From Sales Savvy to Tech Enthusiast: Nathan Rose's Masterclass in Power Platform Pivoting and Authentic Content Creation

Mark Smith: 0:37
Welcome to the MVP Show. My intention is that you listen to the stories of these MVP guests and are inspired to become an MVP and bring value to the world through your skills. If you have not checked it out already, I do a YouTube series called how to Become an MVP. The link is in the show notes. With that, let's get on with the show. Today's guest is from Auckland, new Zealand. He's a lead consultant at Cap Gemini. He was first awarded his MVP in 2023, so relatively recently. He's a budding pianist, something that most of you don't know about him. He's the power effects guru that you all do know. You can find links to his bio, social media etc. In the show notes for this episode. Welcome to the show, nathan.

Nathan Rose: 1:30
Thanks so much, mark, it's great to be here.

Mark Smith: 1:33
Good to have you on the show. I feel like I just talk to you every day in some form or some way. I was surprised when I see that 2023 was when you awarded MVP, because I feel like you've been an MVP for ages.

Nathan Rose: 1:49
What was the feedback that I got from the product team at Microsoft through my MVP mentor? They also were like we thought he was one already. Pro tip if you're trying to be an MVP, it really helps if the product team already thinks you are one.

Mark Smith: 2:10
Nice, I always like to start with food, family and fun. What do they mean to you?

Nathan Rose: 2:17
Yeah, great question. As you can tell by my accent, I'm not originally from New Zealand, although when I do go back to the States everybody always says, oh my God, you sound like a Kiwi. You wouldn't say that I've lived in New Zealand for 17 years. Now Most of my family is back in the States. I'm originally from Baltimore, maryland. I do have a 16-year-old daughter here in Auckland who splits her time between her mom and me and just absolutely adore her, even though we are in those grumpy teenage years. But she is my world. When I'm not doing my power platform thing, I'm really involved with my local church, just serving and loving local community here in South Auckland. Food man, I'm always down for a cheeky burger or coffee with friends.

Mark Smith: 3:08
Nice, I like it. I've known you've been in Auckland for a long time because way back in the day I think business mechanics were you working for them.

Nathan Rose: 3:18
Yeah, I worked for BMX. I think actually the first time we met I think was when, because I used to be in sales before I got into my whole power platform thing. But I did a stint at Microsoft in sales and I think it was actually Paul Balcott that introduced us in the lobby there at Microsoft.

Mark Smith: 3:38
That's a name I haven't heard in a long time.

Nathan Rose: 3:43
Yeah, I'm pretty sure that was how we met.

Mark Smith: 3:46
Tell me about your story of becoming a consultant. Like you said, you were in sales. What was that journey for you? At what point did you decide that you wanted to double down on the power platform?

Nathan Rose: 4:01
Yeah, great question. So, yeah, so I worked in corporate sales for 10 years. It took me that long to work out that I was terrible at it, but if you ask any of my former bosses, they'll tell you that I was just not a salesperson. Yeah, I'm quite extroverted, I love mixing it up with clients and people, but I guess I got to the point where I realized I was tired of begging for my job every quarter because, you know, I wasn't making quota, more interested in actually solving the problem. And so what I did was I said, you know, I think actually being a business analyst is what I really want to do, and so I identified the transferable skills and moved into a business analyst type role. And I did that for a few years, always working around Dynamics 365 type projects, and then I got introduced to the Power Platform in 2019. And that just it was like a bomb went off in my life and it lit a fire that I just it never went out. So in 2019, so I was working for a global manufacturer as a presence here in New Zealand and we got to be part of the private preview for what we now know today as co pilot studio. At the time it was called virtual agent. And so I got to get hands on with this thing and the first thing, first thing I did was, you know, let's hook this up to Dynamics and get it playing around with cases and that type of thing. I was later told by some of the more responsible people in my organization that probably wasn't the smartest thing to do without an authentication wall. But you know, the beauty of of experimental and preview products and features is we get to work out what's possible and then walk it back to what's responsible. But I had just amazing engagement from the power virtual agent team at Microsoft and because I mean I like I had to learn everything I do learn power automate. There weren't connectors to virtual agent. So I literally had the product team at Microsoft writing JSON for me and I had to learn what JSON was and but it just, you know it took me two weeks to write my first flow. But the learning curve was just crazy because you know, I went from kind of two weeks to write a flow to being able to do it in 20 minutes. But yeah, it just it was amazing. We got to go to Atlanta to the last Microsoft Business Application Summit before COVID. We got to be part of the customer advisory forum and meet with, meet with these product managers from Microsoft in person. It was an incredible experience and, yeah, it just lit a fire in me. And then I was like you know what I want to do this full time and here.

Mark Smith: 6:46
I am now Awesome, awesome, and so what year did you join CAP?

Nathan Rose: 6:53
So I joined through Intrigen, so I joined in 2021. So I was there for kind of the last 12 months of Intrigen we got acquired in. I joined in September, we got acquired in November and then in July of 2022, that's when the complete rebrand happened and we're now, you know, completely branded Capgemini and part of that larger group. Yeah, Amazing.

Mark Smith: 7:20
Now you know you've created a name for yourself in the industry around PowerFX, which I think is amazing because I think you're the only person that I see index heavily on PowerFX and it's such a.

Nathan Rose: 7:34 
It was your idea, man. Thank you.

Mark Smith: 7:37
Tell us about, yeah, why you went down the PowerFX path and and what has that open to you, by really carving that bit of space out for you in the power platform ecosystem.

Nathan Rose: 7:51
Yeah. So I guess first we need to walk it back to the last mentoring challenge that you ran before the current one in 2022. And I was fortunate to be part of that. And you mentioned in one of the sessions that you didn't see a lot of content around PowerFX and I was like you know what? I'm going to make that my thing, and so I just dove in, started learning it. I initially focused on the model driven app and modern commands and it's just expanded out since to plugins and columns and that type of thing. But yeah, it just I don't know it. Just it's my love language, it just kind of gets me and I get it and yeah, but it's, I guess, in terms of the journey to MVP, I always say, you know, there's no shortcuts, but sometimes there's express routes and if there's an area where there's really not a lot of a lot of content and it's something that Microsoft is heavily invested in, it's probably a good idea to get involved there. You know, if I wanted to, you know I probably can't add anything in terms of, like, customer insights, journeys compared to Megan Walker or Power Automate. You know, we've got MCJ here at Capgem, or Jerry Weinstock or Eliza, some of the you know kind of the, you know the big names in Power Automate, but yeah, powerfx was, you know, there was kind of this brief period where nobody was talking about it and so, yeah, I just picked it up and ran with it, but again, it was your idea, man, so thank you. Shout out to the 90 day mentoring program.

Mark Smith: 9:37
Thank you, sir. Listen, I want to unpack your journey in PowerFX and the re and I want to do it from this point of view is that there are people out there in the community that go, you know what could I become known for? But like what are the what's the practicalities of that? And you know, in the 90 day mentoring challenge we covered the whole. If you're going to index on the area, I think I give Jerry Weinstock as an example, who was very heavily in the Dynamics 365 arena and then along came Flow back in the day now called Power Automate and he decided to learn everything he could about it. Now, if I was to unpack your journey and and let's say you were advising somebody else and let's say they were going to pick up, let's say they're going to pick up Copilot Studio just as an example, right, and although Copilot Studio right now in its current iteration, is kind of indexed more on what we had with chatbots and PowerVirginal Agents, if you were gonna define a 12 month schedule of really diving deep into a specific product based on your experience with PowerFix, how do you do that?

Nathan Rose: 11:48
Yeah. So the first thing you need to do and this is the most important thing is you just have to get started. There's a brilliant quote that I read earlier this late last year. I think it's in Rick Rubin's book the Creative Act. I might be mistaken, but it basically the quote is modern art equals. I could have done that plus, yeah, but you didn't. So the reality is I haven't done anything special. Anybody could do what I do. I chose to get going. So if you said, hey, I want to make a name for myself in Copilot Studio, just get started, just do your thing. When I look at my content from 12 to 24 months ago, it's terrible, it's embarrassing, but we move on, we keep going, we learn, we grow. The next thing I would do is I would say just bring yourself to it. It's the beauty of getting to create content around these awesome products is you really get to bring a lot of your own personality and yourself to it, and so just do what comes naturally to you. Make the videos that you would want to see. One of the complaints that I had early in my journey before becoming an MVP was gosh. A lot of this content glosses over so much of the process, like here's the three steps to do this, and it's like it's not three steps, it's like 40, but you've glossed over it. And so I like to. I make the video for me, like, hey, if I've never touched this before, how would I do it? And so that's the way I try to come across my content. But just make the video, write the blog post, make the content that you would want to see. That would be helpful for you, because I guarantee you, if it's helpful for you, it's going to be helpful for somebody else.

Mark Smith: 13:47
What was your decision around the medium that you chose, like you mentioned video there and blog post, et cetera. Did you decide that the video was going to be the way you're going to do it, or why did you choose that over, let's say, doing a podcast on PowerFX, just dedicated or just using blog only or written word only? What was your thinking, your choice around what was going to be your main distribution, created and content, that type of thing?

Nathan Rose: 14:24
That's a great question. The simple answer is I didn't. I'm not a big planner. I just go out there and just get started. The best career advice I ever got was just go out and get your nose bloodied. That's just the way I approach the world. But I started out doing videos. I used to blog a long time ago, not so much about dynamics or technical things, but just when I was in sales I used to blog. What I found is even some of the best bloggers and writers as I get older. I just don't have the attention span to read through it all. It's a tough one. I'm a reader, I love to read, but I just don't have the attention span for it. I started out with videos because I just didn't have any other ideas. I just did it. I still do videos. I find that video. Even I struggle to watch it. I get grumpy when people send me a video clip like, just send me the meme so I can look at it, laugh and move on. But yeah, which is ironic coming from the guy who's dropping videos on LinkedIn all the time. But what I have found is by taking the time to subtitle them. There are times where I will start watching a video and if the subtitles and it interests me, then I will watch it through. I do that. The one thing and I've noticed you've started doing this recently is Carousel posts. I get crazy engagement from the Carousel posts. What I noticed was hey, I like these things. I love that I can flick through them really quickly, capture the idea. I started doing those in late 2022. The first one took me several hours to do. I can do them pretty quickly now. I mean it's insane. You can bang it out in 20 minutes and if I do a PowerFX one or something like that, I'll see the stats go crazy new followers. It's insane. I've pulled back from it a bit. I like to do video just because it gives you more of a three-dimensional sense of who I am. What I really enjoy doing is getting on stage at events and whatnot, and I'd like to do more of that. I use the video to show a bit more of myself, to try and move into that space.

Mark Smith: 16:53
Nice, Tell me about your tools. What software are you using? Camera recording software? What's it? A lot of people want to know that type of detail. What is it for you?

Nathan Rose: 17:07
Yeah, man, this is so embarrassing. So if I'm doing just one of my, I joke about my FitSpo videos on LinkedIn, but if it's one of my just videos where I'm talking literally, I just record myself on my iPhone. If I'm doing a demo, I set up a meeting with myself and teams and record myself and teams. It's probably not the highest quality, but it's just how I do it. So I guess the message out there is just get started and, like, you have the tools now. So yeah, I use Canva pretty heavily. I probably should start paying for it, but I'm still in the free version. I, yeah, so I use Canva for all of my carousel posts. I use it to edit my videos. I haven't bitten the bullet for any subtitling AI yet. I do that by hand, but it does take quite a bit of time. So I'm starting to say you know, it's probably worth paying for something like that. So, yeah, but yeah, very simple toolkit, so really nothing special.

Mark Smith: 18:12
This is so cool. Tell me about distribution. Then you mentioned LinkedIn. Is it only LinkedIn?

Nathan Rose:18:17
Yeah, I'm predominantly on LinkedIn. I occasionally drop some of my other videos through Facebook or Instagram, but most of my following is on LinkedIn. I do have a blog that I set up as part of my MVP journey. I haven't updated it for a while. Yeah, most of my engagement just seems to come through LinkedIn. But yeah, at some point I probably need to look at setting up some kind of website or personal site so that people can connect with my content and find it a bit better.

Mark Smith: 18:50
Yeah, so nothing on YouTube.

Nathan Rose: 18:53
Oh, yeah, I do have a YouTube channel. Sorry, I do have a YouTube channel. I don't have a lot of followers, but when I record my more technical demos I do like to put them there, because then it's easily found, and I've heard that some of my videos do make the rounds through the product group at Microsoft. So, yeah, youtube is a fantastic tool for keeping your content there.

Mark Smith: 19:21
So why did you choose to index on LinkedIn?

Nathan Rose: 19:24
Great question. I had just always kind of been a big LinkedIn user. I was one of the early adopters of the blogging on LinkedIn when that came out, and so I had just kind of always built a following there and, yeah, linkedin just kind of seemed to work for me. Yeah, I do I have been thinking that, yeah, I probably should explore some other avenues in terms of reaching people, but yeah, linkedin has just always kind of worked for me Nice.

Mark Smith: 19:57
Are you going to run out of topics to talk on in PowerFX?

Nathan Rose: 20:01
In theory you could, but what I found is the more content you create, it just opens this torrent of creativity. I was crazy because I took a couple of weeks off over the holidays when I was visiting my family and it's really hard to get started again from that place Of Stasis. But in the last few weeks I've just found that the ideas just keep coming. Yeah, you get great questions from the community and you're like I didn't think of that. That sounds like a great idea, or just stuff you're trying. And I guess the other thing that I would share is that everything is material. The thing you want to try, the demo you want to try and build, is material. If it works, that's material. If it doesn't work, that's material. If it's impossible, that's material. Like you can use all of it. I mean, there are times where I've had to go out and say, hey, this isn't the post that I wanted to share, but this is what I wanted to do, and it doesn't do that right now and yeah, so it's all material. So I guess In theory you could run out of stuff to talk about with PowerFX, but if you're really in there mixing it up, probably not.

Mark Smith: 21:17
Yeah, I love it. I love that you can take a topic and you can really cut it up and slice it up so many different ways, whether it's finding the bugs in it, whether it's finding oh, I didn't know that, you know the light bulb moments, whether it's doing something to address a community question, right, that, hey, let me show you how to do that. And, as you say, if it doesn't work, that's great content as well, because it shows how it can't be done. We wouldn't have all the story around Edison, the light bulb and stuff without all the failures, and I think that so many people in the community want to only look polished and only look at the end result. And it's actually the journey. I mean one of the creators that I really like, Gary Vee or Gary Vaynerchuk. He is just like listen, if you were just chuck a video on and when about your day, people would watch that, right, Because people want to see how you do stuff. And it's not so much about you know. Yes, in time you get better, right, you know how to use the software better, you know how to create the hook better, you know how to drive the value better, but nothing beats just getting going right and getting that momentum. You know, I always say was it a law of physics that a vehicle under motion is easier to move than a stationary vehicle? Right and guiding it? And I'll try to look it up, but I don't think it is a law of physics. But anyhow, if you listen to this, correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought I learned it in school. That aside, final word, Nathan, to folks thinking that they'd like to become an MVP what's your advice?

Nathan Rose: 23:10
My advice is just get stuck in and do it. It's an amazing journey. I will echo. So you had Paul Stork on recently and I sent him a connect on LinkedIn and a message and I was like, man, everything you said was 100% my journey. So, if you get right, before I became an MVP, I was at the point where I was like you know what, if this never happens, I've already won. The things I've learned, the stuff I've gotten to do, the people that I've met like this is awesome, this is the victory. And then at that point, the fireworks popped and it was like, hey, we think you'd be a good MVP, but yeah. So I would say I mean, everybody starts out wanting to be an MVP and along the way, you learn that the real win is the community and the things you learn. And so if you just get stuck in and start going for it, amazing things will happen.

Mark Smith: 24:11
Hey, thanks for listening. I'm your host Business Application MVP Mark Smith, otherwise known as the NZ365 guy. If you like the show and want to be a supporter, check out buymeacoffeecom forward slash NZ365 guy. Thanks again and see you next time.