Turducken featuring Andrew Rios

Transcript

Rob Dwyer (00:02.008)
Happy, happy Thanksgiving from me at Next in Queue and my guest Andrew Rios. Andrew, how are you?

Andrew Rios (00:11.527)
Hey, I'm doing great. Hey, happy Thanksgiving, Rob. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. I'm doing great. Excited about Turkey Day and a little football Friday.

Rob Dwyer (00:22.744)
Yeah, yeah. So let's talk just very quickly. It is Thanksgiving weekend. What does the Rios Thanksgiving look like? I know that you're at your mom's. Is this in preparation for Thanksgiving? What's happening?

Andrew Rios (00:38.953)
You know, the real Thanksgiving kicks off on a Tuesday at about four when you jump on the freeway and already committed to the next 10 hours of being, here we go, while the rest of the Rios pack rests warmly, slumberly in their seats there. You know, I'm back in Vacaville, Northern California. I'm a NorCal guy originally, my mom's house. Thanksgiving is about...

Rob Dwyer (00:55.17)
You

Andrew Rios (01:03.999)
You know sports, so I wake up early. We're going to do a turkey trot. It's our third annual Turkey Trot down here as a family. Then we come back and you know it's football time, right? Watching football all day. My mom makes an amazing stuffing that stuffed in the turkey. My dad likes to fry one so we get the best of both worlds and that this year is going to be a pretty special one. So we got a lot of. A lot of real says coming in from all over California, so I'm pretty excited about.

Rob Dwyer (01:34.158)
That's awesome. No turducken.

Andrew Rios (01:38.535)
No turducken, but we will pay homage as the highlights go through the day. And you know, one day I may try that if I ever hosted Thanksgiving at my house, which I'm still enjoying being a guest there, pro tip, be a guest as long as you can. I don't know about you, Rob. What are you doing for Thanksgiving?

Rob Dwyer (01:53.389)
you

Rob Dwyer (01:57.654)
I mean, we are hosting this Thanksgiving. And so the family is coming over here. My wife has already begun the preparations. The turkey is currently brining and we'll get in the oven early in the morning. There is at least one pie, I believe already cooked. Pumpkin pie, I'm helping.

with an apple pie this year, so we'll see how that goes. My wife will be supervising and under her careful direction, I'm sure I won't mess it up. So we'll see.

Andrew Rios (02:30.013)
Hahaha

Andrew Rios (02:36.149)
I love it, I love it. know, since you bring up pies, fan favorite and always a surprise when I bring it through is I'll pick up a boysenberry pie. I love a good boysenberry pie for Thanksgiving. And there's a little mom and pop diner that's been doing pies since I moved to Vacaville when I was a wee little. And I love to get one of those every year and bring it in to match the pumpkin and the other stuff that comes in the app.

Rob Dwyer (03:06.232)
That is a unique option. will say I don't know that I've ever had a boysenberry pie if I'm being completely honest about it. I am I love, you know, traditional apple pie. I love the pumpkin pie. My absolute favorite, although it's not a Thanksgiving kind of thing, is a lemon meringue pie. That's that's my GM right there. Yeah, yeah, so.

Andrew Rios (03:15.207)
you

Andrew Rios (03:22.709)
Yeah.

Andrew Rios (03:30.589)
Yeah, I like that.

Rob Dwyer (03:33.838)
Also, there will be some football going on here in the house on the TV and the last time you and I recorded a pod together. You were all in on Jarrett Stidham. I don't know if you remember that, but you said he was going to be the next Rich Gannon. That was a quote from you. And that explains why the Raiders have the worst record in the NFL this season.

Andrew Rios (03:51.766)
I'm so sorry.

Rob Dwyer (04:04.12)
Perhaps, but I bring that up because you and I despite despite our football team is being arch enemies, we are friendly friendly guys when it comes to our football and and what we can learn from that. So I want to talk to you today. About playbooks and playbooks are very football thing so.

Andrew Rios (04:18.389)
you

Rob Dwyer (04:33.878)
Let's start when you think of playbook outside of just football, what comes to mind?

Andrew Rios (04:41.589)
How you execute something to get a specific result? Right at the end of the day the steps it takes and how you execute something to get a specific result, right a Playbook for how you want to retain a customer, right? Playbook for how you want to troubleshoot intermittent internet connectivity, right?

Because at the end of the day the results is the same right I I want to resolve that internet I want no more internet connectivity interment issues right or I want to save that customer the results the same how you go about it may be different in in the type of game that you're playing right and That's how when I think about a playbook when I think about a play

Rob Dwyer (05:22.52)
Yeah.

Rob Dwyer (05:27.054)
So I imagine that you've developed your own playbooks over time. And I say this, you also are a football coach, maybe not in the NFL, but you do coach youth football. So I imagine you've got playbooks there, but you've also got playbooks outside of football. So let's talk about some of the playbooks, some of your favorite playbooks, maybe that you brought with you from different organizations to new organizations and

maybe an offense or a defense that you've installed in those organizations.

Andrew Rios (06:02.419)
Yeah, no, yeah, think the documentation playbook, right? How we document something. And I have a phrase I use and people who know me know I like to say this all the time. I should create a shirt for it, but it's not documented. It never happened, right? And then I follow that back up with what are the facts? What do they mean? What are we gonna do about it? So my documentation playbook, I take it back to elementary school.

grammar school, whenever you're learning how to write a paragraph, right? It's about who, what, when, where, why, and then next step. So whenever I'm teaching someone about documentation, whether it's a high-end electric motor or an internet connection or a SaaS product, it's who contacted you? Great. Why did they contact you? Okay. What made them contact you? And then what did you do to resolve it?

And then that's where I say resolving it could also be like, just what's the next step, right? I resolved it because I escalated it to the network operation center, or I resolved this case because I created a feature request for the product team. And all that just comes from your documentation playbook. That's the playbook we run. And that's how I'll teach, I coach it. was like, this is all your, so whenever something's missing in the play, cause they, you I forgot to document that. that's it. There you go. Now the play is complete. Touchdown.

first down, you know what I mean? And sometimes plays are just designed also, as you know, let's just get to that first out. Then we'll get to the next one. Then we'll get to the next

Rob Dwyer (07:28.76)
Yeah

Rob Dwyer (07:38.306)
Yeah, one of the things that phrase, right? If it's not documented, it didn't happen. have long held to that. And it is also true, not just in how we interact with customers is true with how we interact with the people that we're leading. So when we are coaching our people as to their development, being able to document.

the things that we talked about, what the next steps are, what those commitments are that they're going to do moving forward. Those are things that need to be documented as well. So all across the spectrum of the organization, there's an opportunity for documentation and it is often the biggest gap when you get into an organization and you go, well, okay, well, how do we go about documenting things?

I don't know.

Andrew Rios (08:31.221)
I sent an email, sent an email. was like, no, absolutely not.

Rob Dwyer (08:35.031)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So having playbooks is one thing. But when you come into an organization, you are, for instance, if you were to come into the chiefs organization. You'd have this great winning culture. You'd probably be able to, you know, fit in really easily and have a lot of success. And if you are.

Andrew Rios (09:05.107)
Yeah, yeah

Rob Dwyer (09:08.43)
For instance, in the culture of a, if you're coming into a team that maybe has been struggling, has cycled through some different leaders and maybe has gotten rid of some star players recently, I'm not pointing the finger at any particular organization. But there is a difference to the type of plays that you can use and there are personnel adjustments that need to be made.

Andrew Rios (09:18.421)
Okay, we'll with them, okay?

Rob Dwyer (09:37.358)
Right? So what worked over here may not work over here. Can you talk about how you approach that?

Andrew Rios (09:48.821)
Yeah, you know, it's assessing, it's assessing the current state, right? Like what caliber players do I have? Right? I've been using an analogy lately. You know, you're playing varsity football. Are you playing varsity football with experienced players, juniors and seniors? Or are you playing varsity football with some freshmen players, the sophomore? That's going to experience matters. So the level of experience. And I think that one of the phrases I like to use too is

Experience is a funny thing, right? You get it after you wanted it, but before you need it. So assessing the experience level of the team and then keeping the goal in mind and going, okay, based on this experience level, what pre-season games, what reps do they have to get in order to make it to that first game and be competitive, right? It's also knowing as a coach going, hmm.

We're not going to knock them out of the park right away. I use a bunch of analogies. I would go from one sport to another, but you know, we're not going to score. We're not going to score a touchdown right away. And you know what? We're not going to run, you know, a three option reverse right away either. Why don't we just start with run right off tackle and make sure each player knows their goal. So back to that. It's assessing, okay, I got these players in here. Do they know their role? Okay. Let's come another term and.

Rob Dwyer (10:50.243)
Ha

Andrew Rios (11:12.361)
play I like to use and bring into organizations is the back to basics playbook. Like, you know what? Got this big playbook. We're not even getting into half of it. Let's just go back to basics. Let's just go back to basics, right? Sweep right, sweep left, dive right, dive left. Then we'll start making those interkeys, give them the experience of successes, give them the experiences of a failure, missing a documentation, making a customer unhappy.

not providing a thorough update to management, those experiences that then when it's time to play in that varsity game, right? That CIF championship game, that Super Bowl game, they've had that experience of the failure before, they've built it before. And again, it goes back to that experience phrase that yours came to me was like, it's a funny thing, man, that you get it after you wanted it, but you get it before you need it. And I think I embrace that a lot in my career. I...

I take that into organizations when I go in there and that's how I like to run my plays back to basics. the best thing about that is once the team starts hitting those plays, right? Once the FCR is where you want it, right? Once your KPIs are where you want it, then you can start doing what management leadership wants, stretch goals, right? Okay, now let's shave five points off this. Let's do another point on retention. know, can we get another two points on NPS?

Maybe we can now that we know because we're running these plays, we can do this now. And then this is the key to Rob is giving the players an opportunity to run those plays and then ad hoc when the time comes and be comfortable with it. And so you know what? It says I'm supposed to go left, but I've done this enough to know, you know what? This time I'm gonna just do right button hook because I'll be there and Rich Gannon is gonna drop me the ball.

Ha ha ha ha

Rob Dwyer (13:03.854)
I mean, he's not he's retired. He's going to be sitting on the couch like the rest of us watching football this weekend, but. I love that we're talking about the basics, right? And there is a phrase borrowed from football that is used in business all the time, and that's basic blocking and tackling. And it is all about just doing the very basic things well.

Andrew Rios (13:06.739)
Ha ha!

Rob Dwyer (13:32.002)
gets you so far and then adding on those wrinkles, right? Maybe doing some advanced things can absolutely take you to the next level. But I think where a lot of companies fall down is they forget about the basic blocking and tackling and they're worried about these high level plays, schemes, techniques, but the basics

Andrew Rios (13:55.925)
you

Rob Dwyer (14:01.88)
Like we even got that down guys, right? I mean you can't you can't even run off tackle if you're not blocking right? Gotta do that first and so I love the idea of sometimes you just need to take a step back, understand where we are and we may have to start at the very basics before we can. We can do something.

Andrew Rios (14:30.665)
this.

Rob Dwyer (14:30.914)
much more complex. But that said. Let's talk about introducing those new plays like when do you decide? OK. We're doing really well here. Let me introduce something else. Is it once I've mastered kind of the last thing or do you start layering things a little bit sooner than that? How do you approach that?

Andrew Rios (14:42.791)
you

Andrew Rios (14:46.101)
you

Andrew Rios (14:59.805)
Yeah, always always be layering always be layering so Setting the stage for what's coming next right? One of the things that is like as great leaders We want to be looking around corners not just a corner but corners, right is Coaching as we're giving those players the plays the team members Hey think about this in the future then think about this in the future an example is

You know, we're building a, we're improving our SaaS product where we, where we offer referrals, right? Okay. So we've got a good referral program. Awesome. But what is a referral program? It's just the code that gives someone something based on what that code says. It could easily be a promo. It could easily be this. So now instead of building this play for this one referral, build the program and then give those examples to them so that they can keep seeing it. And that's my strategy is just.

Keep seeing the next step, keep seeing the next goal. you're gonna, I use the phrase of eventually once they plateau, they plateau and go, now I know how to get to the next one, because I know what the next one looks like, right? That's kind of how I like to do it. And just real, real examples, real, real examples. So when we're troubleshooting a wireless connectivity issue with the customer, right? But then we're starting to diagnose that maybe there might be an anomaly in the firmware of this router.

but where we don't have a bug logging process, but you know how to document, you know that coach Rios has been talking about, we need this process. That's how I see that I'm doing my job right. When the intuitively with initiative and autonomy says, wait, you know what? So now I'm just gonna take the stab at documenting this process. So kind of all of those things lead into that. And that's kind of my approach to it is paint the vision and literally show the examples.

and then let them walk right into it.

Rob Dwyer (16:57.592)
As we sit here and talk now, can hear the family in the background.

makes me think about balance and some of the challenges that come around with that. So right now, my assumption is you're all smiles, you're getting all of your family together, but for other people, that gathering of family members can layer on a lot of stress. I've got my work.

Not everyone gets all the time off around the holidays, right? There are people who still have to work, even if it's Thanksgiving Day sometimes. Talk to me about how you help manage through the need for balance, both in a personal life, in the professional life, and particularly as we get to this time of year where we're starting to see holidays and more family interaction.

Andrew Rios (17:51.935)
See you later.

So, we tried to contact because she's like, what is she doing?

Andrew Rios (18:04.829)
with a very humanistic approach being, I've been there before, right? I've been there as not someone who knew how to balance well. I've been there as someone who was in transition. I've been there as someone who was employed. I've been there in someone who had to go across the country to see family and also knowing that family is what's more important and what makes people tick. And you said something there that's crucial too, is that there are people that still have to work that day. Customer service individuals still gonna have to work that day.

network operations centers, industrial jobs, airport workers, service industry. We could go on and on that are working that day. And I've been there. I've been in the service industry. I had to work on Christmas day, right? So leading by example first is, I'm off, I'm off, but I'm going to check in with you just personally. Hey, how are you guys doing today? You know, a good example, my team over at a city side fiber today, we've got a skeleton crew working in office, taking care of those customers. You know, I'm going to do a simple thing as just taking care of their lunch today.

And then if everything dies down, let's get them out of there early today. You know, we got our, our after hour service that can take those calls for us. So kind of balance it that way. Also ask, and this was actually our team meeting last week. What are you doing for the holidays and what gets you excited about it? That was the topic of the meeting. So instead of Andrew and the team talking about our customers and this and that, and all those things, it was, let's talk about what we're looking forward to. Like what we opened up about, like what are you looking forward to? Those things. then.

really caring and following up on that, right? And saying, hey, how did it go? Did you enjoy it? You know, making sure that it's purposeful and you mean it. It's not just an air clap or I have to do this because I have a manager in my title. No, it's, care, I wanna know what's going on. And then I like to do little things too, coming around this type in the year, because you said something there too, which especially in customer service, right? The world that we live in is...

We're dealing with so many people coming into our phones, into our support channels, and we're a human there trying to give our best effort, but we got a lot of things going on too. So usually around this time of year, I try to lighten the load. So from a professional standpoint, I try to lighten the load. We got 30 days left. You know, we achieved our goals and objectives. I'm not going to pile on a new one to try to cram the year out, right? I'm not going to say, let's go crush the queue. I'm going to say, let's refresh, let's re-energize, let's...

Andrew Rios (20:23.625)
Let's button up this last project that we wrapped up on. I'm thinking about the new year though, right? But not for them. I'm thinking about the low, the days where we're not as busy. Like what can I do? Maybe throw a work from home day in there. Maybe throw a little free time in there. You maybe put a movie on the TV. Thinking about those little things, the coffee runs, the whatnot. And then also around this time of year, what I also usually do at the end of the year for some team members is not some, but all of them is little quality time with their family.

So one of the things that as we're serving other people in the customer service support world, we're not able to serve our family and our friends as much as we might want to. So around this time of year, you know, a gift card to take their loved ones to a movie, or if they enjoy, you know, ice creams, then give them a gift card for something like that. Something that's more, hey, we know while you're helping our customers and our company grow and be successful, there's another team out there. That's the number one team that you're not able to give as much. So here's what we can do for you. Yeah.

Give time, just give the gift of time, right? Just give the gift of time.

Rob Dwyer (21:30.932)
It is easy for people in certain roles to forget how stressful it is when you are working the front lines, whether that's in customer service or retail. I know that Black Friday is around the corner. People, in fact, if you're listening to this on the day of release, it is literally Black Friday. Maybe you're headed out and you're shopping.

There are people there working to support you, some of whom maybe didn't get much sleep, have been working overtime to get things stocked and are dealing with potentially some craziness in crowds. And I think it's incredibly important for all of us to take a moment to think about how thankful we should be that number one,

Andrew Rios (22:05.045)
This way.

Rob Dwyer (22:28.92)
Those people are there and they're they're taking their time, maybe not necessarily by choice. You know, that's kind of the role that they're in. Sometimes maybe they don't really want to work Thanksgiving, but they are. They show up right? And so for you to do the things that you want to do on that day requires other people to show up and be at work to serve others. So so there's that piece of it.

Andrew Rios (22:38.55)
Yep, yep.

Andrew Rios (22:55.797)
Mm-hmm.

Rob Dwyer (22:58.028)
And then I think just being thankful that we have people that are willing to miss, you know, Thanksgiving. I remember when I was working retail, you know, Thanksgiving, I was, I was good with working that when I was in college. It was great. It was not super busy. But yeah, but there's always right the flip side to that.

Andrew Rios (23:19.081)
Time in a half.

Rob Dwyer (23:25.928)
And not everyone has that same experience. So just being thankful that people are still serving in that environment, think is, I would like to encourage all of us to go into this holiday season with that mindset.

Andrew Rios (23:29.503)
Yep.

Andrew Rios (23:42.282)
because

You know, spot on, thanks for bringing that up because one of the things that I do consciously and extra is say thanks to the folks that are out there. I have a tradition when I still kind of go shopping in the mall around Christmas. I go to the Cheesecake Factory and get the pizza bread Caesar salad lunch special. It's a thing I've been doing for 20 years. Don't ask me. I enjoy it. But I'm extra grateful to them there. I may give them an extra shilling here and there, but I'm extra grateful to anyone that's there, even opening the door, shoveling the snow.

stocking those shelves that never stay cleaned. And even if I notice that someone is being not as nice as they can be to the people that are serving us, I let them, person, hey, don't let that person get to you. You're doing great. Thanks for being out here today. And that right there, people appreciate and enjoy. As for someone who's, like I said, I had to bust a table on Christmas Eve. I've been there before. So being aware of that and being just purposeful and showing that gratitude is awesome.

This is the way to be.

Rob Dwyer (24:49.186)
Yeah, it's often forgotten and I think that is one of the reasons that we celebrate Thanksgiving. Ideally, it's not just for the football and it's not just for the food. Those are big parts of it from a tradition standpoint, but really just being thankful about the things in our lives about our families and the opportunity that when we do get the time to.

Andrew Rios (25:04.137)
big parts.

Andrew Rios (25:12.175)
yeah.

Rob Dwyer (25:17.528)
to spend time with them. You talked about the gift of time. Like anytime you can get that, like there is a time when you're younger in life where you may not be as thankful for it, but believe me, there's a time later on where you're really truly thankful for every day. And this is a good reminder to express that.

Andrew Rios (25:28.979)
Yeah.

Andrew Rios (25:39.797)
Absolutely.

Rob Dwyer (25:40.79)
Let's talk a little bit about player development. I brought up Jarrett Stidham when we got started a little bit in jest, but I think football is actually a great metaphor when it comes to player development because guys and they are guys in the NFL. They're not always guys in our business environment for certain, but

Guys coming into the NFL straight out of the draft. A lot of times they're a project, right? There are certain guys that you just go, well, we're gonna bring them into the organization, but they are a project. They are not a pro bowler yet. They are certainly not all pro. Tell me about how you go about player development in your teams and

Andrew Rios (26:21.191)
Nah.

Rob Dwyer (26:40.034)
Maybe share with me some lessons that you've learned over time as it comes to players.

Andrew Rios (26:47.901)
Yeah. A lesson I learned over time, I'm start with that one, is don't be afraid to have a hard conversation, a radically candid conversation. And that could be, takes me back to a time when I was at Fitbit with an up and coming star, started as a coordinator, made their way to program manager and...

is now running a program management team over at Sony. Awesome development, right? I asked the question during a conversation when we were working on the project together. And I knew that I could ask this question to this individual at this time based on our relationship of radical candidness. And she was ambitious. She gave her best every time. She was hard on herself, right?

There was a miss in one of the meetings where she got a little bit intimidated by someone with a bigger stature and title, right? And got overwhelmed and kind of caved. Happens to all of us, right? She took it very, very tough, right? Because it was impactful, was devastating, right? Like, wow, she took it as I let you down, Andrew, I let the team down, I let us down. I love that.

Cause you build on that, right? That's like, you'll take that over raw talent any day. So, back to what I was saying, can't be afraid to have a crucial conversation. You know, I remember this, like it was yesterday sitting in that conference room here in San Francisco saying, do you want to be great? Do you want to be great? And she tears. Yes, I do. Yes, I do. I felt that. And I was like, okay, you're going to remember this moment. This is a moment in time.

that you learn from because you, and this is where I just go into, you were right. You had the data, you had the facts, you had it documented. You just let an outside factor that they're gonna happen from here on through the rest of your career, they're gonna happen. Change the way you approached it and stifle you, right? And I'm paraphrasing, but can't be afraid to have that tough conversation.

Andrew Rios (29:05.385)
You know, and then I think there's another approach too, which is you got to know your players and know when to have the tough conversation. Right. Another situation, someone made a horrible miscalculation and basically announced an up and coming product to the world through our beta testing program by just hitting the wrong button. A person was devastated, came to work thinking you're going to fire me. Like this is obviously a fireball offense. Like obviously I'm not going to be working here anymore.

She shows up to my desk there here and starts going, my God, I can't believe I did that. And she just goes in and then, and then she went into, but I thought of something. If this feature would be there, I wouldn't have been able to do that. A simple, so she came with the solution. So after all that, and I just listened, and then I looked there, I could tell she was very emotional about it too. And I said, hey, let's go for a walk.

And we just took a walk down San Francisco. We walked for 15 minutes talking about, how's your grandma? knew her grandma was under the weather, this and that, just to kind of calm her nerves and get her. Cause she had already solved it, right? She had already did. There was nothing for me even to coach in that matter. But what I was coaching was how to handle that situation. Right. And then I remember she was telling me like, Hey, you're doing what my mom does to me when, when she, before she scolds me, go, I'm not scolding you. You, you did something wrong. Okay. You acknowledged it.

You have a solution for it that is actually feasible. Then I'm just going to simply tell you, go work with the vendor, see if we can implement that. That's a feature that's now a main feature in their product, 15 years later. Right? And she's over at Google now running a team as well. And I just, that's player development. knowing when to have a crucial conversation, not being afraid to have it.

And also, and there's more examples, of course, I can go into, but that's for another podcast. Another day is that there's also the development of it too, when you're coaching them up and you're like, Hey, you missed on that. And you got to know when to say you clearly missed. need you to tell me why. Cause if it's documented, you've been trained, you acknowledged it. You like, I like help me understand what else I might be missing because this conversation is about to switch into another path now. So.

Andrew Rios (31:23.657)
That's the player development too. And there's also seeing their genius, right? think one of the things that I like to look at, you know, as a humble brag, it's a humble brag, is that I love identifying superstars, right? Like, hey, that person's great. They're awesome. But that person right there, when the game's on the line, that person wants the ball. They need the ball. They crave the ball. And that's kind of as I'm building and assessing teams.

Rob Dwyer (31:41.174)
Mm-hmm.

Andrew Rios (31:52.873)
I'm looking for those things. And then then you can figure out how to get the best out of them, right? Yeah,

Rob Dwyer (32:02.33)
Lot of great stuff there and I love that. Look, those tough conversations. One of the things that you just illustrated is sometimes a tough conversation doesn't need to be as difficult as you think it's going to be right. If you've created it, the kind of culture where people number one recognize when they messed up and.

come to the table with a solution. I don't have to get on you right and you see this in in all kinds of teams where someone says that was me. I messed up. I know why I did it and you don't have to as a leader have a conversation with them about it really other than to reassure them that we understand. Where you are right now and we're confident that you're not going to make that mistake again, right?

Andrew Rios (32:59.007)
Yep. Yep.

Rob Dwyer (32:59.736)
That's a really incredible place to be. It's not always like, look, we all wish that we always had superstars like that. the Mrs. Were those kinds of Mrs. Where they're like, I fixed it. Don't worry about it. It's not going to happen again. That certainly isn't always the case, but it is something that you need to be aware of that you can allow to happen. And sometimes it's just a matter of shutting up and letting them.

Andrew Rios (33:07.765)
Yeah

Andrew Rios (33:31.989)
Exactly. No, exactly. And that took me a long time to learn as a leader. I wasn't born with that. I didn't get the handbook that said, here, Coach Rios, this is how you're going to communicate with people. Listen, no, it took time. And I thank all those employees earlier in my career that had to be learning that. But it's a gift. It's a gift when you can start to master it, I would say. Start to master it.

Rob Dwyer (34:01.238)
Well, as we're talking about gifts. I want to ask you. Coach. What are you thankful for this year?

Andrew Rios (34:14.107)
man.

Andrew Rios (34:18.389)
my family, my family and you know, my family, I'm going to, you know, it might sound cliche, but if you know, coach Rios, my family, yeah, my family and being able to see and being at a part of my career, you know, being at a part of my career and my journey where I'm able to spend quality time with my kids and my partner.

where mentally mindset wise, probably 15 years ago when I didn't have my kids or my family, I wouldn't have thought that, right? I would have been, I'm gonna work, I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna keep, keep, keep. Where now, I'm gonna take time off and I'm gonna take the day off and I'm gonna watch my son, right? And fam, think so. I'm grateful for opportunity and experience that I've had to have that mindset.

that it really is family first, and that is the greatest currency, right? I tell people a lot, when I talk to them, coach, mentor, know, whatever it may be, is like, yeah, maybe 10 years ago, I made a lot more money, but you know what? I'm richer now with the time that I have to give and what I have. And then, you know what else I'm thankful for is...

I'm thankful for the amazing Concierge team at Cityside Fiber that I get an opportunity to lead every day. They're a great group, a great support team, living great values, doing great work. So, you know, thanks for allowing me to be part of the team and lead you all. And I'm really grateful for them, you know, been there about nine months and we're doing some tremendous work and they're tremendous people. So I'm grateful for that.

Yeah, yeah.

Rob Dwyer (36:08.852)
I am grateful that you have taken the time to join me. We have actually been going back and forth on this episode for quite some time, battling through some illnesses and some technical challenges. And yet here we are. And I'm grateful that you've taken time out of your day, that you're sharing with your family to chat.

me to chat with the audience and even take a little bit of ribbing about. Those horrible, horrible Oakland Raiders either than even in Oakland anymore. They've been just kicked out of the city, I guess, but that's fine. They do have a beautiful new stadium and it's everybody's favorite road game now because you get to go to Vegas baby. Why not Vegas? So.

Next year will be better. Maybe you'll find a quarterback and you can be grateful for that next year. But this year I'm grateful that that we can chat and I can I can give you crap about it and you're a good sport. And I am also grateful that you and I have have been able to create this kind of long distance.

Andrew Rios (37:12.402)
f-

Rob Dwyer (37:31.832)
Friendship. I always love chatting with you. You are so generous with your time and your insights and I know that that Extends to anyone who's out there listening that wants to get in touch with you Maybe would like to learn something from you I know you've done some master classes out there and you're always sharing so if people want to get in touch with the coach Go down to the show notes

Andrew Rios (37:33.843)
Yep.

Andrew Rios (37:45.569)
you

Rob Dwyer (37:59.864)
Find the link to his LinkedIn. Tell him I sent you. Tell him what fan you are in the NFL world. If you are a fan and if you're a Raider fan, he's going to love you for it. And if you're not, he'll still love you anyway, because he's just that kind of guy. So so thank you. Thank you for being here today.

Andrew Rios (38:10.013)
Yeah.

Andrew Rios (38:23.315)
No, man, thank you. And you said something there too that's awesome. Birds of a feather, if you will. You're a big, sports guy. And you ribbed me, but you ribbed me good, truthfully, honestly, and factually. And I love it. And I have to respect the chiefs. I don't have to like them. I don't have to really like them at all. But I have to respect them for the way they built that organization and what they've done. That's leadership. That's consistency.

Rob Dwyer (38:38.471)
Hahaha

Andrew Rios (38:51.131)
And as a Raider fan, that's what we're hoping to do. We've been hoping for about 25 years now. What I'm hoping is that we keep lighting those candles and it's going to happen soon. But worst case scenario, I'm just going to take the Raider team on the road now for more road games for me because I've been to Allegiant. So maybe I'll be coming out your way, Rob.

Rob Dwyer (39:12.846)
If you are, you let me know.

Andrew Rios (39:17.257)
For sure. Awesome. Have a great Thanksgiving. Thank you.