IAM2523 – CEO Helps People Grow and Maintain High-value Business Relationships

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Jody Glidden Teaser 00:00

I thought, what if it helped us keep in touch and really remember the people that we're forgetting about that we wish we didn't? Help us keep in touch a little bit better, not in a fake way, not just like sending random messages to people and all that stuff.

But actually just researching people and noticing when somebody has a kid or noticing the things that you wish you could notice about things and being real about it, but just allowing you to do more.

And so that's really what Postilize is all about, noticing the things about the relationships that matter to you, and helping you do more.

Intro 00:34

Are you ready to hear business stories and learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and level up your business from awesome CEOs, entrepreneurs, and founders without listening to a long, long, long interview?

If so, you've come to the right place. Gresh values your time and is ready to share with you the valuable info you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO Podcast.

Gresham Harkless 01:01

Hello, hello, hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO Podcast, and I have an awesome guest on the show today. I have Jody Glidden. Jody, excited to have you on the show.

Jody Glidden 01:08

Yeah, nice to be here. Thanks for having me.

Gresham Harkless 01:10

Yes, I'm super excited to have you on and super excited to talk about all the awesome things that you're doing.

And of course, before we do that, I want to read a little bit more about Jody so you can hear about some of those awesome things.

And Jody is a veteran tech entrepreneur with over two decades of experience founding, scaling, and exiting B2B SaaS companies.

He is most recently the founder and CEO of Postilize, an AI-powered platform helping people grow and maintain high-value business relationships.

Before Postilize, he co-founded Introhive, where he helped pioneer the relationship intelligence category, scaling the AI company globally and securing private equity investment.

Jody has built multiple startups from the ground up, navigated market crashes, and led teams through rapid growth and exit.

Today's focus on how AI can enhance human connection, shape the future of work, and drive meaningful impact in business and beyond.

I was listening to a few of Jody's episodes before we popped on this. He's doing some really phenomenal things, has five successful startups over the last 30 years. We even chatted about a little bit before we hopped on this.

And one of the things that I really love around AI is I always say it's not either or, it's both and better.

And I think that's a lot of what Jody talks around where you're not asking, can I be human or can I leverage technology?

You're doing both of those things together. And one of the things that really stuck out to me is he said, I've always been driven by a passion for helping people leverage technology to build relationships and meaningful relationships.

And that's why I've spent a career building technology to solve that problem. So Jody, excited to have you on the show, my friend. Are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

Jody Glidden 02:42

Yeah, I'm ready.

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Gresham Harkless 02:43

Let's do it. Let's get it started then. So to kind of kick everything off, let's rewind the clock a little bit, hear a little bit more on how you got started, what I call your CEO story.

Joy Glidden 02:52

Yeah, yeah, sure. So, I got started in programming when I was a little kid. That was just kind of accidental, and I used to play around with it and just kind of for fun, for science fair projects and all this.

And then when the nineties came along and I was just graduating high school, I started to realize, wow, this can actually maybe be a career. I'd never expected that.

For me it was just a hobby, just a fun thing. I knew I wanted to get into business. Then, I ended up getting a call from somebody who was who had a startup that was fairly small at that point, but it was leading in the category of e-learning.

And I had, just done a T a year of teaching and I had this software development background.

So they found me, I guess, and asked me to join. And that ended up the platform that I built ended up driving the company a lot.

And it just turned into a rocket ship. We got, we got acquired. I got bit by the bug and just kind of kept on going from there.

I started another company. We got acquired again by the same company in the, in the late nineties.

And then did another one that the late 2000s that we got acquired by BlackBerry, then started two companies in 2010 Introhive, which we grew to about, almost a $500 million valuation, raised 140 million during the course of my tenure there, it's still going.

And then another company, which was more of a services company, but it was still a lot of fun.

Gresham Harkless 04:24

Yeah, absolutely. And the most recent one, Introhive, you'd been doing for almost a decade or so, if I read that correctly.

Jody Glidden 04:30

Yes, we started in 2010 and then I left about two and a half years ago to start Postilize. So yeah, I was there, I think 12 years, 12 and a half years.

Gresham Harkless 04:38

Nice, nice. Well, that's definitely awesome. And it sounds like definitely not only do you have the bug, but you also have the eye for it.

It sounds like as well, too, to be able to understand where there might be those opportunities to build something really awesome and impactful.

But at the same time, you know, have that that exit, which so many times we as founders can forget about.

Jody Glidden 04:55

Yeah, I think one of the areas where I could have went wrong, but, managed to stay on track is you often come up with ideas that aren't necessarily within your expertise or you sort of get dragged into areas that are not your expertise.

And to have an exit on a startup is, the odds are stacked against you so much, you know? So you really need all the wind blowing at your back.

So I've just always remained in things that were in my area of expertise. So it's always B2B, large enterprise, software as a service.

The last two were AI. The first two were all in the same line in e-learning. I've never veered too far off the track of the last one in my next one. I think that helps a lot.

Gresham Harkless 05:40

Yeah, absolutely. So I know you touched on a little bit. I did as well, too.

I would love to drill down a little bit more, hear what you're doing with Postilize, how you're making that impact, and how you're serving the clients you work with.

Jody Glidden 05:50

Yeah, sure. So one of the things I thought was super interesting, and I think a lot of people do, is generative AI.

My mind was all about measuring relationships and cultivating relationships because it's helped me so much in my career.

And it was a lot to do with what we had built at Introhive was measuring relationships. So I thought, what if I could build a tool that could help build relationships?

So, we all know there's this thing called Dunbar's law where they talk about,that most of us have about 100 and some meaningful relationships in our lives.

And after that, we can't scale. And I thought, well, generative AI kind of can make us scale.

So, I thought what if it helped us keep in touch and really remember the people that we're forgetting about that we wish we didn't, help us keep in touch a little bit better, not in a fake way, not just like sending random messages to people and all that stuff.

But actually just researching people and noticing when somebody has a kid or noticing the things that you wish you could notice about things and being real about it, but just allowing you to do more.

And so that's really what Postilize is all about noticing the things about the relationships that matter to you and helping you do more.

Gresham Harkless 07:03

Yeah, absolutely. And so I almost wonder if that is personally your secret sauce or the secret sauce of the company or a combination of both, is that ability to not just see that, not just understand that from a deep human perspective.

And the understanding and need for connection, but also understand like how these technology and these new tools are able to do that. Do you feel like bringing those things together is part of your secret sauce?

Jody Glidden 07:26

I think part of my secret sauce has always been noticing when all of a sudden, something was available to be done that wouldn't have been able to have been possible maybe a year before.

Cause you not only have to have a good idea, but you have a, you have to have a good idea at the right time.

And then you have to be able to execute really, really fast, right? Cause there's a million other people having the same idea at the same time. I can almost guarantee it.

So I think that's, that's always been my thing is like just curiosity and always going to bed, sleepless nights, because my mind's wandering and I'm like, oh, I'd love to have something that could help me with this.

Solving your own problem is, I mean, you know this, it's one of the most important things. If it's a pain point that you have yourself, then chances are you at least have something that is going to be useful in the world.

Gresham Harkless 08:14

Yeah, absolutely. Kind of scratching your own itch, so to speak, and being able to kind of do that.

And I was going to ask you for a CEO hack, which is like an Apple book or a habit, something that makes you more effective and efficient.

But like one of my favorites that I read recently is 10X is easier than 2X, I believe. So 10X is not necessarily working 10 times as hard; it's actually thinking in a different way.

And a lot of times, when you have that innovation looking outside the box, they're saying, what box that allows you to think in such a different way where you don't have the composition.

You are making a bigger impact, not because you're working harder, but because you've been able to kind of think outside of what other people are thinking.

Jody Glidden 08:50

Yeah, but I think there's something to the other spin on what you said a second ago, too, which is, I think there's an awful lot of people that talk about doing the early years of a startup with work-life balance.

And that's never been the experience that I've ever seen succeed. Like I think, startups, it's a lot of work, but it's actually a lot of fun.

And so, the advantage that you have, if you can have half the size of the team, and everybody's working one and a half times as hard.

Then I think you get the same or better results because you don't have all these layers of communication and decisions by committee and all this kind of stuff. You're just actually getting things done a lot faster.

And so that's always been the approach that I've tried to take, is just you gotta love what you do, you gotta keep people that love what they do, and everybody will just work hard, and everything is a lot higher chance of success.

Gresham Harkless 09:43

Yeah, absolutely, that makes a lot of sense. And so, what would you consider to be a little bit more of what I like to call a CEO nugget?

So this could be like a word of wisdom or a piece of advice. I like to say it might be something you would tell your younger business self if you were to hop into a time machine.

Jody Glidden 09:56

Yeah, I think probably the biggest lesson that I learned was the importance of getting really good legal advisor.

I had a couple of my exits that I had, I ended up kind of not getting the best outcome because of a legal technicality that ended up happening along the way.

So I think, like in the earlier years of my career, I was very focused on making sure that legal costs were really just squeezed to a minimum, and what could I do on my own, and I think I realized as I got older.

The value that especially for the complex parts, like an exit, like an acquisition, like a massive financing, or something like that, it's really important to surround yourself with people who've been through that a hundred times.

Gresham Harkless 10:49

Yeah, absolutely. That ends up being such a huge thing. Do you find like that's something that you would have done from day one or day zero?

Or is that something that, as you're starting to think about that exit and taking those steps, that is something that you should think about then or on all of?

Jody Glidden 11:05

It's more like once the numbers get big. So like, let's say you're about to have your first exit. I wouldn't do your first exit without having a super experienced attorney who's probably had a hundred or a thousand exits.

And if you're about to do a financing round that's say 50 million or greater, I wouldn't do that without an attorney that has done that a hundred times.

And because there's so many ways to kind of be taken advantage of that are not super obvious.

Gresham Harkless 11:36

Yeah. Absolutely. Well, I appreciate you so much in sharing that.

So I want to ask you now one of my absolute favorite questions, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO.

We're hoping to have different quote-unquote CEOs on the show. So, Jody, what does being a CEO mean to you?

Jody Glidden 11:51

To me, I think being a CEO is, for me personally, it has been the pursuit. Like, I personally love the pursuit more than the money.

What I think the job entails for me is motivating everybody because when you start out, if you have the right idea, it should be really, really improbable that you can make it happen.

And you are the one with the irrational belief that this will happen. And if you don't make that contagious, then you're not going to find the money, you're not going to find the right employees, and you're not going to find the first customers.

Gresham Harkless 12:26

Yeah, absolutely. I love that irrational belief because I think that irrational belief is actually can be rational once you do it.

But I think a lot of times that irrationality, if that's even a word, comes from the outside of like, that's not possible, that can't happen.

But I think when you have that person that believes that, that belief becomes infectious and it starts to embed like the entire DNA of the organization and the people that are within it.

And that's when you can really do literally anything that you can, as long as you have that resilience, the perseverance, and some of those things that are needed in a startup, for sure.

Jody Glidden 12:59

Yeah, absolutely true. I think if you have, if you don't have the irrational belief, you will almost certainly not make it successful.

If you're starting something that is, uh, if you're starting something that most people already believe is going to happen, then you probably have the wrong idea because there's going to be a million competitors.

So I think those two things have to go together. It has to be something that it's extremely hard.

So, most people disbelieve it, but you irrationally believe it. And you can spread that onto others.

Gresham Harkless 13:30

Yeah, absolutely. I'm so curious. I feel like so many times people you set goals that you can achieve because you know that you can achieve them and you can celebrate them.

But what do you feel like has gotten into your, I'll call it DNA, or what makes you say that I do want to set those irrational goals, those irrational visions?

Is that something that you just can't do it any other way? But what do you think has contributed to that?

Jody Glidden 13:57

I find the job fun. I find the selling fun. I find the creating PowerPoint presentations fun. I find the software the coding fun.

When something gets really hard and somebody on my team says that's not possible, I actually jump in and start coding it myself sometimes. So, and at Introhive, we had almost 400 employees.

So I don't mind jumping in and doing it because I find the work fun. And I think that just kind of leads to further belief by everybody that it can happen.

Gresham Harkless 14:25

Yeah, absolutely. And I think that it's kind of like any good movie that you watch. You're like, hey, you have your ebbs and you have your flows and you have things that work out well, not so well.

And you're like, how's it going to end? And I imagine the excitement of that ends up being very infectious as well.

Jody Glidden 14:38

Yeah, I think there's a lot of people that have my same story where, they had a dad that didn't believe in them and a mom that did or vice versa or whatever.

And then you're kind of in the perfect position because you want to prove one of them right and one of them wrong.

It's you have that support structure that you need and that sort of chip on your shoulder to try to make it happen.

Gresham Harkless 15:03

Jody, super excited to have had you on the show and love everything you've been able to do.

So what I want to do now is pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional that you can let our readers and listeners know.

And of course, how best people can get out of view about, about all the awesome things you and your team are building.

Jody Glidden 15:18

Yeah, sure. So, love for you guys to come check out our what we're building at Postilize, which we think is the future of relationship building.

So it's P-O-S-T-I-L-I-Z-E.com. And you can also reach me at Jody Glidden on LinkedIn.

Gresham Harkless 15:34

Awesome, awesome, awesome. And of course, to make it even easier, we'll have the links and information in the show notes as well, too, so that everybody can follow up with you to find out about all the awesome things that you've been working on and you've been building.

And Jody, I appreciate you so much and taking some time out again. I think everything you're building is absolutely phenomenal.

I think when you think about all the connections that people that you're meeting and want to build relationships with, you're like, sometimes your brain gets fried just thinking about how you're going to make that happen.

So I love that you made that easy button happen. But I think even more, I love what it represents and what it symbolizes as well, too.

To me, it's like it definitely very much so in the abundance mentality, where you're not thinking either, where you're thinking both and better.

And you only do that sometimes when you think outside of that box. So, thank you so much for doing that.

And of course, taking some time out with us today. I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

Jody Glidden 16:18

Yeah, thanks for everything you do.

Outro 16:20

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by CB Nation and Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co. I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community.

Check out the latest and greatest apps, books, and habits to level up your business at CEOhacks.co. This has been the I AM CEO podcast with Gresham Harkless Jr. Thank you for listening.

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