SPEAKER_02: 0:14

Welcome back to Cover Strategy, the live show. It could have been an email. Well, it's also the podcast, but also a live show. Welcome. I'm Bruce. And I'm Clark. For now. For now. For now. Um, for those who are listening in audio format, this is our first live on YouTube with our real faces thing we've ever done. Ever. It's our 200th episode. Crazy. Extraordinar. And uh we're just excited to be here today.

SPEAKER_00: 0:45

Yeah, this is this is a weird format. It's really been doing this for five years.

SPEAKER_02: 0:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 0:50

200 episodes. And we've never shown our faces. Never. We've never revealed our identity.

SPEAKER_02: 0:55

There, I mean, there is a YouTube video with us of emoji. There is.

SPEAKER_00: 0:58

We do have emoji faces that we tried one time. I think about 10 people might have watched that. But this is the first time we're actually showing our faces, and this is going to be a different type of episode.

SPEAKER_02: 1:08

It is. It is. I'm I'm excited because I've done all of the setup and nothing else. So Clark is actually going to host and walk us through this series of events. And for those of you listening in audio format, uh, if you go to our YouTube channel, that's uh it's YouTube flats forward slash at corpusstratz.biz, uh, I'll put it in the link tree, but you can watch this with video or you can watch this on the pod. Uh and also, before we get into this, I'm excited to announce we also have a Patreon. So if you would like to support the show monetarily, which we've been doing for a uh we've been doing the show for 200 episodes now, five years. Uh it's coming out of my bank account.

SPEAKER_00: 1:51

I've contributed nothing.

SPEAKER_02: 1:52

If you'd like who's contributing running this episode today, if you would like to support the show monetarily and help us out, uh we now have two tiers on our Patreon. The first is supporter tier, which gets you a cool little uh badge on our Discord, which you can join by clicking the link tree, or you can become a supporter for$10 a month, which will get you exclusive access to special bonus pods. Oh yeah. We're doing that too.

SPEAKER_00: 2:17

We actually have dropped a few, and only the people in Discord ever get access. Yes. So now anybody can get access. Yes.

SPEAKER_02: 2:22

Well, yes, for a nominal fee.

SPEAKER_00: 2:24

For a nominal fee.

SPEAKER_02: 2:25

To allow us to keep on running this. AKA keeping the show going. Yes. You can now do that. Uh if you want to get access to any of these things, you could check the link tree, which is actually, I think the Patreon link is in the show description. Yep. And uh, I'll put the link tree in the show notes on our podcast, which you can get on all of the podcast platforms.

SPEAKER_00: 2:42

Yeah, so yeah, this is really strange. I'm a little nervous. I'm I'm not gonna lie, I'm a little nervous. We have so many listeners and people that have known us for five years. Long time. Five years as Bruce and Clark.

SPEAKER_01: 2:54

Yes.

SPEAKER_00: 2:54

And we have never shown our faces, we've never revealed who we are. We did a little emoji thing, but like no one no one really knows the people that we are. And so, like, this is a little weird. I think it's gonna be like breaking the fourth wall for some people that they're gonna be like, wait a second, these are real people behind this podcast. This isn't just AI spoofing me to believe that this is real.

SPEAKER_02: 3:14

This whole time. This whole time. And uh we we have uh in the chat, we have Kiteils who says co-workers in the background are very static.

SPEAKER_00: 3:21

Oh, yeah, yeah, I know. They listen, they're just doing their job, okay?

SPEAKER_02: 3:25

They're they're in awe of what we are doing. So I'm I'm happy to have them here.

SPEAKER_00: 3:29

I love it. Yeah, we have a live chat going. So there's a lot of firsts for us on this as we're talking about. So first time showing our faces, yes. First time doing a live stream, yes, first time that we're gonna reveal who we are, which is a little strange. I'm scared. And I think it's just strange in general because we're gonna have people joining in, they're like, oh, this is who you are? Like people that have been totally anonymous in our community talking with us, learning who we are, hearing our vibe for 200 episodes, and they're gonna see this. And I think this is gonna be weird, but it's great to finally get to meet you guys face to face and get to introduce ourselves and talk about our background at a more personal level. Is this the new normal for corporate strategy? I think I think it's gonna have to be. I think we're gonna have to do more video formats. I think we're gonna talk as our personal selves, and I think it's gonna enable us to just build a much better platform and hopefully bring a lot more people on too to talk about some really great topics.

SPEAKER_02: 4:16

I'm I'm super excited. And uh please, if you are tuning in to the show for the first time, leave us chats. We're happy to respond to them in real time. But uh, welcome to 200 live stream.

SPEAKER_00: 4:26

200th live stream.

SPEAKER_02: 4:28

So 200 episode, first live stream.

SPEAKER_00: 4:29

Yeah, 200 episode, first live stream. It's actually we've only ever done a few in person, like between you and I. Yes. We've done a few just random episodes. One of them is in a McDonald's because we were told to do that. So we've done a few that it's just us in the same place, but not many. Like it's maybe like five out of 200.

SPEAKER_02: 4:45

I don't know who you are, and now you are in my house, and I'm scared.

SPEAKER_00: 4:50

Yeah, I could have just come over and robbed you.

SPEAKER_02: 4:51

Did you think about that? I didn't. Now you know where I live. You know all my secrets. And I also should mention, um, even though this is the 200th episode, the 199th is still not up. So again, we're doing a little time travel, but it will be up.

SPEAKER_00: 5:04

Okay, yeah, we've had a few of those moments where we referenced something for the previous episode, and we're like, wait, we're actually ahead. Go two episodes back. Yes. You'll actually find what we're talking about now. Yes.

SPEAKER_02: 5:11

So we will we will eventually get caught up when we inevitably miss one. But for now, it's just weird. I love it.

SPEAKER_00: 5:17

Yeah, well, I actually have an agenda. Oh. Anyone who's been listening to us for a while, a lot of people are gonna be tuning in for the first time, but anyone that's been listening to us for a while, you know we do a ton of preparation. We do months and months of research, we do design, we do prototypes, we do practice sessions, and then we happen to hear so well informed and educated that we basically have written a thesis. I love your confidence. No, no, no. You all know clock is totally different. You guys sometimes hear us joke that we have been prepping and planning for an all of 30 seconds before we start a episode, and that's usually what happens. Yeah. Because we're like, hey, what are we talking about today? All right, let's just jump into it and do it. So this one we actually do have a little bit of preparation because we figured it's an important episode. Well, you did work prepared. I want to make this clear. I have no idea what's happening other than I helped set this up. I mean, this is a lot.

SPEAKER_02: 6:04

I did the tech prep. You did the actual I did the actual prep. Which is kind of opposite who we actually usually is.

SPEAKER_00: 6:10

But uh we'll get into that. Yeah. I love it. Well, let's go ahead and jump in. So, as we mentioned, you know, this is a this podcast. I wanted to talk about that at the start. So a lot of people who are just seeing this for the first time, because obviously we now have a chance to share this as our personal selves, which we've never been able to do before. So I think there's gonna be an opportunity for a lot of people to join in for the very, very first time and get to listen in to what we're talking about. So, because of that, we need to be able to talk through a little bit about what is this podcast? Like, what is this? Why do we do it? Why have we been doing this for five years completely anonymously, so no one really knows who we are, and then why are things changing now? So, to start, I actually wanted to talk about what this podcast is. What is corporate strategy?

SPEAKER_02: 6:54

You want to start? Oh my gosh, I don't even know. Uh I mean it well, it started, it we even say this on our our website, corporaty.biz. We greatly we were at a Japanese restaurant and we were talking about, I think, work problems we had five years ago, five plus years ago. At least. And I said, you know, the way we talk about this and the way you help me and I help you, we could share this more broadly with the world because you and I, for those who don't know, have a very storied corporate background. Like we we eat, sleep, drink, live, breathe corporate. And that is not to say we are fans of it. I think it's kind of like, you know, how bugs adapt to being able to live in a volcano. We have adapted to be able to survive corporate. So I said we should make a podcast where we talk about what we know and share the secret knowledge with others and help them not want to jump out the third-story window of the building they work in.

SPEAKER_00: 7:51

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah. As we were talking about it. I think, you know, I I think we do this podcast for a lot of reasons because one, we make this, and why we've done it anonymously, we made this podcast because we wanted something that we would genuinely listen to that would give us good insider tips, but also not take ourselves so seriously. Like have a little fun doing it. Like corporate is so serious, it's so politics driven. And the reality of it is behind the scenes, it doesn't need to be. Like we're all humans, and we can take kind of a satirical look at corporate while also giving you some very real tips because we know it's something that everyone has to do. And a majority of people that are part of our community have been living for a very long time. So, you know, this is something we wish we had, and we create it because there was nothing like this that we could find that we could actually make relatable. Um, I liken it akin to like uh Barstool Sports, which is the biggest sport sports podcast in the world. They started off because ESPN was like too formal and too serious, and they're like, we just need to make sports fun again. Like, let's just have fun doing it. And that's kind of what we did with corporate podcasts. I just have one question. Please. What is a sport? One of my favorite jokes that we would always talk about is like, hey, did you catch a game last night? Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 9:01

So good. Big game, big game, lots of defense, many points scored. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 9:05

Yeah, every single time. It's like, yeah, they got the touchdown and they they kicked it into the goal over the game.

SPEAKER_02: 9:09

The goal units happened. My goodness, the defense, they were defending.

SPEAKER_00: 9:14

They were doing so good. Ferocious. So, yeah, this podcast, we created it for ourselves and for people like us, people that we've mentored in the past and that we think would genuinely bring value to people. And there's a lot of reasons why we wanted to keep it anonymous. Yes. So before we introduce ourselves, yeah, why would we keep it anonymous and not just reveal who we were?

SPEAKER_02: 9:36

Well, I think in the in the very beginning, I worked for a big corporation. You worked for a big corporation, and your corporation is known and beloved by all. My corporation no longer exists. Although we both we both worked there together, but we we we split paths. Um so I wasn't as worried about my identity, because one, I'm a little bit of a type A personality, devil may care human being, but they're also, you know, we were talking about things that we experienced in our workplaces, and we didn't want to put anyone we worked with or ourselves at risk for the things we talked about. And we also starting out, we just didn't know what we didn't know. A lot of a lot of unknown unknowns dealing with.

SPEAKER_00: 10:24

Yeah, yeah. I think that's the way I kind of looked at it too, is this is a little bit of an experiment when we started five years ago to say we just want to put this together, and one, we just want to see like if we're okay at it. Like we can flow, we can talk about things, we come up with topics. And two, if people would actually listen and enjoy it. And I think both those things were very true very fast. It's like, okay, this is just easy, and it's fun for us just as friends to catch up and talk about things we were already talking about, anyways, in a real human-to-human format. And I think as the people started and the community started to grow, the list started to grow. It was really cool because we got the opportunity over 200 episodes to bring people on and talk about like completely and honestly. Like they did not even reveal their names, a lot of them. They came on the show, they talked about, you know, their corporate journey. We got to give them kind of tips, they got to get feedback from us, and we've created this community that we did not expect in the beginning. So we kind of kept it anonymous for that reason. And we also wanted to make sure the very real things we were talking about wasn't like leaking into our real lives. And even though we were keeping it very anonymous, very abstract, we never revealed what company we work for, we never revealed exact names if we were working with, but we revealed real challenges that were happening around us. And so we kept it anonymous for those reasons. But now, now we've got to look at why are we doing like why? Why make it unanonymous now? Why get more personal and why reveal all? Why?

SPEAKER_02: 11:41

Why would we do that? Why would we do that? Well, I I know from from my personal perspective, I've wanted to do this for a long time. I've I've been begging you, Clark, uh, saying, hey, when when do you think we could do like I've said, you know, two big things we could accomplish by doing this. Is one, it's a lot more believable when you have a face to a person. So I think it it lends a level of endearment. I think a lot of the way we talk to each other, sometimes it's very sarcastic, it's very humorous. You might miss that if you're getting an audio format. So there is a little bit of now you can see when we're joking. Uh, but also I think there's just a level of trust, right? When we're anonymous and we're talking to people, there is a well, they're not willing to share who they are. So many self-help gurus out there are broadcasting their every thought, and they they are real people. So, you know, I think us being more public and open with who we actually are lends more credibility to our story. And I think also you can you can now go check us out in various places and see, like, hey, we're not making this up.

SPEAKER_00: 12:43

Yeah, I love that. I think all those reasons, plus, you know, after 200 episodes, we've learned a lot. And I think a lot of our growth has been limited because we haven't been able to use our personal network. And I look at that in two ways. One, because I want this podcast to grow, because I I think it does help a lot of people. We have some very real success stories in our community of people that have been listening to this and have gotten real tips and have gotten real jobs because of the tips we've given. And I want to be able to do that for you know a bigger group of people and a bigger audience. Yeah. But when you don't reveal yourselves, you can only do so much, you know, to make this an anonymous podcast for everything that that Bruce, um, until he's formally revealed, uh, it was referencing to. But I also think that this podcast was meant to also bring on real people and real stories. And when you don't use your network to do that, it's really hard to get anonymous people to be willing to do that. And we've done it successfully, actually. We've had a great guest on, and they're one of my favorite episodes. Like when people ask me, hey, what's can I listen to this? Like, what's an episode? Um, I'll always send them one of our guest episodes. So I'm like, this is a real person who joined our community. We don't even know who they are. We've never seen them before, we've never met them, but they came on our show completely anonymous. They don't even know our names, and they came and shared their story and how this podcast helped them. And I think I want to be able to do that more with the amazing network that we both have.

SPEAKER_02: 14:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 14:02

I think that's the key is being able to broaden this, being able to bring new people in, and then being able to, you know, hopefully grow this and bring more value to everybody.

SPEAKER_02: 14:09

I I think uh just a little self-brag on ourselves, being anonymous, running a podcast for 200 episodes, completely word of mouth based, right? Oh yeah. When you look at our Discord and all of our community members, many of which were in the chat, what's up, we see you. Um, when you when you look at that and you look at the downloads we get, like none of that is done through traditional marketing of any sense. And I say that as someone who is a professional marketer, like to be able to get pretty much consistently like 100 downloads an episode for the kind of thing we talk about is that's pretty amazing given how little we've actually done to promote the thing. So we've done good, and now I think this is an opportunity for us to go bigger and better.

SPEAKER_00: 14:49

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, we kind of looked at ourselves at the beginning of this year, and last year was a little bit of a blip in the growth that we wanted, but we looked at each other to say, listen, what are we trying to do with this? Like we could do this forever. We could literally do this every single week until we die because it's just us getting together. It's easy to do, and it's easy to get a bunch of people to give us topics and things to talk about. So we can do this forever, but we're like, what kind of impact do we want to have? Do we want to stay at this small size or do we want to grow? And I think that was the pivotal moment to be like, we gotta try something new.

SPEAKER_02: 15:15

And I mean, that's why we started the Patreon as well, right? Uh, you know, this has been an out-of-pocket expense for me for five years.

SPEAKER_00: 15:21

He's saying him because it's really him. He really has just done nothing to contribute to this financially.

SPEAKER_02: 15:26

This has been a labor of love. I think if, you know, if we boil it all down to what do we get out of this, one, uh, you know, Clark is my best friend, IRL. And uh Clark has given me so much corporate therapy, both on pod and off pod, whenever I've needed it. And to to be able to take what we've created here, share it broadly, and even without ever going on camera or doing this today, this is something I would do forever simply because as long as I'm working, I need this. Yeah. Right? There is a need for what we do here uh internally, but I assume that's also true for you as well. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00: 16:04

No, I love that. Yeah, all those reasons. So this is why we now are going into our big reveal. Big reveal. I feel like we gotta like do the intro and then give our real names. Oh, you mean to run the intro? Maybe not run the music, but at least say the words. Should I do it? Do you do it? Do you want to do it? No, you do it, you do it. This is so weird. This is so weird. You do it. All right, welcome to Corporate Strategy of the Podcast. That could have been an email. I'm Michael. Oh, and I'm Anthony. This is weird. So I was Clark, formally, informally known as Clark. My real name is Michael, and this is Anthony. Anthony. So we have those pseudonyms just as our name, and that's what everybody belovedly and endearly calls us as. But now you know our real names.

SPEAKER_02: 16:44

We have had guests on our show that have used their real name for years.

SPEAKER_00: 16:49

And they've called us by our fake names.

SPEAKER_02: 16:54

They know who we are.

SPEAKER_00: 16:56

It's pretty awesome.

SPEAKER_02: 16:57

Like, even one of our guests, um, uh, the marine engineer, Michael, when we had him on, also Michael, he knows me as a totally different name because we game together and he knows my gamer handle. So it's like he knows I've met him in real life, I've met him online, and now he's met me on Corporate Strategy as Bruce. It's like we have forced this man to learn like so many names. So shoutouts for all of you who've used our fake names for so long. It's probably like, why can't you just be yourself?

SPEAKER_00: 17:22

Why do you gotta have four different personalities? Why has it got to be such a secret? I love it. Well, to go into the next kind of piece of this episode, um, we wanted to share more about our background. Yeah. So I think everybody that's been listening for a while has picked up things here or there from episode to episode. We've talked about vaguely, not where we work, but what we've done, our roles, the jobs, our journey. But I thought it'd be helpful to actually, you know, bring some credibility behind that to say, this is actually where I started. I worked here, I worked here, I worked here, and kind of talk through our paths. Because what I would say, and we we talk about um this to a lot of people that come on the show or come into our community, there is no defined path for your corporate journey. Everybody's path is a little unique and non-traditional. Yeah. And I think for us, it has very much been that for many ways, where what we thought was going to be our path changed completely. And that's what I think makes it so unique and what's so special about this podcast and bring people on is everybody can share a little bit of pieces of pieces of that. And then you can relate to different pieces and different people to say, actually, I'm in Anthony's side of the journey, or I'm in one of the the guests, you know, journey. And that was really helpful to me at that moment.

SPEAKER_02: 18:27

Yeah, well, and it it's kind of funny. This this podcast, I think, has influenced my journey. Yeah. I don't know if it's influenced yours 100%. It has definitely made me make decisions, which is what we'll talk about, that I probably wouldn't have made had we not been doing this. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 18:39

Yeah, just having that resource. And I think that's like what a lot of our listeners tell us is they're like, hey, if you guys didn't do this, I wouldn't have thought to do this, or I wouldn't have gotten this interview or this job, or I would have never decided to leave my job and find something that's completely, you know, better. Yeah. And so I think that's one of the coolest things and why we keep doing this because we are constantly benefiting from this and we see our community growing as well. So do you want to start? Anthony, who is Anthony? What's your corporate journey? Who's behind?

SPEAKER_02: 19:06

I mean, it's such a it's such a my journey's incredibly weird, just as yours is. You know, we've we've talked about this a lot on the pod, so I'll I'll I'll do it as as condensed and clear as I can. Um started out as a computer science uh degree, right? And I mean, before that I was a landscaper, which we've talked about in the past at Hogwarts Wizarding School for the Whites. Um, but after I was a landscaper, I got my degree in computer science, I was an engineer for five-ish years, working both as like starting out as a QA engineering intern at a very large corporation that no longer exists. I mean, if you want to figure it out, find my LinkedIn and you put this all together.

SPEAKER_00: 19:45

Um wasn't there something before that too? Wasn't the gaming company before that? Oh, so I think that part's really unique and special to talk about.

SPEAKER_02: 19:52

It's so wild that you know more about me than I do. So yeah, I I did it I did an internship at an advertising slash mobile gaming company before I worked at Big Corp, aka Veritas Technologies. And the I mean it was weird, it was a weird place. Like they had dogs just roaming the office, and uh it definitely didn't seem like an HR friendly workplace at all. It was uh it was really it was really odd because I was an intern. I was getting paid less than I was getting paid landscaping. That's crazy.

SPEAKER_00: 20:27

I don't know that I knew that.

SPEAKER_02: 20:28

That was wild. That was strange. And then uh one of my lifelong mentors and still uh a good friend of mine, who's in one of my he was in a he was in a film class with me. I didn't actually meet this guy in a computer science class, he was in a film class, told me, he's like, hey, I can get you a better internship at at Symantec, which would become Veritas. I was like, how much the pay? And it was like double what I was making. Like, let's go. So I left that place to uh to join as a quality assurance escalations intern at Symantec. And from there, I I kind of just did that for I want to say a year or two-ish, became full-time. And then I met a neighbor of mine who I thought would have been a great replacement intern for the kind of intern work I was doing. So I asked you, I was like, hey Michael, you wanna come be an intern at Symantec Technologies?

SPEAKER_00: 21:24

Yeah, yeah, this path was so interesting. I don't know if we should we mix stories? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You talk about our journey and our intersperse it. Yeah, yeah, we gotta we gotta find out how to weave this story. So I'll I'll go into my background now and then I'll I'll stop at the point that we met and we can go back into your story.

SPEAKER_02: 21:39

Right, right, right.

SPEAKER_00: 21:39

So, yeah, my path was definitely not traditional. I started, um, I was a computer science student as well. So I was into computers in high school and I was building stuff on the side, and I'm like, okay, computer science seems like a good path to make money, but also it's something I love playing with technology. My background has always been like ripping apart tech and trying to figure out how it works. And then once I figure out software, I'm like, oh, I can actually like build stuff and create things. So it's flexing that creative kind of puzzle master thing in my head that I love to solve puzzles and solve problems. And so software engineering kind of gave the flexibility of that. And it also was a very like low-risk, you know, job or career to take because it's like, for the most part, you can't make decisions that are going to kill somebody or going to have serious impacts, but they could impact the world. So I was like, software is fun because I can, you know, do things quickly and iterate fast. That's where the world's going. And so I decided to go down that path. But um, when I started into college, I quickly found out that I am not very academic. And while I was good at programming, I was not good at being a software engineering student in computer science. I very much struggled in school because they were like, hey, here's 20 pieces of paper. Write this program by hand with a pencil. And I'm like, so you're telling me everything I was doing in high school to build software on my computer, I can't use any of those tools, and I gotta write things down. That doesn't seem like it really makes sense.

SPEAKER_02: 22:58

So so you went into computer science specifically because the money.

SPEAKER_00: 23:02

Yeah, yeah. I think that was a big motivator, but I also think it was because of what I enjoyed doing. Right. It kind of put all those pieces together for me. But I would say school, and I I don't say this for everybody, I'm gonna put an asterisk. My wife's a teacher, and our last episode on education, she was like, you need to asterisk and say school is very important for many, many people for many, many reasons, which I a hundred percent agree with. But for me in software engineering, school turned me off.

SPEAKER_02: 23:26

Well, I I I think just in general, and I, you know, shout out to my wife. The only reason I went into computer science, also she's the moderator in the chat. So double shout out to my wife. Uh, but the the only reason I got into computer science was I was pursuing an English major. Yeah. And she's like, I will not marry you if you don't get a real degree with something that can actually like produce an income, right? And like 100% serious. Like that was a real conversation we had to have because the honest truth, what what is an English major gonna get you? Yeah, right. And like computer science was the path to go down uh for success for both of us. So there's there's a a little bit of a little bit of truth there.

SPEAKER_00: 24:04

100%. Yeah, in school, unfortunately, like I could do it, but I just I wasn't academic. School was turning me off of computer science. I'm like, maybe this just isn't for me. Like, maybe if this is what the real world is like, I'm not gonna like it. And fortunately, I came back from school one summer, we lived very close to each other. It goes right back to what you were saying of like, hey, I need to replace an intern. You seem like a cool dude. Like, maybe you'd want this role. And I am so, so thankful to you for doing that because I honestly don't think I would have ever stayed with technology because of the way school was sending me. I'm like, I can't do this. Well, this isn't for me.

SPEAKER_02: 24:37

It's it's wild. I think you and I had the same exact experience with computer science because it's just such a hard program to make sort of match up with what's happening in the industry. Yeah. Right? Like, I can't imagine what it's like to learn computer science in a college today with AI the way it is, because I one, I feel like they're going to overrely on it and not teach you enough of the fundamentals. Right. And even if they do try to path you on the fundamentals, you're gonna use AI anyway to help you. And it's like, what it was it was hard for us because we didn't see the value. I can't imagine what it's like today. But it's so necessary to get a foot in the door for an internship at all of these tech companies. You have to have a computer science degree. So crazy path.

SPEAKER_00: 25:19

Right. Yeah. So I was a freshman in college. I came home and that internship happened. Actually, I got the offer before my freshman year was done in college. So I started really early. It was a software engineering internship. I think they changed the name of your role because that was the way the group and team was going. Yeah. So it was like an intern in software engineering. So that's where I started, and that's where we kind of started this relationship.

SPEAKER_02: 25:40

I uh I have to read a comment. So my wife, uh, Kaitales in the chat, Sarah in real life says, I wanted you to learn the error of the liberal arts degree. And then Elmer Futterino uh says, How did you go from tech to sales engineering? We'll get there. I think it's the next step. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 25:55

Okay, so at this point, we're both at Symantec. We are doing, we are working as a quality assurance slash engineering team, starting to go more into the automation route. And what what happened then? Like, where did your journey go?

SPEAKER_02: 26:07

Before we get into that next step, I do want to shout out so quality assurance engineering, there was there was some magic that actually happened. We called, we refer to this era as the golden years. It was amazing. It was amazing. There was about five of us, all around the same age, all on this team. I still keep in touch with most of them, like good people, fun people. Like we would we we would goof off so much. Walk to Starbucks in the middle of the day, go play frisbee in the park, skateboard, there's video evidence, we had Nerf guns. There was there was so much fun that occurred. But also, I look back on those moments so fondly because we produced really good stuff. 100%. Like we took our quality assurance team, which was a complete manual process for testing every single build of Backup Exec 2012, rest in peace. I don't know if you're missed. Um we took the manual process of testing that and completely automated not only the testing of that product, but spinning up real customer environments to test it. And like we did that. Yeah. No one else in the company had done that up to that point. And like a couple of goof off interns came in and fixed and built something truly meaningful. So, you know, as goofy as we were, we did good work. And because of that, what ended up happening was you got picked to go work on a big boy product, and then I got picked to go work on a big boy product. We kind of split path. I mean, we we we carpooled, yeah, we stayed besties. It was at the same location. We were in the same building, and we were actually in the same room, but we weren't working on the same thing. So I went to work on a greenfield, basically a startup with an enterprise product, which no longer exists. It was called velocity, and the whole point was to do copy data management, which is a problem that only the biggest businesses deal with, and honestly, it's so boring to even think about, like it's not worth getting into. But the cool thing about it was because it was so complicated and it was so boring, but it was also so mysterious and no one knew how to talk about it. I found myself demoing it to customers. Like the product management team and the sales team would bring me in to run these demos because I could talk, but also I could talk about the product. And then one of my other mentors came up to me and he said, Hey, you know, you could double your salary if you stop doing development on this thing and just start selling it to people as a sales engineer. So he he roped me into a mentorship program for sales engineers, and uh I found out that I I was quite good at the job, I liked it, and uh they made me an offer. I did double my salary and I went into sales engineering as an inside commercial sales SE or sales engineer. Yeah. And uh I left I left development behind. But what did what did you do?

SPEAKER_00: 28:43

Yeah, yeah. It's funny, like your journey is so interesting because I think that's a very non-traditional path for an engineer to go into a sales position, like um, I think as Almore Foe was asking in the chat, it's like it's it's not easy, and it's a certain personality type that I think a lot of engineers aren't to be able to do that. And oh, go ahead.

SPEAKER_02: 29:04

Yeah, I just want to say, you know, because you you gave me this thought just now. One of the most common paths at Veritas technologies, and I don't know if this, I'm assuming this is true at most places, to get into a sales engineering role. So if you're interested in doing this, is to go from backline or frontline support into sales engineering. Because as a support representative, it's an easy job to get into. They train you everything you need to know on the spot. Um, you learn the technology, you learn a little bit of the sort of customer back and forth because you're always on the phone talking with them. But then you take that skill set and you apply it with a little bit of sales charm. So instead of solving their problem, you're selling them a solution. Yep. And if you can, if you can make that mind swap, going from customer support into sales engineering is a great path to again double your salary and move up that corporate ladder.

SPEAKER_00: 29:52

Yeah, 100%. I think we both had a little bit of like imposter syndrome at this point in our lives, too. Like we we were okay engineers. I was a terrible engineer. He he says that he wasn't terrible. I was a lot of good work. And the work, and the work that we did in the early years, like when we were doing the automation work, it's still something I'm so proud of. Like going back to your comment, it's something that I put in my resume because I'm like, how cool is it that we take that we took a two-week, six-person process, full-time, six people, two weeks to test a product to get a release out the door. And we were able to do it in hours. Yeah. All automated, no more humans having to be in the loop for that testing. Like, that is such a a cool project to be a part of and to see kind of the evolution of technology. So I talk about that story all the time because I think it was incredible what we got to do, even though we were having a lot of fun doing it.

SPEAKER_02: 30:36

I'm still so proud of us.

SPEAKER_00: 30:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 30:38

Like, I wish we could continue to do that kind of work because it was satisfying and it was fun. Yeah. Which I think as we go throughout our career, we lose a little bit of that satisfaction. We lose a lot of bit of the fun. Um, I do want to read uh two comments. One comes from Kiteils. Do you remember when you gift wrapped your coworker's entire office uh and your boss was like rock on? Do you remember that? Yes. Yes, okay. That was so cool. Shoutouts to Shen. We love you, and uh, it was such a soft prank. And then um uh Villis says, Hell yeah, sales engineers, one of the best gigs I'd never heard of before. Part of the problem coming from support though is a lot of tech guys focus on the features and have a hard time trying to shift to value talk. But if you can do it, man, awesome gig.

SPEAKER_00: 31:21

That's really cool. I love that. Um, so jumping back into my story a little bit. So, in parallel to that internship starting, I was actually, I got a really fortunate opportunity to work at Apple. And so I was working at Apple, and it was honestly one of like it was my dream.

SPEAKER_01: 31:36

I was like, Were you working there when I met you?

SPEAKER_00: 31:38

I was. Okay. I was working there in tandem.

SPEAKER_01: 31:40

And you worked there as an intern at the same time.

SPEAKER_00: 31:42

That's right. So I got the fortunate opportunity to work as Apple at Apple, but I was working in kind of business sales. So it was like I had to work with you know small businesses, medium-sized businesses who were like, I need Max to do this for my business. And so that was my job was selling them solutions. And I I don't, I didn't know it at the time, but I looking back at hindsight, I can truthfully say like that was one of the founding moments of my career because one, it was an amazing company to work for. The people were awesome, but I learned really quickly, I am not good at sales.

SPEAKER_02: 32:12

I I just struggle to believe that because you're such a charming and like fun to talk to person. And that's that's a huge portion of being a sales engineer.

SPEAKER_00: 32:21

Yes, which is true. But the, and sorry, I'm not, I'm not bragging there, but I'm saying you're true. Like, I actually was really good at the one-on-one conversations, but I wasn't good at volume. I got the feedback very quickly to say you're not selling enough. You're creating perfect solutions, you're working with somebody, they leave, give you five stars out of five stars, but you're doing two people a day, not 10 people a day.

SPEAKER_02: 32:40

You missed your true calling, which was a strategic or enterprise sales engineer. Exactly. Where I'm focusing on like four accounts, right? And I just keep them happy all the time. That I mean, you want to talk about like quadrupling yourself. Yeah, that's where you go to. 100%.

SPEAKER_00: 32:53

So yeah, I was doing that. I was doing the sales engineering board or sorry, the uh business sales, and I I learned really quickly when the numbers started coming down, I was like, I don't like the idea of shoving products down people's throats just to move on to the next person. Like that just doesn't sit right with me. And I loved working it out, but I loved the process. They they literally, every single sales associate they bring on, they put you in a two-week program outside of the store, outside of the business programs, to basically do one-on-ones of selling products. And so they'd be like, okay, you're role-playing as this today. You have these needs. I'm not gonna tell them what you have. They have to try to figure it out. And they would literally sit you in a classroom for eight to 10 hours a day and do that. And it was so intense, but I learned so much of how to work with people, how to sell things. It was such an awesome experience. After I did that for a little while, right when I was starting my internship, I was like, I don't really like sales. I actually want to just help people solve their problems with technology. So I moved into Apple Care and I very quickly found out uh I was an intern at Veritas. I was also working as an Apple Care uh rep. So I was working during the day as a software engineering intern, going at night to do Apple Care, and I very quickly found out I don't like getting yelled at for problems. I would much rather just be building. And fortunately, you know, after I think six months as an intern, I actually got an opportunity to join a full-time software engineering gig, associate software engineer at Veritas.

SPEAKER_02: 34:08

Oh, associate. That's how you know you've made it.

SPEAKER_00: 34:10

Yeah. And A software.

SPEAKER_02: 34:14

That means we're not gonna pay you, but you're gonna do the same level of work as your superiors. Yeah. That's exactly what that means.

SPEAKER_00: 34:20

It was such a cool moment, though, because what I loved about the internship experience was school wasn't for me, computer science wise. Well, and you hadn't graduated. You were still a student. One year in. I was still a student. And you were already full-time. Yeah, full-time software.

SPEAKER_02: 34:35

Salaried role, software engineer at a very big company.

SPEAKER_00: 34:39

Yep.

unknown: 34:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 34:40

And I remember you telling me, you're like, are you still working at Apple? And I was like, six months after I was a full-time software engineer. And I'm like, yeah, he's like, you probably don't need to do that anymore. I'm like, yeah, you're right. Why am I killing myself trying to work both?

SPEAKER_02: 34:51

I don't, we paid you well.

SPEAKER_00: 34:53

So I did both for a while. Um, but yeah, that like if I didn't get that internship and I didn't, you know, work with you to figure that out and work on the teams that we did, I think my path would have diverged to do something totally different because school just wasn't showing me what the real world was with software engineering. And so that's that internship, and I encourage everybody, you know, if you're someone young, if you're a fresher, as we like to call you, and you're doing software engineering, you're like, listen, school, this is just not what I want to do. Trust me, the real world in software engineering is different. And when I got that internship, that's what saved me because I was doing things in the internship that I was like, this is fun. This is what I remember loving. And then, you know, going back to school, I was like, actually, none of this makes sense what I'm learning in school. I need to be learning these things if I'm gonna be good at my job. So my uh, I would say my educational career kind of took a halt right there. It I can proudly say it took me like seven or eight years to finish my degree, actually, because I just prioritize my work rather than my my education.

SPEAKER_02: 35:48

And, you know, we talked about this in our education episode a few episodes back, but like, you know, my my wife and I attended that seminar on education, and we were like, man, I wish we could go back to school today because we would have enjoyed it a lot more. Like you you kind of had that opportunity to mature a little bit as you continue to do school, and I feel like you probably took a lot more away than even I did, even though you you didn't find it to be the most valuable thing. So you have a very cool path.

SPEAKER_00: 36:13

Yeah, it's it's really, I think it's lucky in a lot of ways. Yes. I think it's very non-traditional, very unusual. But what I would say is be nice to people, network, yeah, try things, try to get internships early on, and try to figure out if you really like the job because that was the pivotal moment for me.

SPEAKER_02: 36:31

If uh if I could offer one piece of advice based on your experience, the the real trick to all of this is telling your four doors down neighbor, hey, I like Legend of Zelda. Truthfully, that's that's all it took. When he said, I like Zelda, and I'm like, Oh, you're a good person. You should be an intern. You should come work with me, because I have no one I work with that like Zelda. I mean, that's not true. That's not true. I didn't work with people like Zelda, but I didn't have something like a carpool with it like Zelda. So absolutely. That was it. That was all it took.

SPEAKER_00: 36:58

Yeah?

SPEAKER_02: 36:59

Yeah, I didn't really care what you knew.

SPEAKER_00: 37:00

And honestly, I think the interview, like, I didn't even need to interview, I already had the job. You already just because of that.

SPEAKER_02: 37:04

He's like, Oh, yeah, yeah, Legend of Zelda, huh? Okay, you're in.

SPEAKER_00: 37:07

Done. Yeah, so so yeah, that kind of started the traditional uh journey into software engineering. I took a little bit, I was still doing a class here and there for my degree, but it took me forever. And yeah, we did end up after we did well. I got promoted to a software engineer. I was a real, a real boy, and we kind of diverged paths of I went to the big boy product, like you mentioned. You went to another big boy product. My product, I kept on going on, and I was still doing software engineering, but I kind of stepped my toe into software engineering management. So I was starting to manage people, which was weird because I was so young. I mean, I was 19 years old, and I had people that I was managing their work. It's crazy how young you were. Yeah, they were like 45 to 50, and I was managing their work, which was pretty crazy at the time. I was like, this feels so weird.

SPEAKER_02: 37:47

It's very weird. It's very like I cannot stress how weird the dynamic was as an observer. Because again, I wasn't on his team. We would we had split at this point, but I would look over and he's like scrum mastering for these ancients that were like literally, you know, days away from retirement, telling them how to, you know, manage their stories, how to develop, how to build. And I'm like, this kid is not even 20 yet.

SPEAKER_00: 38:12

It was such a cool, it was such a cool journey because everybody, fortunately, at that company was like really welcoming. Yes. There were a lot of what's the right word? Oldheads. Crumbgeons. Yeah, they were curmudgeons. Yeah, there were curmudgeons that were very difficult, but you just kind of pushed them off into a corner and you didn't talk to them.

SPEAKER_02: 38:26

They were difficult, but also I feel like they didn't dislike us. Yeah. Like these kids have the verve. They have the energy. So yeah, they drive me nuts, but I'm not going to ever get in their way. I think the thing that got in our way more than anything was actually management and sort of the sort of, I don't know, the corporate layer. Yeah. The corporate layer was our biggest enemy when we were both at Veritas slash Symantec because our coworkers, even if they were curmudgons, were all very workable people.

SPEAKER_03: 39:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 39:00

Everyone was smart, everyone did their job, everyone had a skill and a talent, and we got along with them. It was always that corporate layer. 100% that blocked us. Yeah. That's one of the bigger reasons I went to sales engineering was I was denied a promotion as senior engineer because there wasn't any budget. Like you deserve this on paper, but we can't afford it. Yep. Like, well, I'm gonna go sell. Like that's and that that happened to both of us quite often. Right.

SPEAKER_00: 39:23

Yeah, and you know, before I we jump back to you, I think the last path before, as you were getting into sales engineering, yeah, I was working on the traditional project, but then I one, I was just not a fan of my manager. He I think he really kind of stifled my growth. And also, you know, there were certain other, you know, interpersonal aspects that was not great for our team. Really, really bad management.

SPEAKER_02: 39:46

Your manager is the definition of a piece of work.

SPEAKER_00: 39:50

Yes, a hundred percent. And it just was so difficult working on that team because I would always be trying to do something better and be like, Why are you doing this? Don't do this. You need to be doing this, this, and this. I'm like, this is the worst. Like, he would just harass us.

SPEAKER_02: 40:01

We had no I had nothing to do with your team, your product, your anything. And your manager would harass us. Absolutely, be like, Why are you talking to him? Don't email him.

SPEAKER_00: 40:09

And I'm like, What who are you? Like, we carpool, we get lunch together every day. What is wrong with you? It was such a wild experience. But what I would say, like a learning out of that, is continue to put your head down, continue to do hard work. Because fortunately, I got, as the time you were going to sales engineering, I got handpicked to go work on kind of a new startup team to revitalize the product we were working on and bring a this is this is how old the technology was we were working on, re rebuild a web user interface for our on-server software that we ran. And so that was, they were like, hey, you're young, you seem to be smart. Let's handpick you and like a handful of others around the world, and we're going to build a new web user interface for our customers. That was our product.

SPEAKER_02: 40:50

And and what a what a lead-in to the future that would be. Because as you were building that, I was selling it. Yep. So we'll we'll come back to my world now. As a sales engineer, I started off in the commercial space, which means sort of small to mid-size businesses and enterprises. But I had to focus on next-gen technology because I was coming from that greenfield product, which no one knew how to talk about. So that that led me into talking about other new things the company was doing. A lot of my peers on this team had already familiarized themselves with the existing, I'm just gonna call them legacy. At the time, I don't think they were all legacy, but you know, the existing software set. But the company was going through a pivot, right? It had the product I worked on, it had the product you were working on, it also had uh a few new cloud solutions and storage solutions. So I gravitated towards the new and I mostly focused on demoing and helping out deals with the new. I was tied to the East, but I was helping out everybody because I'm the only one who could talk about a lot of this stuff, and that led me to a jumping point. Um, basically, as a sales engineer, you know, my job is to get on, demo the product, and answer questions that get asked of me. And I was pretty good at that, and I was pretty good at talking about the new technology. So they moved me into an architect's role. So in my focus as an architect, so I was a national architect. I basically represented the entirety of the United States for our cloud solutions, which included the old product I work on and a bunch of other things. So it really forced me to start looking at not just the solutions that Veritas was selling in the cloud space, but the cloud space itself. Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, those were the big three at the time. And I just started learning a lot of this technology. I never became an architect, by the way, like a an art certified architect. I was a national architect as my role, but I never learned I only learned what I needed to to demo the product and talk about it with uh effectiveness. And because of this, I would go do customer visits, I would go do presentations, I would go to cloud conferences like AWS reInvent, Microsoft Ignite, I'd go to Inspire, I would go help out. I forget the FIPS was another one. Um and I would talk, I would give actual presentations in the the breakout halls. And what happened was uh someone from our marketing team saw me give a presentation and like took me aside afterwards, and he's like, Hey, what what who are you? What do you do? And I I was like, What would you say you do a little bit? What would you say you do? I I just saw what you did, but like who are you? And I I I told this gentleman, I was like, Oh, you know, I I basically just I really like to get my hands on things and I like to learn them and get passionate about them because I can be excited about it, I can get other people excited about it. And then he's like, Well, where'd you get that slide deck? Like, well, I made it. And he's like, Why did you make that slide deck? I was like, Because the ones that marketing made sucked. And he's like, Well, I'm the head of marketing, and I'm like, dude, your team sucks. And he's like, Well, do you want a job? I said, Yeah. Can you double my salary? And he's like, Yeah. So that's exactly what happened. He basically, you Know, I called him out on the stuff his team was doing. He's like, look, you bring an authority and an education and a credibility into marketing that we sorely lack. Our marketers are meeting with people, but none of them actually know the technology behind the product. Come work for me. I'll teach you the marketing stuff. And all you have to do is bring your authenticity and your education, your experience, and you can join the marketing team. So that was another basically offboarding point for me where I said, heck yeah, raise my salary, get me into a different space. I don't know much about marketing, but I'm quite sure I could learn it because those guys are morons. I could do this job, and uh I went that direction.

SPEAKER_00: 44:39

What did you do? So it's interesting that job. I think sales engineer to architects, yeah, like sales architect is a very common path. Right. I have a friend who actually just recently went through that path. So that is a very much like defined path and role. It's kind of like a mastery.

SPEAKER_02: 44:54

Yeah. Right? Like when you start as an engineer, you should be aiming to get to an architect position. That's your long-term sales engineering job. It pays well if you like the work. You can do it forever. You you're you are on top of the world in that role.

SPEAKER_00: 45:10

Yeah. Yeah, it's it's a really cool path. But then I think your path to marketing is very non-traditional. Not at all. Would you say from sales engineering architect to marketing is a weird jump?

SPEAKER_02: 45:19

I would say it's a very weird jump. And there's there's also a little bit of an irony in that statement because I encouraged other sales engineers to make that jump, which they did. And and I think both of them said they would never go back to marketing, but they still did it. So interesting. Yeah, it is interesting.

SPEAKER_00: 45:33

Yeah, because I I think about that and like your motivations to do it. One, obviously monetary, it was better for you. Yes. But two, also, I think it it's interesting the the path you take in corporate to find what works well for you and what makes you happy. And I think for you, like you saw what they were doing, you saw the opportunity, you weren't afraid to go try it, even though it wasn't what you do. And I think you found you know what you really enjoy and are passionate about.

SPEAKER_02: 45:56

And again, a little bit of inside baseball here. But this was I had literally had a conversation with a manager who I loved, really good manager. And I was like, hey, uh, I'm a national architect, I represent our cloud solutions, no one else is doing the work I'm doing. I'm educating people who are making literally$40,000 to$80,000 more than I am coming in. How do you get me to that level of pay? Because they're below me. It's like I'm I'm above them hierarchically, and I'm making$80,000 less than these people. And he's like, I I literally can't fix this for you. HR only allows us to move you up in 10% increments.

unknown: 46:35

Great.

SPEAKER_02: 46:35

So it's gonna take like five years to get you to the band where you should be. And I'm like, well, the second the my my my next mentor, who uh one of my favorite people on the planet, said, you know, come to marketing and offer me this job. I was like, can you get me to where the other where I should be? He's like, I can get I can do that, no problem. And like again, I left a role that I was crushing and good at. Well, actually, the first time I didn't, I wasn't crushing or I wasn't good at, but like I left a role that I was really good at because they could not make the paywork. It was that corporate strategy layer. Yeah, just blocking me from success.

SPEAKER_00: 47:08

Yeah, and it's crazy because your manager wanted to help you. And either they're like, hey, my hands are tied. Yeah. And I think that's the definition of a good manager to support you, even though you say, Hey, I need to leave because of X, Y, and Z, or say, I can't do this for you, I encourage you to do this. Yeah, like that is a great manager, you know, a great manager learning moment for you to eventually become a manager as well.

SPEAKER_01: 47:28

Yes.

SPEAKER_00: 47:28

That's awesome. So so while you were jumping into um marketing, so back on to my path. So at this point, I was kind of doing software engineering management. I was just a scrum master because nobody wanted to be a scrum master. So, like, sure, I'll do this. I had my first kind of uh foray with a good manager after I got handpicked to this team. This manager, I think he, you know, he had mixed reviews because of certain engineering ways and ways he looked at things. But great manager for me, because the second I joined the team, he looked at my pay, he looked at my role, he's like, come over here. He's like, first of all, I'm promoting you to a senior software engineer because you were doing more than anyone. He's like, I watch the code commits, I watch what you do, you're doing more than everyone, you're working harder than everybody. Great manager. You need to be a senior software engineer. But then he was like, also, I am going to increase your pay by 40%. He's like, you are getting, and it's it's also lucky because it was a global team. Yeah, we were in we're in Florida, um, but the market here for software engineering, the pay was much lower at the time. I think it's gotten significantly better. But at the time, he looked at my pay compared to what people were making globally. He's like, this is insane. Like, I need to at least get you to where you should be. So great manager for one, recognizing the work, promotion, and then also raising the pay. And that like changed my mind completely because the previous manager I had, I'd like to go into his office, he talked to me about like calculus questions. He'd be like, So, yeah, you took calculus one last semester, right? Like, can you tell me about this? I'm like, Are you serious? I'm like, what? Like that was one of our interactions. I'm like, I mean, we could, but like, you're supposed to be managing me on software engineering where I am never going to be in this product, anyways, using calculus. Why are we talking about this? It was the most wild experience ever, but getting to a good manager like that helped kind of bolster my career because he showed he believed in me. He showed he valued my work, and it's a reason why I stayed for even longer because he was supporting me.

SPEAKER_02: 49:12

And and did he is he the one that helped you get into product management?

SPEAKER_00: 49:16

A little bit. I would say he was more reluctant in me leaving the team. Yeah, he wanted me to better on the team.

SPEAKER_02: 49:22

He saw the gold mine. Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_00: 49:23

It's like we work hand in hand. You're kind of my junior manager because I'm the senior manager, so I you're kind of managing all the people for me. I've got another team, so I'm focused on them. Um, but the way that I found product management, because I never even knew what product management was.

SPEAKER_02: 49:35

I mean, we worked with product managers.

SPEAKER_00: 49:37

We had like product owners who were product managers.

SPEAKER_02: 49:39

What do you do other than collect a paycheck?

SPEAKER_00: 49:42

Yeah, they kind of showed up and they kind of told us what to do. But like I was the one as a scrum master and software engineer creating stories for the team. We always did everything. And so I started asking a lot of questions, and I think a lot of it, and it's funny because hindsight's 2020, looking back to our conversations, I think it kind of led me to where I wanted to go because you were getting closer to the money. Yeah, you were getting to marketing, you were seeing your money increase. But also, I think as we were having conversations, I started to question a lot of what we were doing. I'm like, wait a second, we're building this feature, you're asking me these questions. Maybe we're building the wrong thing. And so I started to question, like, okay, are we building the right thing? And I started asking a lot of questions, talking to you, talking to people around me, talking to other engineers and architects on the software engineering side. And every single time I talked to someone high enough, they were like, hey, don't ask me. I'm not the product manager. I'm like, I don't know what that means. And they're like, go talk to that team over there. And that's how I kind of find product ownership because everyone's tired of me asking questions about the business side and trying to build the right product. And they pointed me to a group, and I went to that group and I started talking to them, like, holy cow. I think this is the harmonious intersection of being a business sales rep for learning, okay, you have this problem, you have this challenge, here's how we can solve it with technology, to actually then go into support to understand what are the challenges customers have with our software and with our technology, to then building the technology, to then getting to understand the business and then saying, okay, we actually can go and build this to solve a customer problem. And so I think that was like the magic moment for me of like everything coming together. This is my niche and this is where I'm gonna thrive, is product management.

SPEAKER_02: 51:14

And it's funny, I mean, you, you know, I was in sales, you were going to this transition. Like, we would talk to each other about the product you would eventually manage. I'm like, customers are asking for this. Why aren't yeah, why isn't it happening? Like, what's going on, you know? Yeah. And and I have a very storied history with product management. If you listen to the podcast, you know I'm not a fan. Just never met one I liked, excluding this individual right here. But it it it is funny that like that's where you landed, and truly, that's where you have been the most influential and successful, because honest to goodness, you're a good one. I'm happy I made it.

SPEAKER_00: 51:51

Didn't think that was. Everybody listen, he just said a good product manager. There's one.

SPEAKER_02: 51:55

There is one on the planet, and he's sitting to the left of me, but for the most part, it is, and I mean, like, I'd love for you to talk about this just from your own inside experience. Like, it's not just me, right? I'm not the only one that finds this role despicable and impossible to work with, but product managers in general just seem to carry an air carry an air of I own this thing, this is mine, I know it inside and out. And then when you tell them anything that's contrary to their worldview, it becomes a fight. Yeah, it's it's a it's a legit fight, screaming match argument, whatever you want to call it. And I've seen that so much in sales and marketing that uh, and knowing what I know about you, this is probably not a problem for you because you're a real human being with a soul, unlike most product managers out there. So I I don't know, just curious what you think about that.

SPEAKER_00: 52:41

Yeah, yeah. For me, I think the success in product management came from understanding all those sides. Yeah. Understanding the sales side, understanding the support side, understanding how to build the thing. And I think it's what made me a really effective product manager because I could speak to all those levels. Right. I could then, you know, if someone, uh, a customer was talking about a problem or whatever it is, I can understand to say it's complex. And it's here's the reason why. I could pull Sally off the street and tell her why something was really complicated where she could understand it. And that's really hard for engineers to do. Like that's not a normal engineering thing. They're gonna be like, well, the database and the index, and you got to use the sequence, and you know, I have all these different technical terms. And like, no one understands that. Right. But I think because of my experience, I was able to kind of take these really complicated things and be able to abstract them at a high level. And then when I went to the engineering teams, they could trust me because they're like, oh, you get it. You get why this is hard. You get what pieces need to come together to make this happen. And I think the pivot point for me was as an engineer, as a senior engineer, I had a pivot point of saying, do I want to really get good at software engineering? Which this was this was pre-AI. So at that point, I was like, no, I don't really enjoy learning really specific algorithmic database things where I spend days working on this thing and banging my head against the wall. I'd rather be figuring out what the problem is, making sure we're we're heading in the right direction. Um so yeah, the more macro view, but also making sure we're building the right thing and not just barreling down a way that's not gonna sell at the end of the day. And so I think that was the pivot point for me to learn about that. But I think the problem with traditional product managers is if they go to school for it, they never were an engineer. They never did sales, they never did support. They don't understand the aspect of the business. So when they go try to say, hey, team, we need to build this, they're like, yeah, that's gonna take like five years to build. You realize that, right?

SPEAKER_02: 54:28

And then the product manager says, no.

SPEAKER_00: 54:30

Yeah, you need to do it in six months. This company over here did it in six months. They're like, Yeah, but we're not that kind of like there's just no real like relatability to the situation and understandability of why things are complex and hard.

SPEAKER_02: 54:41

It is it is why the good, I have worked with more than one good product manager, but it is why the good product managers and product owners out there come from support, yeah, sales engineering, or traditional software engineering. Yeah, the bad ones are educated in in management and product management and have never worked in a deeper technical role.

SPEAKER_00: 55:00

Yep, I a hundred percent agree. It is interesting though, I have met and hired many good product managers who took a non-traditional path. Like they were teachers and they kind of found their way into tech. Maybe they were tech enthusiasts and they kind of found their way to do that. So, but I would say I 100% agree with you. The most effective product managers that I've met have come from one of those roles, not just gone straight to product management. The worst product managers I've met have gone directly into product management or have gone from like sales to product management and then oversimplify the the tech and they go to engineering teams, and the biggest mistake they make is that's not that hard. It's like you don't know. You have never built anything. What are you doing? And the second you do that, you lose all credibility and trust with the team.

SPEAKER_02: 55:36

I I remember we were doing sprint planning back in when I was a scrum master for a few months, and uh we had the product owner and product manager in the room, and my team's saying, like, this is gonna take six months. Like, it should take weeks. Like, that's not how any of this works. Like, do you you don't understand, like, it takes weeks for us to check in code and get it through our pipeline. That's how long it's gonna take to test what we've done works. To actually build it, you're out of your mind. And like it was there, there is a disconnect. And I think product managers that are not technical. If I could change one thing in the corporate technology side, it's a product manager must understand the code at a fundamental level. Like you have to be able to read, understand, present, and talk to the engineering layer. Because if you can only offer the customer layer, you don't understand. It's like the tip, you only have the tip of the iceberg. Yeah. 10%, right? 100%. It's a it's a huge miss.

SPEAKER_00: 56:37

Yeah. Yeah. And I think the biggest pro tip that I can give to anybody that's aspiring or being a product manager is a product manager and feels like you're not doing well, you need to go and understand all sides of it and not be afraid to sit with them and be like, hey, can you just show me like your process? Okay, well, like how do you, you know, save state in your code? How do you handle like when you need to add a new database record? Like, go be curious, go sit with those people. You will instantly build trust because they can see you're trying to understand. And then you will start to put things together in your head to be like, when a customer says this, I don't need to say this because I'm gonna lead to a really complicated solution instead of something that's much simpler that we can do that's real with the situation we're working with at our company.

SPEAKER_02: 57:16

Yep. I mean, this this got me into trouble when I was in marketing often because I had a fundamental understanding of technology. I still had access to the old SC labs and environments. So I'd be building marketing material based on real fact, real product, uh, beta builds, all I had access to all that. So I'd go build slides, I'd build speeches and and videos based on real tech. Yeah. And the product mark uh the product management team would get so mad at me. They would like chew me out to my manager, they chew me out to my like chief marketing officer, they'd be like, he's not talking to us. It's like, well, yeah, because you give me bad info, and then I can go get the the truth from your product. And like there was there's real clash between me and them. And that's been a consistent through line of my career. There's always been a clash between me and product management because in many ways I'm far more technical, and that scares them.

SPEAKER_00: 58:07

Yeah, yeah, 100%. But I think that's the best thing you can do. Like, I think that's learning how the product works, understanding how to debug it, understanding how to run the beta builds, like building the environments is so key to being successful. Right. Because you will start to see all sides, you'll start to understand it at a deeper level. And if you never do that and you're like, oh, well, I can't test a new feature because I don't know how to do a beta environment, I need to talk to Anthony. Like, you will never get far in your career because you don't get it and you can't do it by yourself.

SPEAKER_02: 58:35

The whole reason I became a sales engineer is because our product management could not demo the product. Yep. You couldn't demo it. That is insane. They'd call me in. It's like I don't know. It's just it's been a it's been a very weird history for me with that role because I just questioned what is the value you bring. Now, I do know the value you bring, and I'm sure you'll talk more about your your product management experience and your other other company, but it like from my view, and from your view, I'm sure too, like at Veritas, it was rough. It was really, really rough.

SPEAKER_00: 59:03

I mean, that's why that that's how I just took over product ownership for our team. Because our product owner was so bad on the new web user interface we were building. They were like, hey, you can just do this, right? And I literally did it for our team. Like that was how I got into product ownership, is I just started doing it. And the whole entire team appreciated, we built better things. And um, this is kind of where my path diverged a little bit from you.

SPEAKER_01: 59:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 59:23

So I was working on this new initiative. Still, one of the coolest things we've done because it started in kind of a hackathon where we built an interface and a prototype of how this could work using like flash servers that can spin up a web hosting thing on the server. Like it was crazy the thing we did in three days in hackathon. But the senior executive saw that and they're like, okay, we need to fund this thing, we need to get a team around it. So we built this global team. And slowly around Anthony and I at Veritas, they started to get rid of everybody in the Florida site.

SPEAKER_03: 59:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 59:54

Because they it was like a massive purge. Like, if you weren't on a high-profile product, they were outsourcing your job or moving it to a different place in the United States. And for the most part, it was just laying people off.

SPEAKER_02: 1:00:05

Laying off like incredible talent, by the way.

SPEAKER_00: 1:00:08

Yeah, really, really like people with 30 years at the company they were laying off.

SPEAKER_02: 1:00:12

People who understood like fundamental C-level, assembly level programming for some of our most important applications, just gone without warning.

SPEAKER_00: 1:00:24

And we still depended on those products. It wasn't like we got rid of those products. They still were our flagship products. They made money.

SPEAKER_02: 1:00:31

That was the lifeblood of that company. And they were getting rid of talent that was basically keeping it alive. Right.

SPEAKER_00: 1:00:37

A little bit of foreshadowing. I think that's a major reason why the company failed.

SPEAKER_02: 1:00:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 1:00:41

A major reason because it was so weird working in the Florida office because the sales team was still there. So your floor was in pretty good shape. Around me, on my floor, I was the only person in Florida working on that. And in the matter of like six to eight months, there was no one there. No one. I would come in and the cleaning person would be the only person walking past my desk. It was just me on a floor and someone on the opposite side. And so, like that moment for me was really weird because they're like, hey, we're getting rid of everybody in Florida, but we like you a lot. You want to move to Minnesota? And I was like, listen, I've gone many times to work with you all in Minnesota. I don't want to live there. That place is cold. Yeah. I was like, one, my whole family's here. My my future to be wife is here. Like, I this is just not an option for me. And so that's when I chose to leave Veritas in Symantec at the time. Well, because Symantec Verit is a Santec point. So that's when I decided, okay, I think my story is over with this company. It's time to pursue something else.

SPEAKER_02: 1:01:33

Yeah, yeah. And you you left before I left.

SPEAKER_00: 1:01:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 1:01:38

Right?

SPEAKER_00: 1:01:38

I think it was probably at least two years. That's what I think. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 1:01:41

I was in marketing, uh fully remote, doing my own thing. Right. You you left, you pieced out. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 1:01:47

Yeah. You continued in marketing for at least two more years. I did two.

SPEAKER_02: 1:01:50

I bet I did about two years and like a few months in marketing.

SPEAKER_00: 1:01:54

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And for me, should I continue to the next stage? So for me, I was I was starting to put the pieces together. Okay, I have a diverse background, but product ownership is what I want to do. And so I wanted to find another role. Ideally local, but remote was okay. And I was like, let me find something that's product ownership. At this point, it was Apple, it was Veritas, it was Symantec, it was core technical companies. Like they made their money off selling technical software, services, hardware, whatever it is. And I found an opportunity at universal theme parks. So universal destinations and experiences, the universal theme parks around here. And I was like, oh, this could be fun. It was like a six-month contract role. I was like, I'm a huge fan of Universal. I would love to work with it. Who doesn't love Universal? Yeah. But I was like, it's not a tech company. And so I had like a kind of an identity crisis because I was like, it's not a tech company.

SPEAKER_02: 1:02:39

What do they call it? It's like hospitalment?

SPEAKER_00: 1:02:41

Yeah, hospitaltainment. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. I just want to make sure I had the word right. You do the hotels, you do the theme parks, you do all this other stuff now. Um, so at the time I was looking around and I found a six-month contract with a consulting company. And I was like, okay, maybe I'll go be a consultant. I'll do a six-month gig with Universal, and then who knows where it will go from there. I'll just be able to build a vast kind of experience realm, whether it's with Universal or just with other companies, because the consulting firm was a pretty big one. So I started on a six-month contract there and I fell in love. I was hooked. I was like, this is so cool. I'm like, I got there. It was, I'm very much throw me into the fire, and that's how I learned to do best. And when I got there, I literally didn't have a laptop as a consultant. And then my boss came to me. He's like, hey, uh, I don't have a laptop and I'm gonna be busy for the next two weeks. Here is a 30-page PowerPoint deck of what we want to do with our mobile apps. Good luck. And like literally left me at a table. I didn't know a single person. I had a twenty-page PowerPoint deck, and I was just sitting with it, like, all right.

SPEAKER_01: 1:03:37

So you had a physical PowerPoint deck.

SPEAKER_00: 1:03:40

I had a physical printed out PowerPoint deck, no machine, nothing.

SPEAKER_02: 1:03:43

This may be one of the last instances in human history when someone printed slides. Just throwing it.

SPEAKER_00: 1:03:48

It's very true. But it was so cool because I was like, I'm hooked. Like I love this. I love being thrown into something that it's like, hey, I am not gonna be around. I'm giving you full autonomy. Go figure it out. And that, you know, for me was a really good learning in my career of just go figure it out. Go talk to people, go understand. I didn't even know what I was supposed to be doing. It was like, go figure out what you're supposed to be doing. Yeah, like that was literally my job is go figure out how to build the vision of this thing, do whatever it takes. And so it was so cool because with Universal it was a very small tech organization, maybe you know, 200, 300 people globally. Oh, okay. And so it was really, really small at the time. But they were going through kind of the first early years of a digital transformation because fortunately the leaders realized tech is going to become a big part of our business, but it was nestled underneath um the marketing department, which I think a lot of digital companies went through that of like, you're part of marketing, even though you were part of the technology group. So yeah, it was a six-month contract. And what I realized really quickly uh after six months is consulting, because I was helping with another couple clients at the time, uh, for product management, it doesn't make sense. And why it doesn't make sense is because as a product manager, you have to make decisions, you have to live with your consequences, good or bad, when you make decisions on a product to make sure it goes live. And consulting, it's you're in there for six months, you leave. You don't learn anything. Sometimes nothing even goes live. And I'm like, this makes zero sense for me to leave this thing that I've put my heart into for six months and just go to another client and like do the same thing and then leave. What am I gonna learn as a product manager for the life cycle of a product? Nothing. And so they offered me a job and I was like, I've got to take it. This is gonna be so much fun.

SPEAKER_02: 1:05:23

And and you did that for a long time.

SPEAKER_00: 1:05:25

I was there for eight years.

SPEAKER_01: 1:05:27

Yo, I didn't realize it was that long.

SPEAKER_00: 1:05:29

A long time. From the second I left Baritas Symantec, I stepped into that consulting role and then I joined Universal full-time after six months.

SPEAKER_02: 1:05:35

Yeah, because that makes sense. Because I remember when I was on my way out of sales engineering, of national architecting at the time, that we had the same program that I took to become a sales engineer. You were part of it. I tried it, yeah. You were uh and they were gonna hire you too. They wanted to hire you. I they wanted you to be a sales engineer. I remember. And I remember you told me, like, hey, Anthony, I got this role at Universal Studios. And I'm like, oh, word? Okay, well, go do. That then I guess. Yeah. I'm leaving anyway. So it's like, well, whatever, go have fun. Um, but that's funny. Yeah, you were there eight years. Yeah, because I was I was in sales while you were still while you started Universal.

SPEAKER_03: 1:06:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 1:06:11

Then I went to marketing and did that for two and a half years at Veritas, and then I left Veritas marketing to go join a startup. And I this is when so like I think it's worth talking. At this point, when I was at Veritas uh in the marketing team, while you were at Universal Studios in the product management team, we started this podcast because you and I had problems that we needed a vent about. So we would go out to because we used to get lunch together almost every day when we worked together. And so like the the meetings were less frequent, we weren't hanging out as much. I missed my bestie. Like, let's get some let's get some Japanese food. And we did, and then like I said in the beginning, like we started this thing, and we started podcasting basically after work. Right. We'd get together. Uh in the early days, it was literally just start, hit record on Audacity, let's clap our hands on time.is and make the time march for 12, 54, 55 seconds. Okay, go. Okay. And then we would clap, start, record, and then I would sort of spruce the pod together. And throughout time, as you could, as you can probably hear through our podcast history, you know, you were going through your experience, I was going through my experience. Uh eventually I would leave Veritas Technologies to join a startup. That was influenced by this podcast. Yeah. I talked to you about this at length. I'm like, hey, I've got this opportunity. You know, the pay is big, but I've never worked for a startup before. Like, you think I should do this? Like it's a it's a bigger role, it's a bigger opportunity. And you were like, yeah, go for it, go do it. And I'm like, it will make, it will make for good podcast material. Yeah. And boy, howdy did it.

SPEAKER_00: 1:07:48

I mean it still continues to.

SPEAKER_02: 1:07:50

Still continues to. Like for over the last, um over the last four years. So I did the marketing, I guess this just to kind of finish up my story. I did the marketing thing at Veritas. I had the best mentor of my life. Uh, a gentleman named Alex, he lives in Hawaii, he's the one I told your marketing sucks, and he hired me anyway. He fixed my salary, he is truly a father figure to me. Like, I I look at this man as my second dad. He taught me so much more than just marketing, right? Like, he he just taught me everything about like how to really be a successful corporate citizen. A lot of what I tell you and you comes directly through him. Uh, huge influence for me. And you know, I I I had a lot of clashes with product management. I had a lot of clashes with just the corporate strategy layer at Veritas, and that was always a problem throughout my entire history there. And I think if you talk to anyone who worked at that company, there was magic at the people layer, and there was just absolute kludge once you got into middle management and above. And I I do ultimately think that's what caused that company's demise. You know, they got acquired by Cohesity, and a lot of these people merged in, a lot of them got let go. And you know, I think Cohesity is a great company, but uh sadly, I think the mismanagement at Veritas is really what caused it to die. Right. And I saw that writing on the wall. I had a great opportunity to join this startup, like we talked about, and uh, you know, even my boss, my mentor, Alex, told me he's like, Yeah, you should do this. He's like, and he told me, he's like, Are you doing this because you're running away from Veritas? Which is like, kinda, yeah. But also, like, this is a startup. Yeah, this is something I've never done. And it's me in a leadership role. Like, I I think I want to do this.

SPEAKER_00: 1:09:28

Such a good manager.

SPEAKER_02: 1:09:29

The nightmare.

SPEAKER_00: 1:09:30

Such a good manager to encourage you to do that. Like, yeah, leave the company, you should.

SPEAKER_02: 1:09:33

Well, the irony is he left the next week.

SPEAKER_00: 1:09:36

So yeah, writing was on the wall for that one.

SPEAKER_02: 1:09:39

Writing was on the wall. Um, and and sadly it was a decline for the company after that. And I I tell you what, like, you know, I I might speak negatively of some of the experience at Veritas, but on the whole, outside of the fact that they've just refused to pay me anywhere near the average of where I should have been, that place was so kind and accommodating and allowing me to go from quality assurance to engineer to scrum master to sales engineer, to national architect, to marketing manager, and not question whether I could do any of these things, but to see that I had the willpower and the the comeuppets to basically go learn it and try it. Yeah. Veritas empowered that, and I don't think I could have gotten that at a Google, right? You know, or a Microsoft where you're very locked in. It's it's very difficult to move in a lot of these prestigious big companies, but working at an enterprise company that's a little less known is a safer bet. And I think it was a safer bet for both of us. Yeah. And uh joining a startup, being able to do this podcast while working in a startup, I have learned so much working at the startup, which just recently got acquired by one of Veritas' competitors, ironically, mean uh bought the startup I worked for, Object First. The last four years truly has been probably the most important years of my corporate life. Because everything leading up to this point was safe. You know, it was it was really, I was on team, I had a manager, I had supporters at Object First, where I've been the last four, I still technically am an Object First employee, even though I'm part of Veeam. It has been me. It has truly been, and you've heard me talk about this if you listen to the pod. It has been the Anthony show. Yeah. And I don't think anyone in my company would even argue that with you. They if they watch this, they're probably laughing, like nodding their heads, because I was employee number three.

unknown: 1:11:25

Crazy.

SPEAKER_02: 1:11:26

And I basically had to do a little bit of everything to help make this company be successful in the way that it is. If you look at our website, if you look at the YouTube channel, I'm all over it. Like I am the face of that company, and I I love that company. I bleed orange and purple. Uh we've had ups and downs as we always do, but it's been such a good experience for me because I've learned so much, not just about marketing, but about business and about corporate and about startup life. And I've tried to capture all those experiences and share them with you on the pod. Because it's been fun kind of running a podcast one year at Veritas, five years at Object First with you. Because it's been it's kind of been my journey chronicled uh in these 200 episodes.

SPEAKER_00: 1:12:06

Yeah. Yeah. It's I I love what you said there about learning and the opportunity a startup gives you. I think a lot of people get really niche in what they do.

SPEAKER_01: 1:12:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 1:12:16

And they get kitty cornered into a very small particular thing. And you mentioned Google and Microsoft, and I feel like a lot of really good talent goes there. They get the golden handcuffs, and then they just get niched into, hey, this is your small feature. It's a subset of this product, which is a subset of this feature, and this is all you do and think about forever.

SPEAKER_02: 1:12:36

Right.

SPEAKER_00: 1:12:36

And while that's great, I mean, you're probably earning a lot of money, probably having a lot of fun, you know, doing whatever you want to do, but you're going to be limited in your learning. And that's what I always thought as a software engineer. I was like, I can't wait to get a job at Google, go back to Apple again, because I want to, you know, have this prestigious company on my resume, work for this amazing company. But the reality is, it is such a mega corp, and they have so much money that they need to niche down so specifically to optimize every little tiny pixel everywhere. And you will not have a huge scope of responsibility. No. You will be so limited in what you learn, what you get exposed to. And, you know, just like you said, like going to a startup, you've got the opportunity to learn everything about the business. That's that doesn't just happen at a company. Like you have such a unique opportunity to learn that over the last five years, and now getting acquired too. It's a whole nother phase of business. But it was the same for me at Universal, where it was like, hey, uh, we don't really understand what to do with mobile apps. Uh, we want to build these things globally. Can you go figure that out? And like, that's what I loved about it was it was a small team. I got a huge opportunity with no set path. And it was like, go build, go learn. Here's some things we want to do to make the park feel more integrated and to make a better experience for our consumers. And that is why I chose that role because I didn't want to get siloed in this small little thing. Now, serendipitously, it was the only offer I had at the time. I was, I was in the middle of a few, I think, but it was the only offer. So I was like, oh yeah, this will be fun. Six months. I'll choose something else in six months if I want to. But I'm so happy that role came along because similar to you, I think it expanded the learning opportunity, which in hindsight was what I wanted and I think was most valuable. Yeah. I would take that over earning bucket loads of money and getting niche down in this thing I just don't care about.

SPEAKER_02: 1:14:12

Uh I do have to read a comment from my wife who said, lesson, don't let your dad's advice don't, don't lit, lesson, don't listen to your dad's advice who told you to take the job. That is factually correct. My father did tell me, don't go to this. It doesn't sound safe.

SPEAKER_00: 1:14:27

So But it's like the difference of, I think the generational difference, but also, at least I think for you and me, every change that we've made has been positive.

SPEAKER_01: 1:14:39

Yes.

SPEAKER_00: 1:14:39

Like I have yet to make a change in my career that's been like detrimental, where I've been like, oh man, I really wish I didn't do that. Grass isn't always greener. Now there's pros and cons to everywhere you go where you're I do miss the golden age of us working together. But the time that time has passed. Yes. That that will never exist again in our corporate careers because of where we are in corporations.

SPEAKER_02: 1:14:57

But what about in our non-corporate careers?

SPEAKER_00: 1:15:00

Now, this podcast, this will continue on forever.

SPEAKER_02: 1:15:02

Again, have we told you about the Patreon? You could make us do this full time if you just support the show.

SPEAKER_00: 1:15:06

That would be a lot of fun. Next stage of that journey.

SPEAKER_02: 1:15:09

It would be. It would be. Um, so what what about you? What did you do?

SPEAKER_00: 1:15:13

Yeah, yeah. So with you.

SPEAKER_02: 1:15:14

You were there eight years.

SPEAKER_00: 1:15:15

I was there for eight years. I actually recently left at the end of 2025. So I just recently left.

SPEAKER_02: 1:15:20

I think before you say you left, like I want to give you a shout-out. You opened a theme park.

SPEAKER_00: 1:15:26

Yeah. Brand new theme park.

SPEAKER_02: 1:15:27

Brand new theme, which is like once in a lifetime. Like, literally, I've been to this theme park. You took me and my wife and gave us the VIP experience twice. And I just want to say, great job. You did good work. I know it's not just you, I know it took a literal company full of people to open this thing, but like truly a magical experience that you had a huge hand in. I know you did a lot of work for it. And just congratulations for shipping something so big, so successful, and so awesome. And you know, shout-outs Universal. Like go to Epic Universe, it's amazing. Not endorsed. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 1:15:57

He was paid, but like, I mean, you did that. Yeah, it's it's honestly like I played such a small part in all that. But Universal is so amazing. Like, I loved working there. I would love to eventually work there again, you know, if the right opportunity comes. Because it's just such a unique place, and the leadership there is so strong, and it's a reason why I stuck around.

SPEAKER_02: 1:16:16

Right.

SPEAKER_00: 1:16:16

Uh, the journey is is so unique, but being able to do exactly what you said, like open a theme park, like that is a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

SPEAKER_02: 1:16:22

Your resume has like a line item that literally, you know, only the people who work there in this last, you know, five, seven years could put on there. Yeah. It's just crazy. Yeah. Now it's a destination that people are just dying to get into. Oh, yeah, I help build that.

SPEAKER_00: 1:16:39

Yeah. Yeah. It's I can truly say I think in the next 10 years, Universal will beat out Disney from a theme park perspective. Oh, I just take on the mic live. I just don't see how Disney can compete theme park-wise with what Universal is doing. Disney, if you're listening, let's talk.

SPEAKER_02: 1:16:53

I I have ideas. Well, you honestly should get some breakfast.

SPEAKER_00: 1:16:59

Yeah, but the journey was was really cool. So I'll go back to that. So when I started, it was a very small product team. It was maybe like 10 to 12 people, a lot of consultants coming in to do product ownership. And it was very small. Like the the actual full-time team was very tiny. And the engineering team was underneath marketing, it was underneath like operations. It was really, really strange. But what was so different for me was we didn't make money off software. And so that's what made I think it's so unique to work in was the pressure really wasn't on us. It was we make money off theme parks, hospitality, and entertainment. And so not having to be like the bell cow to make money for the company was really cool. Cause it was like you can focus on making the guest experience amazing.

SPEAKER_02: 1:17:42

It's the perfect role for you.

SPEAKER_00: 1:17:43

It was it was the perfect role for you.

unknown: 1:17:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 1:17:46

So it was all about how do you find friction in the customer experience? How do you look at new technology and what other players are doing? And how do you kind of build and adapt that without the pressure of you have to sell something? And so it was just so unique and special. And the things that we did over the years, so it's a it's a global technology organization. Like I said, it was nestled underneath marketing. It was split with the operational team of on-site technology and digital technology. And eventually a new chairman came to run the company and he really saw the vision for no, no, no, technology is not underneath something. It's one technology organization, and they are an arm of the business because that is where we generate our ticket revenue online and not in person anymore. And so that kind of changed the game, is when that new chairman came in, he uh appointed you know our leader as kind of the chief digital and technology uh organization. He unified the all the technology around the world underneath one single organization. And over the years, it grew to you know 1,500 plus people globally. And it just brought so many unique experiences because I got to work for the Orlando-based theme parks, the California-based theme parks. I got to help be a part of the opening team for the Beijing theme park going through COVID and all that, which was wild. And then I also got to work in Japan for our theme park there. And so it was so jealous. It was so cool. So it was like, hey, not only do you have a day job, but you also have a night job for all these different time zones. But guess what? You get to travel to these different theme parks and just go be in a theme park for a day to see how your technology helps.

SPEAKER_02: 1:19:13

And they shipped you over their business class too.

SPEAKER_00: 1:19:15

Yeah, that was the best thing.

SPEAKER_02: 1:19:16

They took great care of you.

SPEAKER_00: 1:19:17

They really did.

SPEAKER_02: 1:19:18

You would tell me things, I'm like, man, to be Clark for just a day, Michael. Uh, whoever you are.

SPEAKER_00: 1:19:24

It's weird to say real names.

SPEAKER_02: 1:19:26

It's weird to say real names. Um, I another shout out to you specifically is when you took uh my wife and I to the theme park, you gave us a little preview experience because you took us like before it was uh open, and we were you had left. So we were still kind of like dead here on the park, and I was trying to use your app to to order some food. And I I sent you a text afterwards, like a screenshot, like, hey, by the way, uh, I have a fix or like a bug to report. When I do this order of operations, like this thing happens, and like you fixed it.

SPEAKER_00: 1:19:55

Yeah, the team's got it done.

SPEAKER_02: 1:19:56

Like that, you know, actual product manager, friend finds a bug, you go fix the bug. Your team is uh phenomenal. So, you know, you you were doing the job even when you weren't doing the job.

SPEAKER_00: 1:20:07

Yeah, yeah, it's it's such a unique experience to have a like with with what we were doing at Veritas, like you built a product, but it was so critical to like data protection, yeah. Privacy, privacy, security products, and no one, even customers, no one wanted to talk to you unless something went wrong.

SPEAKER_02: 1:20:22

Right.

SPEAKER_00: 1:20:22

It was like, hey, is my data deduplicated across our uh two recovery centers? And it's like, yes, you're good. And they're like, why did the backup fail yesterday? And it's like, it's so boring. It's it's necessary, but it's boring, but it's so important to have. And going to Universal, it was like, hey, uh, you need to reduce friction for guests that are entering the park. Can we get rid of paper tickets and like move to all digital? And I was like, yeah, we can. And then you'd be in conversations where you're like opening a new attraction that relies on technology, and you'd be sitting in the room with people who are running the attraction, people who are running the food location. And they'd be like, All right, uh, we got the blue screen of death in this location, someone's restarting the server. Also, there's birds in the building and on the attraction. Can we get the birds out? And so, like, your brain, like the things it has to go through on a daily basis to operate in a theme park environment, was just so much fun. And just every single day, it's a new problem because it's a whole world of things. And every day you're learning about something new, you're like, holy cow, technology can help that. And your brain just light bulb, light bulb, light bulb, light bulb. And you get to talk to these people who are not technology experts and get to work with them to understand, hey, you came to me with an idea. Let's back up a step to what are you actually trying to solve? And then we'd build trust with each other and we'd build solutions that they're like, listen, Michael, I had no idea we could make this thing this amazing when I came to you a year ago and we started this project. And you just blow your partners' minds, you blow the guests' minds with the things they get to do in the park with technology. Like the Super Nintendo World stuff is incredible. Being able to run around with a band and play like your Mario or Luigi or whatever, like that type of work was just so much fun. And it just made you want to work 24-7.

SPEAKER_02: 1:21:56

Yeah. You did. You did. I couldn't help myself. Scheduling the pod around you. You know, I I work for a startup, which I I've done a lot of work in the last four years. It is, it has exhausted me, it has drained me, it's burned me out. I've gone through all of the emotions, and as you've heard of the pod, working for a startup is not easy. Yeah. But the one thing I had the luxury of doing was scheduling the pod during some of my breaks, either during the day or after the day. Scheduling around you is a nightmare. It's hard. Because you were like, well, I can I can do four o'clock on Thursday, but uh I got a hard stop because after four I got to call China and then I got another call after that with Japan. It's like, do you eat? Do you sleep? I know what time you get up in the morning.

unknown: 1:22:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 1:22:36

So how are you existing? And uh, I mean, you are the world warrior. Uh shout out to you. I could not do it.

SPEAKER_00: 1:22:43

Everybody that works there, especially on the product management team, like is like that.

SPEAKER_03: 1:22:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 1:22:47

And it's hard to turn off. Like I literally, as I grew as a product owner, I got to build out the mobile app strategy globally. I got to build a product ownership team, and I eventually became an executive of product management. And I got to lead, you know, stuff for the mobile app, for the website, for team member experiences, because there's, you know, hundreds of thousands of employees globally. And so, like being able to build technology for all those things is over time, I got to build my team from scratch. And everybody on my team just wouldn't stop working because they were just so passionate. And so a huge managerial challenge was like, listen, you need to take time off. Like, and when you're off, you're off. You're not checking teams, you're not checking outlook. Like, I will evaluate you and your performance if you do not take a break because you will burn out. And I can say, you know, this gray hair was not there when I started at Universal.

SPEAKER_02: 1:23:35

You're still younger than me. But you have more gray. I think I might look older. That's the problem.

SPEAKER_00: 1:23:40

You age has to be in the gray area. But it's because it's such a passionate thing for everybody, and it's so much fun to do. Like it gets you hooked and you just can't stop working. So I had an absolute great time, and I think the leadership there is incredible. The team that I built, I love them all. They're awesome, and they're just gonna continue to do great things. Ten years. Ten years, I think theme parks is gonna be like universal, then Disney.

SPEAKER_02: 1:24:01

I I'm I'm excited to see it. You're you're throwing the gauntlet right now. Uh, again, I'm willing to fight if you want me to help fight the opposite uh side there. Uh as a as a flirting, I don't choose, I win either way. You know, I get to go to either park and have a good time. So I'm ready for it. Um, you know, I've been at the startup now, now I'm you know part of a large corporation again, still still working startup mentality because I'm my own business unit. So nothing's really changed for me, but something big has changed for you.

SPEAKER_00: 1:24:29

Yeah, yeah. At the end of 2025, I decided to leave Universal for mainly personal reasons. I had a really difficult year last year personally, and it kind of made me reevaluate where I'm spending time.

SPEAKER_03: 1:24:39

Right.

SPEAKER_00: 1:24:40

Even though I really loved Universal, I just knew I needed to take some time, do something different. So I'm not ready to announce what I'm doing, okay? Okay. I'm just kind of in a sabbatical right now, which is really nice. Just taking time, being at home. It's it's really nice. It's something I really needed after working so hard for so long. Opening a theme park. Basically, open two theme parks because we opened the the Volcano Bay water park, the first theme park, too. That was also you. That one was a nightmare, technology-wise. We'll get into that later, but the epic universe was such a smooth opening in comparison to that because of everything we learned, because of everything we did. So it was just you know an amazing time working there. And yeah, I'll disclose, I'll just close soon enough. Okay. What I'm up to next.

SPEAKER_02: 1:25:19

Okay, cool, cool. I I'm I'm ready for you to disclose it. Um, I think that brings us up to speed on where we're at. I think so. So what's next?

SPEAKER_00: 1:25:27

Yeah, so yeah, that's a little bit about us. We're revealing all about us, really weird.

SPEAKER_02: 1:25:30

Only took an hour and 30 minutes.

SPEAKER_00: 1:25:32

I was gonna say, I think we could talk for like ever. So we have to make sure we're a little confused.

SPEAKER_02: 1:25:36

This is the danger of us being in the same space.

SPEAKER_00: 1:25:38

This is a problem.

SPEAKER_02: 1:25:38

I'm not standing, we're not on Discord, uh, the dogs are barking. It's it's a different vibe. Yeah, and it's just gonna go on forever.

SPEAKER_00: 1:25:46

Yeah, we might just never end this. Okay. All right, so we got a couple more things. Now that you know who we are, what we do, now we are able to kind of broadcast this message broad more broadly. I want to talk about like why would you stay and listen to this? Why would you become a subscriber? What can you expect? Um I'll kick it off, but I want I want you to kind of add a lot to this as well. I think, like we said before, everyone's corporate journey is unique. And I think the opportunity for us now that we've kind of opened it up to our network is we can bring different perspectives on and get different people to join the community to help each other. That's what it's all about. This isn't about money for us, this isn't about anything like that. This is something we enjoy doing because we think it's valuable. And if anything, it's just a therapy session for us, and people seem to really enjoy that as well. So it's really fun for us to be able to do that together. But I would say if you are struggling in your corporate journey, if you are someone who is like, am I happy in work? Is this job right for me? You know, am I making enough? Like that is what we do this for, it's to help you figure that out. And it's something I wish I had in the early days of us starting our career. And it's something I still really value that we do together. So if you are in that spot or you're just trying to figure out how I can excel in my corporate career, I will say that Anthony has been really successful in his career. I think I've been okay in mine. And so both of us have done a pretty awesome job, bro.

SPEAKER_01: 1:27:03

Successful, okay. I think it's successful, successful.

SPEAKER_00: 1:27:08

It's successful. I think we've both been very successful, but I think it wouldn't be without us working like we are together.

SPEAKER_02: 1:27:13

Well, and also, you know, uh shout outs us. Uh also Henry Call Elmer Futterino says, this entire video has made my career feel woefully inadequate. Don't feel that way. The truly what what Michael's getting at here is this podcast, and and by extension, our community, and the guests we've had on and the conversations we have are a way for people like yourself to ask us the questions. Right? Like, I've had you, I've had the mentors I've talked about throughout my journey. That I've had my wife, huge part of my corporate journey is me talking with her. She doesn't under like I will she'll joke. It's like when you know, when me and some of my uh fellow tech workers we talk about what we do, she's like, No, it just goes over my head. But I can explain. To her in sort of a layman's term, like what I'm going through, and she's given me great advice. I've been surrounded by people that empower me. Right. You, my mentorships, my wife, not my father, uh, who's told me, you know, never leave your job, son, stay where you are, because that's all that you'll never you leave here, you're not loyal. It's like, I, Dad, if I had listened, uh-uh, I'd be laid off right now. But I would say, you know, for Elmer Federino and others who might be watching this, feeling like, man, y'all did a lot. Firstly, 15 years, right? I've been in this 15 years, you've been in this a little less than me. But the mentorship and the people around us have helped, and this podcast exists to fill that gap. The podcasts in the community really exist to fill that gap. If you don't have that kind of mentorship, if you don't have that kind of uh person in your life you can talk to, join the Discord. Watch these streams. You can you can talk to us through the chat right now. We'll give you real life uh opinions and examples. And you can also talk to us directly through the Discord or just listen to the back catalog of the 199 other episodes, which I've tried to title appropriately. You can also search through. We talk about a lot of things and we don't talk about it just because we like to. Again, this has been a net negative for me financially. I do this because I'm trying to pay it forward. Yeah. I think you do it for the same reasons. 100%.

SPEAKER_00: 1:29:16

Like everyone that I've mentored, everyone that has worked for me, like I bring these lessons in, but a community like this is one of a kind. Like to build something like this, to have a platform like this, I can truly say without you, without something like this, like my career wouldn't be this way. And so it's exactly what you said. It's for everybody who doesn't have that and just feels like they're stuck. Like this is something uh that you can listen to, and yet you can go and binge 199 episodes of just random pieces here and there. And yet, some of them are a little goofy, but they're fun. They will give you real tips and insights. And a lot of the learnings and you know observations that I've had and things that I've been like breaking through to get through a problem have come from us just talking out loud, where we're just like, whoa, I didn't even understand this perspective. Now I get why this person acted like this. And this community brings topics. If you're listening to this, you can bring us a topic and we will talk about it. We will also talk about very difficult things, and it will be hard to talk about those things, but it's important things that you can bring totally anonymously to this community where you can ask us those questions and we'll be more than happy to talk about it.

SPEAKER_02: 1:30:14

Some of some of the folks in the chat are longtime Discord contributors, the Discord itself, our corporate fam. Um, we've got so many people in there. It might not be the most active Discord on the planet, just you know, being truthful, but the conversations that happen in there are good. And the topics that have been put forward by everyone who participates in the Discord have been things we've addressed. Right. Like you and I will try and bring whatever we there have been times we have not had the amount of experience that we probably needed to talk to it. We go off, you know, we read, we learn, we'll talk to our peers, we come to, or we're bringing guests. Yep. And that's the thing, is like we will do our best to help solve your problem. Because I think at the heart of it, Michael and I are both like we like solving problems. Yes. That's part of the reason this exists, is it allows us to talk through and solve problems people have. So we are more than happy. Uh Elmer Futterino, if you if you do have, if you're at a spot where you'd like to give us more information, we'd like to help you solve your problems. 100%.

SPEAKER_00: 1:31:12

Yeah. Either in the community or just talking live on an episode if you want to deep dive into something.

SPEAKER_02: 1:31:17

In I I see in the you know, Elmer Futterino says in the middle of finding out what I want for my career, mortgage keeping me somewhere, still trying new things, uh, tied down. Like, go in the Discord. I think I know who you are in the Discord, uh, just based on your name. Write us up a topic. We'd love to dig into it for 100%. And if we can't answer it right away, we're gonna do the work, the research, yeah. Uh to to really bring you a solution and help at least offer you some paths.

SPEAKER_00: 1:31:39

Yep, absolutely. So I think to close, you know, this awesome episode has been a lot of fun. I think we could talk for hours upon hours, like 199 episodes worth. Probably, didn't we do the math one time? It was something like we've talked for like 40 days straight. Yeah. Or something like that, if we were to total the minutes.

SPEAKER_02: 1:31:53

Our hosting platform gives us that information and it's it's horrifying. I will also say the longer we go, the more it costs me. Oh, good.

SPEAKER_00: 1:32:01

So we're actually, we could just bleed him dry right now.

SPEAKER_02: 1:32:03

This is I mention the Patreon.

SPEAKER_00: 1:32:06

So to close us off, I think everything that we just talked about, you can expect. I also think, you know, we provide some utilities like a workplace happiness tool. You know, we we've we've deemed it called CAC, but it stands for culture, autonomy, um, challenge, and compensation. And it's a way that you can kind of use it to measure am I happy where I'm at? Is this going to reach me closer to my goals, where I'm at in my career? And this, these tools have been born from conversations on this podcast within the community, and we put those things out for you to use so that way you can hopefully make your experience a little bit better in the corporate world.

SPEAKER_02: 1:32:39

Yes. And uh I I can only agree with what you said. And you know, in addition to that, we are open to other ideas, right? This right here changes a lot for us because one, uh, now you know who we are. Yep. You can find us. Um, we're Google. We'll post it. We'll we'll post it. I think we should probably update our website. Um, but it it also means that we can go places and do things that we haven't done before. Yeah, right?

SPEAKER_00: 1:33:05

And bring people on that we that I've never like literally the people that know about this in my life are so few.

SPEAKER_02: 1:33:10

Right.

SPEAKER_00: 1:33:11

There is like a handful of people that even know I do this, and they're like my closest friends. So when when we announce this, people will be like, holy cow, you've done this for five years, 200 episodes, and no one knew. Yeah, it's crazy.

SPEAKER_02: 1:33:22

Yes. And I I think like, you know, we have massive LinkedIn networks, we have massive personal networks. You know, when we bring on guests, I'm I'm pulling on my my friends and fellow coworkers from jobs past to say, hey, like you do something cool. Now, some of our guests have been directly from the Discord. Yeah, we've met you and you've come on and we thank you for that. Like, it is a little bit of a gamble. Like, is this person safe? But we've never had an issue.

SPEAKER_00: 1:33:48

Never.

SPEAKER_02: 1:33:49

So, you know, I I think there's a huge opportunity for us. When you were telling me your your story at Universal, I was thinking, how much fun would it be for you and I to do a stream, live stream like this, where I force you to play a theme park simulator. Man. And I want to I want you to build a theme park based on what you know and see if you can actually do it. Roller Coaster Tycoon. Yes, it's coming back. Great game. Roller Coaster Tycoon 2, great game. Let's see if Clark Michael, excuse me, it's gonna take forever.

SPEAKER_00: 1:34:16

Yeah, we're never gonna get our names right now.

SPEAKER_02: 1:34:18

I can do it in real life. I can't do it on the pod.

SPEAKER_00: 1:34:19

Well, it's I think it's good we're doing it now and messing it up and saying it, because then people go, Bruce Anthony, Clark, Michael. Yeah, just put it together in their heads.

SPEAKER_02: 1:34:26

Uh Bruce Anthony Clark Michael sounds like an 80s musician who sings songs about last Christmas. Yep.

SPEAKER_00: 1:34:34

I call saxophone.

SPEAKER_02: 1:34:35

Okay, okay, cool. Cool, cool, cool, cool. Yeah, no, I uh this is super exciting for me, and I hope this has been uh super exciting for you. Zero Pepsi facts.

SPEAKER_00: 1:34:44

I'm disappointed. Oh, yeah, yeah. You know, there's a whole, it's funny for Super Bowl. I know you love sports ball. Uh for the Super Bowl, yeah. Pepsi was a huge sponsor. No way. And they did these challenges of can you tell the difference between like Pepsi Zero and Coke Zero? Oh. And it would be a lot of fun to do one of those.

SPEAKER_02: 1:34:59

We need to do that. I think uh just in case this is your first experience, because I think a lot of people are gonna find this because of YouTube and your your network. We have spent so much time talking specifically about historic Pepsi facts and their long lost, yet not forgotten, and very important mascot. Pepsi Man! It's to come back. We also need to play that live stream. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 1:35:22

If we can actually play like the ROM of that, that would be we absolutely can.

SPEAKER_02: 1:35:26

You gotta find that. I will make it happen. We will play Pepsi Man. Um, need to must must do it.

SPEAKER_00: 1:35:32

I love it. All right. Now you know what to expect. It's gonna be fun. It's a whole new chapter for corporate strategy.

SPEAKER_02: 1:35:38

Whole new chapter. I am uh Elmer uh Futterino says Michael Clark is a famous Aussie cricketer.

SPEAKER_00: 1:35:46

Oh, I could be an Aussie. I can't do accents, by the way. My wife will tell me I'll get canceled. So I don't do accents, but Anthony does accents really well.

SPEAKER_02: 1:35:53

I I do. And if you've listened to the pod, you've heard them come out and you will hear them in the future. But uh yeah, I'm excited.

SPEAKER_00: 1:35:59

Me too. This is a new chapter, but I'm excited to join it with everybody that's now gonna hopefully be tuning in for the first time. So yeah, I'm excited for this next step.

SPEAKER_02: 1:36:07

Uh and what do you want to see? Right? Like if this is your first experience with us, you know, I'm not gonna tell you to go listen to 200 episodes of our back catalog.

SPEAKER_00: 1:36:15

Even though some people have done that. That would be fun. Some people join our community and they're like, I'm on episode 56 of 125. You remember that? Real talk.

SPEAKER_02: 1:36:22

I will I will have people, people I work with who know, because I I've never been real, I've not been as private as you have. I've shared episodes on my LinkedIn. My coworkers know I do this. It's not a secret, but I'll have my coworkers be like, oh yeah, I'm a few episodes behind. I'm like, behind. Thank you. That's incredible. Thank you for taking the time to listen to each individual episode. I don't think you have to. There's no canon chronology to corporate strategy. But uh, you know, it is it is funny. I would say, what do you want to see now that you can see us, now that you know more about us, that we can bring to you? Let us know in the comments on this, join the Discord, let us know there. Uh, there's so many ways to reach us now. Uh the link tree, I don't think, is quite up to date because this is also going to be uploaded in audio format to our our podcast platforms. People can hear this if they're more comfortable with that way.

SPEAKER_00: 1:37:12

But whew, it's a lot. Yeah, it's a number of ways you can reach us. And everything is free, by the way. So you can always listen for free. Yes. On any podcast platform, you can join our community for free in Discord. But yes, we would appreciate it if actually I wouldn't, because I don't experience the financial pain of running a podcast. But Anthony would really appreciate if you guys would join the Patreon community. And I think it will be fun because live streams like Pepsi Man, right? I think we're gonna make exclusive to things like that because it is extra content that we're putting out and having to edit and do all that stuff.

SPEAKER_02: 1:37:39

Right, right, right. And you know, uh again, if there's extra content you want from us that we're not doing today, like we will absolutely take that under consideration. And again, if you want to join the Patreon, we have a link in the show, the the YouTube video you're watching right now, the live stream. It's also in our link tree, which you can get access to. Uh, I'll have it both on our YouTube channel as well as in the show notes. Thank you. I'm uh now there's too many places, there's too many things. We do too much. And again, uh just one more plug for the Patreon. There's a supporter tier, it's a dollar a month. Uh, it shouldn't be too invasive, but it does get you a cool little gray silver uh status on Discord, and you'll be listed as a supporter. And if you get the gold tier, which is$10 a month, that makes you a corporate strategist. Of course. And uh you're gold and truly gold in our hearts. 100% if you support the show in that way, and that will get you access to more content and part of that platform. So that's uh that's the show. 200th episode. We did it. We did it. 200th. Yeah. And uh now I don't know how to close it. Yeah, I mean in LiveSpace. Buy our merch. Oh, yeah, you can buy our merch. So buying the merch does not support us.

SPEAKER_00: 1:38:46

No, and we literally make zero money on this, but these things are awesome. It's expensive.

SPEAKER_02: 1:38:49

How hilarious is that? This this mug has done the work.

SPEAKER_00: 1:38:52

Yeah, I use it all the time.

SPEAKER_02: 1:38:53

I you know, we need to. Did you did you do the logo, by the way?

SPEAKER_00: 1:38:57

Uh I haven't yet, but I will.

SPEAKER_02: 1:38:58

Oh, okay, cool.

SPEAKER_00: 1:38:58

I I do something sometimes. I had to I had to prep for the podcast. You know, that was my job.

SPEAKER_02: 1:39:03

You know, I didn't have to do anything. I gave him an action item. I was like, hey, can you get this set up before the show on Friday? I'm so glad. So glad I offloaded that to you.

SPEAKER_00: 1:39:11

Listen, I'm on a sabbatical right now.

SPEAKER_02: 1:39:14

Uh one one other call out. Just uh if if you are interested in being a guest in the show, if you have a cool job, if you if you work a terrible job and you want to share it anonymously, we'll we'll still do the digital conversations. We'll we'll find ways to make it work. So uh let us know. We are always looking for new and exciting guests to have on. So I'll make that call out too. But support the show, Patreon, join the show, be a guest. Thirdly, and most importantly, is if this is your first encounter with us, we say this every pod, but this is still true. Very much word of mouth, as we talked about our marketing. 100%. Please share this with your friends. Share the YouTube link, share the links on Apple, Spotify, wherever you listen, please share. Uh, because this is the year of corporate strategy. We are looking to see if we can increase our listenership and viewership by doing things like this. Share it broadly. Please. Share it widely, and leave us a review if you can.

SPEAKER_00: 1:40:07

That'd be great.

SPEAKER_02: 1:40:08

That'd be great. Uh, and I think that does it for our 200th episode, first live stream extravaganza. Um, thanks for thanks for sticking with us all these years. And until next time, I'm Anthony.

SPEAKER_00: 1:40:23

And I'm Michael?

SPEAKER_02: 1:40:24

Oh, gross.

SPEAKER_00: 1:40:25

Oh, it feels weird. This is not as I just doesn't five years of I'm Bruce and I'm Clark. And now it's syllable. Anthony and Michael? Oh, yeah, I don't know.

SPEAKER_02: 1:40:35

Bruce and Clark was single syllable. Yep. Anthony? What kind of name is that? Like I sound like some kind of an Italian ragamuffin.

SPEAKER_00: 1:40:43

I mean, I could be Michael Angelo. Michael? Michelangelo. Michelangelo. Anthony. I'm Antonio. He's Michelangelo. That could actually play. That could play.

SPEAKER_02: 1:40:51

Maybe that's how we close it. Just go full Italian. I think more it's you gotta do either more syllables or less. There is no middle.

SPEAKER_00: 1:40:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 1:40:57

Like Anthony and Michael.

SPEAKER_00: 1:40:59

It just sounds weird. But Antonio, Michelangelo. Maybe if we do Michael Anthony, it kind of just flows. Just mix them together.

SPEAKER_02: 1:41:09

I I am incredibly wigged out. I don't know why the word Michael Anthony is now stuck in my craw. I can't un I can't unhear it. Uh you're on mute. And off cam. Turn it on. And we'll see you next week. We'll see you next week.