Nate Smith is one happy fellow. He is not only Oceanic Time Warner Cable’s president, but also one of the smartest businessmen around. He’s also all about being connected, whether it’s with customers, employees, technology, Hawaii, or the world, Smith has paid his dues, and he graciously shares with our readers the wisdom that he’s acquired through the years.

Smith officially got his start in the cable business in 1978 when he worked as a legal assistant at Time Warner’s Manhattan Cable Division in New York. In 1980, he worked his way up to General Manager of Time Warner Cable’s Canyon County, California system and then to Reading, Pennsylvania. Smith continued upward in the Time Warner chain by becoming Vice President of Operations in Pennsylvania, Missouri, and Colorado; then from , he experienced Kiwi life as the CEO of Sky Network TV in Auckland, New Zealand. So just how did Smith do it? He still must be doing something right, since he’s been president of Oceanic Time Warner Cable since 2001.

One of Smith’s earliest and memorable business lessons was in 1980, when he became the general manger of his first cable system in California. Smith managed 12 employees, but he was still a novice, so he called his regional manager at least once daily and up to four times a week with questions. Smith’s manager always answered his questions with patience and told him what to do, until one day, his manager replied, "You know, I have to go home and think about that for awhile before I can come up with an answer, and frankly, I’ve got a lot else on, so why don’t you make the call?" That’s all it took for Smith to realize how dependent he was on his manager. From that day on, Smith never called him again, and to this day, twenty-five years later, the same holds true: he needs to make the call every day because that’s why he’s there.

Mistakes are meant to be learned from, and Smith relayed that he wants to create an environment where people feel that they won’t get chastised for making mistakes.

"Over the years, one thing I’ve learned about business in general is, unless you really don’t have a clue, you’re going to make 80 percent of the right calls and the 20 percent that you don’t get right aren’t life-threatening," said Smith. But for some reason, most people in business are so afraid of the 20 percent and I’ve just found over the years that you don’t get hung up on it and you move on. As you make mistakes, make new and different ones, don’t make the same ones," Smith added.

When Smith ran Sky TV in New Zealand as their CEO, he learned another valuable lesson: It was all down to you. Being so far away from the U.S., Smith couldn’t communicate with his American Board in real-time,so he became self-sufficient very quickly. Even though we’re part of a corporation, we’re so removed from just about anywhere. The skills that I learned there about being self-reliant and figuring the stuff out for myself has greatly helped in working in Hawaii," said Smith.