Steve Denton of Ware2Go: “Seeing Light at the End of the Tunnel; 5 Reasons To Be Hopeful During this Corona Crisis”

… we are a resilient people, and we usually come out of these tough times stronger than when we went in. We take stock of what’s important and pursue those paths. I know it’s tough out there, and so many people are fighting battles on multiple fronts with loss of loved ones, loss of jobs, loss of status, and a ton of uncertainty. We are getting through this, and we are coming out the other side, so it’s important that you are running to something vs. running from something. The best advice I can give is to make sure you are running to something.

As a part of my series about the things we can do to remain hopeful and support each other during anxious times, I had the pleasure of interviewing Steve Denton is the CEO of Ware2Go, a UPS company.

As a serial entrepreneur, he has had 3 successful exits and a history of building great organizations. Prior to joining Ware2Go, Stephen was the President and CRO of Collective[i], a pioneer in AI and market leading platform for enterprise sales organizations. Previously he was GM and Vice President of Marketing Solutions at Ebay and was responsible for all of eBay Enterprise digital and agency business units and integrated 9 acquired companies into one global marketing solutions leader.

He founded and is active with Goodness Now, a charitable organization that provides weekend meals to nutrition challenged elementary school children in Monmouth County, NJ.

Steve is a proud husband and father of two college-aged children and splits his time between Atlanta and California. He is a graduate of Shepherd University and holds degrees in Business and Marketing.

Thank you for joining us Steve! Can you share your backstory and what brought you to your specific career path?

I’ve been fortunate to have worked for some amazing leaders and on incredible teams. I thought I was going to be a radio DJ, but I was lucky enough to get my first job out of school at Pepsi and even more fortunate to have my first boss be a rock star. You know when you meet special people, and my first boss when I was 22 and he was 27 was a guy named Chris Furman; he showed me what great looked like before we started using terms like that. I saw early on what great leadership was, and ultimately Chris went on to become the president of Pepsi. I spent 12 years working for Pepsi and FedEx, rising through the ranks, and then met an amazing brother and sister, Stephen and Heidi Messer, in 1999 who had started an internet company called LinkShare. While the model of performance-based marketing online is commonplace today, at the time it was new, and I wanted to take a risk. I was fortunate enough to connect with these two amazing people and saw incredible entrepreneurs create a market and learned how to lead a company. We ultimately sold the company, and I stayed on to run in and integrate it into Rakuten, which had purchased us. That was my first opportunity to run a company and work globally. At that point I had caught the bug and went on to do some other entrepreneurial ventures, including selling GSI to eBay. It has been a great set of experiences working for small and large organizations. The thing all of those experiences offered was an opportunity to work with other business leaders to help them grow their business and really see it up close. From deli owners who were buying soda and entrepreneurs for whom we were shipping packages or companies where we drove their online sales and built their online stores, it was always about how we could help this person grow their business. And in those industries you see it first-hand. That is what drove me to Ware2Go; we truly level the playing field with supply chain solutions to help companies of all sizes compete and win. I believe in a world where it takes all to win vs. winner takes all, and at Ware2Go we do that for the SMB and mid-market merchants to allow them to compete globally. With my background in digital, eCommerce and transportation, it was a perfect role.

Is there a particular book that made a significant impact on you? Can you share a story or explain why it resonated with you so much?

I alternate my reading between business books and books about US history, and I often come back to Spencer Johnson’s Who Moved My Cheese. When you are constantly managing change and the people who are part of that evolution, I just find that the book is a great reminder of the personalities and best practices to manage through that change. It’s an easy read, with sound, practical advice.

Many people have become anxious from the dramatic jolts of the news cycle. The fears related to the coronavirus pandemic have heightened a sense of uncertainty, fear, and loneliness. From your perspective can you help our readers to see the “Light at the End of the Tunnel”? Can you share your “5 Reasons To Be Hopeful During this Corona Crisis”? If you can, please share a story or example for each.

1. For some perspective, read about what a person born in 1900 experienced in their first 50 years on this planet. Obviously this is a challenging time, and COVID is horrible, but we also have access to the best medical care in history and the best technology, so we will get to the other side and are better equipped now, more than ever, to fight a virus like this. You gotta believe that we are going to get through this — we all have a part to play, and it’s going to take all of us to do our part.
2. We are not going back to the normal we all knew prior to COVID. This experience has only accelerated the pace of change in terms of remote work, shifted shopping patterns, and the willingness to embrace new technologies, to name a few. So, we are going to need to embrace those changes, and for some this is an opportunity to make that pivot, reinvent yourself and embrace this new reality. This is going to create new opportunities and ways to work. I’ve been talking to some business leaders who are thinking that they will move their businesses to working three days a week in the office and two days working remotely, because they have seen their teams work well in a remote setting.
3. This ability and the adoption of remote work is going to create opportunities to work for companies and pursue roles that are outside of where you currently reside. From an employer standpoint, it allows us to recruit the best talent, regardless of location. And for talent this provides equal ability to pursue the best companies. That’s an opportunity that will be more readily available than prior to COVID.
4. For some this will provide the springboard to change roles or start a company. Historically startups founded in tough economic times have fared better than those started in good times. Look at what is making your life easier now or what you consider essential now, and seek out those opportunities — ecommerce, delivery services, remote exercise, remote learning platforms, and contactless payments, to name a few.
5. Finally, we are a resilient people, and we usually come out of these tough times stronger than when we went in. We take stock of what’s important and pursue those paths. I know it’s tough out there, and so many people are fighting battles on multiple fronts with loss of loved ones, loss of jobs, loss of status, and a ton of uncertainty. We are getting through this, and we are coming out the other side, so it’s important that you are running to something vs. running from something. The best advice I can give is to make sure you are running to something.

From your experience or research what are five steps that each of us can take to effectively offer support to those around us who are feeling anxious? Can you explain?

-If you are leading a team you need to step up and show up for your team. That means you need to communicate clearly, often and correctly. People are anxious or afraid when they don’t get the information they need or don’t trust it; they don’t trust the person or source of information; or the information is really frightening.

-Check in with people on a human level. I’ve been setting aside 30 minutes each day to just check in with two people for 15 minutes. It’s important that you take that time to connect and check in.

-Think about this situation as just a chapter in your book of life and not the book itself. Chapters change when you turn enough pages, but the story goes on. Don’t think about this as a closing of a book — it’s just a chapter. We all need to have new chapters.

-Seek out and execute on tactical things that can change or improve your situation today. Too often our strategies are complex and take time when what we really need to do is start pedaling. Commit to actions you can do today to remove or change that source of anxiety.

-Turn off the news. I’m not advocating that you put your head in the sand, but sitting all day in front of your computer screen on video calls and then watching the news can be exhausting. Stay informed, but once you are, move on and do something productive. Countless hours of opinions is not going to be good for your anxiety.

What are the best resources you would suggest to a person who is feeling anxious?

Exercise 30 minutes each day in some capacity; it will help with stress and clear your mind. Talk to people who have the capacity to listen but also have different opinions vs. those who will just commiserate.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Do you have a story about how that was relevant in your life?

I had a great boss early on who always used to say how important it was to get the hard stuff right. He would say, “Steve, get the hard things right because they are the important things, and it makes the other things much easier.” At the time I just nodded and smiled, but as my career evolved and the challenges became greater, it really was about making sure that we got the hard things right. A great example was when I was at eBay and in the process of merging nine acquisitions into one company with board offerings. It was such a difficult assignment with different markets, founders, and clients, and while there was a ton of excitement about the outcome, the journey was challenging, and there were at least five decisions that were critical and, candidly, very difficult. I kept telling myself and our team that it was critical to get those hard decisions right.

You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be?

I believe that any person should be able to get a college education for free through an online platform. For-profit online universities have proven that the model works, and from a monetization standpoint you could make it so that students could attend for free and be supported by an ad model. There is an amazing amount of great content available right now through platforms like MasterClass and Coursera, and it’s possible to take that next step and provide an online degree for free. That would be incredible and expand education not only in the United States but also globally.