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My Path to Become a NetSuite Consultant

My Path to Become a NetSuite Consultant

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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 with someone from the Anchor Group, Caleb Schmitz. Caleb serves as the chief revenue officer for Anchor Group and as a sales solution architect, working in both the NetSuite space with integrations and 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 for being willing to share a little more about yourself.

Caleb (01:17)

No problem. I think this topic was, when we were talking about it, like, you know what? There are many people who are just curious about how to get into the consulting space and what that path looks like. And I think it's pretty interesting for people just to understand more about who consultants are, what the journey and what the career look like, how 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 hear what that looks like, because it's one people often end their careers on. And it's been something I started early on in my career on this path, and just a slightly 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, in general, many people, as they grow up, look to their parents or mentors for what careers are out there and that sort of thing. So I think childhood can have a lot of influence on the way somebody lives their life and the 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 were 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 an 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 ordinary in school. I'm glad I went through high school before cell phones became 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 they sold the building and the business. There are 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, one of the best gifts they gave me was that we never had internet, and we didn't have a TV for most of my childhood. I guess we had a TV, but 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, growing up, it was like 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 it is like the very first point where I began to have a more creative mindset. And as you get into the consulting space, a huge part of it is being creative and thinking 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, a 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 make my own remote-controlled cars. And these were like the little things I did while I was listening to audio cassette tapes and 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 having 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 who was in the way of figuring it out. And I think that is a skill set learned through those projects in my 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 making videos and editing. I always have one project a year and am learning a new skill set.

Michael (07:55)

Yeah.

Caleb (08:20)

Did you ever read the book Hatchet when you were 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 on 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, like the basics of video editing and little skill sets like that. But there were a couple of funny scenes in it. One where I do a front flip with a hatchet off 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 tried to 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, while hunting. It was, like, 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 are both 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 to grow up with that sort of childhood. Now, you were born in Wisconsin, and you grew up in Wisconsin. Two questions for you. How close were you to the Great Lakes? Because Wisconsin is sweet, they have a Great Lake to the north and to the east. 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, in a more 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, so 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 the 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've got to check out Car Valley Cheese. My family takes trips over there, to Car Valley Cheese. They make wonderful cheese curds and have a couple of locations right off 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 the top two prank books on Amazon. It wasn't my best work. It was middle school work, but it was kind of a funny story: much later, it performed fairly well and was selling like 500 to 1,000 copies a year. It was pretty funny. And it was literally just like a middle school book. I wrote that 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 my travels, and the other was 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, the 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: to study engineering. But at the very beginning, I knew that I was probably a little bit different from 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 as 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 the 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? Was 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 software, 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. 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 the classes were small. 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 from 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 degree.

Caleb (18:34)

It was a great school. I really enjoyed my time there, especially being an RA in a freshman dorm for that many years. It was really fun. And I know that you have 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 interacting with the freshmen. They're much more energetic and outgoing, and they're able to open doors to meet new people. And I know that's not really the case with upperclassmen, especially when you're 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 gave me opportunities to take corrective action against 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 are people sometimes that are older than you, some that are younger, and some of the same age as you are their peers. And that's the same when you're an RA. You just have the 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 were times when I had to write people up as an RA for things that were necessary to do, and I learned 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: 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 that I didn't have the courage to do so all the time; at least I got the start of exposure to having hard and crucial conversations. And I think that's what I mean by the foundations of leadership in that type of 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 not to 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 an 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 that 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 of 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 very rural parts of the US, 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 much like a 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 about 50% therapist. I don't think people realize how much of humanity there is in becoming a consultant, because these are real people with real emotions who are dealing with real stress in their day-to-day lives. And learning how to not just work on the technical side, but to navigate that side of reality, is a skill set 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, or the most book-smart, but I do work hard. And I think that I've learned more about that versus some other, where some people in engineering were just like so smart. There are 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, 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, it's usually because, as you said, emotions can be kind of high because people are dealing with a real problem that they need solved. It's like negatively impacting their day-to-day or their business's success. 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: the work ethic and understanding how to navigate friction are, 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 my first job and my first employer. Even though I don't work there, I am very grateful to the people who become the first employers to hire people out of college. I think that is something I will always be grateful 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 as a design engineer, working with AutoCAD and Inventor as they're shifting more toward that. But I also got to work with some of my classmates from engineering, some of whom I did homework with all the time, worked with some of my friends from there for several years, and 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 to transition into our professional careers. But I started as an engineer, and very quickly afterward, they pulled 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 the number of resources that NetSuite had on an SAP implementation. It's just very different. NetSuite's way cheaper to implement than I experienced it to be, 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 specifically on the SAP, which 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 differently when you log on to 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 have some amazing ERP experience. It sounds like around the introduction to it, at least. And then came the onset of Anchor Group, or was there?

Caleb (30:39)

No, not quite. After we went live, I moved into operations as a production supervisor. And that was really great, too, because I was on the floor in manufacturing, and there were 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, more qualified for this job than I. And that was a little bit unique in balancing when people wanted that job, and it was like a young person, and they had been there for 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 how to work with people who don't fully respect you and still treat them professionally, 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 well they do their job. And I'm very grateful to the many people who respected me, showed me a lot of patience, held my hand, and helped me learn how to handle the manufacturing component as a supervisor. Really, it's managing people. Maybe that's why I was put in the role, because it was a little bit more of a people manager role than one focused on 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, 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 my being a production supervisor when 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, 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. 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 in 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, from 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, even when he's like, I know I can do this better, I'm still gonna delegate anyway. And that's a skill set I've started adopting, and I've found it 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 we were just niching into, already from the very beginning, because of previous experience. I very quickly picked up on NetSuite, and with the ERP experience I had, things clicked much faster for me than they did during 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 were 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 that I always wanted to get down to the sales side, as a sales engineer. It 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 sales. And I naturally fit into that role. I was the only person who 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 I was in a very rural spot in the country, and I always had an entrepreneurial spirit at heart, and I did a couple of mini businesses when I was probably in, like, third, second, or 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 finish all their candy but still want more. 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, then go buy more candy, and just rinse and repeat. 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 all day, and that was my only customer.

Michael (38:49)

Really?

Caleb (39:16)

Guess what that person who drove by the driveway was?

Michael (39:21)

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

Caleb (39:22)

It's somebody who 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 into something that taught me that traffic matters. And because when I started moving into sales at Anchor Group and filling that role, I really enjoyed solution design 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, the mailman was the only person who 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, getting to the top of Google for major keywords and getting some of the most traffic across the website. So that's, in a nutshell, how it all evolved over time. There's more to this story, for sure, but that gives a good perspective on the evolution and how growing up in college influenced the early 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 from 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 recently that one of the things I enjoy most about my job is providing. 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, too. That is your primary. I agree. I care about it, 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, are bigger than 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 creating a culture and leadership that really drives me to work hard, be a very good NetSuite consultant and solution architect, and serve people in this role.

Michael (43:41)

Sounds like, three years in, you mentioned, is really when the rubber met the road in 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 the business, from a consulting firm standpoint, really, really stabilizes, and it's just in a really healthy spot because there are enough roles that cross-training enough people 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 me, that was said in a prideful way. What I mean is, one of the things I'm most proud of is 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, there are ups and downs with any relationship, and with any client relationship too, but working through those to deliver some real delight, experience, and quality. I've really been happy with all that we've been able to build and invest in 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: marketing infrastructure seems really fun, and then growing some more people around me. And at the same time, I occasionally have my own clients, and I find a lot of joy in designing solutions to some really hard things.

Michael (46:49)

You're still getting that firsthand experience in NetSuite, especially as you build those solution designs. So, in the future state, what do you see shifting, 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 it'll continue to invest in AI, as Oracle has been able to do. And I've been trying to be creative in my use of it, in solution design, and in figuring out ways to incorporate it into some client projects. But I think that NetSuite has a very solid core foundation across all the modules I see, and they're just making improvements that can address niche markets, like sub-industries within sub-industries. I see them trying to niche even further, but it's already a solid solution across many industries 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 investing in AI and get creative with this. But more than anything, I think there are going to be niche, patch-up, sub-industry topics and solutions that have more native, out-of-the-box features that we currently have to customize NetSuite to resolve.

Michael (48:32)

Yeah, it seems like a logical place for NetSuite to go with 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, please do so. I really try hard to be a positive influence on the ecosystem and to be friendly and easy to approach. 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 to just 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 know 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.

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