Katalina Dawson (00:11)
Hello and welcome back to another episode of Career Path. I am your host, Katalina. Today we are discussing creating your own opportunities. And here to discuss this topic with me, I have the incredible Michael Vesper, who is both founder and CEO of Dial Connection. Michael, it is such a pleasure to have you on today. I'm super excited for this episode with you. Thank you for coming on.

Michael Vesper (00:33)
Thank you, it's great to be here.

Katalina Dawson (00:34)
Well, we're going to start with the same question we start pretty much every episode with, and that is, tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got to where you are today. But your career path is also extremely instrumental to this entire topic. So I'm super curious to hear a little bit more in depth about it and how you found different opportunities along the way or how you created those opportunities.

Michael Vesper (00:57)
All right, sounds great. Well, my story is a little interesting. I essentially had two paths that I could take in my career. I was a musician and I was also someone very interested in technology. So it made sense to pursue music when I was younger. I really got the bug when I was around 17, 18 years old. I had met a local Philadelphia artist who was a big deal in the area, on the East Coast, New Jersey area. So this guy named Robert Hazard, I was working at a lighting store and this guy, Robert Hazard, who really, he really had a really big career in the Philadelphia area and ended up getting signed to RCA Records. But his real claim to he wrote Girls Just Wanna Have Fun, the Cyndi Lauper song.

Katalina Dawson (01:43)
He wrote that!

Michael Vesper (01:44)
He wrote it. Yeah, he wrote it. So, so we became fast friends and I was, you know, I was young and I was a little bit awestruck, you know, I was like, wow, that's like a real musician here. And I was, you know, I was, I was still like playing in, in garage bands. I was, I started out, my first instrument was a drummer. So I think what he represented to me was that it was possible to have a career in music. Cause I was kind of seeing it up close for the first time. So, we became friends. he was.

Michael Vesper (02:11)
Cause he didn't feel like older than I was like, again, 17, 18 years old. He was probably in his mid thirties. We ended up having the same birthday, which was this thing we had in common. And so we ended up, you know, again, becoming friends and he became a mentor to me. And again, I was just playing drums and I really got, you know, I got the bug to write songs and things like that. And, and he really, uh, kind of showed me how to do that. So, so jumping forward a bit, um, again, my drums were my, it was my first instrument. So, We, I guess it was probably maybe five or six years later, I ended up becoming his drummer in his band. so we were doing some really great shows you know, when you're a musician, you work a day job, right? That's what you have. And, so I was working various day jobs and, we were doing some really good shows to jump out to me. opened up for Bob Dylan.

Katalina Dawson (02:55)
Yeah.

Michael Vesper (03:04)
which was an amazing experience, you know, as a young guy. Yeah, it was pretty cool. So, but along the way, as I'm doing this, I got a degree in computer science because I'm kind of a pragmatic person. I wanted to have a plan B, you know, because, you know, making it in music is not an easy thing. So anyway, don't for it, I got a job with some computer experience and some graphic design experience. I ended up getting a job.

Katalina Dawson (03:07)
That's incredible! Absolutely.

Michael Vesper (03:29)
as a kind of a magazine layout person. I was an assistant to the guy who was doing it. I was assisting him. It was for a music tip sheet. So I was kind I can combine technology with music and that would be great. And so I did that. And as things were heating up with the bands, it became evident that it was going to be hard for me to manage a job and make it to television shows or make it to big shows. And it just wasn't going to be good way for me to go because it was just too hard, too much to ask for people I was working for and so forth. I really decided that I needed to find something that was more flexible. So what happened was I had an opportunity with a friend of mine who had a computer consulting company and I decided to work with him and that would give me the flexibility I needed. I could make good money.

Michael Vesper (04:14)
I would be doing something that I liked, really on both sides. I was playing music and I was being able to work with computers, which I enjoyed doing that. I was developing applications of all sorts of different types. But again, I could work in the middle of the night, I could work in the morning. It was a flexible schedule so I could do what I needed to do from the band perspective. So lo and behold, We started to do work on a dialing application. Now keep in mind, this is, I want to say early nineties. I'm old. So early nineties. So we, we, started developing my first application in that, and we were developing it for a specific company and that company ended up going out of business. And we were left with an application that was, I would bet about 80 % done. So we finished the application and decided that we were going to start.

Michael Vesper (05:01)
working and distributing that application, trying to get clients on that. And we ended up doing that. We started getting clients in the mortgage space, really it was fundraising, anybody that needed to call people, essentially, that's what we did. So what happened there was my, Ultimately and my friend decided he didn't want to do it any longer and I did. And I was still doing the band thing and I still wanted to, you know, I wanted to be successful at something. I kept pushing both and I ended up buying the assets of that company, of the consulting company. And then I formed Dial Connection. So this was right around 1999 is when I made those decisions. And there again, it was kind of, for me, that was recognizing the opportunity of, okay, now I can own a business. I can still pursue what I want to do on the music side and I can really have dual career paths, which is what I did. So I had dual career paths for quite some time and managed it. Yeah. So, so it was fun.

Katalina Dawson (05:53)
Yeah. That's incredible. I don't hear about a ton of people doing dual career paths. It's very unique.

Michael Vesper (06:02)
Yeah. Well, it was pretty stubborn. I really wanted to be a rock star, you know? I was pursuing that pretty heavily and we got close. I mean, the band that... So jump forward, I ended up leaving Robert's band and I ended up forming my own band. Now this time I put the drumsticks down, decided I was going to... I had worked on my craft of writing songs and now I was writing songs for a band. I wrote a bunch of songs went into a studio, got some studio musicians, recorded a demo so I could go put together a band. So that's what I did. Now I did that earlier on. I did that like when I formed my own band, that was probably about 92. And that's when I started all that. So I was kind of working on my own band and working the business at the same time and just kind of doing them both at the same time. And trying to.Focus the business though is what I ended up doing in 1999 was when I formed Dial Connection I changed the focus of the business first I named it Dial Connection and it was focused around, you know calling people were primarily at that time you're primarily just calling people. You're not you weren't doing text messaging because it didn't exist email and things like that, so so then I started getting different types of clients started getting collection clients. I got a few

Michael Vesper (07:20)
clients that were in the area where I live, New Jersey, Philadelphia area. And at some point decided, okay, I'm just going to completely focus in on the credit and collection space with Dial Connection. So while I was doing the band, I'm bouncing around timeline a little bit here, so forgive me for that. But what happened there is the year I formed Dial Connection was also the year that I released my second record in my band, which was called Mercy River. We released a record. And that was kind of like, all right, let's make the big push with the band. And we did well. We ended up getting our songs on the radio in the area. We ended up touring. It was hard to do as an independent band, but we were able to do it. We ended up what we did, we ended up entering some competitions and we won these...

Katalina Dawson (07:55)
It's huge.

Michael Vesper (08:07)
this radio competition where we got to open up for Live, which was a band in the nineties and got added to a radio station and then the local other radio stations picked up a couple songs and we released a record at the same time. So it was all really going well. So, it's, yeah, it was, it's, though, you know, things happen. we ended up, again, a year later, we...

Katalina Dawson (08:21)
Yes, going really well it sounds like.

Michael Vesper (08:34)
had the same song that we ended up winning this competition where we got to open up for Live and get some radio ads. We entered the thing called garageband.com, which was this website that was created by Jerry Harrison from The Talking Heads and George Martin, was a producer that produced The Beatles and some of these other big time producer guys. But anyway, we ended up entering that and this was in 2000 and we won it. And that was a worldwide competition where songs were uploaded and people just randomly music and they voted on it. So it was cool. Yeah, it was really an amazing thing. But we got that. With that, you got a record deal.

Katalina Dawson (09:07)
That's incredible. Yeah!

Michael Vesper (09:17)
And so again, now we're like, okay, it's happening now, right? This is going to happen. have Jerry Harrison is going to produce a record and then we're going to do this. We're going to do that. But what happened next was like we got lawyers involved. No offense to lawyers, but we got lawyers involved and they talked us right out of these deals and we ended up. I'm going to you.

Michael Vesper (09:41)
not doing the deal with garageband.com, which was, was like a free record produced by Jerry Harris. And what's the worst that could happen, right? Nobody would hear it, but I would hear it. So I'd have it for however long. But nonetheless, we didn't do that. if you are there, I could be here for an hour telling you stories about all the things that we had offered, but didn't take because of management making decisions or recommendations or advice or.

Michael Vesper (10:07)
whatever you want to call it, guidance, so to speak. publishing deals, I it's just crazy. Anyway, so we ended up not doing that. ultimately those things all just went away. So we were like, okay. so then I jumped forward to around 2004 and I'm still, know, Dial Connection's humming along, you know, the business is doing well. And my wife and I adopted a from our first child from China. We adopted a child from China. And then that was kind of it. That was this decision. was like, okay, you know, I just want to focus in on one thing 100 % of the time and not have any distractions and all that. So that's what happened. So that's when I kind of made that decision that it was time to make Dial Connection my... It was always a main focus. I'm very passionate when I'm working on things and no matter.

Katalina Dawson (10:34)
Come on.

Michael Vesper (10:56)
whether it was the music or whether it was the business, I would take both of them equally as serious. so one wouldn't suffer, but, but, know, as you're getting older, you're like, how much time do you have? You know? And, I look back on him now. did it honestly. I want to look back now in terms of the time, cause it would be like no sleep and, know, out all night, you know, craziness anyway, that's what happened. And so that's what really led me, to really, really.

Katalina Dawson (11:09)
Yeah. Absolutely.

Michael Vesper (11:22)
focus in on the Dial Connection business. And from that point forward, I just had a kind of a real drive to make it successful and to try to grow it. that's what I did for the next four or five years, we grew the business significantly and had a lot of employees. And then 2008, 2009 hit, was was a kind of a financial meltdown. We weathered through that. And then

Michael Vesper (11:48)
you know, continued working, you know, uh, with that, continued having clients and our clients, um, it, it, we shrunk, but we didn't go away. And then we made it through that. then I'm going to jump forward a bit further. Um, around 2014, 2015, I wanted to take the business, uh, I wanted to grow the business further. So I, um, took a private equity investment in the business to help grow the business.

Michael Vesper (12:18)
That didn't work out so well. So we had to, ⁓ well, actually it worked out great. So the outcome of it was great. And that's kind of like, you know, you never know when you're going through something that it's really an opportunity. So, ⁓ yeah, so, so, you know, there was some hard times going through that process. It was the first time I had ever been involved in anything like that. But, what was good about it was a learning experience, for how that whole process works. So I learned about that.

Katalina Dawson (12:20)
No. Yeah.

Michael Vesper (12:47)
And the net of it was I met my now business partner, Keith Larson, who is, you know, me and him working together for 10 years now. So he came along with that private equity deal as a, as a board member. And then we ended up partnering and, you know, I ended up buying out, buying out the investors and bought Dial Connects essentially back from their private equity investors. That was 2017. And then we just have continued to grow the business from there.

So that was an experience. what brings us here today, at least where I'm at from a business perspective, we're continuing to grow the business. Keith and I are, we have different lanes. I'm a technical guy. I like digging into the technical aspects of things with customers and solutions and working through that. Keith takes care of all the contracts and paperwork and all the stuff I hate. So it's perfect. We have a perfect relationship in that way. And then occasionally, our paths get into each other's lane, so to speak, or we get into each other's lane to work out different things. in that regard, it's been good. So the business now is, we're in our 26th year as a business. ⁓ Thank you. Congratulations!

Michael Vesper (13:57)
It's been fun. What's really fun about, I find, about the space that we're in, the credit and collection space, there's always the challenges of compliance. There's always the challenges of, our customers have things that their clients require, which are features and solutions and reporting and all sorts of different things. That's the fun part where you're always creating a solution. That challenge that is like, Yes.

Michael Vesper (14:21)
Nobody likes compliance, but...

Katalina Dawson (14:22)
No. But finding those opportunities within those challenges.

Michael Vesper (14:28)
Exactly. end up being opportunities to think outside the box and come up with solutions that you might not have come up with unless given the challenge of that compliance issue that you have to address. ⁓ yeah, that's what I've really enjoyed. now is a really exciting time with a lot of the AI opportunities that are there. So we're looking at

Katalina Dawson (14:43)
Absolutely.

Michael Vesper (14:54)
a number of different things in our solution. Dial Connection is an omnichannel contact center platform, right? So it's communicating with people through multiple different channels. And a lot of the AI opportunity for not only from a communication perspective, but also from a reporting perspective, hopes through a different thing. It's really amazing. So just to look at from a technology perspective, I've been doing this for a long time.

And just to see how far things have come in the technology space. And then also in this industry that we're in, for kind of the acceptance of that technology, you know, it takes a while sometimes in the credit and collection space for us to, to, to, to adopt these new technologies. But yeah, but, but I, I do find it, a lot of fun to, to, to, to, go up with these challenges and then, as you said, you know, make opportunities out of those challenges.

Katalina Dawson (15:30)
Yeah. Absolutely, and kind of bouncing off of that, I would love to hear a little bit about creating opportunities that fit you, not just that fit a challenge, but creating an opportunity out of a need that you personally have. Because I feel like that very much speaks to your own personal story.

Michael Vesper (16:00)
Sure. Well, I think there's internal, well, if you say need, like from the business perspective, like what we need as a business or.

Katalina Dawson (16:11)
Either way, whether it's you need flexibility because you're a parent or a single parent or something like that.

Michael Vesper (16:18)
Yeah, sure. Yeah. Well, I think that, I mean, I think when you, when you are essentially a principal in a business, you have some built in flexibility around that, you know, but you just had the flexibility to maybe offload your hours to different times of the day to be able to do things. So, um, so I find, you know, working in the middle of the night sometimes is a better place for me to work because I don't have any interruptions. can.

Katalina Dawson (16:34)
Yes. Yeah.

Michael Vesper (16:43)
you know, stay focused on things. And if I'm digging into something of a technical nature, then it's a lot easier to do so when you're not getting an email, you're not getting a chat, you're not getting all these different distractions that happen all day long. you know, that's what it is. And everybody, you know, right. And everybody expects an immediate response. I emailed 30 minutes ago. Okay. Well, I was doing a podcast with Catalina. So sorry, I couldn't respond to the email, but you know.

Katalina Dawson (16:56)
Yes. I resonate with that. My fault.

Michael Vesper (17:12)
That's right, exactly. So, but no, I'm just saying that that's the way our society is that you need responses. So it does give you the ability, I think that, we as a company, I converted the company to a virtual company in 2012, so way before COVID. And that was just because I saw that we had a big office space and it wasn't getting used. The salespeople were out traveling, the.

Katalina Dawson (17:17)
Absolutely.

Michael Vesper (17:36)
programmers would come in, two times a week because they could do more at home and get more accomplished. So it ended up being that it didn't make sense to, have office space and make people come in when we could do this all remotely. We could, we had tools that we could communicate with through and really have an office, remotely. So when COVID came, we were like business as usual, right? There wasn't any change. didn't have to struggle to get tools together to manage it. So it worked out well.

Katalina Dawson (17:52)
Yes,

Michael Vesper (18:02)
You know, right?

Katalina Dawson (18:02)
you were one of the few that probably breezed through that. That was the challenge.

Michael Vesper (18:07)
Yeah, we didn't have a challenge there. So that was good. having the opportunity to make that decision early on, think that was an opportunity to be able to do that. And who knew that eight years later, we would end up going through COVID where everybody would have to be working remotely. yeah, exactly.

Katalina Dawson (18:24)
Yeah. Well, I think that speaks to the idea outside of the box can create opportunities that can solve problems you don't even see yet. By looking at just where the office was now, you combated a future problem that so many people came to eventually and just, yeah, that forward thinking.

Michael Vesper (18:47)
Right. Well, and that was, you know, that was the need, you know, and the need in our industry was, well, there really wasn't a choice, right? Everybody had to come up with the solution. you know, a lot of the people in the industry that, you know, creditors and issuers that wouldn't allow remote work really didn't have a choice. So, and, and it was amazing, I think too, of how well the industry, our industry, you know, adapted to it and were able to be successful during that time.

Michael Vesper (19:13)
you know, during the COVID time where that challenge created an opportunity that now most of the businesses have held onto. So it's really, you know, it's really interesting.

Katalina Dawson (19:16)
Yeah. So I'd love to bounce off this idea a little bit more and talk more about resilience and reinvention and how to stay resilient when things don't go as planned, especially when you're trying to build these opportunities. And if you get to a certain point and you hit a terrible challenge, how do you overcome that?

Michael Vesper (19:42)
Persistence, hard work. I mean, it's really not that hard. It's simple logic. It can be hard to do, but it's really, when you're going through different things, just putting your head down and getting it done and being persistent and having a lot of tenacity and not giving up is really the only way you get through it. And it's interesting too, because you look at sometimes, like in my career when I was going through

Michael Vesper (20:11)
music challenges or band stuff or business stuff where there was a really challenging moments and you're kind of on the edge. You're teetering of, where's this going to go? And then it turns out fine. And because you're just kind of doing, you're trying to do the right thing all the time and you're trying to just power through it. then I think that's the best thing you can do is just. Put your head down and work and get through whatever those difficult times are. Because nothing goes as planned. Nothing ever goes as planned. You know, all the best planning, right? You could plan it all out and then, you know, there's going to be snags. So you can plan for the snags and you do that with, I mean, you know, writing software and doing that, you're constantly planning for things that are going to go wrong, you know, because you're trying to avoid all those things. but yeah, I mean, that's part of it too.

Katalina Dawson (20:42)
love that. That forward thinking, I love what Adam Parks says. He always says, like, if you have one, you have none. If you have two, you have one. Just kind of that forward thinking of like making sure you prepare for things so that in case something happens, you have something. Because if something goes wrong and say, know, there's a power outage and you only have one flashlight, but those batteries are out, you had one flashlight, you had none. But if you have two, then you're actually prepared.

Michael Vesper (21:15)
Yeah.

Katalina Dawson (21:31)
for what could come next. What you were saying about, yeah, I love Adam's advice. He is full of really good quotes. Maybe that's part of the reason I'm so big on quotes too. And what you were saying just there reminded me not necessarily of a quote, but of a visual that I've seen a lot when people talk about careers and showing up and resilience. And it's this idea of like a meter of like your,

Michael Vesper (21:32)
Sure. Absolutely. It's good advice. Yeah, he has good quotes.

Katalina Dawson (21:55)
Motivation may be huge on different days and like minimal on other days. So you can't always go off of just pure motivation. What actually makes the change is what you were saying, that persistence. It doesn't matter if you're inspired today and not inspired tomorrow. If you just show up every day, whether that's for your career, whether that's for your workouts, whether that's, you know, for any aspect of your life, it's that showing up and being persistent.

Michael Vesper (22:22)
Sure. Absolutely. You got to show up to do what you're there to do. And I'm a true believer in you kind of set your motivation. Like if you wake up and you say, this is going to be a bad day. It's going to be a bad day because you've just set it up to be a bad day. But if you set it up and say, hey, this is going to be a great day and I'm just going to, you know,

Michael Vesper (22:45)
muster the energy. tired. I can't see straight. I'm tired. if I buy into that, then that's what's going to happen. So if I try to counter it with, okay, I might be tired, but I'm not going to be tired. I'm not tired. And talk myself right out of it. That usually works for me anyway. It's like a mental thing, but I find that it works pretty well.

Katalina Dawson (22:53)
Yeah. it's that reframing, just like how you take a challenge and you reframe it as an opportunity.

Michael Vesper (23:13)
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. That's a business thing. That's a business thing though. The opportunities. there's a problem. No, that's an opportunity.

Katalina Dawson (23:15)
So speaking of which, Well, it could be in your personal life too, if you notice like, I'm not very good at whatever it is, cooking. Hey, it's an opportunity to learn. Get better at it.

Michael Vesper (23:29)
Right. That's right. Yeah, exactly. Get better. Take a cooking class. Yeah.

Katalina Dawson (23:34)
Yeah, so, seeing challenges as opportunities is one way to find those different opportunities, but is there any other way to kind of seek out or create opportunities for yourself?

Michael Vesper (23:47)
I think trying to think ahead a little bit, you know, is the way that you can, you know, you can create opportunities where you can maybe see where, whether, you know, in industry, like in our industry, we're seeing where the industry is going, seeing what, and being ahead of that curve rather than behind it. You know, that's, that's not always easy because you're, you know, you're, you're working every day, you're, you're, servicing your customers and they have their current needs and all that. So getting ahead of that sometimes is, a challenge.

Katalina Dawson (24:04)
Yes.

Michael Vesper (24:17)
That's what you want to do, right? You want to be ahead of the curve and have solutions that people are looking for next year, not the ones they're looking for this year. So that's, that's with technology and it changes so fast. you know, and it becomes, yeah, I mean, it, yeah, there's really not much more to say that it's constantly changing and then you have to change with it. And, you know, hopefully you'll have a solution that

Katalina Dawson (24:26)
especially with technology.

Michael Vesper (24:44)
Um, that somebody wants and you, and, you're adding to it because, know, over the years, I mean, there was a point in, in, you know, Dial Connection where we were just a dialer way more than that now. But you know, that, that came with the need of, of, of, of recognizing that there's other communication channels and who knows what other communication channels they'll be in. You know, five years, I don't know what else they could do, but you know, you never know. It's something else that's going to come about, you know, where you have to have that as part of your.

Michael Vesper (25:14)
process for reaching out to people. coming up with.

Katalina Dawson (25:15)
Yeah. So in short, it sounds like you can create opportunities that fit for you, whether that's because you need flexibility or just where your life is at the time. And you can find them through challenges or through looking to the future. And as long as you show up with that consistency and perseverance, that is the best way to have those opportunities become a success.

Michael Vesper (25:39)
Yeah, and hard work. Hard work. I'm a believer in hard work. yeah.

Katalina Dawson (25:41)
And hard work. Absolutely. Totally agree with you. Yes. Well, Michael, I want to thank you so much for coming on today. This is actually all the time we have. I can't believe it. went by so fast. But it was such a pleasure. No, not at all. I adored hearing your story. And I'm actually really curious. Is there anywhere we can listen to your music today?

Michael Vesper (25:52)
Okay. I talk too much, I'm sure. I'm sure I talk too much, but. Soon there will be. I was a bad technologist a few years back and I lost the domain for my band, but I got it back. have a bunch of music that we released, music that we recorded with some really big time producers and engineers and that sounds great and I hope people would like. I'm putting up an archive site that'll be mercyriver.com and that'll be.

Michael Vesper (26:35)
music. So it's going take me a while because I have no time. Over the summer, had my oldest go through and scan a bunch of pictures of old pictures from the band stuff and the band days. So I have a lot of that electronically in a digitized format. And we'll be working on getting all the music and stuff up there as well. yeah, so probably in maybe six months, I'll have something up there. But if I get something sooner, maybe I'll start simple and I won't.

Katalina Dawson (26:44)
Fair.

Michael Vesper (27:02)
I won't try to make it perfect and I'll just try to get some pictures up there and some music up there. And then that way we can share it people can hear it.

Katalina Dawson (27:04)
Yeah, I would love to hear it. Once you get it up, please let me know. I would love to hear it. Anybody else? If you remember that band name and everything he said, jot it down, check it out in about six months time from when we post this. But Michael, it has been so incredible to hear your story, hear all these opportunities you created and how you went about it. Thank you so much for coming on today. I so appreciate it.

Michael Vesper (27:17)
That's a Right, it's my pleasure and thank you for having me.

Katalina Dawson (27:34)
Yeah, and to anybody who doesn't know Michael and you are in the industry, he is a wealth of knowledge, an incredible person to know. Go ahead, find him on LinkedIn, connect with him, and hopefully hear his music in about six months. But thank you, everybody. yes, there you go. That'll be shared on LinkedIn. But thank you, everybody, so much for watching the episode. We appreciate you. If you have any questions, comments, or any topics that you would like to see us.

Michael Vesper (27:45)
Maybe I'll put it on LinkedIn. Right, there we go.

Katalina Dawson (27:58)
Discuss at some point, put it in the comments. We will do our best to get to all of them and then we will see you in the next episode. Bye.

Michael Vesper (28:06)
Bye.