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Experts of Experience
How Engineer-Turned-Exec Creates Personal Experience At A Global Scale
01:10:37
What do a superhero named Captain Rochester, a bold business trip to Brazil, and AI-powered sales have in common?
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- [00:00]
Colin Strother
I'm trying to evolve from B2B into P2P. So person to person, when you're managing this type of business on a global basis, no two days are the same. No one in Rochester thinks AI is coming to take their job.
- [00:13]
Lacey Peace
That would not be fun. I'm in these new tech systems. You know, AI is supporting these companies. But now I'm getting hit with just so many different communications. I'm completely overloaded with text messages, emails.
- [00:25]
Colin Strother
Imagine a situation where all the communications you ever got from companies was of relevance to your you. Everybody's got eyes on everything and everybody's responsible for it.
- [00:35]
Lacey Peace
You're unsiloing everything.
- [00:37]
Colin Strother
How we can get that into the minds of the seller who's engaging with the customer so the customer could truly understand the value. It's another industrial revolution where man and machine are just going to come together in amazing new ways.
- [00:50]
Lacey Peace
Gives her an opportunity to completely rethink how we're operating, given the tools we have access to. Welcome back to Experts of Experience. I'm your host, Lacey Peace. And Rose, our producer, is here as well. We just got off the mic with Colin Strother, the executive vice president of Rochester Electronics. And, man, this was a fun episode. Rose, what did you think?
- [01:14]
Rose
I thought it was super cool. And I was introduced to a new term today. I have heard of B2B, obviously B2C, but I've never heard of P2P. Break that down for me real quick.
- [01:28]
Lacey Peace
Yes, yes. So P2P sounds a little funny. Sounds a little bit like, inappropriate, to be honest. But P2Pmeans person to person instead of, you know, business business or business to consumer. And it's a concept that Colin really likes to talk about and, like, kind of wraps a lot of his leadership philosophy around, which is this idea that all business is personal, all business is person to person. Whether you are a massive organization, a small startup, or you're a consumer buying a product, it really doesn't matter. It's based off trust. It's me buying something from you. And if you start to scale out too large with these B2B or B2C terms, you really start to lose the focus of the customer and the person that's at the center of what you're trying to do. So I really love that philosophy. It actually ties into something that I've been thinking about a lot lately, which is this idea that startups tend to do, which is doing things that don't scale.
- [02:24]
Rose
Doing things that don't scale.
- [02:26]
Lacey Peace
Like startups don't scale. Yes.
- [02:28]
Rose
Intentionally Doing things that you can't scale with. How does that work?
- [02:32]
Lacey Peace
So I like to give some examples for this. So like Airbnb, they used to rent out their own house, like their own extra bedroom. I don't even think it was a bedroom that they had. I think it was like a couch that they had in their living rooms that they were trying to make extra money on. Inherently not scalable. You can't just have a bunch of people sleep on the same couch. Right. Or like doordash. The founders used to actually go run all the door dashes on their own before they had any kind of team or any way to like, scale up the technology that they were using. Reddit used to have all their employees make fake user accounts to engage with threads to make it look like there was more people than there were on Reddit. Right. So like, a lot of these companies start from a place doing things that are unscalable. And there was a story that we hear from Colin in this episode that is not scalable, but it's something that he's done throughout his career, which is going face to face to a potential prospect or a customer and working with them directly. You can't clone Colin and have a bunch of him running around doing this at scale. So it's an interesting idea that he's like, you have to do this face to face engagement with a customer. You need to be present with them in this really personal way and in order to move the needle enough that you can start to do these things that are scalable.
- [03:45]
Rose
Yeah, that makes sense. I'm glad it was Colin leading this conversation with us too, because Rochester Electronics, it's enormous and it's a global enterprise. So if they can manage this P2Pmindset, then any company of any size should be able to.
- [04:03]
Lacey Peace
Absolutely, absolutely. And for those who don't, aren't super familiar with Rochester Electronics, or maybe they've heard the name but don't know what they do. Rochester Electronics is able to produce and manufacture and sell a bunch of semiconductors. So they're producing semiconductors for pretty much like all kinds of electronics that we use daily that you see all around. And they have an inventory of more than 12 billion silicon chips.
- [04:27]
Rose
Is that 12 billion with a B?
- [04:29]
Lacey Peace
With a B. Wow. And then 15 billion devices that are packaged crazy. It's just like these numbers that I'm looking at are wild. So it's a massive organization across the globe.
- [04:40]
Rose
We also talked a lot about change management in this episode, which I appreciated. I think that's Change management, with the rapid evolution of AI is becoming another corporate buzzword, I think. I mean, I'm seeing it everywhere, but I really enjoyed listening to you guys talk about getting into the weeds of change management. What actually moves the needle when it comes to integrating new technologies into teams, especially at scale.
- [05:08]
Lacey Peace
Just one, like to give you guys a little tease. One of the key takeaways that Colin shared that I resonated with a lot was around leadership and how you as the leader saying, hey, you know, this is a new tool or new technology that we want to implement. You have to have that trust already inherently built in with your team that they hear you and they're like, well, if. If Colin recommends that, then I trust him, then I want to actually try this and implement it. So it's like almost everything in this episode, we get really technical. Colin shares a lot about the results that he's seen with AI agents, some of the salesforce tools and products that they've incorporated into their organization. But at the base of all of this, he always brings it back to this human connection and what it takes to be a great leader and a great customer service provider. So with that, I would like to introduce Colin Strother, the EVP of Rochester Electronics here. Here's Colin. Welcome to the show, Colin. I'm so excited for you to be here.
- [06:04]
Colin Strother
Thank you, Lacy. I'm really looking forward to the discussion.
- [06:07]
Lacey Peace
Yeah, absolutely. Well, for those who are unfamiliar with Rochester Electronics and unfamiliar with yourself, Colin, do you mind just giving a quick intro?
- [06:15]
Colin Strother
Sure, yeah. Rochester Electronics are a global distributor and manufacturer of semiconductor products. We provide a range of products into a variety of different industries, typically focusing on those that have a longer term requirement and a higher reliability. I've been in the industry now for about 34 years.
- [06:39]
Lacey Peace
Congratulations.
- [06:41]
Colin Strother
Thank you. And I've been with Rochester for 18 years. The first seven was based in the UK and the last 11 here in.
- [06:48]
Lacey Peace
The US that's awesome. I'm so excited that you are have been at Rochester for so long. Did you start in your career in semiconductors at Rochester or were you at a different company before that?
- [06:57]
Colin Strother
I was an engineer originally in the company today are called Plexus and their major facility in, in Europe is in Scotland, which is where I kind of started my, my journey and at school in the, I guess the 90s, Scotland went through a lot of change as a nation. A lot of the heavy industries, coal, steel, shipbuilding, textiles, for example, car production really kind of sadly shut down. But there was a lot of inward investment at that point. To a new industry, which was electronics. So at one point, there was more multinational electronic companies in Scotland than anywhere else other than Silicon Valley. So you do tend to.
- [07:44]
Lacey Peace
It's wild.
- [07:45]
Colin Strother
Yeah. You do tend to find a lot of Scottish people from that era dispersed across the globe in our industry. Yeah.
- [07:51]
Lacey Peace
I had no idea. You shared that when we chatted last. And I had no clue that Scotland was like that big of an electronic company at that time.
- [07:57]
Colin Strother
Yeah, it was massive. All of the brand names were there. We were making everything from computers to semiconductors to VCRs to cameras. Sadly, as time progressed for low cost manufacturing, a lot of the production moved initially to perhaps Eastern Europe and then into Asia, South Asia, China. So today, unfortunately, the industry in Scotland is a shadow of what it once was. And that's really what I guess led to my journey where when I left the factory as an engineer to move into what was field sales at the time, my territory was East Scotland, believe it or not. And there was a plant making over a million cell phones a week at that time. And then suddenly with, with, you know, those industries offshoring, I think we lost 14,000 jobs in one week in one town in the industry.
- [08:59]
Lacey Peace
Wow.
- [08:59]
Colin Strother
My sales territory became all of Scotland, Scotland and Northern uk. Scotland, Northern UK and Ireland, Europe, Middle Eastern Africa and ultimately today, global.
- [09:11]
Lacey Peace
Wow. Wow. And when did you make the move from Scotland to where you are now?
- [09:15]
Colin Strother
I did it with Rochester, actually it was in 2007. And it's funny because both my children and my wife were all Scottish. My son was one year old when we moved. My daughter was around six or seven to England, to the Rochester office that is north of London. So my son, today, he's heading to Scotland to spend time with his cousins next week. And he miraculously has a Scottish accent when he's in Scotland. He's never had one in his life before, so it's quite amusing. And often wonder what it's like for my kids today, living in the house here in the US with my wife and I, who speak with a strong Scottish accent. My kids really don't. Yeah.
- [09:54]
Lacey Peace
Oh, that's so fun. So what does your day to day look like now at Rochester? Since you started as this engineer, how did you get to where you are now with Rochester?
- [10:05]
Colin Strother
It's a good question. So from engineering, I moved into field sales. And in those days, and like today, typically companies want someone in sales to also be technical. Right. Because you're able to go and engage with customers and talk technically about the product. So that then led itself to some More sales management, sales leadership, types of roles where I would manage sales teams across geographies and Europe. For example, when I joined Rochester, I was European Sales director. And then by adding facilities in the UK and offices in Europe and expanded it, I was the general manager for Europe, Middle east and Africa.
- [10:44]
Lacey Peace
Wow. I mean, that's just wild. What a scope to be in charge of so many different cultures to really account for.
- [10:51]
Colin Strother
It's an interesting one at that moment because when you're. When you're from the UK and you're doing that type of role, you really do have to leave the UK to cover the customer base. And, you know, although there's a lot of similarities, you're in France and you're in Belgium and you're in Holland and you're in Germany. And back in those days, when I first did it, there was no European Union, there was no Euro. So it was not only different languages and cultures, it was different currencies. So I moved to the US in 2014 to run global sales. And that really brought into Marima, all of the Americas and Asia, which we break into Asia Pacific and Japan. So really it was a continuation there. And I did the same thing, managing the team, setting up all of the local offices throughout Asia and the Americas, whether it's in North America or Southern Latin America. And through time, there was, you know, I'm always thinking with the customer in mind, Lacy. So there was things where I felt we could perhaps improve on as a company, and I really wanted the opportunity to help. So I picked up marketing. So I was vice president of sales and marketing, and then, you know, other things such as supply chain, you know, actually getting the products from the suppliers into the hands of the customers, and then operations and then business applications. So today my role really spans everything from how we engage with the semiconductor companies we represent, as their authorized distributor comes with Texas Instruments Analog Devices, through to how we receive the product, how we market and sell a product with physical resource, local presence, digital resource, and then how we physically deliver the product from a supply chain. And that gets me involved in so many things on a daily basis. So there's obviously, there's a sales element, but there's the websites, the digital marketing, the product catalog, even things such as tariffs, trade policies, export compliance, logistics, warehouse management. So that's really exciting for me because ultimately, Lacy, my thoughts, customer success. How can we be of value to the customer? All of these things, in my mind, even if it's slightly indirectly, they all feed into that same North Star. And it also allows Me a little bit of time to maybe tap into my engineering brain a little bit and get involved in some of these other areas, which is a little bit different to perhaps sales. So it's really rewarding, really refreshing. And 18 years later, whilst there's a lot of consistency and stability, when you're managing this type of business on a global basis, no two days are the same. No two days are the same.
- [13:40]
Lacey Peace
Oh, I bet. I bet. What I find fascinating about everything that you've shared is that you sit in this seat where you're seeing this massive global perspective and every year it sounds like you've gotten the opportunity to layer on more countries, more people to work with, more products, probably to sell. Right. And so everything is really, at this point, large global scale, but you're still distilling what you're seeing there down to this very individualized how does this affect the customer? So it's like from global to personal. And you had a really great story, actually, that we covered last time we talked that I would love for you to share with our audience that I think speaks to this really well. Would you mind sharing what happened in Brazil?
- [14:20]
Colin Strother
Sure. I don't know if it's in my DNA or what, but growing up in Scotland in the 70s, there was not a lot of diversity and I was always fascinated by what I would see on television. I love TV and movies. It's like a complete fix for me. And it made me always really curious, so I always wanted to explore. I guess that's why I've lived in different places as well. But the engineer in me always likes to finish a project. And this is one of the greatest challenges, you know, across any industry, is having an idea in, say, a boardroom and actually being able to translate it into something on the ground. So I was always a big believer that you've got to go and spend your time when the work is done. To me, I'm not having my best ideas, if I have any good ones at all, behind my desk. You're just involved in the day to day at that moment. Typically. Now, I'm not saying we don't get together and we don't brainstorm or we don't take an idea and kind of noodle it. But really, if you want to be where the work is done, you've got to be in the field with the customer, with a supplier, for example. So at that time, Brazil was a country that I was curious about and we had very little business there and I decided I would go on a trip. So while Today in China, for example, we've got four offices. Right. In Japan, we've got two offices. There was a day where none of that existed, and there was Colin and a plane ticket. I still keep doing this type of thing, rinse and repeat and enjoyably shocking myself into it. So off I headed to Brazil. So I don't speak Portuguese, and I have a strong Scottish accent. And I was with two colleagues, one from Mexico and my colleague from North America with a strong Boston accent. And we were in a city called Curitiba, and we visited a customer, lovely customer. And this is where the human connection comes in, because, you know, you might not be able to exchange all of the language verbally, but you can through your expression, your language. And when you see, you see it in someone's eyes, you understand if they're quizzical or they're understanding. So. And I'm also really, really competitive. I've got to say that. So I'm in the customer, and I see a plaque on their wall in the conference room from another distributor. Now, the fact this is our first time there, I immediately see and think, I want a plaque. I want our plaque on the wall. I want Rochester's plaque on that wall. So I said that to the lady, and we had a bit of a laugh. And I said, no, seriously, what did they do that we could do? And how do you really want to be best served? You know? While she gave me an individual answer to her, which we can touch on later, perhaps in personalization, I thought about it on a broader scale, on a global scale. So this is how she wanted to be served. She wanted to meet face to face. We were there, and I said, well, this is always the best face to face, but I or we or colleagues can't be in Curitiba every day. But she wanted that physical connection. So that then led to us putting in field sales in Brazil. I said, okay, if it's not face to face, what do you want next? I want to be able to pick up the phone, and I want to talk to someone that knows me and understands my business and my challenges, and I want to be able to do it in my local language. So we hired Insight Sales in Brazil. And I said, okay, so face to face, there's on the phone, but what else? I want to go onto your web platform and place an order. And I'm like, okay, I think you could do that today. And she said, yes, I can, but it's on a credit card. And when I thought about it, most of our customers or Larger customers sent their business to business. So they would raise an order in their ERP and either send it to us to an inside sales team or. Or over some other electronic protocol, a credit card, you know, if that's what you want to use, that's fine. But in a business to business environment, you don't really raise an order in your erp, then go look and print it out, then go looking for a credit card, then go on a dot com platform, then place it with a credit card. So I'm sitting there thinking, that's a, that's not a great process.
- [18:23]
Lacey Peace
No.
- [18:24]
Colin Strother
Okay, so at this point, I'm up to, you want to meet face to face, you want to have someone on the end of the phone, you maybe want to email orders, and you want to place orders through an inside salesperson, but you also might want to do that using your credit terms and your account online at your convenience. So that led me to think, okay, what we now need is a unified experience. And I said, is there one last thing you need? And she said, yes, randomly. I might just want to go and check something. I might not want to phone someone, I might not want to trouble someone. It might be out of hours. I just want to go and check something related to my account. So that was the other learning experience that customers, you know, in the modern world where we're, you know, we're talking about AI and digital transformation, they want to be met in many ways, potentially complementary, maybe contradictory, and they want to be able to do that at any time, at any moment. And that's really what I left with. And then set off to try to ensure we could offer our customers Lacy on a global basis. And I maybe would have gotten there, but I got there a lot quicker listening to that lady that day. So I do need to visit her face to face. I do need probably to tell her what happened next and to thank her.
- [19:40]
Lacey Peace
For her, oh, you gotta send her this podcast and like say, hey, yeah, that's a great shout out.
- [19:46]
Colin Strother
That's right. I think I shall do that.
- [19:48]
Lacey Peace
No, what I love about that story is you. I mean, just from the beginning, the get go, you're like, I'm gonna go to Brazil. I'm just gonna take a plane ticket, I'm gonna go to Brazil and I'm gonna talk to someone face to face, even though I can't speak the language. And we're not really like present with them. They're obviously, they're using a competitor already. So, like, just the, the desire to do that. I find really inspiring and interesting that that was something that came from within that you wanted to go do. But then that whole story of, you know, she's explaining, here's this long list of the things that I want access to, and I think anyone listening this podcast has heard that same list. Like, I want to be able to call someone. I want to be able to talk to someone face to face if I need to. I want to be able to speak in my native language. And if I don't want to talk to someone and I'm kind of feeling like I'm in an introverted mood, I want to just go on my. The website or the platform or whatever it is and access the information I need to. And I want all this to be seamless regardless of which way I choose to go. Like, if I'm talking to a human or I'm online, either way, the data information history of my account is all there and present, and you know who I am and you know what I need. Um, and so, like, that story is, I think, very common and it's true for pretty much every consumer in today's world. Um, so, yeah, I would love to hear kind of like you described a little bit about how Rochester started to apply those lessons that you saw. But do you mind describing, like, how you started to actually do this not just for Brazil, but across the board for all your customers?
- [21:15]
Colin Strother
Sure. And it's a strange one because everything we've. Well, first of all, when you relayed the story with Brazil, it kind of like sounds like it was nutty what I did, but I've done. This is all I. This is how I behave, I suppose I don't even year doing it. It's something that I really enjoy. And also the parallel of how we as consumers act. Right. I mean, if it was the bank my nearest branches in New York visited once in 10 years, for example, I can maybe phone someone, but I'm typically just going to use the app and if I can't get what I need on the app, I'm probably going to go on the website. So as a consumer, as a person, the things that we were talking about that day is very common when it comes to businesses and companies. It's a strange one because when you mention a company, you kind of think of a name and a group or a share price, but really it's just people. So I think sometimes we forget how people want to interact. So when I left there, I really came away with a strong feeling of it's not B2C or B2B, which is often how things are pigeonholed, especially when you look at the. To buy a product. I thought it was P2P. It's person to person. So to get started on that, you really need to understand every aspect of your customer and you've got to offer them a holistic, unified engagement. So what we did was we had a variety of different products running different applications, whether it was the CPQ or whether it was a web platform. So, you know, and they were integrated, but they weren't the same thing. So it asked your specific question in terms of giving that unified experience to a customer online offline. It's a unified commerce platform. So really it's the same thing. So whether you're talking to an inside salesperson and providing them a list of parts, for example, to provide information on, although whether you want to log in in a secure portal and do it yourself, it's a unified experience. Your information is all contained in that one place. Your inside salesperson can see what you're doing. The customer understands that the inside salesperson can see what they're doing. So it really does allow for, perhaps even in a way you could, you know, as a customer, you could do something online in your convenience, and your inside salesperson, if you chose, could complete it offline in their time zone. So it's this unified experience, and it's all in Salesforce. It's all in one place. So it's not through integrations. It's entirely native onto one platform. And that's a platform where really we capture all information about our customer.
- [24:02]
Lacey Peace
So before this combo in Brazil, did you guys have multiple different technologies you guys were using and trying to integrate together?
- [24:07]
Colin Strother
Yeah, in my wisdom, it's like, you know, it's like any company, you can go through the years with different systems and processes.
- [24:15]
Lacey Peace
Absolutely.
- [24:16]
Colin Strother
At one point, I really felt that, you know, the systems that were in place, certainly from a customer success perspective, were a little bit more backend it finance driven. And that's fine because you absolutely need that. But I really wanted to have something that was a lot more user friendly, friendly for the seller and a lot more user friendly to engage with the customer. So in my wisdom, I created a lot of custom applications and they were great because they did exactly what we wanted them to do and everybody loved them. The challenge was A, they were not scalable, B, they still had to integrate to other applications, and C, in our evolution, we'd perhaps digitized processes that really should have been revised and improved. I think the trick in all of this is with the massive amount of data and applications, et cetera, we have, you've got to try to have this. I guess it's this kind of law that states where we're trying to add sophistication. We've also got to maintain simplification because otherwise you can get a lot of wires, spaghetti very, very quickly with the thread. So that was a learning experience for me. I don't regret it because it was good for us at the time. We probably wouldn't be where we are today had we not went through it. It would have been just too big a jump. Right. Sometimes you've kind of got to evolve to get to the state that you really want to be in.
- [25:43]
Lacey Peace
Well, there's something you mentioned there about digitizing processes that maybe shouldn't be digitized that I kind of want to dive into a little bit because I've heard this from a lot of people and I've seen it in action with companies that we work with where there's this system that we're like, okay, cool, let's go, we got AI now let's just take the exact system that we've been using for the last decade and AI to execute on all these things that we said we should do. Right. But there's this pause moment that needs to happen first where it's like, oh wait, should we actually be running the system the way that we've been running the system? Is there an opportunity to completely rethink how we're operating given the tools we have access to? So it's not just like let's have AI copy and paste what we're doing. It's like, how can we rewrite the entire system that we've been working with as technology is improving? So I just, I feel like that's a really valuable point that I wanted to kind of dive into a little bit more with you.
- [26:36]
Colin Strother
Sure. So you know, the, when you're looking at an application, say like a Salesforce product, and you know, we're working together and we, we highlight the challenge or define the problem statement perhaps, and then we, we talk together about how we can solve it at that moment, you know, you typically are able to come up with a high level resolution. The challenge is always delivering that because then you get into all of the data challenges, the change management aspects, for example. So maybe the engineer in me, it's a strange one because, you know, curiosity to go and investigate new things, drive to go away and do it, but that complete or finisher, task orientated nature where I Want to see it through to conclusion. Everyone's house has got this drawer that's. That's kind of full of the scotch tape and the keys and stuff.
- [27:28]
Lacey Peace
Juncture, for sure.
- [27:30]
Colin Strother
So you've kind of got to. You've really got to fight through all of that. Right. Because when you talk about AI, for example, it's only looking to read data effectively and then make a pattern from it. In my view, if what it's looking at is inaccurate or incorrect, it's not magic. It won't give you the answer you're.
- [27:51]
Lacey Peace
Looking for or just outdated. It might just be outdated. Like maybe it's not wrong. Maybe it's just old data. Yeah.
- [27:57]
Colin Strother
So we have begun our AI journey. Kind of lucked out. So we have a company superhero called Captain Rochester.
- [28:04]
Lacey Peace
I did not know this.
- [28:05]
Colin Strother
And we've got comic books and we did videos because, you know, the biggest people say, who's the biggest competitor to Rochester? Really, what we fight all the time is we fight against unauthorized resellers because we are an authorized seller of semiconductor products. And quite often we might find in our industry, you might find unauthorized products leads to supply chain security challenges or actually risks on a component level. And semiconductor products are valuable commodities. So you might end up with substandard products and counterfeit products. So Captain Rochester really was the industry's first superhero to fight counterfeiting. So we kind of retired him at one point. And I was at Dreamforce last year, and I'm sitting there and it's all about AI agents. And I'm thinking, C A P T A I N. We've lucked out. We've got Captain Rochester now. He's Captain. Captain AI Rochester.
- [28:59]
Lacey Peace
AI. Yeah.
- [29:00]
Colin Strother
We've introduced him as the industry's first AI superhero. And if you go on rockolight.com today and you ask a question, you're able to ask Captain Rochester a question in native language and get a response. So natural language and get a response versus a bot. And it's fantastic. It's absolutely fantastic. So me personally, when I'm online and I'm searching something, I always read the AI response. But you then have to deduce, is it kind of telling you what you kind of thought it would? Is it kind of correct? So on our journey, we're going carefully into the AI night because ultimately, what underpins it all, in my view, is the foundational data that it's utilizing.
- [29:43]
Lacey Peace
Yeah. Oh, for sure. For sure. And as you guys have started to implement these different AI agents or AI tools, what has the response Been like with customers, are they liking Captain Rochester?
- [29:52]
Colin Strother
Everyone loves Captain Rochester because they're pleased to see him again. Because at the end of the day, we're very serious with what we do as a company, but we don't take ourselves too seriously. And I think the customers appreciate that. The humility there. From an AI perspective, there's not been a huge amount of feedback, Lacy, which is a good thing because sometimes people are nervous of new technology and the feedback might be a little bit negative perhaps.
- [30:19]
Lacey Peace
Absolutely.
- [30:20]
Colin Strother
As well. What I've seen is that people just enjoy being able to type a question and get an answer, which kind of sounds crazy, but really what all the AI agent is doing, and ideally not replacing and augmenting, is picking up the phone and talking to someone and getting an answer. You ask a question, you get an answer, right? When it's a bot and you know that you're trying to give the bot the information to try to get to the answer that you're looking for. Right? So I think the experience has been good. And as I say, I'm really saying that though, because there's been no disruptions, no concerns, no complaints, no nothing.
- [30:59]
Lacey Peace
What other ways are you guys using AI though? Because I imagine Captain Rochester sounds great and I love that you're using this chatbot on the site, but internally I gotta imagine there's a lot of different applications of how you're using these tools available to you now.
- [31:12]
Colin Strother
The main way we use it today, carefully, and it's more. The Einstein agent from Salesforce is when we're looking at our sales processes and our opportunity funnels. So. So it's very, very important that as sellers, especially in some of our more complex value added products, where we're manufacturing the product, redesigning the product, really, that's got to have a lot of customer engagement, right? It's got to be fully qualified. The customer's got to be fully understanding what the solution is. For example, so we use sales cloud for all of our sales pipelines and processes and we do use the Einstein score and opportunity level. What that's good for is that it provides a score and opportunity level that the seller or the seller's manager can look at. And it would give you an indication of, well, why is something, maybe something you need to improve on or something that's going well, that you can learn from. So we use it there. And we're constantly looking at other things, such as guided selling and coaching. Because a global sales force, different cultures, languages, it can be quite difficult to try to explain some of the finer points of Rochester that are going to be really critical to the customer. We form a rather unique complementary space in the, I guess, the semiconductor supply chain, and that's really what gives us our unique value proposition. But it's a little bit different to what people are used to, and I experienced that when I joined myself. And therefore, how we can get that into the minds of the seller who's engaging with the customer so the customer can truly understand the value is kind of critical. So we're going to use the, I guess the. I call it pitch iq, where the seller will pitch key points and the AI agent will be able to guide them with feedback. So I think that's a really nice way of doing it because otherwise it might be a little fun or it might be a little distressing. I don't know what. We'd get hundreds of sellers around the world, and I don't really want us getting the popcorn out or scoring the sellers and stuff. So it's nice to be able to have the AI agent there who's going to be taking the best practices from everybody.
- [33:22]
Lacey Peace
Yep. And just getting smarter over time, too, because as there's more data, more information, more insights on what's working, what's not working. We're tracking this now that we haven't been tracking for the last decade. Yeah. You can really start to teach the AI, which then can help augment and continue to teach your sales team. And the point too, that you made about, and we've stressed it heavily, is that this is a global sales team, this is a global company, and each country or each company that you're working with might have different values or different things that they are most interested in. So having some sort of tool helping your sellers understand that going into it, I can imagine is invaluable.
- [34:00]
Colin Strother
Yeah. And, you know, initially with the guided selling, it's in English, but a number of languages will be releasing within the coming months. So in fairness to our colleagues whose English is not the natural language, such in, you know, Japan, for example, we have to also understand that they're going to, you know, derive a little bit different benefit from it initially, and therefore the AI agent can't be too critical. Does that make sense?
- [34:32]
Lacey Peace
Yes. Yes. That's a really interesting point that you just made that. Yeah. Like, I can't be. I can't go to my team and say, here's this cool new AI agent that's going to help teach you, and then it just tears you apart.
- [34:42]
Colin Strother
Yeah.
- [34:43]
Lacey Peace
Because that would not be fun.
- [34:44]
Colin Strother
It's really not going to be awful for anybody.
- [34:47]
Lacey Peace
Yeah, yeah.
- [34:48]
Colin Strother
But one of the things is because I am an engineer, because I began my sales career in field sales, because I've been with Rochester for nearly two decades, because I've been the first person in most of the countries hiring, the first person looking for offices on my own or with the first person traveling back to these teams. So I was thinking about this, Lacy. You know, when, when, when I go to China, for example, and we've got four offices, Shanghai, Chengdu, Beijing, Shenzhen, north, south, east, west. I'm spending weeks in country and we're typically traveling by rail. So I'm in a country where I don't speak the language, traveling with colleagues who do and we're on the road together. Right. Whether it's we're checking into the hotel, we're going for dinner, we're in a hire car, we're on our train for 12 hours, we're spending a lot of time together and I'm totally at their mercy, right. If they said we're stopping for a coffee at this train station and it wasn't, then I'm stuck. There's a humility that comes with that, but there's also an element where you really get to know people on a human level. And more importantly, they get to know me. So I think that that establishes trust because they know who I am, they know my history, they know where I'm coming from. And therefore when I'm rolling out things such as new systems, processes, tools, training AI. AI agents, of course, you know, not people don't really like change. Everyone says change, change, change. But yeah, people like the status quo even if it's not good for them. Right. But sometimes you have to grow up and eat your vegetables. But there's an element of trust they have in me that allows me probably to be able to do things in a broader and more expedited fashion and get buy in because it's a little bit more intrinsic. Whereas if I was just a face or a picture, then who is Colin and where's all this coming from? Right. How does it impact me?
- [36:49]
Lacey Peace
I think that's a really great point for anyone that is implementing. I mean, hopefully everyone is implementing AI now into the organization is it can't just be like, here's this outsourced company that we're working with or here's this new person we just hired who's going to teach you and tell you all the different ways these tools are going to work and we're going to completely overall your systems, because there's no trust built between that new person or that brand or company that's coming in to support you. And so I don't think we've ever clearly stated that on the show, but I think when it comes to training, that's something that I. That's a download now that I'm going to take with me going forward because I'm like, that is really interesting. It can't just be me hiring out and being like, hey, teach everyone this. It's me as this person that you built trust with saying, hey, truly. I've used it. Truly. I think this is important and this is going to help us. And here's how I'm going to deliver it. And I imagine there's lots of lines of communication open between you and those folks. So if they've got feedback or questions, they're coming straight to you and you're able to help, like, explain why this is so valuable for y' all.
- [37:51]
Colin Strother
So luckily, the hundreds of people don't come straight to me.
- [37:54]
Lacey Peace
Well, no, of course, but they do.
- [37:57]
Colin Strother
They do in a way. So I'll explain what happened. So I drowning in email, like literally drowning. So my day tends, My week tends to begin Sunday evening because Japan opens because remember, most of my direct team are international. Then Shanghai, Singapore opens, our other headquarters in those regions. Then by the time I maybe start to get to sleep, Germany, Poland, coming on stream, UK coming on stream. So I wake up and the Asia day is ending in the UK halfway through and America's Day starting and America's Day kind of finishes when I think it's like Phoenix, Arizona office closes. Incidentally, my most kind of agitated time of the week is probably about 8 o' clock on a Friday night, Eastern time. Because there's nothing. There's nothing happening, right. So time's the switch off my brain. Colin, time to time to go watch.
- [38:56]
Lacey Peace
Some TV or movies, right?
- [38:57]
Colin Strother
And when you're traveling as well, right. You know, you're in Asia and therefore when you're ready to kind of go to sleep at night, America's kicking off and you've got a lot of work to do on emails. So I was at Dreamforce a couple of years ago with my colleague and we were talking to these guys, why are you here? And they said, oh, we're here because we use slack. Slack? What's slack? So they explained it to us and then they said, oh, yeah, we never do email anymore. What? So I grew up before email. I left school before computers. Right. Show my age that, that was like an out of body experience. So we took a little bit of a leap of faith and we invested in Slack. So today I've got it on my other monitor here live. I run the entire global business using Slack. And back to the colleagues around the globe. We've got all of these help channels. So if they see an issue on the website or they see a price discrepancy or they want an extended description or they're looking for a status of an order that's yet to be published, they're all in channels. Now I can choose which ones I want to see which ones I want to be notified on. I'm not going to reply to the individual elements. I'm not best placed to do that. But what I'm looking for is a theme or a pattern that tells me there's either a problem to be addressed or an opportunity to provide a better solution. But what it's done, it's like I don't go to Asia and give an update. I may go into an office in Tokyo and Colin's here with his quarterly update on the business. But I do all the talking in that instance. I want to interact. So what I do is I make sure I've got some pens for the whiteboard. Everything is on the whiteboard. And there's nothing better in life than my last trip where I have this idea and our sales manager from Osaka jumps up, he's like no, no, no, no, no, no, no. And starts to go like that with a pen. Now some colleagues might have who don't maybe know me, maybe shocked at that behavior. It was fantastic because his idea was better than my idea. So we're going to go with his. And then I went down to Shanghai and I had a question on our CN web platform and that ended up with people banging on the glass to bring people into the room to doodling. And we came up with a fantastic idea that never been thought about. Then I go down to Singapore, everyone's agitated and they're all waiting for this moment to tell me where there's been this issue. Now I've worked remotely from, you know, for Rochester and other companies from HQ as well and I'm like, calm down. Note the problem statement. Correct yet. Okay, let's get all of the pieces on the board and then figure out what's what. And everyone's trying to answer the question because they know the answer. The answer is there's a problem. So you have patience, work through it all. And it was a total misunderstanding. There was no problem. The Message sent had not been the message received. So today by fostering this openness and this level of communication and then having Slack as the engagement layer and we've got other products, Chatter and Salesforce for example, people are communicating with people all the time. And if I could visualize it, it's just like this intermeshing of everything all coming together. So I was likely to wake up to a question in Slack in the morning from a brand new inside salesperson in Shenzhen, as I am from a general manager in Tokyo. In different channels. I think the whole company sees this level of interaction and communication which gives everybody the confidence that their voice is welcomed. So instead of a traditional business where maybe issues on the web, the marketing team are the eyes and responsible for it. Imagine a business like Rochester where everybody's got eyes on everything and everybody's responsible for it. That's really what we've driven here.
- [43:03]
Lacey Peace
You're unsiloing everything. Right. Because it could have historically been marketing's over here playing some game, sales is over here doing whatever they're doing. And then customer success is having these problems over here. There's just like retention issues or product is developing these things. And now suddenly you've got one tool where you can see everything that's going on. And I'm sure that helps really connect the dots since you're someone who likes to be in that seat where you're looking at all the different things that you can join and be a part of. So yeah, I think that's, that's really cool.
- [43:30]
Colin Strother
When I first started work, there would be the HR department, it was the personnel department, and then there would be maybe facilities department and, or the IT department and, and companies were built in silos and that gets you clear, clear chain of command. Okay, now what I'm going to say brings in other challenges, but in today's world, there's not a lot that can be achieved without cross functionality, really. Right. So everybody's involved in everything. Now I'm lucky now that I've got this remit that spawns like a, like a, a large range of people departments. But I still have the same challenges of when you set cross functional goals. Everyone really wants to be successful, but who's doing what? And I talk about this all the time with other industry executives and leaders. The idea that happens in a boardroom, translating that to an actual measurable result over a period of time, it's not easy and it's a bit of a unicorn. So I think what will happen here with whatever new technology comes on board, whether it's AI, for example, or other technologies, a lot of people may try to adopt them. But really, like everything in life, you kind of got to build the foundations and you've got to. You've got to put the work.
- [44:49]
Lacey Peace
Yeah.
- [44:49]
Colin Strother
It's not magic.
- [44:50]
Lacey Peace
Yeah.
- [44:51]
Colin Strother
Nothing will happen. Well, on its own.
- [44:52]
Lacey Peace
Oh, no, no. And it starts with that work that you've been talking about, which is like that person to person work, where as a company, we have this certain kind of culture. These are our goals, these are our values, this is how we communicate with customers, this is how we work together with each other. And that's really setting that strong foundation. So when you introduce these new technologies, there's a path forward with them that actually delivers results. Speaking of all these technologies that are coming online now that you guys have been integrating, I know it's still kind of early days with some of them. Have you been seen any resistance or challenges that, you know, you would want to flag for maybe other industry leaders that are like, hey, I'm interested in doing this. Like, what are you guys seeing that you'd be like, hey, FYI, this is something that you should understand before you get into it. Or these are the things that we're hearing from employees that they're like, having a hard time wrapping their head around. Just curious if there's anything that comes up for you around, like, core challenges that people are having.
- [45:46]
Colin Strother
Yeah. So a little analogy. I'm would travel across to the US for a number of years to visit headquarters here at Rochester when I was based in the UK for meetings and training, et cetera. And I live in New England and we're a New England based company. So the fields are green, the roads are squiggly, and the signs all say the same thing. So you have a misconception that it's just like home. But then you live here, and when your kids are in school and you know you're a homeowner and stuff, and then you realize that the deeper you get into things, the more differences there really are in people's thought processes, cultures. So how people react to things. When you say something, what does that person hear? What do they see? How are they thinking? And that can also change with what else is going on in that person's life or in another moment. So what you then realize is that you thought you knew a little bit about something, but then you're actually just, I guess, scratching the surface. So the older I get, the more I can revert back to. And even in this World of AI, it's all about the people. It's always been about the people, it always will be about the people. Because how people code AI agents, for example, will determine on how that agent performs. Data, the data that we have that is serviced, for example. The two biggest areas that astounded me are change management. Number one, everyone likes change. No one likes change.
- [47:26]
Lacey Peace
No one likes change.
- [47:28]
Colin Strother
So if someone might hate a system or process, but they prefer it to the fear of change, or they may use a system or a tool, that is a bit cliche because a little bit of busy work can sometimes be food for the soul. So change management. So the way I described it in the end, because people also like processes. They want to process, Lacy. When something's went wrong, they want a corrective action, right? Something's went wrong, but they don't necessarily want the process when it's changing something that they're used to doing. So what I've been evangelizing around the globe for the first six, half of this month, it's a bit like this. Look, we all have to eat our veggies if we're going to grow up big and strong. And we're always going to agree to that. And they do. But then I say that might mean not having any candy before dinner and I'm going to have to take away your candy, right? Because it'll spoil our appetite and we won't be able to eat our veggies. Everybody gets that point, right? So everyone wants the change in a way, but they don't want to. They still want to have that sneaky little piece of candy before the dinner, right? Like we did before.
- [48:34]
Lacey Peace
Yep, yep, yep.
- [48:35]
Colin Strother
So I think that really got people on board. And the other issue, which is a everlasting gobstopper from like Willy Wonka, is data, data, data, data, data, data. When you're a company that's been in business for, I guess, what is IT now, nearly 45 years, different systems, different ways of working, different ways. People have called something, coded something, semiconductor companies that we represent over 70 with their amount of data. I think we've got something like over 250,000 SKUs in the public offer today, over 600,000 in the system and approximately 15 billion parts in stock, all with a range of attributes. It's crazy. So when you're trying to do things, to get things, to bring together that customer360 or to forecast or rapport or service up clean information for a customer, and it's all these legacy systems, processes, tools that you're bringing into one place, I absolutely underestimated that challenge. And now I see it as a journey that will always need care and attention to keep clean. But I think we're over the hill on that. And if I was to look back, knowing what I now know and we went through, I'm not sure if I'd had the courage to embark on it. But we're here now. I think it's going to leave us in a much better place for our customers, moving forwards. I think it's literally going to be transformational for decades, what we're doing today.
- [50:11]
Lacey Peace
Well, it's a lot of good lessons you can pull through for the next decade. Right. Where like, oh, we didn't keep the data clean, we were monitoring it this way. Now moving forward, you know that that could potentially be a challenge in next decade when there's new technologies or tools, and so you won't have the same struggles. Hopefully at that time there'll be different struggles because every time there will always be some new thing that gets uncovered. But I've been hearing that same message from a lot of folks about the massive data problem that there is to try to get things integrated into new systems.
- [50:42]
Colin Strother
Absolutely. And if you think of companies, a lot of our customers and suppliers, semiconductor company acquires another semiconductor company, who acquires another semiconductor company, and then you're not even talking about data, you're talking about multiple ERPs, and you're trying to integrate them all together into one, one instance. But if you keep that customer success as your North Star and you keep the customer in mind and you know, and you have the belief, and it can't be blind faith, but. And in my type of position, right, whether it's a. An engineer, you feel you're able to create something, as a seller, you feel you're able to engage and add value, or I'm going to jump on a plane and I'm going to fly to a foreign country with my credit card and my phone, okay, you might think you're a bit naive or foolish, but you've got to have belief. So I've got to believe that I'm able to do it all the way through. Right. And everyone's with us now because we're all seeing the benefits of it as customers, as our suppliers, our colleagues. But you're absolutely right, Lacy. Never again will we have all of these drawers full of untidy things, Right. It's systems locked down and we've got eyes in it and triggers and alerts that again, was change management because People. Well, I need access to that, Colin. Well, why? Well, I like to go in there every Tuesday morning. It's like, no, I'm sorry, it's not personal. But you can't, right? You can't. That's been a big thing as well, Colin.
- [52:10]
Lacey Peace
One of the things that I've noticed with digital transformation is that now as a consumer, like, I'm completely overloaded with text messages, emails. It's like, okay, cool. I'm in these new tech systems. You know, AI is supporting these companies, but now I'm getting hit with just so many different communications that a lot of times aren't super relevant to me. And I know you have a interesting idea here on how you guys are doing this with Rochester to make it more personalized, more relevant to the consumer and customer that you work with. Would you mind sharing that with our audience?
- [52:39]
Colin Strother
Sure. And it all kind of ties back to the. The lady in Brazil. But. But I guess people in general, and this is, this is across all areas of the globe and culture and today as well, in addition to what you say there, Lacy, about this, the overwhelming amount of data that gets fed into our, I guess into our ecosystem is a couple of things. There is, you know, bad actors. Right. There's hardly a. A weekend where I speak to my mom in Scotland goes by where she's worried about a text she's received from a bill that's not been paid or a phone call or something, right.
- [53:13]
Lacey Peace
And it's getting super sophisticated. It's really hard to tell now.
- [53:16]
Colin Strother
It's outrageous. Right. And really, really worrying. So the other thing as well is it's really all about relevance. So I'm trying to evolve from B2B, or I guess we're not a B2C company into P2P. So person to person. So if I phone someone, a company on something that I may need, it might be a travel thing or whatever else it might well be, you automatically think that person is always calling, he's on the phone, and, oh, yes, I can see his information. Right. And when you don't quite get what you're looking for, it makes you feel a little uneasy. You check and clarify. So when you think about that mindset in your personal life and, and how you react, right? So it, it's about being relevant and adding value. So imagine a situation where the only communications you ever got from, from companies was of relevance to you, how valuable that would be. You wouldn't have to cut through all the other things and then worry about bad actors, for example. So how do you do that? How do you do hyper personalization at scale? So for Rochester, with hundreds of thousands of contacts, for example, and customers of varying customer types, vertical markets, languages across the globe, I think we've got something like 12 websites at the minute in different languages. How do you do that? Well, it starts with the data for a start, but how do you do it in a trusted way? So what we do is I'll say to customers, you can engage with us tactically or we can try to provide more valuable information, be more of a solution provider. But to do that you've kind of got to share a little bit with us so we understand some of your challenges. So we engage with our customers, whether it's like I said, on the phone, in person, online, with the digital conversation, and we try to gather information that they want to provide, that they're comfortable with providing. And then we use that information, which we are able to capture at an individual level, to personalize the content that we provide by return. We're not marrying it to third party content. We're only replying to you or engaging with you, the customer, on the topics that you have asked to be engaged on and shown interest in. So a great example might be you might be interested in a certain type of product family for a certain type of application. Once you start to show interest in that, then that's the information that we will provide you. We won't spam you with hundreds of Thousands of Parse SKUs or it's a knowledge based article, for example, or the questions that you're asking Captain Rochester, we're gathering all of this information as part of the customer360 but never for nefarious means. We're keeping the data secure in a trusted environment relevant to that individual in their role in their segment, at their customer. And with the help of a variety of data products such as Data Cloud and now perhaps AI, we're able to try to provide content that is really relevant to the customer, which then causes the customer to engage again with us and provide more information. So what I'm trying to get to Lacy is we can't be there all the time, we can't be there in person all the time, we can't be on the end of the phone all of the time. We're trying to augment everything together with a digital conversation. But because it's all one platform, you call us and you talk to your inside salesperson and they're able to bring up your information, they see all of this information so it doesn't feel like you're having a disjointed conversation with someone in person or online or, or an inside salesperson, it's all got to be the same information. If it's not, you know, me as a person, it might make me feel a little anxious. You know, do they really understand who I am? Are they really listening to my problem? Makes sense. So hyper personalization at scale. We have all the right products. We are getting all of the data together in the right areas. If there's data that we feel needs to be cleansed from a previous system, we're not feeding that in, for example. So I really feel that this is something that's going to be really, really valuable to the customer. Hopefully it will allow us to cut through all of the other kind of misinformation and noise that customers have to deal with and consumers have to deal with. But on scale, at scale, you've really got to harness the power of technology. The good news though is no one in Rochester thinks AI is coming to take their job. Right? They just don't. We've just this morning I was looking at an office lease in Canada where we've created a legal entity and hired a bunch of folks. I'm often accused of being a bricks and mortar person.
- [58:21]
Lacey Peace
Not a bad acquisition. I mean, I think that's great.
- [58:24]
Colin Strother
I'm also accused to be a digital transformation as well. But I just believe it's all about the people. It's all about the people. The ideas start with us, the implementation starts with us, the customers. We're interacting, we're trying to do on an individual, person to person basis. So that's been a huge reminder to me when I go to a keynote speech and it's about an agent talking to an agent talking to an agent. That's fun, but scary as well. Right? People are always going to be behind all.
- [58:59]
Lacey Peace
Yeah, well, and it's all about how do you upskill your team such that they can use those tools? Right. It's like, I don't want to replace you, I just want you to be able to use these and like we can have AI plus human all the way through. And that way you as a human can focus on the stuff that like actually brings you light and joy and fun in your job role versus the like data management stuff that maybe is a little bit more boring and you don't want to have to spend a bunch of time on. Right? So I think there's a lot of places where this human plus AI is way more interesting to me than Human. Or. Sorry, instead of AI instead of human. I'm way more for the human plus AI.
- [59:36]
Colin Strother
I'm smiling to myself there because hopefully everybody at Rochester understands who I am and where I'm coming from. But I am perhaps a little more critical of field sales because that's a role I've done myself. So if you were having to do the pitch iq, I might have the wrong name for it. And would you rather have Colin sitting there critiquing you as a field salesperson, or would you rather have the Captain Rochester AI agent make sense?
- [60:04]
Lacey Peace
I mean, I would much prefer the AI agent. I don't want you critiquing me. Right. That's embarrassing. Yeah.
- [60:11]
Colin Strother
So that's a great example of where people are using the technology and they're not finding it to be, I guess, something that's going to be troublesome to them.
- [60:20]
Lacey Peace
Yeah, absolutely. Well, Colin, I know we've kind of gone through the scope of, like, your background and what you're doing at Rochester. I'm curious how this has all come together and sort of shaped how you think about CX and, I guess, business and just customer relationships in general.
- [60:35]
Colin Strother
You know, when I think about it from a leadership perspective, which I think about a lot, there's many different ways of doing things. And the way that I choose to do or we choose to do it may be no better or worse than someone else, but I think it all comes down to authenticity. And I walk through airports all the time and I might want to pick up a book for my next flight and I might stop at. I like reading autobiographies and probably read everything I want to read at the moment. So I might go to the business section and it turns me cold because it's like a new fitness book at Christmas. Right, Sorry, holiday period. Right. New fitness book at the holiday period, where. How different can it be? So you could pick up one of those books on every single trip and it could give you something different, do this in a different way. And when you look at some of the largest business or. Sorry, they look at some of the leaders of some of the largest companies on the globe, and then you read a little about the leadership styles. They're very different. So do you pick one or do you just be yourself? And I think you've got to be your authentic self. And that's where it all starts and ends with me. Because I'm not saying that I don't travel around the world and I don't meet with people all the time or I don't Engage in mentorships and stuff like that. Of course I do, whether I'm a mentor or a mentee. And you learn all the time, but who really are you? Because if you're trying to lead a global audience and ask them to have a real sense of purpose and engagement during a time of transformation and we're bringing in digital tools, they've got to trust me. Now, I'm not saying I get everything right all of the time. I'm Scottish. We can be a little passionate by nature, but if you're going to give something of yourself to get something in return, people have got to know who you are. So I guess that's it. In the end, my leadership philosophy hasn't changed. And openly, it's kind of common sense. Most of this is common sense. Most of everything is common sense. It's really reaffirmed it. So that's a couple of things, Lacy. The reaffirmation in my style, it's authenticity and reaffirmation in this world of transformation. And let's face it, I've been in the technology industry all my working life, so. So really, I'm at the forefront of all of this in one way or another. It's just that really nourishing feeling I have, that warmth I have that it's all about the people and there's going to be a place for us, right? There's always going to be a place for us. I mean, I've got kids, one works at Rochester, graduated college, my son's at college. You've got to have that belief that there's going to be a world out there where we're not all going to be replaced. I don't think that's the case at all. I think it's another industrial revolution where money machine are just going to come together in amazing new ways. Right. I really do believe that.
- [63:38]
Lacey Peace
Yeah. No, I love that optimistic perspective on this because we hear in the news so much this, like, fear, uncertainty, doubt, trying to scare people into, like, not wanting to embrace these technologies or the fear as an employee of whether or not you will be replaced. And I love flipping it and saying, I'm so excited for the opportunity that we get as businesses, as people, as individuals, as moms, dads, partners, that these tools are going to unlock and allow us to do if we choose to learn them and engage with them. And I'd rather choose into that than be afraid and not use them. Right.
- [64:13]
Colin Strother
I agree. And I've seen some amazing leaps in technology in my 30 odd years in the industry. And there's always a debate at our kitchen table about when we were growing up as kids, there was no cell phones and stuff like that. Of course, my kids grew up in a different era. I can't change it, I can't control it. I'm one person. But ultimately I'm surrounded in the technology that I might complain about. So it's finding the balance, right? So around our kitchen table, we put our phones down, right? But then when we're not at the kitchen table, we're all using them again. So I think at the end of the day, it's up to you as an individual how you're going to use technology, how you're going to embrace technology. But I certainly think it's not something that anybody should be nervous or fearful of. And yes, you're always going to read a story in the newspaper where maybe someone was replaced by an AI agent, but where's the story where this amount of data or structured, unstructured data was pulled together from so many sources it made a massive medical advancement, for example. I wonder. Something's wondered about the space program, right? I walk through Logan Airport in Boston when I'm coming home, and there's all of these things and you walk, it's a whole walkway where it tells you that when man went to the moon, it allowed us to invent this and this and this. And it's quite amazing, right? So I think we're at a really interesting, exciting time. I really, really do. And for me, at Rochester, with the human in mind and authentic leadership, I'm going to keep trying to get that data cleaner, keep trying to give the customer a better personalized experience, make people less fearful of change management. Yes, there might be one or two less candies before dinner. A little bit of fun with it with Captain Rochester, our own AI agent, I'm going to enjoy it and I'm going to make, make sure we all do.
- [66:11]
Lacey Peace
That's awesome. Well, Colin, thank you so much for joining. I think that's a great place for us to end it. Like a really high note, optimistic note. Where can people find you if they're interested in engaging with you more about these questions? Or they're like, hey, I listen to you on this pod. I want to drop you a line and see what you're up to.
- [66:26]
Colin Strother
My profiles on LinkedIn, I do tend only to connect with people I, I know or have met, I would say, because I'm afraid nowadays sometimes the person that's coming through to me might not quite be the person they say they are, yeah. But I'm on LinkedIn. You'll be able to in message me and I'll always do my best to provide you a response because I'm traveling all of the time and I get bored easily. I'm pretty diligent at keeping up to date with every little alert that comes through. So that's. That's probably the nicest way to start.
- [66:58]
Lacey Peace
That's great. I do have one final question for you actually, before we wrap this up. What? Since you said you love reading and you love watching TV and movies, what's one recommendation you want to give our audience on either a book or a movie or TV show to check out?
- [67:12]
Colin Strother
My McDonald's Happy Meal place is a soccer team called Glasgow Rangers. So when I was a small child, I went to my first match and it was a wet evening on a Wednesday against a Spanish team in a European competition. I can't remember any of the. The match and I just remember the lights and smell and everything. So I'm a vociferous follower and reader. And we had a very famous player who went on to be a manager and he managed Manchester United and his name's Alex Ferguson, and I read his autobiography. Now what I would say is, you might not be interested in Glasgow Rangers, you might not be interested in soccer. The book starts as he's giving a lecture at Harvard and it's all about leadership. And it's really interesting how he went from humble beginnings, working as an apprentice in a shipyard in Glasgow, through to being the manager of probably the largest soccer team on the planet through their most trophy laden period, managing such a variety of people like Cristiano Ronaldo or David Beckham. And it's a really great example of how he was able to look at things at a high level and then deliver them on the pitch. So that. That is a fantastic book. In terms of TV shows, so. Or movies. I think everybody in life is driven, truly driven by one or two things and has core beliefs. The thing that I really struggle with most in life is injustice. So any TV show or movie where good overcomes evil, where people overcome adversity, I tend to also root for the underdog. And you know, Rochester's a. A large distributor and manufacturer, but we're not the largest. And I always kind of like the fact that we're a private, privately held, family owned and operated company because sometimes, even though we're really not, I like to feel we're a little bit of the underdog. Makes sense.
- [69:17]
Lacey Peace
Yeah.
- [69:17]
Colin Strother
And I also feel that when we're fighting against substandard products, unauthorized resale. It feels a fight for good. So anything that's kind of leading in that type of direction is going to grab my attention and hold me there.
- [69:35]
Lacey Peace
Captain Rochester makes more sense now, too.
- [69:37]
Colin Strother
It wasn't my idea. It was the idea of our co presidents Chris and Paul Gerrish. But that just adds to the authenticity of our company as well, where, you know, maybe we do things that are a little kind of off piste, but there's, there's, there's an authenticity that comes with it. And I'm in a place and we are in a place where individualism is welcomed and you're also viewed for who you are, not just what you do. That comes with. The other side of it is you're, you're. You're measured for who you are and it's not just what you do. Right. So that certainly allows me the freedom and flexibility to be authentic and do things that others wouldn't and get on planes and go places or go to Dreamforce and come up with the Captain Rochester AI agent.
- [70:24]
Lacey Peace
I love that. Well, thank you so much for being on mic with us today, Colin. I am so excited for our audience to get to tune into this one today. Thanks for joining us.
- [70:32]
Colin Strother
Thank you. I've enjoyed it. Appreciate you.