Zoho MEA Podcast: Decoding A Decade As A Zoho Partner: An Interview With Dean Schreuder, Managing Director Of DSL Telecom

You can tune in to the complete podcast episode here! 

Dean: I mean, it goes back to when I finished varsity. After going through institutions like school and then employment and having this feeling that I didn't really like the way it was structured. I wanted to start my own company, and I wanted to change all the things that I didn't like about my experience. The way it was all structured just didn't make sense to me to try and get people to do what they needed to do. So I thought, let me build a business that will be a place where I, myself would like to work at.

Dean: The culture actually developed over the years. In the beginning, I was just hustling around trying to sell products and services to bring money into the business. As I started to recruit people and started to make mistakes, I started learning, and that's when I took a step back and had a look at what was holding my people back from being successful.

I asked myself how do I get them to be more successful in my company and that's when I looked at what the normal structures are in employment and in companies. I looked at how I can reverse engineer those structures or get rid of those things and change the way people look at things.

We started to identify what makes salespeople unsuccessful and what makes them successful, so we needed to have an approach to sales in order to educate the guys to choose the sales career. We did quite well at that and then later on I identified that people have a lack of enjoyment for employment or for working at a company, due to them complaining about their boss, how much money they make and that there's no growth.

After interviewing hundreds of people, I realised it can't just be the companies, the business owners, or the managers that are the problem but potentially it's the way that the employees are approaching employment.

Dean: Yes, the mindset. I started looking at the employee mindset and how people are indoctrinated to think about employment, knowingly or unknowingly, with most people it's unknowingly. It's a bit of information or memes that have been passed over from parents, family, friends, or social media. So I look at how people approach employment and if I can change their view on employment, then hopefully they can be more productive, and I think we've been quite good at achieving that with our team.

Kelly: That's amazing. So by flipping it on its head, guys approach memes and the employment mindset in a different kind of way?

Dean: Yes, so I can't teach somebody to be positive or build a positive culture unless I know what a negative culture is. It all starts off with what is the approach to employment? How do I get a healthy, productive employee? And that starts with the relationship that we have with the guys. When I recruit new people, I try to find out if they are generally nice people, that they communicate well and make sure that they don't come with any legacy or employment poison in them.

So I am in every first induction that we have with new recruits so that I can convey my message. I start my training off by asking everyone how they're doing, and I'll get answers like okay and good and then I respond back by saying well I am amazing, I am doing flippen amazing. It's so powerful, what you say, you become. If you say that you're okay then you're only going to have an okay day, and the day that you have is all that you have got. Yesterday is a memory and tomorrow doesn't exist. So all you've got is today. So what are you going to make of the day?

Kelly: That's amazing.

Dean: Maybe if I explain some of these memes, it'll make more sense. So on a Monday, people say, "Oh, it's a blue Monday." Now, if you're saying to yourself that you're having a blue Monday or it's a blue Monday when you start the day, what type of Monday are you going to have?

Kelly: Yeah, it's going to be negative.

Dean: It's going to be negative - it's going to be blue. So what we do is we flip that on its head. We call Monday a 'Green Monday.' If you're in sales, you have the opportunity to make commission. If you're in any other role, including sales, you can learn a skill, make a connection, compliment a colleague, make them feel better about themselves, help someone, train someone, or watch a webinar. The point is, you're either going to start and end your Monday as a better person, or you can start and end your Monday as the same person you were in the morning, and that's just a waste of a day then. We should say, 'I get to go to work on Green Monday because I can make money if I sell with a positive mindset or if I learn a skill, and I can add value to the marketplace because that's what people pay for.'

Kelly: Yeah, and starting the week off like that just gives you so much more trajectory that the rest of the week is going to be better.

Dean: It's so much better. So you have a productive start to your Monday. Then on a Tuesday, we've got 'Choose Day,' where you get to choose if you continue to be productive or just let the day slide by and do the bare minimum. On Wednesdays, there's Hump Day Wednesday. What does hump day mean?

Kelly: Downhill Wednesday.

Dean: It means it's downhill, coasting to the weekend. Yes. Now, if you and I were in a cycling race and we're both cycling up to the top of the hill, and at the top of the hill, you decide to coast down the hill, and I'm still pedaling.

Kelly: Yeah.

Dean: I'm going to win the race. I'm going to be more productive. I'm going to get more out of it.

Kelly: Yeah.

Dean: Thursday rolls around, most employees just kind of get through Thursday. Where we've got 'Thunder Thursday,' and we're going to bring the thunder on Thursday as well. Obviously, Wednesday, we call it winning Wednesday.

Kelly: That's great. So you kind of got to reject the employee memes?

Dean: Yeah, it's a stupid concept because you're going to be unproductive if you've got that mindset. Whereas if you change it to winning Wednesday, Thunder Thursday, and then what happens with normal employee mentalities, you wake up on a Friday, what do you say? "Thank God it's Friday."

Kelly: Yeah.

Dean: Which is dumb because it's the first time in the whole week you've delegated something to the good Lord. You haven't been religious the whole week, and now you're delegating it out. Thank God it's Friday.

Kelly: Yeah.

Dean: So what are you saying if you say thank God it's Friday? You're saying thank God that it's over with. But guess what? You're going to do it again next week. So you're not setting yourself up for success for the next week, and then what happens is by 12 o'clock you mentally clocked out on a Friday and you're mentally braaing. If you think about it, there are 52 weeks in the year. So if you poison yourself with the idea of a blue Monday 52 times in one year, imagine if you're employed for five years or 10 years, how toxic are you going to be at the end of that? And if you think hump day's rolling down to the weekend and you say, "Thank God it's Friday," or "Thank goodness it's Friday," whatever people are saying, they don't actually understand what they're poisoning themselves with.

Kelly: So basically, every day there's some negative connotation.

Dean: Yes, and it doesn't serve you if you're in employment because you want to make it the best experience that you can. What happens if you get in that cycle on Blue Monday, Tequila Tuesday, Hump Day Wednesday, Thank God It's Friday mentality? You're going to be unproductive for the entire week, and yet production is what yields happiness. Being productive doesn't necessarily mean work. It could be going for a hike, going for a run, doing a chore, doing the dishes. You'll feel a lot better, and nobody can contest that. That's the truth.

Kelly: Yes. Yeah. No, definitely. So you guys have created this almost winning culture that you guys are constantly trying to change the mindset.

Dean: Yes, so we kind of give them the information, and then they can make a choice. I'm like, you can go down this toxic route for weeks and months and years, but you're not going to be of any value to yourself. You're the one that's going to end up being depressed, unhappy, and not where you want to be because your outlook from the get-go is wrong. The way that you approach employment, just by saying, like, I have to go to work, rather than I get to go to work, it changes everything and focuses on how you view each day because you've got to battle against all the negativity that's out there. 

If you've got the information, if you choose to engage and go, 'Thank God it's Friday, and hump day, and Sunday fun day,' that's your choice, but it's not going to serve you in employment. You're not going to get anywhere in the medium or long run. And with my employees, I'm investing in them. A lot of companies go, "We're a family." In my company, we're not a family. Your family wants you to be safe. Yeah. I want you to be successful. There's a difference.

Dean: Yeah, 100%. They are now aware that the choices they make can impact where they go. Instead of life happening to you, you can turn around, and you can happen to life. If you empower them like that, then my job's pretty easy. It doesn't work with everyone, but if the person hasn't been poisoned with this employee mentality over time, that's why I like hiring younger people. The chance of them having that poison of being in the workplace or the wrong workplaces is less likely to be there. I'm not going to give them a framework and say that you must do this. I'm saying, here's the framework that everyone else is following, and they're unhappy and they're depressed, and those companies don't do well. In my role, it's more about guiding them and encouraging a different perspective on work and life choices. 

I like my job, but there are parts of my job that I don't like. Overall, I like my job - there's no job that's gonna be perfect out there. It doesn't matter what you do. There are hard things that you have to do. It's terrible because it's setting us up for failure, and that we have this perception that you should look for this dream job that's perfect, but no job is perfect.

So if I can get my employees on the right path with me, just how to start the day, how to approach the week, and then obviously we've got longer-term cycles, monthly, yearly, and so on. What happens is that they get on their lane in their framework, and they start to dismiss all the negativity that's out there.

Kelly: Yeah, it's so true. You're kind of setting yourself up for failure before you've even started. It's so interesting, and I love how you give them the choice to decide as to how they want to run their careers. And then kind of, we've spoken about this before, but they're kind of carrying the culture for you, and the momentum rubs off on everyone, and the staff carry it for you.

Dean: Yeah. So if enough of the employees run with that suggested framework for long enough, then I get key people in the organisation that are perpetuating that culture. They're rejecting negativity; they're rejecting excuses. I mean, an excuse is just a reason not to perform. Now, if you've got, especially in sales, if you've got a sales-driven organisation, which every organisation should be sales-driven, otherwise you're not going to go anywhere, you've got to have people that are perpetuating the culture for you. The culture takes over. I don't have to be the person preaching it the whole time. I can preach in the beginning, but everyone's singing the same gospel in the choir.

We achieved a little critical mass in terms of those people that run with that type of framework, and it's not just me. When we went to the Zoholics here in Cape Town, we took about 30 of our team members, and the culture that we've kind of created, it just kind of took over.

Kelly: They were flying their own flags.

Dean: It's got us to a certain point where we're achieving certain levels of success. We've got some awards and accolades, which are really cool. It becomes part of that, but it all starts with your mindset and your approach, because otherwise you're just inhibiting yourself from moving forward. They were flying the flag of the business and their own flag. Yeah. And it was beautiful. I could sit back and eat the chicken and rice and the dessert, and it was a beautiful thing. It's the first time I've actually been able to sit back and enjoy it. And it's because it's been perpetuated. To me, it is the right way to go. Well, it's at least been the right way to go for us.

Kelly: Yeah, no, that's so true. And with you and Paul traveling to Chennai with the partner team, I think you kind of saw a similar culture narrative in the Zoho Head Office.

Dean: 100%. I saw the same thing happening there. We've noticed the same thing happening from many years ago. It's also one of the reasons that we chose to be a Zoho partner. One was the software was great to use and you know, comparatively what else was available in the market 12-13 years ago wasn't working for us, so it was a good product. But if you attach that to Zoho's culture, there's a lot of similarities I suppose. And I learned a lot from Zoho's culture itself and I incorporate a lot of it into my culture as well.

Kelly: And how the people are just running with what was originally kind of created. Similar narrative, which is quite cool.

Dean: Yeah. And I think that's what the culture is. If you let them run with it, they will manage it. I don't want to manage it - it's boring. They want to manage it, and they don't want to be managed either. Some people can't manage it, but those people just don't last long. Most people will step up, and they will operate within the parameters and the vision of the culture. It's quite nice now because I can put new people in, and it's kind of like an incubator for the culture. Even if I wasn't involved, they're still getting quite a bit from it.

Kelly: Yeah, like we were just talking about this example of the guys just organising some analytics training and taking initiative and assisting each other.

Dean: It's fantastic. They do things. I'm like, oh, whose idea was that. I used to have to ask someone to drive things, and now they drive it themselves.

Kelly: Yeah, that's very, very cool.

Dean: And at the end of the day, it's more rewarding for them. They learn more skills, they become more valuable, and that translates to our customers too. So I always tell my staff that, you know, who pays your salary? And sometimes they go, you do, or the accounts lady does because she pushes the button on the bank account. But it's not me that pays the salary. I might, between the two of us, I might dictate how much it's going to be. Yeah. But the customers are actually paying your salary. Money is flowing from the customers, businesses, and pockets, and it's flowing to our business and flowing to their pockets. The more customers that we can get or retain, the more opportunity there is for them to increase their salary should they bring the value and that's because we've connected them with who pays them.

Kelly: And that's so great because now they want to serve the customer, give them excellent service.