Grand Slam Journey
This podcast discusses various topics around - sports, business, technology, mindset, health, fitness, and tips for growth. Topics range from what sports have taught us and how we transitioned from a singular focus and pursuit of our athletic goals and dreams to the decision to end our sports careers and move into the next phase of our lives. My guests share how they found their passion and purpose, tips for maximizing potential - holistically - physically and mentally, how they transitioned from one chapter of their lives to the next, and how to drive success in sport, business, technology, and personal life.
Grand Slam Journey
84. Maciek Szczesniak︱Unleashing SMB Growth Through Trust
Picture this: a technology salesperson walks into a meeting armed with impressive specs—gigabytes, terabytes, processing power—only to face a small business owner who simply asks, "What will this do for my business?" This fundamental disconnect lies at the heart of why so many technology companies struggle to serve the massive small and medium business (SMB) market effectively.
In this conversation, "Magic" Maciek Szczesniak draws from his 25-year journey through Compaq, HP, HPE, and as a Chief Growth & Strategy Officer at B2SMB Institute to unpack the critical differences between enterprise and SMB technology sales. "SMBs don't care if the box is black or white," Magic explains. "They care what this box will do for them. It has to lower costs, make them more efficient, drive revenue, or please their customers." This business-first approach requires a complete rethinking of how technology is marketed and sold.
Beyond SMB insights, Magic shares powerful leadership wisdom that applies across organizations of all sizes. His approach to recognition stands out: "Recognition is a never-ending pot. The more audience you gather to recognize someone, the more everyone understands what behaviors are valued." He advocates for precise, public recognition tied directly to business goals — a practice that costs nothing yet yields tremendous results in building high-performing teams.
The conversation expands to explore international business dynamics, the critical transition from manager to leader, and how artificial intelligence offers SMBs a once-in-a-generation opportunity to close the productivity gap with larger corporations. Magic estimates this gap represents 5-10% of GDP — real dollars, which small businesses can capture by embracing AI strategically.
Whether you're selling to small businesses, leading teams across cultural boundaries, or navigating the AI revolution, this episode delivers actionable insights from someone who's mastered the intersection of technology, business, and human connection.
Connect with Magic on LinkedIn
Watch it on YouTube.
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A large corporation will have someone who is really focused on understanding this technology. They have nothing else to do. They don't need to sell, they don't need to do finance, they don't need to do HR, they don't need to do anything else. They are the guy responsible for figuring out the technology, be it the CIO or director of the data center or whoever CIO or director of the data center or whoever. So the sales process will be very much focused on the technology itself. There will be discussions about the gigabytes and terabytes and throughputs and the performance measurement of the technology itself.
Maciek:What I like about SMB is and several times I've tried that and I failed miserably to go and talk about gigabytes and megabytes and this kind of stuff. To the small and medium businesses, the conversation is a pure business conversation. They don't care if the box is black or white. They care what this box is going to do for me. How is it going to improve my business? It has to either lower my cost, make me more efficient or drive additional revenue, or please my customers or please my employees. Okay, so it's a completely different conversation. I cannot tell you how many times I had internally with an HBA, a conversation with a product marketing organization when they would come and present the new product that they are going to sell to SMB, trying to tell me, well, but this product holds four hard drives and six memory modules, and I was like I don't give a damn. You know, being the voice of the SMB customer, I want to know is it quiet, is it low maintenance? Can it be remotely serviced, and what is it going to do for me?
Klara:Hello, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Grand Slam Journey podcast, where we discuss topics related to sports, business technology, underlined by leadership. My today's guest is , aka Magic. Magic is an experienced general manager, channel sales executive and go-to-market leader with a career at the intersection of business and technology and deep expertise in helping brands unleash growth in the small to medium-sized segment. We cover it all music, sports, business technology, career progressions and leadership tips. I launched this conversation in video format last September on YouTube, but I'm just now getting to release it in audio format. I apologize for the delay to you, my listeners and my guest Magic.
Klara:A lot has happened in the past year and I'm finding my creative podcasting rhythm and cadence again. I may have a new, more sustainable plan, but I may have to test out how executable it is. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider subscribing to the podcast, dedicating one minute of your time to provide an official review, or perhaps you may decide to share this conversation with someone you believe may enjoy it as well as always. Conversation with someone you believe may enjoy it as well as always. Thank you for tuning in and enjoy the listen. Hello Magic, happy Thursday and this afternoon for you. Welcome to the Grand Slam Journey podcast. How is Poland?
Maciek:It's fantastic. Talking about Grand Slam, you know Iga Świątek made it to the semifinals on Roland Garros in the Olympics, which we Polish are extremely proud of. She's going like a champ through all the games and we obviously support her. Today she's going to play another game and then I think I hope that during the weekend we're going to see her in the finals. So keep your fingers crossed for Iga.
Klara:She's been fantastic fun to watch. I guess a little bit of bad luck on the Wimbledon, but good luck for us Czechs. So that was awesome for me to watch the finals. She's definitely in her realm and playing fantastically the past, I guess, this year or even last year. It's always fun to watch her and it's awesome to have a fellow neighbor. I haven't had anyone from Poland on the podcast yet, so it's a fun fact for anyone who may or know, Czech Republic and Poland are neighboring countries. I think people may know where to place Poland but given Czech is so small, they never truly know where in Europe Czech Republic is.
Maciek:Poland is typically mixed up with Holland. When I say I'm from Poland, they say like Amsterdam, oh, great, great man. That's right. But that's not the case. Czechia has a beautiful city of Prague, obviously, and is very well known for that. I've been to Prague several times and I mean congratulations. It's such a wonderful city, great to go to, so I'm sure you're inviting all your friends to go and visit your country. I Great to go to, so I'm sure you're inviting all your friends to go and visit your country.
Klara:I've had a lot of touring, especially in college, because when you're an international student I studied in the US we would trade the countries because you end up being friends with mostly the international students, so I visit them, then they visit us.
Klara:So I was a Prague tour guide, for sure, for many years while I was in college and some of my fellow international friends were visiting me, and I want to dive into your Grand Slam journey of a fantastic career. You have been building, I know, your focus for many years and now going forward will be also small, medium-sized businesses, which is something I'm passionate about. My parents started business right after Revolution. They auctioned a store and it was something that changed the trajectory of our family and sort of the opportunities that even I and my sister had going forward the ability for me to play tennis and travel and then eventually inspired my passion to study business, and so I want to learn a little bit more about your journey, but also your upbringing. So we'll dive into that, but first I want to give you an opportunity to introduce yourself. I know we had a conversation. For anybody who's confused, we agree to call you Magic. I think it's a fantastic name, but I don't want to butcher your Polish real name, so please take it forward.
Maciek:Yeah, my real name is Maciek Szczesniak, which is a complete tongue twister. That's why, for the last 25 years, everybody was telling me I've been known as Magic, the kind of a kid with wands and spells. That's me. It's been a magical journey over so many years I've been. For 25 years I've been working for Copac, hp and HPE, but my journey with technology started even beforehand.
Maciek:There are more similarities that you and I have, because I understand from your webpage that you've been playing piano. Well, I finished a musical school. So when you've been playing piano and then playing tennis and then perfecting your game, I started as a musician and the dream of my parents was that I become a musician, I play in the orchestra, I travel the world with the orchestra and then, like for you, my parents, after the changes that happened in the Eastern Europe after the communist fall, they also opened a private business. My father opened a company, a small company, and that has changed completely the way my life has shaped, because being a musician was no longer such a big story in Poland and I decided to go into business and I wasn't a great musician, by the way. So it's for the goodness of everybody that they don't need to listen to me playing, even though I still, you know, from time to time take a guitar and play for my three daughters, and they like it a lot.
Klara:That's fantastic. I wish I hear you play one day Magic, it's just to insert. My piano finished almost on the verge as my tennis was starting, because my piano teacher said your hands and fingers get too tight, so somehow the holding the racket and then playing a piano didn't fully go hand in hand, so unfortunately I had to stop that, but I still love it. It's my favorite instrument and, yeah, that's the one if I actually had time. I've been contemplating should I go play some piano, take some more lessons, because it's so relaxing. You just focus on the music and it's a great way to disconnect from the busy world.
Maciek:It is a great opportunity. I played piano, oboe and violin at school.
Klara:Wow.
Maciek:And at a certain point in time on my journey through the world, when I moved from Warsaw, I started with Compaq in 1998, and very quickly I was proposed to move to Germany, to Munich, where we had the European headquarters. So I moved from Poland to the European headquarters Because at the same time I was doing an MBA study and working in a new country in a new environment. Having something to take your mind off was super important for me. So guess what? Before I bought any furniture for my apartment, I bought a piano. And my way of disconnecting and stopping all the craziness of the day between new job and the school was to just sit down and just practice a little bit and play piano a little bit. And I still enjoy it from time to time when there's really kind of a crazy situation, even though my way of dealing with stress and focusing on something else is to go and do rock climbing.
Maciek:So for the last 10 years I started doing the rock climbing. Generally speaking, I'm a crazy sports guy, not a professional like you were, but I just like to do a lot of sports. I've been running marathons, I've been hiking marathons. I've been hiking, riding bikes, windsurfing, I play bridge very regularly and my latest love for the last, I think, 10 years is bouldering and rock climbing. I do it two, three times a week and I really, really, really enjoy it, because when you are on the wall you know you're kind of climbing up. You have to think about this particular thing, you know if you start thinking about the job, you typically fall off.
Klara:I love that connection of the mind and body and needed to be focused. Maybe I should start rock climbing. Obviously, tennis was that outlet for me, because when you're on the court there's so many things and if you don't have your mind on the ball you just don't play well. For many reasons, including just I've played tennis way too much. So for professional athletes, I would say, with general health and fitness you get healthier and have better life, but with professional athletes you get closer to retirement and so especially the sport that I've played the most is actually the one that hurts me the most.
Klara:So this last injury I had really put me on a bench for about five months and I'm still not patient with injuries even in this day and age. So I'm looking for a new thing that I can actually do and have that mind connection, because I do work out, go for a run, but when you're running your mind is still going. Even in the workouts in the gym it's like different. So I need something to fully focus on. So I'm contemplating about pickleball. Just yesterday I was texting some of my girlfriends. Although I hated the sport at the beginning, I was like is this really what I have to transition to?
Maciek:So maybe bouldering and rock climbing might be better Psychologically transition to. So maybe bouldering and rope climbing might be better. It's psychologically is great because you always go up. Okay it's, it's a total body, you know, kind of a development right, because you need to use a lot of muscles. And it's also about stretching because you need to reach far and twist yourself and move. The more mobility and the more power you get, the better you are. And, believe me, it's not only about kind of a shifting yourself on your hands, it's also twisting your body and adjusting. And I have been kind of a promoting bouldering to a lot of people recently and they come and start and they are much more powerful than I am, like more athletic and everything. But because I have this technique now and I move and I have the balance and I have the attitude and the technique, I just do it much better than them, even though they are much stronger than I am frankly saying, clara. So give it a try.
Maciek:It's extremely, extremely good when you are traveling a lot, like I used to travel a lot with Compact HP and HP and I continue to travel a lot. It's also a very good sport because you can do it almost anywhere. So most of the main cities have, you know, a climbing wall where you can go and for a small fee you know, kind of take an hour or two off of climbing, and all you need to take with yourself, you know, on the travel it's some kind of a pair of sports pants or kind of clothing which you normally take anyway, and a special shoes. Everything else you can rent. You don't need to drag anything with you. So there's no you know kind of a complicated equipment or whatever. I also like the rock climbing and bouldering community because people are extremely friendly, because, especially when you go and do elite climbing, you need someone to belay you, which means you will have to get to know a person and trust the person to not let go.
Maciek:So it typically involves a little bit of a conversation and a discussion and a kind of exchange of ideas. So it's a mind opening, you know kind of a collaboration, you know kind of incentivizing and very good for your body. Sport, and I think it's getting more and more attention. If you're watching the Olympics, the sport I think for the first or for the second time, is fully in the Olympics. Next week there will be bouldering and leap climbing and speed climbing. We'll be there to watch. So something really, really fantastic.
Klara:We'll give it a try. I put it here Look up rope climbing, bouldering gyms in Austin, and I love what you mentioned, even building the trust Somebody you don't know, because I did it only once with my sister she had a rock climbing wall at her university and so that's sort of natural. You know, siblings, we trust each other in many ways by default, just the bond of the family. But I haven't considered the travel aspect and the shoes are actually very packable because they're so thin so it's easy to take on the road and I like that component of creating new relationships with people, new cities, and kind of created that trust bond while you're climbing up a rock. So yeah, that's a great idea.
Maciek:It's a very, very, very positive uh, community. I must say, you know, I've been, you know, kind of a training, a lot of a lot of sports and, uh, generally, I like everything that is connect, anything that is connected with mountains. So I also like hiking. Um, I'm gonna be hiking in bulgaria in a week from now and in Slovenia in about two weeks. I've been hiking in the US, in across Europe, in Japan as well. You know anything with mountain skiing. I'm a crazy skier, I love it. I absolutely, I'm absolutely crazy. You know, it's like when they open at 8 30, I'm there and when they finish, you know the day, at 4 30, they kick me out, typically as the last person from the slot. That's me, I love it. That's one of my passions in my private life.
Maciek:Obviously, in my professional life, my passion was always technology. I mentioned to you that I worked for Compaq, hp and HP. But I should tell you, clara, when I was kind of preparing for this conversation, I cast my mind back and, honestly, technology started before I started to work for Compaq. It was when I left, when I stopped being a musician, I mean when I finished musical school and I went to the business school. My father who opened his business. He bought a computer for me and he said well, I'm buying you a computer, but not for you to play games. But I want you to figure out how we can use the computer for my business. So you go and test it out.
Maciek:Obviously I was a little bit helping him and a little bit installing some stupid games and playing them, but I very quickly figured out that it was very quickly becoming outdated. I wanted a faster computer than a better, so I started to replace certain components in the computer and before I knew it I started to build computers for myself, then for my family, then for the entire network of friends and family and everybody else. And this is how I went into becoming a guy who was selling computers at the university. And after the university I started to look for options to grow my career and Compaq was the natural fit. It was a great company. I was super happy that I got accepted to Compact. So my technology journey is probably more than 25 years old.
Klara:Yeah, and how fantastic. It seems like you replaced one passion for another and then created that Compact journey. So tell me more about that journey and you kind of highlighted what led you to it. It seems like your parents in many ways inspired the transition to technology for you to help them with the business, and then you uncovered your passion. But what else do you want to add to it?
Maciek:Magic. My passion was also, very quickly, you know, it was not assembly of the computers which was interesting, but it was the interaction with others. I think you know one of the things I really enjoyed is, you know, kind of getting out there and speaking with people and kind of being the evangelist for the technology. When I started at Compaq I was the first product manager for Compaq Notebooks in Poland ever. You know, like they created the position, I took it and very quickly I ended up kind of throwing a couple of notebooks into the back of my car and driving around Poland and meeting the channel partners and having a conversation with them and building this channel network in Poland. That was extremely successful. That's why I was supposed to move to Munich, to the European headquarters. And I think the next really great thing that I gained through Compaq and then HP and HP is this international experience. I learned so much about the different cultures and living in another country. You know you experienced that yourself living in the US.
Maciek:I lived in Germany for seven years. And Germany and Poland there are a lot of differences in the mindset, in how people approach daily routine. Even the language is different. The Polish language is all chaotic and the grammar is not very structured. As opposed to Germany and German, everything is extremely well structured, well thought through, maybe a little bit slower, but extremely efficient as well. So I lived in Germany and what I discovered is, through this technology, I could connect with more and more people with different culture.
Maciek:I moved from the European headquarters to the global headquarters and I worked with emerging countries like Colombia, philippines and Saudi Arabia. I've been in Ukraine. I've been in many, many smaller countries, driving marketing activities in those places business development. So I spent six months in China working on a project for HP. So what was really great about this is the technology. The passion for technology enabled the passion for international communities and international collaboration. And then, when I started to think about my place in the organization, it was always the channel, and the channel is always about collaboration with the small and medium businesses, because there's 350 million small and medium businesses around the world. There is no single company today that can build a sales force that will cover such a vast amount of businesses. So typically, the best way for the technology companies to reach to the small and medium business was to build a very, very solid channel, which means even more people reaching to even more people.
Maciek:And SMB. I need to tell you, clara, that SMB has one massive advantage from the business perspective because there are so many small and medium businesses around the world and they are so diverse and they are so much leaning on trust when making their business decisions. It's a perfect spot for me. First of all, it's much less about being it is competitive, but it's competitive in a positive way because there's so much opportunity.
Maciek:The competition is slightly different. It's not kind of a punching through. It's more collaboration and explanation and building a trust. It's way more than in the enterprise business. That's why I like it okay, because I prefer to have a trust relationship and a good relationship and a positive relationship than a cutthroat competition. And again, you know small and medium businesses, the selling process is completely different than enterprise and I prefer the selling process because the selling process in the small and medium business is about gaining a trust and explaining and getting the understanding from the decision makers rather than, you know, kind of a nitty gritty discussion. And then when the small and medium businesses make the decision about the purchase, they typically move very quickly into the execution. There's no processes and ticking the boxes and RFQs and endless conversations and you never know what's the hidden agenda and this kind of stuff. It's very straightforward and being Eastern European you understand. We Eastern Europeans are typically very straightforward, to the point. You know heart on the plate and that's why I'm a great fit for the SMB side.
Klara:I love what you had mentioned, the trust and collaboration and I see this through line even where we opened with your bouldering and some of your activities that seem like it's a personality match all along. And actually recognizing that and describing the differences in the selling process that have been diving deeper into the SMB space. How have you uncovered that SMB early on early on, it seems like the way you describe it. You had fallen into it. Or did you seek out that opportunity early on? Was it just where the market was opening up and you saw that this is maybe the right way for some of the rising upcoming companies, to serve them, to create the change, perhaps even for your upbringing and you seeing that difference early on? As you mentioned, your parents had a SMB and you saw what computers did for them. Or was there something else to it?
Maciek:It's a combination of things. As I mentioned when I started to work a lot with a channel, with a channel partners. This is where they thrive and provide support for the vendor. So when I was working for the vendor, when I was working with the channel partners, the main value that the vendor would bring would be the big contracts for the channel partners. The main value that the channel partners would bring to the vendor, especially smaller channel partners, was the connection locally to the local communities and the local small businesses. So, naturally, traveling in Poland to those different cities and connecting with the channel partners, I got invited to meetings and discussions with the local hero, to the local businesses, you know, to have a conversation and understand what's going on. So that became a natural story. And then you know my specialization.
Maciek:The way I work with people is to building trust through programmatic approach, through collaboration, through kind of a volume impact, if you will, impacting the larger communities. I mean it comes from the music when I had to go on the stage and play something. I still like it, I still like to go on stage and say something. So I still do a lot of presentations and speeches and keynotes and that's the impact on a larger group of people and again, you know when I think about small and medium businesses, they like to listen about the technology because they see technology as an opportunity you know they can use to improve their core business. So I think one thing led to the other and I think the last element that was really interesting with a corporation like HPHPE because I started to work in a server division the small and medium business segment from the server point of view was a place that had way more freedom for the executive to make decisions. Again, because it's a very open and transparent space.
Maciek:I found that I could, being the voice of SMBs inside HP and HPE, I could convince a lot of people for the ideas that I had. So there were a lot of experts in the enterprise business. There were relatively much fewer experts within the large organization about the small and medium business and that's a very typical situation for a lot of large organizations. That I figured out Now that I'm part of the B2SMB Institute and I spoke with a lot of large corporations. They all have very similar challenges Enterprise, fortune 500 companies everybody runs after those logos and there are relatively fewer people within the large organizations interested and specializing in the small and medium business. They seem to have very similar challenges but also similar opportunities of being able to maybe do something better and faster than their kind of a large corporations-focused brethren.
Klara:Do you find that there's difference between the people who are attracted more to this SMB space versus the people who work with a larger enterprise? And again, I say from your experience, you've been kind of looking overall from a business perspective but you saw that your passion and the way your character is built matches more with the SMB. What I'm hearing also, you had a little bit more autonomy in creating and building that business and probably with that little bit of creativity, how you want to approach it and go after it. And I 100% agree it's really hard for enterprises to scale that and build that and serve them because there is much more variety. Some of the numbers I have seen is there's actually 99.9% of businesses fall into the SMB right. The large enterprise fall under. It's just very small percentage, but those are the ones that is easier to serve because you can assign people to these large enterprises and then SMBs drive roughly 50% of global GDP. So just such an important pillar.
Maciek:Depends on the country. You know there are countries where, like, if you go to Kenya okay, to the emerging countries you will find that 90% of the workforce work for the small and medium business. The US is a little bit of an exception. It's like 50-50 or 60-40 maybe of the workforce and the GDP as well. You know, like 50-50. But in many companies you go to super S&P countries like Italy, for example, spain or Asian countries, you will find that the S&Ps are responsible for 70-plus percent of the GDP. So it's a massive market and very diverse, very hungry for business and very collaborative, and that's the good thing to mention here. Here is the difference, clara. Imagine a super large company.
Maciek:When we are talking about, again, technology and I'm not an expert in other types of business technology specifically a large corporation will have someone who is really focused on understanding this technology. They have nothing else to do. They don't need to sell, they don't need to do finance, they don't need to do HR, they don't need to do anything else. They are the guy responsible for figuring out the technology, be it the CIO or director of the data center or whoever. So the sales process will be very much focused on the technology itself. There will be discussions about the gigabytes and megabytes and terabytes and throughputs and the performance measurement of the technology itself. What I like about SMB is, if you admit it and several times I've tried that and I failed miserably to go and talk about gigabytes and megabytes and this kind of stuff to the small and medium businesses. The conversation is a business conversation. It's a pure business conversation. They don't care if the box is black or white, they care what this box is going to do for me. How is it going to improve my business? It has to either lower my cost, make me more efficient or drive additional revenue, or please my customers or please my employees, okay. So it's a completely different conversation. I cannot tell you how many times I had internally with an HBA, a conversation with a product marketing organization, when they would come and present the new product that they are going to sell to SMB, trying to tell me well, but this product holds four hard drives and six memory modules, and I was like I don't give a damn. You know, being the voice of the SMB customer, I want to know is it quiet, Is it low maintenance, is it going to break down, can it be remotely serviced and what is it going to do for me? You know, like I'm an SMB customer, what is it going to do for me?
Maciek:And the challenge that many companies are facing when we are starting to have this kind of a conversation is many companies, when they are startups and they are the SMB themselves, they grow because they come up with a really nice technology. The greatest companies of today that are so hot and cold, like Databricks or Snowflake or, you know, weeds there are those names they typically come up to the market with a super cool technology and they go to those Fortune 500 companies and they find those technology lovers on the other side of the conversation, on the other side of the table, and they say I have a cool technology. And the other technology guy says, well, I love your technology. And then they start selling and then they go to the next and the next and then they reach the 500 companies in the Fortune 500 list and the growth is fantastic. Every year they grow 30%, 50%, year over year. It's so great and they sell themselves, they go IPO, they have stakeholders, stockholders, whatever.
Maciek:At a certain point in time the list of 500 companies is exhausted and suddenly those companies, a lot of technology companies have this problem. At a certain point in time, they will have to go to the 501st company or 521st company and at a certain point in time, there will be no technology lover sitting on the other side of the table. There will be the owner, the business person. The further down the market you go, the more person. The further down market you go, the more likely you're going to encounter a businessman, a real entrepreneur, making the decision about the purchase of your technology. And this is where you need to completely change your narrative. You need to start talking about the business outcomes. You need to talk about not the performance of your technology, but the performance of the business of this guy that you are collaborating or conversing or negotiating with, and a lot of technology companies struggle to do that. And I think this is where B2SMB Institute is helping, my expertise is helping and my passion is helping.
Klara:I love that. Thanks for describing and I want to dive into the B2SMB Institute and some of your vision and what you see for SMBs going forward. We talked on a last call and I thought it's really interesting, but before we go there I want to go a little bit deeper into some of the international components that you had mentioned. You work with many different countries. I've been privileged to get to know people from many different countries early on through tennis because I traveled around the world, and so I think that really helped me.
Klara:Tournaments being in the center and people from all different countries gather to play inspired the passion of individualization. We all are unique and have our own background, and it's still one of my core strengths now actually in business that I use kind of looking at that specific person and the skills and strength they bring, given their upbringing and culture background they come from. But I've also, even at Apple in my last role, I worked with many different countries and many different companies in different continents and it was really interesting. You start seeing this trend between how the culture shapes them and maybe it's due to the language and the customs etc. But anything you want to highlight let's say, companies or countries you really enjoyed working with and maybe some that you didn't. If there's something like that exists, but you would want to highlight this culture was really difficult for me to work with for this or that reason.
Maciek:I look at this slightly from a different angle, clara. Okay, so I'm a, I'm a, I'm an executive, okay, and and I worked with large organizations and I managed large organization and I think, as a manager, I was told, uh, I was told there was a manager. His name was Chuck Smith. He was my boss 10 years ago, maybe 15. And he told me Magic.
Maciek:Your role as a manager is to understand for every person what is their best contribution to the organization. You need to understand it. That's your most important job. Understand each and every person in your organization or manager in your leadership team. What are the advantages or qualities or capabilities that they bring? You need to maximize those capabilities for the benefit of the organization and then, if they do a good job, you need to go and tell them that they are doing a good job. This is what you need to do Recognize who does something really good, let them do that, or deploy them to do that, and then tell them about it. Recognize that, okay, ideally, publicly and then tell them about it. Recognize that, okay, ideally, publicly. And I think this is one of the best advices that I got in my leadership development, and I apply exactly the same rule to the cultures and nations. There are nations Germans are extremely well-structured. So what you need to do is, when you have a project, you want to go to the German team and you want to work with them on how to structure this project so it's executed extremely well. By the way, similar qualities Japanese organization possesses, the Japanese team has always been at the forefront of how do I plan the project so this project can be executed with a super precision and super quality. However I'm sorry, my German friends, india team will be both Germans and Japanese, or India or Italy, you know, for example, will beat the Germans and the Japanese on creativity.
Maciek:I loved brainstorming with the India team, or with the Italian team, you know, or with the Latin America teams, like Mexico, for example. Go and put the idea on the table and ask the question is it a good idea? And you know, if you do that in Japan, they'll ask you 1,500 questions and at the end of the day, they will tell you whether the idea is good or bad. If you go to India and you say, is it a good idea? They'll start brainstorming with you and come up with 10 other ideas. You know you might not end up having a judgment on your idea, but you will find like 1500 other possibilities and opportunities.
Maciek:So I think this is exactly the same like with you know individuals, the countries or the cultures. Obviously I don't want to generalize it you know there are Indian people that are extremely well-structured and there are German people that are extremely creative, okayructured, and there are German people that are extremely creative. So generalizations are never good. But I had to know where to go and ask for help and for connections and collaboration and I knew that certain teams will jump on it. If I had an idea, I knew that there are certain countries that I can go to and present it to them and they will kind of jump with me on this and try to put this together and execute.
Maciek:And typically the more creative would require a little bit more hand-holding in the execution, which I'm good because I'm crazy Polish who lived in Germany, so I have both qualities a little bit more hand-holding in the execution, which I'm good because I'm crazy Polish who lived in Germany, so I have both qualities a little bit.
Maciek:Then, when you've kind of honed your idea and you pilot it in one country and then go, let's say, to Japan, and you have this conversation and the Japanese team would commit to me that they are going to execute.
Maciek:I just could go back home and just ring back in three months and ask them how they are doing and they would just tell me we are 60% done. No need for control and milestones and checking, because they were so good on the execution that they would deliver. I knew they don't need any handholding, they just need the freedom to act. And they were obviously always extremely good. And I have tons of examples and the situations when I was taken completely, you know, by surprise by the super quality of execution in Japan and completely blown away by ideas that would come from Spain, italy, you know, kind of India or Mexico, okay, so I cannot tell you that there would be a country that I liked more or liked less. I knew that there are countries with certain qualities that I wanted to use to the benefit, for the benefit of the organization, and that's how I did approach my job.
Klara:I love you highlighting that and actually looking at the aspects differently.
Maciek:Because I've heard so many times from my colleagues you know like I cannot work with this and this nation. I cannot work with them and I always said like, take a step back. They cannot work with you. You are behaving like you know. They don't like to be treated like that. You need to have respect. You're asking them for something they don't like to do and they are not capable of doing. They need to convince them and inspire them by letting them do what they love to do. I mean, none of us likes to do the stuff that we don't like to do. There are people that like to I don't know paint beautiful pictures. If you ask them to sit down in an Excel spreadsheet, you're not going to like it. You know there are some people that love Excel spreadsheets, but if you would ask them to go on stage and present something, they would just run away. And you just need to balance that across the organization. Only then the organization can really thrive and drive the growth and expansion.
Klara:Yeah, I love again highlighting the recognition. And then, do you had or created that skill? Is there anything particularly you can pinpoint magic to the skill that it helped you uncover and recognize? Because, as you mentioned, there's people who get it, some people that don't. Do you practice it? Are you born with it? Or maybe a little bit in the middle?
Maciek:Leadership can be learned. I mean, yes, there are some people that are very charismatic from the start and you know, and they are natural, etc. But 99% of the leaders they need to show the willingness to improve and to learn and to understand. When I started, I was a terrible employee. I was really not paying much attention. I was just focused on, you know, certain aspects of my job, but not on other aspects of it, and I really respect my bosses for not kicking me out of the organization back then. But throughout my career I had good moments and not such a good moment. I remember one particular job when I was not a good boss. I remember that now reflecting back. There was a job when I was not paying enough attention to the structure of my organization and understanding how I need to be the good boss for that. But I've learned from this. I learned to listen more and to put more understanding and appreciation of people and what I told you about Chuck. Chuck told me, hey, this is how you do it. And that just opened this kind of a place in my mind when I said, okay, now I get it and I started to practice this.
Maciek:And recognition is extremely important, bara, and I think one of the things that people just people think that you only have the recognition is money. Okay, that you have I don't know so many thousands of dollars and if you give them away you're out Okay, so there's only so much recognition that you can give. No Recognition is a never-ending pot. You just need to give it away in the right way and it will just come back to you in the ability for you to recognize even more. When you recognize people, first of all do it publicly. The more audience you will gather to make a recognition for someone, you're gaining two massive advantages. First of all, you gain a happiness of a person that you are recognizing. I mean, they feel appreciated and this is many times worth more than money and the salary increase, frankly saying Not that you shouldn't do salary increases, but it is worth tons. Okay for people that are being recognized publicly. But what is even more important, frankly saying, is for you as a leader of the large organization, is everybody else sees what is being recognized by the boss.
Maciek:So if you recognize someone for doing I don't know, preparing an extremely good analysis and then you name specifically what you like and this is another kind of a secret here that I'm letting you know. You need to be precise and specific about what the recognition is all about. If you just say, like this person is really really nice, you're not really telling what is the essence of the recognition. You need to be very specific. I like that this person has spent time to run the analysis and found certain trends and anomalies in the numbers that are telling us something super interesting about our business. That's a proper recognition for the business analyst. And then all the business analysts that are on the call are listening and they are saying, oh, so Magic wants us to do trend analysis and find some anomalies and some business insights. Aha, and suddenly you know, by recognizing one person, everybody else got the message. And if you recognize at the next conference call another analyst and another analyst, very quickly those that haven't been recognized yet will know about it. That's why I was more in favor of recognizing people than bashing them, because the fact that you are not recognizing them, I think it's enough of the problem for them, because they understand that they need to ramp up their efforts to become recognized as well.
Maciek:So there is a never-ending pot of recognition points that you can give away. It's always great and you should do it as often as possible and you should do it publicly and you should be precise about what you are specifically recognizing. Ideally you connect it back to the business goals of the organization that you are running, because then it's obviously the best. That's why salespeople are so easy to, in a way, easy to recognize because you say, like this guy sold five million dollars deal to this customer. It's super precise, it connects with the goals of the organization.
Maciek:You know, when you recognize, try to recognize finance people. It's way more difficult and requires way more skills from the, from the, from the leader. Uh, pricing I've been in a pricing organization. Pricing is super difficult to recognize why when the pricing is right, nobody's complaining but nobody's happy, either because you pay too much, but when the pricing is wrong, there's a gazillion of people that are upset. The salespeople are upset because the pricing is too high or they're not getting the pricing response fast enough, or I mean one of the most difficult jobs in the world. And try to recognize the pricing analyst about the good job that he has done in a way that everybody understands and findings finds it meaningful. Sorry, recognition is something that I really believe in, so you just stroke a nerve, yeah, yeah.
Klara:I love you highlighting it and I'm internally thinking where to take this next, because I want to challenge you on one thing about tying it to leadership. I agree, I think what you've given is a fantastic example that I wish every leader was like that and at the same time, I know and have worked for so many leaders that don't have that skill set or the practice of recognizing or I don't know if they never have been you know mentioned this coaching tip that you have and haven't taken it in, or they just aren't able to see the differences. What do you think has helped you recognize this skill and really take it in and practice it? Is there something specific or how do you see that good job done and take the pause to mention the specific and precise items that the team or person have done in an excellent way?
Maciek:I have mentored many employees. I always volunteered my skills for younger employees you know less senior employees and participated in a lot of mentorship programs, never refused a mentorship request from managers, and if anybody is listening to us and wants to reach out to me, do it through LinkedIn, and if I can help you, I will. There is a little tiny button that you can press and book a short appointment with me, and it's free of charge. I'm not going to charge you, but we can have a conversation. I can help you in whatever capacity I have.
Maciek:This is a super common problem, clara, in a lot of organizations, and I came across this with both my subordinates, my direct reports, but also with my bosses. Funny enough, people in the corporations are being promoted for the quality of job that they do. So the best salesman is becoming a sales manager. Right, the best engineer is becoming the manager of engineers. He's not becoming a manager of engineers because he's a good manager. He's becoming a manager of engineers because he's a good engineer, and that was a typical advice from me when I was coaching or mentoring people that would just become a manager. The first thing I would tell them let it go, you're the best engineer, or let's say, you are the best salesperson. You become a sales manager of your peers. Problem number one you now need to become the boss of the friends that you've been having parties with. But this can be overcome. Now, what is your best tool that you have? Where do you excel? You are the best sales guy. So the natural thing is you go through the panel of your former peers and you see that you would do it better. So the natural thing is you start correcting them.
Maciek:And how do we call it in the management? We call it a micromanager. You become a micromanager, which ends up being you are overworked and there are so many managers I've heard you know like I have no time. I have no time, I have no time. Why? Because they micromanage. And what happens to their employees? Well, they have nothing to do. Because suddenly the boss is sticking his nose into everything that I do and they tell me I will do this better, this better, better that better, that better, do it like this, do it like this. So you take away the freedom of action and freedom of execution. And I've seen it at any level of the organization. Honestly, I've seen my bosses at the vice president, senior vice president level that were micromanagement freaks. They didn't recognize that I had my own way of doing things.
Maciek:I'm interested in the outcome. We should agree on the outcome, not on the way. As a manager, you need to empower people to deliver outcome. You need to agree on the outcome and empower them and help them and support them to achieve the outcome the way they want. Their way of achieving the outcome could surprise you.
Maciek:You're not going to see at the beginning of the journey of the project how the project is going to evolve. I mean, think about this You're starting and your employee has an idea how to finish and this idea could be fantastic, but it's not the same like yours and you only see the beginning. So you don't know how the situation is evolved. So, unless you let it go and let the person do their job and be there for them, if they make a mistake. If they make a mistake, then you use your expertise because you are the best salesman in the world. So if they are about to lose a mistake, then you use your expertise because you are the best salesman in the world. So if they are about to lose a client, then you can pick up the phone and call and say you know, dear customer, I'm the sales manager, I want to apologize for the mistakes made by my employee and let's have another conversation here, right? Then you're very important because you're saving your employees' bottom and then you're getting the recognition from your employees like they are very happy with you. But let them do the journey and then help them throughout the journey and agree on the outcome and then celebrate the outcome, recognize the outcome.
Maciek:Many managers are not leaders. That's what we always say. You know there's a big difference between the manager and the leader. And if you are not able to pivot from manager to leader and from leader to manager, if you're not able to change it because you have to be managers from time to time but we can it's a long conversation, right? If you want to be a leader for people, you need to let it go and let them do stuff and you will be amazed. You will be amazed, as a leader, what your employees will do for you if you let them do their job and you recognize that.
Klara:It's going to be one of the best experiences in your life love it and thank you for sharing that journey and sort of that transition.
Klara:I have to say I've personally recognized it myself and there's differences, even say my very first job. I've been green as an apple, coming from college to being put in a position of managing stores, retail stores, stores, and probably 60, 70 employees that I probably knew less than them. It was more of like how do I enable them Because I had nothing to give them advice. They probably knew how to do the job better than me so I had to learn a lot from them and I first came with this strict mindset, you know, like from tennis and athletics, and you've got this and this and that, and it was. They didn't work at all. So after a few months I realized quite painfully that I need to pivot and just how can I fit into the gap to help them do their job better? And I always pointed as one of the best experiences I've had very early on in my career and a position. So it was a fail fast and learn tip for sure.
Maciek:That's why in my own organization, when somebody would come to me, you know like we had this kind of annual reviews and somebody would come to me and I would always ask how do you want to grow? What's your next career step? What do you want to do? You know many people come to you and say like I want to be the people manager, I want to become a manager as my next step in the career and then my number one kind of a recommendation and the support for those people would be typically to put them on a project that would require them to manage people without the former authority. So learn how to inspire people to follow you, rather than suddenly in the HR system you have the lines attaching to you and you feel like you're the boss.
Maciek:No, no, no. First learn how to inspire people. For example, good ideas for our listeners if they want to take advantage of this, is any apprenticeship program or internship programs where you take students and then you put this kind of aspiring manager in charge of those students. Okay, and he has to teach them and inspire them and make it work somehow.
Maciek:The impact on the business typically is not that crazy. The impact on the organization could be profound because this person will very quickly learn that kind of getting students to do something for you and teaching them and then you can do a little bit of your kind of a micromanagement, but very quickly you will have to move out because otherwise you will not be able to do your own job right, because you're not excused from delivering your own job. So I think this kind of a free test to become a people manager many times caused people to say like no, maybe I don't want to be a people manager, and some others had a kind of a training before they assume a people management job later on in their career and I think many people were very thankful for this experience.
Klara:I want to dive maybe on that note a little bit more into your career and then transition to SMB. I know we're running out of time it seems like the two of us could talk forever and I want to respect the time we have allotted, if we can still fit this conversation within that. But you have built a fantastic career in technology again, from Compaq to HP to HPE, most recently Global Vice President and General Manager of the SMB and mid market, and, as you mentioned, you're transitioning to now lead the B2SMB Institute. So I want to talk a little bit about what's going to be ahead.
Maciek:I'm not going to lead the B2SMB Institute. I'm going to be the chief growth and strategy officer. I don't want to take Dave's job yet.
Klara:Thanks for the clarification. Looking at that career and trajectory, you've outlined some of your leadership skills. But as we look back and summarize, and before we dive to the next chapter, anything else you would want to highlight are some of the key moments or skills that came to you either naturally or you have learned personally kind of the hard way. I was like, oh I wish I knew this 15, 20 years ago when I started my career. Or if I internalized it early on, building my career would be much easier.
Maciek:Many people, from the very start, have told me that the best way to make a career is you need to follow a certain path. And you know the famous question who do you want to be in the next five years? You know, like I'm the sales guy, I want to be the sales manager, the sales director of sales, vps, you know, chief sales officer and and I agree that some people might find this path compelling Okay, they want to specialize in one thing and build their career around this particular capability. I took a different route and, within Compact, hp and HP, I took different jobs based on my desire to have fun, because I started as a product manager with a big component of channel and sales management, because I was the only person responsible for notebooks in Poland, so obviously I had to do everything Former title product manager and I went to work for the European headquarters as a product manager. Then I took a pricing job in the finance organization and then I took a marketing job. And I've been to many different places around the company, always trying to find something interesting within Compact, hp and HPE and changing my career. And I want to say to everybody that has done it that is currently at the beginning of their career. It is not true that you have to choose your path today, and I think there was one sentence that you wrote in your blog that if you love something, eventually it becomes your job. I think if you want to continue loving things, then you might take yourself out of the comfort zone and move from tennis to telco, to health you know, apple Health and then Accenture and I think that you will find your career. Maybe you're not going to become a CEO Okay, but maybe you don't need to be a CEO Okay, but maybe you don't need to be a CEO. Maybe you just need to have fun and love of your job. Every time, every year, every 10 years, looking back, you will say like maybe I didn't take the top job. I mean, there'll be some people that will take the top job, but maybe on the way I've learned so many different things and I've met so many interesting people and now I'm a more of an all-rounder than very specialized sales guy. This is not a bad career. This is not a bad decision and could be more interesting for you to jump around and take opportunities.
Maciek:Move to a different country, for sure, okay, uh, I think staying in a different country versus, uh, traveling to different countries. A completely different story. So many people tell me hi, I've been to us. I've been to us 15 000 times and and I've been to the US 15,000 times. For the first time I went to the US for vacation as opposed to for a business trip. Completely different feeling, completely different story. And now I've been to the US 15,000 and 50 times, many times just for vacation with my family, and I still know it's not the same as living in this country and really experiencing the way people kind of work and live and the challenges that they are facing in their daily life.
Maciek:So if you can move to another country, learn more than one language for sure. You and I have this kind of a privilege because we have our natural language, you know, and then we learn english and you probably speak maybe one or two more languages as well. Uh, so learning another language opens a completely new space in your mind again. Because I mean, just from the pure, like lame explanation, this is a phone, right? Okay, it has a name phone. It has a different name in polish, it has a different name in german and if you take even more complex things, suddenly the same thing at least you are able to name in three different languages. I mean how much expansion of your mindset it is.
Maciek:And then you know like there are connections between the words and between the different things in a language that are different in different languages. I don't know how to say that, but in many languages there is one word that has like three meanings, but if you take it to another language it doesn't have the same three meanings. It will have maybe three other meanings. In Polish, for example, the word może means the sea, but also the maybe right. Okay, in English it's the sea and the maybe. In Poland it's może and może right. It just makes a completely different connections in your mind.
Maciek:And then when you start comparing different languages between each other, it's even more funny. My wife is laughing and all the German friends are laughing when I tell them the story of Wieheister. Wieheister in German means it means who is this? It's a sentence question who is this right? And in Polish wie heister, it's this thingy, something that you don't know how to call it. So the Polish people took a German sentence and turned it into a word. Wie heister means like this thing that I cannot name. Wie heister is like who is this right? So when you start making these connections, it just again opens another kind of a path in your brain and expands your capability to be more creative and more capable, I guess.
Klara:And I love that. And maybe I'll move us into the not-so so positive connection with some of the generative AI and artificial intelligence and the translation, because this is exactly what I've been pondering myself. With all the translators being much simpler, much easier, and now you have even applications that you can upload audio, translate it for you or live translation in time, I've been always pondering are we going to become even more lazy as humans? Because I think our default mechanism, as not just humans, but animal kingdom, is to be more lazy when there is opportunity to do so. I sit on my own dog, I study my own dog. I think it's the best.
Klara:So when something is comfortable, it's easy. We sort of default to that easiness. I think it takes much more effort as humans to continue to push ourselves to do something challenging because it's just hard to do. And so I'm even thinking about this artificial intelligence, and is it gonna make us more lazy? And what is your view of the artificial intelligence, generative AI and even towards the SMB space, as you're transitioning into this B2SMB and focusing on the growth for those SMBs specifically?
Maciek:If you're asking me this question, you will have to schedule another podcast. You realize that Sounds good. You're just starting another long. So, first of all, are we going to become more lazy? Because there's artificial intelligence? A good friend of mine, jay McBain, who is an analyst at Canalys chief analyst at Canalys. He wrote a really great blog post, which I completely agree with, on this topic and the premise of the post. You can look it up on LinkedIn if you want to.
Maciek:There is a peanut butter and there is other food and the peanut butter is something that I like to have at home, but I don't really love it. It's just there always. So if I could outsource the ordering of a peanut butter every time it just goes there's very little somebody could reorder it for me. I don't want to make any decisions about the brand. I know more or less what brand they like. I would just put it on the constant reorder, but only when it just goes to a level when it has to be reordered, so not every five months because it might not be precise. So if I could outsource that to someone, I would have more time for things that I really like ordering food that I really like, doing things that I really like and I think this is the essence of the artificial intelligence there are things that are annoying and not really great for people. So think about, you know, riding a bike. I love riding a bike around Warsaw or in the woods or somewhere, okay, but if somebody would ask me to ride a bike from Warsaw to Barcelona or from Miami to New York, I am not sure that I'm really up for it. So I'm really grateful that somebody has sometime in the past invented something called plane or train where I can jump on the plane or train and fly over to the other side. Does it make me more lazy or not riding a bike? No, I love riding a bike or walking around or going for a hike, but there are tools that I use where they are most useful for me, and I think exactly the same story is with artificial intelligence and I think exactly the same story is with artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence today takes care of a lot of stuff that I either couldn't do because I was not skilled enough, or I didn't like to do because it just took too much time of me for the very little outcome from my business perspective. So it's the efficiency game and it's the productivity game that I'm playing here. I use artificial intelligence to do things so I can have more time for the things that I really believe I can make an impact on.
Maciek:And I want to say one more thing, which is super important, about the artificial intelligence, which I might be I might be wrong about long term, but short term I'm 100%. This is true, and when I had the lecture for the students at the University of Washington a couple of weeks ago, I told them exactly this you could use artificial intelligence to write your essays. You could, okay, but beware if somebody will start poking you about the essence of your essay and you have no clue what's inside, or you don't even know what this essay is really all about. And if you don't learn about the topic that you're going to be asking the artificial intelligence to write about, you could end up having an essay that does not make any sense and you will not be able to judge it. So, whether we're going to use artificial intelligence or not to write our essays or emails or whatever, we better have the knowledge and understanding and comprehension of the topic to be able to judge the outcome.
Maciek:I use artificial intelligence to write a lot of things. So then I read through that and I judge it and I use my knowledge and understanding and I know what I want. It's just that me writing it versus the artificial intelligence writing it. It's much more efficient for the, for the artificial intelligence. So I think everybody should be using artificial intelligence, I think everybody should be understanding how it works and I think everybody should be taking the responsibility for the outcome of what the artificial intelligence delivers and not let it just run your life, especially when we are talking about the things that are more important for you, the things that you care about. If you want to go ride a bike around the city, do it yourself. Don't go by car, because it's a completely different experience, even though car is many times more efficient than bike.
Klara:It seems like your view is that this would actually allow us to unlock more potential, and people will continue to gravitate to the things they're passionate about.
Maciek:Maybe there will be people that will just use artificial intelligence to be lazy all the time. I'm sorry, clara, but that means that they might not experience the beauty of putting some blood and sweat into something, and maybe that's the choice in life. I respect that. It's not my choice in life. I respect that. It's not my choice in life. My choice in life is to put blood and sweat into something, every time something different.
Maciek:Now you've opened another Pandora box, which is what is the advantage of SMBs from the artificial intelligence. I'm really sorry, but I read great research recently from your competitor so I'm not going to name the name about the productivity gaps between the small and medium business and the large corporations. So it's one of the biggest problems, equal to between 5% and 10% of GDP. If we would bring all the SMBs to the productivity levels of the large corporations, our GDP would jump between 5% to 10%. The research says and that means this is a real dollar. I mean we are not talking about some fuzzy stuff. This is thousands of dollars per business a month. You can actually measure it if your productivity would grow. So if the productivity is one of the biggest challenges for SMBs and AI is the productivity lever. How can you miss that? I mean, how can you not deploy artificial intelligence? So you have to. I mean, as a small and medium business, you will have to deploy artificial intelligence. So you have to. I mean, as a small and medium business, you will have to deploy artificial intelligence. Just like, during COVID, smbs had to deploy remote working solution, e-commerce solutions you know what name you.
Maciek:So this productivity, you know, this deployment of AI, I believe, will go in three or four phases for the small and medium businesses. The first, number one will be very it's already happening okay is Microsoft, google, meta have embedded AI into their tools that everybody is using You're using. I don't know if you're using M365 or Google Workspace, I don't know Maybe Zoom Workspace, one of those you will see that you have a possibility to purchase a license of Gemini or Copilot or whatever other AI. Apple will be introducing open AI into their ecosystem. So, very quickly, you will find yourself that you actually have an access to AI and you can start using it. And if you've tried it summarizing the meetings, creating presentations, drafting emails I mean very natural thing, and I think many people already use that. Maybe even they don't say that, but they use it a lot. They don't want to admit that they didn't create the presentation by themselves. But go to a copilot and say create the presentation of artificial intelligence and you will be amazed what's going to happen. Just do that problem. So there's going to be the kind of a number one stage will be they will be using tools, other tools, remote work or financial tools, like accounting, accounting company will embed artificial chatbot into this. I mean analytics, customer support, marketing, communication, whatever they are using which is non-core business for them. They will see their suppliers embedding artificial intelligence and if they are not embedding artificial intelligence into those non-core functions, then I would go and change the supplier, frankly saying, because, again, productivity is the name of the game today.
Maciek:The phase number two is they will see that this artificial intelligence is gaining space. They will start deploying it into different places in their organization, which means that they will have more and more technology. They will be more and more reliant on the technology and what it means is remember, two weeks ago, what happened with CrowdStrike. Yes, they will realize that there is a problem because they are so reliant on technology and the cyber criminals are not, you know, kind of awaiting in the darkness until you know, there will be more and more attacks and they will see those attacks and the phishing attempts and the ransomware attempts and they will start paying more and more attention to the cybersecurity. So there will be AI cybersecurity employed. They will be investing in cybersecurity and, frankly, saying banks will force them because banks will tell them you know, I'm not going to give you any money if you're not going to be cyber, you know kind of a safe, cyber secure. That's wave number two.
Maciek:Wave number three is, as they have more and more technology and more and more data, they'll start learning how to use this data and monetize it through AI.
Maciek:And the last phase and I hope they will get there the fastest, the quickest is going to be using AI to redesign and redefine their core business. So if you're a restaurant, you know it's a different story when you use AI to write emails about your menu. It's a different thing when you use your ERP system, ai to maybe optimize your ingredients ordering. It's a completely different story when you use AI to redefine the recipes that you are serving to the customers to find new tastes, the recipes that you are serving to the customers to find new tastes. Yeah, you've been having a restaurant, your father and your grandfather and you've been having this recipe for generations, and now you're going to come and completely redefine your core business by inventing new recipes using artificial intelligence. It's a crazy example, but you can use anything else. So the moment SMBs will start using AI to redefine their core business, the cycle is complete. Then they are really AI-driven companies.
Klara:Do you think the technology is at the maturity to where we can use the AI and generative AI for the core business reinvention? Because, even kind of looking at it, it's a great tool for, as you mentioned, I've used it for many of those similar examples right Summarizing notes, brainstorming, helping to write cleaner and more succinct emails kind of have a, I guess, administrative assistance or if people call it nowadays. But then the quality of it? I think a lot of new things will be coming out and I'm really curious, obviously about the Apple intelligence when that gets rolled out and with the next software release. But how far do you think we are from that for the models to actually be accurate enough and trusting enough and we have enough confidence to be able to reinvent that SMB core business?
Maciek:We are still far from it. Not every business can be reinvented through AI yet I think Because today, what I find when talking to people and seeing what is possible, not possible, language it's a large language model, so anything connected with language is great. When you start going into the numbers hallucinations, a small hallucination can completely change the number game. So you know kind of a reliance on the analytics. You need to be a little bit more careful.
Klara:I know we're right on time and thank you so much for the conversation. It seems like we can for sure talk for hours and schedule next one, maybe last two quick questions. There's a lot of chaos going on in the world nowadays. I mean, you're in Poland, feel it, perhaps more than some other countries, being right next to Ukraine. A lot of elections and instability. Obviously, the Venezuela thing just came up. There's this presidential campaign in the US that creates its own chaos. Given all of that's happening, what would you want to inspire people to be doing more of or less of?
Maciek:I think you know, whatever choices we make, stay true to your core beliefs and don't be manipulated. You know, like, take a step back. We are not too far from each other. We can be Republicans, democrats, whatever, but as people we are really close together. And you know, when the war in Ukraine started, in Poland we have our own kind of left-wing, right-wing, you know, kind of all those kind of political discussions. The moment the war started and the Ukrainian refugees started to pour into Poland, there was no longer a discussion about your political wing or whatever. Everybody just started to help. And that made me extremely proud of what Poland stands for that when there is a real problem to solve, we don't look at the differences. We look at the solution that we need to provide to people and support them. So look at the possibilities from the unity point of view, not from the divisions which some people are trying to capitalize on.
Klara:I love that, and where can people find you? I'll add your LinkedIn profile to the notes, with your permission, but what's the best way to reach out to anyone and who wants to connect with you about the conversation?
Maciek:LinkedIn is the best. Really, it's the easiest and the best and I hope most of your listeners are on LinkedIn. That's the easiest path to do that. I don't use some of the easiest path to do that. I don't use some of the other social media that much. Linkedin is my place professional network. That's what I like to offer my professional support and connection.
Klara:Excellent. Same here. Actually, it's my most useful really social media, so I prefer that over other. Thank you so much. I know we're running over time. I so appreciate over other. Thank you so much. I know we ran over time. I so appreciate this conversation and, if you're up for it, happy to schedule round two whenever the time works.
Maciek:Absolutely, absolutely Grand Slam 2.0. Magic, grand Slam 2.0. Let's do it. Yes, 100% Thank you so much If you enjoyed this episode.
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