Meet Aurelien Mottier of Operatix

Today we’d like to introduce you to Aurelien Mottier.

Aurelien, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
After graduating from an engineering degree, I started to work in a company very local to my hometown (Le Mans, France). After a couple of months, I came to realise that I really hated programming and that the job was not for me, so I decided to quit. What I realised while working as a programmer was that I needed to have more human interactions, that I was good at solving issues and enjoyed sharing ideas, but also that I need a bigger aim than just programming my piece out of a larger project I decided to join a business school in France, and choose ‘business management and marketing‘ as my speciality. This was a 2 years course and the second year was based on the 2 weeks at school / 2 weeks working in a company as a trainee (we call that ‘alternance’ in France).

The company I was working with was Phillips, and I was part of the Marketing team. While at Phillips, I missed the opportunity to travel to places such as Russia, Brasil (…) simply because my level of English was not good enough, so my direct report at Philips suggested me to move to Cambridge in England to finish of my study and learn English. I never moved back to France. While learning English, I worked mainly as a barman in restaurants (my actual first job was cleaning offices, and I had to get up at 4am, get on my push bike and start cleaning at 5am – that was not fun!), but after a year or so, I decided to get a proper Job and started working for a company called Optima Consulting partners within 2 years, I became the number 2 at Optima and worked as the right-hand person to the CEO, dealing with both the acquisition of new clients as well as making sure that we had the right set up from an operational perspective to deliver results.

In 2010, we sold Optima to a NASDAQ listed company (HQ in Campbell, CA) called Rainmaker. Subsequently I became Managing Director of Rainmaker in EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa). After 2 successful years at Rainmaker, grew the business from 35 employees to 125 employees within the 2 years timeframe, I decided that it was time for me to start my own business and with the help of a couple of business partners started Operatix in January 2012.

It’s never a smooth road when you start your own business, no matter how good you are, you will always face new challenges, but after all, that’s the fun part of it and why I really enjoy what I am doing. Some of the struggle: Being French, I have a strong French accent, which was a bit of an issue, particularly when I took my first few trips in North America and people had difficulties understanding me. I have had to learn to pace myself when talking and not let passion take the control – but yet again, I believe that my accent also helped me to get recognised and remembered by people. Being young : while that’s getting better now and I have started to show some grey hair, I have had issues due to the fact that I may have looked a little ‘inexperienced’, so I had to work hard and leading conversations with best practices and war stories to show my experience and win people over, as well as get their trust.