Michael Smith - CIO at Estée Lauder

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:00) Hello, my friends. One of our past guests, Mike Anderson, the founder and CTO at Tealium, he deployed Leaderbits back in April to his leaders and he's having tremendous amounts of success and he's referring us to new customers and investors. So a special thank you and a special shout out to Mike for helping us spread the word. If you want better leaders faster, then send an email to your HR or learning development team and tell them that you want your leaders taking action with Leaderbits. Now get excited because today we are talking to Michael Smith, the CIO of Estée Lauder.

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:34) And we discuss innovation within your brand, how to get the most out of your executive team, and what you can learn from a reverse mentor relationship. All of this right here, right now on the Modern CTO Podcast. Here we go. This is the Modern CTO Podcast. Hey, buddy.

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:00) How are you, my friend?

(Michael Smith at 00:01:02) Good. Good to see you. Where are

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:03) you calling in from?

(Michael Smith at 00:01:05) I'm at Long Island City in our new tech and innovation hub.

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:11) Oh, like a new building?

(Michael Smith at 00:01:13) A new building. Yeah. We've been in here, I want to say, October was when we moved in. And, you know, we were in Long Island City before Amazon ever started talking about it or left. But we're excited to be here.

(Michael Smith at 00:01:27) JetBlue is in the same building as us.

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:29) Oh, really? I love their flights. I'm on East Coast. I'm in Florida. So getting up and down the East Coast, if you get a JetBlue flight, that's the first one you try.

(Michael Smith at 00:01:39) Yeah. Absolutely. They, you know, I go back to the West Coast fairly often. My family is still back there. And the nice thing about JetBlue is they offer a 9:30 flight out.

(Michael Smith at 00:01:52) So you can stay in the office Friday till 6:15, 6:30, and still make the flight.

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:59) Still make it back. Yeah. And the time shift isn't that bad. Right? Probably get a midnight, right? Yep. 1 a.m. back like that? Yeah. Yep.

(Joel Beasley at 00:02:06) Those direct flights are awesome. So I'm really excited because when we started talking about this, having this interview and this idea, for me, Estée Lauder is a makeup style brand. For better or for worse, that's what's in my head. But every company these days has to be a technology company. Right?

(Joel Beasley at 00:02:29) Absolutely. It has to be building stuff, has to be deploying products. So normally, I like to talk about how you fell in love with technology, but I'm just so interested in what happens. What is the technology landscape at Estée Lauder look like?

(Michael Smith at 00:02:45) Well, first of all, yes, we are, I think every company is a technology company these days. And we are more than just a makeup company. I know.

(Michael Smith at 00:03:00) You know, we are a prestige beauty company, and we have 30 brands.

(Joel Beasley at 00:03:06) Oh, wow.

(Michael Smith at 00:03:07) Yeah. It's, whether it's MAC or Tom Ford or La Mer or Clinique or Origins. Oh. List goes on and on, and, you know, we're in everything from skincare to makeup to hair, and across makeup. You know, it's everything from lip to eye to foundations.

(Michael Smith at 00:03:31) And, yeah, we believe we're the, well, we are the number one prestige beauty company in the world. Deloitte just talked about us as the second largest luxury company in the world. And we believe we're the best diversified pure play in the industry because of all the brands we have, all the markets we play in. We're not the company that probably a lot of people think we are. We're not the company I thought we were when I first got a call.

(Michael Smith at 00:04:03) Right? But, yes, back to your technology question. Consumers right now are expecting to be able to interact with brands, and not just in our industry, but I do believe particularly in our industry, expecting to be able to use technology to interact with brands in a very different way. And, you know, for us, that means a lot of different things.

(Michael Smith at 00:04:28) Obviously, just that seamless experience between social, whether you're dealing with us on social, online, on your phone, in a store, in one of our partner stores, that we can create that seamless experience. But it's also once you get in the store, you know, being able to do virtual try-on with makeup as an example, being able to find that perfect shade. You know, it really is for us about creating that luxury experience of the future, of tomorrow.

(Joel Beasley at 00:05:03) And the technology's there. Have you seen the Snapchat filters? You can do it today.

(Michael Smith at 00:05:07) Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. It's a, yeah.

(Michael Smith at 00:05:12) We, you know, and then obviously, there's a huge personalization play as well. Just how do you, you know, one of our goals is to be the most inclusive beauty company in the world. And nothing's more inclusive. Nobody feels like belonging more than when you can personalize it for them and personalize the experience, personalize the product, personalize the shade. I mean, shade is a very personal thing, and this is something that obviously is not really the target consumer for makeup.

(Michael Smith at 00:05:44) It's something that it took me a while to understand, but it's a very personal thing. Why have five shades when you could have thousands? You know? Right. It's the opportunity for what we can do with technology in this space is huge and I think untapped.

(Joel Beasley at 00:06:00) And it's an okay topic of conversation, and here's why. Because as we're talking about this, what's going through my head is engineering the machine that's going to allow me to say, do a color wheel or a photo detection and actually get my own shade that's custom for me. You know?

(Michael Smith at 00:06:15) There's some incredible algorithms out there that we own that tell you exactly what your perfect shade is.

(Joel Beasley at 00:06:20) Now that's cool. Now that, the other thing that's very cool is that while I was limited in my knowledge of exactly what the company did as far as its breadth of services and brands, the one thing that I knew is when I heard that name, Estée Lauder, it was synonymous with high quality. Right? And then so I was excited because I saw in your history that you were at Nike for a long time, and Yep. They have done an incredible job branding.

(Joel Beasley at 00:06:52) Right? People love Nike, and I find that high quality brands, behind them are high quality people. And so for me, it's interesting when I watch people move from high quality brands to high quality brands. I'm like, I want to know more about those humans behind those companies because they're usually super high quality people. Now, like, the technology, so you're building, are you actively building these personalization? What does that look like now? What's the coolest tech you guys have today that's public and we can talk about it?

(Michael Smith at 00:07:24) That's public and I can talk about? Oh.

(Joel Beasley at 00:07:26) Or if you can't talk about it, we could do that. We could edit the interview.

(Michael Smith at 00:07:30) Yeah. I probably shouldn't go there. I can, I want to talk about the high quality thing for a second?

(Joel Beasley at 00:07:37) Okay. Yeah.

(Michael Smith at 00:07:39) Yeah. Obviously, great companies are about great people, and we have phenomenal people here. There were phenomenal people at Nike as well. I also think great companies that have great brands, there's two things, two other qualities, I believe, that are consistent about them. They're usually consumer obsessed and innovations in their DNA.

(Michael Smith at 00:08:03) And I can draw that correlation between these two companies. It's a big part of why I wanted to be here because at the end of the day, if you, you can be a great marketer, but if you don't have great products that are really innovating, then it's not going to last. And we're coming back to great things that are out there. I did mention the virtual try-on, but we have a number of different versions of that. There are stores that you can go into with Tom Ford where you can actually, as you look into the mirror, record your entire experience and then send that off.

(Michael Smith at 00:09:01) You know, because what'll happen is somebody will go in, they'll get a set of services, and then they won't be able to recreate what that makeup artist did. And so this allows you to record that, send it to yourself, share it with your friends, be able to pull that back at any time. And we're really seeing a lot of interest and use and adoption of that service, driving a lot of traffic.

(Joel Beasley at 00:09:17) Now how do you provide services to all the brands? Is it one technology center and you have teams per brand? How do you innovate within the brand? Why does Tom Ford have that and maybe MAC doesn't?

(Michael Smith at 00:09:30) Well, we are a brand-led company, and it really starts with the brands in terms of the consumers that they target, the Mhmm. The what they want to stand for, the messages that they stand for, even their philanthropic efforts are unique to the brand like MAC, for instance. MAC has the AIDS Fund. And in fact, it's the largest non-pharma AIDS fund in the world. And La Mer is about blue oceans and clean water and, you know, the list goes on and on, but this is unique to the brand.

(Michael Smith at 00:10:04) The challenge that I think you're touching on is as an IT organization and a technology organization, we have to support all of that. And so one of the transformations we made when I arrived is we went from being really organized around technology to organized around our business partners to, because we were running in a very centralized way, but yet that's not how the company runs. And so we needed that agility. And so we are organized around teams that support brands. We have teams that support regions, and we have teams that support functions.

(Michael Smith at 00:10:43) And, you know, key groups like enterprise architecture and some of our development operations and innovation sit under those as shared services. And, you know, we're standing up innovation labs that can be a resource to the brands. And, you know, we provide innovation as a service. We also provide it as just a platform that you can come in, you can use datasets, you can use tools, tap into expertise, because innovation happens everywhere. And, you know, if you try to centralize that too much, it won't be successful.

(Joel Beasley at 00:11:19) Yeah. It's like the opposite. Like, how do we centralize innovation and make it incredibly repeatable? It's interesting to have a conversation. Right?

(Michael Smith at 00:11:28) It really is. And it's funny how many companies try to go down that path. But it seems, I mean, it seems common sense to me that that's not the way to go. But

(Joel Beasley at 00:11:39) So your first priority as you onboarded into Estée Lauder, where was your mind? Where was your focus right away?

(Michael Smith at 00:11:48) My first thing was to get to know this business. I, you know, I came in here with a mix of backgrounds, pharma, so had the manufacturing, FDA, regulatory, the science component, research and development at Nike for 22 years. Really understood consumers, innovation, marketing, brand management, retail, understood a lot of the journey, but I didn't know prestige beauty. And it doesn't matter if you have all these other things. I told a couple of people when I was interviewing, and I said, I think the difference between whether I'll be a good CIO or a great CIO is understanding the nuances of the prestige beauty business and understanding that consumer and why this business is important.

(Michael Smith at 00:12:39) And so that was really my focus, and I was very fortunate in the first couple of weeks to sit in some brand innovation meetings where they were talking about innovation around their product and innovation around how they're going to go to market. And that was, one, very informative, but it also created for me for the first time that connection to the brands and really understanding what it means to be in the beauty business and how it can impact people and just how dynamic and exciting it is. And then, you know, I knew that from a company growth standpoint. I mean, you could look at our company and see the trajectory we're on year over year or quarter over quarter. But to actually connect with the brands, that was really, I was fortunate to have that experience in the first couple of weeks.

(Joel Beasley at 00:13:34) Yeah. I like what you said because it triggered, people like to look good. And when you look good, you feel good. Right? I definitely feel different based on the clothes I wear.

(Joel Beasley at 00:13:44) Right? And so you, I didn't realize that there's actually, the makeup industry or this prestige beauty industry has the ability to actually make millions of people feel awesome. Confidence. That's pretty cool. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:14:01) It gives you confidence. Right? Actually, it can make you feel multiple different ways, but we'll only talk about confidence on the show. So just give me some context. How many people are in technology within your IT organization?

(Michael Smith at 00:14:16) We have several hundred people. It's not massive. I'd say we're lean and we're lean and mean, and we have a lot of partners with us as well. So

(Joel Beasley at 00:14:30) On a personal note, I'm learning the difference between clients and partners. And it's the relationship. And it's really interesting because when you have partners, that's a much deeper connection as far as business dependencies than just hiring an outside company to do some service for you. So I'm young. Right? I'm 31, and so I'm new to this world, but I'm really understanding that the partner thing is way, I like it better.

(Joel Beasley at 00:15:05) I like partners because you get to do business with them, and it's more fun, personally. Yeah.

(Michael Smith at 00:15:12) Yeah. Yeah. No. I agree 100%. It's hard to find a good partner, though.

(Michael Smith at 00:15:17) It's not, Yes. You know, because I do think most people default to what's the commercial transaction, what's the vendor transaction, versus stepping back and really looking at the bigger picture. One of the great lessons I learned was when I was working for a CIO, he created a technology leadership forum where he brought in the biggest players and said, we're no longer going to be in the center as the client or the customer doing a hub and spoke relationship. We're going to get you all in a room together, and we're going to sign a multidimensional NDA, and we're going to build a plan on how to move our company forward together. And it was the most incredible thing I've seen, and it was very impactful.

(Joel Beasley at 00:16:04) Who did this?

(Michael Smith at 00:16:07) That was Roland Pöhnacker, actually. I don't know if you ever met Roland, but he was CIO at Nike at the time.

(Joel Beasley at 00:16:13) Is he still active in business?

(Michael Smith at 00:16:16) He's not. He's retired. He did his brief stint at Levi's, and then he said, his kids went off to college, and Yeah. And he said it's time for he and his wife to explore the world.

(Joel Beasley at 00:16:29) Nice. Yeah.

(Michael Smith at 00:16:30) I know.

(Joel Beasley at 00:16:31) Kudos to him. Right? It's like, okay. You do amazing contributions throughout your career, and then you say you're going to go do your exploring. Now it's just you just say thank you and have fun. Right?

(Michael Smith at 00:16:42) Yeah. Not bad.

(Joel Beasley at 00:16:43) Yeah. That, I bet you he's a wealth of knowledge.

(Michael Smith at 00:16:47) He is. He is. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:16:49) So what are you personally most excited about right now?

(Michael Smith at 00:16:56) Wow. What is there not to be excited about? Yeah. Seriously, I have this amazing job, and we are working on pretty incredible programs and projects to focus on growth in our business, focus on greater consumer connections. You know, I'm at a company where I can actually invest in innovation.

(Michael Smith at 00:17:25) And, you know, there's some exciting things out there with analytics that we believe we can take it to the next level. You know, I've got a great team. It's hard not to be excited on the professional front. It's hard not to be excited. I feel like I got a dream job.

(Michael Smith at 00:17:44) So—

(Joel Beasley at 00:17:44) Yeah. Me too. I love it. No. I like your long list of reasons why you're excited.

(Joel Beasley at 00:17:52) So I'm curious to know what your close team looks like. Like, what type of people do you have? I'm assuming that you got about five to seven people that report directly to you. But what type of roles are those?

(Michael Smith at 00:18:08) Yeah. Actually, I actually have nine direct reports at the moment. And it's a mix of people that have been here for a while and some newer folks. Broad range of different industries, broad range of cultural experiences, professional experiences. It's a pretty diverse team.

(Michael Smith at 00:18:30) You know, I have, if you just think about it in broad terms, I have somebody responsible for the brands, somebody responsible for regions, somebody responsible for functions. The CSO reports into me.

(Joel Beasley at 00:18:46) Super important these days. Yeah.

(Michael Smith at 00:18:48) Yeah. Absolutely. And then enterprise architecture, operations and strategy, and then our development and tech ops area. And we're really in that shift into a true agile environment. We started that journey.

(Michael Smith at 00:19:07) We're really closing out our first year of our three-year strategy. And so we're in that place of shifting to agile, shifting to a true products and platforms approach, particularly as you're more consumer-facing, where we're moving from a buy and integrate strategy to more of a build when you're closer to the consumer. And—

(Joel Beasley at 00:19:33) Oh, yeah. For sure. Yeah. I know what you're talking about right now. If you can deploy directly to the consumer—

(Michael Smith at 00:19:38) Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then, of course, we're making the, like everybody else, making the shifts to the cloud and getting out of, you know, kind of our own prem data source.

(Joel Beasley at 00:19:50) Yeah. I like that. That's an interesting—this is what I like about talking to everybody so differently is everyone's structure is just slightly different based on the nuances of their business.

(Michael Smith at 00:20:02) Exactly.

(Joel Beasley at 00:20:02) So I always laugh when people ask me, like, what's the roles and responsibilities of the CTO or CIO? I'm like, what business is it?

(Michael Smith at 00:20:10) Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. I, you know, there's maybe four or five major frameworks, but your point of how you apply them has to be unique to the business. And I would say in my major roles at Nike and pharma and then here, it's been a different model every time.

(Joel Beasley at 00:20:32) I'm curious to know. On your LinkedIn, right, it says—and your bio says—committed to a legacy of building leaders, high-performing teams that transform industries. So you seem super passionate about that. Can you talk to me a little bit about that?

(Michael Smith at 00:20:46) Yeah. It really is my passion. More than anything, I want to impact people. It's really the only thing I think that ultimately matters. And one of the things I like about this job is there's really a couple of dimensions.

(Michael Smith at 00:21:10) We've talked a lot about consumers. That's one reason I love consumer-driven companies, is because you can impact the lives of consumers in a positive way. And that is so consistent with the values of this company going all the way back to Mrs. Estée Lauder. And, you know, but you also get to impact employees. And the opportunity to invest in people and to—you know, the majority of us spend the majority of our time at work.

(Michael Smith at 00:21:44) And one of the most influential people can be the person you work for because they can make your life miserable, or they can make it fun and exciting and interesting. And, you know, the work we do in technology is hard, but it's also super interesting. And I just want to be able to amplify that for people. I want people to—I talk about one of the things I talk about a lot is a culture of joy. And it's because it means a lot to me, and the word joy is, if you break it up, it means a sense of achievement and a sense of well-being.

(Michael Smith at 00:22:20) And I want to create that sense of well-being for people that they know. One, I want to be the company that takes care of their employees, that pays fairly, that provides great benefits, that ensures their safety, and ensures long-term well-being. But also that as a leader or a manager of people that you have their back. Right? Because that's where innovation is going to come from, is when people feel confident that they can take a risk, that there's that opportunity.

(Michael Smith at 00:22:58) And then the sense of achievement is, you know, I think we're all wired to accomplish something, and we all find that feeling you get when you—and so just being at a place where you can drive to actually accomplish things that matter. And so that's what motivates me, and that's why I want to be here. I want to have a chance to challenge people, to inspire people, and have them do more. So I know I rambled a little bit.

(Joel Beasley at 00:23:33) No. It was beautiful and poetic. Thank you. No. Like, this is what it's all about.

(Joel Beasley at 00:23:40) Right? Because your unique perspective on, like, who you are and how you grow your teams and lead and what's driving you. I mean, this is the raw—this is why people listen. Right? Because they get to know, like, what great leaders are actually driving towards, and I think that's really important.

(Joel Beasley at 00:24:01) So, by the way, do you know my story? You could say no. I'd like—on the spot. It's okay.

(Michael Smith at 00:24:08) All right. Tell me about it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:24:09) Well, all right. Yeah. Beautiful answer. Yeah. So, writing code since age eight, father was an engineer, taught me to write code.

(Joel Beasley at 00:24:18) I'm 31 now. And wrote code all the way up through high school, ended up getting hit by a car and a wheelchair, spent more time writing code. Right? And that's, like, the positive of the negative situation. And then ended up selling some technology, but still being pretty quiet.

(Joel Beasley at 00:24:36) And then about, you know, two years ago, I started doing this blog, which got really popular, turned into a book, and then now the podcast. But before that, like, I'd say, if you were to walk up to me, you know, two and a half, three years ago, I was just incredibly quiet, just writing code, and I knew about, you know, five, seven people. Right?

(Michael Smith at 00:24:58) Yeah. And then—

(Joel Beasley at 00:24:58) Now I travel the world and speak to, like, thousands of technologists, and it's just this crazy change that happened in my life. But what I'm finding is, first of all, the reason why I'm so excited is because I think I have, like, 17 years of the not talking pent up inside of me. And secondly, the path has taken me to being super interested in how leaders think and how they grow their teams. But the reward of helping other people, whether it's directly on your team or by sharing—you said earlier we're wired for that. I'm, like, hardwired for that for sure.

(Joel Beasley at 00:25:36) Like, I get so excited when I get texts or LinkedIns or tweets or messages. Like, oh, I heard this from one of your guests, and it helped me a lot or any—that positivity has been more energizing than anything I've ever experienced, like growing a team and all of that. It's just—I couldn't be anything else now.

(Michael Smith at 00:25:59) Yeah. That's amazing. That is amazing. You said your father taught you to code at eight?

(Joel Beasley at 00:26:05) Yeah. Yeah. So he would take me—we were pretty poor. He did freelance stuff on the nights and weekends. And so I had siblings, so he would take me to work to keep—so my mom would have to deal with two kids. And I would be a kid, so to keep me busy, he taught me how to, like, move bits around in memory and, like, search through tables and do all of this old school computer-related stuff.

(Michael Smith at 00:26:31) Yeah. That's very cool. Although, you can't talk to me about old school. I started as a COBOL programmer. So yeah.

(Michael Smith at 00:26:40) You know, I was this morning, I was at the Time 100 Most Influential—100 Most Influential Summit, and Tim Cook was speaking.

(Joel Beasley at 00:26:53) Really?

(Michael Smith at 00:26:53) And he said that he believed that every child should learn to code, that it should be the second language of choice. And so I find it interesting that you learned at eight, and then now look at what you've—I mean, look at where it's taking you and look at your accomplishment, achievement, and the future ahead. Right? I mean, just—it alludes to something.

(Joel Beasley at 00:27:20) I'm excited because I feel like I take—I interview people like you and you share and then I'm, like, the in-between. And I found this—these little organisms called mycelium. And what they do is they broker nutrients between the deep soil and the roots of trees. So a tree needs some nutrient. It'll take something in exchange and go down into the lower soil and bring something—it brokers nutrients between. And so I found, like, my usefulness in the fact that, like, you know, I come interview people like you, and then the audience hears, and that brings them value.

(Joel Beasley at 00:27:56) And on the in-between, all of a sudden, I became valuable by brokering the knowledge transfer.

(Michael Smith at 00:28:04) That's a—yeah. That's amazing. I—no. I forgot where I heard this the other day, but they were talking about the most powerful or most influential people are the ones that don't just create—don't just expand their network, but they connect networks. I know where it was.

(Michael Smith at 00:28:21) Keith Ferrazzi. And we had Keith Ferrazzi come speak to my leadership team. And that was one of the things he talked about—the way you really build teams and make a difference and influence is you're not just focused on your network, but other people's networks. And that's exactly what you're doing. It's pretty amazing.

(Joel Beasley at 00:28:43) So I'm really excited about getting to speak to you and all of this stuff. And but I guess the question that is on the tip of my mind right now is because we're talking about leadership and you have this team under you, I want to know what stands out to you that—like a behavior someone would do that would stand out to you, that would cause you to invest your time into them? That's a—that's a good question.

(Michael Smith at 00:29:11) I don't know that I could boil it down to one thing. Some of the ones that come to mind immediately is curiosity. Somebody that's curious that wants to learn. You know, the leaders I've been able to see and work with, whether it was, you know, Mark Parker is CEO at Nike.

(Michael Smith at 00:29:43) Heather Bresch is the CEO at Mylan. Fabrizio here. You know, one thing that they have in common, and I'll say this particularly about Mark and Heather because their journeys were similar in that they both started at the very bottom of the company and worked their way up over 20, 25 years, and were still very effective. You know, a lot of times when you stay in the same company for a long time, it's hard to continue to be innovative, continue to push the boundaries, continue to disrupt your own company. And that's what all three of these great leaders do—this constant transformation muscle that they've built. But what's behind it is their curiosity.

(Michael Smith at 00:30:24) They're lifelong learners. I've never seen people like them that not just in a specific area, but broadly, and just they want to learn more and get more perspectives and more insights. And so when I see that in someone, you know, that makes me really want to invest because I know the potential and the upside. And, you know, the other thing, I guess, is courage. When I see courage, I know some people can do amazing things.

(Michael Smith at 00:30:51) You know, courage lets you take risk. Courage lets you—it takes courage to maintain your integrity, to be honest. I mean, you know, a lot of times when you're faced with the hard choice to do the right thing, sometimes it takes courage to do that. Sometimes it's easy, but sometimes it takes courage. And so I feel like those are two things that you can kind of work with and can help you achieve greatness.

(Joel Beasley at 00:31:24) No. That's—I love it. Curiosity and courage. Yeah. So, yeah, if you see these traits, like, happening within people, your mind's like, yeah, maybe I should invest some time into them.

(Michael Smith at 00:31:38) Yeah. Absolutely.

(Joel Beasley at 00:31:39) How do you currently, like, grow your executive team or—I guess, well, here's a question from the audience from last week that I haven't gotten an answer for. They were wondering, like, you have your executive team under you, but how do you prepare that next generation? Because companies grow and people move, and so, like, how do you prepare the layer under your current layer?

(Michael Smith at 00:32:09) A couple of ways. You know, I'm a big believer in stretch assignments. And just, as you identify that next layer, give them stretch assignments. Give them an opportunity to do something that's a little bit out of their comfort zone and put them in leadership roles. It works both ways too, though.

(Michael Smith at 00:32:35) Fabrizio started here a reverse mentor program, which was really to take millennials and be a mentor to him. And that expanded over the executive group. I have a reverse mentor. A number of my leadership team members have reverse mentors. And so it's an opportunity for, you know, some of those earlier in their career to actually mentor and teach the executives of the company.

(Michael Smith at 00:33:02) And I think, as you know, when you mentor somebody, you as the mentor, you tend to learn more than the mentee does. And so I think it's great exposure for them. It's also super helpful for us as executives and leaders to stay in touch with what really matters. We also have a millennial advisory board, one inside of IT, but we have them elsewhere inside the company. And those are also opportunities that create that chance for people to raise up and kind of take on a different level of responsibility.

(Joel Beasley at 00:33:32) I'm learning a lot. I've never heard of either of those two things, and I like them. They sound like—it's how you keep everything close when you're separated.

(Michael Smith at 00:33:41) Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:33:42) Right?

(Michael Smith at 00:33:43) Absolutely.

(Joel Beasley at 00:33:44) So I assume that the event you were at this morning, the Top 100 Technical Info, you were getting the award for number one. Right?

(Michael Smith at 00:33:53) No. No. No. No. No.

(Michael Smith at 00:33:54) Yeah. No. This was Time's 100 Most Influential People. So they have some great speakers. You know, Tim Cook was there.

(Michael Smith at 00:34:03) There was a panel with Aileen Lee from Cowboy Ventures and the founder of Bumble and Tyra Banks and Gail King. There was Jared Kushner was speaking, Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton, you know, pretty—they had screenwriters, and it was a pretty amazing event to get a lot of different perspectives, entertaining and insightful.

(Joel Beasley at 00:34:32) I like it. And it was a daytime event because usually the events that all the popular people are at are in the evening. But this is a cool one because it's a business one. I mean, I'm up at like 5 a.m.

(Michael Smith at 00:34:42) Yeah. Yeah. No, they do have a gala tonight, and I guess I didn't make the cut for that.

(Joel Beasley at 00:34:49) Not at the gala. So when are you—do you do speaking? You have to do some public speaking.

(Michael Smith at 00:34:57) I do some. I do some.

(Joel Beasley at 00:34:59) So what type of topics? You don't get nervous?

(Michael Smith at 00:35:02) Yes, I do.

(Joel Beasley at 00:35:04) Okay. First of all, nervousness is just the feeling of excitement because you're about to change the world. It'll happen. Anytime you're going to go change the world, you're going to feel a little bit of nervousness because all the electrons build up on you because the world knows what's going to happen. So you're just excited because you're fixing to share your knowledge and perspective with all of these people. But so what topics do you typically speak on?

(Michael Smith at 00:35:30) I usually will speak on the importance of culture and innovation. I will speak about leadership and occasionally about transforming organizations.

(Joel Beasley at 00:35:47) Do you have a date when you're speaking next, or you just as the opportunities come up?

(Michael Smith at 00:35:52) As the opportunities come up. I don't have anything on my calendar now that I'm aware of.

(Joel Beasley at 00:35:58) Let me know when you do. I would love to come hear you speak.

(Michael Smith at 00:36:01) Oh, wow. I would be honored.

(Joel Beasley at 00:36:03) I'll bring my crew. Right? There's like three or four of us. We'll make posters. We won't be in the first row. We'll be on row three so you could see us, you know, or, you know, get a spotlight on it. We'll hold up the posters. Now do you prefer Michael or Mike?

(Michael Smith at 00:36:21) I get called both. I probably prefer Michael, though.

(Joel Beasley at 00:36:26) Yeah. You know what I'm finding? I'm finding a lot of Michaels prefer Michael.

(Michael Smith at 00:36:31) Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:36:32) Yeah. That's just my research.

(Michael Smith at 00:36:34) Yeah. Nice.

(Joel Beasley at 00:36:36) So what is—as we start to wrap up here, I'm curious to know, if you—let's say that you're driving down the road. Okay? Let's pretend you have a Tesla. I don't know if you do or not.

(Michael Smith at 00:36:48) I do not.

(Joel Beasley at 00:36:49) But okay. You're driving down the road in your Tesla, and Elon Musk pulls up next to you, and he's got a Tesla too. Right?

(Michael Smith at 00:36:58) I hope so.

(Joel Beasley at 00:36:58) He's showing off dog mode and all this stuff. Right? And he invites you over to his house. And so you go over to Elon Musk's house, and he's got a time machine. And you go into this time machine, and you go back ten years, right, to your past self, and you get to give yourself one piece of advice. What would it be?

(Michael Smith at 00:37:23) Make sure you're on that road again that night so that you meet Elon Musk, first of all. But I would say enjoy the journey. You know, I was fortunate at Nike that as I got more and more responsibility each time, they would give me an executive coach, which I highly recommend, by the way. It's great to have somebody give you kind of unabridged feedback. And the coach told me, said, you know, at that point in my career, I was more about what was next. You know, I was all about what was next. And the coach said, you know, sometimes you just got to stop and enjoy the journey and enjoy and celebrate where you're at. So that—it would either be that or the, you know, know your passion so that you can drive your career around that. Andrew Carnegie is "my heart is in the work." And, you know, for me, my heart is in the work because it is about building leaders. It is about developing teams. It is about helping the lives of consumers. It is about innovation. It is about transforming organizations, building great cultures. And that's where my passion is, and that's why my heart is in the work. And I believe that people can find that. Sometimes when you say pursue your passion, people envision it as being, you know, what's the word I'm looking for? Trivial, I guess. But you can do—meaning your passion can be about really meaningful, impactful things in life.

(Joel Beasley at 00:39:17) Yeah. And then, you know, I think it was the book Grit where they say that the people who have mastered their crafts, you don't love it all the time. There's no one—you find something, and then you find interest in it, and then you work at it, and then you kind of hate it, but you developed a little skill at it, so it's somewhat rewarding. That's how the human—we're programmed. We do the work, we gain a little skill, it kind of is painful, but then we can gain a little more skill, and then we can get a little bit more reward out of the work. And if we keep going a mile deep on that skill, then it becomes very rewarding. And then you get into that level of, like, you're so good at it, people can't help but notice.

(Michael Smith at 00:39:56) Yeah. Absolutely.

(Joel Beasley at 00:39:58) Yeah. This is fantastic conversation, Michael. I really enjoyed it. But next time I'm in New York, I'll ping you, let you know I'm coming through because I travel around everywhere, and maybe stop by, get a tour or something.

(Michael Smith at 00:40:10) We would love to host you here. It would be fantastic.

(Joel Beasley at 00:40:15) Awesome.

(Michael Smith at 00:40:16) Great to speak with you. Great to—

(Joel Beasley at 00:40:17) Great to talk to you, Michael. Have a great day.

(Michael Smith at 00:40:19) All right. You too.

(Joel Beasley at 00:40:20) See you.

(Michael Smith at 00:40:20) Bye-bye.

(Joel Beasley at 00:40:27) Thank you so much for listening. If you'd like to help, please take a moment right now to open up the iTunes app and leave a review of the podcast. If you take a screenshot of the review and text it or email it to a friend who needs to listen to the podcast and then CC me, [email protected]—if you CC me on the email, I'll send you a copy of the Modern CTO book or give you a shout-out on the podcast, whichever you prefer.