Nick Verykios is anything but your conventional executive. A practising Buddhist who meditates daily, a poet, songwriter and ex-glam rocker, a surfer, a father and an entrepreneur, he is someone who resolutely refuses to dance to anything but his own tune. “The advice I gave my 18-year-old self has served me well. Dream your own dreams. Don’t set goals, because that means you are borrowing other people’s dreams,” he says. The pep talk didn’t end there. “I also told myself: We are here to be useful in this world,” he continues. “To be useful, you have to add value, which means giving someone something that they cannot do without. If you are not doing that, you are not being useful.”
In his early twenties, this manifested itself through performances in front of hordes of glam rock fans in dimly-lit venues across Australia and America. At the same time, Nick spent much of his spare time counselling troubled youth while completing his commerce degree (with a double major in marketing and psychology) at Sydney’s UNSW. Yet there was always space to achieve more; to follow other dreams. Immersed in the distribution of IT products since the late 80s, in 2004 he founded Distribution Central with business partner Scott Frew.
Along with Nick being The CEO Magazine’s Executive of the Year – IT in 2013 (and a finalist for Executive of the Year – Managing Director in 2014 and 2015), the company appeared on BRW’s Fast 100 list five times, before being sold in 2016 to American Fortune 500 firm Arrow Electronics for a reported $67.5 million. Following the acquisition, Nick is now managing director of Arrow ECS ANZ (Arrow).
Adding value through advanced IT
Nick explains how Arrow “do globally” what Distribution Central did on an Australian and New Zealand level. “We are a value-added distributor of advanced and emerging IT technologies that are sold through a reseller network into companies to solve modern business problems using IT,” he says. “Thanks to the nature of our technologies, we also provide a lot of high-end services associated with them as well, such as engineering services, systems-based services, and deployment services.”
The value-added aspect of its distribution – in both engineering and logistics terms – is something Distribution Central pioneered in the region and allowed the company to “introduce technologies into Australia and New Zealand with the accolade, respect and confidence they deserved,” he says.
But Distribution Central didn’t just sell third-party technologies. “When we found that the systems available for distribution were not good enough, we built our own,” Nick says. “We went from scratch to the largest value-added distribution in the region in a decade.”
As global interest in its homegrown technologies grew, Nick believes the meeting of Distribution Central and Arrow was “the planets aligning,” as he phrases it. “We were at a point where we needed to take what we were doing global, and Arrow happened to be looking to expand its presence in this part of the world,” he says.
An agent of change
For Nick, Arrow stood out for many reasons. “Along with its entrepreneurial mindset, Arrow viewed our innovation as something they could expand globally. And, because it didn’t already have a presence here, it meant that we could continue to do what we were doing, but with the support of an international business rather than having to interfere with anything local,” he explains.
Nick has officially been in his new role since October 2016 and already says that “the broad reach that Arrow has given our innovation has been the highlight.”
As the world moves closer towards the Internet of Things, which Nick is particularly enthusiastic about, he is excited that his Sydney-based innovation team is now part of a talented global entity. “They are able to add their value to a much bigger enterprise when it comes to systems development, software development, and process development, along with the associated campaigns and selling processes,” he says.
“You have two choices,” he concludes. “You can either be a participant in change and be bloody good at it, or you can actually be the change agent. I choose to be the change agent. I choose to create the change that necessitates innovation by being able to understand what technology can do for individuals and then coming up with solutions for that.” In every aspect of his life, Nick has played the role of the visionary in contrast to the participant.
On a personal level
Nick calls the experience of having the backing of Arrow “fantastic.” He continues: “It has opened my eyes, it has opened my imagination, it has given me more content, more stimulus. Distribution Central was a very disciplined company, so there is nothing that Arrow has imposed on us that we hadn’t already imposed on ourselves. I guess it’s like Distribution Central on steroids,” he laughs.
I have always looked to do what wasn’t there rather than to be a better version of something that already exists.
He does his most creative thinking in what he calls “white spaces”, or the gaps in between his daily appointments. “There is always plenty of white space; it is how we choose to use it that determines how useful it can be,” he says. Inspiration can appear anywhere, at any time. “Sometimes I find myself spending three hours of a four-hour surf just in deep thought.”
A practising Buddhist since the age of 21, Nick also draws upon the powers of tantric meditation in the business context. “It gives me the opportunity to analyse everything that is coming at me when I am interacting with stakeholders.” He meditates every day, “up to eight hours, depending on the time of the year and the practice that I am doing. I feel much more refreshed after an hour of meditation than I do after a full night’s sleep,” he reveals.
Thanks. Nick Verykios was my boss.
What an inspirational man,