Nathan Coutinho.

SPEAKER_00 0:00 I was seeing all the teams putting data sheets together about the number, all the firewalls you can buy and all the mice you can buy and all the whatever you can, and it's sending it out to customers one after the other. And hang on, they're gonna block us, and no one's gonna want to see anything we send them. So all the value is gonna go out the door. SPEAKER_02 0:27 Hello everyone, Simon Dudley here. It's the before it was obvious podcast, but you know that because you clicked on the button. As I say every single week, it will be funny one day. Today's guest is well an old employee of mine, but also my friend, uh Nathan Catino. Nathan, welcome to the show. SPEAKER_00 0:45 Thanks for having me on, Simon. It's uh great to be here. Looking forward to it. SPEAKER_02 0:48 Yeah, it's good fun. I've been watching all your videos, so you better be watching all of mine. Now, we work together at Logitech, but we've known each other rather longer than that, and CDW and all sorts of other things. But the ladies and gentlemen won't know who you are or probably don't. So why don't you start by telling us who you are and what you do today? SPEAKER_00 1:07 Sure. So I have always been a bit of a techie. So I've been on the in the tech industry for quite a while. Um I actually spend more time on the data center side than I have in collab. But about 12 years ago, I got a leadership leadership position managing the collab business, then eventually came out to Logitech to work for you, obviously. And we work very closely together. Today I'm still at Logitech, but I am uh in a marketing role. So I focus on still on analyst relations, but I also manage our channel, global channel marketing teams as well as our global alliance marketing teams. So a lot of different hats, uh, but as you know me fairly well, it's the only way I know how to work is just doing multiple things. SPEAKER_02 1:45 Yes. And and to be honest, if we the interview was just about the things I don't know about Nathan already, it'd be a fairly short interview and no one would need to watch it. So we're gonna we're gonna actually go and dissect your career. And to do that, we need to go way back to the beginning. So Nathan Catino, Catino, Portuguese name. So you're clearly port oh hang on. Go on in. Tell us how did how did you uh turn up on this planet and where did you start all of those things? SPEAKER_00 2:17 Wow. Well, kind of a long story. I'll try to give you the abridged version and obviously stop me uh if you want more clarity on it. And if I don't have an answer, I'll make something up. But um, so I was born in the Middle East and from India originally. My parents moved there in the 60s, uh, specifically Abu Dhabi in UAE. And I went to high school there. And at some point, my parents were like, hey, you need to go do something with your life. And uh I was a homebody and I was a terrible student. I mean, terrible, terrible student. And I was basically coached by my then friend, and now is my brother-in-law. He's like, Listen, like, no one gets an opportunity to go off to the US or the UK or Australia and go get an education. It's like, act on it. Your parents are willing to do it. And I took it seriously and I applied to a bunch of colleges and I ended up in the US. And ironically, for accounting, which I did not graduate with, by the way. So I went into accounting probably because it was my happy place. Math was always my my well, I wasn't one of my strongest suit, but I was very interested in it. And if you notice with me, I like a lot of things that can be proven. And math is one of those things that helps you prove things, right? And I was good at accounting, so I'm like, hey, I'll just go become an accounting major, not realizing that you know the internet would have been started uh two years into my college degree, '96. And my friend dragged me into a lab one one so one day at midnight. And he's like, hey, you got to check out this World Wide Web thing. This HTML coding is so fun. And for some reason, I just got hooked into it. I know, I know. It's crazy. Uh I got hooked into it and I wanted to learn everything into it. And that's that was my pivotal point in my start of my career, where I was like, this is what I was meant to do. Right. I wasn't sure exactly what, but it had to be tech. And ironically, it's funny because I've always been kind of a techie person, but not to this level. And uh so that's what helped me. I actually literally jumped out of my accounting degree and went straight into MIS, Management Information Systems at the time, and went straight into consulting, one consulting company, to the next consulting company, to eventually a smaller company that got bought by CDW. And uh I spent 17 years at CDW, learned a massive ton of information, not just from learning how to be a better engineer, but then also learning how to become a leader, a manager, do some MA. Right, right, right, right. SPEAKER_02 4:33 So you're jumping about or jumping forward way quicker than I'd like. So keep up, Simon. Because what are the wait for the ladies and the gentlemen thinking of the audience? So it's interesting. You did you have computers as kids? You were being the right age to have a computer at home. Did your parents think about that sort of thing? SPEAKER_00 4:52 So I was a kid who liked to do a lot of things and then typically never followed up to it. For example, I wanted a guitar, bought me a guitar, never learned how to play it until much later. So they were kind of like, no, you're not going to use a computer. So I actually used to borrow my dad's friend's Commodore 64. And that's how I, you know, basically ended up with my first couple computers. Eventually, when I was in high school, they finally broke down and bought me a 286 SX used. And uh that got me through just word processing type stuff, word perfect. I don't even think Word was out then. Uh the DOS days, right? Early 3.1, Windows 3.1. And that's how I learned. So they weren't very supportive, but they obviously gave me the tools when they were like, okay, he's actually going to use it. But I don't think anyone expected me to do more with the computer. It was just never one of those expectations. SPEAKER_02 5:44 No, I've always known you as a business guy, not a I mean, you you've got technical capabilities, but you you're a bit like that kung fu guy. You know, you don't actually want to use the kung fu, you just want to have it as backup and the off chance. It gives you confidence, right? Yeah. So you you started in Consulting C. Did is it did you think, I know I'm gonna work up, you know, maybe after you joined CDW, right? That would have had a very 17 years there, it's a long time. Did you sort of join there, right? They have a whole machinery of how people are built up through the organization. Did you go, I'm gonna be an SVP one day? Or did you just go, oh, just do this job for a bit and then someone else offers you something else to do? How did that work? SPEAKER_00 6:29 I think for the longest time I always wanted to be an SVP or CEO or something like that, right? I think that was my okay, then next, what's the next thing while you keep going up and you keep climbing up the corporate ladder and you do something different. I in the last probably decade or so, I think I've kind of given up on that because I'm just not interested in it anymore. But I think when I started, I I was doing consulting, yes, you're right. Uh, but I think the the parts that really helped me along the way was just doing absolutely different things and trying to find my way along the way as to what I liked and what I didn't like. And uh, I think we may have talked about this before, but there were so many projects that I took on that I did not want to do. But I built relationships with those projects and I learned a lot about things, a lot about things that I'm like, I don't want to do that anymore. That's just it's garbage. That's uh not my my thing at all. But can you give me an example of that? Yeah. So we did a couple integration projects as part of MA. And I got thrown in into the mix to basically uh figure out how all the different part numbers from one ERP system was gonna get imported into another one that needed e-commerce. I didn't have any skill around that. I had no background in that whatsoever. But I was in Chicago and they needed a liaison from the company that was getting acquired to me. And they knew I would be able to figure it out just because of all the other projects I was in. So again, not something I want to do. I'm not gonna hang my hat on that project, but it needed to be done. But I met all these people that I then worked the next 10 years with. So those relationships helped. It also helped me understand the inner workings of the e-commerce system. So understanding how to put a new product into place and all the different things that have to happen between website images and SKUs that need to match up and warranties that are attached, that all helps, right, in the grand scheme of things later on in a different role. At the time, I was just like, I just need to get this done, right? So let me let me do it because my boss told me to do it. But there have been a lot of projects like that. SPEAKER_02 8:26 And so you kind of build all these different bricks, and then only later do you realize, well, actually, all these fit together and it allows me to do something better. SPEAKER_00 8:33 That and that was probably the strongest thing I learned at CDW is that I was in corporate strategy, I was a seller, I was a pre-sales guy, I was managing people, various leadership, you know, doing keynotes and stuff like that. It really helps you round out your skill set and then tries to not only good for your career, but it helps you figure out what do you want to do next? And like, do you really enjoy doing those bits, or do you just want to focus on the bits that you're really good at and want to hone in on? Um go ahead. Sorry. SPEAKER_02 9:01 I was gonna say it's very interesting to me, and I'm gonna gently take the Mickey a bit, but also give you a compliment. The Mickey taking is you are a famous non-reader, right? You've said yourself, you don't you've got three books and you've never, and one of them I wrote and you've never read it, and you've never read anything I think I've ever written, even when you work for me. You're you're famous for not reading, but you are a lifelong read uh lifelong learner. You've just is it autodidac? I think it is. That's a great word, isn't it? Just to get to use the word autodidac. Those of us who read books know words like that. Don't worry about it. It just means you continue to learn all your life, right? Which you you don't need to know the word to actually do the thing, and that's clearly what you've done. Would you say, would you say that was your superpower? SPEAKER_00 9:49 I I think the superpowers to always want to learn, uh even about things that like, you know, one day I'll wake up and I'll like want to learn how to build a kite, and I'll just go all in on trying to figure it out, regardless if it flies or not, and then I'll kind of move on to the next thing. So for me, it's like it's the the curiosity kind of drives the passion to go learn about something. And I want to be clear, I I don't like reading books, but give me like people's blogs and something that it's generally interested in, I will read it back to back nonstop. So You've never read my blog. Yeah, well, you know. Oh, I do I read some of yours. That's not all of it, but you know. But I think that's I mean, you have to read. Like there's so much to learn about, right? So there's there's out there's out there. It's just I have a significant, uh, I don't know if it's attention deficit disorder, one of the rarest versions of that that's out there. Oh, but I will like drift really quickly and then like I'm done, I'm moving on to something else. I can recognize it in you because I got it too. SPEAKER_02 10:42 Your your ATHD is off the scale. Totally. Yeah. It's just completely ridiculous. But I think that that coupled with your curiosity just keeps giving you these snippets of capability of continually improving. Yeah. Which I think is a very different experience. A lot of people seem to think that school is where you do the learning and work is where you do the doing. And you you have realized or worked out that it that learning how to do it is the important bit. Doing it, yeah, somebody else can go and do the actual doing bit. But learning how to do it is the bit that interests you. And I think that's a fascinating experience. Because like for me, I don't we've had some folks on here, one of our guests is was a NASA engineer, another one's got a PhD in geomathematics. I mean, we've got we've got some super high IQ folks in here. But I think the the leveling function is a curiosity rather than uh an IQ. SPEAKER_00 11:41 I think so too. And I one of the things that you helped me with a couple years ago was I remember we were talking about like cameras and like, you know, filmmaking and videos and stuff like that. And and I was always my mental block was, well, it costs too much money. It's like a $1,000 camera body. Like, why should we spend the money? Will we will we get the ROI on it? And your response was like, well, if you buy it and you build five videos for the company, we've already paid for itself and you've learned a new skill. And now you can go to an agency and make them do the work and you know how to explain to them like what you want better, right? So you've added skill, you're doing something better for the company. And I never, I never looked at it things like that. I always like felt like the financial block was always a block where we couldn't get anything done. And I'm like so into video now because of you, right? Honestly, because I'm not just blowing smoke here. I'm just like, I have taken it to a whole different level that I never, I mean, we could barely edit a video three years ago, right? And now I'm totally into film production and we were talking about color grading the other day. So I think it's something that I found a passion in. And now I'm like, okay, I have the means to do it. I'm obviously doing it for corporate mostly, but it's interesting. SPEAKER_02 12:52 Well, the other thing, and I think where I was going with that, and this is maybe being me interviewing you, by the way. So but let me not say too many words, but I will use some of my words now and say one of the reasons to learn how to do it is so that when the agency inevitably turns around and says, You want to do whatever, ooh, you know, that's gonna be expensive. Or if you don't understand the general mechanics of what you're looking at, pull them all over your eyes. If you actually understand enough, you go, no, no, no, we're stupid. You just need to do just cut this two minutes out of the video and it'll fifty bucks, not five thousand. I think that's a I think that's a very in itself that's a very useful skill. Even if you decide not to do it, at least you understand enough about it so you can not get ripped off when you do it. It's all of the above. So let's get about CDW for a moment, right? One of the most impressive companies in the IT industry. I forget what their revenues are now, 17 billion or something. It's twenty I think it's like 2023 billion was last year. It's uh a very large number. One of how many people? 5,000, 10,000? I think it's north of 14,000 now. 14,000, right? So it's an absolutely monster of a company. And you started where? What what was your first role at CDW? SPEAKER_00 14:09 So I came through acquisition. So they they were getting into it's like in the in this was a 2005, 2006. They wanted to get more seriously into services because they saw it coming. They're like, listen, all these technologies getting more complicated. Customers want a one-stop shop for it all. And they wanted to get in consulting. So they bought this smaller Midwestern company called Burby that I was a part of. It were 800 employees. And when we got purchased, I think CDW was only about 6,500 people. So it was fairly small. Uh, and it was probably their largest acquisition that they did. So when I came in, uh, I was focused on selling servers, storage, and mostly VMware, if you remember VMware. And uh and I was on the advisory board with VMware as well. So I was already fairly technically, you know, doing that role. And the superpower that I kind of got instantly was the fact that in the old company, they were focused more on Cisco networking, uh UC, which I had no idea anything about at that point, security managed services. And then the server storage business, at least the server side with VMware was tiny. But when I went to CDW, they had 2,500 sellers that know how to sell servers, right? So instantly I had, I basically retired 100 sellers and went to 2,500. So it gave me the superpower because they didn't have the technical know-how to be able to figure out how to go to market with this technology. And my team did. So we enabled, we enabled so many sellers just in the first year, and they were like, this is great. I didn't expect this before, and boom, that's what I was doing, like really the first three years. SPEAKER_02 15:42 And this was UW fairly famous for the overlays, right? You got the account execs who will sell anyone anything. Yeah. Frankly, mainly supply anything. I don't mean that in a rude way, but they're not subject matter experts. And then you have the the overlay teams, and you ended up so after all networking. I mean, I my understand I'm not an expert in networking, but I understand it's still kind of popular, right? So that department didn't close down. SPEAKER_00 16:05 No, no, no, it's huge. Yeah. SPEAKER_02 16:07 Of course it is. So why did you you did you then move into UC after that? SPEAKER_00 16:12 So what happened was I was in, I was basically at one point I also took on storage, enterprise storage as well. So we were kind of divided the company in separate parts, central, west, east, blah, blah, blah. And I had mostly the West uh folks. I was actually taking on storage at that point, learning about storage, which was great because it's all related. But at one point, uh, I remember my boss called me and he's like, hey, we're trying to figure out big data. And you're like the only one who can be thrown into this and figure out like what we should do with it. There's a whole team set aside. The CEO wanted us to do research on it to figure out do we open up a site business? Do we focus on it? Who do we bring in? That kind of stuff. So I got involved in this project and ended up really liking this team and eventually ended up working for that team. And that's how I got into corporate strategy. Uh so I ended up leaving. And it was a big leap for me because I'd only done technology for the most part. I'd only done pre-sales, but had never done MA. I'd never really done research to this level. So they took a chance on me as I did it with them as well. Uh, but it was a manager made in heaven because that's how I got introduced to Gartner and Forrester and uh Bain Consulting and all these guys that were literally working the back ends to build this corporate strategy. And so that was one leap, and it was great because I learned so much. I mean, I was taking a class to learn how to read financial statements before you buy them, which is like something I would have never done, right? Yeah, yeah. SPEAKER_02 17:31 And so CDW gave you that opportunity. Oh, absolutely. SPEAKER_00 17:34 Yeah, yeah. SPEAKER_02 17:35 And it's interesting, and I think many of us, and I guess I would include myself in this. Actually, I don't know where I sit in this, so ignore me. But most people will have a skill set and then they'll work out how to use that skill set to get further in their career. Yeah. I from what you're saying, I would I would suggest in your case, it wasn't the skill set, it was a mindset. Yeah. It was a I'm curious, I'm interested in learning new things, I can incinerate this problem with mental horsepower if I have to. And CDW saw that. SPEAKER_00 18:06 Yeah, I think they I think I had this, I think I was known for just throw throw him into it. He's probably not going to think, right? And he's probably gonna end up with something that we can use and it'll be good for the company. And and that was definitely a mindset, but I think they also gave me the opportunity because they saw early in me. One thing I forgot to mention is before I got this job in in corporate strategy, I had presented to the board on what cloud is. And that's it's just an interesting thing, right? So I was a new manager and my boss called me. He's like, hey, listen, the CEO called and they want you to present to the board on what cloud is. And this is 2008, 2009. So it was a little, little early, right? People were talking about it, but no one was trusting it yet. Yeah. And because the CEO is like, this is going to change our business, and we need to adapt fast. So we need to make sure we understand what's at risk and what we need to do in front of our board. So my boss is like, you've been asked for, so make sure you don't screw it up, right? SPEAKER_02 18:59 Always, always the best motivation. SPEAKER_00 19:01 Don't screw up. But they gave it to me because they knew they've they've seen me do keynotes before, they knew you know what I was capable of. So they're like, if anyone can simplify this, it's you. And I will tell you, one of the things that I was shocked by is that so when you know, you know this probably because you've been to so many board meetings, but uh when you do board meetings, you usually prep way in advance, right? You usually do rehearsals, making sure your all your slides look right, all that kind of good stuff. I was in I was invited to every single closed door meeting, which I was not expecting. I was expecting Nathan's gonna do this X section. We'll bring him in when we need him, all good, right? The CEO is like, no, when we go into the board and we're presenting something, we're presenting something as one team, which means you need to understand the financials. They need to understand what you're talking about, and that if anyone then asks questions, you can at least sound intelligent enough to know what the plan is. Yeah, the context in which it comes from. And I was shocked. So I sat through a lot of meetings where I was just like, numbers are flying at me. And I'm like, okay, I'm just like gonna write down things I don't understand and then ask someone else who won't yell at me. And they were really, really nice about it. And the the other thing I really appreciated was when I was doing my section and I was nervous as freaking hell. I was 28 years old, maybe 29 years old-ish, I think. And I'm like, why am I even here? Like I feel like a complete imposter. Like I don't know any of this stuff, right? But I somehow pushed it, pulled through it. And the nice part is like as I was presenting, they coached me throughout the whole thing. So they didn't say, Nathan, that's wrong. Don't say that. That sounds stupid. They were like, okay, maybe we accentuate this a little bit more, maybe we take that out because we need to connect the dots back to the previous presentation. So they were continuously thinking about as I'm presenting what they had just presented to make sure it doesn't conflict, right? So it's writing on each other, and then what's going to be presented next. And I was shocked. I was just shocked by how good they were with that. So I learned so much from that just from being able to then coach others to do the same. SPEAKER_02 20:56 But what a fantastic piece of career advancement to get invited. I I've clearly been in many board meetings, I think, smoking a cigar. I've clearly been in board for years. But mainly because I get I get asked along for some competitive or some technical or semi-technical issue, and I just forget to leave, you know. Unless they actually physically get a push, and that would be my advice to our listeners. If you get invited to a board meeting, once you've done your bit, just sit there. If they don't push you out the door, you can learn a lot from just listening to all these other people. And I've always been that. You were actually invited to stay, but I just no one had the bottle to turn around and say get out publicly. So that's really interesting. So it's really ultimately about your mindset, not your technical capability, because cloud was brand new at that time. But speaking of cloud at that time, did you see did you you know your CEO? At the time, I'm pretty impressed with this, by the way. Your CEO went cloud, that's important. But to a company like CDW, which has big warehouses and fault-lift trucks and lorries and things, the cloud doesn't look like an obvious play. Reasonable to assume that they would go, well, that's got nothing to do with us. So the CEO saw it. Did you see it coming? SPEAKER_00 22:20 Yeah. So the reason why I saw it coming, again, I couldn't have predicted how big it was going to be, to be fair. I'm like not that level genius by any means. But we did know it was coming fast because we saw it happening with partners. They were starting to like start like, you know, putting services in here. I think the big aha moment for me personally was when, and this was probably two years later, where Adobe's like, we're only going to do a cloud subscription, right? That was like the urge sharing for everyone. And that was the right thing to do. At the time, everyone's like, no, no, that's not how we want to buy it. But as everyone adapted, right? Everything is subscription. SPEAKER_02 22:50 And to be clear, no one wants to buy it that way now either. But it's a choice anymore. SPEAKER_00 22:55 It is still that's the way we buy it, though, right? Yeah. And I think the way they were looking at it from a lens is like, number one, we need to know what's coming. It's a massive business, millions of dollars at stake, right? And we have to make sure we're also delivering what customers wanted. But so there's two sides of it. One, it's risky to the hardware business, which by the way, has not gone away, right? To be fair, hardware is still king, hardware's still selling a lot of still selling a lot of network switches and all that kind of stuff and video bars, and that's not going away. But the mindset changed completely as to how you buy. And I will say that the biggest lift was not, and this is in the next seven years, was not changing how you sell, because that would have happened anyway. But the subscription economy, being able to adapt that to your own billing systems kept every reseller hopping for a while. I think we're on the other side of that, but that's where Zora came from on all these uh subscription platforms. And no one knew how to make it work. It was such a struggle. Like even the big guys were like, hey, this is the platform you use, and then Microsoft used one, Cisco used another one. So the reseller got stuck trying to like implement all these different systems with millions of dollars in investment. But I think that happens with a major change of technology, right? That that has happened with cloud, now we're past it. It's now happening with AI. It's some of the problems are solved because subscription's there, right? There's other problems now we have to solve for. SPEAKER_02 24:19 Well, you know, absolute credit to CDW and you, but let's talk about it at the company level. But credit to you or CDW for doing that. Because the reality is, is when a business changes fundamentally, that fundamentally, from a technological business program point of view, most of the players in the old world don't survive the move to the new one. And what CDW did is deeply impressive. You know, hats off to the whole team for actually making that happen. SPEAKER_00 24:50 Lots of smart people that were that had really built a solid engine. The engine was just solid. I could say that actually about Logitech in just in supply chain. Our supply chain is phenomenal. You know that you were here, right? It's just it's one of those world-class things that it's just hard, it's not hard to believe, but it's like it's not shocking that they actually come up with improvements over and over again. But that's that engine that CDW has is just top-notch. And they were just really, really good. Very smart people at the top, obviously. SPEAKER_02 25:17 We'll get to Logitech in detail in a minute, but for for the for the audience, one of the things that attracted me to Logitech when I joined 10 years ago was their ability to well, let's put it this way. Somebody once said to me, What's Logitech's special capability? What what makes them unique? Which is actually a good question you should ask of any company that you're either looking to work for or do business with. And the answer I realized for Loggy was this they have the ability to work out what to build in California, design it in California and Taiwan, build it in China, stick it on a ship to Rotterdam, put it on a truck from Rotterdam to Heathrow Airport, put it in a vending machine in Heathrow Airport, and you walk through Heathrow and go, Oh, I need a clicker for my next presentation. And you pay top dollar for that for that clicker, it's the best clicker in the world. I'm using this as one of millions of examples, or mouse or keyboard or whatever it is, and everyone knows that the Logitech product will work perfectly, and it's the completely the safe choice. And you put your credit card details in, or you swipe your credit card in, and it pulls out the bottom of the vending machine, and it costs $69 for you to buy it. And Logitech makes money when you do that. I can't think of another company in the world capable of doing that. And people say, well, Apple's better. No, no, no. Apple is selling thousand dollar products, not sixty-nine dollar products. And there is a world of difference between making money on a thousand dollar laptop where you own the entire ecosystem, and a peripheral supplier, which is one of Logitech's great strengths, and still makes money on a $69 or whatever the price of the product is. It's it's an amazing machine. And I remember Brack and Daryl once saying that, and I'm sure the numbers are higher now, Logitech built 160 million things a year. That's five things a second every day of the year. Five things a second, just pour off a production line. What a remarkable operation that is. Hats off. I have I worked there for 10 years, had no idea how any of that worked, by the way. And I suspect you don't either, Nate. But but it's but it's still it's still some it's a it's a wonder that the world can do that. SPEAKER_00 27:45 Yeah, that they're the economies of scale, the scale with the we built are are truly fascinating. And so and and sustainable as well. Those are big that was a big project to take on that we did on what eight years ago we started that process. You were here before me. And now we have about 79 or 78% of every product that we manufacture today is made with recycled plastic. 78%. SPEAKER_02 28:08 But but we we get see, we've I'm not gonna change this in the edit because what the hell? It's just a conversation. But we go ahead of ourselves. We've started talking about Logitech, and you haven't finished your journey at the end. But this one is your fault, to be fair. Of course, it's my fault. It's all my fault. It's obviously your fault. And and I, of course, I will now edit the bit where I say it's all my fault out. Of course you will. Continue with your story at so you did uh you did uh strategy and planning and all that, and then suddenly you're in charge of a billion dollar UC organization. SPEAKER_00 28:40 Uh yeah, so basically what happened was while I was still in strategy, we were teaching an MBA class at Northwestern. Well, we were kind of like the case study, to be fair. And we but we were at every, you know, every class once a week. And by the end of the class, we finished at 9 p.m. I got this text message from my future boss and basically said, Hey, my leader who runs UC is leaving, and we want you to essentially consider applying for the role. And I was like, okay, uh, that's something I can consider. So basically I called her back. And after a couple of meetings, we basically said, Yeah, this is something you know that makes sense. And at that point I wanted it because it was a director role for me again, you know, climbing up the ladder. I wanted to do it. And I was like, but are you sure you want me for this role? Because I literally know nothing about UC. I didn't even know how to change my voicemail on my Cisco phone. And she's like, Yeah, I don't, I don't need you to learn the technology. I need you to run the business. Because it was a massive $300 million business at the time. And went through the interview process. I ended up becoming the candidate. I took it on. And as you can probably figure, the first thing I did was figure out the technology because I didn't want to run a business I didn't understand. The math made sense to me. The the like all the financials, the businesses, the services, it all made sense to me. Uh, because it was not that different, to be fair, than a data center business, right? On paper, it's about the same stuff. You install some stuff, you sell some stuff, the security involved, blah, blah, blah. SPEAKER_02 30:05 But but it's also back to that conversation we had earlier about learning how to do a video recording, right? Yes. If you understand enough about the business, when someone turns around to you and says, Oh, we can't do that because of the argolfagle glue, you can look at them and go, don't be stupid. There's no algalfagle glue, but I know it. And they'll they'll not mess you around. But someone, if I worked for you and you didn't know anything about the business, I could pull the wall over your eyes all the time and probably buy camera equipment when no one was looking, for example. SPEAKER_00 30:35 This one was a it was a Herculean type effort for me because I had all of contact center, all of UC, and all of video. And that's where I started. Eventually, when I when I left that role to come work for you, I also had all of mobility. I had a customer success group that we had stood up for Cisco Software because it was a massive business. Oh, and the managed print business. So I had, I over time I expanded and had more and more people and ended up with 150 people at some point. And it was, I mean, for me, it was like great. I learned so much in those roles, right? I had really good leaders under me as well. We grew the business. And in 2020, late 2020, we had finished our first billion dollar year just in collab. So it was definitely a peak moment for me. And then I'm like, okay, where do I go from here? And, you know, and this is the transition to Logitech. And if you remember, I was at the point where I'm like, okay, I've done this for 17 years. I've always wanted to work for a manufacturer, to be fair. And at that point, when I made up my mind, I needed to go look for something. I I really only called one vendor and it was, it was you guys, right? I talked to Scott, and Scott, obviously, we talked to you. And my my intention was like, I could go to a number of places, right? At that, at that point in my career, but Logitech wasn't, I didn't think of it as a safe choice. I thought of it as a they're on fire right now. They've figured this out. And even through some of our arguments, if you remember, like, you know, probably four years prior to that, where you were like, here's the meetup, and it's gonna be like the best thing, and every room's gonna have one. I'm like, why would anyone buy that? It's a USB camera. And I had my head in the codec space, right? Thinking that like that's the only way people do it. And you were like, no, you're wrong. I'm like, no, you're wrong. And we, you know, agreed to disagree, I think, somewhere along the line. And over those three years, Logitech proved that they could run this entire market. This was even before Rally Bar, right? So, so who so when who was right then? I'm not gonna admit that. So let's go. SPEAKER_02 32:39 Anyone listening? Nathan just nodded and said I was right. SPEAKER_00 32:43 Anyway, so at that point, I'm like, okay, Logitech makes sense. Uh I knew Scott, I knew yourself. I'm like, it was a good transition. I I will admit, I didn't know anything about the culture. I didn't know much about Bracken. So that was a very pleasant surprise. Like, very pleasant surprise because I was used to corporate America, right? Lots of lots of spreadsheets, lots of meetings about financials. I was not expecting this kind of culture where you can be yourself, you can go explore more things, you know, have the liberty to go do good things, right? That was the first thing you told me when I came there. It was the, by the way, it was the most frustrating call for me. You just have to know this. I don't know if we've talked about this, but that first day when I started the Logitech and I had done all my paperwork and filled out all the forms, all that kind of stuff. And I called you at 4 p.m. It was our first Zoom call. And I'm like, so Simon, like, what do you want me to focus on? And you were like, I want you to do, I want you to do good things. And I was like ready to have a hissy fit because I'm like, what the hell is that supposed to mean? I'm like, I've had structure for so long, right? I had all these people at a billion dollar business. What the hell did I just leave? Right. And then you laughed at me, which I was maybe even more aggravated, by the way. And you're like, you know, when I started six years ago, I know mission accomplished. When I started six years ago, Scott Wharton told me the same thing. And I'm like, oh, okay. So this is like a tit-for-tat thing. Like you're basically dumping it on me. SPEAKER_02 34:01 Pying it forward is the word. SPEAKER_00 34:03 And and you did say, like, listen, everyone starts with, you know, this I idea, but eventually you figure out what you're going to contribute the most to and you go do that. And uh that did happen. I'm not going to say you're right again, but that did happen after a bit of time, right? And uh probably it forced after the, you know, me taking over annual disrelations, obviously you were about to have another child. So you had you were out on paternity, but that kind of forced that function. And I just figured it out. The other thing I think I really appreciated was you said, hey, listen, you you don't really know much about Logitech yet, which was fair, right? Uh so I need you to go talk to these people. And you give me the list of 150 people. I don't know if you remember. And they're like, go call these people, like folks in Japan, folks in whatever. And I did probably 90% of that over the three-month period. And that helped a lot understanding number one, that every country's different. All the regions are different. Some time, some countries, the products are called completely different things, right? All that stuff I needed to learn before I said, okay, now I'm ready to go do something. And then I got AR given to me. Obviously, you were going to be out. And that really helped shape kind of what I wanted to do. And that's how I've run my, I've been here almost five and a half years now. And it's I'm still learning new things. I'm still taking on new roles. Nothing's changed really about me in that respect, right? It's there's definitely more stuff happening, but it's all within the same lines. If it's learned something new I can learn, I'm gonna go do it. SPEAKER_02 35:25 But and it's interesting to me now. I mean, I would agree with everything you just said, particularly the bits where you said I was right a number of times. But if you were one of those, and and I would encourage anyone watching this to be the guy or the girl, the person that the company comes to when they don't know what to do next, and they need someone who can work out how to solve the problem. If it's uh I I'm a big believer that the analogy I use is train drivers and train designers, right? The people who design trains do not drive trains, and the guys who drive trains do not design trains or tracks or any of the other signals or any of the other stuff. It's and there's nothing wrong with either. You need both, right? If you've got a bunch of people who only design trains and no one knows how to drive them, it's pretty worthless. But equally, if you've only got train drivers and there's no one out there designing the next train, well, what's the use of that? Yeah. So you need both. I think the the you uh the the do good things, which is exactly what Scott Morton said to me, was the most frustrating thing I'd ever heard. I it's like you've just set me up to fail. I'm I'm now going to in four weeks, someone's gonna say, Well, what the hell have you been doing, Dudley? And I'd say they go, Well, nothing, I've been trying to work out what to do. And I'd be fine. And that's the shoot what I assumed, and I assume that's what you assume as well. But it's also the best thing. Yes. If you have the mindset that allows you to go, I have a blank slate here, I've got however many hours of work week I want to work, ten hours a week I want to work. I can now fill it with things that are interesting rather than right. Well, I've got nine hours of TPS reports and another hour with my boss, and now my calendar's full and I can't do there's no time to do any thinking. SPEAKER_00 37:18 Uh you said mindset. I want I want to double click on that. It's not for everyone, for sure. Right. I know many people that would just crumble at that and say, uh I uh tell me what to do, right? And to be fair, we need those kinds of people too, right? We can't do that. We do, we do. SPEAKER_02 37:34 Absolutely desperately. You you can't have if everyone's a thinker, nothing gets done. SPEAKER_00 37:39 Yeah. But I think that you and I were both hired in strategic roles, right? That that was expected. That's the baseline. Like if you can't think for yourself and go do good things, like why are we hiring you? And that was the underlying, I think during the pandemic when there were so many really good, I would say, opportunity hires happening, we made a lot of good decisions like that because we would people like would give us all this stuff that you know no one else had. And my other superpowers, I was in the channel for like 20 plus years. So that all helped significantly. And I've actually still I'm still working with technically, I'm actually managing the channel marketing team now. So I work a lot with our channel program teams and stuff like that. So that all is useful because I've had all that experience in the past. But like I said, it's not for everyone. There are a lot of people that I know that are close personal friends that would crumble. If someone said do good things and there was no defined job, they would not be able to handle it. SPEAKER_02 38:31 Yeah, and and I I will make this as an admission. I've had people who work for me and I've said they're do good things because I'm a little bit of a specialist in the sense of I'm not very good at at the doing bit, I'm very good at the thinking about it bit. And I'm not certain I'm very good at managing people who uh who are doers rather than thinkers, right? And as you say, there's not it that it's not that one is better than the other. You just need you need a ratio of both. And I I I would say my personal experience is I've let some people down by not giving them as defined a role as as their personality required. That was on my that was my fault. That was my failing as a leader, not theirs. But when you do have someone who can just pick up the ball and start doing interesting things with it, it's a it's a magical experience. SPEAKER_00 39:22 Yeah, there's I would say it is hard. I mean, because I have both now, and you you have to just make sure you meet them where they're at. And you know, they hopefully the inspiration can come, right? It's not a given by any means. But yeah, it you you gotta do both. You gotta find a way to do both. And I I do both now because I have both sets of folks and they're both phenomenal sets of people. But one's driven by task and objective and very specific things, and one set are thinkers, and some are both. Some have to do both, some have to be strategic by day and then task-oriented by night. I don't know how you not do that, but I'm just wired to do everything as you know. I'm like I'm wiring stuff up for a for a show one day and like drawing diagrams and cutting wood to do something, and the next day I'm doing something strategic. So I feel like for me, it's like I want to do it all so I can learn. So that's the one thing I did learn from you. It's like i not one thing, but several things. But that was one thing I remember now since I'm being put on the spots. But that helps really round things out. Like you know how to do it from start to finish. And if you don't want to do it again, that's fine. But now you know what it takes, right? And you know where the error points in the field are. SPEAKER_02 40:28 And therefore you can hire someone else who can actually do the doing work free your mental horsepower up to go and do something else. I think that's a a great way of thinking. And uh I don't want to make this a love in, but I loved working with you because of your ability to do that. It was it was uh one of the highlights in my career. Great fun. SPEAKER_00 40:48 Well, likewise, I think we worked really well together, so that's always a plus. SPEAKER_02 40:51 And and of course, you you were also useful because I have a memory of a thing without a memory, and therefore you used to write down all the mad things I would say and spout them back to me, and I have no idea that I'd ever said them. Thank goodness for recordings. Which is probably another podcast on another channel, but for another day, perhaps. All right, so so you moved, so you you were strategy, really, you were building things from scratch when you started, but now you're develop you're running quite a quite a sizable team, aren't you? You keep doing this, you keep ending up with large teams. How many people you got today? SPEAKER_00 41:26 It's uh well, I only have like 15 today. It's not it's not 150 like it was in in our CDW. So it's it's uh there's a little bit more time in the day, which is good. Uh, but I do find myself like like it's like a pendulum swinging. I go like individual contributor, and then I roll back to a team, sometimes a large team, and then I go back to individual contributors, and it's not by choice, it's just by whatever opportunity is there. If they want me to do something and it's you know something that I really want to do, I'll go do it. And uh there are a few things that I haven't done. I haven't worked in finance or accounting yet. I'm not asking, I'm just saying I have not sure someone will offer you a job as a CPI. But I do work really closely with them. So I work really closely with our finance teams, our accounting teams. So I I do do that. The one thing that I have just not done anything with is supply chain and manufacturing, which I'm very interested in. Um so at some point I'll probably do like a residency project or something, right? Just go check it out because I I am interested in it. And it does help, again, fill in all the gaps, right? But other than that, I think I've been in almost every department in a company, right? Uh I've not done the mail room, to be fair. I just keep thinking of like Will Ferrell from E.L.F., right? That could be pretty good. SPEAKER_02 42:36 Or or Jimmy from Better Call Soul. He started Mailroom. And perhaps that we'll draw a viol over that because I aimed it quite badly for everyone. SPEAKER_00 42:45 Yeah. I don't want that for sure. SPEAKER_02 42:48 So what does the next couple of years look like for you? I I'm not going to make you do the 10 years, but what's the next couple of years look like? SPEAKER_00 42:55 Uh I think it's really honing in on skill. I there's there's a lot of things that I do today that I need more time for. For example, I'd like to do more of uh strategic content thinking. Like right now, I'm doing a lot of ad hoc stuff that is interesting, and I am learning a lot. So one of the things like if you notice I have like endless amounts of projects that I take on. Like seasoned baggage is one example. You are asking me that they're like, so what's the point of this? Right. I'm like, uh, well, one, I want to in I want to basically improve the skill of filmmaking. It could be interviews, it could be something about a city um documentary kind of style, right? And there's just an interest in being able to do it. It's not even so much the content right now, it's more of the art of making the film, syncing everything together, you know, editing the episode together. But I think from a Logitech perspective, uh I could do that on a grander scale for content, uh, but we haven't really figured out what that means yet. So I think I I think like for me to be able to focus on content, focus on strategy at the same time. I love doing the AR stuff. So the analyst relation stuff is great. That keeps me grounded because that keeps me in touch with the numbers, what's going on with the market, to then help me inform what kind of content I'm building. So they're all related, right? Somehow they're all related together. And so maybe if I can focus more on that, that becomes a bigger part of my role. I think that would be quite nice for me. Obviously, I already do a lot of keynotes, so I'm doing a lot of events. I don't want to live out of a suitcase every day. So that's my, you know, I got little kids, right? So I want to kind of balance that. So it's hard to kind of go all in and say, I'm going to be the keynote guy globally, because as many people have asked me to do it, I can't do that, right? It's just not possible. At least not this point in my career. Maybe after 10 years, after my kids are all in college, maybe, right? But right now, I'm just not at that time. So I have to balance travel and what I want to do and then being able to cheat what I want to do. So that's the hard part for me, is like trying to figure out when this is the next move and what does it evolve into. But I would say it has to be around content strategy and insights. That's that's kind of where my current focus area is. The video stuff is great. It'll flow into it. I'm not going to like, I'm not going to be a gaffer running around with a $10,000 camera. That's not me long term. Right now it is because I want to learn the art of it. And once I learned the art of it, to what you said earlier, then I can hire an agency to go do it for me versus and then understanding the time commitments and stuff like that. Because a lot of things are like, oh, you want to change that label? That's going to take three weeks. No, it doesn't. It takes five minutes, right? I just did that for someone else. So those are the kinds of things to what you said earlier. I want to make sure I understand all the pieces to the craft and then just go get good at it with the team. SPEAKER_02 45:37 Sure. And we'll put the links to some of Nathan's work, which is, by the way, I think extraordinarily good. Thank you. I've really enjoyed it. You've done some beautiful cinematography recently. And you you use words like color. What is it? Color? Color grading. Color grading. Yeah. I don't even know what color grading is, but it looks amazing. And so we'll put the links to that in the description for the for the conversation. Alright, so Nathan, you've had a really interesting career, and it's been a real joy for me to see you develop within Logitech. When I and you and I first met each other, of course, you were with the client and you were CDW, so you were an important man. And then when you said, Well, I'd want to come and work for you, I was like, What? Do you? Why would you possibly want to do that? I genuinely mean that. I was quite shocked that you would even consider coming to work for me, but I'm very pleased you did. So in the last few minutes, before we let you go, what did we not talk about today that you feel the audience would benefit from hearing? SPEAKER_00 46:38 What did we not talk about? Gosh, it's like an open-ended question that I'm trying to think of from. SPEAKER_02 46:44 How about he said hinting? How about presentation skills and their importance and how you got good at it? SPEAKER_00 46:50 That's that's fair. I think, and I've actually trained a lot of people on this as well. So I think it's it's probably appropriate. I will tell you like, so the first time someone asked me to present, and this was probably it was 25, 26, they were like, hey, go to Appleton, Wisconsin and do this presentation on VMware. And I was a nervous wreck, and I'm like, what am I gonna do? Like I've never really done any public speaking before. So again, this thrown into the fire, which is like everything I've done has been thrown into the fire typically. And I said, okay, I'll do it. So I basically went up there. It was a room full of maybe 60 people, maybe 50 people, and I presented on VMware. I did great. It was freaking amazing. I was so pleased with myself. I got done with the deck, and there was a lady, her name is Pam, it was in the back, one of our reps, and she's like, she was just like had this look of horror on her face when I came up to her. I'm like, wasn't that great? She's like, Yeah, that was interesting. I'm like, looked at her, I was like, didn't you see what I just did? I went through 150 slides in 40 minutes. And she and she's like, Did you notice that everyone was either falling asleep or left? And I'm like, She's like, it was way too much content. You were just basically that one picture of the guy sitting on the couch in front of the TV and he's getting blasted by the volume of the speakers. That's basically what I did to them. And that was my learning moment is like, okay, less content, you know, more, more, you know, less words on the slide, blah, blah, blah, all that stuff. And so from then on, I just tried to keep getting better, one, one, one thing at a time. And at some point, I was, I was already doing keynotes, but I still needed polish. And my boss was like, and this was when I was in corporate strategies, like, listen, if you want to do this, I'll go get you a presentation coach. I'm like, ooh, what's that? So uh I ended up spending probably two months, like once a week with this lady in LA. And she was really amazing. There were so many things that she taught me that I just didn't think about simple things. And I know you know this for sure, but as you're on stage and you're bridging one section to the next, right? So you want to say, okay, we've done with this section. Now we want to bridge it somehow with words, right? Well, you should then walk on the stage. By the way, I forgot to mention, I used to do this on stage for every presentation, just the whole presentation. And there was a time where someone at CDW, one of the executives, was like, do not give him a lapel mic, give him a podium and do not make him let him move. And I was like, the, I was just like at the podium, I'm like, this is so uncomfortable, right? So that was the first sign. That's why I got the presentation coach, which she said if you move with purpose, you're taking the entire audience on a journey. And so now that's like whenever you now, whenever you see someone do it, you'll know what they're doing, right? Because that's exactly they're trained to do that. Because if you keep moving around, they're just like doing this and they have no idea like which part of the presentation you're in. But when you bridge it with walking, you're then taking them on that journey with you. So that was one little thing I learned. And the thing I would tell people, practice, practice, practice. A lot of people I told just go join Toastmasters. That's one of those things where you, you know, you get it's very uncomfortable, right? You get up in front of people that you have no idea who they are and you're trying to present to them on a box of tissues or something that they have no interest on. That is the worst case possible for a presenter, right? But you learn how to build thick skin and how to connect with the audience. And the other thing that I've learned is you got to read the room. Forget about knowing your audience. That's table sticks. You need to understand who's going to be in the room before you present. But the other thing is you have to continuously read. If people are falling asleep, that's a problem. And one of the things I've learned along the way is if you feel like you're drifting, like the audience is completely drifting, or they're just not interested on their phones. One way to get everyone nervous to start listening to you is to ask them a question. Right. So basically, if someone's on their phone, they're like, So uh what how do you feel about video conferencing? Do you think we're making progress? And the guy's like, uh, yeah, we are. And whatever answer they give you, everyone else is now on alert, right? So they know that we're probably gonna ask you another question. But that's another way of taking control of the presentation. Because if you've lost control, right, and you're just drifting, of course you can try to improve it, but that may not work. That's just another trick to basically get people involved. I it's easy to say tell a joke, but man, it's hard. You've got to be good at jokes. You've got to be good at jokes. SPEAKER_02 51:01 If you're if JD Vance, I'm looking at you. If you not really a political statement, just one of if you can't tell a joke, don't try and tell a joke. SPEAKER_00 51:10 Right. SPEAKER_02 51:11 Right. SPEAKER_00 51:12 Interesting. So I think it's it's for me, it's been it's a lifelong thing, right? I'm still learning. I'm still trying to learn new things. I've learned from you, I've learned from a lot of people. SPEAKER_02 51:21 I just wanted to say autodidac again. Yeah, you did. Um I must look it up afterwards. We may have to edit that word out of the presentation because I may have got it wrong. Um, how much effect do you think your presentation skills, which are world-class, by the way, if anyone hasn't seen Nathan present, he is a highlight of every event I've ever been to. Truly one of the best presenters I know. SPEAKER_00 51:39 It's a lot. SPEAKER_02 51:40 It says a lot. Do you think it helped you very much in your career? Absolutely. SPEAKER_00 51:44 Uh so and this is a direct, direct result. If I was not presenting on cloud at all our events, I would have not been invited to the board meeting. I would have not had any chance of being called up. I mean, the fact that the CEO called and told my boss that it has to be him. And he's like, I don't even have a choice. Like, you have to do it, right? I'm like, all right, great. So that, yeah, it absolutely does matter. And the one thing I forgot to mention was uh prior to that board meeting thing, every year I picked a different technology, got really good at presenting it, and became the keynote speaker at all our events. So one year was mobility, one year was security, one year was like, I don't know, authentication, one year was whatever. I just kept picking it up and saying, okay, I want to be at these events and I want to be the spokesperson and learn to skill. So for I have to have something new. I just can't keep talking about VMber every year. It's not gonna work, right? And that's how I met all these people, networked with all these people. And it's not like I was making up, I was actually working with them to get me the right content. And then I would start building the stories. And my stories were shit, honestly, when I first started. It just didn't make sense. It was very technical. There were too many slides. And eventually, you know this better than most people. You write out the narrative first. What do you want them to leave with and action on? Right. Then you work up to the slides. There's so many people that start with all the slides. Let's get all the slides together. Let's jam it together, right? And it doesn't work. The story just crumbles. So I'm and I'm still learning. I'm not perfect at it, but it's one of these things where I always write the story down first. Sometimes I'll even put it on note cards. I'll write it on note cards so I can figure out what the pace is going to be. And I'm, you know, me, I'm a post-it guy. I don't know why. I love I love post-its. I have post-its everywhere. Uh, but for me, visually, I need to feel that the content is going the right direction. And then come the slides. The slides come last. It should come blast. SPEAKER_01 53:34 Yeah, yeah. SPEAKER_00 53:35 But not everyone does that. So no. SPEAKER_02 53:37 You and I have both experienced, we won't say who or where, the 450 slide long deck. Yep. And then when someone says, Well, how do you present 450 slides? I go, Oh no, I only present 10. Well, which 10? I just randomly pick them. That's like me giving you Lord of the Rings and saying, Pick six pages and you'll get a story. Hang on, which six pages? Any old six pages will do. No, no. You've got to you've got to have an arc. And if you don't have an arc, you don't have a story, you don't have a call to action. Start there, start at the end and work backwards. That would certainly be my advice. SPEAKER_00 54:14 But it is funny that the one person I always quote is uh Nancy Duarte. Uh, you know, she's got the Duarte Academy, uh, has written some really good books. Some of them's some of them have changed how I've presented. One of them is Resonate. That's like one of the best-selling books that she has. She's got present presentation slides, and there's a couple other ones that are due, but Resonate is the one I recommend, highly recommend. Because it kind of walks through the story structure, the Steve Jobs structure, the Martin Luther King structure, and they all have arcs. And they all have my favorite moment is just like, what could it be and what it is? Or sorry, what it is, but what it could be. So you start with a negative or a positive, and then you take the audience on a journey to be inspired by what it could be. But you're not just saying a thousand songs in your pocket instantly. You're not just throwing all these things out. You're basically taking them on this journey. So when they're done with it, they feel like, okay, I believe the story. It makes sense for me. And maybe it's a buying product or selling, selling that product eventually, but that should be the outcome, not the this is my product and it's got an amazing lens, and that's everyone should buy one. SPEAKER_02 55:16 Yeah, yeah. You gotta sell the idea. unknown 55:17 Yeah. SPEAKER_02 55:18 Yeah, I it always reminds me of the school analogy. You tell people what how do you present? Well, we put all the facts on the page, and then and we all know folks who do this. Well, simply explain all the facts around our product, and the customer will clearly want to buy it as a result. That obviously doesn't work. What you need to do is inspire people. That's what a good presentation is about. Inspire them to learn more, not convince them during the presentation that you're the right answer. Think about it at school. Was the best teacher the one who put the most stuff on the whiteboard? Or was the best teacher the one who inspired you to go, actually, this is an interesting topic, and it's more interesting than the seagulls on the playing fields out the window, which is certainly what I looked at all the time. SPEAKER_00 56:05 What's interesting? The only one I can think of, not to insult every teacher that I've had, but they won't be watching this probably, is my calculus professor in college. That is the only person I can literally point out, like a professor that inspired me. And it's just one of those, I mean, this is a guy, I can't I can't sadly remember his name because it's been such a long time. But he would literally stand on the chair. If there was a pupil not in one of the chairs, he would stand and he would do this with his arms trying to explain algorithms and how expressions work. And he would literally hop from dust to dust. He was so interactive. It was like a mini circuit Soleil happening inside a classroom. But even though I had no interest in taking calculus, I ended up taking calculus, like I only was required to take calculus, let's say 301. I ended up taking 302, 303, financial calculus, to the point where he pulled me aside. He's just like, you know, you are not going to get any benefit from this. You're still graduating now late, actually, because you're taking all these damn classes that don't have any effect on you graduating. So unless you're going to become the next Alan Greenspan, quit taking my classes, right? And I basically listened to him and I stopped because I did want to graduate on time. But that is a that is hard to find, Simon, in a teacher or a professor. It's not that easy to find. Certainly, I agree. SPEAKER_02 57:19 And it's something to aspire to. I think for for anyone watching this conversation, will want thank you for getting this far into it. But also, if I was to give anyone advice, and this is always the problem with public speaking, is this isn't one of those things you can practice alone. Yeah. You you can't, well, I'll I'll read about it. No, no, no. I mean, sure, you could read about it, but you're not going to get any better unless you're in front of an audience. So it's always a high wire act. And I think you have to assume the first hundred times you do it to be crap. And that's okay. So just make certain the first one that matters is your hundred and first. So if you're ever given the opportunity to present, take it. However terrible you are, it will be a very steep learning curve. Better to do it where it doesn't matter than when it does. SPEAKER_00 58:07 By the way, one other tip that I've learned the hard way, and and and this is me, this is coming from a person who's fairly technical and loves the technology and loves to use the technology as an aid. Do not depend on your confidence monitor. Do not depend on some iPad that may have your notes on it while you're on stage. Practice like you're not going to get your notes because I've had that get screwed up so many times. If the technology is all working when you start and you're confidently walking up on stage and I'll be, hey, good afternoon, everyone, you start going and someone screws up the order of your slides and your notes. You don't want to be with the to look like you have a dirt and headlights look on stage and then you're completely confused. That has happened to me many times. iPad didn't work, Wi-Fi didn't work, notes didn't work. Uh, I actually use, you know, this, I actually write out note cards. If it's a lot of information, I want to make sure I'm getting right side. I will write it down on note cards. It looks really old school, but you know what? You deliver. And it's I've had, I don't know how many times it's happened to you. It's happened many times to me where the tech just breaks and then you're stuck on stage and you look like an idiot, right? If you don't know what you're saying. Uh, but I think you and I can both kind of dodge, dodge that whole issue. Like something goes wrong with the tech, who cares? Just keep talking. Sometimes the projection will stop working. That just happened recently at a different event. You just have to know how to get past it. SPEAKER_02 59:23 You ha if you don't know your topic well enough that you can present it without slides, you don't know your topic well enough. Well said. That's as far as it goes. Well said. Nathan, it's been over an hour. It's been an absolute joy. Thank you for coming on the show. Of course. Thank you, audience, for being part of the show. Ask us a question. We're gonna we'll put all the links to Nathan's up, including his band, which we never got to talk about. Oh, that's right. Um, on the on the podcast, and we'll put them all in the in the notes. And with that, we'll see you on another episode of Before It Was Obvious.