How to Lead with Vision in a Rapidly Changing World with Dean Curtis -CEO of Ingage

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This is the Beyond the Story podcast, a show that goes way beyond the story. And now, Sebastian Rusk Well, I appreciate you taking time out of your busy day to hang out with me for a few minutes. There's a lot of things you could be doing, but you decided to hop on the Podcaster's Podcast.

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You know, I heard it's the place to be, so it's all the cool kids are hanging out. I was like, man, I want to be with Sebastian. Well, I'm glad you got the bald memo. Well, remember, I'm bald by choice. I shave it all off. I can't speak for So I love telling people's stories on the show. Well, first of all, before we jump into that, you and I first connected through, uh, the, the wonderful, uh, the great Dan Martel's group. And, um, we got to just hang out in old Canada, a couple of weeks back, which was great. And, um, then we ended up doing a few things, getting you booked on some client podcasts and whatnot. But, um, so it's, I just love the, the, the idea that, creating meaningful relationships is a direct product of being in the right room around the right people with the same thought process and the same goals and ambitions as well. So consider you Well, it's, you know, it's amazing. We're in these groups and we meet online. And then that experience that we had up in Kelowna, so many of those relationships have gone to the next level because we had meals together, because we had shared conversation, because we had a hallway conversation. It was unbelievable to make those personal connections, to bring the online Yeah. That's what, when, when, when it goes, when offline goes, when It's crazy. You know what? And I think we're default to, I'm on this Zoom and I go on to my next thing. It's important to be intentional about creating those offline connections and opportunities. I did a training this morning for a local group of business leaders and the level of interaction off the charts that I don't think we would have ever gotten on Zoom. So I think there's value to both, but it's important to remember those in-person interactions Yeah, they really are. Even after, you know, especially after a global pandemic, people are, you know, I think, and I always say that all the onset of AI and all of that cute stuff that's happening at a rapid rate is not going to replace those human connections and being able to, you know, After 2020, we just wanted to give somebody a hug. And I don't think that ever went away. And I think that as we continue to be more digitized, if you will, we continue to crave those offline experiences.

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Being in Canada for that week was a great example of that. So couldn't agree more, man. like I was starting to say before I went squirrel brain real quick and, uh, want to talk about how you and I connected. I love telling people's stories on this show. Um, so let's back up to the beginning of the story. Now, the beginning of the story is different for everybody. So whatever that looks like for you. Um, but where did the beginning of the story, um, start for you and, um, what really brought you to present day with what you're currently working on. I know bits and pieces of the story, but for some context purposes for Yeah, I think what's interesting is I've always been me in anything I've been. And I've always been that person who's always looking to grow and be kind of moved to that next level of wherever I happen to be. Started out my life, I'm going to go all the way back, in upstate New York. And I always knew that wasn't where I wanted to end up. So I chose a college that put me eight hours away from home and opened my eyes to just different cultures and different ways of thinking in the Midwest versus in upstate New York. I started out my life as a teacher and then realized that there was so much more that I wanted to do with the technology background that I had and moved into the tech field working for a whole bunch of different companies. So go from classroom teacher to technical sales consultant, and then realized after working at some pretty major companies, Fortune 5, not Fortune 500, but like Fortune 5, big, massive companies that I really wanted to try my hand at something where I had more influence and impact. So I joined a startup, and that's where I am today. Love So, and you also had a pretty solid career Yeah. So that was my last job before being here. So I go from one of the biggest brands of all to someone no one ever knows about or has heard about and leading this charge into a whole different space. And I wanted, but again, it was that influence and impact, the ability to really go in, test my leadership skills and make an impact on a business. And here we are nine years later, we've taken it from, basically did a whole turnaround to the company. It looks completely different than it did when we joined nine years ago. And here we are approaching a massive milestone in So what was it like to work at Apple? It was awesome. I look back at that time as extremely formative in my leadership skills and my ability to handle ambiguity. I think one of the things that you have to deal with at a big organization like that is there's lots of things going on and the ability to deal with ambiguity was a muscle I didn't really have and being able to really exercise Um, that and understand that my impact might not be seen today, but could be seen three, four or five years later, uh, in dealing with that, uh, ambiguity was probably the biggest takeaway from my time there had some great leaders. I worked with some amazing people and I realized I loved being around a players and that's where I'm trying to build now is in our company. Can we be a culture of a players that really push each other every single day to, um, 10 X, what So let's talk about your company. What exactly do you guys do? Who do you help? Who do you serve?

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We are an interactive presentation software company. So if you're thinking about, well, how does that fit into the world?

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The problem that we solve for most people is giving confidence to sales reps when they're having conversations. You're like, well, how does interactive content and confidence with salespeople actually meet?

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Well, what we found is that most salespeople, when they follow a very defined process, the content supports that process. And so for the sales rep, we give them always on-brand, interactive, amazing content that they can work with during their sales calls. We give sales team leaders the ability to have insight into what those salespeople are doing with that content. And then all of the plumbing that IT needs to make sure everyone has the latest thing without any issues. And marketing is super happy because the brand is preserved because sales reps can't change what they give So what kind of customers do you have? What kind of businesses need what Our primary target is home improvement contractors. So if you think about if you're buying a new roof or new windows or siding, someone usually comes to your home and sits in your home for 60, 90, two hours, and they're telling you all the value of what they bring. But that's a very complex educational process. Those sales processes, by the way, seven steps, eight steps, 10 steps, are very well defined. So they had this need where the current content they had was not serving the sales team well, was not converting customers and was not on brand. We came to the market with a solution. We didn't intend to go after that market. They found us and we've built an entire business serving that home improvement, home services contractor. And how do you guys find new business?

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We go through two different channels, well, many different channels, but we'll go to conferences and meet with people at industry conferences. But we try to go to market through both the bottom, I'll call it the bottom of the market, direct to contractors. But we also have relationships with some of the biggest building product manufacturers to get access to their network of contractors. So if you think about someone like Pella or James Hardy or Owens Corning, We're working with them to build amazing content for contractors so that they can have it accessible within our platform at no cost to the contractor, so it gets them up and Love it. What would you say the best part of the last nine years The opportunity to give people a chance. I think when I look at my journey professionally, someone always took a chance on me to get me to my next level of growth within the positions that I had at all these different companies. And I always say I'm aspirational in my hiring. So I always look for people who are just about ready for the job I'm gonna give them, but maybe don't come with all the experience. And some people might say that's absolutely crazy, but I always look for people who are trying to get to that next level and give them the opportunity to do that. It doesn't always work out, but for the most part, when you look at some of our senior leaders in our company, they were not filling those roles at other companies. They were actually one step removed and we gave them the chance. So I look at it as the opportunity to really give people an uplift in where they could potentially Yeah, we do. You know, our podcast is, we're going to reshape of it. It served a certain purpose up till this point. And our conversation when we were together up in Canada really changed my mind about what we needed to be using that for. So we're reshaping a few different things. So we're going to reshape the podcast where it's going to be less from a marketing perspective and more from a sales and understanding customer pain perspective. So I'm taking it over from our marketing team and I'm going to lead conversations with people who have done the thing that people want to do, get in the room with people who have actually solved the problems that they're trying to, but also talk to our prospects and our customers about the actual day-to-day of their business and where the problems exist, not just problems we can solve, but maybe ways that they've solved problems that other people in our network could learn from. Then we're also looking at social media in general and leveraging that podcast in order to feed the social media content engine that we're building also.

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which is, if you're listening to this, friends, this isn't the podcast, Suck Podcast, it's beyond the story, but most of you know what I do, and that's specifically what I teach, leveraging a podcast to get out there and identify and create opportunities. It's a relationship builder, it's a bridge builder, it's a biz dev tool, and it also allows you to double down or get in the game with your social media content so you're showing up consistently on there. So nice work with that, Dean. I'm excited to see what's gonna unfold with all that for you guys as well. So we're almost wrapping up 2025 here, which is just bananas to even start to think that Halloween is next week. Stupid holiday anyway, but. We don't want to go down that road. Yeah. What are you excited about for the rest of the You know, I think a lot of people wait for 2026 to do the new thing. We've chosen in Q4 to do some new things, to prep, to test, to make sure those are the things that we want to be doing in 2026. So Q4 is a test bed for us in a lot of different ways. We're on track to hit a lot of our annual goals and we are not resting on those laurels. So when I look at how to finish the year, I look at this as separation season. Because so many people are saying, oh, we'll get to that in the next year. I actually think this is the perfect time to try a few things to know if they're going to work or at least get a few test cases done so that you can hit the ground running in the new year. So for me, Q4 is. time to test, we're doing a whole new way of goal setting, we're doing a whole new way of incentivizing our team, and we're trying those in Q4 so we know as we head into 2026 that we're ready to go and have some new ways of thinking and new ways of executing our business.

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Love it, man. Well, listen, I'm encouraged by what you got going on there, there at the company, and also us being buddies now and running in the same circles too. That makes business and life just that much more fun. I almost said funner, but- You can make up words. It's your podcast. That this is true. I was just about to say that, too, but it's my is that a word? Well, it is now in the world. Dean, I appreciate your time hanging out with me for a few minutes today and learning more about your story and what you do and who you guys serve. Any You know, this, the social media thing is pretty new to me. Uh, I would love that if anybody wants to connect, connect with me on social media, I'm Dean Curtis 23, just drop the, I guess, Sebastian dropped me a DM with Sebastian to let me know that because you know, Sebastian, you're interested enough to follow me and connect, um, always willing to, to help, but also see if there's, there's something that, um, I can provide a value to anybody who's listening.

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I appreciate that, Dean. I'll make sure to include Dean's Instagram link in the show notes. That's the description of this podcast episode, in case you're wondering what the hell a show note is on there. Dean, you the man. Always great to see you, my brother. Keep doing what you're doing and look forward to seeing you at one of these events here in the near future.

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Sounds good. Thanks, Sebastian. You got it. Until next time, friends. Thanks so much for tuning into this episode of the Beyond the Story podcast. We sure do appreciate it. If you haven't done so already, make sure you're subscribed to the show. This way you'll get updates as new episodes become available. If you feel so inclined, please leave us a review. We sure do appreciate it. Signing off from the podcast, launchlab.com studios.