Mike Herder

My career to date has been a lot of fun and focused on retail and consumer products technology. I've had the opportunity to learn through experimentation and through landing softly across the many "learning opportunities" that life has afforded me.

​

A few good keywords to summarize my career would be: Global, Multi-Disciplined, Profitable, Meaningful and Fun

​

Usually when I speak of my career, I start ten years into it with my first day at SAP in Melbourne, Australia. I was deployed and assumed the SAP outcome of a $100M program that was threatening a sizable legal and reputational action. The six people before had all been asked to leave within a 12 month span. The team was demoralized and the customer even more. It was a complete disaster. It was here that I realized that people do their best work when they feel a sense of factual fairness and safety within that fairness. It is here where I learned to address irrational fear through a common set of facts. It is here where I got my first true taste of the power of transparency when I listened to the MD of the Region take accountability and work through resolution alongside the team. This one program shaped much of my professional approach and I'll never forget that team of people who worked so hard against a seemingly stacked deck and overcame some pretty tough odds.

​

The program went live and I became "messed up stuff guy" for three years and I earned the privilege of doing the same thing at four other customers. This is reflected in the color of my hair.

​

I decided to move to the front end of the process and the SVP I was solving a tough problem with knew of my desire to move to consulting sales. One day he snapped his fingers and overnight I became a Client Partner in his organization. This remains my favorite job of my career. I loved working as the outcome representative to a customer base I adored. I did this job far longer than any other just because I loved it so damn much.

​

One day I woke up and realized that I was open to doing something a little different. I decided to follow a few people with whom I had worked very well to IBM to run a software region. After reviving a flat territory amidst a 40% headcount reduction, I was invited to lead the GTM for a half billion dollar line of business. This LOB had seen 7 consecutive quarters of contraction. Two quarters later we returned to growth. Sometimes all we really need to do is to find the unseen metric that really drives adoption and focus on the proper first derivative of revenue.

​

In 2020 during COVID, my wife was pregnant with our first daughter and I started Big Ogre Advisory. I have had a lot of fun with Big Ogre and have lived out "productive, profitable and fun" (my tagline) from 2020 until now.

Since 2020, I have:

• served a consulting company to earn "partner of the year" distinction within IBM and sold millions of consulting services in six months of participation.

• advised CEO / CRO on a new product launch and organized their C-Suite around it.

• launched a sales and marketing organization from scratch and secured several anchor clients.

• served as the fractional Chief Customer Officer of a startup and implemented their first several customers.

• served as the fractional Chief Operating Officer of a startup marketing agency.

• through the Microsoft Founders Hub program, launched my own AI-led publication as a measure to stay current in AI technology. I did this alone with only the support of ChatGPT and a phone call or two with a gentleman named Nico.

​​

I really enjoy the opportunities and challenges that technology presents and I would love to speak with you.