Straight out of college, Joseph Landes landed a job at Microsoft and stayed for 23 years, growing into many roles and living in many countries throughout his time at the company. Upon meeting his current CEO, Vadim Vladimirskiy, he left Microsoft to start a very different journey. 

Joseph became the chief revenue officer of Nerdio, a technology firm that helps MSPs build cloud environments using Microsoft Azure. 

“Drop the dinosaur and get the goat!” he says, referring to when clients leave larger competitors for Nerdio because the company offers a better product at a lower cost. 

In this episode, we dive into what made Joseph stay with Microsoft for so long, and the adjustments he had to make moving from a massive organization to a startup. He talks about the even-keel mindset that one must have when running a startup and the importance of the entire company sharing that mindset.

Carol and Joseph also discuss a challenge facing Nerdio: competition with other technology companies for talent. Joseph likes to use the concept of drivers and passengers when deciding who to hire; “drivers” refer to talent who constantly strive to get work done and are proactive in nature, no matter their role, and “passengers” refer to those who clock in and clock out. They talk about how to identify drivers from the very first interview and look for something Joseph calls the generosity gene. 

Learn more about Joseph Landes and Nerdio.

You can find more information on all our episodes at Vertical Elevation, and you can find Carol on Twitter @carolbschultz or LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carolbschultz/.