My Path to Become a NetSuite Consultant

Follow Us On LinkedIn!

• Caleb Schmitz, CRO at Anchor Group
• Michael Mueller, eCommerce Account Executive at Anchor Group
• Anchor Group (Company Page)

Podcast Transcript:

Michael (00:00)

Hey everybody, thank you for tuning in to the Anchor Group podcast. Today we have an exciting one for you. It's going to be an interview of somebody on Anchor Group's C-suite, that is Caleb Schmitz. Caleb serves as the chief revenue officer for Anchor Group, and he also serves as a sales solution architect working on both the NetSuite space with integrations and in the e-commerce space. He's been at Anchor Group for about eight years, been working in the ERP e-commerce space for 10 years, and so today he's going to be sharing some thoughts and insight and kind of his origin story about how he came to be the Chief Revenue Officer at Anchor Group. So without further ado, let's get things started.

Michael (01:12)

Caleb, thanks for hopping on today and being willing to share a little bit more about you.

Caleb (01:17)

No problem. I think this topic is, when we were talking about it, was like, you know what? There's a lot of people that are just curious how to get into the consulting space and what does that path look like? And I think it's pretty interesting for people just to understand more about who consultants are, what's the journey and what's the career look like, how do they help people, and all the little things that are stacking up in life that get you to a consulting career path. And it's just a little bit unique and by no means is this the only path. It is just a path. And it's nice for someone to be able to hear what that looks like because it's one that oftentimes people end their careers on. And it's been something that I started early on in my career in this path and just a little bit different take.

Michael (02:10)

And talking about starting your career, let's, when we start this conversation, let's kind of take it way back to your childhood. I know many people I've spoken with, and I'm sure just in general, many people as they grow up, look to their parents or look to mentors they have for what careers are out there and that sort of thing. So I think the childhood can hold a lot of, can have a lot of direction for the way somebody lives their life, jobs they get in the future. So taking it all back to childhood, what was that like? What was your childhood like growing up?

Caleb (02:41)

So origin story. I grew up in a small town in Wisconsin. There was 3,000 people. That was actually the largest town in the county as well. And most people were employed by a pretty large clothing company, Land's End. And that's where it's based out of. So most people were employed by one e-commerce brand, well, at the time was more catalog based. And a lot of people worked at that company. So it's very common to understand, and as part of the town culture to be surrounded by one larger business. And it was pretty interesting to see that. But that helps give you a little bit of idea that it was very much a real community, which I loved. And I really enjoyed all of school in a smaller town too, and at the public high school. I found them to be amazing teachers at the public high school. And this was before cell phones were really common in school. I'm glad I went through high school prior to cell phones becoming very much more prevalent. So I'm very grateful for that. But if I were to think about this a little bit more, my parents were in a very different field, very non-technical, even. Even within the last year, my mom was complaining about two factor authentication. And I was like, oh boy, I think you would really struggle in this career. And my dad was a chiropractor and had just a small practice. It was just my mom and my dad working out of their small practice in the town. And they've retired and the business has been, they sold the building and the business. There's other chiropractors in town now. But one thing is we lived in the woods. And one thing is that when I think about my childhood, the most, like one of the best gifts they gave to me was we never had internet and we didn't have a TV for most of my childhood. I guess we had a TV, but like it was in the basement and because there's no internet, we never had cables. So it was the farmer five. You get like the basic five channels. And I also, it was like something growing up was I would always have to play and practice piano for 30 minutes to watch 30 minutes of TV. So it's very much like nothing that I had much of. But what that did is it did create some healthy boundaries. And I lived in the woods and I would spend a lot of time just with my imagination and playing in the woods, building forts, and having so much freedom just to dream and to wonder.

Michael (05:06)

Really?

Caleb (05:30)

I'm saying this because this is like the very first point where I was beginning to have more of creative mindset. And as you get into the consulting space, a huge part of it is the ability to be creative and think outside the box. And if I were to think back all the way back in childhood, I would be in the woods playing, dreaming, not having distractions, but just to have an idea. I had some really good science and engineering type, STEM wasn't a thing back then, but we'd have science classes and that was always something that really intrigued me. So my mom would go to a garage sale and buy an old radio for me to take apart. So I'd just take it apart, take out the wires. There'd be like the little motors from the cassettes and I would take those and then make little... I would take Popsicle sticks, hot glue gun and go make like a little car, and then I would go get, back then it was air hogs, remote control airplanes, the air hogs. And I would take those controllers and then make my own remote control cars. And these were like the little things I did while I was like listening to audio cassette tapes and listening to different stories. I think it was a lot of Hardy Boys and like boxcar children for a time.

Michael (06:49)

Very familiar with those over here.

Caleb (06:56)

So I would just listen and build and dream and get creative and get really frustrated and like, I'd have to start from scratch, working through those emotions of getting stuck and having to work through getting stuck on a little car project or messing up and have to start again, learning the resilience and persistence with that space for creativity. And that is another skill set. Through all these different little projects and that space to be creative and not distracted, I learned resilience and I learned persistence in solving things I didn't know how to do, but I knew that I had to figure it out and I was the only one that was in the way of figuring it out. And I think that is a skill set learned through those projects in that childhood. And I would never have learned them if I didn't have those distractions and the space to be creative. So I'm very grateful for that. And I'd say coming up through, that kind of gets me to before middle school and halfway through middle school, I was really interested in building videos and editing. I always have one project a year and learning a new skill set.

Michael (07:55)

Yeah.

Caleb (08:20)

Do you ever read the book Hatchet growing up as a kid?

Michael (08:23)

Dude, I loved Hatchet as a kid. And then when I was actually an English teacher, I taught Hatchet to my students a couple of times. We read through that book. So I'm very familiar with that book. It's a wonderful book, in my opinion.

Caleb (08:33)

It's so good. I read it and then in middle school, I did like a movie that was kind of based off of a little home video. And it's a very terrible movie, but it's pretty fun. My friends and I will occasionally watch it much later on and just laugh at it. But there's a part where I'm learning how to be creative and learning like the first parts of video editing and little skill sets like that. But there was a couple of funny scenes in it. One where I do a front flip with a hatchet off of a tree and I put like five mattresses. I held like all of our mattresses out of our house and my mom came home and she's like, what are you doing? But there was a tarp on the ground and all the mattresses stacked up as I try and hop off this tree and do a front flip. And I was trying to like get a deer and I brought a neighbor. This is rural, so hunting is very common. So I grabbed a deer, like a hunting, it was like, it was a real deer that was taxidermied. So it was like a taxidermy, but like a full deer that I used as a prop to jump off the tree, do a front flip with a hatchet and land on the stack of mattresses.

Michael (10:01)

And Caleb, you're saying there's video evidence of this somewhere?

Caleb (10:04)

I think so somewhere. Actually, I do have this DVD.

Michael (10:10)

All right. Might have to resurface that. Amazing. Caleb, I know you and I, we both have families now. We both are fathers and the imagination of childhood is incredible. And it's like, I remember when I was growing up too, I'd sometimes go out in the woods and a stick in the woods can keep you entertained for hours on end. It's amazing growing up in that sort of childhood. Now, you're born in Wisconsin, you grew up in Wisconsin. Two questions for you. How close were you to the Great Lakes? Because Wisconsin's sweet because they have a Great Lake to the north and to the east side. So how close were you to those lakes?

Caleb (10:59)

I was in southwest Wisconsin. I now live in Milwaukee, which is right on it, but I was in much more rolling hills, rolling hills in more of a wooded area of Wisconsin.

Michael (11:11)

Right on. Then, okay, follow up question, kind of unrelated. If you're from the upper Midwest, like, you know, Anchor Group, we're based out of Wisconsin and Minnesota. Are you a big cheese curd fan?

Caleb (11:17)

I am a walking stereotype because my grandpa owned a cheese factory so there is, it couldn't even be more of a stereotype than that. I mean it was like, this was the size of a tiny house. It was very small when I say factory just, that was a town of 40. So town of 40 is where my dad actually, he told me he's like, I'm pretty sure I never met a girl that I wasn't related to until I was in first grade. That's what he told me. So awkward kindergarten crushes for him.

Michael (12:20)

Speaking of cheese factories, if you're driving through Wisconsin, I know some people who listen to this are based out of the upper Midwest. If you're driving through Wisconsin on 94, you got to check out Car Valley Cheese. My family takes trips over there, Car Valley Cheese. They make wonderful cheese curds and have a couple locations right off on 94. Have you got a favorite cheese factory out there in Wisconsin, Caleb?

Caleb (12:44)

No, that's a good one. When my wife, she was from Chicago, but when we first moved to Wisconsin, she always laughed at the highway signs where it was basically just be a big sign that just says cheese.

Michael (12:56)

Isn't that crazy? For us, it's so normal, right? Growing up in this area. But I guess if you're not from, if you don't drive through Wisconsin often, that'd be crazy. Just, cheese. So, getting out of that childhood stage as we look, grow up a couple of years, you're getting more into, you said, video editing, that sort of thing. What are some of the next steps that led you to where you are today?

Caleb (13:15)

Well, one of my projects in middle school too was I wanted to, I was trying to do creative things and so I made my first book and I wrote my first book. It was a prank book and many years later, I did nothing with it. Just sold like five copies to different family members and this was with a point and click digital camera, middle school, through and through humor. It was after college I met someone in a bar, I sat next to him and he was a graphic designer. I was like, hey, do you want to design, do some of the designs for this? I was like, I want to just publish it exactly as is, terrible grammar, just to see. And for many years, it was like top two prank book on Amazon. It wasn't my best work. It was middle school work, but it was kind of a funny story that much later it performed fairly well and was selling like 500 to a thousand copies a year. It was pretty funny. And it was literally just like a middle school book. I wrote it was pretty funny.

Michael (14:08)

That's hilarious. Wow. Very cool. Is that the only book you've published or have you published other ones?

Caleb (14:14)

That was the first one. I had a couple others. One was more about some of my travels and one at Anchor Group, our book on NetSuite e-commerce. I am not a good writer. I have probably written more books than I have read, to be honest, because I'm an audiobook type of person. In middle school, I was doing these types of projects. Then in high school, same thing. I really liked the arts and I would play soccer, but I did like the arts and that creative side. And I always knew I really wanted to be an engineer. I didn't know why, but I thought it was just because I liked building things and being creative. And that's what I ended up going to school for, is to study engineering. But at the very beginning, I knew that I was probably a little bit different of an engineer than many of my classmates, and in that, like, I enjoyed it. But I didn't love it and I wasn't as talented at it than some of my other classmates. And I think I knew pretty quickly that what I enjoyed most about it was learning how to problem solve really well. And it was less about engineering work in general. It was just the joy of problem solving. And I found that was the most valuable skill set that I learned in engineering was that by itself. It's just a joy of problem solving.

Michael (15:44)

And you got introduced to that in high school, you're saying?

Caleb (15:47)

No, I would say in college. Well I got, I mean, I've always liked problem solving, but when I picked engineering and if I think about when, why I liked engineering, that was it. It was less about the engineering work itself.

Michael (16:01)

So okay, that takes you up until college. What was college like for you in that engineering program? Did you work a lot with different software platforms? Any of it related to business or was it truly just through and through engineering software that you were working in?

Caleb (16:16)

It was all, I mean, AutoCAD and Inventor, which are 3D modeling softwares, and that's where I would get the initial exposure to the manufacturing space, which would come a little bit later, right after college. But that was the main thing I was studying. It was a five-year program, and at the time, it wasn't accredited at that school, so they had a dual partnership with the University of North Dakota, so I took some classes there and then some in Kansas. I did a little bit of both there. That's why I actually have two degrees from two different schools that are the same degree. It's just how the partnership worked. Now the school is accredited, but the engineering professors were amazing and it was small classes. At the time, the engineering classes were 10-20 for the whole grade. Now they're in the hundreds. It's not like a massive school, but they have a very, very good engineering program. North Dakota has a good engineering program, but Benedictine in Kansas was better. It was noticeable how good of a program it was. And even after when I did my MBA, I was very grateful. I learned so much there. I did the program in four years and then I worked a waiting job at a Greek restaurant. Loved the family that I was working for there. It became like an extended family of mine. And then I was an RA in a freshman dorm for three years. I never got out of a freshman dorm in college.

Michael (17:58)

That's funny. And being an RA for three years in a freshman dorm, that's gotta take patience for sure.

Caleb (18:08)

I liked it. It was really in college, Michael, that you and I first met in person.

Michael (18:13)

And here's the deal, Caleb. We got a shout out Benedictine college in good old Atchison, Kansas, right? That's where we went. Got to give them a shout out. Good school. Home of Amelia Earhart. Did they find her yet? I feel like every year it's like, we found her. But good school. Good place to get a college.

Caleb (18:34)

It was a great school. I really enjoyed my time there and being an RA there in a freshman dorm for that many years. It was really fun. And I know that you got to be an RA as well. And that's kind of when we first interacted there in the upperclassmen and lower classmen. And I really enjoyed being able to interact with the freshmen. They're much more energetic, outgoing, able to open the doors to meet new people. And I know that's not really the case with upperclassmen and being an RA to them. But I will say it came with cons. I've got many stories from being in the freshman dorm and it took some opportunities for me to have some corrective action to take on some people too. And that was, you know what? Reflecting back on it, I think that being an RA has a lot of components, the initial components to leadership, which is reflecting back, it's kind of interesting.

Michael (19:37)

How so?

Caleb (19:39)

Well, I think when you're working with your peers in a similar way in leadership, there's people sometimes that are older than you and some that are younger and some of the same age that you're their peers. And that's the same when you're an RA. You just have authority to make decisions. And oftentimes when someone's breaking a rule in leadership, you're often enforcing policy and culture and what you're trying to create in a business. And the same thing goes when you're an RA. And there's times where people, I would have to write people up when I was an RA with things that were necessary to do and learning that it's good for them to have accountability and that accountability is a healthy thing for someone, even when it's hard. I didn't want to have to do that either. It was really hard to work up the courage to do that. And I think that many leaders find that it is hard to have the courage to have a hard conversation. And that's the skill set I think I learned most is the ability to have a hard conversation or at least start to learn the skills because if I'm reflecting back, there are times when I was a bit of a coward to have a hard conversation too. It wasn't just, I didn't have the courage to do so all the time, but at least got the start of the exposure to have hard conversations and have crucial conversations. And I think that's what I mean by the foundations to leadership in that type of a role. You had that role as well. So what do you think?

Michael (21:16)

I would agree with what you're saying. I think handling friction, that's kind of the way I term it, right? Handling friction, conflict, whatever word you want to put there. It's a skill that everybody needs to develop. And I do think whether you get a job in high school, whether you get a job in college, whether being an RA is your job, it's important for young professionals, people aspiring to be great professionals, important for people to have that. And as you're saying, leaders, when I think about the best leaders I've worked for and have seen work in organizations, they know how to handle conflict and handle friction very well. They don't shy away from it. But I do hear what you're saying. I mean, in college, sometimes in that role. And I'm sure if you're listening to this out there and you had a good old college experience, sometimes for an RA, it is easy to not always enforce everything as well as they should. Right?

Caleb (22:20)

Blind eye. We've all had that moment.

Michael (22:24)

But I do think that's important skill to learn is how to manage that friction, right? And I know here we, honesty, integrity is like very important, right? I know to both of us individually and we also bring that into the company culture at Anchor Group. And so the earlier you can test your mettle in that honesty and integrity, I think it's important and being an RA gives you an opportunity to do that amongst your peers. That's for sure.

Caleb (22:52)

It's true. I really enjoyed it. I was taking I think like 20 credits of engineering being an RA and then I was serving tables a couple nights a week and that last component actually if I think about it was, there in a small town like that it was very common to get stiffed and not get any tips or anything like that. And it was just like, if you haven't been to some parts of the US where it's very rural, it can happen quite a bit. There's like a surprisingly high amount. I think that, luckily the owners of the business treated me so well. I am so grateful. And they would send me home with pizza and like homemade stuff all the time. Very like very Greek mother there. But I learned a lot about customer experience and how to have a really good positive outlook and interact with people. And that is a good customer experience skill set, the very first and basic in comparison to the consulting life. But what people don't know is that being a consultant is like 50% being a therapist. I don't think people realize how much of like humanity comes into being a consultant because these are real people with real emotions that are dealing with real stress in their day to day life. And learning how to not just work on the technical, but navigate that side of reality is a skillset that I think I really learned in the food industry too. And I'm really grateful for that. But all three of those things combined in being an RA, working a lot of credits and working an extra job, I think what I learned in that is that work ethic can really be in my favor. I'm not always the smartest person in the most book smart, but I do work hard. And I think that I've leaned more on that versus some other, where some people in engineering were just like so smart. There's a few classmates that I'm like, I just couldn't even come close to how smart they were. I could never compete with that. But what I could do is I could work harder. And that was the skill set I think I learned is the value of work ethic in college too.

Michael (25:29)

Caleb, I want to add some color to what you said about consultants at times kind of being like therapists, right? Good old software therapists, if you will. A lot of times when consultants are called into these projects, usually sometimes it's because, as you said, emotions can be kind of high because people are dealing with like a real problem that they need solved. It's like, negatively impacting their day to day or the success of their business. And so going back to what we were talking about earlier, just being able to understand how to navigate friction and conflict. Like it might not be friction against you as a consultant stepping in, but there's like maybe internal friction, that sort of thing. So I guess I agree with what you're saying that the work ethic, understanding how to navigate friction is in my opinion good in any profession. Customer service, you learn how to handle that well, but especially in consulting. And if you're able to handle that, you can be very impactful, for sure.

Caleb (26:36)

I'm very grateful for all those experiences. Then coming after college, I'm even more grateful for even my first job and my first employer. Even though I don't work there, I am very grateful for just people who become the first employer to people out of college. I think that is something I will always have a lot of gratitude for.

Michael (27:03)

Where did you land for that first job out of college and what were you doing?

Caleb (27:08)

Well, I started working for a transportation company that was a manufacturer. They're a publicly traded company. And I was hired as part of their tank trailer division to be a design engineer working with AutoCAD and Inventor as they're shifting more towards that. But I also got to work with some of my classmates from engineering, some that I did homework with all the time, worked with some of my friends from there for several years, worked on a lot of projects. And I'm actually even getting a chance, he's stopping by my house with some travels back to the state this weekend. So I'm excited to run into just old friends and old colleagues. That's fun to have that experience. But because we already had some work interactions in college, it was very easy into our professional career. But I started as an engineer, and it was very quickly afterwards that they started pulling me into an ERP implementation as an end user. They were implementing SAP at the time. This is a $7 billion company, roughly. I don't know if it's still the same now, but the division I was part of was, I'll call it 60 to 100 million in annual revenue. Well, that was that location. Probably the division itself was probably like 400 million in annual revenue. I got pulled onto the end user. There were probably like two dozen nearly full-time people working on that implementation. It was wild. I compared to NetSuite the number of resources that they had on an SAP implementation. It's just very different. NetSuite's way cheaper to implement than I experienced, at least in that entity. But it was a very clean global live, invested a lot of resources and I was part of that implementation more on the, SAP has a variant configurator. It's like how to quote, it's very similar to what I'd say is like NetSuite CPQ and like the equivalence. And I learned a lot about ERP. I was very junior at that point. I mean, still learning a lot and learning how to be a professional too. I remember like some of the things I didn't know coming out of college, I'm embarrassed by my ability to even use Outlook calendar. It was embarrassing. I don't know. Do you remember that experience? First getting a job and starting to use typical business tools and just feeling totally ignorant.

Michael (29:31)

I think a lot of people can relate. Yeah. When you have to, when you are an official adult, it hits a little different when you log onto a computer for the first time. I'm like, oh, this is all the stuff I'm using.

Caleb (29:52)

I remember, it's so stupid. I remember like scheduling my first calendar invite on Outlook. And I was just like embarrassed to ask. And I am embarrassed. I'm still embarrassed about that. I still remember the moment going over to my supervisor. I was like, no. If I were his supervisor, I'd be like, yeah.

Michael (30:12)

Well, apparently you figured it out over time, right? You figured it out.

Caleb (30:17)

I got much better at IT very quickly after that.

Michael (30:21)

That's how it goes. You got some amazing ERP experience. It sounds like around introduction to it at least. And then was next the onset of Anchor Group or were there?

Caleb (30:39)

No, not quite. After we went live, I went on to operations as a production supervisor. And that was really great too, because then I was on the floor in manufacturing and there was roughly 30 people there. And I've spoken about this on other episodes where they were very knowledgeable and very skilled team members and way better. Many of them were, I would say were more qualified at this job than me. And that was a little bit unique of balancing when people wanted that job and it was like a young person and they had been there like 30 years working as a welder. That brought its own challenges and how to lead people and how to receive respect. Sometimes you'll never receive it. Knowing that, how to work with people that don't fully respect you and being able to treat them in a professional way, nonetheless. And that was a little bit of an interesting component, just working with the blue collar space. But I will say, they're very hard workers, and I think very highly of their abilities and how to do their job very well. And I'm very grateful for the many people that did have respect for me and just gave me a lot of patience and held my hand and helped me learn how to do the manufacturing component as a supervisor. Really it's managing people. Maybe that's why I was put in the role is because it was a little bit more of a people manager than it is knowing the product. But it was really good to spend a year there. And that was kind of my last role before jumping into NetSuite full-time.

Michael (32:32)

Very cool. So next we, so.

Caleb (32:33)

So now, we're there.

Michael (32:38)

And this is really where I don't think on this podcast yet, Caleb, we've done like a breakdown of Anchor Group and how Anchor Group started and got to where it is today. But as I understand it, you were one of the very first few employees, is that right?

Caleb (32:51)

Yeah, worked out of a living room for a while. It was fun.

Michael (32:58)

Like so many other companies. You and I both used to do a lot of podcasts and that sort of thing. And so my favorite ones are hearing how companies started and how they grew over time and how they got to where they are today. And so many of them genuinely do start in living rooms. Just people bootstrapping it together to make something successful, filling an opportunity in the market and serving customers well. Tell us about the early days of Anchor Group. What was it like?

Caleb (33:29)

Well, it was about a year into me being a production supervisor where I realized, you know, manufacturing isn't where I'd like to be in my career, which is weird because I actually do it in a different way. So I guess I'm sort of there still, but I didn't want to be in that. My brother called me and asked me to come help. And that's really what persuaded me is because my brother asked. And at the end of the day, that's what I came down to. But it was also something new and it was before I was married and although we just got engaged within like a few days of when I decided to put in a notice and I gave like a six week notice just to help with operations. And my brother had called because he's the owner of Anchor Group and I'm an employee, a good part of the business or portion of it on our C-suite, and I've been there, but I am an employee still. I just care about it like my own. So it was really my brother, he called me and he had been a NetSuite developer in the past. So he was working for a handful of companies as a contractor and knew he wanted to start a business because my brother really cares about creating a good work culture for people and building jobs. I think it really comes from an honorable place of that really wanting to create that. And that's been really his drive and he's been very talented. I think one of my brother's biggest skill sets is his ability to delegate is really, even when he's like, I know I can do this better, I'm still gonna delegate anyways. And that's a skill set I've started to adopt and I found it to be very useful. He just knew it way younger than me on how to do that. So I think that from a founder, that's the skill set that I would acknowledge as being a unique skill set that really not very many people have, the ability to let go of control, let go of control when it comes to things that they can do. Not all things, not let go of everything, but that piece of it. So he was doing a lot of the work and then I was being trained as kind of a NetSuite developer and semi-functional, but he was also a suite commerce developer. At that point, there was only Suite Commerce Advanced and NetSuite's e-commerce solution. So that was a natural trajectory that we were just niching in that already from the very beginning because of previous experience. I very quickly picked up on NetSuite and after some ERP experience that I had, things were clicking much faster for me than my first exposure to ERP. And there was a lot of pressure, self-imposed by me of like, hey, I have to make this role my own role for me to have a job. My brother can't just live off of credit cards. I have to be productive. And within one year, there was three of us in a living room at that point and we all had to be productive and to work hard and figure it out. I learned a lot. I think being forced into a situation where it's like a sink or swim, I thrived in that environment. Maybe not thrived, I don't think anybody really thrives, if you think about my previous story and I was talking about how I learned resilience and perseverance, it's in that moment that that came from my childhood and I had to learn it, I had to figure it out at that moment. It was like, I either figured it out or I didn't have a career in NetSuite. And I saw that it was a pretty good career option. And so I had to figure it out. And about a year in, I knew always that I wanted to get down to the sales side, a sales engineer. That had always come to mind that I really enjoyed talking. I liked solution designing. I liked the creative side of sales engineering. And I knew I always wanted to get into the sales side. And I naturally fit into that role. I was the only person that had a passion for that. It was kind of an intersection of passion and talent, I'd say. And I think my brother always knew that I would fill that role because I'll take a story back for a second. Remember I said that I was in a very rural spot in the country and I always had an entrepreneur spirit at heart and I did a couple like mini businesses when I was probably in like third, second grade, fourth grade, something like that. My school bus driver, I go up to him and be like, hey, Halloween was yesterday, or was two weeks ago. I saved my Halloween candy. I want to sell it because people just, they finish all their candy, but they still want more because the demand is higher now, but there's no supply. And he's like, the bus driver was like, you know what? I'm okay with it. As long as any wrappers, you clean up. So I would clean up, sell the candy on the bus and like go buy more candy and I just rinse and repeat it. So it was like that entrepreneur spirit was always there. And then the second time was I, like a lot of kids that would have like a lemonade stand, I think I had some Rice Krispies. And I remember sitting at the end of my driveway in a rural place in Wisconsin. And this is, one person, there was one car that drove by our driveway the entire day, which was my one customer.

Michael (38:49)

Really?

Caleb (39:16)

Guess what that person that drove by a driveway was.

Michael (39:21)

Guess who it was? Probably the mailman. The mailman, right?

Caleb (39:22)

It's somebody that comes every day. The mailman came and he gave me an extra 25 cent tip and I learned that day that traffic matters. That'll teach you quick. That gives you a little insight in something that taught me that traffic matters. And because when I started moving into sales at Anchor Group and kind of filling that role, I really enjoyed solution designing and being creative. I ended up getting really good at this part of NetSuite. And when it comes to e-commerce, I ended up getting really, really good at this. And I think I got good at it because I just had a passion for it and I just worked really hard at figuring it out. And that's when I started also getting into the marketing side. And just like that mailman was the only person that came that day, Anchor Group was never going to succeed unless I got traffic. And that's when I really started working on our website, being top on Google for major keywords and getting some of the most traffic across kind of the website traffic. So that's kind of in a nutshell, how it all evolved over time. There's more to this story for sure, but that gives a good perspective of the evolution and how growing up in college influenced the first parts of my career. And like that's how I really got into it.

Michael (40:57)

As you established the marketing funnels at Anchor Group, what did those, well, let me ask you this. When did you feel like Anchor Group was established? How many years did that take from going three people in the living room? You know, you're working hard so your brother doesn't have to pay for all of his stuff on credit cards. When did you feel like, hey, this marketing, the traffic, we're in a good spot now. How long did that take?

Caleb (41:22)

Probably three years. Probably three years when it was like, we're fine. But I'd never felt like, it's a big weight. I was telling someone this recently that one of the things I enjoy most about my job is I love to provide. I love to provide. And not only just for my family, but I love to provide for my team members and their families. And I find a lot of fulfillment in creating jobs, probably similar to my brother, in that I find a lot of joy in creating jobs and work for people and work that people can have a job that's stable and a good culture and like, that is enough that they can provide for their families. And I care, I really care a lot about that. And I think about it a lot. And one of the things I think about that always created a lot of stress is that if I don't do my job well, people can't provide for their families, at least within this culture with care. And that's a heavy burden to carry, but it was a very motivating burden that helped me work really hard and stay focused for long hours. I think that is, for some, they will relate to that. Others, they may kind of only partially relate. They're like, I only care about my flesh and blood, which I get that too. That is your primary. I agree. I care about, even though we have like 50 employees, it's their spouses and all their kids that we provide for too in my role here. And so sales and marketing, I see as bigger to that. And I of course really care about our clients. That kind of serves, I care about them. We've got that Midwest nice culture here, but that's another component of just creating a culture and leadership that really drives me to work hard and be a very good NetSuite consultant and solution architect and work hard in this role in serving people.

Michael (43:41)

Sounds like three years in, you mentioned, is really when the rubber met the road on the marketing. And from there, you've been able to grow Anchor Group and be part of the team, the core team, growing Anchor Group to what it is today, about 50 people all based out of the Midwest here.

Caleb (43:58)

So I think what I was trying to get at now that, thanks for reminding me, was that three years where it was like, we're fine, we're healthy, but it probably took like five to six years for me to distribute, delegate that burden of providing for people to other team members. And that, and now it's much more diversified and it's just a healthier spot. Once you get to like the 50 employee mark, I think that the business from a consulting firm standpoint really, really stabilizes and it's just at a really healthy spot because there's enough roles that enough people cross-trained creates a lot of stability.

Michael (44:42)

So Caleb, what are some of the most exciting things you're working on today in your role?

Caleb (44:48)

Today? Oh, well, I have built an amazing team. Well, okay, not I, that was said in a prideful way. What I mean is like, one of the things I'm most proud of is just building an amazing team of people like yourself. I'm very proud of you. And I'm very proud of so many of the other team members on our team and just our customer experience is like so many clients are just loving it, have like raving reviews and some really great experiences that we're delivering. And even through the challenges and the real life challenges of consulting and working through those, and there's ups and downs with any relationship and with any client relationship too, but working through those to deliver really some great delight and experience and the quality. I've really been happy with all that we've been able to build and invest into our employees, and not only on the sales and marketing side, but on the delivery side. They're just awesome, and I'm very proud of them. And then, from other projects I've worked on since then, I think this next year, I started solution designing a new marketing infrastructure to do more analytics around marketing that I'm really excited to continue solution designing, and then implement within our own NetSuite environment because I think that will be pretty, it's fun, it's creative, it's that fun and creative work and helping to grow people around me. Those are the two things on my mind is marketing infrastructure seems really fun and then growing some more people around me. And then at the same time, I occasionally have my own clients too and solution designing some really hard things on occasion, I find a lot of joy in.

Michael (46:49)

You're still getting that firsthand experience in NetSuite, especially as you build those solution designs. So I think in future state, what do you see shifting or changing or improving with NetSuite 12 months from now? Do you have a pulse on that? What do you think is going to be changing for NetSuite clients?

Caleb (47:10)

Well, I think that NetSuite is very well established at this point. It's just going to take some iterative approaches to existing. I think that it'll continue to invest in AI as Oracle has been able to invest in it. And I've been trying to be creative in my usage of it and solution designing and figuring out ways to incorporate it within some client projects. But I think that NetSuite has a very solid core foundation in all the modules that I see that them just making improvements that can address niche markets like sub industries within sub industries. I see them trying to be able to niche even further, but it's a solid solution across so many industries already as an ERP, especially in the mid market space. And what I mean by that is like 5 million plus in annual revenue, like 5 million to a billion in annual revenue. That's what I think it's just a great solution for people in that space. And I think they're going to continue to invest in AI and get creative around this. But more than anything, I think that there's going to be niche and patch up, niche sub industry topics and solutions that have more native out of the box features that currently we have to like customize NetSuite to resolve.

Michael (48:32)

Yeah, it seems like a logical place for NetSuite to be going on that. Well, Caleb, thank you for taking some time to share with everybody a little bit about yourself, kind of your origin story about how you ended up at Anchor Group and what led to that. And even at the end here, sharing a little bit about where you think NetSuite's going to be going in the future.

Caleb (48:52)

I hope it has inspired people and for those who haven't connected with me on LinkedIn, connect with me. I really try hard to be a positive influence on the ecosystem and to be friendly and easily approachable. So go ahead and connect with me on LinkedIn and just say hi. I never need to know who is actually watching. I just see analytics on views. So if you want to just reach out on LinkedIn and be like, hey, I saw a video of you talking about your origin story at Anchor Group. I would love for you just to give me a quick ping because I love meeting people in this ecosystem. It's a strong community and a strong environment. And it's nice when you can just know that you can reach out to someone and have a friendly face.

Michael (49:38)

Definitely. Well, Caleb, thank you for sharing your thoughts and experiences with us today. And for those of you listening, thanks for tuning in and we'll catch you next time on the Anchor Group podcast.

Related Article: Anchor Group Featured on the SuiteScript Stories Podcast

Where to Listen to the Podcast

Find more episodes of the Anchor Group podcast!

• Anchor Group Podcast on Spotify
• Anchor Group Podcast on YouTube

Oracle NetSuite Alliance Partner, BigCommerce Certified Partner

As both a BigCommerce Certified Partner and an Oracle NetSuite Alliance Partner, Anchor Group is ready to handle BigCommerce and NetSuite projects alike! Whether you already have one platform and are looking to integrate the other, are considering a full-scale implementation of both platforms, or simply need support with ongoing customizations, our team is ready to help answer any questions you might have! Get in touch!