CXO Conversation Podcast

C-Suite Perspective in Leading with Authenticity


C-Suite Perspective in Leading with Authenticity with Doug Gattuso.

The through line of my chat with Doug seemed to be ‘Focus on the opportunity and outcomes, not title and self’. In this episode, we talk through Dougs’ career movies and choices, why it’s so important not to burn bridges, the knowledge you can gain from job to job, the importance of teamwork and so many more insightful & useful viewpoints.

Doug expresses that title is one thing but the opportunity you get to create and contribute to the people/companies that hire you is what’s most important, leaving your ego at the door.

Doug speaks to;

  • Career path big picture
  • The importance of international work experience
  • Advice for those who seek the C suite

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Thank you Jalan Crossland for lending your award-winning banjo skills to CXO Conversations.

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Episode Transcription

Michael Mitchel:

Joining us from Fort Wayne, Indiana on CXO Conversations is Doug Gattuso.

Doug Gattuso:

Hello, Michael.

Michael Mitchel:

Hey, how’s it going, Doug? Doug’s been with Prometheus Group for three years, and during his career he’s held executive roles, including president and CCO, which we’ll get to what a CCO is in a few minutes. Doug started his career in the right path by attending the US Naval Academy, but things got weird upon graduation when he chose the Marines instead of the Navy. Go Navy. Doug and I will be talking about leaving and returning to a company, why the focus should always be on the opportunity and the outcomes, but not a title, and why. Doug, thanks for joining us, and let’s just get it out of the way real quick. Why the Marines instead of the Navy?

Doug Gattuso:

Well, Michael, my father and my brother both also graduated from the Naval Academy and were both naval aviators. So when I graduated, it was put on me to return honor to the family and have to go into the Marine Corps and justify this whole thing. But no, I love the Naval Academy, love the Navy, I have so many great friends that made a career out of the Navy and the Marine Corps, but no, I had great experience in going to a Naval Academy prep school called the Marine Military Academy in Harlingen, Texas in 1979, 1980. And I don’t know, once you got exposed to those types of Marines from Korea and Vietnam, I wanted to be part of that organization.

Michael Mitchel:

I get that. The one thing I will say, because I am Navy, the Marines, and we’ve talked about this before, all the veterans have the sense of camaraderie, but the Marines, they are much more so. I am a little envious of that. I will say that.

Doug Gattuso:

I get it.

Michael Mitchel:

When you got out, your first gig, if I’m not mistaken, was with EDS. So how’d that come about? Why EDS? Why technology?

Doug Gattuso:

My dad ended up getting into IT outsourcing, he spent some time with General Electric in the semiconductor industry, and then noticed what Ross Perot was doing with outsourcing, and being a competitive guy he said, “Well, if he could do it, I could do it.” Now, he never did it at the scale that Mr. Perot did, but he did pretty well and he started some outsourcing companies, actually ended up selling one to EDS Perot way back when. So I had got a TRS-80 in high school and taught myself programming, and I knew that I wanted to be in that field, I enjoyed it. So once my commitment was over, I wanted to join EDS and changed my cammy suit to a dark blue navy suit and went to work.

Michael Mitchel:

See, you just can’t get away from the Navy, right?

Doug Gattuso:

I know.

Michael Mitchel:

I’m sorry. I couldn’t pass that up. I miss EDS because when I first started doing search, my first client was Siemens, and we pulled a lot of people off EDS. I miss EDS.

Doug Gattuso:

It was a great company. And there’s a funny saying, and with our theme today, it was a great first and third company to join.

Michael Mitchel:

Yes. We’re going to talk about that. I think you and I first met when you were at CSC, if I’m not mistaken.

Doug Gattuso:

Yeah.

Michael Mitchel:

So let’s talk a little bit about that, because how many times… Because EDS, Utopia, Norris, is there another company you’ve-

Doug Gattuso:

No, no. Those are the three that I was fortunate enough to be invited back for a second time, each one. So the old military story of burning the ships and no turning back, that doesn’t work in the commercial world. You shouldn’t burn your ships, you shouldn’t burn your bridges. And maybe it’s always I left for the right reasons, and I communicated with my leadership of what I was doing and why I was doing my decisions, and it’s a small world, no matter what industry you operate in, that gets even smaller. At that time, there was only three major firms in the outsourcing space, EDS, IBM, and CSC. So I always try to do my best, and I don’t think anybody can argue with looking for more opportunity in progressing one’s career, so three different times the journey went back to where it started, and it was a good experience in each time.

Michael Mitchel:

I think the whole era of those outsourcing companies, because you also can include at some point HP, Unisys, Siemens slash Atos ended up buying Siemens, there’s been so much consolidation in this space. ACS, right?

Doug Gattuso:

Sure.

Michael Mitchel:

I’m sure we’re forgetting a couple, but even those side’s deals don’t exist anymore. I think SaaS has changed that. And of course, I’m biased, I’m going to sound old, get out of my yard, but there’s something about the client executive sales role I really enjoy because they do some really interesting deals.

Doug Gattuso:

The first outsourcing deal I ever sold was a 10-year full ITO, started with a letter, didn’t even have email. Mailed the letter, called the CEO a week later, did the follow-up thing, and it took a year, 12 months, to close that. Sure, times have changed, technology’s changed. I think Moore’s law overtook everybody, and no one is going to sign those long-term commitments anymore.

Michael Mitchel:

Oh, I remember years ago I was doing research for Siemens, and, this harks back to the days of those big deals, I talked to no less than four salespeople who claimed that they were the one that sold the billion dollar Proctor & Gamble outsourcing deal. I was like, “You did?” And he’s like, “Yep.” So were you part of a team or a different tower? He’s like, “Nope, I did it all.” I’m like, “You did? Oh, interesting, because that’s what the other three people said.”

Doug Gattuso:

Success has many fathers.

Michael Mitchel:

And I just was like, “This is what I love about salespeople.”

Doug Gattuso:

Right.

Michael Mitchel:

Why did you come back to EDS? Tell me a little bit about that, because it tee’s up to the other two.

Doug Gattuso:

There’s always a mix of personal and professional motivations on these things. And I had left EDS to actually go work for the company that I sold an outsourcing deal to. We spent a year getting to know each other, we really enjoyed that, and I guess we just didn’t want the party to end. So I actually went and joined an operating company, and managed 12 shortline railroads around North America into Canada, Mexico, and then I found myself in Brazil for about 45 days straight with a young wife at the time in San Antonio, and my boys were probably about a year and maybe three years old, and didn’t know soul in San Antonio, just went down to work for this company. And that stretch was going to turn into a much longer duration, and I just didn’t want to be away from my family that long, so that was a real personal choice. And when I had left EDS, my sales leader said, “Hey, anytime you want to come back, you’re welcome.”

Michael Mitchel:

And that’s the way it should be when people leave.

Doug Gattuso:

I called him up and said, “Remember what you said?” He goes, “Absolutely.” So I think that was on a Thursday and I was back at EDS on Monday.

Michael Mitchel:

Oh, how long were you gone for?

Doug Gattuso:

It was about a year.

Michael Mitchel:

A year, okay. So your badge is probably still floating around somewhere.

Doug Gattuso:

Yeah, and he was right, I was way more knowledgeable about the rail industry and transportation in general, so that’s what I focused on when I went back.

Michael Mitchel:

And I hope I’m pronouncing it correctly, NEORIS?

Doug Gattuso:

NEORIS.

Michael Mitchel:

NEORIS. So you were there, you left, and then you came back. Let’s talk a little bit about why you left and what that whole evolution was like for you.

Doug Gattuso:

I think that was a really good lesson, and one point I would like to make is patience is a learned skill. So when I left NEORIS the first time I was probably at the peak of my career. I had taken over a pretty meager business unit that was sub-10 million dollars, doing about eight and a half million dollars a year. And we did the strategy, rebuilt a team, and within four years, through a mix of application outsourcing and large SAP projects, we were at a run rate near 50 million dollars. So it was a great run in four years. And the company was thinking about monetizing themselves and the parent was going to sell NEORIS.

Michael Mitchel:

Well, I want to jump in because you grew it from eight million to 50.

Doug Gattuso:

Yeah. Well, me and the team. It’s a team sport.

But you know what? I will say, it did take someone outside the organization with a different vision and then create the team that would believe in the vision, because at the time that company had a pretty good set of experience with SAP in Latin America, but none in the US. And I had quite a bit of SAP experience in the US, particularly around application outsourcing, so I knew what was possible. So I was just the intersection between what they could do and what I knew was possible. And frankly, the directors that were there with the company at the time couldn’t see that, they couldn’t understand how we were going to sell against tier one size in the US, and how we were going to execute this application outsourcing across the borders. And we just changed that, got some people in there that never knew it wasn’t possible because they’ve done it somewhere else.

So at my year performance review, the CEO said, “When I interviewed you, I really thought you were crazy, but I thought, what the heck? What do I have to lose?” And I said, “What was it that gave you the impression I was crazy?” And he said, “Well, during the interview you said, “This is not rocket science. All it’s going to take is a couple 25 million dollars deals and we’ll turn this business right around.”” And that’s what happened in the first year. It was a bit of pointing to the fence, but I had done that with CSC, so I thought, why can’t we do it here? I didn’t know any better.

Michael Mitchel:

Did he think that was those crazy, your confidence that you’re like, “Oh, this is no big deal,” or the fact that you thought, oh, just a couple of 25 million dollar deals, which is nothing?

Doug Gattuso:

I think it was they had never sold a deal over five million.

Why would you think we could sell a 25 million dollar deal? So it was just a frame of reference. And so when we got to the point where we had turned things around in the US and parts of the other geography was doing pretty well, the company was for up for sale, and I think I got a bit arrogant, and I got impatient, I didn’t see how I was going to participate in that event, and I thought I was bulletproof, I just got off this four year great run, and frankly, I was immature. I shouldn’t have jumped and gone and pursued the next thing, thinking that if I do it here, I could do it anywhere. And that goes back to the team sport. It’s not the case. You really need the right team around you.

And I saw that frequently from people going from CSC where we had a lot of struggles, a lot of challenges, the big outsourcing group versus the consulting group, and people that left CSC, a lot of them became really successful whether they went to Accenture or Deloitte, E&Y, they all thrived, so it’s the team that is around you that I think is really going to dictate year end performance.

Michael Mitchel:

As I recall, you left as a president.

Doug Gattuso:

Yeah. I was president of the US business unit. It was great. It was a fun role. I had every aspect of the business, sales, and marketing, and analyst relationships, and finance. It was a great role.

Michael Mitchel:

But then you got the call to come back?

Doug Gattuso:

I did, and with a different CEO too, by the way. And it was an individual who was a peer of mine while I was there the first time. They had a different strategy. They wanted to be more of a digital transformation agent and high content and building apps, and less so around SAP, but they invited me back and very quickly they asked me to lead the parent account. NEORIS is owned by a company called CEMEX down in Monterrey, Mexico, so was the largest account that they had, and always critical when you’re in a parent child relationship like that. So new CIO, not from CEMEX. Traditionally, the CIOs would come from the ranks, this was someone from outside the organization, and I think they just felt they wanted somebody who had a little more tier one large scale experience in managing those types of relationships.

Michael Mitchel:

Did you have a title? It sounds like you were doing the high-end sales.

Doug Gattuso:

I don’t remember what the title was. So everything on the account I managed. It was probably about 450 people, anywhere from 40 to 50 million dollars revenue, pretty high visible role within the organization.

Michael Mitchel:

So you left as a president, you come back as essentially a client partner, and that’s the role they hire you for. But the story doesn’t end there, that’s what you thought you were coming into, but things get interesting.

Doug Gattuso:

And the new CEO had a philosophy of no presidents, nobody had the title anywhere in the organization. It was no country managers, no presidents, everybody was equal, go off and do your thing. Lead, create whatever organizations you needed to be successful if you could justify it. And there was a lot of reading of the most popular business books at the time. And I’m not convinced that it was the right strategy, frankly, because they haven’t quite had the success that we had in the past since then. So I’m sure they’re doing fine. I don’t keep up with them totally, but I do know what the condition of the US organization is. So I didn’t care about the title. I cared about an opportunity to contribute. And I think even with my current situation of being the chief customer officer of an organization that was acquired by a bigger, more financially successful organization, and without the title, just come in, contribute, here’s our objectives, can you help us or not?

And your leadership will remain regardless of your title and your ability to influence will remain regardless of your title. So if you get caught up in those titles, I think you could stumble and worry about some of the wrong things. In this case, when we were acquired, we had a couple of people that didn’t really have the patience to play it out, and to wait and see how they could contribute, and how they could add value. And they did get caught up in, well, I had a leadership role in company A and here they’re asking me to be an individual contributor, I don’t like that. Well, okay, but you didn’t play it out to see what was next, what happened in the next six months or the 12 months after that.

And everybody’s different and everybody has their own frame of reference, but when I look back and think about my lack of patience for leaving NEORIS at the wrong time, at the peak of when I was in the president role, I had to fall on that patience this time and say, “Hey, wait a minute, we’re getting acquired, what’s the best thing for me right now?” And I chose to put the ego aside and pay attention to what’s going on around me. We are owned by a pretty successful private equity firm, and this firm’s been very successful, so I wanted to learn how they did it. And obviously I’m incented to stay and make this successful and make the acquisition worthwhile, at some point there’ll be another phase and I’ll move to another role, and I’m sure I’ll use what I learned here in the last 12, 18 months through the acquisition, plus my entire career of experience in the next role. So moving around I think is fine, always having a way to contribute I think is where you’re going to progress.

Michael Mitchel:

So to continue that opportunity, you come back as a client partner and you seize the opportunities, because ended up going to Prague, you ended up opening up an office in India, right?

Doug Gattuso:

Yeah. It was a great experience. I was at the tip of a very large global digital transformation project, really changing the entire customer experience from ordering to receiving the product, it was building material supplies, concrete, ready mix, aggregate, those types of things. I did, I went to Prague, lived in Prague for a year, that’s where the CIO was sitting, opened up a brand new office there, hired about 250 various developers, scrum team leaders, it was all agile, and also had an opportunity to go to Gurgaon outside of Deli, do the same thing, open another office there from scratch, pouring concrete in the floors…

Michael Mitchel:

Oh my goodness.

Doug Gattuso:

From scratch. And we hired about 100 people there. First time, really interesting, because CEMEXX is, as I said, from Monterrey, Mexico, and NEORIS had always been their in-house development team, they had done a lot of work with IBM as well, but this was the first time that they hired developers outside of Mexico, so we had teams in Prague and in India.

Michael Mitchel:

Did you go straight from Prague to India?

Doug Gattuso:

I did.

Michael Mitchel:

So there’s a thing called culture shock. I experienced a little bit of that, because I was stationed in Japan for two years in the 80s, and I came back to California and there was a little bit of an adjustment. I didn’t have so much culture shock when I landed in Japan, because that’s why I joined the Navy, was to travel. Did you have a culture shock going from the states to Prague, but then what was going from Prague to India? Because those two, you’re going from Eastern Europe to India.

Doug Gattuso:

The cultures are very different. I had some experience with India and offshore at CSC, so it wasn’t the first time that I’d been in India, and worked a lot with some offshore firms. Prague was interesting. It’s a really a melting pot of the region. So in Prague, you’ll find technical resources from Poland, and Slovakia, and Germany, Italy, everywhere. They would come to Prague because, Prague, one, it’s beautiful, it’s a really pretty city.

Michael Mitchel:

It’s on my bucket list.

Doug Gattuso:

My daughter said it was living in a Disney movie, and it’s a very affordable location. So a lot of people from Europe would want to come and locate to Prague. And frankly, a really good talent pool, rich talent pool to hire from at reasonable costs. The cultural norms are quite different between, say, Prague and Central Europe, to India. But for me, no, it wasn’t a culture shock, at that point I had enough experience to understand what the differences were and what was important to the types of people that we were hiring in Prague versus the technical resources we were recruiting for in India.

Michael Mitchel:

So how long were you out of the States for between Prague and India?

Doug Gattuso:

It was about 18 months.

Michael Mitchel:

Oh, not that long.

Doug Gattuso:

And I was still having to travel to Monterrey, Mexico, so I was on a constant rotation between Monterrey, Prague, India. I cranked up a lot of miles.

Michael Mitchel:

But I think for most people this would be a big deal, but you’re active duty, so you were on the move back then too, so you’re used to this kind of travel.

Doug Gattuso:

I didn’t mind it at all, and I traveled a lot throughout my career. What I didn’t like was three cities in one week. That was tough. I remember having to pull out the phone book in a hotel room and put it on the nightstand next to me, so when I woke up in a panic, I would look and see where I was. But going to three cities, and I’d stay for weeks at a time, that wasn’t bad at all. The time zones would catch up to me when I would get home once in a while, but other than that it wasn’t bad

Michael Mitchel:

Utopia was, sometimes you hear the term retread, but I don’t know if that’s derogatory or not, but you came back to, so when you came back to Utopia, you were a CCO. What is a CCO?

Doug Gattuso:

Chief customer officer, had all things related to sales and marketing, and had a couple of unique service practices, strategic value management, and with alliances and partnerships, analysts relationships, things like that.

Michael Mitchel:

So is it different from a CRO, or is it the same but just a different title?

Doug Gattuso:

All the responsibilities of a CRO, probably with a little bit more, but, yeah, you would call it very similar.

Michael Mitchel:

And then how about the difference between the CRO, CCO to, we’re getting a lot of acronyms here, a CSO, chief sales officer?

Doug Gattuso:

For me, that was one part of my job, because I did have the marketing and the analysts, and we had two other practices that very specific in what they did. So at the end of the day, it’s all about sales. One thing has to lead to that one way or another. Nothing really happens until something’s sold, as they say. So I got comfortable in front of customers and representing the firm that I stood behind pretty early in my career. And I enjoyed actually the relationships with different analyst firms over the years, like a Gartner or a Forrester, still basically selling the firm and then helping the analysts understand our capabilities so they could evaluate us properly and also give guidance to their customers as necessary.

Michael Mitchel:

It seems like in the last seven years, give or take, there’s been more variations of the C level titles, before it was always just you had your traditional CEO, COO, maybe chief sales officer, but now you’re starting to see more chief diversity officer, CPO, chief people officer, because now we’re seeing the CHRO role being used in different terminology, so I guess over here at OC National Search, I’m the CMO, the Chief Michael Officer.

Doug Gattuso:

All right. You’re making a point that there’s all these titles out there. At the end of the day, you you’ve got responsibility and you’ve got an opportunity to make a difference, you have an opportunity to contribute to the company’s objectives, and whether you’re doing that on a small scale or a large scale, it all depends on really your span of experience and what you’re comfortable in putting on your shoulders and how you view yourself as a leader in the organization. And even in this case, I view myself as a leader in this company, but I don’t have the title. I’ve been acquired, the firm had been quite successful before they acquired us, I think we were the seventh acquisition or so in the last three years, and so our executive team has an executive team. They surrounded themselves with their trusted advisors. And it would be naive of me to think that I would just title enter into that. So I’m enjoying my role here, I’m enjoying the company, I’m working with a lot of very bright people, very sales driven culture, and I know that this company will continue to do very well.

Michael Mitchel:

And as your history has shown, never worry about the title because you never know what the opportunity will present itself when you rise to the occasion. When you look back at your career, what’s been your biggest takeaway? Obviously you learn a lot by walking away, which I think is really important, you’re the president and you said, “Oh, I’m better than this now. I can do more,” and you had a little bit of a humble pie, sounds like, and you learned from that.

Doug Gattuso:

Yeah, I went off and bought a couple restaurants, thought I was going to do something different, and mixed up the idea between a hobby and a profession.

Michael Mitchel:

What advice would you give to someone who wants to be a C-level executive, a C alphabet?

Doug Gattuso:

Check your ego. Ryan Holiday is an author out there right now, he writes a lot about Stoic philosophy, and he wrote a book called Ego is the Enemy, and I read that. And even at my age and years of experience, it was pretty much a gut check, and it grabbed me by the shoulders and shook some sense into me, because I can look back over my career and see, hey, these decisions were emotionally driven and I left too soon, or I left for the wrong reasons. And I think I took my eye off the ball. I’m glad I learned that lesson when I did, because I think it’s helped me through this transition of being acquired.

And I would say just keep looking for ways to contribute. Don’t look for the credit. That’s not the reason to do it. The reason is you’re going to make a difference. And as someone who sat in the C-suite, trust me, it gets noticed. I would always look for the opportunity to recognize someone’s contribution. And you do those types of things publicly so they get that recognition. So don’t think it goes unnoticed. Now, obviously you could be taken advantage of in certain organizations and every culture’s different, but I would say focus on the outcome, focus on how you can contribute and what you’re learning, because nothing actually lasts forever, but your knowledge and what you learn and how to contribute to firms, that van go with you when you decide to make a move.

Michael Mitchel:

I’ve got a client, we’re actually approaching our double-digit anniversary, and he’s an SVP of sales, and I asked him, “How come you don’t have the CSO title?” He’s like, “I don’t care about titles.” That says a lot about him. And he doesn’t. He does the job of technically he could just swap out his business cards whenever he wants.

Doug Gattuso:

Sure.

Michael Mitchel:

It also feeds right back into the company culture and the sales culture there, which is why- Yeah, go ahead.

Doug Gattuso:

Really, when you’re sales driven, titles mean even less. The most important thing’s the comp plan.

Making sure you’re being compensated fairly, worry less about the base and more about the upside, because that’s where you’re going to really hit some home runs, I think.

Michael Mitchel:

What I look for when I talk to salespeople, they’re like, “Call me whatever you want as long as you’re paying me.”

Doug Gattuso:

And they value your contribution, and they don’t take advantage of you. And I think that’s a big aspect of company cultures, that people will tolerate a lot of misgivings, maybe we don’t have the right processes, or there’s a little bit too much bureaucracy, but I think if you are recognizing that you’re contributing and making a difference in the firm, and the firm is recognizing you for that and you feel a part of that organization, it goes a long way.

Michael Mitchel:

How do you see the C-level role has changed over the last X years, seven, 10 years?

Doug Gattuso:

Wow. Seven, ten years.

Michael Mitchel:

X whatever timeframe you want, because I’m sure things are changing, obviously there’s more conversation around DEI, for example, and inclusion and culture has become more of an issue.

Doug Gattuso:

I think what’s important constantly is a moving target. Obviously financial performance is always there, but some of the other social aspects of being in a leadership role and being… I remember when I took the role with NEORIS, I consciously thought about, okay, I need to be careful what I put on Facebook, I need to be careful about what my social media image portrays.

I just wanted to make sure that I didn’t say something that somebody wouldn’t appreciate or would go the wrong way. So I just in my mind said nothing but it’s about my kids, my family, it’s encouragement, it’s a reward, those were the topics I focused on.

Michael Mitchel:

Well, we’re recording this conversation late February 22, and this week you talk about social media, the president of Estee Lauder got bounced out because of what he was posting on his Instagram. People think it’s just my personal account, but when you’re at that level, you’re representing the company no matter what environment you’re in.

Doug Gattuso:

Right. I’ve seen some good behavior from colleagues in the C-suite and I saw bad behavior, things that they deserve to be bounced from their job.

Michael Mitchel:

This can even go back to your high school years, what’s the worst job you’ve ever had and what have you taken away from it that you still use today? I’m a half class full kind of guy.

Doug Gattuso:

I don’t want to say a worst job because I grew up on a farm with a pitchfork and shovel in my hand, which was still I learned a lot. I think the hardest job may have been selling outsourcing at EDS. When you’re one guy and you’re given here’s a territory, and EDS had no experience, we didn’t have any

references in the rail industry, and we had one trucking company, and they just say, “Go make something happen.” Back then there was no marketing, there was very little understanding of clients of who you were, unless they’d maybe worked with you in the past. And if you’re going into a blank industry, they don’t know who you are, nobody in the rail or trucking industry knew who EDS was, that was hard because it was cold calling, cold letters, visits to really explain what outsourcing was from the ground up, to people that may never have heard of it before.

So that was a challenge. That was a hard job, because I always felt like, hey, if you don’t make your number, they’re not going to keep you around, you got to perform. And I was recently young married guy with two young kids and it’s time to put up or shut up.

Michael Mitchel:

Yeah, talk about a binary indicator of performance, sales doesn’t get much more than that.

Doug Gattuso:

What I learned from it was get to work, do what you have to do, and one way or another, if you keep on doing the right things, something good will happen. The first outsourcing deal I sold at CSC, my wife had signed me up for Indian Guides with my oldest son because I wasn’t spending enough time at home, and I wasn’t a big fan of that because it was going to take time away from my objectives. I’m standing at the threshold on my door, on my way out, and I turned to my wife and said, “Well, maybe I’ll meet someone there.” This Indian Guides meeting. Long story short, I ended up meeting a guy who’s still a friend of mine today. This has been 25 years. He introduced me to the CIO of Dr Pepper/Seven Up at the time, who also is still a friend, I spoke with him this week, and within six months I had a 25 million dollar outsourcing deal that came from having to go to Indian Guides.

Keep your mind open.

Michael Mitchel:

Well, look, Doug, I really appreciate your time. I’ve really enjoyed the conversation. Thanks for being a guest on the podcast. Thanks so much. Anything else you want to add in closing?

Doug Gattuso:

I enjoyed the conversation. Nope. Work hard, play hard.

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