Just after Christmas, my great friend Mike O’Brien and I decided to record one of our usual weekly catch-ups! The brief was that I’d interview him and we need to try not to swear or go down too many esoteric rabbit holes! As you can see, we were clearly separated at birth with our shared love of tech, beards, guitars, good music, land rovers and flannel shirts!

I’ve known Mike for over 15 years and he was my account executive for a company called Strategic System Solutions (SSS) that were based in Newcastle, UK & Hangzhou in China. SSS brought very skilled, motivated and experienced financial services development and run resources to my team and do it in a way that was also fun! I still stay in touch with many of my team and had the pleasure of being able to work with them again at Nomura where we worked with Cap Gemini who had by that time bought SSS.

As I mention in the video/podcast, the thing that kept bringing me back to teams Mike led was their honesty, humility and capability. If they didn’t know how to do something, they’d simply say that! No powerpoint overkill to try and sell me a service that did not exist! Every engagement we worked on came good. There are only a few companies that I have worked with where the culture is still more about the fun of delivery than purely chasing revenue, margin & commission.

Also our Christmas drinks in Newcastle were legendary! I can’t wait to head up North again after the lockdown to try out the skate ramp and hope I don’t break anything!

We covered a bunch of stuff including:

• Starting up his own company and growing to over 120 employees at the start of 2021

• Anti sales culture

• Cat cafes and entrepreneurship

• The power of serendipity to grow business

• Being a good human in a competitive marketplace

• Building a good human culture and motivating a workforce during COVID19

• Maintaining the start-up feel in a scale-up

• Meeting while walking

• Being an authentic leader

Some key links from the session:

• His company: opencastsoftware.com

• Mike's Instagram: instagram.com/mikeesk8hy

• Mog on the Tyne Cat Cafe: www.mogonthetyne.com

• The sign writers who inspired the skate ramp: www.rapid9signs.com

I hope you enjoy it!

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