In this episode of The Jake Dunlap Show, Jake is joined by Joseph Fung, a repeat founder with multiple successful exits who share his perspective on what career success really means, the importance of creating better workplaces by developing more effective onboarding and enabling processes and why he thinks it’s never too late to change your career path. Joseph was attending his undergrad in computer engineering at the University of Waterloo when he decided to delay his studies and take the time to travel and work on creating his own business. His plan to take things slow and ponder his next steps paid off. Since graduating, Joseph has been the mastermind behind 5 technology companies he built from the ground up and managed to exit successfully. Today, his company Uvaro helps technology businesses hire sales professionals that can deliver from day one and offers recruits the training they need to be competitive in this modern selling environment.
In this episode of The Jake Dunlap Show, Jake is joined by Joseph Fung, a repeat founder with multiple successful exits who share his perspective on what career success really means, the importance of creating better workplaces by developing more effective onboarding and enabling processes and why he thinks it’s never too late to change your career path.
Joseph was attending his undergrad in computer engineering at the University of Waterloo when he decided to delay his studies and take the time to travel and work on creating his own business.
His plan to take things slow and ponder his next steps paid off. Since graduating, Joseph has been the mastermind behind 5 technology companies he built from the ground up and managed to exit successfully.
Today, his company Uvaro helps technology businesses hire sales professionals that can deliver from day one and offers recruits the training they need to be competitive in this modern selling environment.
Time stamps:
(00:57) Jake’s guest today- Joseph Fung, Founder and CEO of Uvaro, and host of “The Seller’s Journey Podcast”;
(02:13) His mother pushed him to find a path doing something he loved most, and not waste his time working normal teenage jobs;
(03:27) Discovering his passion for computers purely by accident;
(05:01) Taking time off from school to travel and work on building his own company;
(08:03) Realizing the importance of creating a company where employees enjoy working and are treated right;
(08:58) Working with friends and family and things he’s learned along the way from each company he founded;
(10:50) Building TribeHr as a learning venture company, and getting acquired by NetSuite;
(13:17) Leaving TribeHr, starting a new company, Kiite, and following through with his plans of creating better workplaces and a more effective approach to onboarding and enabling;
(14:37) Shifting in a new direction demanded by the market and accelerated by the pandemic;
(18:03) A definition of career success and how the perspective on success shifts depending on the role you find yourself in;
(24:57) Trends and challenges- companies are no longer interested to invest in training and developing their employees and are now taken by surprise by the rapid changes in the way sales work and the scarcity of talent on the market;
(27:25) What attracts Joseph to Sales- both industries require the same type of skillset;
(29:27) Buyer behavior is changing and B2B companies need to offer people options and bring their sales tactics and processes up to date;
(33:39) Don’t lose sight of the importance of your customers' experience;
(38:08) The world is waking up! People start to acknowledge that career success needs to change.
Quotes
“I was really angry and frustrated and (...) I needed to take time off to get away from the University, so I found a role in China and took a year off. When I came back I realized I just need to not wait to live life and so I proceeded to do one term of school, then take a year off, do a term of school, take a year off so it took me eight years to finish my undergrad.”
“(His company, Simple Machines) It all stemmed from the idea of trying to build a better company, where people really enjoy working, don’t have the same fear, and do some really cool tech along the way.”
“With Kiite, we went back to that drawing board. How do you get people effective from day one? (...) At that time there was a lot of new technology coming out around content mining, around conversational AI, around leveraging the existing knowledge in the organization, so we were able to leverage a lot of technology to come up with a different approach to onboarding and enabling.”
“(When exiting a company) you always have this period where it feels like you have your two feet, each in different ships, and you try to figure out what is the right course of action(...) Honestly, it feels a lot like a grieving process.”
“Spending time with people who were looking to change their lives we realized that the definition of success is much more holistic (...) It’s financial security, a work that you enjoy but also feeling fulfilled in your life choices and your peer network.”
“Trust me! You can have the money, you can have the life that looks good on paper but you might not still feel successful in the long term. Success is not all just about that.”
“We’re competing with everybody! If your competitors are global, and customers are global you need to be able to interact with them on chat, take a credit card on texting, maybe even in different languages (...) and it really does come back to the different types of diversity you manage to bring into your team(...) The teams who get it are going to continue to thrive and they’re going to outcompete the folks who don’t get it night and day.”
“I love the art of improving the way we sell but just the blind adherence to that kind of a process is kind of a failure of leadership.”
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Get in contact with Joseph:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/josephfung/?hl=en
Linkedin:https://rb.gy/po29sw
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jbfung
Twitter: https://twitter.com/josephfung
Joseph’s Podcast-The Seller’s Journey Podcast
Joseph’s company, Uvaro- social links:
Website- https://uvaro.com/
Facebook- https://www.facebook.com/uvaro.life/
Twitter- https://twitter.com/uvarolife
Instagram- https://www.instagram.com/uvaro.life/
Linkedin- https://linkedin.com/company/uvaro
Tik Tok- https://www.tiktok.com/@uvaro.life
Youtube- https://www.youtube.com/uvaro
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Follow Jake:
Website- https://www.jakedunlap.com/
Instagram- https://www.instagram.com/jake_dunlap_/
Linkedin- https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakedunlap
Twitter- https://twitter.com/jaketdunlap
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