, and, uh, and make sure they, they have a clear understanding of the deep technical levels. And just over years, one thing led to another in the process where, you know, I just spent a ton of time with, with, with practitioners and the organizations I work within.
And, uh, you know, continue to grow my career through that process and got my first taste of leadership teams, you know, in the pro leader leading teams in that process and, you know, was a terrible leader out of the gate. And, you know, learned how to learn how to be somebody that I, you know, hope that, that, that that would be somebody people would like to work for, that they would enjoy working for that, you know, assess high expectations and, and lofty goals.
But at the same time as an empathetic leader and, you know, learned a lot about that over the years. And at the end of the day, you know, it's a natural progression. Because at the end of the day, the, the job of of an, an engineer in the field is to make sure you're shepherding the customer to solve the problem they've laid out in front of you and, and make sure on the other end that, you know, they feel like you had their back throughout the journey.
And you build these, these trusted advisor relationships. And that's exactly what I'm, what I'm doing now at Island in the role of Chief, chief customer Officer. It's, uh, you know, I spend a lot of my time handing the tech hands in the tech a ton of my time, hands in the tech and. Right in front of some of the biggest practitioners on the planet and letting them pressure test the tech.
And as they're learning the new category that we've built, uh, you know, they're, they're navigating it, trying to understand it, trying to, you know, trying to demystify what it is and what it isn't. And. Uh, at the end of the day, you know, on the other end, I own the journey of, of not only their, their decision to, to, to make the leap to, to, you know, um, become an island customer from a technical standpoint, but also in the consumption of it.
So, at the end of the day, whatever we promise on the front end, you know, we've gotta make sure we deliver on the back end. So we, we live up to the, the, you know, the promises that we made on the other end, and we. We hold ourselves accountable to that on the delivery. So, uh, it's been, that's, that's, that's the best part of my job is I get to work, you know, with some great people, some really talented practitioners.
I've made a ton of friends in the industry over the years and, uh, you know, I'm very fortunate to say that we've got a lot of great people inside of island. Many, many people inside of island. A ton of people inside of island I've worked with for 15, 20 years at this point. It's a lot of great friends, friendships and uh, for me it's almost like this cool thing where there really is no dividing line between work and where my friends live.
They're literally in both places, which is great. So.
[00:06:10] Jamie Grant: So one of the things I love that you just touched on, um, I'm huge on tensions between two competing forces, right? Like where there's like a, a pull one direction and a pull a different direction. Um, I, one of the things I love about your story is a lot of times I feel like the, the chief customer officer kind of comes up through the customer success.
Vertical that's maybe a little more, um, a little less technical, let's say, right? Where, um, they're really good at triaging and routing and bringing the resources to the table. But I think there's this, this like polarity between being an engineer and also then being a chief customer officer, where there's an appreciation for the limitations and the power of the tech.
Um, there's the honesty and the accountability of either the tech does it or it doesn't, uh, against kind of like the warmth and grace and empathy that it takes to really be a great chief customer officer. And I think that's a really cool part of your story. Um, I wanna ask you a question going back real quick to something you said.
Uh, you, you referenced like we all, I think in leadership roles early on, we think we're ready to lead and we're like, you know, if you had a couple of things or is there one big thing that you would look at that you go, man. That is the one lesson I learned the hard way about leadership when I first got exposed that way.
[00:07:35] Bradon Rogers: Well, you know.
[00:07:36] Jamie Grant: Or if you describe, when you say maybe you weren't the leader you would've wanted to work for as an early leader in your career, and now you very clearly are with the team that follows you and the longevity that's there, is there something you could share that, that somebody would go, man, I, I don't wanna make the mistake Bradon made and,
[00:07:52] Bradon Rogers: Yeah. I think, you know, one of the first things as a leader out of the gate, when you first jump from individual contributor to leadership, it's natural to try to do the job. Of the people that, that you, that, that you work with and the people that work for you, it's natural to try to do the job for them.
And there were many times I would just jump over the top of people to just do the job. 'cause in my head I'm, you know, I guess I'm doing it better. I don't know, maybe there's a little young ego involved in some of that as a young leader. Um, but you have to learn to trust people. And, uh, obviously that trust is earned on both sides of the fence.
And, uh, you know, people are gonna make mistakes. And there's, there may be, you know. It's like getting to a destination on the road. You know, there could be 10 different paths to get to that de destination. You're just, because you take this certain path. I'm, it's funny 'cause I'm sure my wife, my wife and I have argued about this a million times as we're driving the streets of Auburn.
She goes, why do you go this way? I go this way and it doesn't matter. We both get the same destination. Um, and early in my career, sometimes maybe I probably was a little bit too stiff about the direction that it took to get to the destination. And there could have been some alternate paths. It might have been even been better, better.
And, uh, you know what I did? I began, began to loosen the reins and just open my eyes to the fact that, you know, while I was learning as an individual contributor from the job I was in, I was growing every single day. I began to learn from the people that work for me in the process and, and be able to find common ground.
I think that's one thing as a leader. You know, a leader has a, hopefully has an even temperament, but at the end of the day, finds the way to be a broker between, sometimes it's the tech, you know, finding the problem and matching the tech to the problem, but also between people and trying to say, you know, sometimes, sometimes there's tense conversations and you know, at the end of the day you, you become a little bit of an arbiter sometimes, and ultimately the decision maker after you hear all the facts.
But, uh, you know, I think at, at the end of the day, that's, uh, to me that's probably one of the biggest learning things for me is like being able to take my hands off the wheel. And trust people that work for me that they, they've built a career too. Those people are, are, are great at their jobs. They've, they're, they're really intelligent, smart people and, you know, and, and most of, most of 'em I found over my career are smarter than me in the first place.
So, um, so that being said, I, I do think it's that hands off the wheel thing and that's, it's a trust thing that you learn to develop over time.
[00:10:05] Jamie Grant: I, I love that. I, I have battled in my career and I, and I think I realized it a, a year or two ago, maybe a little bit longer, I guess it was still while I was, um, in the CIO chair. Um, I almost subconsciously choose to delegate and it's in, it's like, it, like binary with the amount of trust. And so I've gotten to a place where when I trust somebody, I don't want to be involved.
We talk about one-way doors, two-way doors, like the two-way door of if you can, you know, if you ask me do I need to wear a jacket? You didn't need to interrupt my day. You could walk out the door, figure out if it was cold, walk back in, grab a jacket. I don't need to be in your business. This.
[00:10:42] Bradon Rogers: Yeah.
[00:10:42] Jamie Grant: Um, but then sometimes there was one-way doors, right?
A, a product shipping. Um, you know, major things are one-way doors and like, let's get together and talk about it. But as I really tried to like look inward on it, I started realizing that I am a terrible, like put my hands on it, do the work, come over the top when I don't trust. Um, and so trying to, to really learn how to build that trust.
'cause I think you're spot on. Like, it, it's hard as a leader when you want to delegate and want to trust, but you're constantly having to play cleanup or you're constantly having to kind of undo, redo. And it's like, all right, how do you find the time to both coach and grow your team and delegate to your team?
But I think where that trust comes in, it frees up a leader like you to just go, Hey, go do your job. You're here for a reason. We trust you. We're empowering you. Um. But to me, I don't know if it if it, if it relates or, or resonates for you. To me, it's, it's like I don't wanna micromanage and, and a hundred percent of the time when I go, wait, why am I so deep in something that I shouldn't be that deep in the answer is always like, I don't trust this person right now, so how do I build that trust so that I can get out of their way?
That frees me up, it empowers them and you watch them just grow so quickly when that happens.
[00:11:54] Bradon Rogers: Yeah, you know, it, it is a trust is an interesting part of it. You know, when you're building a team from, from scratch or you're hiring people from the, you know, within doing an existing team, um, you gotta trust, you gotta, you gotta do a good job of, and it's on you as the, as the person doing the hiring to hire people.
Are capable that can come in and, and do the jobs that you need. So again, if you, it can be on you to make bad, bad decisions on that front at the end of the day and they'll, they'll let you down right outta the gate, you know, from a trust standpoint because you made the wrong decision and wrong hiring.
It may be somebody that didn't fit the role or fit the situation, uh, both for the company and for them. And, uh, but, but I think the hiring thing is a big part of it. 'cause when you bring people into the team, you hopefully vet the right people out that it fit the culture and the mold of the tech and the things that you want.
And, uh, as you do that, you know, right outta the gate there, there's, there's a little bit of earned trust just by getting in the door. And then at the end of the day, you know, you let people go off and, you know, it's like, it's like a kid with training wheels. At some point you take the training wheels off and you let 'em see, let 'em scratch their knees up a few times and give 'em, give sometimes, give 'em, sometimes give loves and, uh, you know, hugs.
And sometimes you give 'em some, uh, some tough love in the process. But, uh, to me that's, but one thing I think is really important is trust is a two-way street. So, as the is, is as they earn your trust. Um, you have to earn their trust as well as a leader. And part of that is, like, for me, it's a really big one to be, you know, I, I try not to ask the people that work around me to do jobs that I'm not willing to do myself.
So you'll see me get as deep into the tech as an example, as I ask some of my engineers. I've got engineers that are way better than me and the tech, but I, but you know, at the end of the day, I challenge myself all the time to be deep hands-on, into the tech at, at a, you know, at at a senior level in the organization.
Because I'm gonna ask these people to do this, and I want them to be able to see me in front of a customer taking the hard questions, the challenging problems, et cetera, just like I'm asking them to do. And, uh, you know, um, but I think that hopefully that earns a little bit of trust in the process as well, of them seeing I'm capable of doing it, but also at the same time, I've gotta grow my skills as a leader.
You know, starting out, there's new muscles I've gotta develop. So it's like, you know, so I did, I do have to take my hands off the wheel somewhat because there's only so much capacity you have at the end of the day, if you're gonna grow your skills as a leader. So again, it, it, there's some balance in all of this, but at the end of the way, the trust being a two-way street is really important.
'cause having my teams trust me, one thing I learned a long time ago, I think it's really important is, you know, as a leader you have this imagination of what the culture is in your organization. And you imagine what it is and you know, sometimes you work in an org where people tell you all kinds of great things about you, about your teams, et cetera.
And what you really hope isn't happening is there's an alternate culture actually happening beneath the surface. And the alternate culture beneath the surface is the opposite of what you think that would be. That's, that's terrible. As a leader, you, you're being fed bad info. You're, you know, you're, you, everybody's saying all the right stuff, but not telling you what the real situation is.
And while you'll never be deeply, perfectly aligned and, and in tune down to the microscopic detail in the culture, you know, you don't wanna be out of a room and then the room changes and says totally different things than it would say when you're in the room. And what you're hoping for is the culture you think it is versus the culture that it is are really tightly over overlapped.
And, you know, trust in many of those things go into that. And again, being close to your people, empathizing with them, um, being able to do the jobs that you're asking them to do in the process. Uh, be able to be able to step in front of them and take the hard shots when sometimes the hard shots come so that they're not the ones having to take it.
They see you having their back in that way. Um, and then sometimes it's making hard decisions about sometimes the. You know, where there's not a good fit in the org because at the end of the day, sometimes that can be detrimental to others in the org that are having to pick up the load in the process. So, you know, there's, there's a lot of tough things that come with being a leader.
But at the end of the day, I'm, I'm, I'm proud of, of the development that, that I've gone through the years and I've still got a lot more to go at this point. So.
[00:15:48] Jamie Grant: So I I, you touched on so many good things there and I'm gonna try and recall 'em. Uh, but one that I almost interrupted you to ask and then you went straight to it, is, uh, when you talked about the training wheels and you talked about the fact that like, you know, we're gonna have some skin knees.
One of the things I've struggled with as a leader is how do I build a culture where the right kind of mistakes are encouraged, right? Um, be a liar, be a fraud. That's a character issue, not a mistake. Like we got a zero tolerance on that policy. But then inside of that, I need the team to play fast. I need the team to take risk.
I need the team to be curious and innovative, all those things. And so we can't discourage mistakes. I also can't have the same mistakes over and over. Um, 'cause that's a problem. And so I'm curious if you have something on how you've kind of institutionally or in very large organizations where I got a lot more flexibility in, in our team than, than you do.
How do you coach it? How do you get 'em to understand like, hey, we'll get in the film room, we're gonna watch the mistake, we're gonna coach the mistake, we're gonna prevent that mistake, but I can't let you walk outta the film room Scared to make a mistake on the field tomorrow.
[00:16:54] Bradon Rogers: Yeah. Uh, really good question. I, first of all, I'm, I'm, I'm gonna carry your parallel on, because you mentioned the film room. You think about it, you, when you're preparing for a game, you don't just sit and watch film. You actually go to practice and you, I, you know, I don't know what the ratio of practice to games is, but it's probably a substantially heavy tilt toward practice versus games
[00:17:16] Jamie Grant: It's gotta be 10 to one. When you take spring ball, take two a days. It's gotta be two to 1, 10, 10 to
[00:17:21] Bradon Rogers: exactly.
So you think about it, you, you can create environments in, in, in places where you work, which. Simulate the real thing now. Now again, you're never gonna get, you know, I'll use our Auburn analogy. You're never gonna get the feel what it's like playing in front of 90,000 people in Jordan Hair stadium on a game day Saturday at a practice field.
But what you'll do is you're, you'll train yourself repetitively over and over. This is what a given motion looks like, and that's super, super important. And you can do that in the workplace by gamifying things out, by practicing, like in our world, when I talk to sales engineers, practicing the demonstration of the technology, getting comfortable with it, how you talk about it.
You know, I, I can't tell you how many times I've been in hotel rooms at midnight practicing for the presentation the next day, saying the words over and over again, turning it into something that I can commit to memory and feel comfortable with what I'm saying versus ad hoking it up. And sometimes it's okay to ad hoc stuff up like this conversation here, but the, um, but I think practice goes into, goes into preparation.
And by the way, you mentioned film. Go back and watch the film. Like if you're gonna, like, my people are gonna record a demo. If you're gonna do a demo, record yourself doing the demo and then go watch yourself awkwardly delivering it to see what you think about it. but there's, there's ways to be prepared for when you, when you go into the real situation that you'll scratch your knees up a lot less.
It doesn't mean you don't want to encourage that. I'll come back to that in a bit, but it doesn't mean you don't wanna encourage that. But at the end of the day, there's preparation that can go into it.
[00:18:44] Jamie Grant: Yeah, I, I love, um, kind of the notion of like, if, if it's not instinct down magnolia on the fields that nobody's watching, it ain't gonna be instinct on Saturday. And when all the distractions and all of a sudden something goes awry, uh, it's gotta be baked in and, and the, the fundamentals have to be kind of there.
So let's, real quick, I want you to set context. If you were to explain Island to my 80-year-old saint of a mother who still doesn't understand what I do, can you give me a really quick synopsis? And I know we're gonna get into it a little bit around the customer experience stuff, but, but for folks who maybe haven't yet heard of one of the fastest growing software companies in the history of the world.
What is Island doing?
[00:19:29] Bradon Rogers: Yeah, so the thesis is, if you think about the most pervasive way that in a history of my technological career and in history of yours as well, the most pervasive way we've consumed applications is with a web browser. Now herein lies the dilemma with the web browser. We all use, the browser, we all use isn't built for the purpose of practitioners in delivering apps.
It's actually built for shopping. It's actually built for, um, targeted search advertising and things like that. And there's nothing wrong with that. At the end of the day, it's a consumer grade need. You think about the needs for consumers, you know, like if, if you go to the, you know, you go to the Indy 500, you're not gonna see people rolling around the track in a minivan.
Um, totally different purposes in the vehicles that are needed there. but I, I think the, the reality is that we, we, we've stood up this, this experience. That's where you ubiquitous your average end user in the organization knows how to use a web browser. Um, but at the end of the day, it's not built for the purpose.
So here's the dilemma. You start having to stand up an immense amount of infrastructure around it to deliver apps to the end users, to make the corporate environment, you know, empowered. You stand up virtual desktop infrastructure, VPN infrastructure, a massive cybersecurity stack with proxies, DLP, cas bs, sass, sassy Technologies, all these other things.
And the reality is when we stand all that stuff up around it, we take that great experience that the user knew and loved in that browser, and we just ruined it. We just made it exceptionally difficult to access applications. The, the experience we're streaming pixels oftentimes with BDI. And so we said, look, what if we could rethink this whole thing and, you know, take advantage of the user's knowhow and using a browser and, and build the world's first browser built for the enterprise.
We call it the enterprise browser. And transform the browser into a true application delivery platform that makes every engagement safe, while providing access to the key applications for the users to do their job, and then empowering them to be more productive with things. Obviously AI is a huge conversation right now, but empowering them to be able to take advantage of tools to make them more effective at their job and to be able to, to, to automate many of their workflows in the process, but give them easier access.
Just simplify the entire experience for the user. Let them feel like the internet. Um, let, let them make them feel like the way they work. It works exactly the way the internet was originally designed. Like you, like it happens at your home at
[00:21:38] Jamie Grant: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, okay, so I'm gonna, I'm gonna, 'cause I wanna go from there.
Now I want you to explain to my mom what a chief customer officer does, but I want to, I want to come in here for a second first because, um, I go back to that tension you have and a healthy tension of being both an engineer.
A chief customer officer and trust and kind of bring this together because if, if we made a different parallel, sales is really good at walking into the bar and getting dates right. They're really good at saying what needs to be said to get a date. Marriage is different. And when you're in that chief customer officer role, really like the, the, the purchase order is kind of the beginning of the relationship almost.
That like we've earned the opportunity to have you as a customer for a long, long time and we're gonna earn that if we can build the trust. But I, you know, I've had some co-founders in the past. Uh, one, one comes to mind that like every time we were in an enterprise room pitching and we got asked, you know, does your platform do that?
The answer was yes. It didn't matter what the question was. And then he was gonna come back to the dev team and go, Hey guys, roadmap updated, uh, here you go. So that was problematic for a lot of us. Right? And then simultaneously, if you didn't have kind of the structure and standards, and I'll say the good part of, of, of rigidity in the go-to-market motion that say, Hey, sorry, we actually don't do that.
We're not the fit for that. Um, how would you explain a chief customer officer? 'cause I see you sitting at the intersection of trust with the customer, but also the whole team at Island has to trust you, that when you come back from an engagement forward facing and you're kind of reporting the news or giving the sales led product market fit data to go like, wow, this isn't really landing with the customer, or this isn't working for the customer.
one, I'd love for you to tell me if I, if you think I'm crazy, uh, in, in that regard, but two, just to kind of explain what a chief customer officer does. And then I want to kind of get into why I think it's a tragedy that the public sector doesn't have that role. Um, pervasively through agencies and enterprise that have taxpayer facing, um, or constituent facing applications.
[00:23:58] Bradon Rogers: Sure. Uh, you know, I, I think at the end of the day that in short, the role of chief customer officers to drive an outcome and, you know, buying a soft, buying a piece of software is not an. Making a piece of software pivot to be used to solve a problem that you stated at the beginning of the journey with a vendor or with other whatever situation you're in, you, you stated a problem at the beginning.
You want someone to grab that and go, all right, let me, let me make the machinery work to your advantage. And that, that to me is the role of the chief customer officer. And ultimately the people that work in my org at the end of the day as well is, is um, you know, from the beginning of the relationship, we get to know the customer.
We spend our time with the customer. We, we dive deeply into the problems they have. We try to understand the, the ecosystem of technologies and the influences in their org and the politics and the policies and things like that, and try to get to know them. And you, and again, you do a lot of this stuff in the sales process as well early in the, early in the engagement.
And, but what's interesting, especially about the org we've created, we've, we've changed the model quite a bit from what traditional technology companies have have built in most technology companies. When you're engaged in the sales effort. You work your way through the sales effort and then the customer transacts and all of a sudden the sales team pulls back a little bit, maybe a lot, a bit.
And all of a sudden this professional services team parachutes in and you had all this continuity. You, you broke bread with these people early on. You learn their environment, you learn their culture, their policies and process and the things they need. And you also made promises to them. You told them how things would work, you told them the, the functionality and how it would be delivered in the scale, et cetera.
And then all of a sudden this new team parachutes in and they have none of that. They don't know what was said in the sales cycle. They don't have any relationships, they haven't had any dinners with these people. They don't inherently back to the hiring earlier and all the other stuff about trust.
There's no inherent trust for these people yet. 'cause we haven't built that bridge yet. And then, you know, they work to hopefully get the technologies deployed in the process. And then there comes the point in time where they leave the, an organization after it's all stood up after probably some teeth gnashing from time to time.
And then there's another team now whose job is to support it. And that team that now that team knows even less about the customer, that he, the team is ill-equipped. They weren't engaged at the beginning. They don't know these people. These people, you know, these, these people on the customer ain't side of the house or the organization side of the house are calling one 800 to get help.
And they're getting asked basic questions. You know, I, I'm sure you've done this before. You, you, you, you call support somewhere and they start asking you these simple questions like, have you rebooted your machine and all this other stuff? Or have you checked your wifi router? And then you, you in your head, you're going, at least for me, I was going early in my career.
I'm a network engineer. Why are you asking me this? I already know this kind of stuff, but they don't know me. They don't know not to do that. They're having to follow their playbook. So all that institutional knowledge is lost. And for me, and this is why the org is like this, but this is ultimately the role I'm in as well, is to, to live with the customer at the beginning of their journey and stay with them through the, the parts where they figure out whether it's a good mapping, good match for, for the problems they have.
And then as they make the decision to say, you know what, we're gonna put our trust in island in this case with us, but any, any vendor that I've been in, they make that decision to put that trust rather than disappearing. And another team parachutes in, we stay with them. So we leave the same people engaged that own the deployment and make sure that success happens.
And, and again, at the end of the day, we still know all their infrastructure and their people. And we, we didn't lose that continuity. And then we went to the support process and guess what? Those same people stayed engaged to make sure those customers were white gloved throughout the entire journey. And again, the mission of the, of the people that I work with is not just to sell 'em a technology, but it's to drive the outcome on the other end.
To make sure that we live up to the brand promise that the customer was given from the day they began to engage the technology. And the same people that now own that. And by the way, there's a heavy degree of accountability. You can think about your relationships in life, all the promises you made early in life that later you were held to account, to live up to.
'cause you're the same person. Somebody else didn't have to own the delivery of that. You had to own it. Same thing is true here. We, we believe that that. That, that ensures that at the end of the day that, you know, if I'm gonna, I know that if I say something early in the journey to the customer, I gotta deliver it later on.
I can't, I, I don't get to walk away from that promise I made. And that makes this very unique. 'cause this goes back to the heart of the conversation we had earlier. Trust. I
[00:28:17] Jamie Grant: I, I'm laughing because it was earlier in my career, uh, early on in my career and our, we were having a real, we were having that challenge significantly. Um, and as you know, we were dealing with really sensitive patient data in the healthcare space and, and providers, doctors that were trusting us with their patient panel, which is effectively their livelihood, right?
Like, I mean, you're talking really intimate stuff here. Um, and we were having a real challenge between sales and, and, and the account management function and, and retention function at one point, and kinda got the sales team together. And I, I'm, I'm actually hesitating on whether I should say this, but I couldn't figure out how to drive it home.
And I said, I said to him one day, I said, guys, I need you to understand that there's this very intimate transaction happening here in business and personally when a doctor is giving us access to their entire patient panel and trusting us to make sure that the data and the caregivers are doing that work 24 7 when the doctor's not in the room.
That's a, that's a really big leap for a doctor to. And then simultaneously a patient is giving us all of their medical records, which is obviously really sensitive. And I couldn't think of it. And I finally thought, guys, I don't know how to drive this home. But if you take the parallel of, you know, guy walks into a bar and ends up having a one night stand, 'cause he said all the things that it needed to say for a different kind of very intimate encounter to happen.
And for that woman to think like, oh, I, I'm dating this guy now. And the next day he's like, no, no, you're dating my friend. It's account management. You're not dating me. I was just the one who got you into the relationship. But, but I'm gonna hand you off and you're gonna date my friend. And, and she's like, but I didn't, I didn't get like vulnerable with your friend.
I got vulnerable with you. And we, I thought kind of aligned and, and then we had some more problems and we revisited. And I said, guys, now I want you to imagine that the one night stand turned into a pregnancy and, and there's now a situation and, and, and it seems hyperbolic. And they are certainly not the same.
But if we root it back into trust, and we think about the fact that like the trust is built at the beginning to get to a purchase simultaneously, vulnerability happens between these two people that say, okay, I'll take this risk. I'll buy your thing. I'll trust my organization with you, and then you're gone.
'cause you got the yes. And they're stuck dating somebody they had no interest in working with who had no understanding of how it brought together. And then this thing turns into a real situation with financial and operational implications. And, and it is hyperbolic. I, I'm like, I, I can't believe I just said that, but I, but I, I use that to try and say like, guys, I'm not endorsing any of the above, but you gotta understand you're building a level of trust with somebody that is in a different way, incredibly intimate when they're trusting you with their data, their livelihood, their operation.
And we can't just go in and say what it takes to get the transaction and then pretend like there won't be consequences if we just hand the relationship off to somebody else.
[00:31:20] Bradon Rogers: That, that's, that's, that's right.
And I'll, I'll, I'll go back to your medical analogy. You know, if you go to that physician or that healthcare facility and you have a good outcome on the other end, maybe you had a scary moment in the middle of that. And you have a good outcome though, on the other end, when the next one happens, you're likely to go back to those same people and you're likely to go back to those same people again because, you know, at the end of the day, you, you, you know, not only they have your back, they're intelligent, et cetera, but you, you start developing relationships with 'em in the process as well.
And relationships matter. And that same parallel translates to the the work that that I do. And the, that many people that I work around that I are blessed to work around do the same, same exact thing. They'll keep coming back to you. I've got customers over the years that have, that I've known at several different companies I've been at.
They, they, they were willing to let us walk into the door and spend time with 'em 'cause they trust us. 'cause we knew that, they knew we had their back in the past. And, uh, that's really, really important to me. And then breaking that, you can lose that in one, in one set of bad decisions that, uh, that, um, that you may regret later.
But you, you try your best to dog on and get it right every time.
[00:32:24] Jamie Grant: I think this is audacious, but I, but I also think it's accurate and some people think I'm crazy on this. Uh, but, so I want to ask you if you agree, um, and it's one of the reasons I remember when you first, when, when we first met, you know, four or five years ago. Um, shout out Brett Edins. Thank you. Um,
[00:32:41] Bradon Rogers: You right?
[00:32:43] Jamie Grant: uh, I remember when, when, when you went to Island, I was like, man, that's pretty cool what they're doing.
Um, and I think the tech is, is what, what y'all are doing is really, really awesome. It's growing, like, it's growing for a reason. I think people buy people before they buy a product.
[00:33:01] Bradon Rogers: Hmm.
[00:33:02] Jamie Grant: Like to your point, I, I think the reason people call you is sure they're putting trust in your judgment on product, but I think people are buying Bradon in that situation more than they're buying the product or the company Bradon's with.
Do you agree or do you think I'm crazy?
[00:33:19] Bradon Rogers: Well, no, I, I think there's something to be said for that. I do think that, you know. Um, me or others, anyone else for that matter. If I had a history of being great friends with 'em and taking 'em to dinner and everything else, and getting to know them really well, and then selling them junk technology on the other end that I said would do X, Y, Z, we wouldn't be friends for very long and then they wouldn't, they wouldn't engage me the next time.
So they're, they're willing to engage you because of the prior relationship, but because of the prior you, again, I go back to that kind of concept of the, of the brand promise at the beginning. You know, you, you, you made that commitment, you made that commitment. You went through the cycles of, of whatever it took to deliver on it.
And you, they, you pr you prove that on the other end you had their back in it. It may not always go perfectly according to plan. And you know, I've had situations in my career where something didn't deliver what I'd hoped it would deliver, but I, I, I was always transparent in the process with 'em and I think that was really important 'cause they were willing then to work with me again.
And I, I'll be honest with you, I'm very, we're very blessed here. Um, I, like I, I count my lucky stars. I get to work with so many people at Island. Who've worked with me at two to five companies over, I mean, got a lot of people, I'd, I'd say probably 70% of the people in my team have worked with me, at least at one company before, if not five.
And if that same exact promise had been let down in the process, they probably wouldn't come join us again at the end of the day. And I, and I don't blame 'em. And I, you know, again, I, I wake up every single day trying not to let the people down that are, that have entrusted us with their careers. 'cause, you know, they're feeding, feeding small mouths and, you know, they're, um, you know, keeping the power on and, and, you know, building a future for themselves off of the things we do here.
And, uh, you know, I take that super seriously and I'm grateful that so many people have entrusted us in this that same way over and over again.
[00:35:02] Jamie Grant: So, I, I want to dive in in a second to kind of tactically chief Customer Officer. I want to dive in on the public sector side, um, because I think one of the things that's fun about our conversations is, is we. Kind of meet at the intersection on a lot of things from like opposite goalposts, move into the 50 yard line.
I, I got a couple quick questions and then one thing that I wanna get off my chest, and I'm not gonna ask how did you do it? 'cause that would take us way farfield, so don't let me, but you've, you touched on this, um, I'll say innovative or strategic, intelligent incentive alignment for the customer. How hard was it to get the compensation plan right?
Because I feel like every time I have tried to kind of put that org chart together, there's some reason why somebody says, well, I can't take my salespeople outta the field. And I'm like, yeah, but they're also the, the, the knowledge that we need here in some regards, they can't completely helicopter out.
Was it hard and how hard was it?
[00:36:03] Bradon Rogers: Well, I think when you're thinking about compensation for yourself or for anybody else, you wanna think about rewards you get for the things you're being asked to do. If you're being asked to do stuff that you, there's no reward for On the other end, you, you may not go be willing to do it, or at least you won't do it well because you won't, there, there may not be a motivation.
And by the way, I think, you know, I'm, I'm very fortunate in my world that, you know, at least. Technologists, A lot of the people I work with, they're motivated for a lot of things and sometimes fiscal compensation, but a lot of, you know, a lot of people are intellectually stimulated. Like they enjoy the tech and, you know, there's a lot of people that won't, the, the pay could be great if the tech sucks.
They just won't wanna work there because it's not fun to them. Um, so, uh, but I think you, you always have to try to find ways to align, uh, rewards with the things you're asking people to do in their jobs. And it, you know, it has to be worth their while at the end of the day. Um, and, um, you know, I think it in general that that's, that's what we've done here.
We, and, you know, it won't always be perfect. You'll, you know, that's why you may, may, you may do adjustments during the year or you do adjustments next year, you may change things all around. But, um, at the end of the day, you know, it, it, for me, it's just a very basic thing is you look at the tasks at hand and you're, you're asking people to do, and you try to align the way they get rewarded for those things based on those asks.
And again, if there's something void in that and you're asking them to do so. You might ask yourself, are you gonna get a good outcome if you don't find some creative way? And in the uni, in the universe of technology companies, sometimes those are part, part of base compensation. Sometimes there's one, one-off things you do that are, you know, give one-off bonuses or in, you know, the world of sales, oftentimes they call 'em spiffs, but you know, sometimes you do some one-off compensation things for people.
But, uh, but yeah, again, it, it, to me it's, it's a very elementary problem at the end of the day. And again, you won't always get it right. You just try to get it right. And you want your people to believe that you're making an effort because there's no, there's no desire by, I don't think, at least here, there's no desire by general leaders to, for their people not to do well.
You know, I want, well, the wellbeing of my people matters a ton to me.
[00:38:02] Jamie Grant: I guess maybe part of it is I've always seen individual contributor sales models and I just believe in a squad model more like how do I build little units, uh, of, of complimentary team sport. Um, but I, but it was always hard 'cause like I wanted to, I wanted, I, to your point, show me the comp plan.
I will predict the behavior like over the statistical outlay. We're gonna see exactly what the, the comp plan incentivizes. The second question I wanna ask you real quick, that's. It's kind of related to being a chief customer officer. It's a core function that you do. But I think this is one of the areas when I was talking about the public sector, private sector experience that you and I have and and kind of jam out on sometimes. Have you ever seen, or how common is it, like let's say we express it as a percentage, how common as a percentage of opportunities where you've been really engaged in your career with a private sector customer? Has there been a purchase before, at least a solid just baseline architecture or design, kind of the business process, technology process, operations process?
I don't mean all the documentation, but like how often would you see a purchase happen where it's like, yeah, I want that thing now I'm gonna pay somebody to do the design
[00:39:14] Bradon Rogers: Um, I would say probably 90% of the time, if not more,
[00:39:19] Jamie Grant: that they're buying first.
[00:39:21] Bradon Rogers: Yeah, no, the sometimes the design is in the process is in the process before the buy. Like you're, you're, you're, you know, you're sitting in a room. I've been in many, many rooms before somebody had ever transacted, and we're laying out how this thing's gonna function.
We're getting on a whiteboard and drawing out the architectural layout. Sometimes it could be, sometimes it can be a little more informal. Sometimes it can be really formal and rigid. And many, many of the engagements we work within, you know, will architects from the organization will come in and wanna get deep into it.
And because they're the ones vetting out, is this going to be, 'cause, 'cause you know, our architecture's really, really important. 'cause architecture will dictate how difficult something is to operate. It'll dictate sometimes cost and complexities and things like that.
[00:39:59] Jamie Grant: okay, so, so follow up question. I'm leading here 'cause I think I know the answer. Uh, how many times did you charge for that? Like, what did your customer pay for that?
[00:40:06] Bradon Rogers: Um, well, when you're selling something, you know, ne never, that's which is part of the process. That's part of what you do. Like, that's how, that's how you get someone comfortable with that. You know what you're talking about. Number one, that, that you actually are an expert and you're given field. Um, and at the same time, um, you know, I think more, I think more for software companies and technology companies, that's not, that's just part of the selling process.
Now, there are advisory firms where you're paying for their consulting skills and they're, you know, you're gonna pay for that. And they, you bring them in as an expert and they help guide you through the decisions and what kinda architectures make sense and things like that. But yeah, I mean, I'd say a hundred, a hundred percent of the time, I, I, I said Nani earlier, it's all, it's a hundred percent of the time when you go into engagement.
You, you, you will do that. And if you don't, you probably won't be selling much of anything.
[00:40:49] Jamie Grant: This is one of the things that blew my mind in the three years in government, like working inside the, the agency and the operation. It is the exact opposite.
[00:40:59] Bradon Rogers: Hmm.
[00:41:00] Jamie Grant: Like when the companies, when, when, when I talk to either boards or folks in Venture or C-Suite folks, they're like, how is the public sector that hard?
And we'll kind of walk through the different in, but, but like so many times we find it is literally just an inverted mirror. Whether it's the incentive structures, the process, whatever it is, it is almost inverted. And that was one of the things that blew my mind is that design might be done 1% of the time pre-purchase.
And you touch on how important the architecture is. And then we start to wonder like, why do sales cycles take, you know, 18, 24 months in the public sector where people are doing it kind of the, the, the status quo way. And it's like, man, they're, they're going to the legislature. They're asking for millions of dollars for a feasibility study that's nothing more than a book report that somebody replicated from another state they did in it and did a control F to change states.
And a couple of names hand in that book report. And then we're supposed to start. And it's like, guys, what if we just did like baseline design? And I think that is one of the biggest opportunities in the public sector right now is for the buy side, the focus on the inside to really focus in on design.
Two, to make it clear that all the way from procurement process to the executives running the agencies that like we want to, we can have transparent, accountable, and ethical partnership conversations around a whiteboard, metaphorically, or literally to, to map this stuff out and say, Hey, how do we figure out if we're the right, right fit or not?
But when you were touching on the design piece, I wanted to ask you, especially with your background, 'cause we haven't really talked about that publicly much, but I mean, it is almost 0% of the time that w when, when our team goes into triage, something in the public sector, um, that a design exists, that a user story exists, that any sort of, of that exploration, I think that's one of the biggest ways we can help the public sector. So, alright, Bradon, that was one of the more thorough and fun setups, uh, and we really kept the Auburn references to a minimum. So I'm proud of us. No promises the rest of the way. All right, now here's what I wanna do.
[00:43:04] Bradon Rogers: It's, they're Easter eggs throughout both of.
[00:43:06] Jamie Grant: that's, that's exactly right. Look, if you want a great culture, let's just set this state.
Let, let's land here. Anybody I asked you leadership and, you know, lessons learned and whatnot, I'll die on this hill. Anybody who wants to have an absolutely elite culture in their organization, go read the Auburn Creed. Go take Auburn out of it and implement that in your organization and you will watch your culture transform
[00:43:34] Bradon Rogers: 100%.
[00:43:35] Jamie Grant: it.
Everything we talked about is there. Uh, which
[00:43:38] Bradon Rogers: there's a reason we had to, we had to memorize it in college for a reason, so,
[00:43:41] Jamie Grant: one of my favorite lines about Auburn and I think that it, it kind of goes to the culture is like, if you love Auburn, she will love you back. And I, I think, you know, as I'm older in my career now and people are like, man, you're a big Auburn fan.
It's the old Pat die quote. Like, Alabama fans love Alabama football, Auburn fans love Auburn University. Um, and it's just a university that, that changed my life. Alright, so. I want to get a little more tactical here. We've set the stage, you've got a network engineering background. You've been across the industry doing all sorts of stuff.
You're in this holistic, you know, kind of end to end from awareness, engagement, conversion, purchase deployment, retention, growth, kind of map for the customer journey from prospect to customer to better customer. Now, I wanna take you to the public sector and kind of drill down that I, I think I've said this to you before, but when I was doing my first reorg and I was at least theoretically responsible, I was, I was theore, I was accountable for $120 billion organization.
I was theoretically, uh, empowered to, to actually run it. And I knew I was taking over a dumpster fire when I took the job. I did not know how bad it was. I worked on kinda my first reorg and, and kind of going back to where you were talking about, it's like, you know, had 300 something employees at the time in the organization and ran a data center and we're supposed to stand up cybersecurity and supposed to build the state's first enterprise data catalog.
And it's like, okay, how is this org supposed to do this? What talent do we need? How do we situate this? Um, I actually routed into the governor's office my first reorg, and I had a chief customer officer reporting to me. Um, and, and they nixed it. They were like, that's stupid. We're not a business. And I was like, man, it's, it's, this isn't about currency, this is about culture.
Like this isn't about a title. This is about empowerment and setting the expectations that the taxpayers, the agencies, the local governments, we partnered with the legislature, the go, everybody was a customer of what we do. If we would take a customer mindset, and I think Bradon, one of the reasons I'm so fascinated around this conversation with with you is, is obviously what you bring to the table, but two, I'm just.
Convinced more than ever that that one of the biggest reasons the metaphorical or literal experience at the metaphorical DMV or state agency is such a tragic experience is that the design doesn't happen. A chief customer officer would certainly be making sure that we're getting designs done prior to purchase, but it's almost like in government we have the, the, the amount of money we have, we got a problem or a project we wanna work on, we go buy the thing, we hope it works, the managed service does it, and then it's a dumpster fired three years later and we start over and we do it again. I, I don't know if you think I'm crazy on this or not, but I think so much of it gets fixed when we have a customer culture
[00:46:31] Bradon Rogers: Hmm.
[00:46:32] Jamie Grant: and when we have somebody that is responsible and empowered, they gotta be together. I can't have you overly accountable if I'm not gonna empower you and, and, and vice versa. But I think where that function exists, we would watch a lot of government services transform because.
Chief customer officer would both see we have one of our, one of my co-founders, her job is literally to be customer leadership. That means both leading us as a team internally, but leading externally. So many of these projects, you know, island, yeah sure you can transform the, the taxpayer experience, but you transform the employee experience overnight. But are we really having a conversation about who our customers are and who we serve and what that should look like? So that's the preamble. I'm gonna set you up with this question 'cause you've had exposure to the public sector. Maybe just initial differences, like what do you see in your role when you're talking with a public sector organization that stands out to you as a difference than when you're dealing with a, a Fortune 100.
[00:47:34] Bradon Rogers: Hmm. Well, um, sometimes I, I can, you can definitely sense when you're talking to some of the people, they realize how hard the change is and that it takes incredible stomach to push your way through it. And sometimes that is not worth the risk. Um, so, you know, the, um, the, um, there's a, I, someone said to me a while back, you know, in a joke, but someone said to me a while back, you know, there's a sign sitting on, well, these people were vesting into their state retirement or whatever the retirement system is, you know, you know, there should be a sign in some places that says, quiet we're vesting.
Um, yeah, that was. Um, but, but no, I, again, I, I say that jokingly. There's a lot of really, really hardworking people, uh, that work in public service.
[00:48:25] Jamie Grant: hundred percent.
[00:48:26] Bradon Rogers: um, I will tell you, I'm sure just like, you know, just like the DMV experience that you mentioned a minute ago, they're not all bad. By the way. I think the one in Lee County's done a really good job here.
They've actually re-engineered it. They've set it up. Honestly, I went in the other day and it was a totally different experience. They, they thought about it and it's, it moves fast now.
[00:48:42] Jamie Grant: I think the, to interrupt you for a second, I think the DMVs are some of the best right now because they got plagued for so long that leadership finally said, stop, like, change the experience. Our customers are the DMVs. I, I think that's a great point why I said metaphorical because it's, it's like the joke that lands or people get it.
But I like you, I find those are often the most innovative shops. 'cause they have somebody coming to the desk. There is the pressure to perform and finally some leaders said, we can't keep doing the same stupid stuff over and over. And thinking that. So sorry for the, the rant.
[00:49:16] Bradon Rogers: No, I, I, I go back to where I was though. The, there's, there's, there's a lot of motivated people in public service, but then they realize the system around them. Sometimes it's so hard to fight through for change management, for innovation, for the next tech. You know, there may be people that resist, and again, those are the people with the signs I just mentioned a minute ago, jokingly.
[00:49:35] Jamie Grant: sure. No, no.
[00:49:36] Bradon Rogers: was a joke, by the way, to anybody. That was a joke to anybody listening. Um,
[00:49:39] Jamie Grant: and it was true. If you're one of the minority that are that, like, I think Bradon, I'll, I'll cover you here for a second. 'cause both of these things are true. And I say this over, uh, uh, like I only had one job in government. I get there, I've heard the stereotypes, right? I was blown away at two things with my team.
Number one, they were far more technically talented than I expected. Number two, they were far more mission driven over the population than there was now. There are bad apples that are trying to play the game of, I don't want to have to do work. I don't want to take risk. I, I felt a personal responsibility as the, the, the leader of the organization.
To make sure I got the battleax out and had the shield to take the bullets because these folks have been starved for so long to try and go fast. But they'd never had the protection, the insurance, and the usher that it was okay to make mistakes, that we were gonna have their back and that we'd equip 'em with what they needed.
But I think, I don't even think when we say incentive structures are undefeated, this is another one I talk about a lot. Um, when we're trying to get people to understand public sector. In the, in the commercial private sector, everything moves towards Yes, it's pulling towards, yes, the polarity goes towards, yes, you can get promoted, you can earn more r issues, you can vest faster, you can make president's club, all of those things that you were talking about.
I think until people realize that in the public sector, the reward for being innovative and, and, and problem solving is more work, same pay.
[00:51:09] Bradon Rogers: Yeah,
[00:51:10] Jamie Grant: So, so like, why are we surprised that somebody who wants to be a great dad, a great mom, a great spouse, make their kids game, is not jumping in the war room next time there's a disaster?
Because I found myself and I, I had to look in the mirror. I would go find my most reliable people every time, and then I had to go, wait a minute, I don't, I'm not allowed to pay them more. I can't give them a percentage of savings. We can't return to them 20% of the value. They just saved the state and the taxpayer, which is criminal, and we should be doing that.
But until we incentivize getting to yes, everything pulls towards no. So now we have these buckets. One bucket is what we just touched on, right? Like they just, they're tired of getting punished with more work, same pay. Then you have that very small minority, um, that, that do exist, that are just there to vest and they're waiting and divest.
And they know that if they take risk and it's bad enough that they could get fired, they're not gonna take risk either. And so as a result, the totality of the incentive structure in the public sector pulls everybody to stay at, no. Rather than stay at Yes. Couldn't agree with you more.
[00:52:12] Bradon Rogers: You, uh, you know, you lived it probably more than anybody being the CIO of one of the largest states in the United States. Um, but at the end of the day, you know, there's a lot of great people who don't make a lot of money in public service, and they're there for the noble mission of doing it.
Like you think about it, the people in law enforcement, the people that work in public safety, uh, you know, people could, firefighters, they're, they're not, they're school teachers. They're all paid well beneath what they really deserve for all the pain they go through and the risk for lives and things that they take.
At the end of the day, they're, they believe in the noble mission. There's a lot of great people in tech and other places as well that have that same mentality. That they just, they want the system to be better. So they, they're, they're willing to push through and change, but it's hard. And I'm sure, I'm sure you know, I've never lived it.
You've lived that experience far more than I have. But at the end of the day, I, you know, I wanna be there to help, help those people try to find a way to do something different that can make their constituents lives better. And the constituents, I don't mean just the, the citizens, but I mean their, their departments that they serve and their organization, you
[00:53:10] Jamie Grant: A hundred percent.
[00:53:11] Bradon Rogers: blah.
So.
[00:53:12] Jamie Grant: Here's, here's an idea placeholder for you and I'm happy to jam out with you on it. I did this on a personal scale and it was highly effective. It doesn't scale. Um, it's something I think every public sector leader should be doing. Um, I also found my team had no idea what their market value was, right?
These are people that almost historically started in the public sector, had never been in the private sector, had no idea what their skillset was actually worth and had no, um, education, onboarding awareness of, uh, how to transition. 'cause they're two totally different worlds. And I was very clear on a couple things.
I told 'em, I said, you have permission at any point to walk in my office and say you've been offered a job that you're very interested in taking. And I, the only thing I ask is I get to negotiate your deal on your behalf. I get to go be the recovering lawyer and have some fun. But I want you to be able to come in here and have the conversation with me that says.
Hey, boss, I'm thinking about leaving. That's a scary thing to say, right? Because I may say, fine, get out. And so we weren't doing it kind of on a, on a one-on-one basis. And, and we kind of looked at our culture of where did our team go? Like who was hiring from us? Uh, what did our coaching tree look like, right?
Two, how many people when we had vacancies, what percentages of vacancies were recruited by somebody that was inside, uh, of the digital service was a major one for me. Um, but there's gonna be a point where a few companies put together, and there is, I have found nothing on this. The, the National Association of State CIOs, to my knowledge, unless they've stood something up, does absolutely nothing to offload a CIO for the private sector.
They may help 'em get a job with a company that's a member of the organization, but there is no like institute that is kind of like, Hey, we'll get you situated for the public sector. It was amazing how much that made a difference in our team when, when I or a couple others would spend time with 'em to go like, look.
I get that you're thinking about that job. I think we can get you a better job that's better suited. Here's why I don't like that offer. Here's what they're actually asking you to do. Or, Hey, I can't ask you to stay. That's a life-changing opportunity. Let's go get it for you. Um, because that culture recruits itself, right?
Like it, it starts to go. Um, but you're absolutely right. So, so let's, let's, gosh, I could have these conversations with you all day. I wanna drill in now to kind of land the, the, the, um, kinda the last phase of this. We've touched on island enterprise browser. We've touched on chief customer officer, what that looks like.
We've touched on public sector challenges and, and some of the holistic challenges there when you're dealing, and I don't care, public sector, private sector, 'cause it's probably, you probably have more data points on the private sector, but when you're doing, you said the word change management. I like to think of workforce empowerment 'cause it's at least aspirational.
Um, rather than like, we're gonna manage the change. Um, it's like, how about we just empower our people? So, so island shows up, you're one of the four fastest growing software companies in the history of the world for a reason. The tech does this crazy stuff. You're now really investing in public sector and starting to look at what that looks like. How do you go about that kind of at a high level? And I don't wanna take us too, too deep and take your whole afternoon, but how do you deal with what it looks like, you know, to be able to sit down with a customer and go, yeah, we could effectively replace your VPN or we could take your VDI spend here, or this is what we can do in the sassy space, or all these different things.
'cause this tool that has near infinite applications in the enterprise.
[00:56:45] Bradon Rogers: Hmm.
[00:56:45] Jamie Grant: What does it look like for you to go like, here's the, the, like we've discovered the pain point. We've validated that we can be really helpful there and would be a good fit. Now walk me through what it looks like a day in the life or a a, a deal in the life of a chief customer officer to go like, what am I tactically doing to make sure this thing goes the way it's supposed to go?
[00:57:09] Bradon Rogers: Well, I think at the beginning of an engagement, um, and this is before someone's transacted or bought the technology, and this is, um, super important to your, your your point a moment ago. You know, it's, it's a, there's an old saying if, if, if you're every, if, if you're everything to everybody, you're nothing to nobody.
Um,
[00:57:27] Jamie Grant: I love that.
[00:57:28] Bradon Rogers: so if you, you know, this, this, this is a great piece of technology that like, it's a very unique approach. It's like never been done before and it does solve an immense number of problems. But the, the job of myself and my teams and the people that work around, it's our job to. To create, to map the journey for the customer of what that looks like and to identify, you mentioned pain point earlier, to identify something that's very painful in the organization.
Don't try to identify everything and like, you know, it doesn't, you don't have to turn on every knob and every switch in it for all the things that it could do. The idea that he has, identify something that's a really difficult pain for the organization, go focus on that. And that may be a smaller audience of people right outta the gate, but go prove that you can deliver and, and meet, meet the customer where their problem is.
And on the other end, show them that there's a, there's a, there's an alternate path, a better way. you know, a lot of customers have other technologies in place. They have, you mentioned many things a little while ago. They've got, they've already invested in X, Y, Z and, um, I, I kinda, I, I sometimes I like to make a little bit of a joke of, of, uh, when I was speaking at shows, but, you know, if you thi think about the, the horse and carriage, you know, the horse and carriage was a very modern mode of transportation at one point in time.
[00:58:39] Jamie Grant: The hammer and the wheel were, the wheel was like groundbreaking innovation.
[00:58:43] Bradon Rogers: percent. Yes, exactly.
[00:58:45] Jamie Grant: The wheel itself. And yet, and then you had like the caveman like, why do I need that? I can just carry stuff.
[00:58:53] Bradon Rogers: it, uh, you know, but that was, that was, that was, uh, that was a, a, the marvel of transportation at one point, Don, and then, you know, at some point someone came up with the idea of an automobile and, you know, you had the industrial relu revolution, you had, uh, the mechanics of, of machinery and you had, you had combustion engines and you had aircraft come along and you, you now saw there was a new way and you didn't look back and go, you know, why didn't I take the horse and carriage today when I took that long trip to, to Tallahassee or wherever the heck I'm going?
Um, you didn't do that because, 'cause there was a new way and, but, but it's not to, but the long-winded point here is to say. It's not to say that people that use the horse and courage were, were doing it wrong. It's what they had at their disposal at the time. And like I look at, I look at what we're doing at Island is a, is a very different, is a very similar kind of change, paradigm change in that there's an alternate way to do these, to solve many of these core problems, these very difficult things and just let's demonstrate a way that's, that's much more novel.
But again, focus back to your question, focus on something that's really, and keep everybody focused. Lay out the path that within that problem, here's the thing, here's the steps that have to be accomplished and go nail those steps down and prove it on the other end and measure it on the other end that, did you do it or not?
And then go chew the next one off. But there's a map in, in every customer's journey through the tech that we have. And that's true probably with any tech. Our maps just exceptionally long of the things you could possibly do in the process. So we try to really stay focused and I think that's the key.
[01:00:25] Jamie Grant: Have you ever seen, um, gosh, what is it? I'm drawing a blank. It's the, uh, I think it's the, the Rogers Theory of Adoption, the 16% threshold.
[01:00:34] Bradon Rogers: I should know that by
[01:00:35] Jamie Grant: I'll send, I'll send it to you. You, you'll, you will enjoy this in your keynotes. It's a gift to you. Um, but it basically breaks down segments of new innovation. And, and at some point you hit that 16%.
Um, and so, you know, there were folks that hopped in the automobile when, when it showed up, and they were those first two, two point a half percent. They're the people that waited in line for the new iPhone. They're the people that, you know, whatever it was. Um, but you get to that, that tipping point, and then you're gone.
I love, you know, when we teach minimum viable product, the wheel is a great example, right? Because now it sits on a jet and the wheel was the MVP at some point to, to help things get from point A to point B. So, what would you say the biggest impact to Island would be? Or a company? Uh, let's just generically. That has everything we've described. They have a chief customer officer, they have a very experienced, seasoned chief customer officer, a servant of a chief customer officer. They got all the, if we ripped that out, if, if we played this in the inverse right, we've talked about what happens to an organization, uh, what, what's happening at an organization that does have a customer mentality and, and struck the right way.
What do you think happens like tangibly if that just disappeared and the same elite technical tool was being shepherded deployed and managed in kind of the, I'll say the status quo. 'cause I don't think many companies are, are where y'all are on this.
[01:02:06] Bradon Rogers: Yeah. Well, let's, if I were to start with today, right where we are at this very moment and we ripped it out, this idea goes on without us. And I say that because
[01:02:17] Jamie Grant: love that answer.
[01:02:19] Bradon Rogers: like I, I'd like, well, I think the genie's outta the bottle, like, you're not gonna cork this one back up. Um, and so it'll be someone else that does it, but the genie's in the bottle's not coming back in.
And as a. Uh, I do believe, you know, and I, I, I truly believe this. I see it happening all the time. I do believe in the next five to seven years that every person in the workforce will be using an enterprise browser. I do believe that to be the case. Um, that being said, um, yeah.
[01:02:44] Jamie Grant: And by the way, can I ask you a, can I ask you, uh, for, for accountability perspective, do you also agree that something will disrupt the browser afterwards?
[01:02:54] Bradon Rogers: Hmm. Well,
[01:02:56] Jamie Grant: Because that's a hot topic right now,
[01:02:58] Bradon Rogers: yeah. You
[01:02:59] Jamie Grant: I'm where you are that if you're not using an enterprise browser today in a a, an enterprise IT shop, it's borderline malpractice if you have the resources to do it and you're not doing it. Uh, but you get some of these folks and it's, it's a little bit of like the all in crowd and, and some of them that are. I typically think Chamath is, first of all, he's brilliant, successful. Like I, I got no room to, to step in the ring with him, but he shocked me when he was a little bit poo-pooing the enterprise browser. And I thought, that's crazy. 'cause I absolutely agree with you over the next decade it is here. I don't know what would displace it.
But I'm curious if you, if you think of, because if you're saying what could displace us, it's also saying how do we make sure we're not a dinosaur one day that gets gobbled up.
[01:03:45] Bradon Rogers: Yeah.
Um, well, I, I think AI has made that pretty future proof. Um, let's look at this. Look, think, you think about how your average users consuming AI today, they're doing it via a browser interface. It, I, it is like, if you wanna talk about the, the native home for a creature, the native home for AI is riding the browser universe.
Now, you, you might think that, okay, so you, you could go say, you know, well, there's some standalone AI clients. Guess what? They're built on top of? They're built on top of a browser. They're, they're, so, at the end of the day, the way users consume information will still be via that window. How it's delivered to them within that window may evolve.
And in fact, the, the mechanics of, of how they engage to do their job will evolve. For example, you're, you know, we see this today just in a very basic way, people doing their job and they just pull a generative AI prompt up and start asking questions. Um, at the end of this, changing how they do their job, that'll start being woven more and more into the fabric of the fabric of the workflows they engage to automate many of the common steps of things they would do otherwise.
Um, but that's, that to me is still, that's a very heavy browser centric thought process. Again, the content may be rendered differently on some of this, you know, maybe, maybe dyna, you know, a lot of, there's a lot of discussion around AI supplanting the business logic layer inside of applications and things like that, but yet there's still visuals and the human eye still will consume things.
[01:05:03] Jamie Grant: I think this is and, and we could do, um. Gosh, there's, there's so many ways I could go with you on these conversations, but I also think there's a fascinating thing that you kind of touch on there, that part of the reason I say malpractice is in kind of the traditional internet web-based application accessed by a traditional browser.
Um, if I was a secretary responsible for health data or criminal justice data or education data, and I had to deal with hipaa, dipa, ferpa, all the different, uh, things, um, you know, there were ways for me to put a pretty rigid fence and make sure that that data only lived in certain databases accessible by certain applications.
I think that's one of the things that AI is future-proof, the enterprise browser on the same way is now that the open web becomes a portal to go everywhere, I have near infinite exposure to HIPAA data or to FERPA data. Um, that if I'm the CEO of an agency, I better have a plan in place to go wait. If my team is able to access a free and open internet on their third party device to access their subscription to any one of the AI app, the GPTs,
[01:06:22] Bradon Rogers: Mm-hmm.
[01:06:23] Jamie Grant: the level of exposure is insane. It's super fixable and easy, but I don't know how you fix it without leveraging the browser.
[01:06:30] Bradon Rogers: 100%. The, uh, now first of all, let's go back to the thesis you brought up earlier. And this is totally true. You can wall things off today. That, that, that's very common. You wall things off. We put walls around all kinds of things. We put firewalls around things, all kinds of controls. But all the things that, from a cyber standpoint, you think about what we do, we're, we're bolting on these experiences.
Like, so there's an application provider that built some cool app with cool capability, and all of a sudden we surround it with all this junk. Um, and then guess what happens? Oh, we protected it. But we gave the user a terrible experience in the process. And so the user now absolutely hates their job because the technology is part of the friction in their job and the the things they have to do.
And by the way, many times with the frontline practitioners or frontline people, they're not technologists. So they, you've, you've forced them to learn how do you, how do use technology x, y, z in the process that they're uncomfortable with? But it's just, and, but again, it gets to the point is you ruin the user experience in the process.
Again, going back to what you said with ai, at the end of the day, again, the whole goal of what we should all do is try to dissolve all those things that get in the middle, that are the bolted on experience and try to drive the internet usage for the end user and the application experience. Back to the original design.
When you go home at night and you go to your web banking app, your web banking site, there is no broker between you and the actual destination you're going to in the app, your banking site. There's nothing in the middle of that except for the, except for the wires and the, the telecom, uh, connectivity. You have a great experience.
It's a, it's encrypted point to point, and the, you use a credential and you log in, you get a great experience, and then you come to work and we just jam all this stuff in the middle of it.
[01:08:05] Jamie Grant: And I was about, so, so what I was itching to just like throw in there is, you're exactly right. They're not technical. They're being asked to learn something new and they're being asked to use a tool that has been completely bastardized to operate in a way that it was not written to operate.
[01:08:20] Bradon Rogers: That's right.
[01:08:21] Jamie Grant: I mean, it is a, it is a absolute perfect storm.
Um, all right. One thing I'm gonna, I'm gonna get us to what we call the roundup. Have a little fun, uh, with you to close this out in a second. The, it's funny, we were talking kind of Easter eggs parallels all the things I used to say all the time. Uh, you, you just touched on the security and operations, or the security and modernization, but even at the baseline, like the balance between a ci o and just operations.
Has been this historic standoff and no, CISO will really say this, you know, but, but it, they may as well sometimes the, the, the minority that are, that are just the minority, they'll say, I'll just unplug everything. We'll be safe. And it's like, well, the business has to run. Like we still have to do stuff around here.
And then simultaneously operations is like, oh, we could do this and this and this and this. And there's no intermediate there, there's no mediation between the innovation, modernization and acceleration of the business and balancing for security, which is why I'm so fast. I used to say all the time, my CISO was my, my defensive coordinator, his job was to make sure that the Russians, the Chinese, and the APTs did not put points on the board for us. Um, my chief data officer, my chief technology officer, some of the forward facing that was my offensive coordinator function, their job was to go put points on the board. And you uniquely will appreciate this, but during the, the gust buss years, uh, that hurry up, no huddle was fantastic to put points on the board, but you went three and out and you had a defense suck in wind.
[01:09:57] Bradon Rogers: Yeah.
[01:09:58] Jamie Grant: And I think what's important when you think about the offensive coordinator and the defensive coordinator is that those two things have to have a head coach that sets a vision and says, guys, we're gonna be really good at scoring points and keeping points off the board, but they can't operate in silos agnostic of each other.
To your point. And I guess I'm going on a little bit of a, a, a, a preaching session here. To your point, the browser now becomes the thing that lets my CIO be really comfortable in the security posture of the operation and simultaneously lets my team, my operation and my innovators use really cool stuff natively the way it was used, designed to be used without all of these handcuffs and, and, and, and being in like technological bondage. And it just takes something as simple as the browser to go like, Hey, we can mediate this for, for this to happen. Um, and that's, that's one of the things I've just been really obsessed with watching what y'all are doing. Um, there was one other question I'm gonna ask you. Um, and feel free to say no, but as we roll out the, uh, as we roll out some of what we're doing on, on the content side, a lot of it's gonna be aimed at, uh, helping public sector leaders who are on the inside equipping them with resources.
I would love, uh, to have, uh, I would love to pick your brain at some point on like, what if we created a job description that you and I collaborated on? That was the essence of the chief customer officer and translated for the public sector, um, or just some of the core functions that if we could give like even a small little playbook that says like, here's the customer mindset for the public sector.
Um, if you're ever interested in doing that, I think there's just a, a fascinating opportunity to help people. And I just realized I didn't land the plane earlier when I was talking about kind of at scale. Uh, I, I wanna make sure I, I capture this when I was talking about kind of my team and how I would coach them next job and help them whatnot.
I think there's gonna be some companies that set up this institute informal, that will fill the vacuum that is there to help educate public sector people how to trans uh, how to transition from the inside. To the outside, almost like a a little light curriculum playbook thing that says, here's the questions you should be asking, here's the things you should be thinking.
Here's how to negotiate. Here's what these things mean. 'cause Bradon, I tell you man, there's so many talented people in the public sector like you've experienced that just don't have kind of the encouragement or the, um, education or awareness to know how to make that transition. Um, and I, I just, I, I kind of thought it would be the National association, but it's really just state CIOs and they're really not focused on that and, and somebody's gonna fill that vacuum.
Um, so happy to, happy to help. However I can
[01:12:51] Bradon Rogers: That's cool. That's really cool.
[01:12:52] Jamie Grant: let Alright, let's take you to the roundup. Have some fun and get you outta here. So these are just, we, we ask kind of a almost always the same questions. We rotate a few in and out, but they're really designed to kind of let you put kind of your exclamation mark both on Bradon, the guy, and kind of the personality.
So, um, if you had one piece of advice that shaped your career more than anything. Who, what is, what is it and do you have somebody you'd give credit to on that?
[01:13:20] Bradon Rogers: Um, I wanna think this, I wanna make that a thought, a very thoughtful answer. Um, I gave a piece of advice on LinkedIn the other day, and I, I'm gonna go away. I'm going, I'm gonna, it's probably the only advice I've ever given on LinkedIn. Um, I honestly, I don't usually, I'm not one of those people who use posted my positing, my just general thoughts.
Uh, but, um,
[01:13:38] Jamie Grant: My account got owned the other day and stolen, so I don't have to worry about LinkedIn. For a while,
[01:13:41] Bradon Rogers: there you go. All right. I wonder why I was getting some weird messages from you.
[01:13:45] Jamie Grant: I got misgendered. I was like a 30-year-old, uh uh, looking like ae female. Uh, my phone blew up with some friends that were like, Hey man,
[01:13:53] Bradon Rogers: So they, so they changed all kinds of stuff, huh?
[01:13:55] Jamie Grant: they let me know they were there.
[01:13:56] Bradon Rogers: Wow, that's interesting. Um, yeah. You know, um, you know, in, in my career, I think one of the most valuable things for me, and this really probably worked out more personally for me, but this, you know, many listening will go through this, um, acquisitions, you know, being bought, having your company be bought.
It's a scary time that's like, oh my gosh, you like, you don't know up from down. You're like, you know, am I gonna have a job on the other end of this? You know, it's a very unsettling time. And at this point in my career, I think I've been bought five or six times at this point. Um, but I figured out a formula for that.
And I, and I, like I said, I posted on LinkedIn, the formula is, is really simple. It's, it's be patient and keep your head down. And I don't mean keep your head down and hide, but I mean, keep your head down and do your job really well. And for me, I, I learned that early on when the first company I I, I'd worked at that got bought.
I just stayed the course and I literally just, I made sure I wasn't a, I wasn't a troublemaker. I wasn't complaining that the old culture was gone. The reality is there's that first year of the acquisition where you are, um, there's the first year of that acquisition where your culture and the old, the new culture of the company bought you and your old culture.
They're not neither one of 'em there. You're, you're living this hybrid kind of. Miserable. Not certain what it is thing. It takes about a year for that to settle. That's why I say the patience part. You have to be patient to let the culture settle.
and then obviously keep your head down because they're looking for, I mean, what, what the new company that bought you is looking for.
They're looking for the people that are in or they're out. And I'll tell you what they don't want. The people that are out are the people, the naysayers, the, the people that are difficult. The people that are grumpy about their old culture being gone, that are living in yesteryear. And I learned that through the first acquisition inadvertently.
And then I, I put that to practice several times throughout my career. And I'll tell you what happens is when you get acquired, then at that point, a lot of people start falling out. They leave, they quit, they get sent somewhere else, they, they don't have a job anymore. And that creates opportunities for you.
'cause there's gaps, there's places to fill and fill those, those voids. And uh, every single time that happened to me. My career jumped up another notch or two in the process and it just got, I got better and better at my job, number one, by being patient and keeping my head down. But at the same time, I also got recognized for that by being seen as somebody who, who wanted to be there, who, who was, who was excited and enthusiastic.
And it wasn't false enthusiasm. I mean, certainly there was times of misery and uncertainty and things and doubt and that, but that just paid off and, and every single time the situation improved for me on the other end of that.
[01:16:27] Jamie Grant: So I love that answer. The thing that I was blown away. One of the things that blew me away in the, in the public sector, it's really easy from the outside to go, well, like m and a is just a private sector thing.
[01:16:39] Bradon Rogers: right.
[01:16:40] Jamie Grant: It ain't, it happens in government every year. I get agencies that are split up. I get teams that are sent to a different agency.
So I was very, I I, I candidly didn't really think about this when I first kind of said publicly. Um, and this just shows you how naive I was on, on something. I was clear. I was like, why am I running a dumpster fire of a data center? That's a cost suck. That's a legacy thing that government can never allocate the appropriate CapEx to.
One legislative session goes wrong and you got real problems. I'm like, get this thing off my balance
[01:17:14] Bradon Rogers: Hmm.
[01:17:15] Jamie Grant: Well, what I was really telling a number of people in my organization was, I don't want you. And I hadn't thought of it. Right? And so I go to the legislature, I convince them to outsource it, and I'm like, this is gonna be awesome.
And then I spent probably, I don't know, six, nine months managing, uh, an an an m and a from one side and to let people know, like, guys, we don't have all the information we're waiting on to know how many heads we got, how many dollars that, you know, payroll, all the things, um, happens every day in government.
And it was eye-opening for me to kind of, in the midst of it have to have that realization. 'cause I had experience with m and a. In the private sector. And you know, the thing I would say for anybody who's not familiar with how that process goes, if we just strip it down, whether it's raising capital or a liquidity event, there's a spreadsheet that is, who do I gotta keep?
[01:18:03] Bradon Rogers: Hmm.
[01:18:04] Jamie Grant: I, I think if I added to your point, Bradon, it's, it's be patient, keep your head down, but lean into the fact that you made yourself invaluable before
[01:18:13] Bradon Rogers: Yeah,
[01:18:13] Jamie Grant: because that, that event really just lets a report card come up where the buyer is asking the seller who is absolutely invaluable for this thing to keep going.
And it's a moment of truth that, you know, it, it just, it does create tons of opportunity. The people who tried to make themselves unhirable by keeping stuff close to the chest and not being team players, I don't see them survive very often in the liquidity event. But the people who were team first bought in made themselves invaluable with patient, put their head down.
Ended up in a promotion in that new org who said, I've heard you've done awesome things. Teach me how you're doing it.
[01:18:53] Bradon Rogers: 100%. That keep your head down part to me. Again, just to repeat that is not go hot out and disappear and don't be noisy or anything. It's, it's keep your head down and, and keep your nose to the grindstone and really show that you're valuable. It is just demonstrates your value. But, but, but while you're demonstrating the value.
Demonstrate your enthusiasm for being a part of it. And because, because I'll tell you, that's what people want around them. They want enthusiastic, positive people around them through an acquisition. Sometimes it's really painful and hard to be that person. So you're working around, A lot of people are grumpy and unhappy about the change.
But I, I, I look at jamming of cultures together and you mentioned state agencies as a perfect example of this. It will probably take a good year before you, you're kinda living in this weird non culture thing. It's not one thing, it's not the other. And it's, it's so unfamiliar, it's uncomfortable, and nobody knows the processes on either side.
And then all of a sudden, uh, one day, you know, you're like, wow, this is a great place to be. And, uh, and I'm happy in my job and, you know, a lot of the naysayers left and I got a promotion in the process or something better situation. So that, that, that really worked out well through every one of them for me.
[01:19:55] Jamie Grant: On that, on that part. Just to, to wrap that one up. I, I heard, I think it was Eric Schmidt, but it was a panel on a podcast I was listened to a couple years ago. And I, I'm a big believer that whether it's a, as a startup, you probably have a year to establish your culture at those core principles, but at some point it's baked in concrete and it's really tough to, to bust it up.
Right. So good culture gonna get baked in. Bad culture gonna get baked in. It's important. Um, but I think it was Eric, it was a panel he was on, but they were talking about when you have a promotion or a merger or a, something, a new leader inheriting, um, that you have, like that six month nine, i, I can't remember if it was like six or nine months where it was like, this is your opportunity to bake the culture with a team you've inherited.
No matter how you've inherited, and then it's gonna take that, you know, kind of in aggregate year to get there. Um, if there is, uh, if you stay at a friend's house and you don't have the choice of asking you, you come to Nashville, hang out, stay in the guest room, and I'm gone. And you get up, do you strip the sheets or make the bed?
[01:21:04] Bradon Rogers: Oh, strip the sheets every time somebody else got sleep in that bed.
[01:21:10] Jamie Grant: I, I'll So I'll tell you the story this weekend when
[01:21:13] Bradon Rogers: ideally, ideally, you know, if you're a good host. You may tell me where the spare sheets are, that if you're not in town, I can go make the bed up too. I'll make it up with the fresh sheets, but, uh, yeah, no, that's, that's a hundred percent like it.
I don't know. I don't know a lot of people that wanna sleep in a bed that some other person slept in before, unless again, it was their spouse or something like that, or,
[01:21:31] Jamie Grant: or why am I making the bed for the host to have to unmake it?
[01:21:34] Bradon Rogers: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Right, because that's what's gonna have to happen. Or, or the ultra insensitive host is gonna go, I made the bed up. The next person won't know. And
[01:21:44] Jamie Grant: It's, I'll tell you what's funny outta this question. There's a, there's a long tail story behind that question, but it is fascinating how there are geographic answers to that question, and I could have predicted. Yeah, a hundred percent. It's been, it's been really funny. Um, if there is a book or a band or a show that you think the world should know about that isn't talked about enough,
[01:22:09] Bradon Rogers: I'll tell you the show is the Eagle's at the spear.
[01:22:12] Jamie Grant: okay.
[01:22:12] Bradon Rogers: You wanna talk about going to a show? I mean, like, it's not fireworks or anything, it's just 30 songs, you know, every single one of them. Like, like,
[01:22:21] Jamie Grant: this, is this fear as good as that? I haven't done it yet. Is
[01:22:23] Bradon Rogers: oh, it's amazing. I've been twice. Yeah, it's absolutely amazing. I saw you two there and I saw the Eagles and the audio visual experience is incredible.
Like, I encourage anybody to get, like, you don't have to be like, I'm not a huge Vegas person. That's worth going to, that's worth going to. Like, I don't, I'm, I'm a terrible gambler. I don't gamble. So I just, um, you know, I got friends that are great at it and God love 'em. I just can't do it. I'm not great at it.
So, uh, but the sphere is a, uh, it's a really cool experience and, uh, you know, whether you like, you know, I think there's all kinds of bands and then going through, there's Zach Brown Band and there's the, the Backstreet Boys who I won't go see.
[01:22:57] Jamie Grant: Yeah,
yeah,
[01:22:58] Bradon Rogers: but I think the Eagles are coming back. That's, that is definitely worth seeing.
And the Eagles I love because, you know, it's not just me, but I think, you know, they're kinda like an American songbook, you know, they're like, you'll go there and you will know. A hundred percent of the songs. If you don't, you'll know 90%. And that's the best thing. A show like going to a show and you hear an artist play a bunch of songs you don't know, you're like, this sucks.
And they've saved their greatest hits for the end, like the last five songs. This is just a show that, you know, the entire show is songs, you know? So it's
[01:23:23] Jamie Grant: I, I couldn't name, uh, I'm probably gonna get, you know, flamed for this. I couldn't name five Eagles songs. I bet I could sing along to 25
[01:23:31] Bradon Rogers: Yeah, yeah. But guarantee.
[01:23:32] Jamie Grant: Like, um, all right. So we like to have some fun with this one. If you have one hot take that's like your, your most controversial take that you're just convinced should not be a hot take, that it should just be mainstream. Do you have anything that you think is like, I don't understand why people example, I don't understand why pineapple is the only topping singled out for like adjudication of whether or not it's appropriate on pizzas. I don't care if you don't like pineapple, but like, why did we pick pineapple for the one that we have to like single out? daylight savings has been one, but if, do you have like a, uh, do you have like this thing that it at your, you know, sitting with customers dinners where it's like, yeah, I don't understand why this is controversial. This is pretty main, this is pretty mainstream, but
[01:24:22] Bradon Rogers: Well, the daylight saving time was a really good one. I mean, I'm like, man, golly, why, why do we do this? And it really stinks, you know, living in Auburn. 'cause it's like the worst thing in the world here because, you know, for those that are watching that know where Auburn, Alabama is, like, we're 15 minutes across the time zone from the eastern time zone.
So it's getting dark here at 4 30, 4 o'clock, 4:30 PM and it's one hour later. It's 5:30 PM just 15 minutes down the road. So they get an extra hour of daylight, you know, during the summer, spring, and then winter. It's terrible here. Um, so yeah.
[01:24:50] Jamie Grant: It's just proof. There is no perfect place. 'cause without that, uh, Auburn, Alabama would be the, the
[01:24:55] Bradon Rogers: yeah. Yeah. Um, man, you threw me on the spot on that one. I, I, I, I don't know that I've got a great one for you,
[01:25:01] Jamie Grant: All right. We'll skip it. We'll skip it. We, we, the other, the other one we do as a backup that sometimes is fun is in, in like a good way. What's the
[01:25:09] Bradon Rogers: Oh, I, I give you a hot take. I don't know how anybody likes the beach. Like get getting on the, like, I love, I love, I love, listen, I love, I love sitting in a beach house looking at the ocean. The idea of going and getting the sand all over your crap. You got you, you're tracking it back in the house. It's everywhere, whatever.
I like being out on the back porch and I'm, I'm a lake guy, so I go to Lake Martin all the time, so, uh, I don't have to deal with lot of sand. But yeah, I, I never understood the beach. Uh, like, I never, like, I love looking at it. I love going down to the coast. I love, I love the restaurants and everything, but going out on the sand and sitting out in the sand, that's miserable to me.
Like I, I wanna sit on the back porch and stare at it and listen to it.
[01:25:41] Jamie Grant: Bradon, you just nailed it. That's the best. That's the best one we've had. Alright, so last one, before we get to our final closeout. If your team could play a walkup song for you as you walked up to the plate in the office. When you walked in the office, if you could, like if, if they picked your walkup song or if you picked your walkup song either way, what would Bradon Rogers walkup song be as he came into the office every day?
[01:26:05] Bradon Rogers: You know, before, before, um, our friends up in Tuscaloosa ruined the song, sweet Home, Alabama, like a lot of shows that would be it. 'cause everybody around the world knows it. Like, like my friends in Israel and my friends in the uk, they all know it. And, um, but now I can't hear that song anymore. Like, I want to, I'm sorry for those listening if you, if you, if you've leaned toward that side of the state.
But I, you know, I wanna vomit when I hear that song now.
[01:26:26] Jamie Grant: They've ba and all the little rifts of like the commentary. It just, it's no longer the boys from Fort Payne singing.
[01:26:33] Bradon Rogers: Yeah. Exactly. I'm, uh, so I'm a, I am not a big fan of that song like I used to be. Like, I wouldn't, I wouldn't ever, like I say, I don't, I wouldn't
[01:26:39] Jamie Grant: Here's, I'm gonna, hang on, I'm gonna alter this question for a second. For you, specifically for you. If you could pick one hype man. I don't care about the song. If you could have a hype man that was like introing you as you walked into the office, who's the best hype man you've ever seen that you would want to, to be your hype man?
[01:27:01] Bradon Rogers: man. Um.
Kid rock's a pretty good one.
[01:27:08] Jamie Grant: Okay.
[01:27:08] Bradon Rogers: Uh, like you, you know, if you've ever been to Kid Rock Show, I mean, I've seen him a couple times and I'll tell you that dude can scream and he's intense and the whole nine yards and like, you know, he, um, you know, um, I don't know Leonardo Di Leonardo DiCaprio's character and Wolf of Wall Street, you know, he is
[01:27:24] Jamie Grant: I'm not going anywhere.
[01:27:26] Bradon Rogers: Jordan Belfort.
Yeah. He would've been, he been, he would've been a great one. That character at least. I don't know if in real life he's like that or not. He would be, he would be a good one. Um,
[01:27:33] Jamie Grant: perfect. That's perfect. I, I thought you might go somewhere. I would go. I think the world's greatest hype man I've ever seen is taquito spikes.
[01:27:40] Bradon Rogers: he is pretty good. Yeah, that opening video coming into the stadium was pretty incredible. No doubt about it.
[01:27:45] Jamie Grant: Alright, so we close out with this, and this one's kind of fun. So every guest gets to answer a question left for them by their last guest and then gets to leave a question for the next guest. Um, so, uh, the guest that preceded you real good buddy, uh, Ray Rodriguez, was in the legislature with us and, and now is the chancellor of the, the university system in Florida.
And, uh, since, since you are a man, we'll keep it the way it was written. Uh, it, it was either king or queen. If you were king for a day. You could make up any public policy to become law, what's the one public policy you would implement as King Rogers?
[01:28:22] Bradon Rogers: Hmm, man, I stole the one. I would've said, honestly, I honestly would've said daylight savings time right out of the gate. I'd kill that like tomorrow afternoon.
[01:28:31] Jamie Grant: that's a totally acceptable answer. 'cause you, 'cause you gave us another hot take. I stole your hot
[01:28:35] Bradon Rogers: yeah. Okay. I, I'll go with that one, because that's, that literally, if you hadn't asked that earlier, that's the one that would've come right off my tongue.
It would've been like eliminate that.
[01:28:42] Jamie Grant: by the way, here's why. That's a brilliant answer. Because you could get reelected, even though Kings obviously are not elect, you could get reelected with all the moms that are sick of daylight savings. Uh, they would actually vote for King Rogers if you got rid of daylight savings. That's a, that's a fact.
And then if you wanna leave a question, so, uh, we don't tell you who the next guest is. Um, sometimes that's scheduling. Sometimes we just like to keep it generic. Uh, but if you were to leave a question for somebody to answer, what would that question be?
[01:29:16] Bradon Rogers: Soccer. Yes or no?
[01:29:18] Jamie Grant: Whew.
[01:29:19] Bradon Rogers: Soccer. I mean, I, I, I gotta tell you, man, I got people, friends of mine that watch soccer game and that they're watching the whole game to watch one to nothing. I'm like, that is miserable. Like, like,
[01:29:29] Jamie Grant: I am, I, I cannot promise you that I will not ask their feelings on kickball first.
[01:29:35] Bradon Rogers: Yeah.
[01:29:35] Jamie Grant: Uh, with you brother. I'm with you. Um, Bradon, dude, you have been so generous with your time. Um, I cannot thank you enough. I'm super excited. Just, uh, one, grateful to be a friend, um, and the time we get to spend, uh, at Auburn and watching Auburn on the road.
Um, but you're doing really great work. I'd love how this turned into more about leadership and culture because I think it is the essence of the title. Um, and I really would love to follow up, um, on how we help public sector entities kind of embrace a customer mindset and not just. Said, but operationalized to say, here's some tactical things, uh, that can help you do that.
So, um, from our whole team and, and just the time you took, um, I can't thank you enough and, uh, I also can't wait to see you this weekend, buddy.
[01:30:23] Bradon Rogers: You too, bud Warrior.
[01:30:24] Jamie Grant: right. Thanks Bradon. We're eagle. We're.