In celebration of 7 years Podcasting and 600 Episodes - This is my story

Mark Smith: 0:06
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.

Meg Smith: 0:34
Tēnā koutou katoa Ko. Meg Smith, tōku ingoa. Hi everyone, I'm Meg Smith. You're probably not used to hearing my voice on the Microsoft Business Applications podcast, but today's a very exciting episode because I've got Mark's permission to do a takeover. We're going to do an MVP show interview to celebrate seven years of the Microsoft Business Applications podcast, so let's get into it.

Meg Smith: 1:00
Today's guest is from Whangarei Heads, aotearoa, new Zealand. He is the host of the Microsoft Business Applications podcast. He was first awarded his MVP in 2012. His career in Microsoft Business Applications spans decades and hemispheres. He started with Microsoft CRM version 1.2 in 2003, and his career has taken him from small town New Zealand to the big city lights of Sydney, hong Kong, london and Las Vegas. It's taken him all over the world. He's passionate about helping people reach their full potential and he created the 90-Day Mentoring Challenge to help people advance their career in Microsoft Dynamics 365 and the Power Platform. He's a pro podcaster.

Meg Smith: 1:44
I am not Please bear with me today as I bring my flavor to the MVP show and we learn a little bit more about Mark together. Also, just to explain at the start of the episode I opened in Te Reo Māori, the Māori language. Māori are the indigenous people in Aotearoa, new Zealand. My whakapapa, my genealogy, is with iwi or tribes in the North Ngapuhi and in the middle of New Zealand, tainui, so we're about to jump into it. If you want to know more about Mark, if you haven't seen his face all over your social media lately, you can find links to his bio and socials in the show notes for this episode. So, without further ado, welcome to the MVP show, mark.

Mark Smith: 2:26
Thank you. Thank you, this is going to be very interesting.

Meg Smith: 2:30
I'm going to enjoy it a lot. So it's one of the things I've been wanting to throw back your way for a little while now, because I hear you do it for other people on the MVP show. Please tell us. Tell us about Food, family and Fun. What does that mean to you?

Mark Smith: 2:46
The three Fs Food, family and Fun. Well, first of all, most important thing, of course, is family. For me, of which you are part of, of course, our lovely three children Connor, my oldest, which is he's 19 now is he, I think he's 19 off at university. And then poppy, um, who is four, and nico, who is just turned two. So they are our family and they are the most important thing to me. Um, that's family, food. Um, well, well, food's interesting. I love food.

Mark Smith: 3:27
It's interesting how many people come on the podcast and say that they're a foodie. I don't know that I'd be a foodie when we're living in London and cities and stuff like that. Definitely we would be out trying everything, but now we're in a much more rural lifestyle. The food focus for me is as natural as possible. So, in other words, the distance from the garden to the plate is really really something that I feel that we as a family focus on, and it's part of our sustainability.

Mark Smith: 4:00
We don't want you trucks, lorries carrying our food around, uh, creating a massive carbon footprint If we can produce as much of it on our own land as possible. And even now, you know, our meat only comes from the next door neighbor. So the distance from you know the paddock to the plate is very, very short, and my one of my things that I want to do is make sure that food supply chain becomes a higher percentage of it comes from very local, rather than you know, distributed geographies. And so when I think of food, like I'm massively into vegetables and developing my garden. And then the other thing is fruit trees and or fruits of all sorts, because when I say trees, we've got pineapples growing, we've got bananas growing, we've got, you know, a whole every citrus possible species that you can get in our country, and of course, I'm into nut trees as well. So my goal is that every month of the year, every form of food is supplied from our property.

Meg Smith: 5:08
So would that be your fun as well? It sounds like, and yeah, that's a lot of my fun.

Mark Smith: 5:13
A lot of my fun is, of course, with the kids and also, you know, from time to time I've been known to do a bit of gaming online, so I do that, but I definitely nothing like when I was younger in my tech career. So if I just want to disconnect, I will do that. The other couple of things I read a lot like, a lot, a lot, not so much novels, but very much anything that's around business, philosophy, self-improvement I've always been a big fan of, so I definitely do that in down times. But then having a one and a half acre piece of land, it has always got me plenty of things. I always like creating new things, building new things physically in the world. So it kind of balances the digital lifestyle I live.

Meg Smith: 6:10
It's been a bit of a switch up for us, hasn't it? This grounded home, being in one place, because the other thing I think of when I think of you and fun, it's travel. Right? Could you talk a little bit about your experiences and also just what a travel mindset has meant for you?

Mark Smith: 6:28
yeah, so one of the things it's like a rite of passage in new zealand is that kiwis, because we live at the bottom of the world right, the only thing further south than us is antarctica, um, the and and. So because we're so remote and as a culture have always been so remote, we have this kind of inbuilt thing to want to travel as soon as you can possibly travel, and so a lot of people you know when they finish high school, before going to university, we'll do a gap year and they'll go and travel. I never did that because I never went to university, but I've always had this love of travel and exploring and understanding other people and cultures to add to my own. In other words, my goal is to evolve my life view. Just the way I was brought up doesn't need to define who I am, and so I didn't want to be locked into my upbringing to stop exploring or shut or, you know, have a closed mindset really about the possibilities of the world.

Mark Smith: 7:28
So I've been to 41 different countries traveling.

Mark Smith: 7:33
I think all but two of those have been with Meg, and so we've actually traveled together all over the world.

Mark Smith: 7:39
Key highlights for me was traveling through Russia, walking across Spain for 33 days from one side of Spain to the other, the Camino de Santiago, amazing experiences multiple times to Iceland and all those Nordic-type countries just been absolutely fantastic, I feel like you know, for so many years almost 10 years we were traveling for work and for pleasure years, almost 10 years we were traveling um for work and for pleasure, and and that hasn't gone away. What's been brilliant now is that we have a home base, and so I feel that we'll still continue to travel, like next year. One month is planned in italy, perhaps a year after two months will be once again globally somewhere, and then, ultimately, my goal is to get to a three months of the year being somewhere international in the world, and because I like the idea of full immersion into a culture rather than tourist immersion, I want to stay for like at least a month in a location, get to know, you know how things go there.

Meg Smith: 8:38
Yeah, it's interesting as well. I can remember when we came back from one of our first trips to Europe, which was actually for our honeymoon. We went to Spain and France and we came back and we just tried to hold on to that feeling, I think, of you know, going out and seeing the world with new eyes and being curious about the people that you might meet. So we, yeah, have been very fortunate to be able to travel extensively. But we were reminded this week. We this week, a few weeks ago, we took our kids for a road trip in New Zealand and we're able to tap into that same mindset and, I guess, for the first time for our little ones, show them what that might look like and, yeah, I hope it will always be part of our lives.

Meg Smith: 9:22
Okay, I would love you touch a little bit there on your journey that after high school you know you didn't go to university. This is one of my favorite things about your story. I find it super inspiring. I'd love if you could talk a little bit about your journey, your professional journey into tech and how that has sort of led you. My leading question after that is going to be talking about your MVP journey, but I just really love how it starts out of high school.

Mark Smith: 10:19
Yeah, so I can even take it a step back before high school, before going to high school. And so New Zealand high school is about the age of 12, 13 years old that you go from what's called primary or intermediate school to high school. And it was at this point, before going to high school, that my mother realized like hadn't worked out that I actually couldn't read, hadn't worked out that I actually couldn't read. I grew up in a very small community school, rural New Zealand, on a dairy farm. And when I'm talking about small, from five years old to the end of intermediate, which is 12, 13 years old, depending on where your birthday fits intermediate, which is, you know, 12, 13 years old, depending on where your birthday fits, there were at one point only 21 students in the school across that age range.

Mark Smith: 11:09
Right, two teachers, husband and wife, and I got on well with the teachers Like I knew how to like. I suppose I learned social engagement. I did that well, so I knew what you know. My teacher was into what he thought about and I was a good friend, you know almost, of the teacher which allowed me to not do well in math and English and reading and writing. I sucked at all those type of things. So here I was about to go to high school and my mom kind of cottoned on to that oh my gosh, I can't read. That could be a problem, absolutely it could, right. So she got me a personal tutor who started me off on five-year-old books and sounding out words the apple is red, the banana is yellow. And I learned to read in that kind of year before going to school. And, of course, only an older in life have I realized that there's, you know, dyslexia is a thing, and because I never knew what it was being a Gen Xer growing up, and that that explained why things got garbled in how I read it. Like I'd read a sentence and I'd like I don't understand what it said. Even though I've read every word in that sentence, I didn't understand what was being said, or it didn't, just didn't make sense to me.

Mark Smith: 12:38
And so you know, as you can imagine, through high school I wasn't like a star student. Every you know I hated essays, I hated writing, I hated writing. I looked for every excuse possible. If a distant relative died and I had a piece of homework due, I would use that. That distant relative died. You know the emotional pull to the teacher why I shouldn't be marked bad, even though I never knew that relative at all. It just come up in a family discussion that some distant relative died but there was leverage to get out of writing an assignment or doing something like that, and so I would. I would invoke it.

Mark Smith: 13:09
But anyhow, through school my father particularly never had a, um, never impressed on me any need to get an education beyond high school. The reason is he left school at 14 years old, became a dairy farmer and by 21, he had scraped enough money together to buy his own dairy farm himself at 21 years of age and by that point he'd already had three kids, which was just crazy. I'm one of seven children. So anyhow, he always saw as a practical trade for me. You know he wanted me to become an electrician, but that required further study and my auntie offered me a job as a groundskeeper and I knew how to mow lawns and so straight out of high school I became a groundskeeper and for three years I mowed lawns for one of the most prestigious schools in New Zealand, auckland Grammar, and that was my lot.

Mark Smith: 14:08
But during that period the internet came about and I fell in love with the technology, bought my first computer and I started to you know the amount of times you know using MS-DOS. Back then I destroyed that computer, had to rebuild it. Back then you were always tinkering in it. You were connecting your modem and trying to work out why your modem wasn't communicating to log onto a bulletin board and things like that. But of course all this was highly tactile, which appealed to me Like getting into the computer, playing with the electrics, even though you shouldn't be pulling the know, pulling the backs off computers and that a pug straight into the wall, and stuff like that. But I suppose that's where it started to to to grow.

Mark Smith: 14:50
I then actually went into another job after that for seven years, excuse me in the medical industry and that was great, but it wasn't my core. Um know it doesn't spin my wheels, but building your website was a part of what came out of that and I built the company's first website and that got me enough to transition into then taking a role in an IT company where I was just a salesperson, not just a. It was. It's a good skill and it's a powerful skill. That's seen me well.

Mark Smith: 15:23
But I sold computer training courses and the first big course I sold was a course I wanted to take, which is a five-day course on web design. The problem is there was no instructor for that in New Zealand to do web design. So they were like, well, you seem pretty excited about it, why don't you teach the course? We will put you on a train, the trainer course, into the us. You're going to have to get up at 2 am in the morning and do this and training you know remotely to learn this course and then deliver it and the classroom size was we could take 12 people in these what we'd call a tech class at that time. So I sold 12 people into that class and then that ended my sales of computer training, because I then became an instructor and I delivered that first course and that got me into then a whole bunch of other courses around internet working.

Mark Smith: 16:11
How packets um travel across what's called the osirm, the open system interconnection reference model. How it travels from your keyboard, if you like, into your computer through the various stages physical, logical out of your network card. How does it communicate across routers. I learned all that. I taught it in classes.

Meg Smith: 16:29
This is insane to me, though, that you could have come out of school thinking that you were not a strong learner, because, as you've just shown through your story and through what you still know now, more than 20 years later, your ability to learn and retain information is exceptional, and the system that you went to school in that a lot of us go to school in it really destroys any self-confidence and makes you believe a lie about yourself, that you're stupid, which is really frustrating to me and inspiring to so many people, I know, because they can see what you've gone on to do. But you and I have talked about this before about but what would it have looked like if you'd come out of school knowing that you were really smart and that you were a great learner, and how could your trajectory have been different? So, yeah, I really love when you share that story, and also it's a reminder for everyone to think about, like I think, when you talked about dyslexia not really being even a thing that people were aware of in the education system, or there was no diagnosis or support, I think it's been really important to move through the stages of we've seen, of the last 10, 20 years of diagnosis and support. But it's not a disability, it's not, it's not a less than it's actually a superpower, or I've seen it and you know we're sitting in a house right now that benefits from the superpower you get of being able to think differently, to think in dimension, whereas I think in flat.

Meg Smith: 18:01
I can remember when you were like I think I can convert this barn into a house that we can live in and I'm like, okay, but you could see it and you knew exactly what you were going to do with the different spaces and how they were going to look, because you could see that in 3D in a way that me, who did really well at school, really well at university, great, according to those kind of measures, I couldn't see it and I couldn't do it, let alone, um, you know, go through and and and learn how to teach a course that was very technical and understand it.

Meg Smith: 18:32
So, um, yeah, thank you for sharing that. And then, so to fast forward a little bit, I'd love to talk a little bit. I mean, you know we were just married um 2011, I think, when you really I can remember you coming and saying, hey, there's an MVP in New Zealand, and that was the first time I had heard of the MVP program. So talk a little bit about your awareness of it and your, I guess, ambition to go and potentially become part of that program, and then maybe a bit about where it's taken you.

Mark Smith: 19:04
Yeah, so yeah, there was this one dude that was an MVP in New Zealand that I met in the Microsoft office and what I noticed is that when you're at the far flung reaches of the world, you know, back here information arrives late. Right, we're talking about generally two years late. I always used to say New Zealand operates about two years behind the rest of the world in so many areas, and what I noticed is that this dude would get to do. You know, he wasn't a Microsoft employee, he was an MVP, and he would get access to the product team and he would get access to um. Back then, the product team would you know, either in person or online Uh, I think link. There was a software way back then that we used to use Um. They would show you what they were planning, what was going to come up, what was going to be in the next release and generally, because product releases are only every three years, you got the you know the goods early. You learned this and that would be a powerful tool, you know, for you in business, because by that point, I'd fallen in love with what has now become the power platform through its very various iterations.

Mark Smith: 20:21
For me, starting off, it was called a product called MSCRM, and so I was like I need to become an MVP because I need that early access, because the Microsoft local office they didn't know anything that was going on in the product team either. If you don't understand the structure of Microsoft, from last count, there's 14 Microsoft subsidiaries around the world. These are all in geographies and they're all sales arms of Microsoft. Then you've got the core R&D product development teams that are dotted all over the world, support etc. And so I realized that my local team they didn't have the information that I needed. So I realized I needed to become an MVP. So I looked at what do you do to become an MVP and I did what was needed to become an MVP.

Mark Smith: 21:07
A Microsoft employee nominated me and by that point, point the individual that had been an nvt, a guy called son. He had lost his mvp for whatever reason. He was no longer a business applications mvp, um, and so I became that in new zealand and really took that baton forward from that point, because there's many um, I suppose, folks in that space. But it meant that on january, the 1st 2012, I woke up, we were on holiday and there was this email that morning to say that, bang, I'd become an MVP, which was quite clear. I remember it quite clearly and it's been a massive journey since I think just this week I ordered my what is it? How many years I think I've been maybe 13 years an MVP now. So, um, yeah, it's, it's been a massive journey.

Mark Smith: 22:03
But I tell you, the access to the product team was a game changer for me and I really saw that becoming an MVP was an honor to get it, but it was so important that the recognition of it was around helping others how can you add value to others. And that's really kind of translated into my mission. Because what I noticed with this is here's me, brought up to think that I was dumb and I was able to transition into a technical role and I'm not so technical nowadays, but back then I, you know, was more so and really gain the skills that allow me to one um, become successful in my career, become recognized in my career and to make good money in my career. Right as in, when you look at you know where you sit in the percentiles in countries. We, from an income perspective, has always been in that top percentile, and that's because of tech career. And so here's me no university, no formal education as such, outside of schooling, was able to learn tech skills and make an income that not just worked in my country. It has allowed me to travel all over the world, work with amazing, amazing companies, been involved in incredible projects, getting insights, like you know the stuff that I've done in the public sector space, even though I wasn't a citizen of the country. I had to be chaperoned everywhere, but so many of my ideas became the solutions that were actually built in these countries, even though, as I say, I didn't have the security clearance. So it's been an absolute wild ride, but it's really limitless and that's why I'm passionate particularly about I suppose I have seen so many people that have taken a career in business applications in the Power Platform, and the impact is much broader than them as an individual, it's their families.

Mark Smith: 24:05
You know, when I was working in Australia, I was able I was lucky to be able to hire many people from India. That meant they could relocate to Australia, and it wasn't the individual relocating, it was their immediate family and their extended family. I was able to get the visa types in place that would allow for that, and so they could relocate and have a better lifestyle than perhaps what they could see they would have in their own countries. And so I've always seen the power platform is really power is the right word because it is empowering. It empowers people's lives outside of, yes, what it technically does, the value it can bring to the individual. It learns, the skills it gives them such freedom and choice to really, you know, as I say, work anywhere in the world, do whatever they want to do, make whatever income levels they want to make. That is all possible and you can't say I didn't have an education, because hey, I didn't and I've still been able to achieve it.

Meg Smith: 25:01
Yeah, I mean I've personally seen your journey. For most of them, I mean we've been together for 16 years and your journey has impacted my journey. You know, in getting into tech I worked for Google for 10 years, so in a different ecosystem. But some of those skills and that impact and I've often said that the commitment and the love and the power platform dynamics, communities around the world that we've got to be part of, it's unparalleled. Like Google is a product or Google is a company that has lots of products that people love. They love the products, but they're not showing up on Saturdays to work with other people in the community to solve a problem. You know, not that.

Meg Smith: 25:39
I saw, anyway, to the same extent, that people give time back into the Power Platform community and I know that's because people feel that sense of, I guess, indebtedness or that recognition that it has done something magical in their lives. So why not give it back and share that? I mean, we talk about pay it forward right In the 90 day mentoring challenge and that is such at the heart of our own journeys that it kind of would be remiss not to take that approach One of the things that came up when I was being a bit cheeky and floating on LinkedIn whether I should do this takeover episode I loved. Lisa Crosby did a screenshot of a suggestion from LinkedIn and around what I had said, and I think it's so important because you've been described as I mean audacious is a kind word. You've been described, as you know, really bold and sometimes it rubs people up the wrong way. But I'd really love to take that question, which was from LinkedIn, which was how can audacity impact personal growth?

Mark Smith: 26:58
um how can audacity impact personal growth.

Meg Smith: 26:59
So, first of all, what do you understand audacity to mean? I? I actually looked up the definition on this and the one I took is audacity means being willing to take bold risks. But I mean, let's talk about it in the vernacular at the moment, too right, that, um, we talk about, say you know the audacity of I don't know if you talk about it in the vernacular at the moment, too right that we talk about, say you know the audacity of.

Meg Smith: 27:15
I don't know if you talk about this, but in the social circles I'm in, the algorithms that show me are memes around women should have more audacity than men do, which is you show up. You know you don't have to be 100% qualified. You back yourself. You, you know, ask the bold thing. Sometimes it's a negative thing and sometimes it's saying, oh well, people should, you know, be more humble, and we talk about that too. There's so, there's so much space for that. But I actually have really claimed audacity, being audacious as a verb, as something that's empowering, and I think that's because, without labeling it, that's what I've seen you do. So, yeah, I guess that's what I'd love your take on.

Mark Smith: 27:56
Yeah, so part of that whole travel and exploring other cultures is that you get to see how different cultures act and interact. And one thing that I love about Americans is that I think, as a people, they're very you know, they have that audacity and they will just go for something. And so I suppose, once again, my travels through the MVP program has allowed me to go and experience those cultures and bring them back and repurpose them as part of who I am, to, as you say, be bold, to take the opportunity. You know, I did a video series called how to Become an MVP While we're Living in London I think about 33 videos and a playlist up on YouTube there and I got reprimanded because in one of the videos I take the Jerry Maguire quote show me the money, because I talk about the money that you make as an MVP, and you know another MVP is attributed over $700,000 across their career because they've been an MVP, and people are like, well, who gives you the audacity to say that? And the thing is is that I'm not into keeping the black art hidden, right, I'm wanting to expose it and let other people take advantage of it, and hence why, you know, I think that is so important, and so I've learned from those cultures.

Mark Smith: 29:09
Another one I've learned from a book from an Indian guy which was he coined this phrase called brules, and he was like how many brules in your life hold you back? And of course, the definition of brules are bullshit rules. Okay, rules that people make up and you get these in companies. So much here's the rule. Is this like a legal thing? Oh no, it's our policy. It's a bullshit rule. It's somebody made a rule to control somebody else or control something. And so it was such a defining word for me because, in the way you're brought up, a lot of the way your parents teach you and grow you as an individual is through bullshit rules. Teach you and grow you as an individual is through bullshit rules. If you hold your face that way and the wind changes, it's going to freeze and that's what you're going to look like. It's things like these type of things because you're pulling a funny face or whatever.

Mark Smith: 30:06
But there's so many. That's an obvious one, but there's so many other things the way males and females should act or react to each other. They are bullshit rules. They are you know, know your place. They are bullshit rules and the more that you can remove other people's imposed beliefs on yourself and decide what am I going to believe? What's going to be important to me?

Mark Smith: 30:30
It changes your perspective, me, it changes your perspective and it all to a degree it removes limiting behavior, and I think that's when I think of that word audacious and having the audacity it's about in whose eyes, like, why should I live in the smallness of mind of somebody else? Why shouldn't I be able to expand to be all I can be? I don't want to. You know, when I look at my life, I want to go. Did I really take, did I live my life the best way I could possibly live, taking advantages and giving as much value as I can and should? Or am I going to?

Mark Smith: 31:12
You know, just get by, you know, settle down, don't do anything too crazy, don't have big dreams because you might get disappointed.

Mark Smith: 31:26
You know, and remember my mother just coming to my mind right then, my first car.

Mark Smith: 31:28
Don't let it go to your head, don't make it your pride and joy, because you like just crazy, crazy and I was, because I was brought up in a religious home and that was so. Many of those brawls were impressed upon me and so I suppose part of the mvp program and traveling and experiencing other cultures that didn't have the same upbringing as me. They had their own, a lot of brawls right, I'm not saying they didn't have that, but what it enabled me to do is like, ah, these are just belief systems and you can either buy into them and make them your belief systems and I tell you Satya's book, when he wrote the book Refresh, when he came in as the UCEO 10 years ago at Microsoft and he really talked about this book on mindsets and you either limit your mindset. You either have a closed mindset that says I can't because of this or that or something else, or you can have an open mindset, and an open mindset is ever expansive. It's like the universe.

Meg Smith: 32:24
It goes on and on and on and I suppose I tie it to that when you were talking about some of those rules, um, when you were talking about some of those rules, I um, you know it reminded me that there were a lot of that that came at us when we were getting married. Right, oh, you can't get married at night time, it's not legal. Yes, it was. We had a, we had a moonlit ceremony at 10 pm, um, there was. And then we went on honeymoon and people would say, oh well, you know, get that out of your system, get that travel done and then settle down and buy a house and have kids.

Meg Smith: 32:55
And I think the big kind of thing that I love, that we've done and hope we keep doing more of, is opening our minds to really living according to our own definition of success and encouraging other people to do the same To their definition. It's going to look different to everybody. Encouraging other people to do the same to their definition, it's going to look different to everybody. Um, mike, this has been just so much fun and I really appreciate, um, you, um, that's, you know, uh, everything that you do and the way that you um live your life, because it has really made mine um so so good. Uh, thank you so much for your time and cheering so openly and living so openheartedly. You're amazing.

Mark Smith: 33:42
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 nz365guy. Thanks again and see you next time. Thank you you.