Josh Liegel is the President and CEO of EIC Solutions, a manufacturer of solid-state cooling systems that protect sensitive electronics in harsh industrial and military environments. He offers a distinct perspective on leadership, having worked his way up from an entry-level role to the top position over 21 years at the company.

Nate Wheeler is the host of the popular Manufacturing Insiders podcast. He also owns weCreate, a nationally recognized marketing agency that helps manufacturers grow, save money, and become more efficient.

In this episode of Manufacturing Insiders, Josh Liegel details the mindset that separates employees who wait for opportunities from those who create them. He explains how taking ownership of problems outside his immediate responsibilities made him indispensable. This discussion reveals why fostering a culture of proactive problem-solvers is the most effective strategy for growth.

Josh provides his practical approach to hiring people with this internal drive and how to spot them during an interview. He also tackles the difficult challenge of leading former peers and gaining buy-in for a new vision. The conversation offers a clear playbook for building a team that can overcome the toughest hurdles in a niche manufacturing market.

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Nate Wheeler (00:00.763)
Welcome to Manufacturing Insiders. I have Josh Liegel with me today. He is the president and CEO of EIC Solutions, a manufacturer of solid-state cooling devices that protect electronics in very rugged conditions and some awesome applications, which we’re going to hear about today. Josh is an interesting person to talk to from a couple of different perspectives.

One of them is his methodology and mindset as he moved from the bottom of the totem pole at the company to CEO and president over 21 years. It’s a really impressive story. Welcome to Manufacturing Insiders, Josh.

Josh Liegel (00:48.504)
Thanks, Nate. It’s good to be here.

Nate Wheeler (00:50.361)
One thing I don’t always do, but feel I should do more, is introduce the concept of this podcast and why we’re doing it. It’s really important to use every tool at our disposal to build manufacturing in the US. There’s a lot of talk and effort behind that today, but I think there’s a gap in leaders sharing insights and knowledge about what’s working from a marketing, hiring, and culture standpoint.

It’s great to hear it straight from the horse’s mouth and hear what a leader has to say about those topics. That being said, how did you manage to move from an entry-level position at the company to CEO? I don’t know if you can even summarize it.

Josh Liegel (01:46.03)
People ask me that question a lot because it’s a very uncommon story, especially today. A lot of people look to move from position to position by jumping companies, and that’s fair. There are a lot of opportunities there. When I was coming up in this company, I had personal circumstances that required me to stick around because of the job’s stability.

I wanted to stick around for that stability, but I didn’t want to just keep doing what I was doing. I wanted to do more. Oftentimes, you don’t get that opportunity because you’re too busy with your current role, and maybe you get promoted within a department. But I regularly tried to make myself more valuable to the company. As long as I was sticking around, I figured I might as well learn things outside my specific area of expertise. I took on tasks that would help lighten the load for people above me.

I kept making myself more valuable to the company through new skill sets and by just grinding. Twenty-one years doesn’t go by quickly day-to-day. Looking back, of course, it has. But day-to-day, you’re just figuring out what you’re going to do, and at times, it feels slow and like it’s not going anywhere. Over time, you start to see progress, and people recognize that you’re a team player.

I kept doing that, which put me in line for positions I wouldn’t have been considered for otherwise. Instead of keeping my head down and only focusing on the tasks I was asked to do, I took things to new levels. I recognize that opportunities like that aren’t available to everybody; there’s not always the bandwidth or availability. But I took every chance I could to learn new skills and become more valuable. Eventually, I became indispensable because no one else knew how to do what I was doing.

No one else was doing it, so I would just do it myself. Even when they tried to get me to give up certain responsibilities, I always kept a hand in it to make sure I knew what was going on and wouldn’t lose sight of that skill.

Nate Wheeler (04:27.096)
That’s a great answer. You’re right that those opportunities may not exist visibly in some companies. But from a CEO perspective, if you have a person who goes above and beyond, expands their responsibilities, and learns things outside their job scope, you’re going to want to advance them. You want to keep them and do whatever it takes to make them happy. From the general to the specific, what are some examples from those early days of things you learned or did to stand out?

Josh Liegel (05:14.455)
Early on, as I was learning the products and getting an understanding of the company, how we sold things, and the product functionalities, I saw a bottleneck. We would get all this data, submit it to a different group for analysis, and then they would kick it back to us. Sometimes that took three or four days. I decided it would be much faster if I could do it myself, so I started asking people if it would be more helpful if I just took that task away from them.

They taught me how to do it. It wasn’t particularly difficult, just a bit time-consuming, but I had the bandwidth. It helped me get back to my customers faster with quicker answers, so I started doing it. The rest of the sales team started sending the work to me instead of the engineering group because I would get it done faster. I started learning by stepping into small areas adjacent to my group.

I didn’t come from sales and customer service and try to run operations. I took on this task because it was customer-facing and was taking too long once it left our group. Being able to do it faster led to other opportunities because people started to see me as a trusted person within the group.

Nate Wheeler (06:50.502)
That’s a really smart approach, and I wonder why more people don’t take it. Is it a personal thing? For example, was it your own intrinsic personality that drove you to behave that way? Or were you looking at the company as a whole and realizing you would eventually be rewarded for that effort? Or is it a mix?

Josh Liegel (07:23.789)
There is a personality side to it. I don’t like to wait for things when I can do them myself, and I like to have a certain amount of control over the outcomes of what I’m doing. I don’t want a negative outcome that reflects directly on me to be the fault of somebody else, so I want to control as many variables as I can. Culturally, within companies and even society, we get very singularly focused on, ‘This is my job. Don’t ask me to do anything outside of my responsibilities.’ That can lead to complacency within yourself and the group.

People then say, ‘I’m not being given more opportunities.’ And that can be true. Even during my 21 years here, there were plenty of times I didn’t know if I would be rewarded for what I was doing. This was never a set career path for me; I didn’t start out thinking I would be CEO in 15 years. I just kept pushing forward and asking, ‘What little more can I do now?’ That made me a little more valuable, but it never occurred to me that this is where I would wind up.

Oftentimes, people like the idea of larger companies for many reasons, one of which is defined career tracks. You can come in, do a job, and after a certain amount of time, you’ll get moved into the next position. That’s great if it fits the model of what you’re looking for. But I would encourage people to consider getting involved in a smaller company. In small companies, your job is usually expansive, you cover a lot of departments, and you get to do many different things.

It’s a great way to get exposed to different areas. In a big company, you have a very defined skillset with a lot of work to do within that scope. In a small company, you have a large number of responsibilities and skills across many different disciplines because there’s lots to do and many hats to wear. I started to see that and decided to just do it. Internally, I wanted to do it because it was more interesting than doing the same thing day in and day out.

I also felt that if I was going to go anywhere, I would have to go out and get the skills myself; they weren’t just going to appear one day. No one was going to just give it to me. Waiting for the company to offer training or develop a program that would let me rise to a new position wasn’t going to happen unless I drove it. I had to push a little harder and get a little further without someone telling me it was time or that they needed me to do more.

Nate Wheeler (10:32.024)
That’s a really important point. A lot of employees will sit on the sidelines and complain that they don’t have opportunities or that nobody’s giving them more responsibility or a larger role. In my years of managing employees, I can’t think of a single instance where someone came to me and said, “Hey, I want to take this on. I think it’s a great idea for the company.” I’ve never said no.

I may have shaped the idea a bit, but I’ve never flatly refused. It’s exciting when an employee does that. When you look at your employees, how do you develop more people who have that entrepreneurial mindset? I assume there’s a component of picking the right people during the hiring process and identifying those characteristics. But you also need mechanisms within the company to facilitate and foster that mindset.

Josh Liegel (11:45.4)
In a small company, there isn’t always time or opportunity for that. Sometimes you have the time and need certain things done, so you might give someone an opportunity, but that doesn’t always exist. It boils down to your hiring process. It starts there, because if you don’t pick the right people, it doesn’t matter how many opportunities you provide. They won’t step into them, or they’ll overstep from day one.

All they’ll want to do is things outside their job description. When we’re hiring, we are big on hiring for culture. I can train most people to do the job. If they can show a basic skillset, we can train them to do more, teach them the products, and help them understand things. But when you get somebody who has the right culture and personality fit, you look at their resume to see their drive and if they stick around somewhere.

That’s something we look at a lot. We see many people who jump to a new job and company every 24 months. That’s fine, and I don’t understand everyone’s personal situation, but it doesn’t suggest this is someone who wants to invest and grow within a company. It says this is someone who wants to do a job for a period and then jump ship when they get tired of it or see an opportunity to earn more. We try to look for people who have a ‘stick-to-it’ attitude. You can feel a like-mindedness when they come in and during your discussions.

One of the big questions we always ask is, ‘What are your hobbies?’ Someone might have a certain skillset on paper as a salesperson or marketer. But when you ask about their hobbies and they say, ‘I love to work on cars,’ that gives you insight into their technical mind. You can start to see patterns that reveal more than just their professional skills; it’s about their attitude and passions.

It’s interesting when you ask people about their hobbies because they often get excited and talk passionately about them. When you see how locked in they get, you realize this person has passion and drive. Getting into a more personal discussion helps you know if this will be a good culture hire. We’ve made plenty of bad culture hires, don’t get me wrong, but it’s one of the things we really look for.

Nate Wheeler (14:44.298)
I’m glad you gave specifics on that because I hear ‘hiring for culture’ quite a bit. It’s often difficult for people to convey how they do that. Is it a gut feeling, or are there specific questions you ask? It’s interesting to hear about the hobbies. Are there any other criteria or measurement tools you use?

Josh Liegel (15:19.757)
I like to ask people what they want from their life. Not ‘where do you see yourself in X years,’ but ‘where do you want to wind up? What are your ultimate goals?’ Most people, especially younger people, aren’t taking a job because it’s their end goal. I hire a lot of people whose aspiration is to work a good job so they can do something outside of work.

Those people are externally driven to do a good job. They have a situation outside of work, like raising a family or having a certain lifestyle, that they want to earn money for. As long as they can do that here, that’s their driver. When someone says their sole drive is to get a position, move up, and get into management, that’s a drive I’d like to see. However, those may not be opportunities I can provide.

I have to recognize that I could lose that person quickly if they’re solely career-driven. The opportunities in a small company are limited, and timing is everything. You have to be there at the right time and be the right fit for the job that’s available. When you see someone who’s externally driven, I really like that because that external drive will cause them to want to do more.

I had a big external drive coming in. I didn’t have a passion for selling solid-state cooling systems, but I wanted to start a family. I had to keep working hard to achieve that goal. Whether I did that in sales, management, or something else, that external drive kept me moving forward.

Nate Wheeler (17:19.672)
I appreciate that insight because I’ve honestly never thought about an interview from that perspective. That is very helpful. Why don’t you give us a little insight on the actual product? What is solid-state cooling, and what are its applications?

Josh Liegel (17:45.25)
Solid-state cooling, or thermoelectric air conditioning, is a type of cooling where the only moving parts are the fans. It uses a technology called thermoelectric cooling, which is based on the Peltier effect, discovered in the 1800s. Without getting too deep into the science, you are basically passing a voltage through two dissimilar metals.

These dissimilar metals pump all the heat to one side of the device, making the other side very cold. We harness that effect in the center of an air conditioning system. We don’t use freon, oil-based compressors, or any refrigerants. This allows us to create a drop in temperature to cool spaces.

The application is typically within industrial automation, security, and defense. You’re taking electronics and putting them in adverse conditions, whether that’s indoors, outdoors, on a plant floor with chemicals, in a desert, or on an oil rig. You need to maintain a protective setting for those electronics in these adverse environments. Electronics create heat, and you have to get rid of it. We can actively cool the enclosure without ventilating it. That’s what we do and how it applies.

Nate Wheeler (19:41.38)
That’s very cool. You told me about the CRAM systems.

Josh Liegel (19:52.546)
Counter-Rocket, Artillery, and Mortar. We worked on that system about 15 years ago during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. We worked with Northrop Grumman while they were developing the CRAM system. When insurgents would fire into the bases, the system would detect the incoming round, determine its impact point, and alert that area. Simultaneously, it would calculate the origin trajectory and return fire to take out the threat.

It was a multi-step system that worked in seconds. They came to us because their encryption gear was generating too much heat and failing in the field. The gear was in protective cases because of the sand environment, so we built them air-conditioned cases that could be deployed long-term.

We ended up providing over 1,700 of these cases over a couple of years to get them into theater as quickly as possible. That was one of our most high-profile jobs, where we were able to solve a problem for someone in a short period by thinking outside the box.

Nate Wheeler (21:11.95)
That system saved a lot of lives. In terms of your market breakdown, besides the military and defense application, what are the other big sectors for you?

Josh Liegel (21:34.488)
Industrial automation is a big one. This includes anything in a factory, like switches, servers, PLCs, and drives. All these pieces of equipment need to be contained and kept safe. Instead of building massive equipment rooms that require large cooling systems, you can take it down to the component level and create much smaller setups.

Oil and gas is another. Whether it’s drilling, exploration, refining, or transport, you have a lot of equipment that’s measuring and monitoring things. Especially in exploration and drilling, you’re dealing with some very nasty environments. Your electronic equipment can’t be exposed, so it has to be enclosed tightly. This includes certain classifications of equipment, like non-incendiary systems. We operate in that space quite a bit.

Then there’s security, especially fire panels. Many states and municipalities have codes requiring the fire panel to be inside an air-conditioned space. In new construction, they found it was costly to air-condition these rooms. The workaround was to put the panel in a small, air-conditioned box instead of installing a two- or five-ton unit for the room. We do a fair amount of fire panel work as well.

Nate Wheeler (23:12.773)
That’s really cool; I wouldn’t have thought of that. The applications are huge. I assume there must be quite a few competitors. Do you see a lot of competition in the US or internationally?

Josh Liegel (23:36.14)
We’re certainly not the only game in town, but we do our best to have a consultative sales approach. We want to make sure the customer can speak to our team to find out what they need and how we can best provide it. We are very big on customizing our products to meet the customer’s needs. This can range from small features to bigger reworks to match the specific application. While we’re not reinventing the wheel, we offer significant customization so customers don’t have to shoehorn a solution into their problem.

Nate Wheeler (24:22.926)
Right, like the CRAM system. So you actually provided them with the fully assembled case?

Josh Liegel (24:28.685)
Yes, it was the whole case with the integrated air conditioner, all sealed up and ready to go. They had also asked for custom signal entry panels, labeling, and marking. We did the whole thing for them so they wouldn’t have to send it back out for rework. It could go straight to the integration point where they put in their equipment, and then it could go straight into the field.

Nate Wheeler (24:53.645)
Wow, that’s a lot of customization. I can see how that could be a good niche. I’ve talked to a couple of people recently whose exact niche was doing small-run, highly customized work. As a small company, how many people do you have?

Josh Liegel (25:13.197)
Nineteen.

Nate Wheeler (25:22.486)
I’m sure there are some bigger players out there. In terms of your overall business strategy, what would you say are your biggest challenges? If you could rank your top three, what would they be?

Josh Liegel (25:32.162)
Right now, our biggest challenges are similar to what most small businesses and manufacturers in the US are dealing with, which is navigating the volatility of tariffs and supply chains. That’s a huge issue we discuss daily—how things are changing, where we should put our effort, what to hold off on, and what to expedite. That’s one of the biggest things.

The other thing is just general awareness. You and I are talking, and you’ve never worked with solid-state cooling. Explaining what it is, how it applies, and why customers need it is a constant effort. There are plenty of people who are aware of solid-state cooling, but broadly, people don’t have any idea what it is. Those two are the biggest things right now.

Then you always have the general challenges of running a business, trying to maintain profitability, and keeping everything moving in the right direction without getting bogged down. Any small company is going to have that issue, so we see that a lot too.

Nate Wheeler (26:47.374)
There’s a lot to talk about with each of those. As a marketer, I’m interested in the challenge of awareness. When you gave the example of the fire panels, I wonder how many other types of products are out there where a company manufactures a good product, but a certain segment of their customer base uses it in a harsh environment where this cooling is needed. They just haven’t thought about addressing that market yet. I’m curious what other examples are out there.

Josh Liegel (27:32.11)
We deal with customers all the time who have these issues, especially in the South, like Florida and Louisiana, which are not only hot but also extremely wet environments. You also get desert environments with a lot of sand. We talk to customers with these issues all the time, and the hard thing for us is making ourselves broadly applicable in our marketing. We try not to get so focused on one particular application or industry.

We want to be broadly applicable so people can find us and understand that our solution can be applied to their situation, whether it’s ticket dispensing, a security system, fire panels, or any type of oil and gas monitoring equipment. It’s hard to market effectively when you work in a diverse group of industries without getting pigeonholed. If you talk too much about oil and gas, the fire panel people don’t know who you are. If you talk too much about defense, the industrial automation people don’t want to talk to you.

You have to maintain a somewhat nebulous discussion about equipment in general. The challenge is making it applicable enough that a person sees it and says, ‘Yeah, that’s me. I need that,’ without being so pointed that people in a different industry, or even one we haven’t dealt with before, think, ‘No, that’s not for me.’ That is a big challenge in marketing specifically.

Nate Wheeler (29:28.644)
It would be fun to look at the data. It would be interesting to see how many people are searching for ultra-specific applications, like ‘I have an overheating card reader,’ versus general queries like ‘how to protect electronics in hot environments.’ I’m sure there’s a mix of both, but from a marketing standpoint, you want to address the largest attainable search volume. It’s definitely an interesting challenge, but a fun one. I love data mining projects and figuring out how to make something usable out of them.

Josh Liegel (30:23.105)
I think AI will change a lot about the questions we ask. Instead of searching ‘how do I cool this hot equipment’ on Google or Microsoft Search, where I’m always trying to pare back my terminology to keep it broad, I think people are much more comfortable throwing a whole bunch of specifics into AI and asking it what to do. We’ll see how that goes.

Nate Wheeler (30:48.07)
Exactly. You have some confidence that it will assimilate all the information you provide and give you a customized response, which it often does well. With Google, you anticipate that if you search a long-tail query like ‘how do I do X, Y, or Z,’ it’s just going to pick out the three most pertinent words and give you an answer.

AI is changing a lot in the search world. I’ve been doing search engine optimization, primarily focused on Google, for about 15 years. Within the past year, I’ve seen a dramatic drop-off in Google search traffic, but it doesn’t necessarily equate to a drop-off in overall traffic. What I’m seeing is a lot of people transitioning from Google search to AI. AI still needs to pull from search, but it’s looking for different information.

As a personal example, I noticed there were some terms I wanted my company to rank for, but we weren’t. I went into ChatGPT, looked at the companies it listed, and then checked their references to see where it pulled the information from. I noticed it was pulling from a lot of ‘top 10’ lists.

When I searched ‘what’s the best SEO company for manufacturers,’ it would go to sites like Clutch.co, which have lists of top industrial agencies. It’s a simplistic approach, but that’s what it seems to be doing. My best advice for companies dealing with a loss of traffic from AI is to start searching on AI, see who comes up, see where AI is getting its answers, and make sure you are there.

Josh Liegel (33:00.501)
Right. And I think having more long-form content that AI can mine is important when people are asking specific questions. It can show you as a reference because you have a blog post or a white paper that it can search and say, ‘Here’s information regarding that topic,’ as opposed to just keywords. It can analyze the whole string, so it’s a bit different.

Nate Wheeler (33:27.824)
I agree with that. That’s where the SEO best practices of the past five years have flowed neatly into AI. It’s why our customers haven’t been hit too hard; we’ve been writing long-form, informative blog articles that answer a lot of questions about a topic. We end up in a lot of those AI snippets at the top of search results because of that. Those are some strategies I think would be valuable for other listeners. What has been the most difficult or surprising aspect of becoming CEO after your previous responsibilities?

Josh Liegel (34:21.585)
I feel like I have a pretty good relationship with most of my team here. I don’t feel like I have an adverse relationship with anybody. So, one of the most difficult things was wondering, ‘Will they see me as the leader now, since I’ve been one of them for so long?’ Some people leaned heavily into it because I had been in different levels of management at different times. They had grown to trust that my work was solid and that I would give them good answers and not just blow them off. Once I got to this position, we had already built that trust.

Other people, I think, maybe resented me a bit. They felt it was unfair that I got an opportunity they didn’t. Those people didn’t stick around for long, which wasn’t surprising. People want you to do well because they want the company to do well, but sometimes personal feelings get in the way. That was a big challenge, trying to get everybody on board.

Another challenging thing is when you have to shift gears, but the people who were in leadership before are still around. You don’t ever want to paint the picture that they didn’t know what they were doing. If they didn’t, they probably wouldn’t be around anymore. But if it’s a smooth transition and that person is still around on a consulting level, you have to be able to speak plainly about things that weren’t working without insulting them. That’s pretty tough to do.

I came in with a nonstandard situation. Most people in this position don’t have 15 years of experience not only in the industry but in the company. They don’t know all the ups and downs, the highs and lows, and what needs to change. Someone in my position typically comes in and starts from scratch. I had the advantage of already knowing all that, which was very helpful. But it was difficult to manage the people’s side.

How do I hold people to the standard I need them held to when I’ve been their coworker and friend? How can I get them to respect me at the level I need them to now? That was a big challenge and it took me a little while. Thankfully, the silver lining of a horrible situation was that I was made CEO two weeks before COVID hit the US.

Everybody was in a state of turmoil, wondering what we were going to do next. Anyone saying something positive was someone they were willing to follow. That gave me a little bit of leverage. As crazy as that situation was, I was able to leverage it to have people follow me, and we went through that whole situation together.

Nate Wheeler (37:53.433)
I am familiar with that challenge from being in the Marine Corps. It happens all the time where you get promoted and suddenly you’re supposed to be telling your former peers what to do. That happens with every rank.

The fact that you were already respected, as you mentioned, and that people knew you would make the right decisions was probably the largest piece of solving that challenge. Were there any other strategies you used? If you had a specific person who didn’t seem to want to get on board but was still an asset to the company, how did you deal with that?

Josh Liegel (38:54.253)
I try to treat everyone as an individual and recognize that they have a life outside of work. I don’t know what every single person is going through day-to-day—their personal life, their kids, their spouses. But I try to make myself available, especially early on. This involved meeting with people and pitching the vision. A lot of people have worked here for a long time; it’s a common story around here.

I would meet with them and say, ‘Look, I know you’ve been here, maybe even longer than I have, but I’m in this position now. Let me tell you what I want to see and what I think this company can be,’ and give them the space to walk through that with me. Instead of just announcing a new regimen of rules and plans to the group, I gave them the freedom to talk to me one-on-one. I would ask them what their goals are. We talked about this in the interview process—what drives them—but after someone has been here for three or four years, that may have changed.

It was important to get that update and ask, ‘Where are you at now? What do you want to see happen in the next three to four years?’ With some people, you can meet them there, find common ground, and agree on where you want to wind up. With other people, you recognize pretty quickly that your goals are misaligned. You realize they are talking about something you aren’t capable of giving them, or they have expectations that can’t be met here.

In that moment, I would tell that person, ‘Listen, I don’t think we’re going to be able to do what you want here, but I think you still bring value. If you can hang on and maybe shift what you’re looking for, we can still use you.’ If they can’t, I get that too. I’d say, ‘If you need to move on, let’s talk about it amicably, and I’ll give you a letter of reference. But if you stay, you still have a lot of value to bring.’ I try to be very honest with people.

At that time, we were having a lot of individual conversations about what we were doing and why. I was the only one who knew this transition was happening, besides the previous CEO and the board of directors. Everybody else had no clue, so it was a shock for them. For me, it was the culmination of about 18 months of talking and planning. When it happened, I had to sit down with a lot of people who were fairly shocked.

I let them know, ‘Look, I’m on your side. We’re all on the same team. I’m not out to blow this whole thing up now that it’s my chance to run it.’ We’re here to run a company. It was definitely a struggle and an uphill climb at first, and I was learning a lot in real time. That was how I handled it, and it helped lay the groundwork with the people who did stick around. I feel like we have a great relationship and can make everything work through ups and downs because we built that foundation.

Nate Wheeler (42:50.212)
I respect that people-first approach and the open leadership style; that’s a great piece of advice. I like to end the podcast with a segment called, ‘What Do You Need?’ Are there any challenges in your space right now, whether on the production side, sourcing components, or knowledge you’re looking for? Are there any resources you’ve been looking for?

Josh Liegel (43:29.271)
One thing that is very difficult for anyone in HMLV—high-mix, low-volume—manufacturing is building an outbound sales team. This means you’re not building tons of any one thing; you’re building lots of different things in smaller batches. When you do that at a niche level with a specific product, it isn’t widely applicable to many people.

We’ve always struggled with that. You can create inbound sales through marketing, but creating an outbound sales team is different. I’ve been reading a lot about scaling sales teams, and that’s one area I would personally love to know more about, especially for niche manufacturing. It’s a difficult area that most people don’t have expertise in.

Nate Wheeler (44:28.9)
I’ve attempted to build an outbound sales team for my company in the past, and one of my big challenges, which I’m sure is similar to yours, is that I’m the one who knows everything about what we do. It’s difficult to find somebody who can relate to a potential client to the degree that I can because I genuinely care. I’m interested to hear and learn about what they do to figure out the solution. It’s very difficult to find that skillset, but it’s possible.

The other challenge is management. I’m a good salesperson because I’m consultative and I care, but I am not a sales manager. I can’t manage salespeople. You have to be very detail-oriented, track everything, and make small, incremental improvements in closing deals. I can’t do that. That’s the other challenge: if you hire one salesperson, you really need to hire two because you need someone to manage them. It’s interesting. I like to throw that question in there because if somebody listening is the perfect person for that job, I can link them up with you.

Josh Liegel (46:14.027)
Yeah, definitely.

Nate Wheeler (46:15.824)
Josh, thanks a lot for joining today. I really enjoyed our conversation. It didn’t go in the direction I expected, and we didn’t cover most of what I thought we would because we got into other interesting topics where you had great insight. That was fun. Thanks for coming on.

Josh Liegel (46:31.373)
No problem. It was great to be here.

Nate Wheeler (46:33.304)
Awesome. Talk to you later.