In Episode 146 of “The Trusted Advisor,” RSPA CEO Jim Roddy talks retail IT industry trends and leadership with Gilbert Bailey, the President of Genius Retail and Small Business for Global Payments. Among the topics discussed are AI, enterprise tools filtering to SMB, providing solutions beyond the POS, and that leaders “action always beats inaction.”
“The Trusted Advisor,” powered by the Retail Solutions Providers Association (RSPA), is an award-winning content series designed specifically for retail IT VARs and software providers. Our goal is to educate you on the topics of leadership, management, hiring, sales, and other small business best practices. For more insights, visit the RSPA blog at www.GoRSPA.org.
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Full episode transcript via Apple Podcasts:
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Roddy: Welcome to another episode of The Trusted Advisor Podcast and Video Series, powered by the Retail Solutions Providers Association.
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Roddy: Our goal on the pod is to accelerate the success of today’s and tomorrow’s leaders in the retail IT industry.
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Roddy: I’m Jim Roddy, back with you again.
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Roddy: Thank you so much for joining us.
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Roddy: In this episode, we’ll talk retail IT industry trends with Gilbert Bailey, the president of Genius Retail and Small Business for Global Payments.
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Roddy: Gilbert has been part of the Global Payments team for nearly 10 years.
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Roddy: Prior to that, he was a managing member of customer engagement platform provider Beanstalk Data, which was acquired by Heartland back in 2016.
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Roddy: He began his career in 1991 as an account executive at VAR Software Express, where he was promoted several times during his eight-and-a-half years tenure, including serving as the company’s VP of Sales and IT.
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Roddy: Gilbert, welcome to The Trusted Advisor.
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Bailey: Great to be here, Jim.
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Roddy: Yeah, pleasure to talk with you.
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Roddy: So glad to have you part of the RSPA community.
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Roddy: So let’s start with your background, so our listeners and viewers can get to know you a little bit better.
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Roddy: So as I mentioned, your first job in the industry, 1991, with a startup VAR.
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Roddy: Can you tell us a little bit more about that company, your roles there, and then what you learned as a reseller that I’m sure is still carried forward with you today?
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Bailey: Yeah, great.
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Bailey: Happy to talk about Software Express.
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Bailey: It’s an important part of my career and learning.
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Bailey: So yeah, in 1991, I started there fresh out of college, the right page of 21, and there were four folks at this startup, and I’ll get into sort of a little bit of a background there.
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Bailey: So Software Express was actually founded in 1984 and was a retail establishment where folks could walk in and buy software in Charlotte, North Carolina.
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Bailey: And they’d opened a couple of locations, and by 1991, they realized they were about to be impacted by something they called the Blockbuster Effect, which is Blockbuster, you probably remember, went out and educated everybody on rental of videos.
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Bailey: Like all these little mom and pops did that, educated everybody, and then Blockbuster came to town and just sort of took the market from everybody that had actually built it.
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Bailey: So in order to head that off, they did a pivot in 1991 and started a little sort of spin-off startup to go after the education of public sector vertical with a little company named Microsoft.
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Bailey: Microsoft at that point was thinking about Bill Gates, how to sort of get out of operating systems and get into applications and network operating systems.
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Bailey: And so they came up with the idea that if they went into academia, where people were still using, if you remember, typewriters and film strip projectors in K through 12, and deckbacks, mainframes and minis and higher ed, they could create a de facto standard.
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Bailey: They thought that if they could sell, it would generate eight licenses for everyone they sold once those folks graduated, the kids and whatnot.
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Bailey: So anyway, there’s a couple of things I learned there.
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Bailey: So we started in 91, there were four of us.
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Bailey: And this startup, so I watched the legacy business wind down, which was an interesting thing.
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Bailey: So being in the growth area, they were investing in the four folks as we started to grow nationally, they were investing in that while we watched them shut down the retail, you know, sort of establishment and stores.
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Bailey: So that was an interesting theme that’s continued in my life, being in the growth area is then you’re where the, where the, you know, they say the pucks, you’re skating to where the pucks going to be.
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Bailey: And that’s where the investment and capital allocation is going.
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Bailey: And then you’re watching sort of these legacy businesses sort of get repurposed and whatnot and sort of recycled, if that makes sense.
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Bailey: So fast forward, we went from four folks, no sales, sitting at a desk selling software with a phone and three by five index cards and you literally fax or mail product spec sheets on Microsoft products to we became, we were on 8500 twice and we became one of the largest resellers for Microsoft in North America in that space.
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Bailey: So at one point, I got to be at events with, be invited to speak with Ballmer, with CIOs of universities and colleges.
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Bailey: And there’s a couple of things I learned in that.
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Bailey: So the first is 91, there was a recession.
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Bailey: So people who weren’t around, there was a recession in 91.
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Bailey: So we were cold calling into academia.
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Bailey: So cold calling K through 12 schools, cold calling universities and so forth.
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Bailey: And they had they had freezes, freezes on spending money.
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Bailey: And I’ll come back to that in a moment.
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Bailey: The other thing I learned is that Microsoft, when they were then battling with how to gain mind share and so forth, they decided on an indirect model.
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Bailey: And that really stuck out to me because Software Express historically had sold things.
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Bailey: They’d been there from the ground floor.
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Bailey: So they sold, you know, Borland, people that remember these names, WordStar, Borland, WordPerfect, Lotus.
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Bailey: You know, I could go down a list of names if you’ve been around for a while in the software space, you’ll remember those.
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Bailey: Microsoft went through an indirect model where to get scale, they partnered with VARS and they would not sell and compete against us direct.
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Bailey: So, you know, I personally went and sold the first contract at Penn State and the Mid-Atlantic and the Rutgers University system and so forth.
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Bailey: And I didn’t have to worry about Microsoft, some enterprise team competing with me.
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Bailey: I was there educating them on why they wanted personal computers.
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Bailey: That’s another thing I had to learn how to not just…
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Bailey: Yeah, we weren’t selling commodities.
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Bailey: We weren’t selling commoditized software.
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Bailey: We were educating people on why did they want personal computers?
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Bailey: Why did they want software?
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Bailey: And then also pricing them and negotiating agreements on behalf of Microsoft, if that makes sense.
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Bailey: So I learned that that indirect model is really one of the keys to Microsoft quickly getting scale in the early 90s.
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Roddy: Interesting.
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Roddy: So it seems like, well, first, I have to give props.
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Roddy: I love that you had the 3×5 cards.
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Roddy: I started my own business in 1993.
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Roddy: I still have, I’m pointing over here for those not watching, on YouTube to a cardboard box that I have, I still have that card.
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Bailey: I still have my original database in a fireproof safe that has my original 3×5 cards with all the notes that I was calling community colleges and K-12 and whatnot.
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Bailey: Yeah.
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Roddy: I can’t get rid of it.
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Roddy: That’s the whole thing, like the lessons learned.
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Roddy: It seems like a big lesson that you learned was, A, the value of the indirect model, and then also that resellers need to pivot.
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Roddy: Am I understanding that correctly?
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Roddy: No matter how good it’s going now, you’ve always got to make sure you’re turning and adapting for the future.
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Roddy: Am I understanding that correctly?
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Bailey: That’s right.
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Bailey: We’ll come back to that later, thinking about leadership styles and so forth.
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Bailey: But yes, you got to be able to pivot.
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Bailey: Another thing I learned in that was, not only did Microsoft focus on the indirect channel, but they also did things that were unique.
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Bailey: As of R, we got on the ground floor with Microsoft.
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Bailey: We then scaled with Microsoft.
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Bailey: But obviously, as of R, we resold other things.
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Bailey: But one of the things that Microsoft also did was, as an example, I learned when they did incentive programs or SPF programs, they made sure that the SPF programs were set up in such a way that the sales folks got SPFs.
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Bailey: Not that there was some extra MDF funds or funds that flowed through to the reseller at the top level, and the sales folks never saw it.
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Bailey: So they got Mindshare.
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Bailey: As I was building the Insight sales team, we were four and then ultimately I ran the Insight sales team.
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Bailey: Microsoft was a great partner in that.
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Bailey: They really got the Mindshare of our sales team because they were getting the SPFs directly to them and then flying in and educating them on that, if that makes sense.
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Roddy: Interesting.
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Roddy: Very much.
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Roddy: Okay.
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Roddy: So can you talk now about your path from Software Express to today, you mentioned earlier Beanstalk Data, Global, but there’s some other things along the way.
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Roddy: Share with us that as well.
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Roddy: Yeah.
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Bailey: So a couple of things there.
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Bailey: So one of the lessons I personally learned at Software Express was, well, I had great success and it scaled up.
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Bailey: I didn’t have equity.
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Bailey: So in 2000, I decided to leave and I left about 90 days before the.com bubble burst.
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Bailey: So it was a good time to sort of transition and pivot just in hindsight.
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Bailey: Then I had two sort of lifestyle startups.
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Bailey: I had a software business that I built a software platform, but it’s more of a lifestyle business just me.
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Bailey: Then I also had a fencing equipment company where I imported and distributed fencing equipment with the first omni-channel platform for online and then in-person purchases of fencing equipment for the Olympic sport of fencing.
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Bailey: Got it.
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Roddy: Yeah.
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Roddy: Thank you.
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Roddy: People think like fencing goods.
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Roddy: You’re actually talking about the parrying and everything like that.
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Roddy: Yeah.
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Bailey: With the success at Software Express, I made a list of things I always wanted to do.
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Bailey: Fencing was on that list and I started late in life.
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Bailey: I was able to live curiously through some sponsorships I did and also having that fencing company along with this other software business I had.
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Bailey: It’s more of a lifestyle business.
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Bailey: But one of the things to connect the dots to Beanstalk data.
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Bailey: At Software Express, back to your point about VARS pivoting, there was an entrepreneur club in Charlotte, North Carolina where I’m from or based.
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Bailey: It was called the Metrolinet Business Council.
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Bailey: It was small entrepreneurs and as Software Express as I was helping the owners lead Software Express, they were members of this Metrolinet Business Council.
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Bailey: So I would go attend while I was at Software Express.
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Bailey: I met another person who owned what was the first self-service copy stores in Charlotte.
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Bailey: I think it was called Quick Corners.
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Bailey: Just as Software Express was thinking about the blockbuster effect to software, he noticed that FedEx Kinkos, this is before FedEx Kinkos, Kinkos might come to town and destroy his businesses.
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Bailey: So he pivoted into commercial printing.
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Bailey: We worked very closely with him at Software Express as we scaled in terms of big, if you remember the old days of big catalogs and 800 numbers and that type of thing.
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Bailey: Then we also helped him with technology in his business, with desktop publishing and networking and servers and whatnot.
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Bailey: So fast forward around 2009, and this will get back to what I mentioned about the recession.
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Bailey: So in 91, a lesson I learned was, when I was cold calling from 91 and 93, with all those three by five index cards, and no one was purchasing, when the economy turned, because I had the relationships, we had been doing all that hard work, and we had educated people on personal computers and Microsoft software, we just scaled up, and it was just an unbelievable hockey stick from 93 to 2000.
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Bailey: So in 2007, eight is the great recession hit, and I was starting to learn as a lifestyle software business, you can only scale so far.
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Bailey: I started thinking, this recession is so much deeper, the great recession, I need to look for something where I can get with a team of folks, and get into some new, again, skating to where the puck is going.
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Bailey: And when we come out of this recession, it will be an even bigger hockey stick.
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Bailey: So it just so happened that the gentleman that I mentioned who had the copy stores, he was funding a startup called BeanSockData.
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Bailey: And so they connected with me and asked me if I had any interest, met with them, and then we started that in 2009, and then off to the races.
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Roddy: How about that?
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Roddy: It’s funny how points of your career, like you started off with the recession, you left somewhere right before the.com bubble, and then you’re taking advantage of it.
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Roddy: Times where people might want to curl up and crawl under their desk, you’re taking advantage of it, if I’m understanding it correctly, always looking for opportunities.
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Bailey: Always looking for opportunities.
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Bailey: And then at BeanSock, we went through multiple cycles, which was, folks will probably forget that one time there were not such a thing as a smartphone.
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Bailey: So about the time that BeanSock started up, BlackBerry’s is probably the best out there, and it’s really just for email messaging.
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Bailey: So at BeanSock, we started as a marketing and automation cloud.
00:11:48.617 –> 00:11:52.677
Bailey: We pivoted a couple of times there between powering academia.
00:11:52.677 –> 00:12:00.437
Bailey: So because of Software Express and being in academia, BeanSock first started to power marketing and automation in academia.
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Bailey: Pretty quickly, we realized for a variety of reasons that wasn’t going to work.
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Bailey: And in 2010, we partnered up with Xpient Solutions, Xpient Iris point of sale, which was the first Windows-based point of sale and largest in the quick service restaurant space, and then integrated our marketing automation cloud there, and then kind of off to the races.
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Bailey: And then we watched as things like smartphones came along, and the iPhone was introduced, and apps, and then how was our environment going to work with not just point of sale, but with mobile.
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Bailey: And then as mobile came along, then you had a lot of these early mobile wallet providers where they first introduced the wallet, and then they realized they need value in the wallet to get consumers to adopt it.
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Bailey: And hence, we started to triangulate BeanSock with many of the early payment wallets to add loyalty and other customer engagement feature functionality with point of sale, if that makes sense.
00:12:51.797 –> 00:12:54.257
Bailey: So we kind of went through those cycles as well.
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Roddy: And then through that line, is that how Heartland Global ended up, started getting involved in the acquisition because of the payments angle?
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Bailey: Yeah, so BeanSock, well, a couple of pieces here.
00:13:03.817 –> 00:13:05.697
Bailey: Yeah, so BeanSocks, we started to scale.
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Bailey: We were first really integrating to point of sale to provide, at the time, which was really novel, near real-time loyalty connected to point of sale at scale.
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Bailey: So doing offer, sort of that, the right message at the right time, based on the POS transactional data in the cloud, or ASP in a hosting, sort of pre-cloud, if that makes sense, to the cloud.
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Bailey: And then phones come into scope, and then the wallets get there.
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Bailey: But we realized through that, loyalty has a long sales, a long implementation cycle in terms of design, first you got the sales cycle, then you’ve got to design the loyalty program, then you’ve got to pilot the loyalty program.
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Bailey: You have to look at things over time, offers and loyalty run over time, so you have to then A-B test over time.
00:13:51.377 –> 00:14:11.697
Bailey: So one of the things we figured out around 2013 to 14, our largest client at the time, who I won’t name, had this epiphany that our real value was this sort of business to consumer CRM, that there was no business to consumer CRM in the cloud for a point of sale at that time.
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Bailey: You can name any of the CRMs that some of them have sales in their name, but they’re really designed for salespeople.
00:14:18.677 –> 00:14:23.617
Bailey: They’re not designed to collect data at scale and then action on them with campaign engines and offers and so forth.
00:14:23.617 –> 00:14:28.377
Bailey: And so we pivoted and really focused on the B2C CRM.
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Bailey: And then that’s really what got the attention of some of our competitors as we started to win business, and then also some of the card schemes and then heart length.
00:14:38.717 –> 00:14:39.317
Roddy: Interesting.
00:14:39.317 –> 00:14:39.777
Roddy: Very good.
00:14:39.777 –> 00:14:42.717
Roddy: So thank you for that path to where you are today.
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Roddy: So let’s talk about this year and some big news for Global was the launch of the new Genius POS platform.
00:14:48.957 –> 00:14:51.157
Roddy: And it’s going to be kind of the heart of our discussion today.
00:14:51.157 –> 00:14:57.237
Roddy: Can you talk about the industry trends that drove the design of the Genius POS product?
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Bailey: Yeah, it’s interesting.
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Bailey: So one of the macro trends is really bringing these sort of…
00:15:06.397 –> 00:15:08.977
Bailey: So I’m first set up by market segment definitions.
00:15:08.977 –> 00:15:15.477
Bailey: So small business, let’s call it under 1 to 10 locations.
00:15:15.477 –> 00:15:20.797
Bailey: Maybe they do about a million per year per location.
00:15:20.797 –> 00:15:24.397
Bailey: Then you start to get into mid-market where you get into sort of 50-ish and so forth.
00:15:24.397 –> 00:15:32.677
Bailey: You got multi-location, that type of thing, and then you get into enterprise, which is really, you can think of thousands of locations and many of the popular brands that you know.
00:15:32.677 –> 00:15:38.957
Bailey: And so when I think about some trends, there’s a macro trend that’s been carrying through since the pandemic.
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Bailey: I don’t want to rewind all the way to the pandemic, but one of the things is taking the democratizing tools that enterprises use and bringing those down to the mid-market and particularly small business, where you can bring in tools that allow a business to run, a merchant, to run and grow their business.
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Bailey: And everything’s there, it’s seamless, it’s in one user interface, it’s in one platform, and it allows them to be effective versus historically, they would have to go out and work with the VAR to bring in all these different third parties.
00:16:13.017 –> 00:16:21.077
Bailey: So from the VAR’s perspective, now they’ve got one partner they can work with who’s bringing a lot of value and helping them increase margin and so forth.
00:16:21.617 –> 00:16:30.957
Bailey: And then also deploying that versus they’ve got the headache as of VAR or even as a merchant or client, trying to source from all these different providers if that makes sense.
00:16:30.957 –> 00:16:47.957
Bailey: And just to double click on that, in the pandemic, one of the things that we noticed was that if we go back to that March, there was the marches when the national emergency was declared and folks had to shelter in place through about May.
00:16:47.957 –> 00:17:14.637
Bailey: One of the things that we noticed was that in that immediate after the shelter in place order was given within a few weeks, all the way through May, the businesses or customers that actually had additional products beyond just payments, so they had point of sale, they had gift, they had loyalty, they had online ordering as an example, they were more resilient during that period of time and then they were more resilient coming out of the pandemic than customers that did not.
00:17:14.637 –> 00:17:23.797
Bailey: And so if you think about during the pandemic, when those orders went into place, large enterprises already have mobile ordering and delivery and all these kinds of things worked out.
00:17:23.797 –> 00:17:29.657
Bailey: And so, yeah, it impacted their revenue, but it didn’t, it wasn’t an existential threat to put them out of business.
00:17:29.657 –> 00:17:43.417
Bailey: But in the small business and mid-market, it was things like having a gift card program or having online ordering already there at the start of the pandemic, those small businesses fared better and then were more resilient.
00:17:43.417 –> 00:17:47.397
Bailey: So as we, you know, that’s a lesson that we learned by looking at that.
00:17:47.397 –> 00:18:05.557
Bailey: And so coming forward, we start thinking about and looking at Genius, what are the different capabilities we can put in there so that things like bookings and reservations and having online ordering and having invoicing and pay by link and just all these things along with inventory management and order and transactions and things of that nature, if that makes sense.
00:18:05.557 –> 00:18:08.117
Bailey: So it’s in one solution.
00:18:08.117 –> 00:18:08.397
Roddy: Got it.
00:18:08.397 –> 00:18:09.717
Roddy: And bundled it all together.
00:18:09.717 –> 00:18:10.777
Bailey: Bundled it all together.
00:18:11.497 –> 00:18:11.717
Roddy: Yeah.
00:18:11.717 –> 00:18:14.357
Roddy: So some of the trends you talked about, again, tools to the SMBs.
00:18:14.357 –> 00:18:21.557
Roddy: It seems like also a lot of services being offered by the VARS and then, you know, this beyond POS being more resilient.
00:18:21.557 –> 00:18:25.757
Roddy: Are there any other industry trends you want to mention or do you want me to start doubling down on some of them?
00:18:25.857 –> 00:18:27.677
Bailey: So there’s another one which is AI.
00:18:27.677 –> 00:18:37.777
Bailey: And, you know, one of the things having been in software, you know, for a while now, you know, three and a half decades, new cycles come along.
00:18:39.357 –> 00:18:41.577
Bailey: I remember when fax machines were a big deal.
00:18:41.577 –> 00:18:44.117
Bailey: And then email was a big deal when email came in.
00:18:44.117 –> 00:18:47.597
Bailey: And we didn’t have to do things by US Post anymore, the 800 or the phone call.
00:18:48.277 –> 00:18:51.557
Bailey: And then.com came in and online storefronts and whatnot.
00:18:51.557 –> 00:18:52.557
Bailey: And then the phones.
00:18:52.557 –> 00:18:58.697
Bailey: And so I’ve been through many different cycles where everybody first looks and says, you know, this is going to change the industry forever.
00:18:58.697 –> 00:19:00.237
Bailey: It’s also going to take away jobs.
00:19:00.237 –> 00:19:05.237
Bailey: It’s also going to change, you know, put VARs and salespeople out of business or whatnot.
00:19:05.237 –> 00:19:12.937
Bailey: And always leaned in to how to use that for the betterment of the customer, the team, whatnot.
00:19:12.937 –> 00:19:14.357
Bailey: So AI is an example.
00:19:14.937 –> 00:19:19.017
Bailey: So AI, there’s a lot of buzzwords out there about that.
00:19:19.017 –> 00:19:21.977
Bailey: Not just buzzwords, but buzzwords and folks thinking about it.
00:19:21.977 –> 00:19:26.737
Bailey: The way I think about AI is, how can it just solve simple problems?
00:19:26.737 –> 00:19:36.097
Bailey: So our why, so our business has a why within Global Payments, which is we build software to help businesses around the world run and grow their business.
00:19:36.097 –> 00:19:45.477
Bailey: But our team always talks about, there’s a secondary piece, which is if we’re helping you run and grow your business, how do we also give you back time and make things simpler?
00:19:45.697 –> 00:19:59.297
Bailey: Not to take away people’s jobs or so forth, but just to give you back time so you can start to think about spending more time with your family, growing the business or employees at the business, thinking about optimizing things and doing things better.
00:19:59.297 –> 00:20:13.177
Bailey: And so in AI, I think about the first simple use case is we could build reporting ad nauseum and never have enough reporting and analytics for the customer no matter what size they are.
00:20:14.597 –> 00:20:19.517
Bailey: Everybody always wants that extra dashboard, that extra ability to slice and dice.
00:20:19.517 –> 00:20:37.697
Bailey: So simply have an LLM interface where you can ask questions of Genius and then get back what’s the top selling item, what’s the inventory, what are my most loyal customers, because you’ve got again loyalty and bookings and reservations and inventory all together.
00:20:37.697 –> 00:20:54.117
Bailey: So the first is just simply now you’ve got the best reporting interface by asking natural language questions, and then you could do things where then you get to the second phase of saving time and making it more efficient, which is you ask and go through a series of insights about inventory.
00:20:54.117 –> 00:20:57.677
Bailey: What if you ask, well, what would happen if I change my price?
00:20:57.677 –> 00:20:59.117
Bailey: What would happen if I change the price?
00:20:59.117 –> 00:21:00.377
Bailey: Well, here’s what would happen.
00:21:00.377 –> 00:21:02.117
Bailey: I know by the way, would you like to do that?
00:21:02.137 –> 00:21:11.717
Bailey: It just makes it happen versus you get the analysis from the consultants or you do the analysis, and then you’re like, well, I can’t implement it because it’s going to take me too much time to go update the pricing fast enough.
00:21:11.717 –> 00:21:13.437
Bailey: Then you could get into loyalty and other things.
00:21:13.437 –> 00:21:21.197
Bailey: I think about with AI, it’s just simply starting with the basics and saving time and then moving from there.
00:21:21.197 –> 00:21:24.697
Bailey: Not that there’s some silver bullet, if that makes sense.
00:21:24.697 –> 00:21:25.377
Roddy: Very much.
00:21:25.377 –> 00:21:42.557
Roddy: The RSPA is in the process, we’re forming an AI advisory group to guide VARs and ISVs on, you’re just talking about there’s a million different options, both internal efficiency, external revenue generating, and that’s what the experts keep saying to us is, what’s the pain point?
00:21:42.557 –> 00:21:48.617
Roddy: Start with a problem, if AI can solve it great, if it’s something else, that’s fine too, but that’s where you have to start off with, right?
00:21:48.617 –> 00:21:54.877
Roddy: Taking care of your merchants, helping them run more effectively, more efficiently.
00:21:54.877 –> 00:21:56.617
Roddy: That’s what it sounds like is your take as well.
00:21:56.617 –> 00:22:01.357
Roddy: Not just with AI, but like you talked about from going back to the fax machines to today, right?
00:22:01.357 –> 00:22:03.977
Roddy: Like what is the application, what’s the pain point?
00:22:03.977 –> 00:22:04.317
Bailey: That’s right.
00:22:04.317 –> 00:22:18.157
Bailey: And I think about, if I think about, you know, the experience of going from fax to post to email to whatever, and then, you know, the sort of intranet to the customers to figure out their licensing models and everything without getting the salesperson engaged.
00:22:18.157 –> 00:22:43.297
Bailey: I think today from a VAR, you know, if today I had a VAR, I’d be focused on then also how to add AI from a, let’s call it a sales tool in terms of allowing the prospective client to interact with that, to sort of figure out what are the capabilities and what are the things so that then the, the VAR salesperson could add even more value and be more strategic versus just simply going through product information and trying to figure out which of the product and feature capabilities match.
00:22:43.297 –> 00:22:48.177
Bailey: So I’d be focused on trying to introduce AI there from a sales tool matter, if that makes sense.
00:22:48.177 –> 00:22:48.977
Roddy: Very much, very much.
00:22:48.977 –> 00:22:59.657
Roddy: So thanks for talking about it in that realm because our members keep telling us they don’t want to talk about what AI could do, they want to talk about what AI is doing and you’re talking about some practical applications.
00:22:59.697 –> 00:23:00.857
Roddy: Let’s get dovetailing in that.
00:23:00.857 –> 00:23:06.597
Roddy: You brought up that the tools that are available for the enterprise are coming down to the SMB space.
00:23:06.597 –> 00:23:13.557
Roddy: One thing that I’ve said is consumers before be like, hey, it’s my small mom and pop merchant, I’m going to give them a break.
00:23:13.557 –> 00:23:26.297
Roddy: But now that they have Amazon and Walmart rate and all these, snap your fingers and it’s going to show up on your doorstep, they’re less kind, I guess, and they have higher expectations for what the merchant can offer.
00:23:26.297 –> 00:23:37.817
Roddy: Can you talk about the importance of VARs being able to offer tools to those SMB and mid-size merchants, so they can compete with the enterprise because the consumers are counting on them to act like the enterprise?
00:23:37.817 –> 00:23:52.357
Bailey: Yeah, I think about if it’s a VAR working with a small business, it’s not just that you’ve got the sort of what you might think of historically as point of sale, inventory, sales tax calculator, sales tax, business logic, those type of things.
00:23:52.357 –> 00:23:56.117
Bailey: But are there tools in there to help the small business acquire customers?
00:23:57.137 –> 00:24:23.677
Bailey: When we used in running and being with a lot of history and customer engagement loyalty programs, one of the things that was always asked by clients, direct clients, were what do you have to acquire customers in terms of digital advertising acquisition tools, whether it’s social reviews as an acquisition tool, as an example, online table reservations or booking reservations as an acquisition tool to acquire new customers.
00:24:24.777 –> 00:24:27.757
Bailey: Order ahead with delivery is an acquisition tool.
00:24:27.757 –> 00:24:45.397
Bailey: The first thing is making sure that you’re selling a solution that has acquisition tools, because that’s often why folks will go into a small business or even a mid-market business has to go into a marketplace and then slice off a piece of their margin, because they’re just trying to simply acquire customers.
00:24:45.677 –> 00:24:52.757
Bailey: When you can provide acquisition tools in the solution, that helps, and then also retention tools to drive more frequency.
00:24:52.857 –> 00:24:56.697
Bailey: And most folks are focused on retention tools, loyalty, gift cards, things of that nature.
00:24:56.697 –> 00:24:58.217
Bailey: That’s a pretty no-brainer.
00:24:58.217 –> 00:25:01.597
Bailey: But the acquisition tools is a big component.
00:25:01.597 –> 00:25:13.217
Bailey: There’s another piece I think about too, which is today, and this is where I think, again, going back to AI a bit and where the puck’s going.
00:25:13.217 –> 00:25:16.657
Bailey: Today, you would go and search online.
00:25:16.657 –> 00:25:28.517
Bailey: And there are plenty of tools to connect a point of sale online so that your inventory shows up in Google search, just like a big enterprise or an Amazon or so forth.
00:25:28.517 –> 00:25:30.517
Bailey: So there are a lot of tools around that.
00:25:30.517 –> 00:25:43.797
Bailey: But where the future is going is, what if folks start to go into their LLM model, without naming names, go into an LLM model, and they start to look up, where’s the local XYZ, or is this in stock, or that type of thing, after they’ve done some research?
00:25:43.797 –> 00:25:51.957
Bailey: And then the LLM starts to provide the ability to transact right there, and that sort of zero moment of truth is Google calls it in search.
00:25:51.957 –> 00:26:07.977
Bailey: And so to me, getting POS inventory data and other tools, platforms connected up to name any of the LLMs out there that folks are using, that’s going to be the future, or at least future proofing, because I’m sure search and other things will evolve too.
00:26:07.977 –> 00:26:18.377
Roddy: Right, because if SEO was everything and ranking out in those search rankings, now it’s do you come up when somebody poses a question to some of these chat tools.
00:26:18.377 –> 00:26:23.897
Roddy: It’s funny, I think you and I are right about the same age, so we’ve seen a lot of the same technology roles.
00:26:23.897 –> 00:26:26.857
Roddy: It’s all, I remember, so do you remember Ask Jeeves?
00:26:26.857 –> 00:26:27.757
Roddy: Do you remember that search?
00:26:27.757 –> 00:26:29.037
Bailey: Oh yeah, I remember Ask Jeeves.
00:26:29.037 –> 00:26:41.077
Roddy: And so Ask Jeeves wasn’t just he put in words, you like asked Jeeves a question, and I find myself doing that now, like that’s essentially what I’m doing, what I’m interacting with Gemini or ChatGPT or something like that.
00:26:41.197 –> 00:26:47.417
Roddy: So it’s really funny how, but boy, obviously, what’s the results that come up are way different now.
00:26:47.417 –> 00:26:51.577
Roddy: And it sounds like what you’re saying is merchants and VARs have to be able to adapt to that as well.
00:26:51.577 –> 00:26:53.197
Roddy: They have to understand that better.
00:26:53.197 –> 00:26:54.497
Bailey: That’s right.
00:26:54.597 –> 00:27:04.497
Bailey: It’s interesting if someone’s been around long enough, innovation and the way that industry advances is you break things apart and put them back together in better, more useful ways.
00:27:04.497 –> 00:27:08.417
Bailey: And in this case, AI is a new technology versus Ask Jeeves.
00:27:08.417 –> 00:27:15.917
Bailey: But you could say that it’s the concepts, it’s sort of the concepts and the ideas that you break apart and put back together in better, more useful ways.
00:27:15.917 –> 00:27:21.157
Bailey: And just the underlying technology changes to make it more scalable and faster and more efficient, if that makes sense.
00:27:21.157 –> 00:27:21.917
Roddy: Very much.
00:27:21.917 –> 00:27:23.097
Roddy: Yeah.
00:27:23.097 –> 00:27:27.317
Roddy: Let me ask about one more before, you know, one more of these trends that we mentioned.
00:27:27.317 –> 00:27:30.357
Roddy: It’s about going beyond the POS.
00:27:30.357 –> 00:27:38.817
Roddy: And so we saw that during the recession, like you said, these VARs had been preaching for years online ordering, curbside pickup, you know, everything like that.
00:27:39.237 –> 00:27:42.137
Roddy: And then, you know, the restaurants and retailers were like, ah, we’re fine, we’re fine.
00:27:42.137 –> 00:27:45.837
Roddy: And then once the recession and they were scrambling to do that.
00:27:45.837 –> 00:27:50.457
Roddy: Can you talk about, and again, this is, you know, driving why you created Genius.
00:27:50.457 –> 00:27:53.057
Roddy: It’s not just taking care of the point of sale.
00:27:53.057 –> 00:27:56.117
Roddy: It’s everything or most everything around it.
00:27:56.117 –> 00:27:57.777
Roddy: Can you talk about the importance of that?
00:27:57.777 –> 00:28:06.757
Roddy: And then VARs being able to own the entire, you know, retail technology ecosystem, not just the point of sale with their merchants?
00:28:07.437 –> 00:28:14.277
Bailey: Yes, it’s interesting because, you know, Global Payments, you know, as an acquirer, obviously, we think about payments.
00:28:14.277 –> 00:28:19.337
Bailey: And to me, all the software that we wrap around is a value-added solution.
00:28:19.337 –> 00:28:21.417
Bailey: So, you know, loyalty is a value-added solution.
00:28:21.417 –> 00:28:22.437
Bailey: So is inventory.
00:28:22.437 –> 00:28:24.697
Bailey: So is bookings and reservations, those type of things.
00:28:24.697 –> 00:28:40.617
Bailey: And so by bringing all that in to one solution in a Genius, whether it’s bookings, you know, online ordering, social reviews, you know, acquisition tools like social reviews and smart campaigns from Google and so forth, just as you mentioned, one, you give a differentiated solution.
00:28:40.617 –> 00:28:42.537
Bailey: You’ve got everything there.
00:28:42.537 –> 00:28:51.377
Bailey: One of the, so it provides more value to the small business, and you don’t have to then also take the time to cobble together all these different systems and whatnot.
00:28:51.377 –> 00:29:02.657
Bailey: But it also helps with something that I saw, you know, if I want to speak directly to VARs, I think about my experience at Software Express where over that career, I watched something called margin compression.
00:29:02.657 –> 00:29:20.177
Bailey: You know, if you’re putting more value in there, you’re wrapping more value around that transaction, around the payment transaction, and by putting more value in, you’re also then increasing, not increasing, but keeping the margin there, keeping the margin for the value, if that makes sense, versus having significant margin compression.
00:29:20.957 –> 00:29:22.377
Roddy: Yeah.
00:29:22.377 –> 00:29:22.857
Roddy: Well said.
00:29:22.857 –> 00:29:39.297
Roddy: Before we take a quick commercial break, I also want to get your perspective on how you think Genius is going to help VARs better compete against what we at the RSPA call margin obliterating, VC backed, 800 number, one size fits all POS providers who don’t believe in the channel.
00:29:39.297 –> 00:29:39.517
Bailey: Yeah.
00:29:39.517 –> 00:29:55.577
Bailey: So I think, one, going back to the last question, putting that value in there gives a differentiated solution versus you might have one of these 800, as you just described it, but it may be difficult to bring the payments in.
00:29:55.577 –> 00:30:08.357
Bailey: If it’s difficult to bring the payments in, then things like simple card not present features, invoicing, pay-by-link, order ahead, virtual terminal, all these things that you need, then you have to, one, you don’t have those solutions.
00:30:08.357 –> 00:30:14.557
Bailey: Two, you have to bring in third parties that get sort of clunky or also difficult to bring in.
00:30:14.557 –> 00:30:16.957
Bailey: Maybe that makes it more challenging.
00:30:16.957 –> 00:30:30.877
Bailey: So you’ve got lots of value that the VAR can deliver, and by having that value and having a good partner, then they will have a good margin there versus the competitor.
00:30:30.877 –> 00:30:44.557
Bailey: The other piece, because I think about it, back to that margin repression piece, often the margin repression got so much that I remember competing against resellers where I realized they were just looking to get more MDF funds, sorry, marketing development funds, than even the margin.
00:30:44.557 –> 00:30:48.397
Bailey: That’s where it kind of got to in the 90s, particularly the late 90s.
00:30:48.397 –> 00:31:04.217
Bailey: And so I think now about with Genius, getting scale with Genius requires all distribution go to market motions, whether it’s partner, direct, direct field inside, various types of partners, international distribution, the scale of global payments.
00:31:04.217 –> 00:31:08.757
Bailey: Dealers are a piece of the partner ecosystem, critically important.
00:31:08.757 –> 00:31:16.377
Bailey: I learned my lessons of how Microsoft did that with the indirect model to get scale at the early days when they were not a household name outside of OS.
00:31:16.377 –> 00:31:19.497
Bailey: And so I sort of take some of those lessons learned here with Genius.
00:31:19.497 –> 00:31:22.717
Bailey: And it’s also how to continue to deliver value.
00:31:23.077 –> 00:31:30.097
Roddy: And I appreciate you talk about the revenue part of it because, again, I’ve been in this space for almost as long as you have.
00:31:30.097 –> 00:31:34.917
Roddy: And oftentimes, you talk to folks who have a new product and they talk about the product and how great it is.
00:31:34.917 –> 00:31:37.017
Roddy: And the VAR is like, that’s nice.
00:31:37.017 –> 00:31:38.357
Roddy: Can I make money with it?
00:31:38.357 –> 00:31:40.597
Roddy: And will it open new doors for me, right?
00:31:40.597 –> 00:31:47.797
Roddy: Because if it doesn’t also do those two things, it might be neat, but it’s not going to help them get the number that they need.
00:31:47.797 –> 00:31:49.677
Bailey: Yeah, it’s interesting.
00:31:49.677 –> 00:32:03.477
Bailey: My experience at Software Express in terms of being a salesperson, then growing a sales team, an inside sales team, and then leading the inside sales team there by 2000, 1997 through 2000.
00:32:03.477 –> 00:32:17.597
Bailey: One of the things I learned is that often you could have the best product and widget, but if you don’t have the right sort of go-to-market motion or the right, to your point, margin profile and whatnot, it doesn’t get the salespeople’s interest, therefore nobody ever hears about it.
00:32:17.597 –> 00:32:37.137
Bailey: And so certainly in a company with this scale and all the different distribution channels, I often think about, I don’t often, we think about that as we’re building bundles and products and whatnot, and thinking about sometimes a product idea, if it can’t actually make a return, is it worth doing the product?
00:32:37.137 –> 00:32:41.257
Bailey: Typically, if I can get through the customer lens on that, that means we’re not delivering enough value to the customer.
00:32:41.257 –> 00:32:45.077
Bailey: I know we’re focused here on the bars and sales, but the same is true of the customer.
00:32:45.077 –> 00:32:49.097
Bailey: The customer is not going to buy it if there’s not enough value in it, if that makes sense.
00:32:49.817 –> 00:32:50.597
Roddy: Well said.
00:32:50.597 –> 00:32:55.477
Roddy: Let’s pause here and let our listeners and viewers know about the Retail Solutions Providers Association.
00:32:55.497 –> 00:33:01.777
Roddy: RSPA is North America’s largest community of retail technology bars, software providers, vendors, and distributors.
00:33:01.777 –> 00:33:07.597
Roddy: To accelerate your success through an RSPA membership, email membership at gorspa.org.
00:33:07.597 –> 00:33:13.257
Roddy: Also, thanks to these companies who support the RSPA community and make this podcast and video series possible.
00:33:13.257 –> 00:33:23.697
Roddy: Our platinum sponsor is Bluestar, our gold sponsors are CoCard, Epson, ScanSource, and Heartland, aka Global Payments, aka Genius.
00:33:23.697 –> 00:33:30.557
Roddy: Also, I want to make sure everybody knows, registration is now open for Inspire 2026, the retail IT channels from your leadership conference.
00:33:30.577 –> 00:33:35.397
Roddy: RSPA Inspire is set for February 1st through 4th on the beautiful island of Kauai, Hawaii.
00:33:35.397 –> 00:33:42.837
Roddy: For more information, visit gorspa.org/inspire so you can experience networking nirvana.
00:33:43.057 –> 00:33:44.797
Roddy: So we’ve only got about 10 minutes left.
00:33:44.797 –> 00:33:49.417
Roddy: I want to talk a bit, Gilbert, about your leadership journey and what you learned along the way.
00:33:49.417 –> 00:33:52.517
Roddy: So first, can you describe your leadership style?
00:33:52.517 –> 00:33:58.077
Roddy: Are there a few overarching words or phrases that represent what you’re striving for as a leader?
00:33:58.077 –> 00:34:10.537
Bailey: Building and empowering teams, collaborative, hearing lots of voices, particularly alternative points of view, but then taking action and making a decision based on those voices.
00:34:11.017 –> 00:34:37.937
Bailey: I learned at Software Express, being an individual contributor, there was a point where I had an epiphany about delegating, building teams and so forth versus trying to do it yourself, because it’s a simple math game if you do something at one and you continue to do it there, it’s hard to scale that, but if you get a bunch of folks at point eight, at point five or whatever and get scale, just because they’re getting trained, they’re learning something new, you actually end up better off.
00:34:37.937 –> 00:34:40.457
Bailey: And so that was an important lesson at Software Express carrying through.
00:34:41.257 –> 00:34:46.797
Bailey: But it’s really building these teams and empowering them, taking opportunities to put them forward.
00:34:48.077 –> 00:34:56.457
Bailey: You don’t want to just always take the chance to go speak or to go lead something or whatever, you want to build and empower team members to do that.
00:34:56.457 –> 00:34:58.877
Bailey: If that makes sense, that’s how you get true scale.
00:34:58.877 –> 00:35:00.557
Roddy: Right, you just got to have a leave behind, right?
00:35:00.557 –> 00:35:02.277
Roddy: It’s, you can’t just be all leaning on you.
00:35:02.277 –> 00:35:02.817
Roddy: So go ahead.
00:35:02.817 –> 00:35:03.257
Bailey: That’s right.
00:35:03.257 –> 00:35:10.837
Bailey: And then the other one is, my team would, sure, if they were here, they would smile at this one, action beats inaction.
00:35:10.837 –> 00:35:13.037
Bailey: Do not sit around and admire a problem.
00:35:13.037 –> 00:35:14.677
Bailey: Action always beats inaction.
00:35:14.677 –> 00:35:24.657
Bailey: So I, you know, I move fast, listen to voices, particularly again, looking for alternative points of view, but then taking decisive action and moving on.
00:35:25.717 –> 00:35:26.117
Roddy: I love it.
00:35:26.117 –> 00:35:28.417
Roddy: Action always beats inaction.
00:35:28.417 –> 00:35:32.717
Roddy: Can you double down a little bit on what you said about collaborative?
00:35:32.717 –> 00:35:34.677
Roddy: So I’m a big fan of that as well.
00:35:34.677 –> 00:35:42.897
Roddy: When people ask about my leadership style, I say, try to think that I’m not sitting at the head of the table, but it’s part of a round table and everybody’s contributing to the pool of knowledge.
00:35:42.897 –> 00:35:49.157
Roddy: What are some things that you do to enhance collaboration among your team?
00:35:49.157 –> 00:35:50.457
Bailey: Yes, it’s interesting.
00:35:50.457 –> 00:36:01.137
Bailey: So one is the discipline cadences in terms of having regular check-ins and calls where you’ve got lots of voices around the table and lots of diverse opinions and so forth.
00:36:01.337 –> 00:36:11.917
Bailey: The team knows that there’s a healthy friction in debating ideas, particularly the alternative points of view, and they see that often encourage that debate, that healthy friction.
00:36:12.417 –> 00:36:17.757
Bailey: But then they also see that at some point we’re going to cut that off and make a decision and move on.
00:36:20.037 –> 00:36:20.437
Roddy: Got it.
00:36:20.437 –> 00:36:22.577
Roddy: Yeah, so don’t be afraid of any disagreement.
00:36:22.577 –> 00:36:23.457
Bailey: Yeah, it’s interesting.
00:36:24.857 –> 00:36:28.157
Bailey: I went to Guilford College, which is a Quaker school.
00:36:28.157 –> 00:36:33.477
Bailey: I’m not a Quaker, but went there and then I served on the Board of Trustees for a long time, and it runs by consensus.
00:36:33.577 –> 00:36:41.297
Bailey: In the Consensus Decision Making Model, collaboration and hearing all points of view to get to consensus.
00:36:41.297 –> 00:36:43.937
Bailey: It’s an interesting operating model.
00:36:43.937 –> 00:36:56.477
Bailey: I would say it’s a little bit of a blend of that consensus in terms of getting all those viewpoints out there, but with a little bit more on the then moving forward with the action because there’s a single decision maker versus you’re getting to drive to consensus.
00:36:56.477 –> 00:36:57.897
Bailey: But I find that to be a healthy process.
00:36:59.857 –> 00:37:00.317
Roddy: Very nice.
00:37:00.317 –> 00:37:04.657
Roddy: If I could bring connect two worlds together, I’m originally from Erie, Pennsylvania.
00:37:04.657 –> 00:37:06.357
Roddy: Bradford is outside of Erie.
00:37:06.357 –> 00:37:13.977
Roddy: Jesse Dulouf, who is a great coach at Pitt Bradford, just started as the head men’s basketball coach at Guilford there.
00:37:13.977 –> 00:37:15.097
Roddy: So I love it.
00:37:15.337 –> 00:37:23.757
Roddy: I am following Guilford and Quaker institutions are always very, very interesting to me as well in terms of their approach to things.
00:37:25.077 –> 00:37:29.077
Roddy: So you talked about your path to get from where you are today.
00:37:29.077 –> 00:37:39.697
Roddy: Can you talk about some of the leaders that you’ve looked up to as mentors and helped you shape your leadership approach and what are the things they did or that they said that has had a lasting impact on you?
00:37:39.697 –> 00:37:43.577
Bailey: Yeah, it’s interesting in terms of mentors.
00:37:43.577 –> 00:37:51.757
Bailey: It’s hard to think about something that sticks out, but I will say that if you were on my team, you would get a book called Strategic Intuition.
00:37:52.437 –> 00:37:56.357
Bailey: All of my direct reports and many of their reports get this book called Strategic Intuition.
00:37:56.357 –> 00:38:00.417
Bailey: It’s by Columbia University Press.
00:38:00.417 –> 00:38:02.097
Bailey: William, I think it’s Duggan or Duggan.
00:38:02.117 –> 00:38:04.197
Bailey: I don’t know how to pronounce his last name.
00:38:04.197 –> 00:38:10.657
Bailey: The Strategic Intuition is very much in this model of you read a lot.
00:38:11.957 –> 00:38:15.357
Bailey: In this case, listen to podcast, read a lot, stay up with things.
00:38:15.937 –> 00:38:27.917
Bailey: You build the right team, you get them trained and then you can have this sort of creative spark and act versus you’re creating some monolithic strategic plan, if that makes sense.
00:38:27.917 –> 00:38:30.097
Bailey: Strategic Intuition is something I look at.
00:38:30.117 –> 00:38:41.157
Bailey: There’s a lot of folks who are highlighting that book, whether it’s General Patton or Steve Jobs or others, but it talks about this notion of there’s two models.
00:38:41.157 –> 00:38:45.437
Bailey: You can create this monolithic plan, you can go do a bunch of brainstorming sessions, etc., etc.
00:38:46.217 –> 00:38:59.117
Bailey: Or you can get a bunch of smart people together who are very well-versed and up to speed on things, got the right resources, the right team, and then you plant seeds and ideas with them, and then let the sort of create a spark.
00:38:59.117 –> 00:39:16.597
Bailey: The moment when they’re in the shower, they’re going to bed and about to doze off or they’re running a long distance, and you’ve planted that seed and then have the meeting, and the idea comes to them before the meeting, see if a very productive meeting versus the other way around of doing brainstorming, cold and giving out the topics in the meeting, and it’s hard to progress.
00:39:16.597 –> 00:39:21.057
Bailey: But strategic intuition really captures a lot of the leadership style.
00:39:21.057 –> 00:39:26.417
Bailey: If I want to get into a specific person without naming names on this one, I’ll use a fictional character, Jim.
00:39:26.417 –> 00:39:27.017
Roddy: Okay.
00:39:28.017 –> 00:39:33.057
Bailey: You probably watched Star Trek when it was live on TV back in the day with Gunsmoke like I did.
00:39:33.057 –> 00:39:33.777
Roddy: All right.
00:39:33.937 –> 00:39:48.457
Bailey: I think about whether it’s Captain Kirk or name any of the future ones, like Captain Picard or any of them, and I think about there’s a lot of lessons there in terms of getting the officers together, getting to first points of view, but you have to make a decision.
00:39:48.457 –> 00:39:55.277
Bailey: It’s also important to understand how things work on the starship as the captain, versus you’re disconnected from it.
00:39:55.277 –> 00:40:03.337
Bailey: There’s a lot of lessons growing up on Star Trek where my team will hear me quote things all the time, if that makes sense.
00:40:03.337 –> 00:40:03.837
Roddy: Very good.
00:40:03.837 –> 00:40:04.797
Roddy: And the SPOC, right?
00:40:04.797 –> 00:40:06.777
Roddy: And everything with that, so.
00:40:06.897 –> 00:40:08.417
Bailey: Yeah, exactly.
00:40:08.417 –> 00:40:08.857
Roddy: Very nice.
00:40:09.037 –> 00:40:19.077
Roddy: As you were talking, I quickly looked up strategic intuition, the creative spark and human achievement, a 2007 book by William Dugan, and it is Columbia University Press.
00:40:19.077 –> 00:40:20.817
Roddy: So very good memory.
00:40:21.137 –> 00:40:21.877
Roddy: I’m going to get that one.
00:40:21.877 –> 00:40:28.897
Roddy: And it kind of reminds me of back when I was with a publishing company going through the great recession.
00:40:28.897 –> 00:40:36.397
Roddy: I remember our controller sent an email and he basically said, this is before our steering committee meeting that we had.
00:40:36.397 –> 00:40:41.677
Roddy: He said, we need to make a decision now before a path is determined for us.
00:40:41.937 –> 00:40:45.297
Roddy: If you get to the point of no return, you have no choice whatsoever.
00:40:45.297 –> 00:40:46.557
Roddy: That kind of sounds like what you’re talking about.
00:40:46.557 –> 00:40:49.177
Roddy: You get everybody thinking about the strategic.
00:40:49.177 –> 00:40:55.197
Roddy: And it’s not just, hey, we’re following A through Z, it’s making all the adaptations along the way, if I’m understanding correctly.
00:40:55.197 –> 00:40:57.497
Bailey: Yeah, it’s very much about being adaptive.
00:40:57.497 –> 00:41:00.997
Bailey: And as we’ve discussed over our careers, there’s a lot of change.
00:41:00.997 –> 00:41:02.697
Bailey: And so if you’re adaptive, you can get through it.
00:41:02.697 –> 00:41:11.977
Bailey: There’s another, yeah, there’s a saying I always use with the team, which is, we actually want to create our future and make a decision to create our future versus being the result of somebody else’s decision, you know.
00:41:11.977 –> 00:41:13.697
Roddy: Yes, very well said.
00:41:13.697 –> 00:41:14.537
Roddy: Yeah.
00:41:14.537 –> 00:41:16.317
Roddy: Hey, a couple more questions for you.
00:41:16.317 –> 00:41:21.757
Roddy: One is, can you share with us maybe a mistake that you made as a leader and what you learned from it?
00:41:21.757 –> 00:41:27.237
Roddy: It could be recent, could be a long time ago, could be a colossal disaster, or it could be just fell short of your standards.
00:41:27.237 –> 00:41:29.157
Roddy: You want to share that with our audience?
00:41:29.157 –> 00:41:32.897
Bailey: Yeah, now I’ll give one and this kind of ties into the action beats in action.
00:41:32.897 –> 00:41:36.277
Bailey: So, you know, so action beats in action.
00:41:36.277 –> 00:41:45.657
Bailey: One of the things I learned sort of later in life is that if it’s an existential decision, then you do need to slow down and get a lot of voices involved.
00:41:45.657 –> 00:41:52.637
Bailey: So that because it’s existential in nature, it could be life threatening, it could put you out of business, that type of thing, so you slow down.
00:41:52.637 –> 00:41:54.637
Bailey: But going back to the action beats in action.
00:41:54.637 –> 00:42:07.037
Bailey: So in 2016, 2017, after the acquisition, a lot of businesses got rolled under me to put together and lead sort of a customer engagement and gift business within Global Payments.
00:42:07.037 –> 00:42:13.197
Bailey: And so pretty quickly, I was making a lot of decisions in the first 30 days very quickly.
00:42:13.197 –> 00:42:23.197
Bailey: And so one of those decisions I made was to take at the time, something called a sales enablement team, product sales specialists, and reorg and move them around.
00:42:23.197 –> 00:42:28.697
Bailey: And then, and I didn’t know what product sales specialists were in product sales enablement.
00:42:28.697 –> 00:42:37.197
Bailey: It was kind of, you know, when you’re used to direct sales and you’re used to working through partners like Bars and so forth, to have a team that isn’t calling merchants, calling customers directly.
00:42:37.197 –> 00:42:39.017
Bailey: It’s kind of, you know, what is that?
00:42:39.017 –> 00:42:47.797
Bailey: But then pretty quickly, pretty quickly figured out in a company the size, what the importance of being able to train sales folks to actually sell was so critically important.
00:42:47.797 –> 00:42:53.237
Bailey: And I realized that I’d made a decision to reorg and move them into the wrong place.
00:42:53.237 –> 00:43:04.357
Bailey: So in one of the things that in terms of, again, then owning up to that and demonstrating for your teams that you need to move fast, but sometimes you’re going to make a mistake.
00:43:04.357 –> 00:43:14.337
Bailey: I then had a call with that involved the entire team, their new supervisor, their prior supervisor, and all of my direct reports and explain, hey, we’ve been making a lot of decisions.
00:43:14.337 –> 00:43:15.337
Bailey: I’ve been making decisions.
00:43:15.337 –> 00:43:16.337
Bailey: We’ve been moving fast.
00:43:16.337 –> 00:43:17.597
Bailey: This was the wrong decision.
00:43:17.597 –> 00:43:20.777
Bailey: It’s no fault of the prior supervisor, the new supervisor.
00:43:20.777 –> 00:43:22.717
Bailey: This was my decision.
00:43:22.717 –> 00:43:23.957
Bailey: We’re going to reverse it.
00:43:23.957 –> 00:43:25.157
Bailey: And here’s why we’re reversing it.
00:43:25.157 –> 00:43:28.277
Bailey: I want folks to understand we’re reversing it because I made a poor decision.
00:43:28.377 –> 00:43:30.717
Bailey: I now understand the purpose of the team.
00:43:30.717 –> 00:43:33.437
Bailey: They need to be aligned without getting to the weeds over here.
00:43:33.437 –> 00:43:45.757
Bailey: But no one in the supervisors and senior leadership team should feel that they did anything wrongly, if that makes sense.
00:43:45.757 –> 00:43:45.977
Roddy: Yeah.
00:43:45.977 –> 00:43:48.097
Roddy: You don’t want to be passive in these things.
00:43:48.097 –> 00:43:52.797
Roddy: Things didn’t go as planned or because of the circumstances, right?
00:43:52.797 –> 00:43:55.657
Roddy: My basketball coach said, point the thumb, not the finger.
00:43:55.697 –> 00:43:56.737
Roddy: That’s what it sounds like you were.
00:43:56.737 –> 00:43:58.357
Roddy: That was kind of the leadership lesson for you.
00:43:58.357 –> 00:43:59.777
Roddy: Take full responsibility for it.
00:43:59.777 –> 00:44:00.357
Bailey: That’s right.
00:44:00.357 –> 00:44:05.557
Bailey: And so there’s lots of other examples of mistakes or making an investment or that type of thing.
00:44:05.557 –> 00:44:12.757
Bailey: And by doing that, then the teams see that they have an opportunity where they can go off and innovate and they can also fail and come back.
00:44:12.757 –> 00:44:15.757
Bailey: One of the things I will say, communication is critically important.
00:44:15.757 –> 00:44:22.437
Bailey: And I do have sort of another sort of saying that I use with the team, which is good news travels fast, bad news does not.
00:44:22.437 –> 00:44:24.597
Bailey: So make sure bad news gets up immediately.
00:44:25.237 –> 00:44:36.237
Bailey: And so when the teams are out and they’re innovating, maybe they are re-architecting because the hosting costs on some new platform aren’t performing well and they’re going to go off and do a test.
00:44:36.237 –> 00:44:44.737
Bailey: Pretty quickly, they may go off and they may do some innovation and it fails and maybe it fails with an expense tied to it, but they quickly communicate that because they know bad news should travel fast.
00:44:44.737 –> 00:44:46.337
Bailey: They know they’re allowed to do that.
00:44:46.337 –> 00:44:49.277
Bailey: They’ve seen me make decisions and then own up to it.
00:44:49.277 –> 00:44:50.877
Bailey: And then we just learn a lesson and move on.
00:44:52.557 –> 00:44:52.917
Roddy: I like it.
00:44:52.917 –> 00:44:56.877
Roddy: My related saying to that is bad news never ages well.
00:44:56.877 –> 00:45:02.037
Roddy: So if there’s bad news, you better get to it or else it’s going to be like rotten cheese very quickly.
00:45:03.117 –> 00:45:04.197
Roddy: So last question for you.
00:45:04.197 –> 00:45:05.877
Roddy: We’ve only got about three minutes left.
00:45:05.877 –> 00:45:08.737
Roddy: So what would be your final leadership advice for our audience?
00:45:08.737 –> 00:45:14.857
Roddy: Let’s say you have a quick ride share with a small business leader and they say, hey Gilbert, can you give me some advice?
00:45:14.857 –> 00:45:17.777
Roddy: What would be your leadership advice to them?
00:45:17.777 –> 00:45:31.097
Bailey: Well, the first one is if you have an idea, say it, so many folks have ideas and they never verbalize it, so it never gets out into reality and therefore, they never build a business or create a product or do something.
00:45:31.097 –> 00:45:39.077
Bailey: Then the next thing is make sure you surround yourself with folks and a team, so you can actually execute on the idea.
00:45:39.077 –> 00:45:46.717
Bailey: Because then so few ideas actually get verbalized and then of those, very few actually can be executed upon, if that makes sense.
00:45:47.217 –> 00:45:50.397
Bailey: And then the other one is, at that point, it would be action beats inaction.
00:45:50.397 –> 00:45:54.257
Bailey: Don’t sit around and admire problems and have paralysis by analysis.
00:45:54.257 –> 00:45:58.997
Bailey: You got an idea, state it, have a team that can execute it, and then start moving.
00:45:58.997 –> 00:46:01.917
Bailey: Even if you have some failure, you can learn from it and iterate.
00:46:01.917 –> 00:46:04.457
Bailey: Otherwise, you’re going to have an idea.
00:46:04.457 –> 00:46:17.877
Bailey: The worst case is, you have an idea, and then you have analysis by paralysis inside your head, and you never actually execute, and you never build teams, and you never lead groups and whatnot.
00:46:17.877 –> 00:46:28.877
Bailey: But in terms of just pure leadership, if they already have a group and have a team, and they’ve at least gotten through that, it would be making sure that you focus on talent and your team.
00:46:28.877 –> 00:46:39.177
Bailey: If all the things I have going on, the top priority is always talent development, and making sure that I’m investing in the team to actually execute what we have at hand.
00:46:39.177 –> 00:46:40.637
Roddy: Yeah, the right team and getting better.
00:46:40.677 –> 00:46:49.117
Roddy: It seems like you’re anti-naval gazing, like just examining and sitting still, and you’re a big fan of try, test, measure, adapt.
00:46:49.117 –> 00:46:54.797
Roddy: You’ve got to do all these things because just studying or thinking about it, there has to be some level of that.
00:46:54.797 –> 00:47:00.257
Roddy: But like you said, you’ve got to have some action so you can test it against the market and adapt to it if I’m understanding.
00:47:00.257 –> 00:47:02.237
Bailey: That’s right, because the market’s moving on.
00:47:02.237 –> 00:47:08.597
Bailey: If you’re sitting there doing analysis and thinking about it, others are moving, even if you can’t see them.
00:47:08.597 –> 00:47:09.797
Bailey: Yeah.
00:47:09.797 –> 00:47:10.237
Roddy: Very nice.
00:47:10.237 –> 00:47:12.357
Roddy: Well, that does it for this episode of The Trusted Advisor.
00:47:12.697 –> 00:47:19.837
Roddy: If you enjoyed our discussion, be sure to subscribe to the RSPA YouTube channel and The Trusted Advisor podcast so you never miss an episode.
00:47:19.837 –> 00:47:24.037
Roddy: Before we go, big thanks again to Gilbert Bailey for sharing his wisdom with us today.
00:47:24.037 –> 00:47:32.097
Roddy: Thanks also to RSPA Marketing Director, Chris Arnold for his production work, Joseph McDade for our music, and last but not least, thanks so much to you for listening.
00:47:32.097 –> 00:47:39.337
Roddy: Our goal at the RSPA is to accelerate the success of our members in the retail technology ecosystem by providing knowledge and connections.
00:47:39.337 –> 00:47:43.437
Roddy: For more information, please visit our website, gorsp.org.
00:47:43.437 –> 00:47:47.037
Roddy: Thanks for listening and goodbye everybody.
