Speaker 0 | 00:09.545
All right, welcome everyone back to Dissecting Popular IT Nerds. Today, we have Brian Koslowicz. Did I do that right?
Speaker 1 | 00:18.890
Koslowicz,
Speaker 0 | 00:19.770
yeah. Koslowicz, okay, close enough. You can slap me if you can through the microphone. But the Director of IT at Juice Press, which is… Really cool. We actually connected a while back, but I haven’t had a chance to do this show in some time when you were over at Hale and Hardy Soups, which sounds pretty good right now. It’s always interesting to see the history of the IT history, how you go from… Usually most people stay in the same type of industry. I guess we would call you… I mean, what do we call this industry? Retail food? I mean, what do we call it?
Speaker 1 | 00:57.619
Quick service, USR.
Speaker 0 | 00:59.320
market really oh qsr school so i guess first question which is always fun were you around um on this earth during the dawn of the internet so i was a wee lad when when the internet first first bloomed i guess right we draw a line on this show we draw a line on this show there’s there’s those people that worked in it she prior to the internet and the people that worked in IT after the internet. And then it brings up a whole line of questions like, do you really value what IT does nowadays? Did you really learn and have to go through what we went through? But anyways, go ahead. So what was your first experience with a computer?
Speaker 1 | 01:46.447
My first experience with the internet was actually when my sister introduced me to it. She sat me down in front of this looking device. and logged me into this farewell web browser and said, hey, now you have to sit here and wait to be queued in to do whatever you want to do.
Speaker 0 | 02:07.161
Okay.
Speaker 1 | 02:08.622
And I was like, I don’t know what this is. So I’m sitting at this desk, I’m looking at this monitor, and I’m seeing I’m 12 of 15. And then the number just keeps getting higher, and then I’m in queue, and I get in, and… I’ve never seen this thing before, so she shows me like the small little games that they had back then or like small web searches that you could do and things of that nature. And then it didn’t really spark an interest to me until much later on when my mother bought me my first computer tower, which then I ripped apart and rebuilt in the same night and I’ve been hooked ever since.
Speaker 0 | 02:53.711
And there you go. behind every great man is a mom and a woman. In your case, sister and mom, which is pretty cool. What does your sister do now?
Speaker 1 | 03:05.935
That is a great question.
Speaker 0 | 03:09.175
Okay, nevermind. We don’t always have to go there, but I’m just, you know, it’s not IT. It’s not technology.
Speaker 1 | 03:17.478
She’s a man creation. She worked for Anixter. She worked for Anixter for years. She worked her way from, I think, from sales all the way up to like ahead of her own department, selling, cabling, coax cabling, anything you can think of, really.
Speaker 0 | 03:42.735
So, I mean, that counts. Look, she introduced you into this world, and I don’t know whether you would thank her for that or not, but she did.
Speaker 1 | 03:49.978
Absolutely.
Speaker 0 | 03:50.758
Yeah, and so really cool. So. You logged into AOL. I’m assuming it was dial-up.
Speaker 1 | 03:58.022
It was dial-up. I remember the tones going off the thing.
Speaker 0 | 04:02.544
So I guess we made some kind of jump from there. Because a lot of people are always asking, how do I get into IT? How do I get into this? How do I start my career here? And nowadays, it’s a lot different than it was. than it was back then. Then it was just kind of like, Hey, I’ve got experience doing this. And other people are like, well, I don’t know how to do that at all. So you’re hired. So what was the, I guess, what was the big kind of jump for you? Did you end up going to school or college? And what was the, what was the career path for you?
Speaker 1 | 04:37.125
So I actually landed my first IT role when I was in high school and it was my high school. It was the audio visual aid. I was responsible for VCR players. DVD players, laser disc players, 35mm reel film. Bad density.
Speaker 0 | 04:54.098
Yeah.
Speaker 1 | 04:54.879
It does date me. And being in that role in a technology-driven… universe that we were really in, it really made me appreciate the old style of equipment and being able to really tend to it and clean it so that it still worked today. Because in a high school environment, even though we are where we are technology-wise, they still use a lot of analog stuff. They still use the VCR players. They still use the LaserDisc players. They still use… reels and things of those natures. So I needed to learn quick and figure out how to manage all that equipment and keep it up to date and keep it proper so that it can continue to work after years of being used. That’s what got me into really the technical then doing that throughout my high school career. Eventually went into a college program for PC support and network administration. Um, I graduated from there and then continue my education at Berkeley. It didn’t fit, but it gave me a great understanding of the business aspect of it because I was going for business administration. Um, and I just continued my education after that, just by learning from people that were there before me.
Speaker 0 | 06:22.129
Well, Bill Gates didn’t graduate college either. My brother was in his class. My brother was in his class at Harvard and Harvard. Yeah. My brother went on to be, he went to like start his own computer software company or something in Germany. At the time, I was a creative writing English major, so I didn’t know any of this stuff. But I was on dial-up. So, I mean, I have this argument all the time. Does it really matter if it was me and I was in a huge startup and it was really, really important? What would matter to me is the guy that can get the job done, the guy that’s smart and really knows what he’s doing. That’s what matters to me. And we have that debate a lot on the show. Do certifications matter? And I think the answer is always sometimes. Maybe, because it depends on, you know, is there a company that you really want to work with? And you have to have all these certifications to even be looked at, right? Or do you have to have an MBA to even do this? I personally think if you really want to be at a fun, exciting company, and I think the skills is what matters and an ability to demonstrate those skills. But you do have to be able to speak the language of business. and understand what drives the business. So I guess with, with that being said, what, where did you learn your financial, I guess, what kind of financial speak and influencing upper management and managing the budget? How much does that play into your role?
Speaker 1 | 07:54.464
Um, it’s. probably a good 80% of my day to day now looking at our costs and finding ways or solutions to cut them. I learned a great lesson from a store manager when I was working at Walgreens, the ability to look at cost of goods and the increase in price. to see what your real gross was after it. But that lesson instilled in me the ability to really look at everything as a picture and see, okay, we can cut this by adding this because this program does the three features that that program does and this other program does. And now we can drop those two and bring this one on at a lesser cost.
Speaker 0 | 08:51.276
And then how does that flow through to the rest of the… Company, I guess, as far as because then this will also allow us to cut labor in this area, which will affect the largest control in the P&L and those type of things.
Speaker 1 | 09:03.727
Yeah. So one of the one of the biggest things that we did that I did at Goose Press was bringing in a third party aggregator that would take all of our online orders and directly push them into the POS system. And that saved us labor from the employees having to look at. six or seven different tablets having to read six or seven different printouts and then manually putting that into the pos system so that we know not only the sale happening but also the inventory can come out right and we can track that properly and then we can do the automated bar systems properly so forth and so on i love aggregators i
Speaker 0 | 09:43.739
love that right now when you say aggregator but this was like an aggregate that i’ve never actually thought of that so you’re basically telling me like an application aggregator or like a Like a, I don’t know, like an Uber and an Uber Eats and a Yelp and whatever. And are you saying that you aggregated all that into one? That type of flow?
Speaker 1 | 10:00.186
Yeah. So we aggregated all those orders into one platform that then has a direct integration to our POS system so that it automatically pushes into the POS. Yeah, that’s a good manner. And it automatically prints out on our print tickets like any other order would have been done if we manually threw them in.
Speaker 0 | 10:16.335
That’s a… We should reverse engineer that. There should be an aggregator for the end user. Because you know how… No, there should. I mean, you know how people organize their apps on their cell phone all differently? I hate… how my wife organizes her apps because i just i can’t if i pick up her phone i need to use it i’m like where the heck is your camera or like you know i’m like anyways but i have a food one right and it’s like you know this reveals someone like what’s like if you pick up your food apps on your cell phone like it tells you what kind of like on mine is five guys chipotle dairy queen mcdonald’s yeah that’s an evil one but it’s there i mean no there’s nothing wrong with mcdonald’s why am i saying that i love you sonic chick-fil-a jimmy johns Papa Gino’s. We got that.
Speaker 1 | 10:59.443
So many different apps.
Speaker 0 | 11:00.203
I’m going on page over Yelp, Raising Cane’s, Bird Code, Buffalo Wild. Can we just aggregate it for the end user? That’d be great.
Speaker 1 | 11:08.706
Well, that’s, I mean, that’s what Uber Eats and Postmates and Grubhub and that’s all they do. All those types of aggregates for those other ordering platforms that want to run delivery.
Speaker 0 | 11:19.071
You know,
Speaker 1 | 11:20.711
we’re just taking, we’re doing that next step that really needs to be built out.
Speaker 0 | 11:24.953
Even if it costed more. Even if it costed more. Did that aggregator end up costing more or costing you something, but it still saved a ton in labor and time and headache? And there’s got to be a huge ROI.
Speaker 1 | 11:37.201
It saves us in labor and it narrows down the miss on our inventory accounts. Because if you have an end user looking at a receipt paper, ringing in the items, there’s a human error where that may miss. modifier that doesn’t come out of inventory. And then if you miss enough modifiers that don’t come out of inventory, you’re left over with an extra bag or you’re missing an extra bag.
Speaker 0 | 12:05.122
Here’s the question. How did we find that aggregator? How did you get, end up getting connected with them? Was it through executive management first or was it through you?
Speaker 1 | 12:19.395
So for this company, it was through me. I use the same aggregator at Alan Hardy, which was introduced to me by the OS company that we were switching to.
Speaker 0 | 12:31.100
Boom. All right. So there’s the value of stealing an IT director from another company and bringing them to yours. I don’t know if that’s what happened. I don’t know if that’s what happened. I’m just throwing that out there. But like for recruiters, you know, hey, we’re going to, because a lot of the jobs of recruiters, a good recruiter in the IT field, if they’re good, not just like the… ones that call you like every single day they’re like hey i got a role are you interested um the good recruiters find the competition and then they go take the really good it director from the competition and bring them over somewhere else that’s just yeah that’s just the truth of the world i’m not saying it’s the right thing but that that’s what’s happening that’s what happens so you took no knowledge as an it director brought it to a company you save them money, save them labor, and it had nothing to do with a shadow IT decision. It had nothing to do with upper management saying, hey, we’re using this new ERP. Can you please implement it? Which is always a nightmare. And I’ve yet to see an ERP implementation that’s not a nightmare. But here’s direct correlation from IT management affecting the bottom line in a positive manner, which is a… a business case. Yeah. So congratulations. I just want to say congratulations. That’s awesome. Now, but here’s the thing. You had to sell that. I’m assuming at some point, was this like a new thing? Was this in the budget? Was this known? Was this something that you went in and said, Hey guys, we need to fix this process. How did you find broken? Can you walk me through the process? And then how you had to bring that to, I’m assuming you had to present something to executive management and get a sign off on it or get up. approval or did you just do it and say hey guys we did this like you can thank me later so kind of fell in line with the reason why juicepress kind of fired me okay cool right they brought me on to one handle
Speaker 1 | 14:30.463
their days in and day out it appears but secondary look over all of what it is and find solutions to one year day-to-day operations easier and to cost. And I knew this worked from my last company. And I suggested it to my COO. He seemed to like the idea. And… Then the ball was rolling and we just kept it rolling. And now this is where we are.
Speaker 0 | 15:01.873
Did they know this was a problem? Did they know the problems that they had? Or did they just say, hey, look, our IT is getting overwhelming for us. We know we probably have issues or we have problems. Did they know the specifics of their problems? Or did you kind of dig those up?
Speaker 1 | 15:16.077
As I joined the company, I feel that the problem was known, but nobody knew as to what we’ve been for. And then when I brought it, I brought up a solution. They were like, oh my God, this fixes this problem. Let’s roll with it and see how well it goes.
Speaker 0 | 15:31.031
That’s great. Did it increase your budget buying this aggregation platform? Yeah. And how did you make that sale to executive management? Was there like an ROI that you did, some sort of calculation?
Speaker 1 | 15:53.320
I think the real return on investment was just the ability to reallocate labor to properly creating smoothies, properly talking to our customers and properly making sure the shelves are filled with items.
Speaker 0 | 16:09.749
Nice.
Speaker 1 | 16:10.769
You know, in this type of world where there’s a labor savings, it’s not a true labor savings, right? Right. You can put a dollar amount to it and you can say, hey, this program saved you from doing this task X amount of hours a day. But really, you’re not saving that hour. You’re just reallocating those hours to now you can spend those hours talking to the customers or perfecting your smoothie creation art and even just cleaning the store and making it look nicer.
Speaker 0 | 16:44.992
True. Maybe not true. I mean, look at McDonald’s. They literally have a machine for everything. They have a machine that takes the cup out of the thing, puts it on a conveyor belt, and fills it with ice. That’s crazy to me. They have a machine for ice. And the french fries. They have a machine that throws french fries into the french fry basket. And I worked in plenty of kitchens growing up as my first jobs. And it just seems crazy to me. Like, wow. Like, they don’t trust. the person enough to dump french fries it’s not that they don’t trust it it’s probably more accuracy around measurement and there’s just like a loss of food cost and stuff like that absolutely but that is I mean they probably if you cut I can guarantee if you took out the automation at McDonald’s you’d have to add at least two or three more people and that costs money just a thought but yes if you can add more to the guest experience If you can add more to all of those things, there’s definitely a value there that can be measured somehow. How big is your… I can’t remember. How many locations are you kind of oversee as far as keeping things working?
Speaker 1 | 18:01.950
I oversee all of our locations, which is just around 80.
Speaker 0 | 18:06.453
That’s insane. What’s your staff like?
Speaker 1 | 18:12.738
Oh, my staff is a… team of me,
Speaker 0 | 18:19.797
myself, and I. Okay. So even better, how do you do that? Give me some, there’s gotta be some kind of secret. There’s gotta be something like I came in, I wanted to kill myself and now I don’t, I’m still alive. I’m still alive. And I did this to make life better. Can you give us some secrets or something? Can you like, this is the best thing I ever did. Phil. This was the best thing I ever did that really removed this off my plate.
Speaker 1 | 18:46.865
So one of the easiest things I think I’ve done was create a system that can run completely off of my phone.
Speaker 0 | 18:54.607
So
Speaker 1 | 18:59.108
I use remote software, unattended remote software to connect to any of my corporate employees’laptops. This way in case they have a issue with something I can just remote in. and pass them over the phone and fix their issue from wherever i am in the world the things i have an internet connection as long as they have an internet connection we can fix them and then from a store standpoint i’ve implemented the cradle point solution to all of our non-brick and mortar stores that stores have been store concepts allowing me to review what devices are connected and have a 4g 3g connection to the internet so that I don’t have to worry about landlines going down at a store that I can’t get to right away.
Speaker 0 | 19:48.166
Do you have a general… Do you have a… Like a physical internet connection going into the back of those cradle points as well as the 3G, 4G, or is it all 3G, 4G?
Speaker 1 | 19:58.356
It’s just the 3G, 4G.
Speaker 0 | 20:01.257
POS system and everything running off of that?
Speaker 1 | 20:04.239
POS system, store tablet, store VoIP phone, all run off of a 4G, 3G box that is allowed 300 gigs per month. And we run on a 10 over 10.
Speaker 0 | 20:21.134
internet speed uh no issues what’s the 10 over 10 is that physical or that’s also that’s also 4g or 5g so that’s the
Speaker 1 | 20:31.963
4g the 4g 5 the 4g 3d is controlled by verizon and they pushed down to us the ability to pull 10 gigs over 10 i’m sorry 10 megs over 10 megs of internet speed um for our of the 300 gigs that we are allowed for that one store
Speaker 0 | 20:53.055
How many POS units? Is it one per store? Yeah.
Speaker 1 | 20:58.620
For those stores, it’s mostly one per store. Sometimes it’s two. It depends on the location that we have it in.
Speaker 0 | 21:05.385
So that’s not bad. So one or two terminals. Yep. One phone that probably never gets used, hardly.
Speaker 1 | 21:12.231
For those stores, yeah.
Speaker 0 | 21:13.532
And a tablet. How many tablets? Or is that the tablet?
Speaker 1 | 21:16.755
One tablet.
Speaker 0 | 21:17.996
All right. That’s a great use case. ever run out of the three. Now, but I bet you that 300 G or the 300 gigs or whatever they’re giving you, is that pooled between all the stores?
Speaker 1 | 21:30.590
No, that’s 300 gigs per store.
Speaker 0 | 21:32.830
Okay.
Speaker 1 | 21:33.071
So each store is allowed 300 gigs and the price point was a fraction of a landline price at the same, at the same.
Speaker 0 | 21:42.955
Oh yeah, for sure. Yeah. Pots line. Really cool. I don’t even know where to go from here. So because I was going to ask you about your team, I was going to like, so how do you coach yourself?
Speaker 1 | 21:58.228
So I’m actually in the process of hiring a team member. That’s great. To help me with the on and off again story issues that I just can’t, I can’t get to. So like those are those printer problems and tablet issues and things like that.
Speaker 0 | 22:18.727
Are you having a hard time finding people right now or is it easy and you’re overflowed with like applications and stuff?
Speaker 1 | 22:26.411
So I’ve hired several people as a director of IT and I have to say this time around, it’s very difficult to find somebody that’s looking for the work that that that’s needed. Right. We’re getting a lot of people that are looking at an IT support specialist role and thinking that it’s a management role, that it’s just they can just sit at a desk and manage their own team and features like that. Where in my market, an IT support specialist is somebody that knows all of it. Somebody that can do networking, somebody that can do the A-plus troubleshooting, somebody that can talk to the guests or even talk to the employees about certain issues that they’re having, whether it be with their… phone or their tablet or their prayer or their POS system. And somebody that can travel or somebody that can go from uptown to downtown to Brooklyn or drive to Vermont or Connecticut just to get the work done. And this time around, I’m getting a lot of people that I don’t think know what the role is for this market this time around.
Speaker 0 | 23:41.208
You need like a hustler.
Speaker 1 | 23:44.014
like an i.t you need a switch you need an i.t with army knife yeah that could just do it all yeah yeah okay and it’s not just sometimes you have to take you have to take a beat and hire somebody right out of college that’s just eager to get into the field and mold them into what you want because the the ultimate position to be right yeah rather than going with somebody that is really experienced in in a lot of different fields, but doesn’t want to do the grunt work anymore.
Speaker 0 | 24:18.117
Yeah. Is every store pretty much like a carbon copy of the other? Like pretty much?
Speaker 1 | 24:23.160
Yeah. Every store in our, even the store-than-a-store concept is a pretty copy-based solution from at least a hardware perspective.
Speaker 0 | 24:32.046
So you can almost walk into a store and you can almost walk into a store with a guy and say, hey, look, this is pretty much what every store has. Here’s what’s going to break. here’s what they’re going to ask you. This is the stupid stuff that happens. And this is what I need you to do. Correct. Except today it’s in Vermont.
Speaker 1 | 24:51.142
except today in Vermont this week alone I have been in Brooklyn, New Jersey
Speaker 0 | 24:58.407
Virginia and DC that’s cool someone might like that basically you just gotta find someone I need an IT service army knife that’s willing to travel everywhere that should be the role title,
Speaker 1 | 25:08.254
that’s nice someone’s gonna want that it’s a great job to gain a lot of experience very quickly
Speaker 0 | 25:19.818
Cool. So we’ll just, we’ll use this show as an, as a free advertisement for job opening. We’ll have to, we’ll send it out to, um, I know this, we’ll, we’ll, we’ll put that out somewhere. Do they have to, um, does it matter where they’re from? Do they have to be from New York city or New York or could they be in Vermont or could they be in Virginia?
Speaker 1 | 25:39.931
I think they would need to be in the New York city area because most of our stores are located in Manhattan.
Speaker 0 | 25:44.715
So gotcha. Okay. Really cool. Um, The end user communication. Well, first of all, let me ask you this first, because you learned the language of business stuff from, was it Walgreens? Did I get that right?
Speaker 1 | 26:05.959
The store manager of Walgreens,
Speaker 0 | 26:07.160
yeah. Okay, so that’s kind of where I learned my business speak as well. I was a creative writing major, you know, go figure. And I learned from working in retail and restaurant management and, you know, kind of learning the P&L and that. real life, not actual education. Why pay for a college education when everything you’re going to learn is thrown out the window, except for how to write an email, I guess. I could take that from my English education. Or unless you’re going to become a doctor or a lawyer or something like that, but that’s not what I did. Do you think they could have taught what you know? Well, you did go to college for it. Let me ask you this. This is cool. I’m very ADD, as you can tell. Did you learn anything in college that helped you when you got on this? the IT role or did you learn most of it in the field?
Speaker 1 | 26:57.432
I think I learned most of it in the field. No, the way I learned is by doing it. It’s very hard for me to sit at a desk and read a book and learn from the page.
Speaker 0 | 27:09.399
There’s not a cradle point. There’s not a cradle point class. Yeah. There’s not a cradle point class.
Speaker 1 | 27:14.602
There’s not an aggregator class.
Speaker 0 | 27:17.944
There’s not an aggregator class.
Speaker 1 | 27:20.954
Give me this solution, give me the hardware, let me sit with it for like a week and I’ll know everything about it within that week.
Speaker 0 | 27:28.520
What was the hardest business question or if you had a business question, how do I answer, how do I ask this? The, I guess when it came to speaking the language of business or learning the language of business, what was maybe your biggest question or a kind of fear that you had to overcome? Do you remember a moment where you had to step out of your comfort zone in the business world?
Speaker 1 | 27:56.291
I step out of my comfort zone every day. There’s always a part of my day where there’s going to be a question that’s asked that I am not 100% of the answer. And I am by no means afraid to say, I need time to figure this out. Let me research it and I’ll get back to you tomorrow. And I will spend the next 24 hours figuring out what that answer is going to be. Reading forums, looking up, uh, question, looking up Q and A’s. Uh, even if I have to read the, the user manual several times, uh, I’ll, I’ll spend as much time as I possibly can trying to figure it out so that the next time it does come up, I have the answer right away. And that, and it will be fixed.
Speaker 0 | 28:46.785
I think from a, from a like, kind of technology nerdy standpoint, like that’s going to come natural for you. I guess my question is, is what was, what were you, do you remember a moment where you were like literally like scared? I don’t want to do this, but you forced yourself to do it anyways. And it made all the difference in the world and your career growth. For me, I can tell you it was going from a restaurant job where I was like the manager kind of boss and understood and was in control to a… Cisco technology startup and having to speak to executives and business owners and present to them. That was out of my comfort zone. I can still remember the first time I did it and it was nerve-wracking.
Speaker 1 | 29:35.242
Outside of my comfort zone, there was a project that I was tasked with with my last company where we were in the process of changing our ERP system. there we go erp again see it’s always here we go it’s always the airport and I was captive finding in your case and we met, we must’ve vetted at least a dozen different systems and ultimately landed with this one particular one that has to be really built and molded for your company. And when everything got signed and we’re done, I’m thinking my job is done. Great. Here’s your solution. Now you guys can build it because I’m not an accountant. I can’t build a new piece of things for you. Yeah. I can help you build it by figuring it out, but ultimately it’s an accountant tool and it needs an accountant’s hand to really shape it. And that’s when I got hit with, all right, when can you get up and running for us? And I’m like, what? And I’m having to figure out our old ERP system and figure out the new ERP system and try to build them so that they mimic each other. exporting data, exporting the sales. And yeah, it took me a better part of a year that I was just driven on just this ERP system, building it back and forth. And then while building the ERP system, it was thrown into it, hey, this is also a CRM system. Let’s throw that into the mix too. And now I’m having to take the CRM system out of what we’re currently using and throw that into the system. And then, hey, this is also… commissary module as well. So let’s take our commissary module, let’s just throw it all into one key. And now I’m managing three different projects of a team with two people trying to figure out how everything can communicate and talk. And it really took me out of my comfort zone. And there were some really, there were some struggling days of just, is this really what I want to be doing today? Because it’s not, it’s not, it’s not an IT role.
Speaker 0 | 31:48.924
That’s a Phoenix project. That’s like a Phoenix project. Have you read the Phoenix project? No, I have not. Okay. Then we need to send you a free copy of that or something. Email me after. I need to send you, I need to, I need to like, are you audible? Are you an audible guy? Do you listen to audio books? Are you driving a lot? If you do, then you got it.
Speaker 1 | 32:06.088
So I’m driving a lot, but I’m mainly listening to podcasts.
Speaker 0 | 32:10.349
Great. Okay, cool. That too, but you’ve got to hear this because it’s basically everything you just described and multiply that. Okay. Multiply that nightmare by like 20. That’s the Phoenix project. It’s like an absolute must read for any IT director or IT leader. Absolutely. You’ll see why. You’ll see why real quickly. It will suck you in. Okay, so excellent. Well, I guess what was the learning from that?
Speaker 1 | 32:42.822
That no matter what. title you have, the responsibilities are always going to shift and change based on the project that needs to be completed. So I needed to learn to really just continuously roll with whatever project came my way and give 100% of myself to it, regardless if I knew it or not. Just figure it out and move on.
Speaker 0 | 33:16.599
Yes. Or you also know the, I’m assuming, you know, the vastness of what people could be asking and how simple they think this ask is, but how complicated it really is. Does that make sense?
Speaker 1 | 33:30.719
That is also true. Yeah, no, that is true.
Speaker 0 | 33:33.901
Some people think, yeah, come on, man, roll it out, plug it in. Like, let’s go. It’ll be fine.
Speaker 1 | 33:37.203
It’s a plug and play device, right? No, it’s not.
Speaker 0 | 33:40.725
The moving data.
Speaker 1 | 33:42.426
It’s a plug and play device. All right.
Speaker 0 | 33:45.104
Yeah, the moving parts will drive you nuts. It drives me nuts, at least. Like certain integrations and plugins and APIs and making them work can be, there’s a lot of things that can break. With that, I say, so to bridge that, when you’re moving up in your career, Is there anything that you, when you’re interviewing for other jobs, and this is for other people out there listening, is there anything that you say or look for in an interview to know that you’re in the right place?
Speaker 1 | 34:30.620
Something that I’ve always done with every company I’ve been with is don’t be afraid to make a jump from something that’s comfortable to something that’s unknown. Because sometimes when you go to something that’s unknown, it’s… that’s really where you get to it’s done um and then from an interview standpoint I base whether or not I’m going to take a position on how well I’m vibing with the people that are doing the interview. Right. Because that’s ultimately the people that I’m going to be working with. And if I don’t vibe with them during the interview, I’m not going to vibe with them well during the workday. So it’s huge for me to create some type of relationship with anybody from an interviewing standpoint, just so that I can lean back on that as a friendship type deal.
Speaker 0 | 35:19.259
Yeah. I’m wondering if there’s like a really key question or statement or something that we can ask in an interview. I don’t know that can really solidify something. So when everything goes wrong and the IT system shut down and like customers can’t pay and people can’t buy juice and all of that goes wrong for whatever reason, because it’s not a matter of if it’s a matter of when. how are you going to treat me? Like, what are you going to say? It’s kind of like, it’s like, how are we going to work together? You know, like what’s the most stress? You know, I’m just wondering what that, you know, if there’s anything that can happen. Yeah.
Speaker 1 | 36:06.352
So that happened with me at Goose Press, where the POS system just went down. Yeah. And we couldn’t ring things up. And I got a call from my CEO. I got a call from my CEO. from the COO saying, hey, what’s going on? And I told them flat out, there’s an issue with our POS vendor. We’re all working on it. I will let you know as soon as I find something out.
Speaker 0 | 36:33.453
At least it was the vendor. Yeah.
Speaker 1 | 36:36.235
It’s always the vendor. Oh, no. And the vendor’s like,
Speaker 0 | 36:41.759
is it your network? Is your switch plugged in? Anyways, go ahead.
Speaker 1 | 36:46.422
And it’s just one of those times where And I’m sure a lot of people have this issue that one cloud-based solutions, when AWS goes down, it’s a hard hit for a lot of different systems. A lot of systems just stop talking. And I take that experience and I try to learn from it saying, okay, if this goes down, what happens? What can we do to improve it? And how can we change the…
Speaker 0 | 37:17.536
So there was no way to batch report. There was no way to take payments or batch reports or anything. There was no like standby mode or, you know, offline mode.
Speaker 1 | 37:27.661
In the POS that I have now with this company, there’s an offline mode. But it only works in the sense that it needs to disconnect from the net. It needs to disconnect from the internet for offline mode again. Right. If you have an actual connection to the internet, offline mode will never take. But if you have an issue with your credit card reader, with the credit card system itself, but you still have an internet connection, then it’s never going to go into offline mode. It’s just going to keep failing.
Speaker 0 | 37:55.872
Right, right, right.
Speaker 1 | 37:57.853
So how do we make that change where, hey, is there a way to force it into offline mode? Or is there a way to piggyback off of a different payment type to alleviate some of the stress? There was a time that I saw not too long ago where the credit card system completely crashed on the store. And they went into a lockbox underneath the cash register, opened it up, and they saw this ridiculously old knuckle buster credit card system. Yeah. Where they would just take someone’s credit card, they’d put it on the machine, they would swipe it left to right. And then they would just write the amount on and then they would ring it in later when the credit card machine was working. And that’s how they ran until their credit card machine was backed up and running. And I thought of that and just like, how secure is that? Because what are they doing with all that data afterward? Is it truly a better method than just saying, hey, we’re closed? And you should never close, right? You should always find a way to figure out how to get your… product to the guests because that’s battle, right? The guests came to you, they were looking for your food and you need to provide that. And the POS system that I have now, we were able to design a system so that we can switch it into offline mode whenever we need to, regardless of the internet connecting being bad or just faulty. So now everybody knows that if the internet goes down or the credit card machines stop processing properly. We switch into offline mode and we continuously ring up guests because that’s what we’re here for. we’re here to make them happy and we’re and we’re here to supply our product to them
