Nu Skin

Could you tell me a little bit about yourself and your job at Nu Skin, as well as your journey as a technology industry leader?

In 2000, I began working in the electrical engineering hardware field. So I've spent the last 20 years working in some technology and progressed from hardware engineering to firmware, and eventually to software, where I founded a company, which was acquired in 2016. Later progressed from enterprise solutions architecture at EMC to aerospace design at Ball Aerospace, where I worked on the recently launched James Webb space telescope. Now moving into more infrastructure, technology, and operations, I worked formerly at Amazon Web Services. I joined Nu Skin as an advisory consultant in 2018 to assist them in their digital transformation, and we completed a full cloud migration from their data center to AWS. Shortly after that was completed successfully, I joined Nu Skin to help them continue their transformation through operations and architecture leadership. At the beginning of 2021 took over the role of chief technology officer to help continue the transition and create a first-of-its-kind growth mindset technology and digital organization to assist them to be the world's leading beauty and wellness integrated firm. Today, Nu Skin operates in 52 countries and is a nearly 3 billion dollars publicly traded firm. And there are roughly between 600-700 employees working on technology in my organization on a global scale.

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What are some of the leading challenges when it comes to digital transformation that people in the industry face today?

A word that comes to mind is that you must not just digitize from the outside in but also from the inside out. I have observed that digital signifies different things to different people. In this regard, to update, you must have a solid strategy and communication plan to embed a digital data footprint inside some of the manual processes that are done today. However, digitize them and have a strong employee base; start thinking digital because if you start thinking digital from the inside out, you will eventually become digital from the outside in. For instance, how we conduct call centers today in a more analog fashion is becoming more chatbot, self-service driven—digitizing some of the skills requiring human engagement but becoming more automated activities. So those are some of the difficulties I'm seeing. We are lagging in digital transformation, which is truly a global organizational management change effort that has to start from the top down.

What are some of the leading trends you have seen that is really driving digital transformation or digitization, especially in context to the pandemic and it’s after effects?

With the pandemic, online and social media lead to a social commerce explosion. When I say social commerce or self-service fulfillment, I think of Amazon prime and even DoorDash and Grubhub for food. Everything has become a digital storefront, with the option to order products from your tablet or phone convenience without leaving the house. As a result, things formerly researched online and purchased offline at brick and mortar stores are now being pushed in the opposite direction. We now look at digital reviews from customers in understanding the social commerce aspect of people delivering their comments, reviews, and pictures of the products they bought. It's more of a trend that people look to say that looks great from a social channel perspective. For example, it can be the shoes bought or about the skin lotion or the product from Nu Skin. However, this approach has taken to state we must be digital. At Nu Skin, we go into more of the millennials and Gen Z's that are on the clock, such as Snapchat, WeChat, and Facebook, where many reviews and transactions are moving nowadays.

What method should firms use to address common misconceptions in order to find the right partners, solutions, or service providers?

I believe the misconception is that companies know their customers better than the people who know the companies. In this regard, the firms' method to address this common misconception is to start with the customer and work backward. For example, while deploying a mobile app that displays products, there is no personalization to the user and no capability. So first and foremost, you need to analyze and set a digital strategy, looking outside in to understand how your customers interact with your brand, how they approach your brand, how they refer to your brand, and what digital medium, technologies, and trends that needs to be there. Therefore, I prefer this approach as a customer 360 experience, which includes everything from attraction to understanding and nurturing your brand to ensure them that they have the capability to serve them wherever they are. It can either be at the beach or in the comfort of their home or driving in a car, wherever they may be. This demonstrates how a company should deal with their customers and attend to their requirements to ensure they feel that they have their customers' attention and interaction. No matter what mobile app or product the company creates, it will always be used differently than expected.

  I set up my leadership team and my organization with three key tenants, and those three tenets are composable, crossfunctional, and secure 

Could you shed some light on the projects that you've been involved in the recent past or recent?

With Nu Skin, it’s been more around updating our platform and creating, specifically digital from the outside, in developing a mobile app approach, beginning with our customers and working backward. On that note, we used hyper-personalization, selfservice, and social commerce skills to meet our clients’ needs. As a result, a significant digital push from e-commerce, socialcommerce perspective, where our mobile-first environment was required to support the scale and volume and these personalizations for our customers on a global scale of 52 markets. It was a complete architectural rebuild of our e-commerce and order administration capabilities, supporting the digital touch points that we were developing. It was a win what I call Uber of beauty and wellness, from a writer and driver app, for producing two different types of applications, mobile apps that will support our clients and Nu Skin affiliates on a global basis.

How would you drive your organization forward with your leadership strategy?

I try to understand the business strategy from the beginning while also having empathy from the executive boardroom perspective and understanding what it takes to get down to your teams working to execute. Having the ability to connect on many levels, from technology to business strategies, is a personal trait that I believe is beneficial because I can relate to many of my enterprise architects, as well as my digital and operations teams, and then carefully translate that to the executive team and board of directors. So that's a personal skill I believe is very important in this profession and for anyone seeking to be very strategic in how you convey in decision making, particularly with the board of directors and frontline staff performing the work on a global scale.

What is that one piece of advice that you would like to impart your peers who's looking to venture along the same lines as yourself?

Learn by being curious and understanding as if it was a business strategy. Early on, learn the fundamentals of company strategy; knowing what you want to know today will not get you where you want to go tomorrow. Explore and continuously learn, read books, attend meetups, and trade network relationships. With only a partial seat at the table, you have a great and impeccable technical background or certain business backgrounds. You must listen and learn to be strategic in your communication and decision-making to become a more trusted advisor to your leadership team and the development engineers who are creating and engineering the application. Likewise, I set up my leadership team and my organization with three key tenants, and those three tenets are composable, cross-functional, and secure. The first one is composable, which can be across clouds, followed by crossfunctional that deliver business agility, risk reduction, and process automation; the last tenant in this digitally evolving world is cyber security. These are some of the guiding principles that I have followed.

What are some of the transformations or disruptions that you expect to take place in the industry in coming years?

When I think of digital, there's a Wall Street Journal section where I see the Zalman of the IT department, and I see some of the things coming true. But today, what I see in my mind is a bridge to what I've referred to as a low-code no-code platform, such as OutSystems or Mendix. But in the coming days, it's going to evolve quickly and lend itself to some corner situations that companies will then work themselves into and potentially lock. However, I see hyper-personalization, self-service, and companies taking six months, will need to take two to six days to be able to pivot and physically ready to have business agility. So, in my opinion, it is in their best interests to assure self-service for the company. Firms will take on the task of developing these self-service applications for their enterprises, relying on organizations such as Mendix. It will create value quickly in the future and help organizations to pivot as our social and digital landscapes change. I believe there will be a strong push toward self-service in the form of what I call the blockchain reality and different forms of payment instruments that we must be prepared for.