No company is perfect, and whether you work at a start-up or large corporation, there will inevitably be days where you wish you worked on the other side.

Tim Garbutt, the Director of Corporate Marketing and Communications at Flintco LLC, has been on both sides and knows how the other half works.

On this episode of Knowledge is Power, he shares with host Brandon Pfluger his experiences on both sides of the professional world and a few things he’s learned along the way.

“My dad was a small business owner, so that’s what I grew up around,” Garbutt said. With smaller, privately held companies, “the owner was always in the room, so to speak. You could walk down the hall and talk to the guy who was leading the charge.”

However, after a large, publicly held corporation acquired the smaller construction company he was working at, Garbutt suddenly found himself thrust into the corporate world.

“When the acquisition happened, and I saw the layers of bureaucracy of a publicly-owned company – the careful nature of everything that’s done and how everything is vetted and scrutinized and there’s a structured approach to everything, it became apparent to me how real that is,” he said.

Another career move led him to Flintco and back to the freedom of a privately held company, “and I realized at that moment where I really fit,” he revealed. “My experience has always been that you got to do a lot more interesting stuff in the privately-held company, where decisions are made a lot faster and it’s just more energizing to be a part of that.”

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Knowledge Is Power goes one-on-one with leaders in different industries to uncover these experiences.

Many things can prepare someone for their career—experiences and even time on the golf course. Host Brandon Pfluger spoke with Brett Kanda, VP Sales and Marketing for BRINC Drones, about his turf-covered path to business success.

Kanda has been part of the drone industry since 2013; however, his trajectory wasn’t one of engineering. He was a professional golfer before getting into the drone industry, but he believes what he learned from those years applies to where he is now.

“My affinity and love for business go back to growing up at a golf course and being around a lot of business leaders and successful entrepreneurs. There’s a direct correlation between golf and business,” he said.

From the age of four up, golf was his life. To excel at any sport requires time and dedication, as well as improving your weaknesses. “That’s my same approach to business with the caveat of pursuing things I’m good at and like.”

Kanda shared with Pfluger some key moments in life where he had big aha moments. “The day I decided to stop playing golf. I was in Canada, and I came off and said, ‘I’m done.’ I didn’t enjoy it anymore, so it was time to move on.”

He did, charting a new future in drones, holding several roles before coming to work at startup BRINC. Kanda provided an overview of the company’s beginning, speaking about the founder Blake Resnick, an engineering genius. “He started BRINC in his garage,” he said.

At first, Resnick was developing solar-powered drones to be perimeter barriers, but that all changed after the October 1 shooting in Las Vegas, the home city of BRINC. “Blake wanted to build something that could save lives, and that’s the inspiration behind the LEMUR.”

Host Brandon Pfluger spoke with Jessica Pantages, Chief Communication Officer at NSF International, developer of public health standards and certification programs that help protect the world’s food, water, and environment.

Pantages has spent over two decades building a career in PR and communications. She shared her journey and key insights, starting with what makes her a good leader. “The experiences I’ve had made who I am. I’ve also had a career in several broad industries, which allowed me to be well-rounded. I’ve also never been scared to take chances in my career,” she said. 

Pantages began a career in PR after diverting from journalism. She was working toward that goal in college when a chance to shadow a broadcast journalist. The story involved being at the scene of a shooting where she watched the journalist go up to a grieving mother and ask her how she felt. “It bothered me, and I wasn’t sure it was me. It had me rethinking my career,” she explained.

She then found PR, starting before the age of digital everything, creating clip books for companies. She continued to grow and learn, leading to leadership positions in several companies. “There have been learning moments good and bad, and I’ve had hard decisions to make, especially letting someone go. I have great empathy toward that person because I’ve been in that position,” Pantages added.

She counts a great peer group of other CCOs as an excellent sounding board. The other most important voices are those of her team, wanting to know what motivates them and where they want to go with their career. 

It’s no secret that 2020 has been a year of changes. What may surprise some people is that many of the changes made to adapt to our new reality may stick around long after COVID-19 stops disrupting our day to day lives. Brandon Pfluger, Host, Knowledge is Power had the chance to interview Dennis Becker, CEO of Mobvity, which is a recurrency platform that helps brands drive customer frequency and spend by motivating employees and customers alike. They spoke in-depth about mobility and the changing customer experience.

Moving into 2021, what will these changes look like? According to Becker, mobility will play a big role moving forward. “I think that first and foremost, there has been a misunderstanding of what a digital relationship to a consumer means,” Becker said. He isn’t entirely sure that brands have really aligned with what it is that they're trying to deliver to the user that matches the most ubiquitous thing that the users are used to doing. “If we think about the mobile phone, there's a very, very compelling statistic of fact, this is a fact and I think everybody can relate to this fact. The average consumer checks their text messaging inbox 47 times a day,” Becker explained. Part of the reason this number is so high is because there is no login, user ID, or storage barriers on the phone. “If you switch phones, you don't get to remember to reinstall the app. There's like no friction, it's built into what you do with your everyday life,” Becker explained. He posed an interesting question for brands, “What would you prefer doing? Hope that they see your ad on Facebook? Or ask them to download and install an app, create an account, create a user id, create a password, and hope they get a push notification, or just have a shop in their text messaging inbox?”

For more insight into mobility and how businesses can best serve their customer's mobile needs, check out this episode of Knowledge is Power!

According to Forbes, there are several qualities necessary to become a great leader. This includes having faith in your beliefs, making hard choices when required, knowing your team members and earning their respect, having a clear vision, and most importantly – realizing that people are the key to success.

On this episode of Knowledge is Power, host Brandon Pfluger is joined by Kloudspot CMO, Karyn Scott, to discuss pivotal moments in her career. From what has shaped her into the leader she is today to how she continues to pay it forward to the next generation by making sure they are equipped to continue to push the industry forward, Scott brings over 20 years of experience in technology, including stints at Salesforce, LogicMonitor, Cisco, AppDynamics and Flexport.

Scott joined Kloudspot, a leading situational awareness, and intelligence solution company, in August to bolster the company’s efforts to take AI-driven transformational customer experiences mainstream. When talking about the advice she passes along when mentoring her management team or younger professionals, one tip truly stands out—taking risks.

“Taking risks, especially in the world of business—as long as they’re calculated and data-driven risks—only good can come of it,” explained Scott. “And the people that really grow into leadership positions and even individual contributor positions that do quite a bit—not everybody wants to be a manager or a leader, but you can still make your mark in many ways—is finding a way to take those calculated risks.”

Learn more and listen to this episode of Knowledge is Power now.

While there is no clear path to finding a mentor, when Simon Whitton, Head of SWG Business Unit - Europe, ILJIN Motion and Controls chatted with Brandon Pfluger, Host, Getting Smart, about his career in robotics, he shared some key insight into how he’s ended up acting as a mentor to colleagues.

Throughout his career, Whitton has held leadership positions that have given him the opportunity to educate colleagues in the industry, from other executives down to building his own teams. When it comes to coaching colleagues, Whitton tends to stumble upon these opportunities similar to how he did the field of robotics. “You tend to not really stop and think too much about that, you just move on. And I suppose the evidence of whether you've done it reasonably well, it is the people that are coming along behind you and how they're working,” Whitton said. Whitton has enjoyed following the career progress of his teammates over the years.

He shared a story about a colleague he watched grow and evolve over the years who went from service engineer to the president of a large organization in China. This colleague was very humble, but needed a little push. “You reach a point where you say this person is growing, and you realize that you realized before he realizes, this guy could be quite something. But he doesn't think he can be, he's still very humble and a bit nervous about taking the different steps, if you see what I mean,” Whitton said. He explained that reinforcing with confidence boosters instead of trying to convince him of his potential was more effective. “So it's that reinforcing as a kind of convincing, if you like, but certainly all the time, all you're really doing is this mentoring,” Whitton explained.

Check out this episode of Getting Smart for more insight into leadership, mentorship, and the robotics industry.