Be Your Own Champion at Work - PODCAST TRANSCRIPT

Editor's note: The following is the transcript of a live interview with Kevin Mahoney of Ingage. You can read the interview below, listen to the podcast or watch the recording.

Intro: Hello, everyone. My name is Megan Ellsworth here at RoofersCoffeeshop.com and you are watching a lunch and learn. Welcome to lunchtime. I hope you all are eating something fabulously delicious. I'm so excited to be chatting with Kevin from Ingage today and we have a whole presentation ready and geared up for you all. We're talking about being your own champion at work. Kevin, I would love to just start us off if you could introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about Ingage.

Kevin Mahoney: Yeah, absolutely. My name is Kevin Mahoney. I'm a sales engineer here at Ingage and we're a sales enablement platform essentially. We help you present your company's story better to customers, help them connect better in the home. In the backend, we also provide just a robust system of analytics to make sure that your sales reps out in the field are hitting older marks. It really is used just as much as a training tool as it is a selling tool. That's just a little pitch about what Ingage is and I'm sure I'm going to touch a little bit more on it as we go through this little lunch and learn process as well.

Megan Ellsworth: Awesome. I'm excited. To start out, I know all of you have your learning guides in front of you. I will state the three learning objectives for this lunch and learn and they are understanding self-advocacy, how to use analytics to keep yourself accountable and how to bring new tech to the table. Kevin, let's start out with a little bit of an agenda overview going over those three learning objectives.

Kevin Mahoney: All right. Again, today's agenda, we just went through the welcome phase here. The next thing we're going to talk about is what it means to be your own champion. And then once you actually have that defined, how do you use analytics to make yourself accountable for those aspects of what makes you a champion? Furthermore, this is sort of where Ingage might actually come in as a tie-in but doesn't necessarily have to be Ingage, but how do you bring new tech ideas to your manager? Again, you champion not only yourself but your actual thoughts and values. And when new technology becomes a part of that, you need to be able to have that conversation with a manager in a way that makes sense. At the end, test your knowledge. That's just the closing remarks. We'll just leave you with some rhetorical questions that you should ask yourself when you're actually trying to implement this in your own life.

Megan Ellsworth: I love it. Amazing. The first learning objective is understanding self-advocacy. Kevin, why is self-advocacy so important and crucial?

Kevin Mahoney: It's very important and crucial because in an ideal world your peers and your bosses would be all advocating for you 24/7. We love to see it. I am fortunate enough at Ingage to work in an environment that cultivates that type of attitude but in general you shouldn't assume that's the way it operates. You should really operate as if this real world we live in does not revolve around you 24/7.

People are busy and they're focusing on their own day-to-day problems and their own career growth goals as well. I learned to understand that early on in my career and I think the earlier you accept this reality, the sooner you can work around that and develop the tools and techniques to advocate for yourself more effectively knowing that you aren't the center of attention all the time, you need to work with other people and work around their schedules and make sure that your goals align with their goals because that's the best way to advocate for yourself.

Kevin Mahoney: Again, what does it look like to be your own champion? Really, when there's always a question like this, the one thing I've been learning to do in my role is to always start out with another question because giving a straight answer, you really want to probe the actual nature of the question itself. First of all, you should be asking yourself what is a champion? That definition may change depending on what role you were in. If you can't define it, you're going to have trouble creating those goals in the first place. Probably the best way to do this is just take an exercise and write down some attributes and belief statements and then devise your measurable goals to substantiate those qualities. Does that make sense?

Megan Ellsworth: Yeah. Honestly, I'd love to know what a champion looks like to you in your realm.

Kevin Mahoney: Absolutely. One reason why I was picked for this talk is I have a role as what's called a sales or systems engineer and that's an interesting role because I'm not sales, I'm not quite marketing, I'm not quite an engineer, but I'm the glue that fills all those gaps. And really, when you're in that role where you have multiple hats... Every company has that person that wears multiple hats. You really need to be an advocate for yourself to define what those metrics are that means you're successful because when you're blurring the lines a bit, you need to really work with your managers and say, hey, how am I being successful in sales? How am I being successful in marketing? How am I being successful on the engineering side and the product side? Really, that process works best as a two-way street with your manager to help make that effort.

Kevin Mahoney: It's something we like to call managing up. It's not a term we invented but it's literally a term out there, Google it. It's essentially holding your manager accountable and helping them help you. I'm fortunate enough to have regular one-on-ones with my bosses and mentors and I think it's crucial to keep that process alive. Despite the perceived power dynamic that they're your manager, they're your boss, it is very much a collaborative effort. You work together to shape the goals that both of you agree are important. It's not just to your personal growth. Again, touching back, the role does not revolve around me 24/7, so you have to give them an incentive. If your manager isn't currently in a space where they're finding the time, you need to make it worth their while. This is a business, they're not your personal life coach, you're not paying them, they're paying you.

Kevin Mahoney: I can't go to my boss and say, "Hey, my goal is to sleep eight hours a night and make millions of dollars." Because what incentive do they have to help me out there? Sure, it's a great end game goal but at the same time you need to really construct measurable goals that benefit both you, your manager and the business. That's the enticing, that's the carrot. If you have trouble managing up, make it worth their while and don't be afraid to push and hold them accountable to that because their job as a manager is to also manage your success as well. There's just as much table stakes in it for them as well.

Megan Ellsworth: That is so true. To go off of that, I love what you said about managing up. It's almost like an open line of communication. They can't help you grow unless you're communicating with them on what you need. I love that because really hard, especially, I feel like, now to be able to be open and honest with maybe a manager or a CEO, a big boss in your company. Obviously, very respectful but I think it's so important to have that open line of communication. I love that.

Kevin Mahoney: Absolutely, Megan. Managers differ from place to place. We've all worked under that very difficult manager and sometimes maybe they got put in management because, I don't want to say it's failing upwards, but because there is a vacuum or a void. Maybe the previous manager moved on and you put your best sales rep in that position and they're learning too. Don't assume that they all have it figured out and that they're all that personality type. There does take a little bit of intuitiveness to know how to work with different personality types. That's something you can train yourself on as well.

Are they not a very communicative person? Well, there's always some way to do communication. Maybe it's better over text or maybe it's better over face-to-face. Sometimes you might have to push them a little bit because they need to grow as well. If you're having a manager that's very hands-off and not managing you, it's really not fair to you because if you're not growing, you're not helping them succeed and you're not helping the business succeed. The incentive is there for everybody.

Megan Ellsworth: Okay, Kevin. We're already at learning objective number two. How do you use analytics to keep yourself accountable? I'm really intrigued by this.

Kevin Mahoney: It's a great question, Megan. Again, I work as a systems or sales engineer for Ingage and so my analytics are very unique to my role. Really, it should start out with asking questions. Again, like to any question, you always ask the next question. For me, it's to whom am I accountable and for what am I accountable? So, my analytics or my metrics may differ than somebody else in a different role. I usually work to answer those questions first and from that point, we devise our analytics and we put in measurable goals and milestones and KPIs for me to hit. From there it's just a continuous feedback loop. Again, I work for Ingage. Our three pillars are create, share and measure. Measure means analytics. So, we're all about analytics here at this company.

Kevin Mahoney: I've been repeating this theme of measuring progress and results. It doesn't just help you track your personal growth but it really holds all sides accountable. So, you're not really having your boss judge you on their gut feeling because you're such a likable person or if you're not a likable person, but you bring in the numbers, well guess what? Those numbers back you up. Having that hard data leaves less ambiguity as to whether or not you're achieving your goals. It helps out in all those situations where you just might have an interpersonal disconnect with your manager but the numbers are good. We've always seen situations where you don't see eye to eye with your manager but he knows or she knows that you're pulling in the right numbers, and so hey, they can work on that disconnect somewhere else, but you're actually providing value to the business and the manager's success as well.

Megan Ellsworth: Yeah. What are KPIs and how do you use them to constantly improve?

Kevin Mahoney: Yeah, that's a wonderful question. KPIs are just another way of saying these are the measurable goals everyone agrees is important to measure. It's where you and your business align. They're like scorecards that show how successful a project, a team or a business is achieving specific targets. Some example KPIs in sales might be conversion rate, customer lifetime value or customer acquisition costs or CAC. You can really split them up into leading and lagging indicators. Leading indicators are previews of potential outcomes. For example, generating a target number of leads to help predict future conversions into sales. So, it's all about predictive modeling. Now, lagging indicators are almost a little bit more applicable to myself and they are retrospective views on existing outcomes. For example, sales revenue is a lagging indicator of past sales activities. So, in my role, again, you really have to look at the role to define your KPIs.

Kevin Mahoney: Sales might look at close rates, average deal size and demo rates but somebody in my role, I'm in a unique position where I fit between the cracks and so I'm empowering sales, product and engineering and marketing and customer success. When you're doing that, you're more empowering the other people to do their jobs. So, really the KPIs for me are going to be a lot of lagging indicators and much less in the leading factors. For example, rather than me booking X number of appointments a week as a leading indicator, I tag along with sales to provide technical and product support and then base my results more on the lagging indicators of like, okay, if it's an existing customer, did they renew with us? It's a customer longevity play for me. It's the tide that raises all boats, in my case.

Kevin Mahoney: Those are really important things to do but they're also really hard to define because how do you say I had an impact on something when you're a contributing factor. That's where you have to really work with your manager to be like, how do we measure this because not all these are easy? Some leading indicators, sure, it's easy. Do 20 calls a week, that's fine. But again, maybe it's not that easy. What do those calls entail? What's the point of measuring it if you don't know the outcomes. You need to have something actionable on those items.

Megan Ellsworth: What does KPI stand for?

Kevin Mahoney: Oh, sorry. Key performance indicators. Sorry about that. That's probably the most important part, the most fundamental definition. It is interesting too because when I first heard the term, I was like, oh, this is business speak. This is something that middle management likes to toss around because they know a lot of acronyms but it's really actually vitally important. It's just a fancy way or maybe actually more of a short way of just saying, these are the goals that everybody shares between you and your boss and you need to hit these marks. This is what indicates that you're being successful at your role.

Megan Ellsworth: Okay. I know that you were saying they look different for different roles. How would you recommend people put these goals into place?

Kevin Mahoney: SMART goals, it's something that's common sense and so when you have to remember the acronym, it's like, I can't remember the order of them but when you hear them, they make sense. You need to really set time aside to ensure you achieve your goals. One thing that really helps with that is that they're, quote, SMART goals, acronym. SMART stands for specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time bound. Those are all crucially, vitally important for your goals because if you have generic goals with no end time in mind, how do you track against that? It's going to just become this out of control spiral. This is where you also work with your manager as well. What's a good timeframe to have this goal? If the goal seems too big, break it down. I find it very easy for me to just... If something seems too daunting, break it down into smaller tasks. There's no law in the universe that says you can't do that.

Kevin Mahoney: You need to take the time to do the measurement too. It is really important that... This is a process and it's probably the easiest part to fall off the wagon because if you're losing that cadence of one-on-ones with your manager, or they're taking away your time to actually do the measurement, because again, it takes time. You have to take time to do the measurement. Before starting the task, you have to estimate what it's going to take to accomplish that goal. And then there's time where you have to reassess and redefine. What's the time requirement? Are there dependencies? Sometimes you have to wait on other people, so there's all these outside factors. If you're not taking the time to do that and you're falling off the wagon, well guess what? You're really stunting your personal growth and you're also doing a disservice to yourself and the manager. At the same time, the manager is doing a disservice to you and themselves if they're saying, I don't have time to put you on this, we have something else we need to put you on.

Kevin Mahoney: You need to give that room to cultivate that and it's a continuous process. I've definitely been in situations, in previous places, where bosses did not have regular one-on-ones with me. They'd push it off because it wasn't as important. They were just like, "Are you doing okay? Good. All right. Let's just push this off till next week." But if you're not taking the time, it's going to just continue to just be pushed off and pushed off. It also usually is endemic of what's called being reactive versus proactive too because you're pushing it off because you think there's an alligator closer to your boat.

Most of the time, they're not emergencies. It's just, I didn't feel it today, it's Friday afternoon. I feel like clocking off early, can we just... You do need to make an effort to put in the time and make sure that it's repeatable because again, it's a process. It's like people who work out, I don't look like a person who works out, but those people who do, they do it because they do it on a regular basis.

Megan Ellsworth: True. I also don't work out.

Kevin Mahoney: Exactly. I do eat at a regular cadence though, and so it's been working out great for me.

Megan Ellsworth: Me too.

Kevin Mahoney: Those are the important things to do. It is making sure that you have time and that you're putting realistic goals forward. When you have that, then you can put in the analytics, you can define analytics, but it really has to be time bound and it has to be relevant and measurable and specific.

Megan Ellsworth: Yeah, that's so true. How would you recommend implementing personal analytic tracking for an employee or a company?

Kevin Mahoney: Yeah, it's a very good question. Again, this circles back to being your own advocate. Half the time your boss might not be thinking about this. So, really, you should be thinking about it first, being proactive about the situation. We at Ingage have a lot of different systems that do this. Again, our software provides, like I said earlier, robust analytics. We do track against our own Ingage for sales platform a lot of the time.

Kevin Mahoney: When we have salespeople out there presenting or if I'm presenting, we can track the analytics of who presented, what pages and sections did they present, how long did they spend on those items and we can always compare those metrics between multiple individuals. Not only in a personal growth level but a team growth level. It's a team sport. When your manager's looking and saying, "Hey, I noticed that Kevin spent two more minutes on average talking about the company's story and four more minutes talking about the products and installation process. He has a higher close rate. I should really go back to the other team and have them focus on those areas and see if their numbers go up." Again, analytics should be making you ask deeper questions. You should see numbers and then you should say, "Hey, I wonder why that is." Why is that up, or why is that lower? What can I do? When we're using Ingage ourselves as presentations, we're definitely dogfooding or consuming our own analytics because we built this awesome system, why not use it ourselves?

Megan Ellsworth: Yeah, that's great advice. That little tidbit right there is analytics should help you or make you ask deeper questions. That is so good. I know people out there are taking notes on their learning guides. So, write that one down because if you're getting analytics and it's not prompting a deeper question, maybe they're not the right analytics.

Kevin Mahoney: Yeah. We'll probably go into a little bit deeper depth when we get to the success stories after this because I have some really good anecdotes but on the other end of it too, it's not going to be the only analytics. Our presentation software is awesome but there's still some analytics that you want to have in your CRM. Maybe if you're doing marketing or customer success, you're going to be logging that information there. We don't want to be that product that people have to go into do other things when that source of truth lives in the CRM. If you're using your CRM, also define what your KPIs look like in there. That might be your call dispositions. When you're reaching out to an existing customer as a follow-up that experience like? How are they responding? How much more likely are they going to return to you for business or refer you to other customers?

Kevin Mahoney: There's a lot that happens at the end of what we consider as that traditional funnel of once we get them to sign and pay for a job, well there's actually a whole other side of the hourglass because that funnel grows back out because now it's all about retention, keeping customer satisfaction very high and also making sure that they are singing our praises. A lot of that happens in probably a CRM system. It's good to work with your manager to figure out what's the right data to track there. And again, don't track empty KPIs. Don't treat the exercise as like, well, hey, number of calls per week, that sounds like a good KPI. Why is it a good KPI? You should be asking yourself, why are we tracking this exactly? You're really looking for what are they saying about our product or service? What are they saying about our customer success skills? So, it becomes discovery and data collection and it does provide immediate value.

Kevin Mahoney: This is great because both of these happen in the same week. So, I just wanted to talk a little bit about... This is more of how it all works in concert or in symphony. I've been talking about the individual instruments that play but with real-world scenarios. I was talking to an owner of a business and he was just talking about how he had no time to focus on his sales content. He was apologizing to us and we're like, "Hey man, you're busy." He said he's so busy splitting up his time because he was moving offices, they're actually upgrading to a new office space and everybody knows that when you move offices, job roles disappear. Everybody's a box mover.

Kevin Mahoney: He was splitting that time between doing that and doing physical ride-alongs with his reps out in the field. You got a new crop coming in, so you have a little bit of training. I asked him, "Hey, have you had a chance to take a look at Ingage's analytics to do virtual ride-alongs?" Because our analytics show the linear progression of a rep there. How long did they spend when they started the presentation and every subsequent page they did. And I suggested, "Could you potentially reduce the amount of physical ride-alongs and then maybe focus more on your sales content and just monitor remotely for those people that are probably a little bit closer to graduation, metaphorically?" You probably want to get them out in the wild sooner and less of that time being the helicopter parents. Like, hey, maybe if I put them out in the field, they might do the job and so I'll just monitor remotely.

Kevin Mahoney: Well, guess what? Now, he's in the office just monitoring that. He's working on the sales content. Not only does it save him time to focus on more important tasks, but it also reduces his customer acquisition costs. That's a KPI for anybody at any level because he's not spending his own time and hours out on the road with that person, so he's not spending redundant hours. So, it reduces the cost for that new customer. Again, you can think of anything as contributing to a KPI in any way, even when you're a sales manager or owner at that level. That's not just unique. Two days ago, we had a roofing company stop by my house doing their usual neighborhood inspection knocking campaign where they do the, "Hey, we were checking out your neighbor's roof and we were in the neighborhood, we thought we'd check out yours." This is what I love as an Ingage user because our house is a honey pot.

Kevin Mahoney: It's great for me because they had a trainer out along with a new rep in the field. I get to see how they train these people to sell out there. Even better, is when you're seeing them not just selling with Ingage, what's their process like? I sit there out there and ask a lot of questions. I was sitting there wondering, okay, they had nothing out there, no tablet, no nothing. So, it was making me wonder if this trainer had not been there, there'd been no way for them to know that that junior rep had been sticking to the scripts or saying all the key, important pieces, no tracking whatsoever. So, I actually pulled out Ingage and did the little pitch to him on the tablet and they immediately saw the value, both the trainee and the trainer. The trainee saw the value because it provided him with the guardrails for that junior rep to remember all the statistics and talking points.

Kevin Mahoney: When you're saying 10% of yada, yada does something, that's something you have to memorize. But when it's actually there on a presentation and you're actually showing it to the homeowner too with some visible damage to a roof or something like that, that's far more impactful than just having some guy recognize the script, have the trainer to make the eye contact, handle all the objections. You're having them focus more on the conversation flow and the content can speak for itself. So, they saw the value of that. And then the trainer saw the value of, hey, I can probably transition much more early off from doing the physical ride-alongs and monitor, again, from a virtual ride-along. Again, when you're trying to teach somebody to fly, you don't really know until they leave the nest. It's not until their solo ventures where you can really see where their metal is. That's where we provide a lot of that insight.

Kevin Mahoney: Additionally, when you're working with larger teams, that's where it becomes really big because if you're in charge of a lot of regions, you want to have a roll-up view. Even at a macro level, you want to see how everybody's performing. That's where our success stories lie is that people can just check in down to the individual rep level but they always start out at the macro. If I'm like a business owner and I wake up for my morning coffee and I just want to see how did we do this week, you get the aggregate. 20 presentations, average 18 minutes, our sales were up. Again, when you start at those macro levels, you always have questions, why? What's making that successful?

Kevin Mahoney: Then you start drilling in and be like, oh, that's right. During the sales meeting this week, we talked about talking more about this new product line and it seems to be gangbusters this week. I wonder why that is. Oh, they're speaking this much time on this particular product, a little bit less time on this other area where they're losing the customer. Again, drilling down into those analytics is extremely valuable in the real world.

Megan Ellsworth: That is so cool. I absolutely love that you were pitching Ingage to this roofer. I love that so much. I think you're so right, especially and it would affect every person and every level. Like you said, the trainee and the trainer were both really interested in it. And like you said, a business owner, I love that. So, they can just sit and enjoy a cup of coffee rather than going and checking in on all their different people that report to them and getting all of the latest reports. They can just do it right there from one interface.

Kevin Mahoney: Absolutely. You really have to believe in your product. Just to even go back to goals, like in champion, you have to really believe in what you're doing. I believe in what I'm doing, that's why I'm pitching Ingage to roofers who are pitching me new roofs. I believe in the product and I believe in the value I provide. Really, if you don't believe in what you're doing, you're probably in the wrong business, the wrong industry. Find your right fit. It might not be there but find it because you're going to be much more successful there. I happen to be in the place where I believe immensely in the platform and that it's helping people. When you believe in something that makes much easier to define those goals and saying, how do I make this better? How do I make myself better at advocating for this solution and helping people out?

Megan Ellsworth: Yeah. We've come to the third learning objective already, which is crazy. How do you bring this new tech to the table, that's the next learning objective.

Kevin Mahoney: Absolutely. I'll probably start with saying something that sounds like we're not trying to sell ourselves but don't pick a new technology just because it's the hot new thing. We're hearing all about AI right now. You don't add AI to your system because you don't understand it but you hear it's a cool buzzword and everybody else is doing it. There is something of identifying trends and making sure that you get ahead of them but don't dive into something just because it's cool. If you don't have a plan for it to actually contribute to solving a problem or making your company more successful, well, guess what? You probably just wasted a lot of money on something that you didn't really give a fair shot because you didn't need it in the first place. So, don't be a hammer looking for a nail. It just really start out with identifying an existing problem or an existing opportunity and comparing the pros and cons of a new technology, getting you to that next step of either solving that problem or growing to that next point in your system.

Kevin Mahoney: For example, for our software system, let's say that you're part of a roll-up operation or some merging of companies and you need to get on a consistent standard. Well, great, we offer roll-ups on our analytics, so we're a way to help standardize that process across multiple brands. Back to the tools and techniques. We're big fans of something called the 131 framework. You can use this at any part of your life. It doesn't even apply to if you're a roofer or an engineer. You could just be problem-solving something at home. It's even good for choosing where to go on vacation but it's essentially, define one problem, you come up with three solutions and then from that you make one recommendation. Again, it sounds super simple but that's how all these cool frameworks are. They always sound like they make common sense and you like, why didn't I think of that? Or I do something like that.

Kevin Mahoney: Really, the spirit of this is like don't be in the habit of coming to your manager with problems without solutions because when people come to me and just complain about stuff, I'm like, "Well, that's great but have you tried thinking about something so I don't have to think about your problem for you?" Again, people are busy. The world doesn't revolve around you, so it's always good to come at them with solutions. And it's even better when you come up with three because why three? Why is three a good number? Most of the time, when it's just one solution, you're just going to go with what you're familiar with, what you're comfortable with. So, going outside of your comfort zone and finding three different angles to help against that bias will often end up with you cherry-picking the best ideas from all three.

Kevin Mahoney: So, it helps you go outside your comfort zone, identify three different ways to tackle a problem. And then providing your one recommendation just shows your confidence in your ability to propose a solution. You're saying, "Hey, I'm being proactive. I gave you three options. This is my recommendation based on my expertise." It might not be the solution your manager goes with. They might have other knowledge that says, well, actually this is probably better but I really appreciate the amount of insight you put into this. But it still demonstrates that productivity and the ability to demonstrate critical thinking skills and the ability to make decisions. Again, it's an evergreen quality of being your own advocate or champion, is that you are actually making suggestions.

Megan Ellsworth: I love that. I have a hard time thinking under pressure and when someone, maybe I find them really important, they're higher up in a company than me and they're quizzing me on something or asking me to find a better solution, I get thrown for a loop. I think that is such a good way to pull in your thoughts. And also, maybe you can't do it in the moment, but you can go back and say, "I'm going to do 131. I'm going to think about it. I'm going to give you three solutions and one recommendation and we're going to fix this." I love that.

Kevin Mahoney: Absolutely. It fits beautifully with these four squares I have. It's like building your case is identifying the problem and your solutions. Pitching to your manager, these are the options, this is what I suggest. Overcoming objections. They're always going to have questions, so you need to be able to answer those. And for the ones you don't know, do not feel bad about saying, I don't know. The worst thing you can do is lie or just nod or say, well, it's not going to be a problem or we'll figure it out. It's okay not to know something. The important thing is that you want to find out is it worth figuring out an answer to that question? Is that objection important and why? Because that might help you go back and reassess. Again, it's a collaboration piece. It's a collaborative relationship.

Megan Ellsworth: I'd love to just summarize this great talk we've had, unless there's anything on learning objective three you want to add.

Kevin Mahoney: Yeah. For the recap here, again, analytics, so again, you want to define what makes a champion, that's vitally important and what are those qualities? Your analytics are basically a way of measuring those KPIs as key performance indicators that you assign or ascribe to those qualities. What makes me a good systems or sales engineer? What are the qualities of that? Well, it's being terrifically customer focused, it's being about open to a lot of solutions. It's about asking a lot of questions. So, how do I define metrics on that? Then I'll be like, okay, customer focused. Am I taking enough time to meet with them so that they feel valued? Am I asking them the right questions? Am I helping them grow their business? What metrics can I measure off of that?

Kevin Mahoney: Again, if I don't have the framework and tools there, that's when I define goals that are quickly, easily measurably defined goals that you have so that you can chart your growth. It's all coming together to push into be in that champion right there. Really, the analytics, there are just a way to make sure that you're on track. You want some kind of assurance that you're heading in the right direction.

Megan Ellsworth: Yeah, absolutely. I would love to encourage all the listeners out there too, to start tracking your KPIs and look for tech solutions that you could introduce into your companies to help you track analytics and improve your business.

Kevin Mahoney: I don't want to necessarily treat this as a quiz question that I'm asking now. These should be questions that you should be asking of yourself essentially, every time you're doing something that is pertaining towards your growth or even just your daily tasks in life. Maybe a good habit is asking yourself, what is one KPI you could track right now to keep yourself accountable at work? Saying accountable at work feels like you're not doing your job. That's not what we're saying. It's more about what is one KPI that you could track to make yourself more successful at work? That's probably a better way of thinking about it. Two, what are two benefits of bringing new technology to your manager? Hey, what are three benefits if we're in the spirit of 131? But yeah, start thinking about benefits there. And again, don't think of them as just blind benefits because it's cool or because it brings some edginess factor to it.

Kevin Mahoney: No, what are some concrete benefits that you know will grow your company and grow it in a way that is not only just a one-time benefit but something that's sustainable over time? So start thinking about that as well. What value does this bring to everybody at the table? And then number three, this is one that I constantly still ask myself, you'll probably always be working on this for the rest of your life. How can you effectively pitch a new tech idea to your manager? This is a work in progress.

Maybe this is something where you could even do your own dogfooding and do your own metrics and analytics on how you're doing this. It might start out pretty bad if you're not good at pitching new tech ideas to your manager but start actually tracking what are people responding to? What are they dismissing? Am I being effectively communicative in these ideas? Just with number three, you can actually do all the analytics and metrics tracking just on this question because it's going to be a continuously evolving process.

Megan Ellsworth: Wow. I love that you had questions for people to think about for themselves, not just like, all right, we're going to quiz you now on everything we've talked about. I love that because being able to go internal and see how you can make yourself better is how we make everything better. So, I urge everyone to really think about this and what are you keeping track of right now in terms of KPIs and maybe are they working for you, are they not? I love that you said the third one is work in progress because it always is. I love that.

Kevin Mahoney: Exactly. These aren't studying for the test, this is studying for life. You're constantly going to be asking yourself these questions in one form or another. It's evergreen. Always applicable.

Megan Ellsworth: Yep. Amazing. Kevin, thank you so, so much for chatting with me today and giving a great lunch and learn. I hope everyone enjoyed their lunch. Where can they reach you to get more information on Ingage?

Kevin Mahoney: Absolutely. Those of you who have cell phones and live in the 21st, you can scan this QR code right here. For those of you like me, who for some reason don't use QR codes, so it betrays my age and speaking as a person that's an advocate for technology, you can just manually go to www.ingage.io/demo. Additionally, you can call us, if you're really old school cool, dial 212-608-9146. We're here on all channels. We're here to answer your calls and your prayers.

Megan Ellsworth: Amazing. You can also go to RoofersCoffeeshop.com to the Ingage directory to learn more and find all this information there as well. Kevin, thank you again. This has been amazing.

Kevin Mahoney: Oh, this has been an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much for inviting us.

Outro: Absolutely. Thank you. One last time, and everyone please make sure to go check out that Ingage directory and we'll see you next month on the next lunch and learn.