Ten Thousand Miles

Vic Pepe
  • 5.0 (7)
  • Entrepreneurship
  • Updated Daily

The road to success is full of hard work and determination. It is never easy - you just learn to handle hard... Here, I interview people who "make it look easy" but leave it all on the field daily to do so.

  1. 3d ago

    The Career Secret Every Successful Person Knows at 20

    This episode features a candid conversation between the host and Alexa Palermo. If you are a fan of the show or interested in the journey behind this specific podcast, this episode provides direct insight into the themes being explored. Throughout the interview, Alexa Palermo shares her experiences while the host guides the dialogue to ensure a comprehensive overview. Whether you are catching up on previous episodes or just finding the 10000 Miles podcast for the first time, this session highlights key moments that define the current season. This is a must-watch for those who appreciate a focused podcast interview that gets straight to the point. Subscribe for weekly 10000 Miles podcast updates and leave a comment sharing your favorite moment from this interview. Alexa Palermo, Channel Manager at Vonage, joins Ten Thousand Miles to share how she broke into channel sales in her 20s, built confidence through imposter syndrome, and uses AI (ChatGPT, Claude) to boost productivity in tech sales. A must-watch for anyone starting a career in IT channel sales. Chapters: 00:00 – Cold open 00:58 – 117 episodes in: the mission behind Ten Thousand Miles 03:26 – Alexa introduces herself 04:13 – Why the channel builds stronger relationships 05:16 – Alexa's first channel job at Procure IT 09:44 – What really attracted her to channel sales 12:03 – The "unfair advantage" of growing up in the industry 14:13 – Biggest misconceptions about tech sales 17:09 – The dinner in Texas that changed everything 20:20 – Overcoming imposter syndrome 24:54 – Mentors who shaped her career (Chris Fury, Kristy Thomas, Marina Kay) 29:23 – Mistakes, rejection, and learning to wait your turn 37:00 – How AI (ChatGPT, Claude) is changing careers for young professionals 42:00 – Rapid fire: success, leadership & advice for young pros 44:06 – Why the channel needs more women 46:39 – Final takeaway & closing Please Comment, Like, Share, and Subscribe!

    46 min

  2. Jun 29

    Success Isn't Enough! | Dave Guttman

    Learn entrepreneur mentorship strategies from Dave Gutman. Discover practical business advice and founder lessons for your next venture. This episode sits down with Dave Gutman, a seasoned founder, speaker, and startup investor. We discuss his approach to building businesses and the core principles that guide his professional journey. Whether you are scaling a company or just starting out, his insights on entrepreneurship tips provide a clear roadmap for navigating common industry challenges. Throughout our conversation, Dave breaks down the realities of being a founder in today's market. He shares honest perspectives on mentorship and investment that helped shape his career. This discussion is designed for anyone looking to refine their business strategy and understand the mindset required for long-term growth. Chapters: 00:00 – Welcome to Ten Thousand Miles with Dave Guttman 01:20 – Early Life, Wrestling, Entrepreneurship, and Lessons from Failure 07:39 – Learning Business Through Search Funds, Mentors, and Acquisitions 20:29 – Defining Moments, Dyslexia, Brown, Wharton, and Life’s Turning Points 28:17 – The Cancer Misdiagnosis That Changed Everything 39:32 – Fundraising, Building Sellable Companies, and the Anti-MBA Philosophy 59:20 – AI, Lifelong Learning, Success, Leadership, and Final Lessons Subscribe for stories and business breakdowns, and comment below with which specific entrepreneurship topic you want us to cover next. Please Comment, Like, Share, and Subscribe!

    1h 13m

  3. Jun 22

    My LinkedIn Strategy for Massive Growth! | Denise Panza

    What does it take to close a $2.9 million loan with a doctor you've never met — in a state you're not even licensed in yet — all because of a letterboard and a LinkedIn post? Denise Panza has done it. Repeatedly. Denise is a 30-year mortgage veteran, licensed in 20 states, and one of the most authentic personal brand builders in the financial services industry. In this return appearance on Ten Thousand Miles, Denise and host Vic Pepe pull back the curtain on how she went from Facebook mom to LinkedIn powerhouse — and how her social media presence has fundamentally transformed her loan production, her reach, and the lives of the families she serves. This isn't a fluffy "post more content" conversation. Denise gets real about what actually works, what mortgage professionals are doing wrong on social media, how she handles compliance in a heavily regulated industry, and why she answers her phone at 11 PM — not because she has to, but because she genuinely loves what she does. Whether you're in mortgages, real estate, sales, or just trying to build a personal brand that actually converts — this episode is loaded with practical wisdom and a few laughs along the way. Subscribe to Ten Thousand Miles for new episodes every Monday. Hosted by Vic Pepe | Author of "The RFP Is Dead" and "The Lucky 13" CONNECT WITH DENISE PANZA: • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/denisepanza/ — follow her letterboard game in real time • Apply Online: askmortgagegal.com CONNECT WITH VIC PEPE & TEN THOUSAND MILES: • LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/vicpepe • D&M Enterprise Group: dmenterprise.net ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ CHAPTERS ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 00:00 – Welcome Back: Denise Panza Returns to Ten Thousand Miles 01:18 – Why LinkedIn Changed Everything for Denise's Mortgage Business 03:35 – From Facebook to LinkedIn: How She Found Her Platform 06:25 – The Letterboard Signature and Building an Authentic Brand 09:06 – What Skeptics Said — and Why She Did It Anyway 09:44 – The 99-Year-Old WWII Veteran She Met on a Plane (and What It Taught Her About LinkedIn) 16:00 – Consistency Over Virality: The Long Game of Social Media 25:55 – Why Most Mortgage Pros Are Posting the Wrong Content 32:14 – How a LinkedIn Post Turned a Stranger Into a $2.9M Loan Client 34:40 – Every Loan Type, Every Client: Why Denise Doesn't Pick a Niche 36:23 – No Boundaries, No Problem: Answering Calls at 11 PM 38:43 – Retirement Is Not in Her Vocabulary (and Why She's Right) 47:41 – The Algorithm Nobody Can Predict — Including Vic 51:14 – Rapid Fire: Best Post Ever, Worst Habits on Social, and the Compliance Question 54:29 – The Closing Story That Still Gives Her Chills 57:46 – Celebrate Yourself: Open That Bottle of Camus ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ KEYWORDS & TOPICS COVERED ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ mortgage loan officer LinkedIn strategy | personal branding for mortgage professionals | social media for real estate and lending | how to get mortgage clients on LinkedIn | mortgage sales tips 2025 | authentic content creation | loan officer marketing | jumbo loans | reverse mortgages | first-time home buyers | mortgage compliance and social media | building a brand in a regulated industry | LinkedIn growth strategy | mortgage industry podcast | sales mindset | work-life balance in sales | storytelling in sales | female entrepreneurs in finance | Ten Thousand Miles podcast | Vic Pepe podcast Please Comment, Like, Share, and Subscribe! #shorts #shortsfeed #podcast #leaders #stories #podcast #courage #business #Success #Leadership #Motivation #Inspiration #SelfImprovement #PersonalDevelopment #GoalSetting #Mindset #Entrepreneurship #BusinessSuccess #LifeGoals #PositiveThinking #AchieveYourGoals #SuccessMindset #LeadershipSkills #MotivationalQuotes #SuccessTips #LeadershipDevelopment #InspirationalVideos #SuccessStories #money #life #rockandroll #music #CEO #COO #CFO #CAO #nextjob #goodtimes #success

    1 hr

  4. Jun 15

    The Hidden Opportunity Most People Never See | Anna Stallman

    We're back with another episode of Ten Thousand Miles, and today I'm incredibly lucky to sit down with Anna Stallmann, founder of Ascent Strategic Communications. Whether you're a CEO trying to build influence, a founder considering a rebrand, or a professional wondering if you should start a podcast — this episode is for you. CHAPTERS 00:00 Welcome and Introduction to Anna Stallmann 05:00 From the U.S. Senate to the Department of Defense 16:00 Launching Ascent Strategic Communications 19:00 The First 90 Days of Entrepreneurship 26:00 Strategy Over Noise 33:00 Should You Start a Podcast? 40:00 The Rebrand 44:00 People First Leadership 51:00 Personal Brand vs. Company Brand 58:00 Rapid Fire KEY TAKEAWAYS * The most underrated communication move: know your white space — the message only YOU can deliver * Visibility is not influence. Influence is built through trust, discipline, and messengers * "Plans are worthless, but planning is everything." — General Eisenhower * Be famous internally first — with your family, your team, your community * Hard work ethic still builds the best leaders. Fame that is earned lasts * It doesn't matter what you say. It matters what people hear GUEST RESOURCES Ascent Strategic Communications: https://ascentcomms.com/ Book Recommendation: Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath #StrategicCommunications #PersonalBranding #Leadership #Entrepreneurship #TenThousandMilesPodcast #PublicRelations #CEOBranding #WhiteSpace #CommunicationsStrategy #PodcastInterview Please Comment, Like, Share, and Subscribe! Guest: Anna Stallmann

    1h 8m

  5. Jun 8

    AI First Enterprise: See Everything & Know Everything

    What does it actually look like when a CIO walks into a 20-year-old technology organization and turns it AI-first in under 12 months — without shutting anything down? In Part 3 of the Sage Tech series on Ten Thousand Miles, Vic Pepe sits down with Corey Kirspel, a transformational CIO in the healthcare technology space. This is not theory. This is a boots-on-the-ground account of one of the most compelling enterprise modernization stories in the AI era. Corey walked into a private equity portfolio company three years into a five-year hold — facing a 12-million-line legacy code base, a $2M cost reduction mandate, tribal knowledge locked inside a handful of people, and a board demanding an AI-first strategy. Here is what happened next. What you'll learn: * Why Claude, Copilot, and Cursor weren't enough alone — and what Corey layered on top * How Sage Tech mapped 12 million lines of legacy code in 48 hours — architecture, vulnerabilities, and evergreen documentation included * The one-engineer experiment that turned skeptics into believers — a five-month project done in six weeks * How $1.2M in annual infrastructure savings was unlocked in three months without a ground-up rewrite * The SDLC operating model shift that took a team from 100 lines of code per day to 10,000 * What the first 90 days of AI transformation actually looks like — and how to justify the ROI fast Whether you are a CIO, CTO, PE operating partner, or business leader trying to move from talking about AI to executing it — this episode is required listening. Chapters: 00:00 — Welcome and guest introduction 02:00 — The CIO's real job in the AI era 03:53 — Walking into a PE portco with a 20-year-old code base 05:25 — Why Claude, Cursor, and Copilot weren't enough alone 08:15 — Discovering Sage Tech and the virtual architect model 12:04 — Breaking free from tribal knowledge and key-man dependency 19:34 — The product leader who thought she knew her own system 22:04 — The one-engineer experiment that changed everything 33:49 — From one engineer to eight Scrum teams — the rollout strategy 42:01 — First 90 days and a message for anyone still waiting Connect: * Sage Tech AI: https://www.sage-tech.ai * Subscribe for new episodes every week Keywords: enterprise AI transformation, CIO strategy, legacy code modernization, AI-first enterprise, Sage Tech AI, software modernization, technical debt, private equity portco, healthcare technology, SDLC AI integration, CIO podcast, technology leadership, AI tools for developers, code base analysis, digital transformation ROI

    47 min

  6. Jun 1

    Is This AI a Real Game Changer?

    Join us as we sit down with Bruce Henderson, CTO of Sage-Tech.ai, to get an in-depth look at their platform and the #technology driving it. This conversation provides valuable insights into the technical operations and #leadership involved in their enterprise #aistrategy. Stay updated with the latest AI news and gain a deeper understanding of how AI is explained in practical applications. Bruce built his career maintaining, upgrading, and retiring the massive legacy systems that sit at the heart of the global economy. In this conversation, he pulls back the curtain on how Sage Tech actually works — from the queryable context graph and cognitive model to the AI inference layer, ephemeral environments, and why vector RAG failed them before they built something better. This is one of the most technically honest conversations about enterprise AI you will hear anywhere. No hype. No sales pitch. Just a veteran engineer telling you exactly what works, what does not, and what every CTO needs to understand before 2030. Learn more about Sage Tech: https://sage-tech.ai Miss Part 1? Watch the business track with Deepak Sharma here: [link] CHAPTERS 00:00 Introduction — Why Bruce Built Sage Tech 04:01 From Code to Knowledge — The Pivot That Changed Everything 08:07 The Queryable Context Graph Explained 10:15 Why Vector RAG Failed and What Replaced It 14:03 How the Graph Gets Built From a Real Code Base 17:14 Outputs, Documentation, and Self-Service Intelligence 24:04 Scaling From 500K to 15 Million Lines of Code 28:44 Ephemeral Environments and the Future of AI Coding LIGHTNING ROUND 38:33 Most Overrated Thing in Enterprise AI 39:16 The Underrated Risk Nobody Is Talking About (De-skilling) 40:09 Bruce's Favorite Tool Most People Have Never Heard Of 41:12 What He Would Do Differently Building Sage From Scratch 42:42 The One Thing Most CTOs Still Do Not Believe About AI in 2026 Subscribe so you never miss an episode. Please Like, Comment, Share, and Subscribe We sit down with Bruce Henderson, CTO of Sage-Tech.ai, for an in-depth discussion on their platform and its core technology . This episode offers key insights into technical operations and the enterprise ai strategy driving their work. Discover how their innovation is shaping the future of AI.

    40 min

  7. May 25

    The Insane Enterprise AI Nobody Is Talking About!

    In this insightful podcast discussion, we dive deep into artificial intelligence technologies, exploring how ai works and its significant impact. Vic and Depak offer a comprehensive AI explanation for beginners, highlighting the future of AI. This episode provides valuable perspectives on the evolving landscape of technology. What happens when enterprises try to modernize decades of legacy code — and fail? In Part 1 of this conversation, Vic Pepe sits down with Deepak Sharma, a veteran transformation advisor who has guided some of the world's largest financial institutions and insurance organizations through their most complex technology challenges. Together they explore why legacy modernization almost always goes over budget, over schedule, and under-delivers — and how a new AI-powered tool called Sage Tech (sage-tech.ai) is changing the equation entirely. Deepak walks through how Sage ingests entire code bases in hours (not years), builds a living data model of how systems actually work, and gives business leaders, engineers, and compliance teams a visual map of technical debt, security risks, and organizational dependencies — across every application in the enterprise. Whether you're a CIO navigating a legacy estate, a CTO trying to separate commodity code from differentiated IP, or a transformation leader tired of projects that never finish — this episode will reshape how you think about what's possible. Learn more about Sage Tech: https://sage-tech.ai CHAPTERS 00:00 Introduction — Why Legacy Modernization Fails 03:02 Meet Deepak Sharma — Transformation at Scale 04:17 What Is Sage Tech and How Was It Discovered 07:30 How Sage Ingests and Maps a Code Base 09:28 Hours vs. Years — The Speed Advantage of AI 11:13 Connecting All Your Systems — The Enterprise View 15:04 The New Engineer — System Thinkers Over Coders 17:14 CFOs, COOs, and the Business Case for Modernization Ten Thousand Miles is hosted by Vic Pepe — Managing Partner of D&M Enterprise Group, co-author of The RFP Is Dead, and a veteran technology executive with stops at Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, and JPMorgan Chase. Every episode goes deep with founders, executives, operators, and innovators who are building, leading, and transforming at the highest levels. Subscribe so you never miss an episode. #LegacyModernization #AITransformation #EnterpriseTechnology #TechLeadership #SoftwareModernization #CIO #CTO #DigitalTransformation #ArtificialIntelligence #TechnicalDebt #LargeLanguageModels #AIStrategy #EnterpriseAI #TenThousandMiles #VicPepe #DeepakSharma #SageTech #FinancialServices #CloudMigration #ApplicationModernization Please Comment, Like, Share, and Subscribe!

    33 min

  8. May 19

    The Business Mistake Nobody Wants to Admit

    In this insightful clip, the speaker discusses his book "The RFP is Dead" and explains what truly led to the demise of the traditional request for proposal process. He sheds light on the new landscape of business proposal and procurement, emphasizing what has replaced the old methods. This discussion offers a valuable perspective for anyone interested in business education and the evolution of contract management. Procurement is broken. The Request for Proposal — a process that dates back to the 1800s — is costing buyers and sellers millions of dollars in wasted time, bloated documents, and theater. In this episode, Vic Pepe breaks down exactly why the RFP died, what's replacing it, and what you should do right now, whether you're buying or selling enterprise technology.If you work in procurement, sales, or enterprise technology leadership, this one will hit close to home. Get the book: The RFP Is Dead — available on Amazon for under $7 D&M Enterprise Group: www.dmenterprise.net Contact Vic: vic@dmenterprise.netIn This Episode: • Why the RFP became a compliance exercise and a cover-your-ass tool • The 4 forces that killed the RFP • How AI is now writing — and scoring — RFPs on both sides of the table • Why "if you didn't shape it, you've already lost" is the new rule • What trusted advisors do that RFPs never could • The history of the RFP (yes, it started in the 1800s) • What buyers and sellers should actually be doing right now Chapters: 00:00 Introduction — Vic's book and why he's passionate about this 01:45 Procurement Is Broken — the 4 reasons the RFP died0 3:30 The RFP as a CYA exercise — real stories from the C-suite 04:45 What replaced the RFP — trusted advisors, POCs, peer networks 06:30 The "already won" model — why cold RFPs are a waste of time 08:00 AI vs. AI — how automation is killing the RFP even faster 10:15 The new currency: authority, trust, and relationships 12:00 D&M's authority gap event and the AI leadership divide 13:00 If you're selling — stop chasing RFPs you didn't shape 15:00 Be the advisor, not the vendor 15:45 If you're buying — the RFP protects procurement, not the business 17:00 History of the RFP — from 1800s newspapers to today 19:30 Public sector, the veil of equality, and backdoor channeling 21:00 Failure, fear, and corporate paralysis 22:30 Internal sabotage — what happens when people don't want change 24:00 The 3 things you actually need to know before selecting technology 26:30 What trusted advisors expose that RFPs never can 27:30 Closing — get the book, get a trusted advisor, go execute Please Comment, Like, Share, and Subscribe!

    27 min
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Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
7 Ratings

About

The road to success is full of hard work and determination. It is never easy - you just learn to handle hard... Here, I interview people who "make it look easy" but leave it all on the field daily to do so.

Information

  • Creator
    Vic Pepe
  • Years Active
    2024 - 2026
  • Episodes
    127
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Copyright 2025 Ten Thousand Miles
  • Show Website
    Ten Thousand Miles

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