Patrick Schaudel Podcast Transcript
Patrick Schaudel joins host Brian Thomas on The Digital Executive Podcast.
Welcome to Coruzant Technologies, home of the Digital Executive Podcast.
[00:00:12] Brian Thomas: Welcome to the digital executive. Today’s guest is Patrick Schaudel. Patrick Schaudel has many years of experience in it and the software industry, and is a proven expert for cloud solutions, e-Business and online marketing. As head of product at IONOS, he is responsible for the entire portfolio for the digital success of companies of all sizes, as well as the public sector. His previous positions include working as a direct marketing specialist and as a product and marketing manager for a digital media group.
He started his career at a large creative agency.
Well, good afternoon, Patrick. Welcome to the show.
[00:00:46] Patrick Schaudel: Good afternoon, Brian. Nice to meet you.
[00:00:49] Brian Thomas: Absolutely. Thank you so much for making the time. This is awesome. I know we traversed time zones. You’re hailing out of the great country of Germany. I’m over here in the Central United States.
So sometimes making times work is challenging, but we’ve got some great people that do that for us. Nina at Bospar was awesome to get this set up for us. So thank you again.
[00:01:09] Patrick Schaudel: Thank you. Also, from my side.
[00:01:10] Brian Thomas: You bet. Patrick let’s just jump right in here. Let’s talk about your career in engineering, technology, product management and now you’re the Head of Product Cloud Services and Infrastructure at IONOS. Could you share with our audience the secret to your career growth and what inspires you?
[00:01:28] Patrick Schaudel: Yes, of course, Brian. So, thank you for your kind words. So reflecting on my journey, I would say there are maybe some key factors which contributed to my career.
And I can sum it up into three things if I remember correctly. So first of all, I would state. Continuous learning is one of the most important things. So, in the world, as you know, and we know the tech and engineering world, it evolves rapidly outside surrounding us. And there it’s very helpful and needed to always stay up to date and see the latest advancements wherever it is.
with self-education, some workshops, self-studying. And so, it helps you to have these continuous learning mechanism implemented in your own mindset, so that you are keep staying on top on the way. This is number one. Number two, I would say it’s about risk taking. So, every decision in my past hasn’t been embarked with a guaranteed success, I would say.
So, it’s very important that you also try to step out of your comfort zone, make mistakes, learn from these kinds of mistakes, and try also having these risks as adopted as a kind of continuous way forward that you’re reaching the next level. And last but not least, I would say on number three, it’s a kind of passion and vision.
So, I personally genuinely love what I do. So, I’m really love of creating products and vision product visions. Try to make a difference on the market and see that also something which is created on. And with pen and paper or in a PowerPoint, then really comes to life. And this is something which drives me daily.
And this is my passion. Also, and always also into challenging times. And also, it’s worth to mention that a big inspiration is all the people which are surrounding you. So, if you are living or if you are acting in a good environment with great colleagues, great customers and also be Active in the broader tech community.
So that’s the fuel I would say, which keeps me going.
[00:03:26] Brian Thomas: Awesome. Thank you. And I appreciate you breaking that down and you’re being a risk taker learning. That’s just so awesome. Again, everybody’s got a unique story and we appreciate your share today. Patrick, jumping into this next question, let’s talk about your IONOS platform.
It acts as a one stop shop for all digitalization needs from domains and web hosting to classic website builders and do it yourself solutions. You’ve got e-Commerce to online marketing tools and other enterprise cloud solutions. Could you tell us today why your platform provides more than most cloud providers?
[00:04:00] Patrick Schaudel: Part of our DNA and IONOS and the history is really to focus on. Businesses growing in the small and mid-sized business area. And here our intention always was also in the past to make digital tools and services available for everybody, even without technical skillset. And this leads over the time to so called one stop shop for SMBs, meaning that our portfolio offers everything.
Which you basically need for present yourself online. So, either you’re taking a domain or website or going the way down into the more technical skillset toolings, like dedicated servers, e-Commerce tool of full-fledged cloud infrastructure. This I would say is something which is very deep within IONOS to really make cloud easy.
So, it’s more than a marketing statement. It’s the way we are made our history path with the company. And last but not least, our true dedication is also in customer service. So, what we are staying for is that every customer with every question they have, they can contact us, and we try to help them as good as they can.
So, giving an example here, for saying is that we are offering the so called personal consultant for each and every customer. That means that if you have a personal consultant, and by the way, it’s for free and you calling, because you have a question, you get always the same person at the phone, which try to helps you to solve your problems. That helps that there is a truly relationship between us and our customers and the personal consultants with our customers.
And that leads at the end, like a fun fact that also customers are sending over Christmas presents, for example, for our personal consultant, because relationship was getting so close that they really become a kind of friendship, I would say and last but not least, also kind of success factor for IONOS is that we are not relying on hosting our services on hyperscalers. So, our stack is also on the vertical aspect, really self-developed down to the bare metal infrastructure to the server at the end where the cable is plugged in with our own data center. So, we have 12 operated in the U S and Europe, and this leads to a full vertical control of the stack and the services we are providing for our customers.
And I would say this in. Some that makes the difference IONOS is providing to the market versus other cloud providers.
[00:06:19] Brian Thomas: That’s awesome. Thank you again, Patrick, for sharing, and I think that’s the epitome of customer service, the customer experience, not only having everything in a one stop shop, but providing that level of customer service where you have true relationships being built at that level, which is awesome.
So, thank you again. Patrick, it’s kind of a segue into our next question here. We are a technology platform on publication, and you’re obviously leveraging the digital space. Some of that new and emerging technology in your tech stack. Is there anything you might be able to share with us today?
[00:06:49] Patrick Schaudel: Yeah, sure. So, I would say first worth mentioning is that also the topic around AI is all around us. And we also at IONOS have a deep look into AI, but not only recently. So, we’re taking AI or machine learning seriously over the last year. And that helps us also to set us with a current standard.
Global developments in a position where we can now utilize all our learnings out of the past and our capabilities into real services for our customers. So given an example here is also that we have been one of the first to have integrated ChatGPT as an assistant in our website builder tool, which gave our customers the ability to create assets.
So, content and. Headlines and sub lines within their website directly assisted by ChatGPT. So, this is an truly helpful tool for customers, which not knowing how to write text this foreign website now it is written for them perfectly adopted to their needs. So, a second example here is we recently revealed our new newsletter tool.
So very basic or easy application, I would say for small medium businesses to create newsletter campaigns. Here is also AI integrated for helping customers to designing their ideal campaign, their ideal newsletter, which reaches their prospects as good as possible. And of course, there are a lot of more things in the pipeline to come.
On the other hand, if you are going a little bit deeper into the professional stack in our cloud offerings, for example, we recently opened or enabled customers to use the open-source platform stackable. So, it is a managed version of an open-source platform where data specialists can create their own data warehouses or data lakes.
Or event streaming. So, a platform which enables them to learn and train their own AI models. Of course, this is for really skilled people in those areas for professional user groups. But our investment is also going into that direction to help the professional data engineers and professional users for infrastructure also to set up their own.
Data models and AI infrastructures in our site. So, you see a lot of things are going on within IONOS in all dimensions. So, in all areas of our products, and you can be curious what’s all coming up in the next months.
[00:09:12] Brian Thomas: Thank you and I appreciate you sharing some of the things that you’re doing in your tech stack there.
I know as a cloud service provider it’s very competitive and you have to offer some of these services and, having those big data environments and leveraging some of that AI and machine learning applications is key today. So, thank you for breaking that down. Patrick, last question of the day.
Could you share something from your career experience that would be helpful for those listening today looking to grow their career in either tech or product management?
[00:09:42] Patrick Schaudel: Absolutely. So, product management is always the ambassador of a customer, I would say. So the product management has the duty to, understand the customer’s needs and translate it into services and products, which help to solve problems.
Some problems, maybe customer even not know that they have a problem but optimizing their environment dramatically. And so, I would break it down to also four items. I would say which is crucial for product management. So first, as I said, you have to be customer centric first. You have to understand your customers.
You have to make your decisions within product and product creations. Always according to the customer’s needs, you need feedback, you need contact to your customers. You have to be very close to them to really understand what their problems are and how you personally with your company can help. So second, I would focus on being adaptive and embrace change.
So, as I said, our technology landscape is changing fast. So, you have to be able to translate these changes also into your products, into ” what does it mean for my portfolio, for my customers and how can I utilize these change going out there?” To being directly integrated in your portfolio you want to offer to your customers.
And there you have to be very open for change. So, what is the rule set for today can be totally different in tomorrow. And as a product manager, you has to understand these change and being adaptive. Number three, I would say you have. Continuously self-improvement. So even if you think you have made the greatest product out of the world, you really have to look, okay, what are the use cases you haven’t thought about yet?
So again, asking your customers, try never stop learning, try to understand technology and combine all these in a kind of self-improvement methodology. So that you’re always on asking, okay, what can I do better now? What can I do better with my products? What can I solve better for my customers? And last but not least, I would say one of the most important things is fail fast and learn faster.
What does it mean? So, it’s not a problem to make mistakes at all. So, all of us are making hundreds of mistakes. But the key success factor, I would say, is that you make mistakes just once. So, of all mistakes you make, you can just learn right away what does the problem, what was the wrong hypothesis, what was the wrong methodology to go, to move forward, and put this learning into your next trial.
And then you’re getting better and better and also adopting your mindset. And seeing Something failing doesn’t mean that you failed at all. It was just a learning opportunity, and you can utilize it further. For all out there who are looking being product management or want to step into a product management.
I also can say at the end. It’s not a sprint, it’s a marathon. So, you have to be cautious, you have to stay curious, you have to be patient. So there no genius has been born and been successful right away. So, it is a kind of marathon. You have to go through, along your career.
[00:12:50] Brian Thomas: Awesome.
Thank you, Patrick. I appreciate you breaking those four items down for us today. It’s so important and it’s important for those in our audience to understand that as well. We’ve got a lot of technologists and product managers in our audience. So, thank you so much. Patrick, it was a pleasure having you on today and I look forward to speaking with you real soon.
[00:13:10] Patrick Schaudel: Thank you very much, Brian. It was also a great pleasure for me.
[00:13:13] Brian Thomas: Bye for now.
Patrick Schaudel Podcast Transcript. Listen to the audio on the guest’s podcast page.
