Control the Minutes (WSG Christian Oswald)

In this episode, I discuss the importance of words and listening and communication during times of transformation. Then we speak with someone who understands that importance of listening so well, especially when you're on the edge of market disruption. Christian Oswald is the CEO of Rainfall, a firm that is connecting brand experiences across everything. Of course, he speaks about his top three, including Mark Wales, a former Special Forces officer turned survivor contestant turned entrepreneur who's taught Christian leadership lessons, his own children, who have allowed him to better understand how early life digital experiences shape usage patterns in his workplace and Jen, who is an expert in crafting Mongol teams. And you have to hear what he has to say about being voluntold. All this and more. Stay tuned. You, me and your Top three building your virtual advisory board to better compete in the connecting world.

Welcome back to you, me and your Top three, where we help you build your virtual advisory board to better compete in the connecting world. I'm your host, Greg Garrett. Control the Minutes. This is advice that I've been giving to my teams and to executives for years, especially those that are kind of newer to the to the workplace or to the culture of organizations. I give that advice because meetings Meetings happen all the time, formally, informally, in many corporate settings, especially in the world of Zoom or Google Meet we are running, or Microsoft Teams, we're running from meeting to meeting. In fact, we're not even running. We're just sitting and clicking from meeting to meeting all day long. And the memory of what happens in those meetings, I believe, is quite variable, especially when you're a senior leader and you've got diverse topics, or maybe you're an operator and you're being pulled in just from time to time to work on something that's about change. But the majority of your job is keeping things, keeping the lights on.

The details of those meetings are often forgotten. And you might take your own notes, you might take your own minutes, you might make your own outputs, but they're your version of it. And that's an important version for sure. But as the transformation leader, as the transformation office, as the individual or the team or the leader responsible for pushing a particular type of strategic transformation, controlling those minutes and having consistency in that message is super important. See, minutes are really summaries of decisions, summaries of discussions, but the words that are included start to lay a trail of the journey of transformation ahead of you. And the reason I say control the minutes is it's advice that I give to my teams when we're supporting transformation, is raise your hand, position yourself, be responsible. Even though it Sometimes is dirty work. Be responsible for actually crafting those minutes because those words matter. They will become the record of the way you remember. You can't create an entirely new reality in the minutes. If you made a decision to go right, you can't document that you said left. You can't even necessarily say, we said to go straight even though we turned right. Right is right. The direction that was made, the decision that was made, needs to be documented. But the words that surround it, the context in which it's given the story within the minutes, is the part that you can shape. You can shape these decisions in context of the transformation of where the organization is going. You can shape the discussion and pull out the parts that really matter to the future, verse, maybe to the past. Even if more of the conversation was about the past, you can minimize it in the minutes and make more of it about the future. How you write the language and the consistency in the language. Do you want this to be aggressive? Is this a fast transformation, or is it a slow.

Methodical transformation? The way in which you capture those words are going to be important in the minutes.

So that's my advice to you, is if you're responsible for driving a transformation, especially one that's big and different and hairy and maybe reacting to some kind of disruption in the marketplace, control the minutes. Be the first to raise your hand or have your team be the first to raise their hands to be able to make these consistent documentation that will become part of the record of the road that you're on. That's an important part of a transformation. So, like always, some of the things that my guest today said spurred me to think, hey, I should really let some folks know a little bit about one of the secrets that we have around controlling the minutes. Today's guest, he kind of gets it. He gets the importance of listening to be able to position into these. And he goes into a bit of detail today about why he's chosen to listen. It comes back to his youth and being raised in a family where many different languages were spoken, and he had all of these words mixed together. And so it taught him how to listen, which has become quite a skill in transformation when he's been in different large companies and now in a smaller upstart, a startup that is really looking to disrupt a big segment of the marketplace. So without me telling to tell you all about his journey, why don't I let him tell you about his journey? With no further ado, here's Christian. So, Christian Oswald, thank you so much for joining me. On the you, me and your Top three podcast.

Thanks for having me on, Greg. Look forward to this discussion.

Yeah, yeah. So fairly fast friends met each other just a few months ago, but a lot of complimentary, not necessarily career wise, but kind of subject matter wise that we've, we've discussed. You came and guest lectured in my course a bit ago, and I thought it would be great if you could share, you know, a bit about your leadership journey with everybody. So maybe we can just start off with just a couple minutes about yourself so people understand who's sitting in the chair today.

Yeah, definitely, Greg. So I am based in Phoenix, Arizona, but I'm not from here originally. So born in Australia. Brisbane, Australia, way back when, actually two European parents. So my mother's Spanish, my dad's Austrian. And the reason why I bring that up is it did mold a lot of how I think today and some of my mindsets. I, as I was growing up, my, my parents spoke to me in their natural language, so my mother in Spanish, my dad in German, my brother in English. And I kind of had my own language, which forced me not to talk too much in social situations with other kids. But it did, it did give me a perspective and now looking back about listening and observing and I definitely try to observe and listen as much as I can, but, you know, kind of fast forward from there. I was an early adopter of the Commodore 64, which is what kind of got me into the, the tech space. So you're chuckling there. I'm not sure how, how much you delved in the Commodore 64 days, but, you know, love those days, right? And somehow I was just glued to that machine. It just drew me in and I knew that was going to be my calling some way shape or form. And back then, obviously we didn't have the Internet, right. So I wanted to learn everything about Commodore 64. I'd get on my bike, I'd ride to the library, I'd read everything I could about the Commodore 64 and how to program.

I had coins. I would photocopy pages out of these books. I'd borrow some of the books on and so forth. And that, that really got me into that, that tech space.

Kind of fast forward a little bit more. I ended up going to.

A high school. I kind of specialized in both sporting and it. I was a bit of a sport person growing up. And again, it, the, the tech side just really drew me in.

Went to college.

You probably didn't know this when, when you got me on board to speak to your MBA class when I'm actually a college dropout. So I was, I was just about to turn 19.

And I think, I think it was like three to six months to go before I graduated. So it was pretty silly to kind of pull out. But. But I was somewhat, I was somewhat bored of college. I had you know, kind of self taught throughout my, you know, almost entire life. Right. And then during high school had really good high school. That's, that's actually Kelvin Grove College and, and it's still around to this day. And basically grade 11 and 12 was, was a lot of college. And then I did something pretty drastic. I ended up pivoting and joined the military in Australia which is where I'll meet one of the. Or our paths kind of crossed about one of the top three that I'll talk about a little bit later on. But did that saw some deployments overseas that was from 9903. Definitely a lot of leadership lessons learned there which we can talk about maybe a little bit later on. Ended up getting out 03 I moved to the US joined a startup that was another kind of pivot tech startup in Chicago.

And basically did the startup and big tech thing for a while. So I joined Cisco Salesforce, Twilio. Ended up starting out my career in engineering in the tech space but then ended up moving into more of the sales consulting role.

From a Cisco perspective I was there probably the longest out of all the companies that I'd been with. Been there. I was there for 11 years again started out in engine engineering there worked on different platforms whether it's IoT telepresence, you know, all sorts of stuff, contact centers and also advised a bunch of startups. Kind of missed that startup scene. So I advised a lot of startups. There was a few that ended up getting acquired by Cisco or some competitors, some failed. But that was definitely, you know, eye opening during that time is when I also.

My, my paws with Mark Wales crossed which we'll talk about later. But ended up co founding a fashion brand and I know nothing about fashion but for some reason we ended up starting a fashion brand which we can, we can delve into a little bit more later. And we built tech within the fashion brand that we ended up spinning out. And that's what I've been focused on over this past year is, is the tech that we implemented into that fashion brand and it's about combating counterfeits and helping brands really engage with with consumers.

That's excellent. Somebody stops along that journey. It maybe just one. It's probably not the most interesting one, but interesting to me. So I'll make it for 30 seconds. Podcast for one here. Just the Australian military. I don't know much about it. Is it similar to other militaries around the world? Are there different branches and if so, what, what branch were you in? Or is it one big happy family there? How's that work?

Yeah, definitely similar to, to the U.S. we don't have the Marines, but we have Army, Air Force, Navy. We're like the little brother of, of the US Military. So basically, wherever the, the US Military goes, no questions asked, we will be there whether it's good, bad or indifferent. Right. So, yeah, I think since, I think Since World War I, I think we've been to every theater.

Interesting.

Every theater that the US has been.

And which branch were you with?

I was in the Army.

The Army. Okay, gotcha. Very good, very good. Well, interesting career all, you know, literally around the world. It's taken you and from, from, from early days in tech, through some different leadership lessons and then back into tech. Here you are. So I'm sure you surrounded yourself. You mentioned a couple of names as you were pushing through the story a little bit. Maybe we can explore some. Who can we start with who? As I like to say, we've got you and we've got me. Let's talk about your top three. Who's, who's one of those top three?

Yeah. First one I'll touch on is, is Mark Wales. So Mark Wales, I believe, joined the military around the same time I did, maybe, maybe a year before, but he went to, he went to what we call Dun Troon or rmc, the Royal Military College, which is, I would say, similar to your West Point. Right.

And I, I, I think I would consider myself to be a top performer, probably top 10%. Right. No matter what I would get myself into, I would consider myself kind of top 10. Mark is one of those guys where he's like top 1%, right. And, and no matter what he ends up doing, he's, he's that top 1 percenter. And I've tried to kind of deconstruct what he's done over the past to figure out how, how has he made that happen. But just to give you a sense of, of who he is, so started out his career, you know, like I said, through, through rmc.

He ended up joining the Special Air Service, which is part of the army branch in the Australian Army. Similar to, I would say you're still team six or your delta force. Right. So you know, 1%. Anyone who goes through their selection is a very small percentage that actually get through. And he's not your typical person who would actually pass selection. So I think if you think of Special Forces, you think of these, you know, 6 foot 4, 250 pound folks, just pure muscle. But those folks actually don't generally pass selection. It's usually kind of smaller people that are able to withstand kind of the endurance aspects. But he's, he's your 6 foot 4, 250 pound, you know, pure muscle guy. And it was actually really difficult for somebody like him to go through. And it's actually even more difficult for an officer to go through selection for the Special Air Service than it is for, for just the gi. But he ended up doing, completing, gosh, I don't know how many tours, at least a dozen in Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, all over the place. He ended up getting out, I want to say in 2013 or so, went to war and got his MBA there, joined McKenzie. That's when he started the fashion brand. So he did start a fashion brand that was military inspired. He found that, you know, there wasn't really a fashion brand that spoke to military veterans. So he crafted something that was inspired by the military called a tough luxury. It's high end kangaroo leather jackets that were made out of, you know, New York City. He ended up also.

Winning Survivor, became an actor, corporate speaker. So he does all these kind of things, right?

And what we ended up doing as well, which I'll talk about in a second, is that we, we ended up because he has all this public content. He's written a book as well about him, kind of a memoir of his life. So we took all this content and we actually cloned Mark and created an AI version of Mark that anyone kind of interact with. And what's really interesting is.

I think for most people it might just be like any kind of traditional bot that you speak to. Like, yeah, that's great. I can ask questions and answers. But for me, knowing Mark, it really brings his personality through, which is really interesting. And then him talking to himself was also a moment that kind of blew his mind. It was like very weird experience, you know, talking to himself. But, but I, I think what we can talk about is probably his leadership prints. I mean there's, there's many things that, that we can talk about with Mark. You should probably have him on the show, I think at some point. But I think some of his leadership principles is something that you can drill down on if that's an area that you want to, you know, kind of touch on.

I do. I just. Maybe one question on the AI just because it's so hard to not listen. Listen to anything about AI these days. But were you involved with. With building the marquee or was that something that you just learned about?

No, we actually partnered with. So it's. It's actually, we built it into the rainfall tech.

Okay.

And.

If. If I just touch on the rainfall solution real quickly. So. So with the jackets, we ended up getting, you know, whole. Whole bunch of counterfeits. And we figured, well, let's. Let's see what other brands are doing to kind of combat counterfeits. We saw that they weren't really doing anything at all. This is back in, you know, 20. I don't know, 2017 or so. And so we started embedding NFC chips into. Into the labels of the jackets, and then we built this software layer on top of it. We started out with just, you know, taking your phone. You can tap on the label and it'll tell you if it was authentic or not. And that was great, but it was more of a party trick, like, what else could we do on top of that? Right. So we started embedding kind of the stories of.

The brand, the founder story where we make the jackets. You can see videos and photos of these things being produced. Any kind of call to actions, right? Hey, you can. You can order more jackets here, or here's some accessories. So there was a whole bunch of call to actions, and we figured with everything that's going on with AI and all these capabilities, wouldn't it be great if we could embed a virtual version of Mark? So anyone who bought a jacket or any of the accessories could actually communicate and chat with Mark because he's doing these corporate speaking tours and things like that, right. It'd be great for folks to be able to ask him questions. So we partnered with somebody called Delphi AI and we just basically gave them all our public content that we had on Mark, from his book to his podcasts, some leadership discussions that he's had, some of the shows on, Survivor, media appearances, all these kind of things, right? So, so the more data that they could have, the better. And, you know, within a few hours, Mark AI was born from, you know, giving them a whole bunch of content to when. When Mark AI was born. And then we embedded that to. Into the rainfall platform. So, so everyone who had a jacket or an accessory from the brand could actually start communicating with. With Mark.

Way cooler than Knight Rider and Kit in some ways. Actually getting the human inside of it. So the public Persona of Mark was what was cloned because of the content that it was trained on. Interesting. Very interesting. So, yes, I mean, and the name of that fashion brand is that Kill Capture.

That's Kill Capture, yeah. It was based on the mission profiles of the Special Air Service.

So you said that there may be a handful of leadership principles that you observe from Mark or that he pushes, maybe highlight one or two just to get a little bit of a sense of if we were talking to Mark or Mark AI, what would be some of the ones we'd take away?

It's funny, I did ask Mark AI about this right before the podcast, just in case it was going to make a liar out of me. But it did say the same thing. I think these are principles that apply, I think across industries. This is not just for the military, it's not just for startups. This is, this I think applies across all, but. But it does have that seed from the military where, you know, it's really about. If you think about the priority of a team or an organization.

It'S generally mission, team and self. Right. And I think what I've noticed in the corporate world.

Can you just hold one second, my dog?

Yeah, no worries, give me one second.

So if I think about.

What I've witnessed in the corporate world, while.

General, we talk about mission, team, self in that order, I've noticed that it's been the inverse. Right. A lot of it is me first, team second, and then, you know, mission maybe falls in third or not. Right.

And then, you know, we, if you double click into each of those different areas from the mission perspective, this is where I think things fall apart. Whether it's a startup creating a vision or you know, a larger corporation that has a vision or a mission set, Right. That needs to filter down throughout the organization.

The mission can get lost. Right. And I think to ensure folks are aligned to the mission, it needs to be pretty simple. One sentence that kind of covers the what, the how, the when and the why.

Right.

In one sentence. And, and it needs to trickle down throughout the organization.

Right.

Because what the mission, what the overall mission might be at the exec level might not be the same level of detail that needs to happen at a lower level.

Right.

But you still need to have that common direction. Otherwise you got folks paddling in all sorts of different directions. Right. So I think.

It might be cliche, it might be a no brainer, might be common sense, but it's definitely not common practice. Right. So it's that against that mission team self. And again, from the mission perspective, it's the what, the how, the when and the why. Very simple one kind of sentence. Right.

As it relates to the team, I think it comes down to empowering them and trusting them into doing the job that they need to do. Removing obstacles, getting out of the way, yet also leading from the trenches. I think there's a lot of leaders that tend to lead from the ivory tower and not so much the trenches. And it's not about micromanagement again, it's about empowering the team and trusting in them, but it's leading from the trenches. You're asking the teams to do things that you would also do. Right. There's nothing above you that.

That you just shouldn't do as a leader. Right. I think, you know, if you're going to ask the teams to do something, but it's about again, and trusting in them to do the things that, that they need to do. And then kind of the third part around me, right, there's the, there's the mission, there's the team and then there's me or self.

I think this is more about.

Self care and this goes back to I think some basics that we all lose and it's about, there's a lot of burnout. It doesn't matter if it's, you know, in the startup world, in the corporate world, there is a lot of burnout. And foundationally, if, if there is no self care, right. It comes down to some real basic principles.

Right.

Are you eating right? Are you exercising at least, you know, 120, 180 hours a week. If it's, if it's not vigorous, at least get out and walk. Right. And the third, you know, I think we've kind of glamorized this hustle culture of, well, you know, let's three, three or four hours a night and just hustle, hustle, hustle. If you're not getting that seven to nine hours of sleep every night, right.

You're not gonna, you're, you're going to get burnt out. And you see it day in and day out. You see it in the startup world with founders. You see it in the corporate world where there's just zombies right now. That doesn't mean that every now and then you really need temperature. Exactly. But with that foundation allows you to do that more often. Yeah, right. And better than anyone else. Because if you're already burnt out and you need to accelerate quickly or pivot or do something and you're in Zombie mode. That's a recipe for. For kind of failure. So. So I think those. And Mark can talk about these principles in a much deeper level, but those. That's kind of like the foundational things that. That he continually kind of drills into people.

Right. Christian, did you. Did you meet him while you were both. Both in the military?

We crossed paths, but I didn't know him well. It wasn't until, you know, the fashion brand kind of started that. That we really started working together.

But, you know, you know, military and, you know, you know, the mission team self or mission team me principles. Do you. And Mark lives them. He speaks about him, but he lives them as well.

Yeah, yeah, he definitely lives in.

Yeah, it sounds like he encourages others to live him, not only from the stage, from the pulpit, but. But also you've been working with him in the fashion brand. I mean, he's built some of that into the way you guys work as well, huh?

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And going back to what I said before around him being a. A 1 percenter versus, you know, me generally in that. In that top 10%. What I've. What I've noticed about, like, truly living these principles is that there's this.

We're easily distracted, right? And if you apply these principles, it forces you to focus. When he was writing his book, for example, and I'm really good friends with him, right. When he was writing his book, he's really hard to get a hold of, right. Because he set a goal. This book is going to be 80,000 words or whatever. He's going to break it down into so many words. I mean, you've certainly written a book, Ryan. You know how difficult it is to kind of focus, right.

And there's just life. Right? But when he puts his mind to something, there's like this intense focus and everything else is kind of noise. And I think we.

We.

We being us in general, right. Or people in general tend to get distracted by things, right? Whether it's, you name it, right? Other priorities, shiny object, you name it. We. We tend to be distracted, but he's got this intense focus where he'll. He'll ignore everything, focus on that thing, get it done, and get it done, too. Which is why his resume speaks for itself, where he's able to accomplish all these things based on these kind of principles, right.

It's almost like m. Missioning in some ways. There's. There's got to be a big mission that pulls it together, but the focus allows them to focus on one. One thrust at a time, which probably sounds a lot like military. You know, there's the, there's the bigger, bigger mission at hand, but there's the objective in the here and now. Yeah, very interesting. So obviously Mark has had a big influence not only on your leadership, but also what you're doing with rainfall. We'll talk a little bit about that. Despite impending disruptions, there are defined strategies that greatly enhance an existing firm's chance of survival. The rapid execution of what we call the first mile of a business's transformation is critical to competing successfully. Unfortunately, as a boutique advisory firm, we can't work with every client around the world as such. My colleague Dr. Warren Ritchie and I captured a bunch of the detail that we use to deal with this disruption with our clients in our best selling business book, Competing in the the Connecting World. We offer a proven framework and an approach to assist leaders in understanding, preparing and then bravely transforming their firms to thrive in this new digital era. We hope you can use it as a field guide to navigate your transformation journey. You can find Competing in the Connecting World on Amazon or any of the digital bookstores where you shop.

Let's hear a little bit about who else you've been surrounding yourself with.

So number two, I don't know if this is.

Against the grain of what you usually do, but family and kids specifically. And I'll try and talk about how I talked about observing and listening before. So this is not about giving any kind of parental advice. Probably the last person to do that, but it's more about listening and observing.

If I, if I observe, if, if I talk about how I've seen my kids evolve over the last few years.

So I've got four kids. I've got one boy who's 13, twin girls that are 11, and then another boy who's, who's nine. And.

As a founder of a technology company, I generally have to. At least the way I think about things is I've got a solve for things in the immediate, right. Which is now. But I've also got this vision and I've got to think about things. Five, seven years out, ten becomes a little bit more difficult. But I've got to think about things in the future. And generally the way I look at things is.

When our technologies, when a disruptive technology is going to be kind of the norm, Right. Is it 12 months from now? Is it 13 months? Right. We just talked about AI. Is, is it just the, in the hype cycle right now? When is it going to be normalized? Right. When we're so, so if you look at the past, you know, we talked about NFC chips, you know, maybe before that we put in labels like, like that. That technology has been around for a long time, but it hasn't really been normalized or consumerized until maybe 2019, right. Where it was just native into devices or things like QR codes. Right. But the, the point is there's a whole bunch of disruptive technologies and they converge at some point. And it's not just technologies, it's also behaviors, right? So if I look at.

And I think the behaviors are driven both generationally but also influenced by the, the market as a whole. If I look at my kids and if I look at the difference between my 13 year old and my 9 year old, how they think is very different and how they interact in the world is very different. So my 13 year old was born in 2010.

Some of the first devices he interacted with was the iPad and the iPhone. So touch, touch was his default method, right.

My fourth child was born in 2014. And what's interesting, it's only four short years, right. What's interesting is that his default method is voice, which is more of the Alexa platform.

And how they think and how they troubleshoot is different, right? And if I take a look at how my parents, their thought process and how they troubleshoot things, it's also very different, right. If you think about how they interacted with quote, unquote. Quote unquote technology back then, very different. You know, maybe pulse phones.

The VCR was probably the most technically advanced thing that they had to interact with, right. And what's interesting is that, that I see that behavior still today where if you messed up the programming, like I don't know if you remember programming a vcr, very difficult to do, right? And if you mess something up, you can actually break it, right? And, and that that behavior still carries over to today. If you're trying to walk them through something, even on the iPad, they don't want to touch something because it might break. Versus how my kids, my kids are always experimenting, right? They're very curious about different things. So, so just the way that they interact.

So, so if I look at that, as a founder, I've got to think about things, the technology that I'm building, the vision that I'm building for and the behaviors that are going to be using this technology, right? Who's going to be using this in the next five or seven years and it's going to be people like my kids, right. Whose default method of interacting in the world is Very different than ours. Right. While we.

Technology for us is more of a bolt on for them. It's in their DNA. Right. So how they interact. So, so I'm very, very interested in seeing.

How kids and other generations interact with technology because that can tell me how I should be building and the teams should be building the tech that we're building. Right. Because how you build something for one generation might not speak to the others. But I, I, I can't put on a VR headset and live in a world for more than five minutes before I start getting lightheaded and you know, need to sit down. Right. Because I'm getting all dizzy versus my kids can be in there for, for hours. Right, Hours. So it's just they interact in the world in a very different way.

Right, interesting. So it's almost so one, I'm sure you have lots of relationship with your, with your kids but one, one facet of the relationship from a business minded persp.

Actually using them a little bit like consumer testers and seeing where the trend lines are going. I don't know if you're going to continue to have children so you can keep, keep up with that, but at least you're seeing the trajectory from where you're at. And it's probably also teaching you just to spend time with the youth that are out there. Right. As far as no matter if they're your kids, your other kids, your need to keep ahead, you need to keep seeing how that learning curve continues to change over time. So I am curious, you gave the examples from your, I think your eldest to your young. What are you seeing that's post voice. Then what are some of the interactions that you're seeing that you're paying attention to.

That are being influenced in that next phase? Or is there one yet?

Yeah, I think we're in that in between phase. I think there's definitely.

Mediums like if you think about, and I don't know if this is 10 years out or 15 years out, but that, you know, if you think about.

The connection point between us and technology, it's still analog, right. Whether it's voice or touch, it's usually our thumbs or our voice. Right.

I think, you know, the next big major breakthrough are going to be things like, you know, Elon Musk's neural link or whatever it's called. Right. These, these brain interfaces. Right. But you're, you're starting to see even now with, with AI.

Not just facial recognition, but micro expression recognition.

Right.

Being able to see the emotion on somebody's face and sensors on people's bodies. Folks are wearing the smart watches and all that kind of stuff. And these health devices, I think you're going to see a lot more of that that are somewhat specific to certain use cases and then they'll merge into one little device that kind of does it all. So, so I think those are, and those are industries that definitely need to be disrupted as well. Kind of the health and education industry certainly need to be, you know, disrupted. But, but I see that I, I see more and more senses. Right. We, we've. Or just your book, right, The Connected World.

I think you're a little early on that book. Meaning that.

The things that you talk about in that book. Right. Are definitely plausible and doable, even in the teens. But now you're starting to see it actually come to life, right? Organizations are generally behind the trend. Right. Of what needs to happen. So I think you're starting to see those things actually really come to life. And even things we talked about 20 years ago are now actually starting to come to life.

So I think if you look at.

What is the hype cycle of things today, again, going back to that perfect storm, and when these things converge, are those things five, 10 years out? And that's where I think timing is key for a lot of folks, whether it's a large organizations or startups. So experimenting and taking risks on when you think those things are going to converge, those are going to be the folks that are going to be ahead of the curve.

Well, thanks, Christian. I think philosophically we see a lot of the similarities. So I appreciate the comment in there. And yeah, I felt that when we wrote the book a little ahead, I think I made mention to you I've been teaching this course that's helped shape the book and now uses the book for almost a decade now. And when I started off, the question would be, can you imagine anything that could be connected? And students would have a real hard time thinking about.

Why something would connect. Something that isn't a electronic device already, perhaps. And over time that changed. Can you imagine anything they wouldn't connect to? Now it's really difficult to get them to even think about that question because it's just such a. It's permeated everybody's mindset. So definitely follow the hype cycle through it. But I say that aside from saying thanks for the comment, but also I think you said maybe we're a little bit in a gap right now. We're between cycles. And that's actually maybe what you're bridging a little bit with rainfall or these types of applications of technology in the sense that you're taking some of the tactile, the touch or the analog type of inputs, but you're putting them in places that haven't been adopted yet, so they've been proven inside of certain facets. And you carry with you in your pocket the phone, a device that's been, that's trending along with that touch as well as voice. But you're now asking, you're also now saying, let me go invite some things that haven't ever been connected before. And you're starting to bridge that. And I think that maybe is, maybe that's what you're starting to play out. Maybe that's the point in the trend that you're. You're placing the bet on. Is that, Is that right?

Yeah. Yeah. I think you're spot on with that. And it goes back to your comment about writing the book. There's no reason why technically the things that you mentioned in the book could be done back then, right? I think it was more behavioral and cultural. Right. And goes back to the thing I mentioned about my kids is observing them and seeing how they interact in the world. And the world just wasn't ready back then. Right. But now with what we're doing with rainfall, the world is ready. Right. Even though we've been building this since 2017, 2018, slowly iterating, but it just wasn't ready for that mass market. Right. But now culturally, folks are ready for it. Right. And I think that's what you're going to see over the coming years. Is the world ready for these things? If you think about innovation, and I know that word is kind of thrown out a lot, I think what most people actually mean when they talk about innovation is iteration. They're just iterating. They're not actually innovating. Innovation, I think, for the most part requires a behavior change. If you think about all the things that have happened over the past that most people would call innovative.

It'S been disruptive and it's been disrupted because there's been this behavior change where there was from no Internet to Internet. There was a behavior change to the touch iPhone, there was a behavior change to things like Uber, right. That required a behavioral change. Just something as simple as scanning a QR code. That's a behavioral change, right? But before, COVID in the US couldn't get anyone to scan a QR code, right? Now everyone knows how to do it. So it's that behavioral change.

And I think A lot of startups try and create that behavioral change. Sometimes too early, sometimes too late. You've got to time it just right and sometimes it just doesn't happen at all because you don't have that go to market motion.

Yeah, it's, it's, it we're living in. And I think folks would say this no matter what time they live in, but we're, we're definitely living in some of the most interesting times that we'll have over the next, over the next three, four, five years. Right. Definitely going to be very interesting.

I do want you to get onto Jen, but just because you're talking a little bit about rainfall, let's just stick with it for one more minute. You talked about chasing the behavioral change or trying to influence the behavioral change. Just quickly you've talked a little bit about. It was born out of the fashion industry and it's, it's technology and you're now focused on it and you kind of gave the backdrop. But what is the behavioral change that you're focused on with rainfall that you're trying to help either brands or consumers make a switch towards?

Yeah, I think it's that contextual awareness and interaction with a brand.

So if you're wearing, let's say a sports jersey, for example, that's rainfall enabled. Right. Being able to get things and interact with a brand that's specific to that moment. Again, if I'm wearing a jersey and I'm at a game, maybe I want to see things that are happening at that game in real time or stats. Or maybe you want to interact with a clone version of Devin Booker. Right. From the Suns. So it's all contextual. Right. I can potentially talk with Devin Booker at any point in time through his clone or whatever it may be, but it might not be relevant. So I think it's about bringing brands and consumers together at the right time, at the right moment, and allowing brands, consumers to interact and engage. If you think about things that haven't been connected in the past, like you mentioned, whether it's clothing or cigars or alcohol or, you name it, right. The way that you would interact, a consumer would interact with that brand would be either through social media or a website. Right. And most folks don't, you know, if they're having a drink of alcohol or, you know, whatever the case may be, they're not going to that website.

This, you know, I think what we bring is that ability to be able to engage with a brand, merging the digital and the physical together. Right. And making it contextual for the user and providing value to the consumer from the brand. And if you, we think if you provide value to the consumer, they're going to interact and in new and unique ways. Right. So I think that's, that's that behavioral change that we're changing is allowing those consumers to engage with the brands in real time when it's contextual.

So.

Yeah.

So interesting. Well, I'll let you get on to speak with Jim, but I just make the comment and unless you vehemently disagree, I'll, I'll get the last word in on this particular piece, but when I first started considered.

The space that you're in, you're now in, we were too early as well when we were originally considering it. But it's a pretty simple concept in many ways of.

Taking.

Maybe the most obvious but kind of forgotten about Touchpoint in the digital journey or in a customer journey and digitalizing it really it's, you know, the product itself. No matter if it's the jacket or the cigar or consumable or non consumable, it doesn't matter. Oftentimes when you go and look at the digital roadmaps, you know the, from the, the chief digital officer or back in the day was the E Business, you know, team or when you just looked at them, they would have so many touch points for all the points leading up to sale and maybe some after sales stuff and but the point of usage, it was sparse. There was very few digital touch points. And at the end of the day you're trying to either by force or by frictionless or the best way that a brand will allow you to do it, you're trying to bring some digital touch points during the usage of the product. And what a bet. Is there a better place to have a relationship with the consumer than when they're using the damn thing? And that's what I have found. It's almost so obvious why hasn't this caught on? When I got to meet you a few months ago and I thought well here's a guy who's taking a run at this thing. I really hope Christian can get there because it's just the market needs this in my mind it's just, it's not pulling it there because I don't know if you're, you're 13 year old or any of those, any of your kids. It's almost like they haven't experienced enough to even ask for it. And so it's a little bit of the tipping point. We need more of these experiences for the, for the jackets and the cigars and the places that you're. You're having out there to get people to say, well, why is my tie? Why is my water bottle? Why is my pen? Why aren't all these other devices in my life connected? I just expect them to be. So I'm hoping that the flywheel will just continue to spin on it now, because I talk a lot. We're starting to run out of time. But let's talk about your third. I know you want to say a few things about what you've been doing with Jen.

Yeah. So Jen Balin's the third. She's been mostly on the sales role, GM side of things for pretty much every big tech company from Microsoft, Cisco, Salesforce, aws, SAP. I think the list continues. But I think.

What I want to highlight with her, and I've tried to really deconstruct how she's been leading, and it's been really difficult to do because it's really hard to kind of pinpoint how she does it. I know what the outcome is, but to pinpoint how she does it has been really difficult. But I think there's. There's some common threads.

That I can highlight. And. And she has an amazing ability to pull people along, and.

I think there's very few leaders that do that naturally. Right. Like as. As she's gone from organization to organization, there's usually 100 people that will go with her.

Right.

It's like, why? Why? Right. And I think it's.

She's. She's an extremely positive person, and I think that's. That's. That's part of it. Right.

She will help you learn. She doesn't tell you what to do, but she will help you learn, ask a lot of questions. Right. And I think that's also relative to the kids, you know, from my number two is that they tend to ask a lot of questions. Right. They're really curious and they ask a lot of questions where it forces you to come up with. Up with an answer. But I. I think ultimately it's the culture she's able to create, and.

I think her and Mark have a lot of similarities as it turns to building teams. Right. I think Mark will kind of refer. Refer to it as. As mongrel teams, which is. It's an Australian team. I don't know if it's a US term or not, but it's an Australian term. You know, like a. A mongrel dog is like a. There's no defined breed. Right. It's just made up of a bunch of different breeds. You know, another term might be diverse teams, right?

Yeah.

So bringing together teams that are extremely diverse that wouldn't generally work together, right. From various backgrounds, various perspectives. Right. Different experience levels, doing that naturally. And so we've seen that like, mongrel teams kind of outperform, right. Most other teams, which is why, especially in the Special Air Service, right, they put together these, these, these mongrel. These small mongrel teams, right. To really execute on really tough missions. And I think what. Observing what Jen has done, just naturally she's, she's done that, right? Any organization she'll, she'll fly into, she'll create these really diverse teams. And, and I think that's part of creating that.

And this, this culture of like, excellence is bringing these diverse perspectives.

Were you part of one of those mongrel teams that how you got to know Jen?

Yeah, yeah, definitely.

I was, I was part of those, those, those, those teams with her. I, I reported to her at Cisco and think a few other orgs. But it, it is a superpower, right, because you have to identify where are your strengths, where are your weaknesses, right? And bringing the appropriate folks to. Because you don't want folks to clash at the same time, right? There's. There's good clashing and there's bad clashing. So, so finding the right mix of people, it's definitely, it's, it's a, it's certainly a talent, right? But, but you'll find that those teams are generally those teams that you look back on and you're like, like, man, that was a good team. Right? And if I started something else, I'd bring those folks along. Like, you gotta really take note of those moments. If there's something that, you know, it's almost like magic, right? What are those magical moments? And just pause and reflect on why, why that's a magical moment. And try and deconstruct and see if you can replicate that moving forward.

That's interesting. Maybe just two observations and let's spend a little time on rainfall.

When you, when you started off talking about your parents and having your own language and you were forced to listen maybe more than you could speak at the beginning in your childhood and your learning career. It sounds like some of those same things you feel a Jenn may have actually is that she builds mongrel teams and she gets to listen and she builds it for the part. So that's interesting dichotomy there. The second piece is Building of AI. I mean, if we really want to put Some generative to work thinking to learn from someone like Jen on how to build a team. Team versus doing something. That's. That's when we really know that we've got some AI that's really, really working. So hopefully somebody in one of those fantastic tech companies that she's associated with is working with her to study her. And you've already got Mark. Might as well get Jen going, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely. And there, there is one hack. Well, I don't know if this is a hack for her.

But she never brought this up. I think I found this out through kind of third. Third party. But she takes improv classes.

Okay. Yeah.

And. And I don't know too many people that have just taken improv classes just to round themselves out or you know, exercise a muscle that they haven't exercised before. But that would be really uncomfortable. I think for most people that do, which is a good thing to a good position to be in. Right. You got to be really uncomfortable.

And so I think that has also something to do with it with. With how witty she is and how she's able to think quickly on the spot a lot.

It's a great one. I wonder if she had a career at some point in a formal innovation organization, because that's when I used to run innovation for big companies. That was a trick we would use. We would take executives to improv places because they teach you. One of the things they teach you, aside from comfort, is the lesson of. And that improv is you can't say no and you can't say but because it kills the skit. So you always finish. You always start and finish things with. And building off of the next person's idea, no matter what they said. And it keeps things positive momentum. So that's great. So just a couple minutes left. Let's talk about rainfall. And you gave some examples along the way. You threw out a couple of the product groups that you. You've been working with. Any. Any special projects. So you mentioned one to me that I think is pretty interesting. What, what can you highlight just to make main. The make the context or the. The concept of rainfall make it real for somebody.

Yeah, I think probably the most exciting recent project has been.

So one of our visions is. Or not one of our. But our vision is where every physical item is rainfall enabled. Right. And so if we start there and work our way back. But this project that came up.

A brand called Euphoria Group, was commissioned by some of the early recruiters from PayPal. And every year the PayPal they call the PayPal mafia, right? Which are the original founders and leaders of PayPal. Every year they have a reunion and this year they wanted to gift each.

Other.

These custom Italian made leather shoes that was a collaboration between some artists. So these artists looked at each of the different founders and leaders and created some artwork that was specific to them and made their own interpretation and then added that artwork onto these custom shoes. So Elon Musk's shoes, for example, have their black shoes with this X on it that glows at night.

Peter Thiel's shoes have like this zero to one design from, you know, the book that he wrote and you know, so on and so forth. So.

So they created these shoes. We embedded the, the rainfall technology into these shoes. And each shoe again is customized for each of the different founders and, and, and leaders and the stories that we tell in the shoes. Everything from.

You know, the manufacturing process, the handmade manufacturing process in Italy of each of the shoes. So you can actually see each shoe being made, right? You can see the video of, you know, the, the artisans cutting out the leather and sewing it together and putting on the soles and all these kind of things to, you know, the artwork that was inspired, that was actually applied to, to the shoes themselves, to just the product shots, to.

Even just memories of.

What they had as founders in the early days, right? Like, hey, what's your favorite memory of, you know, PayPal back in the day? It's like this one sentence thing, right? And I think one of, I think Elon Musk's first executive assistant was asked, you know, how is Elon Musk able to go on and start SpaceX and you know, do all these things and you know, she said one, one word magic, right? So her shoe has this magic on it, which is pretty cool. So that's probably like a really cool project that was.

Certainly a bespoke kind of product. But blending this art, fashion and technology together for this really cool use case.

It is really cool and it is super bespoke. But in some ways it's, it, it's so specialized that maybe others would say, ha, that's cool if you can afford that kind of thing. But the reality is some of what you're doing is taking mass products and trying to do the same thing, taking a mass product and giving that extreme bespoke experience. No matter if it's about the experience you've had with the shoe or with the product or where that product has been authenticating the product to say that is that actual product, but you've got. Even though it's a pretty high end, pretty cool, pretty distinct experience with.

The PayPal group.

It actually can be a pretty decent showcase for what any product can do through enablement, through rainfall, huh?

Yeah. And that's spot on, right? Is bringing that type of personalization to scale. So we're also doing cigars right now. If you think of cigar, like what story could a cigar tell retail, right? But if you think about things like cigars that cost, you know, maybe six to $10, right? And they sell tens of million, hundreds of millions of cigars, right. Every single year knowing because they're, they're, they're actual artisans and artists that put together these cigars, right? There's a, there's a technique to it. So seeing these people put together the cigar, right? Having the ability to maybe tip, you want to tip that person because you really like the work that they do, right? It, we, we bring that capability to allow consumers to maybe tip the artisan who's actually creating the cigar because you love the way that that person put that cigar together or the story or where the tobacco came from, so on and so forth. So you, you are 100% correct around, which is why our vision is we want to bring rainfall to every physical product. Right? If every physical product could tell a story, what would it say? Right? So that's, that's, that's our vision. I think, I think we've got something that's, that's going to help us get there day.

Hey, I love it. I love it. Listen, fascinating background, a really interesting way that it all came together and what you're currently doing with, with rainfall. I appreciate you sharing so much. Maybe I can just ask you one last final closing question, which is you've had to develop some, some interesting experiences, some different interesting leadership, what I like to call hacks, things that you've made makes you this better, braver leader that you've built into your normal circumstance. Daily, weekly, whatever. Can you share a leadership hack with people they can steal from you and maybe be a better leader?

Yeah, the one that comes to mind.

And I don't know if this is something that, that you would do on a weekly or daily basis, but it's I think something just in general to, to look for.

And I think in the military there was this concept of, you know, you've been volun told, right? Which means it's not something that you wanted to do, but you, you did it anyway because you were told to do or somebody tapped you on the shoulder, right? To Be part of a mongrel team or whatever the case may be. But I think if I look at, at some of the pivots that I've done throughout my career is while a lot of folks will say do things that you're really passionate about, which is certainly something I did, right. Which was, you know, following my heart with, with it and technology. But I've also done a lot of things that I either had no background in or I just despise or I didn't like. Right. You know, jumping into fashion. I had no idea about fashion, right. So I think it's looking at.

Things that you may not, you know, either again, necessarily enjoy or you have any background in. Just jump in, right? Just, just jump into the deep end. Because you may find that you end up becoming good at it, you enjoy it, and then you start connecting the dots between what you may be passionate about and this new passion. Right. I don't think rainfall would have ever have been created if I didn't co found a fashion brand and experience this, this counterfeit issue. Right. Like, it just wouldn't have crossed my mind. I don't think you said before it was so obvious, right. And it is. It's such an obvious platform, yet I don't think I would have come up with it if I didn't do something that I didn't have a, you know, background in.

So that's great.

That's great.

Fantastic. Voluntold. I like it a lot. Christian, how can people stay in touch with you you and with what you're doing?

I think best place is probably LinkedIn. Christian Oswald. Just as it sounds. And then from there we can, you know, branch out to texting or DMS or Twitter or, you know, whatever the case may be. So should be pretty accessible through. Through LinkedIn.

Okay, that sounds fantastic, Christian. Thank you so much for being here with me today. Great.

Thank you very much. Have a good one.

Fantastic gang. You can stay in touch with me at all those handles. It's Gregory Garrett. Double G, R double T. And until next time, be brave and lead with no regrets. See ya.

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