CloudFirst Podcast with CEO Brent Twist

Transcription:

Interviewer: Well, thanks Brent for joining us today on CloudFirst Radio.

Brent: Looking forward to it.

Interviewer: So we’re actually recording today’s session in Winnipeg in Canada. Which isn’t your hometown, but it’s kind of one of the big offices for Encore, which is a Microsoft partner here based on Canada. Just a pleasure to have you on the show.

Brent: Pleasure to be here.

Interviewer: Now this transition that everybody seems to be go through and this concept of disruption, it’s something that we’ve talked about a bit.

Brent: Great question. I guess I’ll kind of reflect on my personal experience and maybe share that, and maybe there’s some relationship to the question you actually answer. Although, you have to remember I am a CEO, so I tend to just answer whatever question I want. Doesn’t really matter what question you ask, it’s kind of how I roll.

Interviewer: Cool.

Brent: But when I was a young man, about 24 years of age, I had this idea, and that we could basically take some technology and apply it to be able to make the world a better place. The world being the corporate world, so not curing cancer, anything like that. I didn’t realize it had been invented already. So it turns out it was called client-server, so I was very happy when I found out that I didn’t have to actually invent something to do this. We took that technology and we really applied it in a number of different ways that saved the firm I worked for, you know, millions and millions and millions of dollars, and allowed us to do things that we just couldn’t do before.

So, was a very, very good experience. And certainly if you look at the computing world, and that’s my background, I’m an IT guy, and I guess a programmer by trade, you know, there’s some things that really changed it. And so right around that time, this idea of client-server computing, this idea of, you know, local area networks, this idea of taking concepts I guess that were around for the past 30 years but applying them in a different way, really was an exciting thing.

It’s funny, because I remember reading at the time or shortly thereafter about client-server, that it was like teenage sex. You know, everybody was talking about it, but nobody was doing it. And it was really true, nobody was doing it. We were one of the first ones that did it. But the value we created was huge, and that was really an inflection point. The next one was this thing called the internet. Now, the internet as we all know has been around since the ’60s, and the first time I ever was on it I think was in 1984, 1983. And it was nothing like it is today. But, right around the end of the ’90s, beginning of the 2000s, it’s sort of become pretty prevalent that this thing was gonna change the way that we lived, you know?

And I can remember at the time, I was probably spending about an hour a day on the internet, you know, and I was researching my favorite sports teams and looking at news, and I remember the gentleman on the the seat next to me got a phone call from the local newspaper and they were trying to get him to buy a subscription. And he said, “Why would I buy yesterday’s news? I can get today’s news for free. Why would I do this?” And, you know, it was definitely another inflection point as businesses we’d changed, and this idea of disintermediation and how am I gonna stay close to my customers, and as a distributor I can just get rid of the retailers or whatever. None of that really happened, but it sure did change how we did things. The next inflection point is the cloud. And again, I think that the concept of the cloud has really been around since the late ’90s. You know, what was called ASP at the time, it became something else, became something else.

Interviewer: It didn’t quite work properly then.

Brent: Right. Then it was all about hosting or private clouds. There’s always been obstacles to it. Mostly obstacles were around access to it, didn’t have a good enough pipe, your unreliable access. Other issues were around cost, couldn’t afford it. First the cost problem was with the hardware. Then the cost problem was really with the software, because most of the software vendors were on-premise solutions. And their idea of selling us in the cloud was well, you know, instead of it costing a hundred dollars, I’ll charge you, you know, \$10 a month.

But, you know, in a year I paid more than I would had I just bought it. So that didn’t really work. I think the next challenge around the cloud really was professional services. And the issue is that most of the companies provide professional services can’t afford to finance professional services. So this idea of, you know, being able to do the work now but not get paid for it for 25 years, most people can’t feed their families on that, so it created some issues. But what’s interesting is that those issues have all been solved.

And when I look at the three hyperscale providers, you know, Microsoft being as large as the other two combined, and I think about just how they can manage a half a million servers at a cost that I couldn’t achieve if I had a thousand servers, and I look at just the access to high-speed internet, how globalization has really occurred, where most companies are doing business other continents, other countries, for sure, you can just do things with the cloud you couldn’t do before. It’s a game changer. And so, you know, I think our role is, just like it was with client-server, just like it was with the internet is, how do we help our customers use that to their advantage. So how do they A, not get disrupted, to use your word, or B, how do they disrupt their industry and gain advantage. So some of them are playing defense, some of them are playing offense. But it’s a brilliant, brilliant thing, and it’s a great time. You know, in my career, this is the third big inflection point, and they keep coming faster and they keep being bigger. So, should be very interesting.

Interviewer: Yeah. And that really kind of then sort of leads us to probably the conversation that, you know, is being had more and more, and that is…So when I left Australia, we had a prime minister called Tony Abbott, and he’s no longer the prime minister. And I found out overnight that we have a new prime minister, and he’s the ex communication minister. And his opening speech to Australians was very similar to the pitch that we talk to customers about the cloud, in that we talk about, you know, this is a more exciting time than ever, that the opportunity for…everybody has is great. And we need to be more agile, be able to respond to the markets better or faster, quicker. And then we need to be innovative. So, you know, would be quite interesting to understand is, as we see this technological wave just allow things to happen faster and faster and faster, what are you seeing with customers relating to how they’re making decisions? Or, can you give me any insight as about what do you think, what’s your opinion on how decision-making might need to change moving forward for those individuals…those of us leaders out there?

Brent: It’s a challenge. And the challenge is getting bigger and bigger and bigger. And the challenge is that, you know, all of us I think are comfortable making a decision if we feel like we have all the information we require by which to make that decision with. When things start changing at light speed, I think none of us feels like we have near enough information to make any decision. So the natural tendency or behavior is to, “Hey, let’s do nothing,” you know?

Interviewer: Yeah. But you can’t afford to do that.

Brent: Well, that didn’t work all that great for the dinosaurs. So I mean, I think, you know, you can’t afford to do that. But if you think about what that really means in your average company, everybody’s trying to do more with less, right? They’re running a million miles an hour, they’re struggling. You hear the words, “I’m too busy,” over and over and over again. And it’s a problem. It’s a problem, because, you know, much like I was saying earlier, going slightly faster isn’t gonna help this. You actually have to fundamentally change how you’re going at things, or you won’t get a different result. And so, you know, I think all of us have been around, guess depending on what your background is, the business world long enough to know that if you’re not in a position where there’s too many things to do every day, you’re probably not gonna work there very much longer. Somebody’s gonna get rid of your job, right? If you’re spinning on lug nuts for \$37 an hour, chances are that’s not gonna be enough to get you to your retirement, right? So somebody’s going to figure out how to automate that. It’s too much for not enough value, right?

But, I think more and more, we see our customers are getting to the point where they actually, you know, they’ve prioritized things as best they can. They are working on the critical things, but for the first time, critical things are starting to drop. They can’t actually execute or, you know, make choices, or keep moving forward. And for the first time, even though these are very successful, very highly functional people, they’re feeling like…the opposite of what they think they should be feeling, “I have all this great technology, it should make my life easier.” In fact, it’s almost having the opposite effect. So again, I think that’s what this inflection point is what’s happening now is, you know, what you have to do is forget what you know. And you need to do this in a different way. And people are warming up to that idea, because they kind of feel like they don’t have a choice.

Interviewer: What I’m seeing is, you know, for the first time, is customers actually having conversations about their concerns about being disrupted by somebody that they never thought might disrupt them.

Brent: For sure.

Interviewer: We had a conversation the other day you and I with a customer, who’s talking about how Google’s entered their market. And, you know, what’s traditionally…Google would never entered, offering products that they sell, totally hit them round from the side. But it’s probably more and more going to happen. I mean, who would have thought that Microsoft’s biggest competitor might be somebody selling some spare space that they don’t use, i.e. Amazon? But how do you make decisions? I mean, how do you…It’s almost like you have to have a cultural change. And you have to have a…you have to change the way that you even procure and make decisions about big items. Because you can’t afford the time now.

Brent: Right. So it, you know, but this isn’t new, right? So this is client-server kind of happening again in my mind, and I know not everybody’s in the technology field, but, you know, to a certain extent, when we had a mainframe, we were big and slow and stupid. Like, we just couldn’t move fast enough, right? Where everything just took so much effort to move. It was great. But the mainframe was fantastic in many, many, many ways. And our organization was very, very, very hierarchical.

But what client-server enabled…you know, again this connection of a bunch of little machines into one network of machines, was for us to be nimble, agile, fast. So, that’s what organizations need to do. You know, they’ve been trying for years to be more flat. So by basically, you know, flattening, in terms of organizational structure, really just kind of means you have less people to do the stuff that has to get done. It’s almost making the problem worse. Unless you can have some tools, might be technology, might be, you know, a method of doing things or a business process, could be, I don’t know, could be anything. Could be piece paper. But, you know, unless you have some tools by which to change how you do the workloads along with that, doesn’t work. So I think that’s kind of the wall that people are hitting today.

Interviewer: And, you know, as you see this kind of move and shift from people offering services on a time materials basis to increasingly offering services on a value basis, you know, fixed price product, subscription-oriented things…And we talk about how that’s going, but how do you think that’s gonna impact professional services moving forward? You know, do the days of getting paid for how long it takes over? Are they near to their end? Are they in your [inaudible 00:12:31] opinion gonna continue forward?

Brent: I think it’s always a pendulum that’s swinging, right? You know, it used to be do we centralize things, do we decentralize things? Do we centralize things, do we decentralize things? And again, using an IT example, I remember that I walked into this custom-built solution and somebody somewhere almost said, you know, “Batch processing, this is the greatest thing ever, let’s use it for everything.” And he went, “Why would you do that?” Like there’s some places where online transaction processing makes a lot more sense. But then I watched a bunch of people go down that path, and they moved everything to online transaction processing. And, you know, that was just as silly. It’s not about being at either end of that spectrum. It’s about sort of finding your space in the middle. So I think that there’s still some professional services firms that provide more complicated services that the people are gonna need and gonna want, and are gonna value, because they want an experience. They don’t want to buy a service, I want to buy an experience, right? And so somebody has to sort of tailor some of that stuff and figure out how to apply these things so that if it’s not…I mean, business the application of these things, how does that happen. So those kinds of firms will exist. I think that, you know, what’s gonna look a lot different though, the types of professional services that are provided are things we never dreamed of before. So again, if you had said to me in 1985, “Hey Brent, one day you’re gonna pay five dollars for a bottle of water,” I’d say, “You’re crazy, that’s never gonna happen.” Now I do it all the time, you know? So it’s gonna be that kind of an awakening, where this weird stuff that we take for granted today, I think all of a sudden, we’re gonna value very much. And other things that we value very highly today we’re not gonna value at all. We’re gonna think it’s, you know, not required. So there’s gonna be a lot of buggy whip, you know, factories out there that nobody cares about, right?

Interviewer: And, you know, you’re…I know from speaking with you and the talks that we’ve had that Encore’s had to almost transform itself maybe three times.

Brent: Yeah.

Interviewer: What’s it like to be, you know, in charge of an organization that’s gotta perform and transform?

Brent: You know, being part of it, I always say to people the same thing. You know, we have this, here’s what we gotta get to and here’s where we are, and it’s not gonna be easy. It’s gonna be very difficult. And I always say the same thing, that, you know, you’re gonna look back at this one day and say the words, “If I wasn’t so overwhelmed, that was…that would have been the best time of my professional career.” This is something that you’re going…it’s going to be fine. Like you’re gonna really enjoy this, but man, it is gonna be hard. And when you’re in the middle of it, it hurts, and it doesn’t seem fun, and doesn’t seem worthwhile.

But at some point, you get to the end, and when I say you get to the end, it’s just in time for it to start again, right? It’s a process that’s evergreen, as you will. But, by going through it and by going through it quickly, everybody in that organization gets some skills they didn’t have before. Or they’re able to build some of the muscle they did have, but, you know, make it stronger. And, it’s a powerful thing, because that’s what leads to innovation, that’s what leads to doing things differently, that’s what leads to, you know, somebody in the mailroom coming up with this great idea that becomes your new business, right?

So it’s fun, but it’s…you know, in the middle of it, it’s hard.

Interviewer: So I’ll have…and that view is is that increasingly that that gap between when you start, when you stop, is just gonna go away.

Brent: It’s an hour. Yeah, yeah.

Interviewer: And that there will be almost a requirement to…[inaudible 00:15:56] give it some context. So the number…by the time I hit the third sort of dot point on a company’s mission statement, which is…you know, and I sit in a lot of boardrooms, a lot of different organizations. I’ve seen innovation, mentioned in, you know, at least once. And then when you speak to the organization about that mission to be innovative, they say it’s very, very important. But then when you ask them how they measure that innovation in their business, they struggle to articulate it. And then when you start to talk to them about, you know, do they believe that at present they are innovative, they normally say no. My view is is that increasingly, organizations have to be able to be in a constant state of change and be just really good at change. In fact, the better you are at change, the more likely it is that you will succeed or just remain relevant. Because most people are being disrupted out by maybe the customers or, you know, just [inaudible 00:16:55] completely different. From a percent point for you, do you agree, do you disagree, do you…what’s your view?

Brent: Yes. I agree and I disagree both, I guess. You know, I’m kind of in the middle on this one, so I mean, I agree with you what innovation, most companies think they’re not innovative. In fact, you know, a lot of companies that don’t feel that they’re innovative, most of the companies would feel like they were. So, you know, it’s a hard thing to measure. I think, you know, all of us love being change agents. Most of us really dislike being the objects of change. And so your statement about all of us have to really, you know…the business we’re in is the business of change. I believe that, I think that’s true. Now, my personality is such that, you know, I love to create things. And I love to blow stuff up and recreate stuff. I don’t like maintaining stuff. I’ve never liked that. So my personality is more geared toward what you’re talking about, where I like the idea of change. If there’s not enough duress or stress in my life, I like to create more. Because, you know, I wanna try and make things better. Not because I have to, because I want to. I want it to be better, right? So, you know, so organizations really need to get a handle on that. I think in terms of measuring it, that’s the challenge. And…

Interviewer: What do you have, like a…define an innovation metric that you could…

Brent: Well, [inaudible 00:18:20] you know, because I can remember it used to be like “the innovation box” or something, right? And so if you had a great idea, you would put it in the box. And then they would read all these things and then if there was any great ideas that came to life, you know, somebody would get a check for \$500 or something, right? Or I remember the story of the guy at McDonald’s that invented the O-ring for the ketchup plunger and, you know, saved them \$10 million a year, you know. So, you know, I think all of us have this idea of innovation as like this big complicated, let’s get a spaceship to the moon kind of thing. And then the reality is that it’s the simple little things that are really the most innovative. And it’s the ability to reapply those and reapply those and reapply those and reapply those. It doesn’t have to be a new idea, it can be the application of an old idea, but make it slightly better, or tailor it to you. And, you know, I’ve often thought that beef tenderloin is really good. I want to meet the guy that decided you should wrap this thing in bacon. You know, who’s the guy that beef tenderloin wasn’t good enough for, right? Who’s that guy? And so I think that, you know, in terms of our companies and companies in general and how they run, that’s kind of the approach you have to take, that [inaudible 00:19:26] I think in the past, companies would wait until…they played defense as long as they could, and then they would change because they had to. I think in today’s world, in tomorrow’s world, you gotta do it because it makes sense, not because you have to. If you wait long enough to where you have to, it’s too late. You’re gonna be extinct.

Interviewer: Yeah, we talk about runways. The idea is that I’ve got enough runway to make the changes I need to, so that I don’t run off it. I can get off. And the worst thing in the world is when you actually get visibility and most people don’t, and then they wake up going, “Oh, [inaudible 00:19:55] I’ve got 10 feet left, and we’re in trouble.”

Brent: Right. I often think…I always thought of it in my mind, just how I visualize, was a train, right? So when a train wants to turn a corner, it does it over a mile or two, a little bit at a time. You know, it can’t get to the edge and then turn at 90 degrees, it just, that won’t work. And I think oftentimes…

Interviewer: Yeah. And if it’s going full speed as a business does, it’s a big crash.

Brent: It’s a problem. Right. And so I often think that’s sort of a great sort of analogy for businesses, because they are a train, they’re hurtling down this track. And, you know, you need to be able to make that corner.

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Interviewer: Tell me a little bit about the corporate culture in Canada. Tell me about, you know, how you…because I think you’ve worked in the U.S. a bit, you’ve worked in Australia a little bit, you’ve worked in Canada. Where…what’s Canada like?

Brent: Canada, you know, it’s a big country, and there’s lots of different pockets, so it’s hard to characterize the whole country probably with one statement. But if I look at Canada as compared to the U.S. as an example, you know, Canada is kind of about, “Show me where this has worked 50 times and then I’m in. But, you know, I’m not going first, that’s not gonna happen.” I think that, again, that’s changing. Obviously there’s pockets of people that are much more entrepreneurial, much more risk takers and things. But most medium to large sized businesses, you know, they’re running well, things are going good. Don’t mess it up, right? Let’s just keep this thing going.

We implement ERP solutions and CRM solutions. It’s our main part of our business, and, you know, when you’re doing those types of solutions, maybe not CRM, but ERP, what happens is the average time that people replace them was 12 to 15 years from when they put them in. But the reality is, about three years before they replace them, they should have replaced them. But there’s a lot of pain and suffering that goes along with replacing these things and also very expensive. So people really wanna kind of think about how they do that. And unfortunately, I think in that business, in our business, the way in which people evaluate these things is probably circa 1992, you know, the method that’s used.

The cloud is changing that. And the cloud really is this idea of, “Hey, let’s try this thing. Let’s see what happens.” So, I think, you know, in terms of Canada, back to the question you asked, and why am I going off this tangent…

Interviewer: Because you’re a CEO, and I can ask any question [crosstalk], That’s pretty much it.

Brent: I mean, it’s gonna change things a lot. Because it’s gonna be more early adopter. It’s gonna be more, “Get in, let’s try this, let’s experiment. If it works, let’s tweak it and make it work better. If it doesn’t work, let’s kill it and move on.” And so, you know, I’m interested to see what the impact is gonna be on culture as a whole, because I think it will change it, and I think it will change in a positive way. And people won’t take as long to make decisions, because they can’t, and also there’s less risk associated with a decision, so they will…there’s no reason to wait, you know. If you try it and be wrong five times, you’re still money ahead.

Interviewer: That’s right. So the fundamental, that’s that concept of how do you make a procurement decision is something that’s changing. Right, so like I should be able to say, “Look, I’ll try 10 things, and I could do it at really low cost, and 2 of them might work, and if they do, then I’ll continue to invest, and if they don’t know, I won’t do it.”

Brent: Right. But it’s sort of the, you know, the baseball culture, right? So in professional baseball, the guys who fail seven out of ten times are the best in the world, right? So you have to be willing to fail. You have to be okay with trying something. Again, so culturally, it’s a change.

Interviewer: How do you do that? I mean do…

Brent: Take away the risk.

Interviewer: So, can I [inaudible 00:23:47] you know, how do you do with that with your people, you know, your leadership team within your business? You know, how do you allow…how do create culture where failure’s okay?

Brent: First of all…so in our culture, you always have to evaluate when, you know, let people do stuff, right. If you do it for them, well then they’re never gonna learn, right. And we all know…I learned a lot more by doing things wrong than I ever learned by doing things right. So I think there’s kind of two things that you have to enforce on a day-to-day basis. One is that as you’re working with your colleagues, and they have the gun pointing at them, you have to say, “Well, is it pointing at their foot or is it pointing at their head?” And if it’s pointing at their foot, well let ’em shoot themselves, whatever, right. You know, if they ask, right, tell ’em what…you gotta let them do what they’re gonna do, right?

If it’s pointing at their head, you need to tackle them and get the gun out of their hand, right, and have a discussion. And I think the second thing is that when a failure occurs, we shouldn’t be sitting down trying to figure out who’s to blame. Who cares? I can’t change the past, right? But, if the person who made the mistake doesn’t understand that they made a mistake, then you have to have a conversation with them. If they know they made a mistake, you don’t need to have a talk, right. Good, we’re good, whatever, they’ll figure it out.

If they don’t know they made a mistake, if you don’t have that discussion, then they’ll make the same mistake again. And that, an organization can’t afford. So it’s okay to fail, but you can’t keep doing the same failure over and over and over again.

Interviewer: So is it a question of intent? Was it a question of, if you had good intentions and you were working hard and you’re a capable person, but, you know, you’ve got the right to fail, or is it…? You know, and then, that it’s an appropriate failure, it’s not like just put the whole business at risk by doing something stupid?

Brent: Again, I never met a person who came to work to do a shitty job. I don’t know that person. I mean, everybody shows up every day so they can do their best. And they do the best within the context of the information that they have or the experience they have, or whatever. So, I think everybody’s intentions are good. By and large, they’re not trying to do something that’s gonna fail, right? But…you know, again, there’s things that can kill the company. Like there’s things, there are decisions that can get made that can end the company. So you need to be cognizant of what those are, and have some controls in place, right? But, you know, as CEO of a company, I’d much rather be kind of trying to rein people in and hold them back than kick them in the ass to get going, you know.

And so, it has to be okay to fail. You know, if you don’t fail once in awhile, you’re not trying hard enough. Right, it almost should be celebrated when you fail. But just, you know, again, 10 times out of 10, probably not good. Right? You know? If you fail 2 times out of 10, well that’s fantastic, right? You gotta kind of figure out for your organization where that is, and it’s not just your organization, is kind of the role in your organization as well. But, the speed at which things move today, you know, you can’t have one person make all the decisions.

Interviewer: No, and…

Brent: But the concept of a network is each device on that network knows what decisions it’s gonna make, and it makes them. And that’s the trick. And you know because it performs that single function, that specialized function, it’s gonna do the best job that you could do. And it might be wrong, but it’s, you know, it’s better to have the printer doing printing than the CPU trying to do printing. It doesn’t work, it can’t do printing, right. That’s not gonna work. So it’s your best opportunity to succeed.

Interviewer: And so if you think about the types of skills that you value for the young up and comers, the leaders of the future, the people that, you know, you’re gonna promote in this organization, what are the leadership skills, and what are the things that they should be thinking about developing for themselves professionally? And is it different from the skills that you…is it any different from what we used to have to have?

Brent: I think it’s the same. I think it’s aptitude and attitude. I don’t think it’s skills at all. I mean, if you learn this stuff, I can too, or, you know, she learned the stuff, then you can too. So skills probably has the least impact on it. In fact, oftentimes, skills kind of keeps us doing the things the way we used to do them, as opposed the way that we should do them, right?

Interviewer: Yep, valid point.

Brent: And, yeah, it just seems to me if you’re always learning, you know, so that concept of a learning organization, and just always trying to learn and apply, learn and apply, learn and apply, then you’re gonna figure it out. And so therefore, if you’re driven, and you have a high aptitude, it just works.

Interviewer: And then, let’s talk about the other component of that is what about the concept of balance, and balance within the people in the organization. Is there such a thing as a well-balanced leader?

Brent: Yeah, I think there is. And I think as a leader, you have to be clear about, you know, what the vision is and where you’re trying to get to. I think you need to set expectations very clearly, and, you know, kind of divide up the workload in a way that it could be performed. And I think that people just wanna be treated fairly, you know? And as a leader, you’re gonna make mistakes, and you’re gonna do some things right.

Interviewer: But is there a pressure to be a leader, and to continue to, you know, talk about attitude and aptitude [inaudible 00:29:17] like the way that you’d look at things that there’s pressure on one when someone’s young to really try to get ahead of the pack. They’ve just gotta really bust a gut to get there?

Brent: So what what I’ve seen is that, you know, basically, the generalists are the ones that end up being leaders, right? And the specialists are the ones that end up, you know, being experts in some skill set or field. And, you know, I see that one isn’t more valuable than the other. In fact, I often see that the specialists or the experts get more compensation than the leaders do. Right? And I think that the, you know, again, within our own company at least, this idea of managing things is just as important as managing people, because there’s a lot of things we manage as well in a project-based business, right?

And so, you know, for young people trying to get ahead, I would say that the biggest thing is awareness. They say a third of the people in the world sort of recognize opportunities. Oftentimes, opportunities present themselves to you in the form of more work to do and, you know, no appreciation. So, you know, when somebody’s asking you how your job is, and your response is that, “Well, the pay’s not that great, but at least the hours are long,” then you’re probably on the right track to be leader. You know, that’s kinda how it works, near as I can tell, right? And so, you’re doing things because they’re meaningful to you. Again, most of people that I’ve met that have been great leaders, you couldn’t pay them enough to do the things they did, they did ’em because they wanted to.

And they did ’em because it had to get done. They did it because they were passionate about whatever that thing was. And so, you know, again, that idea of constant learning, that idea of having a high aptitude, that idea of being aware, having the right attitude about stuff, right. Because a lot of awareness is, you know, people don’t recognize opportunity. Right? And, you know, when somebody offers you more work and the same amount of pay, you might go, “Well, that’s stupid, I’m not doing that,” which is a good choice. That’s great, but often that’s what, you know…it’s you investing in your education.

Interviewer: That’s right.

Brent: Right?

Interviewer: And it’s about [inaudible 00:31:33]

Brent: Yeah.

Interviewer: So, with that, I’d like to thank you Brent for a very stimulating conversation about everything leadership. And thanks for having us in Canada, and see you around, huh?

Brent: It’s been great.

Interviewer: Cheers.