Ep. 7 - C-Suite Connections - Giorgio Natili

Hello and welcome to our inaugural edition of the C-Suite Connection with a bridge episode. I'm really excited. My name is Paul H. Flowers Jr., host of the Pulper Replace podcast show. And today I've got all the way from the Pacific coast of the US, Mr. Giorgio Natili. Giorgio, if you would say hello to the audience.

Good morning. Good evening, everyone. Paul, super excited to be here. And you are great. You are the one of the few that say my name right. Thank you for that.

Well, as they say, Hooked on Phonics worked for me. And ladies and gents and the audible audience, we're excited to bring to you today again, like I shared, a bridge episode where we're coming into The C-Suite Connection with a gentleman who has a tremendous amount of experience and currently sits in a vice president role as the head of engineering for Opaque Systems. Now you might say, well, vice president's not C, and what this episode is here to do is to make sure that we can bridge the gap between those individuals that may currently be sitting in a C-suite position as well as those who endeavor to be in a C-suite position. Because again, you want to know what you're getting into if you're wanting to take that move and responsibility. So Giorgio, again, thank you so much for joining us today. And let's just hop right in with some of your current projects, where you are with OPAQ Systems, and if you'd like to share some of the story on how you got to where you are today.

Absolutely. So at OPAQ, we are inventing and pursuing the concept of confidential AI. Basically, we build technologies and workflows on top of confidential computing that make secure any, any AI workflow. Think about prompting, think about agentic workflows, think about RAG inference. Everything can be done in such an infrastructure and with such an attestation mechanism that you can have proof, physical proof that whatever part of the system is talking with another party is legitimate and there are no attack in progress. Think that we use confidential virtual machines that can be configured in such a way that if anything changes while the virtual machine is in execution, that just goes in panic mode and shuts down. So it's making it very hard to attack. Basically, you need to have access to the bare metal to maybe be successful. And all of this is because we truly believe that Responsible AI starts with data protection. And data with our technology, it's simply encrypted all the time, except when they are in usage, but they are in an encrypted and protected environment so that nobody else has access to the data. Think about if one day Google and Apple want to collaborate on something, maybe a medical study, but they don't want to share their data. Or they can't because of regulations. With our technology, they can just spin whatever workload, again, can be AI, but can be simply a Spark job, or can be a Python query, data scientist kind of job, and look at a representation of this data through synthetic data, make their work, and at some point say, okay, the job can be executed. And there is no way that anybody gets access to the real data except the system that maybe is training another system, or is generating a report, or is generating a potential diagnosis for a new virus, for a new pandemic or whatever. That's what we do.

Excellent. Now, when we talk about AI and again, securing the data, you're, I think, spot on. The system is only as good as the protection that's in place. So talk to us about maybe your inspiration really to come into this field as, again, your origin story, so to speak. How did you get into the data space? How did you get into this world?

That's a very good question because my path was not linear. As many things in life, you get to a point, to a situation, a career goal, not with a linear path. My passion or interest for security started more than a decade ago when I was working at Akamai Technologies. Over there, I had the opportunity to manage the security component of a company that is serving 30-35% of the internet traffic. So it was a big, huge responsibility.

Yeah.

And I had a blackout because I went into Amazon working on Kindle, payments, fintech. But my passion for open source and for data privacy brought me to work at Firefox. Firefox still exists, is still a browser used only by 3%, maybe less than 3% at this point, of users worldwide, but has a very strong data privacy culture. Everything is done with privacy in mind. And that combined with one of the projects that I launched when I was at Firefox that was embedding GenAI or embedding LLM models into the browser to expose GenAI capabilities natively through Web Extension API started to make me thinking and reasoning about the security of this data, of the data that you use to prompt an LLM, and data privacy in general. And that's when the connection with OPAIC came out. And after a few months, I found myself working there. So it was not linear, definitely. But It's a job that makes me feel good because I know that I'm doing something that not everybody will notice, but it is essential for everybody. Again, think about the industry when we can apply this technology. Of course, there is healthcare, there is fintech, there is any company that needs to preserve their data sovereignty or their privacy or that they are operating in a very strict regulatory environment like bank. And enabling and securing all these workflows is making me feeling good because I know that I'm protecting your data, also if you're not aware about it. It's a tiny bit like when you use Firefox. You pick Firefox because you like Firefox, 90% of the case. Then there is 10% that do it for privacy concern, right? But what is interesting is benefiting 90% of people, although they are not aware. Of it.

Absolutely. Absolutely. And as a former Firefox user, admittedly, I, you know, fell into the Chrome trap. And I know that my data is probably in more places than I'd care for it to be at this point. But as an early Firefox user, again, for those of you who are out there that might be under 30, we'll say maybe in the 20s, Mozilla Firefox was a phenomenal— it still is a phenomenal browser. That, as I'm learning now, has a high focus on privacy. So you mentioned that by using that technology or some of the responsibilities you had there was integrating AI and LLMs, or large language models, again, for those that might not be familiar with the terminology, into the browser. If you would, let's touch on some of that AI at the present because you can't shake a stick without someone talking about artificial intelligence in some way. So how would you navigate some of the tension between how fast everything is coming, right? People get kind of fearful when things happen quickly. So how do you navigate the tension between the speed of technology advancing as well as the need for, much like you mentioned, responsible AI practices?

Well, this is a very broad question. Let me start with something small, tangible that we can do in everyday, and then let's see where we can expand. So first of all, GenAI or AI in general is, should not be seen as a replacement of human beings, but as an enhancement of the abilities and the creativity of a human being. This is true for the C-suite. For the VP level and for the employees. Everybody should be aligned with this. Okay. I use GenAI on a daily basis. I can produce way faster document and analysis, but I do this because a little bit I know how to prompt it. A little bit I know what is the domain. So it doesn't remove from the equation the study, the experience and so on, because being an expert in a domain gives you the ability to look at whatever is generated from AI and say, okay, no, this is wrong, correct this and this and that. But you need to embrace it. You can't resist. You cannot act like BlackBerry. I don't know if you remember BlackBerry. Oh yeah. The phone with a wonderful keyboard that when they saw the iPhone coming out, they say, wow, nobody will ever use a phone without a keyboard. Now there are no more phones with keyboard and there is no more BlackBerry. Exactly. So you have to embrace it. You need to think that it's a companion. You have to be curious and don't ask GenAI to do your job, but to help you to be creative and to be productive on your job. Think about a manager. A manager shouldn't ask, hey, AI, do for me this plan. Oh yeah, you can also do that, but why don't start asking different questions? Give me 5 habits that I can use to change the productivity of my team. Tell me how, give me 5 cold start sentence I can use to give, to get into a more personal connection with my employees during a one-on-one. Tell me 5 jokes to make to the C-suite. So, okay, you use it just to get inspired and then make it your own. Okay. On the other end, I recently saw articles with the C-suite members that are saying, well, before hiring, we should check if a job can be done from AI. No, this is wrong. Check if the job can be augmented by AI. Then you can make a decision and say, okay, I don't need 10 engineers. I may need only 3. But it's not because AI is replacing the human being. It's because AI, it's enhancing the productivity of human being. So to be very ethical in the usage of AI, both parties have to be really convergent on one thing. AI enhance your creativity. Through AI, you can do things in days or hours rather than in weeks or months. Well, then just do it and use it in a transparent way. For instance, I am launching now an initiative in my teams to try out two different GenAI tools that can help them to generate code and accelerate their coding, their productivity. But I'm not talking about firing anyone. Excellent. I'm using GenAI to enhance the ability of a team and supplement what I need. I need more people, but I work in a startup. I have a budget and I have to be in that budget. Then GenAI became the tool that you use to accelerate the ability of your team. Don't come out with sentence, if you're not proficient in AI, you will be fired. That's ridiculous. That's not the way to do it.

Right.

Help people to transition. Every big change in technology brought resistance in and people that just jumped on it. It's part of the personality. People is the biggest asset that any company have. I don't like calling them human resources. I really hate that word referred to people. People is just people. They are a beautiful thing. And the reality is that a great company is capable of cracking the most of them and making them happy at work, excited at work, and productive at work. And you can do this through GenAI. You can do this through GenAI if you do it respectfully, keeping people first in your mind. As I told you, it's a very wide English, why topic that you take now? Tell me what you want, where you want me to go.

Sure, sure. Now you brought up a couple of really interesting things. Funny that you don't like the phrase human resources. I'd been in a position where I'd also heard the term human capital. And I sat in a meeting where they basically referred to the agents as assets, almost like no, it was a term that was akin to furniture. Basically, how many seats are we filling? Type of thing where they really didn't have that humanistic touch, like that people-centered focus in the conversations. And at times you might find that when you have leadership in a company as opposed to those being led. So in your position, you actually have quite a bit of communication between those being led, not just your team, but the teams that are impacted by the work that you do, as well as with the C-suite that ultimately might want to bring on or get rid of a number of people due to some of the advancements in technology. So if you'd share with us some of those communication tracks where, let's say, in your company or in, you know, fictitious company, for example, in privacy's sake, that a C-suite member was wanting to reduce the force by X number, yet instead you found a way to keep the individuals that were there, right? Some type of— I'm sure they've got some stories in there where you've been able to bridge that gap in communication, if you'd like to share?

Well, absolutely. I have been in more than one situation where unfortunately I had to work with my leadership on laying off people or reducing the workforce and so on. It happened once, once that happened in a pretty consistent way was when I had to reduce the number of contractors assigned to my business unit from 30 to 10. So it was a matter of reducing the workforce significantly. It was not the total workforce, but we had this group of people. And this was happening, I don't want to say the company just for the sake of privacy, but that was happening at the end of, let's say, at the end of the pandemic. Mid-2022, okay, somewhere like that, where after the big push to hire as much as people as possible, the need of online tools, online resources diminished because people get back to their normal life and they started to interact again with banking, with businesses in person. Mode. At that point, the first thing that I did was to try to understand what was the real root cause. Budget reduction, company strategy. And the reason why it was so important for me to understand it is because I had to work with the managers reporting into me on this plan. And I wanted to explain very clearly the why. I didn't want just to tell them what to do without explaining the why. The why was a budget restriction due to coming back to in-person life. The way I approached the problem was prioritizing people and business. So that were my two vectors. People, meaning making an analysis of the situation of the person. To the best that we know. We know if a contractor is on a visa or if contractor is on a specific situation where it's very tough for them to lose the job and to find a new job, maybe to stay in the US or to keep feeding their family. Because after you work with more than one year with one person, some part of the personal life leak into work. So that was one angle that I evaluated. Then there was another angle that was the business needs. And I tried to identify which are, which were the areas where I could have afforded some of these headcount reduction. Once I did this, I had a matrix with the potential 20 candidates to be released from work. At that point, I did another round of assessment assessing their skill set and their performance. Of course, they are contractors. So they have different tools from an employee to be evaluated. But I was able to assess that. Of that 20, I found a new home inside the company to about 7 or 8 of them. And I had only to let go 12 people. The way I let them go was extremely, in my opinion, extremely mindful. Was not a work. So we didn't get fired from night to day or get their system disabled, their access disabled from night to day, as many companies do.

Absolutely.

We had a conversation and I decided to take the risk and I convinced my C-suite, my managing VP and senior VP, that was the right thing to do. We had a conversation with these people and we presented to them the last scope of work for the next month or so that we had in mind for them. We asked them to confirm us the time that was needed for that scope of work, if it was 4 weeks, 5 weeks, 6 weeks, whatever it was. And that was their last assignment. So as a contractor, they felt that they were respected because they understood the why. They saw— I explained how we get to that conclusion that they were the one to be let go, but still they get from 4 to 6 weeks, not of benefit or just be, just get paid and being out of here like a bonus, but they felt that they were part of something important, that their job was valued.

Excellent.

That helped me to do a smooth, relatively smooth transition because it's never easy to be on any of that sides, neither be the one that is laid off or the one that is laying off. But of course, who is laid off, it's in a way worse situation, and they deserve a lot of respect.

Absolutely. And I, I'm really glad that you brought that up, as again, at times, different types of positions in the company, there's a need for it, right? There's a business case one way or another to bring more on or let more off. And when this happens historically throughout our country, it seems that the people that have to make those decisions are of course demonized. And, you know, I've been in that position to have to lay people off, and it's never easy. But I do enjoy the fact that you really spoke about the human side of it and was actually able to convince those that were in charge or in those C-suite positions to take a more human approach and really give them that time to show them that they were of value to the company and that through that last assignment, it could make a difference. I'm curious to know, Again, because you've got an extensive history, not just here in the States, but also from Italy. If you would note any of the cultural differences between how teams are led there versus how you've had that experience here.

Well, it's night and day. It's completely different. And now it's 11 years that I live in the US, so my Memories of Italy are seasoned, are aged. But one thing that was striking my attention is that in Italy, a team was way more playful and way more engaged from a personal standpoint than in the US. There is a reason why. In Italy, when you work in a company, you tend to stay there for a way longer period of time. Immediately when you get hired as a full-time employee, you basically, when you hire a full-time employee, you're basically getting married another time because the law is very protective for the workers. So it's really unlikely unless the company has to really get shut down or a big shake that people get laid off. And also if they laid off, they have so long, such a long period of support that goes up to 2 years, 2 years and a half of salary provided by the government that make things very different. So long story short, the average time you stay in a company is maybe 5+ years. So when you have a team that is working together since 2, 3, 4 years without any big change, the camaraderie, the friendship, it's completely different. And then it became way more fun to be at work because you're really working with friends and everything is way more informal. On the other hand, there is a part of the culture that I don't like, that in Italy you work to live while in the US you live to work. So in Italy, when it's 5 PM or also 30 minutes earlier, it's done. You see people really, well, let's talk about it tomorrow. Oh, okay. It's getting close to Christmas already. Let's talk next year. Right? Absolutely. And there is more time to enjoy your life. But at the same time, if you are very passionate about your work, you feel blocked. You say, okay, I can't do the progress that I want because people is quote unquote lazy. It's not that they are lazy. It's that they prioritize life. And it's good. Exactly. But it's also possible because the cost of living is way lower than in the US. In the US, everything is shifted toward high. So high cost, high commitment, high number of working hours and so on. This is another big difference. The third one, it's the passion. Both cultures are very passionate, but it's a different level of passion. In Italy, you are passionate about your opinion. And you really want to make your opinion, your idea succeed. In the US, not everywhere, not fully, but it's a little bit more egoless, where you are passionate about the mission of the team and not simply about your idea. So the egos in Italy are way stronger and the debates are harder and heated because you have a different perspective and the culture itself, it's very vocal. We use our hands a lot to communicate. So there is a joke, right? How you can make an Italian stay quiet? Stay quiet, just keep his hands together and that's it. But that's the other big difference that I observed, the level of passion. Here it's more toward the mission and in Italy is more toward your ideas.

I love it. I love it. So with that, there was obviously a transition period. You said you've been living here now for 11 years and of course, getting used to the culture here in America, I'm certain was a little, little challenging at times. If you would, for those that might be coming through a sort of transition of their own, either from a career standpoint, again, transitioning into a new role, aspiring for new roles, or transitioning culturally, much like you did, what were some of the things that helped you to navigate that transition so successfully?

So a great friend helped me to do that. So the manager that hired me quit with the company before my first day. But once I moved to Italy and from Italy to the US and I discovered that, I reached out and we went out for a beer and we became friends.

Okay.

So much that we're still seeing each other when we have a chance, when I, when he fly or when he's close to Seattle, he stop visiting and vice versa. When I'm more close to Boston, I tend to see him and now he's in Asia. So it's way more complicated. But after my first month where I was sitting in a corner in the office and try to do some work, but not to be too noisy and so on. At some point, I got a text message with my new manager and who should have been my previous manager with a single sentence. We hired you because of the way you are. Be 100% yourself. My answer was, are you sure? Yes, we want to see that. And that's when I started to be myself. So I started to go around for the entire floor, being friendly with everybody. And try to help everybody and jumping in every stand-up and pushing the Scrum Master to push us toward our limits and convincing the managers to buy Nerf guns, tricycles, all the cool things. That office became so cool and so engaging. That was really a pleasure to start your day. And it was really hard to say goodbye or goodnight to everybody. At some point, I got a group of 12 interns reporting to me. So I joined as an individual contributor. After 6 months, I got these 12 interns. And we became such good friends. I'm still in touch with at least 4 of them. I worked again with 1 of them. But even more, we started on Friday afternoon. To play soccer, actually football, in the park underneath, underneath the, the office. And we had so much fun that after 2-3 weeks, other offices were starting to join us. And from 3 PM to 7 PM, there was just a crazy time of everybody playing soccer and having fun. And that's when I transitioned to be 100% myself. Was easy? Yes and no. Yes, it's easy to be myself. I'm an extrovert. I'm not worried about being myself, but I learned the hard way many cultural differences, many things that was making maybe somebody pissed off when my intention was to help. My willingness to help everybody was felt like invading their space.

Right.

It was not my intention. I remember once I sent an email to two female colleagues saying, hi girls, with my manager copied. And the intention was to tell them, hey, you are still young, you're still great. It was a compliment.

Right.

And my manager wrote me, hey, we really don't say hi girls. I said, why? And then he explained, he said, oops. So thankfully I had some managers or some people around me that helped me to navigate. But the first 2 years I made every mistake possible. The difference is that when the mistake was brought to me, I say, oh no, really? I did that? I'm so sorry. And I was going and apologizing, explaining the different culture, right? I was coming from. So it's not a justification. I'm just telling you why I did it. I was a jerk. Apologies for that. Can you accept the apologies? And that helped me to ramp up from a social standpoint in a good sense, not social escalation, but to become accepted by the culture. My first year, year and a half, I had a lot of friends at work, not too many outside of work. After 2 years living in Boston, that was my first city, I had a bunch of friends. Because I was able to gel with the culture, understanding my mistakes and making clear to everybody since the beginning and say, hey, I'm sorry, I apologize since the beginning. I come from a different culture. I do mistakes. It's not my intention. Please come back to me and tell me what I've done wrong. And people started to do it. They took it seriously. Right. And that helped me to learn. So my advice for everybody is Don't be afraid. You will do mistakes. Be upfront and say, hey, I'm going to do mistakes. I'm sorry. I apologize in advance. Please help me. Nobody usually refuses to help you in the US. If you are genuine and you say, hey, help me to understand what I've done wrong here, they will tell you.

Oh, absolutely.

And don't say, oh, it was not my intention, period. Explain the cultural difference, you will have such a good time because people will understand you better as a person, and you will learn a lot from the people around you.

I love it. That is a great point when it comes to, again, how those transitions are so needed. The fact that you landed in Boston of all places as your first city, and from that cultural difference standpoint, again, making that transition I'm certain, having recently visited Boston, that you had quite a few conversations that might not have gone exactly as intended. And I'm really glad to hear that, again, you were open enough and aware enough of those differences to really be able to steer that conversation in a better place, such that, like you mentioned, you're ultimately accepted because you were really able to articulate your sincerity. And, and who and what it was that you wanted to intentionally come across, right, and avoid those miscommunications. You also mentioned the word in there, mentorship, right? I heard the word mentor. It seems like you eased by it, but I love to come back to mentorship as it is something that is drastically important. And as I understand, you also serve in a mentoring capacity, a member of the board of directors in the Med VR Community Accelerator. If you wouldn't mind, share with us a bit about that role.

Absolutely. MedVR is a nonprofit that Steve Max Paterson started a few years ago with the intention of educating and accelerating the adoption of virtual reality in medical environments. And he asked me to be on the board, for which I'm volunteering. Of course, it's a nonprofit, so I'm helping there. And What is interesting about that role is that I'm learning and I learned how complicated it is to run properly a nonprofit, how much paperwork you have to do, and how challenging it is to find funding to sustain the nonprofit. I helped Steve to secure a good amount of money from the Congress a few years ago that we're still using to run monthly webinars with interesting guests that are showing how they're using virtual reality to educate other surgeons. Or to practice very complicated and complex surgeries before doing it on a human being or on any animals. Because please remember that surgeons learn how to do surgery on animals. That I don't think it's an ethical habit. So I feel that over there I'm helping a tiny bit the medical industry, the healthcare industry, to make progress toward a more human a more ethical approach to training.

Excellent. Wow, that's actually— and I didn't get a chance, honestly, full transparency, to investigate MedVR as I did Opaque Systems. And that's really important and impressive that from a volunteer standpoint, you're actually going to be responsible for— I'll just kind of future pace it a bit— changing the way that medicine has done. And you, and you say it so lightly, like that's not a big deal. Like, you're with this role and with this company, the technology that's coming out, uh, it seems that you're able to make a huge difference, like a huge impact. And I'm curious, from a, a world-changing standpoint, did you ever think that when you first entered this field that you'd be responsible really for impacting an entire field like medicine, for instance?

Honestly, no. Um, and I said it lightly because I'm realizing now as we speak, right, the potential impact of MedVR. I usually— I did everything, everything I did in my career, from starting community, running meetups, free mentorship, uh, free training, everything I did it with the intention of sharing what I know and sharing the mistakes that I did in the past to prevent others from doing the mistakes. So it's genuine intention. But I think that that genuine and non-interested approach brought me to make impacts that are more significant than others. So yeah, MedVR, I don't know if we're changing the future of the healthcare, but we're doing our small part. Let's put it this way. Okay. But when I was in Kindle and I launched Japanese, Hindi, Arabic, and Chinese, I realized it after that I was basically bringing culture and knowledge in many countries, including India. Where access to books and to electronic content is not that granted as it is in the US. Think about the 1.2 billion, right, that are in India, 1.1, whatever they are.

Right.

Big number. They don't have the same access. And that was an impact. When I was in payments, we enabled Boleto and Pix, two cash-based method to pay for your Amazon shopping cart. Why it's important? Not everybody in Latin America has a banking account or a credit card. So in my mind, I was helping the father, the parents that were trying to buy something for their kids or for their own development. They couldn't, they can only find on Amazon, but they don't have a credit card, right? How they can do it? And that was facilitating that 7-8% of the transition that were happening through cash at Amazon and facilitating people. So I always search for, okay, how my role will help, how my role can impact, but not every time I realize at the very beginning, I realize it more after. It's like a little bit like what Steve Jobs said about his life: connecting the dots looking backward, it's so easy. Uh, connecting the dots looking forward, it's impossible. You don't see that yet.

You never know that one thing is going to lead to another and lead to another and lead to another. Excellent, excellent. Well, and again, as we're coming up to the top of the hour here, a couple pointed questions that I, I do enjoy asking the audience for the sake of transparency, kind of opening up. But before I get to my usual question, you're a family man also, is that right?

Absolutely. I have two beautiful kids and one wonderful dog that just showed up here close to me. You say family and he's coming.

Absolutely. Absolutely. And if you would, just a quick note on maybe how you balance the responsibilities of work. Again, understanding there's a huge cultural difference here, and that passion may drive you to want to work late and do more. How do you balance that? Family life, you know, parent, spouse, etc., and also make sure you're hitting those metrics?

I try to do my best. I'm not perfect. I don't believe in perfection. But an habit that I changed several years ago just to make more, more space for my spouse was waking up early morning rather than working late nights. That was a big differentiator for me because instead of staying all the night up and maybe go to sleep at 2:00, 3:00 AM and waking up at 10:00 AM or something I did like that, that was cutting the entire night. Now I do the opposite. I wake around 5, 5:15 AM, I'm able to open my laptop and start working by 5:45. And I get that couple of hours that give me some extra time to dedicate enough time to my family. Drive my little son every day to school, no matter what. Oh, maybe I, maybe once or twice per month I don't, but I drive him every day. And I try to do my best to drive my daughter to soccer every day. I do it sometimes, I alternate with my wife. It depends, but I try to spend that hour drive to go there, an hour drive to come back with my daughter. And then I cook for them. So when it's Friday after my last long run, I'm also a long-distance runner. I come back, I take a shower, great beer, and then I start cooking. And I cook Friday, Saturday, Sunday. Sometimes we have leftover for a couple of days. That's my way to show them how much I love them. That's how I try to balance. In my ideal world, I would love to reduce significantly the amount of time of work and dedicate more time to the family. But at the same time, if you want to give them a future, you need to work because you are doing two things. You're giving them the right example, right? You get in your life what you want through hard and passionate work. And at the same time, you create the foundations for their studies, for their future. Also, if they don't want to study, they will have something to start with that will make their life a tiny bit easier, but also will make them able to compete in such an evolving beast that is our world. That is changing so much and so dramatically with the usage of generative AI.

Excellent. Excellent. Again, I love how, again, being able to balance family is really important to you, waking up in those wee hours in order to give more time to your spouse, making sure that you're committed to that transportation time. And people don't realize that, that when you drive a child, it's not just playing taxi. That's time that again, can be spent doing other things, right? It can be spent at work. And, you know, really embracing those hours that are spent— sometimes we can complain about traffic, but if you change your perspective really and look at that as the time that you get to continue to develop your child, either to an event or from an event, I'm certain it can make quite the impact. So thank you again for opening up about your family and sharing about that. Now, Giorgio, there, there's something fun about you that people don't know, and I'll break into that and put it out there and ask what got you interested in the world of being a DJ.

My first job, my real first job was a professional windsurfer for a couple of years. Then I went into event organizer and I was organizing important events for clubs, for public events in Rome. I was managing events for thousands of people per week, and I was managing everything, including DJ selection. I was spending time with my DJ to plan about the music. I was going into record shop— at the time there were vinyls only— and picking up the music. And that brought in, that brought in my passion for music. Sometimes my DJs were in need of going to the bathroom. Guess who was backing them up on the console? It was me. And that's how I learned that music has always been a great part of my life. But then when I changed the job, I became more a consumer of music, just listening, sometimes going to events, festivals, having fun. More recently, maybe a few years ago, I started again. I said, you know what, let me buy again. Was always in my mind, I want to buy again a DJ controller. And I bought it for a New Year's Eve that we had here. The year before we had a DJ, we were completely dissatisfied about the music showing late. And you know what, I bought a DJ controller and I did it by myself. People had so much fun, they left at 2:30 AM, 3 AM. I said, you know what, let me keep doing it. And now I'm I have a grand piano that became my console where I have my DJ controller, my speakers, my dedicated laptop. Now I'm experimenting with this little tool here to compose my own music.

Okay.

It's a synthesizer that I usually connect to my laptop and it brings me joy. It's also fun. It's very hard to hear the same song more than twice in this house. And it's sparking the interest of my kids. When my daughter, with my daughter, when we're in the car, sometimes we listen to different stream services and we build our, the playlist of my next event or the playlist of my next Friday night at home when I play music for them. So it's a, it's an hobby.

Okay.

And again, it's interesting because you never stop learning. Music is evolving so fast.

Absolutely, absolutely. And for my Audible listeners out there, again, I urge you to make sure that you take a moment and at least for these last 5-10 minutes or so, come back and view this on YouTube. Because if you could see the joy in this man's face when he talked about his family, his children, and his passion, right, for being a DJ and how that transition took place. And now again, that synthesizer was actually pretty cool, a tool that you use also. I'd love for you all to be able to see that again, those out there that are listening in. So now as we kind of land the plane, so to speak, my usual pointed question that I ask that the audience may not be able to find through researching or looking at you on LinkedIn and your professional history. Giorgio, what's your middle name?

Don't tell me the name.

Really?

Yes.

Interesting.

In Italy, we don't have middle names. We have a second name, a third name, or fourth name. My full name with my second, third, and fourth name is Giorgio Silvio Marzio Claudio Natili. So they are not middle names. They are not on any documents except You may find them as a note in your birth certificate, but they don't change anything from a legal standpoint. My legal name is Giorgio Natili, but my full fleshed out name is Giorgio Silvio Marzio Claudio Natili, and Silvio, Marzio, and Claudio are the male version of the name of the 3 cousins that I had, that I have from the brother of my father. Sylvia, Marzia, and Claudia. I love it.

So that, that again, I love how we can talk about the differences in cultures and how things are done slightly differently. So legally, those don't exist, so to speak, in terms of any documents you may have here, but in Italy, and there is that notice you'd mentioned on the birth certificate, that it is very present and real for you. And of course, your family would know that about you.

Yes, absolutely.

Excellent, excellent. And that's Precisely why I asked that question, Giorgio, is so that, again, listeners that wouldn't ordinarily get a chance to be that close to you, much like your family, will get to know something that, again, you wouldn't ordinarily share at breakfast, lunch, or dinner. So I thank you so much for sharing that cultural piece. And with that, if you would, we're going to go ahead and wrap up. But Giorgio, for the audience, if you'd share one piece of advice, and it can come into the sphere, and as you know, it comes to you, But one piece of advice for our listeners, maybe some words of wisdom.

Never stop learning. Learning doesn't mean studying a book or being in a training or following a course. People around you is the biggest source of learning. Good people, bad people, average people, they don't— they are just stereotypes. People is a source of continuous learning and experience. Actively listening to everybody that is around you, and you will always learn something, and you will take something back home that will help you to make your next best decision.

My man, never stop learning. You all heard it first. Giorgio, thank you so much. This has been a phenomenal episode, and I'm just thrilled at everything that's going to come as a result, the lives that will be impacted from this conversation. Ladies and gentlemen, this has been another episode of the Pulp Replaced podcast show, our bridge and inaugural episode of the C-Suite Connection with Giorgio Natili. Giorgio, again, thank you so much. Have a great rest of your day. And to everyone out there listening, bye for now.

Thank you, Paul.

Thank you, everyone.