“Your career takes you on these crazy journeys. If it was a straight line and drive it would be easy, right. You could just put it on autopilot.”
Steve Denton didn’t grow up knowing how to be accountable, he had to learn that skill throughout his life. Along the way, accountability turned into dependability and, more importantly, resiliency, which has helped him see his way through a journey filled with highs and lows.
Key Insights
How do you learn to be accountable?
When you spend your childhood like Denton did, moving from one place to another year after year, it’s easy to lose sight of what it means to be accountable. With no one to hold you to what you say or check you on what you do, it becomes a personal responsibility to hold yourself accountable. Denton employed the say-do ratio to bring some discipline into his life, and he has maintained that strategy throughout his professional career.
On how he views the “say-do” ratio: “It’s the ability to execute on the things you talk about, the ability to be accountable for the person that you were two or three years ago, and having to live with that.”
Why you don’t necessarily have to be better, you just have to be different.
In all walks of life, you will find people who are more skilled than you in certain areas. Rather than beat yourself up over how you can’t seem to beat them, why not just try to differentiate yourself? By proving you can still do a job, but in a unique way, you can find success that you weren’t expecting.
“My numbers went through the roof and it wasn’t because I was a spectacular salesperson who was a good talker and could do feature benefit statements. I was just doing it different than other people and it was the lesson I learned, which is, ‘Hey, I might not be able to do it better than you, but I could probably do it different than you.’”
About the Guest:
Steve Denton is the CEO of Ware2Go, a UPS company, he is a digital technology and AI executive, Steve has spent 20 years reimagining digital sales channels to level the playing field for companies to compete and win. A serial entrepreneur with deep expertise in digital technology, ecommerce and AI and a proven track record of building high-performance organizations, Denton has now turned his focus to creating smarter fulfillment networks and democratizing 1 to 2-day delivery as the CEO of Ware2Go. Prior to joining Ware2Go, Denton was President and CRO of Collectivei, a company that uses B2B data to make sales organizations more informed, efficient and profitable. He served as CEO of GSI Media, which sold to eBay in 2011, then as GM and VP of eBay Enterprise Marketing Solutions, where he oversaw billions in ecommerce revenue and ran nine advertising and martech companies. He also served as President and CEO of Rakuten LinkShare after serving in multiple executive positions at LinkShare prior to its acquisition by Rakuten. Prior to his career in technology, Steve held leadership roles at FedEx and Pepsi. He is passionate about leveraging technology to solve complex problems and enable merchants of all sizes to compete in the new era of Business to Everyone (B2E).
This season of the Journey is produced by Mission.org and brought to you by UPS. To learn how UPS can help your small business, go to https://UPS.com/pivot.
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