Speaker 0 | 00:09.527
Welcome, everyone, back to Dissecting Popular IT Nerds. Today, talking with refugee, escaped the country, came into Canada, and became an IT director, IT leader, mastermind. His name is Robert Jakovlevich. And anyone that can spell that without looking him up, I will send you something in the mail. Just send me your address if you get that right. Welcome to the show, sir. Thank you, Phil.
Speaker 1 | 00:40.232
Thank you for having me.
Speaker 0 | 00:43.173
Yes. And I want to take the show in a new direction a little bit. I mean, I could ask you what your first computer is, but we already know what that is. It’s a Commodore 64, which I’ve already deduced from doing the show numerous times. That’s… I don’t know, definitely like something like 80% of everyone’s first computer that was, uh, I guess, uh, X generation, uh, early, early millennial, uh, so to speak. And, uh, I don’t know if I’m dating you there, but that’s, these are, these are the stats. Okay. This is this, this is just, this is the data and numbers don’t lie. People lie. So one. Of the things that we don’t talk a lot about on the show, we talk about business. IT is a business force multiplier. How does IT get a seat at the executive table? How does IT create real change? How do we get out of the server room that we used to hide in where people slipped pizzas under the door? And how do we kind of pull the… the layers back, the layers of the onion, and really kind of get to the problem. And I think we need to take more ownership as nerds and IT people, or maybe just people in general, or people that tend to be engineering-minded technical people, because that might be why we’re in IT to begin with, and kind of get more to the heart of the matter. Now… Before we do that, though, I do want to hear your story as to literally how you got over here to what we would call North America. You can’t call the United States America because everyone that’s not in the United States, say Canada or Mexico, gets really offended by that when you say like USA is America. How did you get over to North America?
Speaker 1 | 02:46.644
Well, I grew up in Yugoslavia, former Yugoslavia, if you will. country as such under that name doesn’t exist for a number of years. Back in the early 90s, we had a civil war. Became a refugee, came as a refugee to Canada in 96. Went to college there, completed programming, stayed, lived, worked in Toronto until 2009. I met my wife online in 2008. moved to California in
Speaker 0 | 03:22.761
2009. Nice. A lot of people meet their wives online. Yes, especially. Online. And all the ones that I’ve known have been pretty successful. So congratulations there. You know, as opposed to, I met my wife like in a bar or something like that. You know what I mean? Don’t do that. Sure. Everyone’s going to be mad now. What are you talking about? So. Left Yugoslavia, I kind of asked you, if you don’t mind, just getting a little personal, I kind of asked you growing up, how did you end up getting into IT? And you said in Yugoslavia, your parents got divorced and that was kind of rough on you. And I’m sure there’s a lot of people that can relate to that because it’s very common in America. It’s like 60% of marriages fail in America. But in Yugoslavia, you said it was much more, just not common, more… frowned upon. I don’t know if you mind sharing that for just a few minutes of how that was a struggle, how you overcame that or, you know, how it benefited you.
Speaker 1 | 04:28.998
Sure. Thank you for asking. Yeah. Unlike nowadays, you know, I was seven with my parents divorced and I did not know anybody, any other kid who had divorced parents. So I took it personally. I took it as if. It was my fault, which made me withdraw from the rest of the kids. And by doing so, the easiest way for me to deal and cope with all that was to study in the books. I did really good in math, physics. Seventh grade, I took a second place in a national competition in physics. And then after that, it’s a natural progression. Mostly, you know, have affinities for math and physics, technology in general, to computers.
Speaker 0 | 05:22.485
At what point did you realize… I’m… Just saying this is important for anyone else that’s out there listening that may have gone through this. At what point did you realize it wasn’t my fault? It was my parents’ screwed up relationship or whatever it was?
Speaker 1 | 05:40.417
You know, that’s a great question. I can’t really say. I think once I started working and making money, I started understanding different perspectives as a child. wasn’t aware of. Having said that, it’s quite possible that some of that guilt is still lingering in my subconscious, like for most people, consciously you’re not aware of it, but ultimately, you know, that guilt that you carry for so long, every now and then comes to the surface and affects your decisions. And until you realize, hey, this still could be an issue.
Speaker 0 | 06:25.096
I think I know what you mean. Because me growing up, I was always the small kid in school. I think in high school, I joined the wrestling team at my sophomore year and wrestled at 103 pounds. 103. My son is just turned 16, like literally, I don’t know, like last week. And he’s 155. So… I know he’s a lot bigger and I remember, you know, similar kind of experience, just different situation. But still to this day, every now and then, you know, I’ll have a flashback to, oh, I wish I could meet that guy on the street right now. Because I’ve been doing jujitsu for so long and now I lift weights and maybe it’s like overcompensation for some psychological battle back in the day. And, you know, so anyways. Yeah, it does. It does pop up every now and then, but you do, but life time changes things as time goes by and you take control of your own life. Like you said, you start making money. Sometimes money is not everything. It’s, it’s right up there with oxygen though. And, um, it does help and you start to take more control of your own life and your own destiny. And then you start to see kind of things for what they really are. And so for any. kids out there that parents that are listening to kids that might be struggling. You, you’d always tell your kids, you know, just take, it takes time. It takes time or, you know, hate me now, thank me later type of thing. And so anyways, I’m glad that you got over that maybe. And, and our, and our now, and then just somehow got to, how’d you get to Canada? Like, what was it? Was it like, is there like any like really excruciating pain with that? Or I had to sneak over here or is it no, I just got on a plane and or I filed for some paperwork or what was that? What was that complication? Because most Americans are very, well, at least white middle class Americans are fairly privileged and don’t know about this stuff.
Speaker 1 | 08:38.678
Sure, sure. It took about a couple of years from the point that I submitted. my request to immigrate to Canada as a refugee. Canada, I think they still run a refugee program annually where they issue about 200 to 250,000 permanent residences through the refugee program. So the way it works for me is I submitted my paper to Canadian embassy in Serbia in February in 94, in 96. I was issued permanent residency while still living in Serbia. So when I came to Canada, I came with a Canadian green card. And then, thanks to the Canadian government, I came with 16 Deutschmarks, or German money, if you will, to Canada. But then, they run what’s called a settlement program. where I was given $502 a month to live on. I first went to Quebec City trying to learn French. It didn’t work for me after six months. I moved to Toronto and found a job two days after that and started learning English. But it was pretty seamless, you know, and I’m grateful for it. Not much struggle other than waiting for 10 years and going through several interviews and getting all the paperwork ready and submitted. Other than that, it was seamless. It was a great experience.
Speaker 0 | 10:19.913
Do you remember the day that you got the notification that you got permanent residency in Canada?
Speaker 1 | 10:28.078
It was September. September 29th, 1996.
Speaker 0 | 10:34.141
Isn’t it amazing how there’s certain periods in your life like you’ll just never forget that day? Where were you? I’m just curious. Do you remember?
Speaker 1 | 10:43.064
I was in Serbia. I worked as a waiter.
Speaker 0 | 10:47.506
What was that feeling like? What was the feeling like? I’m just curious.
Speaker 1 | 10:54.089
I don’t think I can describe it. I really can’t. It’s, you know, it was a hard time. Serbia at the time was under huge economic sanctions. I worked as a waiter. And then, like everybody else at the time, you have to make sure the money that you make, you have to go and buy Deutschmarks on the black market to make sure that when you wake up in the morning, you still have some money. Otherwise, the inflation will eat everything overnight. you know just to kind of expand on it uh the post service in serbia stopped asking for stamps to be put on the envelope because if you are to buy stamps you would cover the entire surface of the envelope you wouldn’t have any space to write address who you’re sending it to it was more inflation than what argentina had just back into that worthless money just literally paper
Speaker 0 | 11:57.679
People don’t necessarily get that.
Speaker 1 | 12:01.302
Right. So, you know, coming home and getting a huge brown envelope from Canadian embassy and reading that my application has been accepted and I was given a date I will be flying to Canada. There was a one-page document because I was stateless. I was born in Yugoslavia and I was a refugee in Serbia as well. So the document came from the United Nations. It was good for one trip to Canada. That’s it. I arrived to Canada as status. Right now I have dual citizenship in Canada.
Speaker 0 | 12:44.367
It’s awesome. My son-in-law is from Yemen. And he explained a similar situation going on right now with the money. It’s like… monopoly money or like play money like please just send give us money that has an american dollar attached to it or something or anything but you know the local money it just changes on a daily basis it is ridiculous um your we talked before the show briefly about how you learned english because i’m a language i’m just fascinated with learning another language and just To me, I’m mind blown by languages to begin with. The fact that there’s hundreds of different languages and people communicate in completely different tonalities and sounds and things is just insane. But how you learned English, I think, is important for how people even learn IT and technology. Because you told me you went through a TESOL program where people teach English as a second language. And there’s a lot of people in America that you can just go get. tesla certified and then go live wherever you want in the world and teach english as a second language and you said that just didn’t work that well but when you took a job in construction and they just threw you in the mix you had to learn english you were kind of forced to learn it you
Speaker 1 | 14:03.858
learned a lot faster is that a true statement that is true that is true i uh i started working as a as a general helper in the construction business toronto canada and uh All other employees were border police, Canadians. So everybody was speaking English except for us.
Speaker 0 | 14:26.263
So they’re like, this is a hammer. Grab the hammer. And you’re like,
Speaker 1 | 14:30.326
huh?
Speaker 0 | 14:30.766
What? This is the hammer. You’re like, don’t make me hit you in the head with it. And then you’re like, oh, I won’t forget that word. Hammer. Okay.
Speaker 1 | 14:38.850
Exactly. That’s how it worked. Like, for instance, I was told several times by a carpet. Go to the van and get me whatever. I have no idea what the personality to get.
Speaker 0 | 14:52.081
You’re coming back with stuff and it’s like a dad yelling at his kid. No, I told you the Phillips head.
Speaker 1 | 14:58.865
Exactly. And then, you know,
Speaker 0 | 15:00.906
I tried to. And then a mouthful of expletives and you’re like, oh, what does that mean? And you’re like, wow, this is how you talk to women. And then you’re like, what? Exactly. Exactly.
Speaker 1 | 15:08.850
And, you know, another thing, I mean. verbal communication amounts to about 10% of how humans communicate. The rest is your facial expression, body language. So having that, even though I wasn’t able to understand it, comprehend it or speak it, I was there trying and reading this person’s body and thinking what is happening here. And after a couple of years, you know, I learned English. very well. I applied for college admission in Toronto and I did my assessment test in math and English and my scores came out that I did better than 98% of all applicants, which I was excluded from a college level one English. That was two years of construction.
Speaker 0 | 16:04.402
It’s cool. Now, comparatively speaking, you were a nerd in high school. I mean, you did really well in physics and all that stuff. You did that really well. How much of that transferred over to technology? And then I guess my other question would be is, do you learn more by trial by fire and drinking from the fire hose, so to speak, by throwing someone into technology and throwing them on the help desk? And the same way that you learned English and everything, do you learn technology that way?
Speaker 1 | 16:39.688
Absolutely.
Speaker 0 | 16:40.749
And this is my argument or why people don’t need to go get some kind of like, you know, master’s degree and certified and all that. Not that it doesn’t help. We all know that like sometimes just having that degree mark helps. But if I was a business owner, would I really want to hire the person that just has the degree or would I want to hire the guy that like, you know, like escaped Yugoslavia and came to Canada and learned all these things this way and not only has all the book smarts but learned everything in real life. That would be who I’d choose.
Speaker 1 | 17:19.435
There’s a saying that growth comes once you step outside your comfort zone. So in order to grow you have to step outside your comfort zone. You have to put yourself in a position where What you’re about to do, it’s not comfortable. It’s not something that you’ve done before. But understanding that even if you’re faced with failure, you will learn from them and move forward with that knowledge. Technology is, you need to understand the fundamentals, right? You can’t go in there and do trial and error on fundamentals. But once you understand fundamentals, like for instance, we can’t be talking about cybersecurity if you don’t understand what their assets are. How are you going to protect something that you don’t know that you have? Right? Yeah. So once you know the fundamentals, you have to have a courage to step outside this comfort zone, to learn things, to fail by doing things, learn from those and move forward.
Speaker 0 | 18:26.912
courage comfort zone we should have like the three c’s or something there’s got to be some courage comfort zone crash you know something like that but uh yeah arnold who i’m a fan of you know he was good at that i i don’t i hope i don’t have to pronounce his last name everyone knows what i’m talking about when i talk about arnold because you don’t grow muscle without stressing the system you can’t just go lift a five pound weight a thousand times and hope to grow some muscle like you need to stress the system and No pain, no gain, so to speak. And I think a lot of people get comfortable sitting in their seat and just taking tickets or collecting a paycheck. I think vendors get very comfortable and take their customers for granted even and like collecting a paycheck every day. And that’s why they outsource customer care to Manila, which is a good choice, by the way. Nothing against Manila. Manila is better than America. It just depends. That’s just a side note. So I don’t even know where to go from here. Oh, I know what it was. So the challenge, the problem, the most common problem that people deal with in IT, and it might not necessarily be IT, but IT tends to be engineering minded. heavy people trying to fix things and or run IT. Wanted to come up with some kind of cheat sheet. I wish there was a way for the people that don’t know how to talk to people. Or the people that get stuck trying to fix a problem. Is there like, could we take like a mathematical formula to mapping human communications? I mean, there’s got to be some cheat. There’s got to be some things that we, you know, like stop, wait, ask how their day is going. Ask, is there a way that we can build empathy and help people that are stuck in the engineering minded, you know, horse with blinders on mindset? but you got any tips or tactics there?
Speaker 1 | 20:41.397
That’s a great question. Yes, ask questions. Be a listener, ask questions. Even if you know exactly what the outcome is, what kind of outcome.
Speaker 0 | 20:56.585
We kind of got to ask what kind of questions, like not the question is like, are you really that stupid? Don’t ask that question. And then listening doesn’t mean like listening while you already got the answer in your head. So it’s kind of like, well, what kind of questions and how do we listen?
Speaker 1 | 21:18.812
Like for instance, let’s take an example. We get a call from one of the users you support, right? And the user says, nothing is working. What do you mean nothing is working? My email won’t open, application doesn’t work, it freezes, blah, blah, blah. So you can just take a simple approach and say, all right, well, thank you for letting me know. Let me look into that, and I’ll let you know. Or you can walk to the user’s office and start asking questions very simply and very guided into the process where They know they have a problem, they don’t know how to explain what the problem is. It is your job as an IT support person to make them comfortable. You make them comfortable by not throwing acronyms there, not trying to show them how much smarter you are and how you’re going to save the day and you’re going to fix the problem. You guide them with your questions to first understand or replicate. what exactly did they do prior to noticing the problem? By asking those questions, you also have to ask for help. You have to develop trust. How do you develop trust? Not by offering help. Instead, ask for help. When you ask somebody for help, you show vulnerability, and that’s how trust is developed. Once you have the trust with your users, you ask questions more than you’re telling them what to do, that’s the beginning of a healthy relationship.
Speaker 0 | 22:54.180
give some examples of unhealthy, and I’ve already pulled it up on living here. Okay. I’m just going to read some unhealthy examples. This is from the Reddit group for anyone that would like to look this up. Just Google Reddit in quotes. Is it me or are end users getting more stupid? Okay. We’ll just read a few of these and we’ll ask you how you deal with this. Okay. I’m seeing an uptick in the amount of users using the caps lock key instead of the shift key lately. That’s the first one. I feel like I get more and more younger users who don’t know how to use a computer. It’s disturbing. That one’s kind of mind-blowing because that’s actually true. Obviously, these are all true. I have watched users click through an error message that clearly explains their issue super fast and then complain to me that something isn’t working. How about you tell me why you think it’s okay to try and install software you’re not supposed to, then mysteriously wonder why, blank. isn’t working right. It’s basically like babysitting a room full of toddlers sometimes. Don’t touch that. Give me that. That’s going to poke out your eye, etc. So clearly, there is many forms that give… I almost want to read a few more of these. Did you get an error or something? Yes, but I hit okay immediately. And it went away. Can you recreate it for me? Thanks. Proceeds to recreate issue error and then hit okay immediately again. Oh, it goes on and on and on. Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds. And I think maybe the question is not how do we deal with end users? It might actually be… This is the deeper question. How do we, yes, listen and coddle the end users, but also how do we get these IT guys to not quit? How do we get IT to not say, this is the worst career ever. Why did I join this? I should just go join construction. How, I want you to tell me. how do I love my job? How do I not want to quit? How do I deal with these people? That might be a better answer because I don’t know. I went down the road of, yes, we need to be better listeners. We all know that. I’m pretty sure we do. Maybe we don’t. Maybe we’re just really angry, I don’t know, technical people that don’t care and don’t get paid enough. I don’t know. It goes both ways here. Here’s a guy that’s saying, it’s hard to break the habit. It affects my professionalism. You know, I don’t even know what he’s talking about, but obviously he’s talking about professionalism. He’s trying to be professional and not lose his mind and deal with all of this stuff. I don’t know. What’s your feelings about all of this?
Speaker 1 | 26:39.478
Of how to get your people not to do their IT jobs?
Speaker 0 | 26:44.460
Yeah, so there’s a duality going on. There’s a duality going on here. IT people help people keep the blinking lights on. They help them with their computer. They help them with their frustrated issues. And the people might be stupid in their minds. They aren’t listening or they aren’t walking them through. But the other side of the coin is people don’t appreciate IT. If I look at… the ratios, there’s one IT director or one IT staff, one IT staff to about 100 end users on average in a typical mid-market American company. Not talking big enterprise where everyone’s like an employee number of 10,005. I’m not talking about small business where they’ve got like a little local IT MSP guy that they’re trying to shave a few dollars off their monthly bill. I’m talking about… typical American-made business people where the IT department is like one guy to 100 and they might not get paid enough and they deal with all this crap and we’re asking them to be the end user whisperers. Sure, sure. No,
Speaker 1 | 27:53.890
that’s a valid point. I take it as, how do I say this? If I don’t understand business processes, that are going on and happening outside my own department or information technology. That’s my fault. It is not the C-suite people’s fault that I don’t understand the financial planning, financial strategy, balance sheets, and all of that. So I have two choices as a leader in IT. I can remain stubborn and say, You don’t understand. You need to pay $50,000 for a PDI. You need another $100,000 for this. You don’t understand one bad email is going to bring your business to the knees. Or I can try to understand the way they think. So I’m going to step outside my comfort zone, which is known and predicted. It’s zeros and ones. It’s technology at the end of the day. Try to understand different perspectives. I will go and learn. Let me learn a little bit about accounting, business planning, marketing, so I can understand when I go to have a conversation with my GM asking him to do something to protect the business, I’m going to approach it from a perspective what he is accustomed to, not what I’m saying. I did my research and I chose the best vendor out of a bunch, and here’s why we need this. No. That’s where… Asking questions again comes into play. You have an end goal in mind, but you don’t just plainly put it out there and ask for that to be approved. You ask questions to guide that user, regardless whether it’s a frontline user or a CEO. You ask questions to guide them to the point that they come to a realization why this is important for business. Not because you said it, because it’s just another opinion at the end of the day. But if you help them by asking the right questions, get to the same conclusion, the outcome is totally different. Regarding how to get your people not to quit their IT job, provide secure environment for them. Inspire them to do things. Make sure they are safe. Make sure they, even if they make a mistake, they’re not going to be reprimanded. They’re going to be shown the way. If a team, if a member of my team makes a mistake, that is up to me. I haven’t said or shown proper way of how things… needed to be done. So me as a leader take a blame and responsibility for that. I’m not pointing finger to that person making them uncomfortable and unsafe to come daily. Make them have an ownership. Ask even though if you as a leader know what the best solution is, don’t just put it out there. Have a meeting with all of your team members. Ask them to do their own research and come with their own choices and conclusions. Then as a team… evaluate all of that. And then once they have ownership of something, they will go above and beyond anything they even thought they can do. They feel safe. They feel appreciated, recognized. And that’s how you get them not to quit. And ask them always for feedback. You have to be vulnerable. You have to ask, like, for instance, stop. We have weekly team meetings anywhere between an hour and an hour and a half. I always end that meeting asking for feedback from everybody. What have I done that I shouldn’t have done? What should I do that I haven’t done? What are the ways that I can improve in the way I handle our operations? And you have to be sincere when you ask those questions. That’s how you make them comfortable. That’s how you make jobs. Well, at the end of the day, people make jobs with management.
Speaker 0 | 32:19.355
Yes. And they think there’s nowhere left to go. There’s no room for growth. Even if there is no room for growth, let’s say. they can still be learning something. You can still be giving them life skills. You can still be giving them experience where they haven’t had experience before. You can still help them learn the language of business, so to speak, and how to translate and do all of those things that you just said to move up in the world and grow their career, right? They can’t feel like they’re in a dead end job. Back to this forum real quick. I think this guy said it best. No. They’re just as dumb as they were last week, last month, last year, and will be just as dumb next week, next month, and next year. And right above that, I think we’re well into the generation that was never exposed to typewriters. So with that being said, we need to love our end users. This is the wrong mindset, people, but it is good for a few laughs. There needs to be some outlet. But guys, at the same time, in your weekly meetings, right? This is how you grow in IT. This is how you don’t get lost, burnt out, hate your job. This is how you don’t stay completely undervalued. Whatever it is, some people just, you know, they walk around like… No one cares about IT. We’re the least valued IT department, or at least no one even notices us. But the truth is nothing in the company gets done better without technology. It affects every single area of the company. Curious, what do you think is the pathway to freedom? And when I say freedom, I mean, what’s the kind of end goal for IT? How do we cash out with like, I don’t know. Five to 10 million and call it a day. Any ideas? I’m still waiting for someone to come up with a great idea. I have a couple ideas and I think that would be, this is my idea, this is my suggestion. You tell me if you agree with it. I think every IT director, every IT leader should push for an MBO, management by business objectives. Anyone that doesn’t know what an MBO is, Google, capital M, capital B, capital O, management by business objectives. Because Yes, it may put a lot of stress on you, but we already got done. We already spoke about getting out of your comfort zone. We already talked about stressing the muscles. We already talked about doing all that. So if you really want to push yourself, ask for an MBO, sit down with your C-levels, have those conversations with people. I need to put this in the book because I forgot about this. Have those conversations with the C-levels that you’re not used to having and say, hey, look, if I do X, Y, and Z, can I get paid more money? And if I don’t do X, Y, and Z, don’t pay me more money. That’s fine. But why not tie your IT position to the goals of the business? Because then you’re forced to have all those conversations with all those different departments, marketing. financial CEO. Now you’re forced to have all those conversations. You’re actually forced to bring results. And when you bring results, you should get rewarded for that. And I’m just trying to think of the way that an IT guy can cash out with 5 million, 5 to 10 million. And I would say, pick your company wisely and make sure that you pick a company where IT can make a drastic effect in the bottom line. And then you tie your job with an MBO. to that bottom line so that when that company sells you cash out and you’re like see you later have a nice day everybody i’m just you know i’m gone what do you think yeah i think that’s good i mean uh you know one thing to understand and and not forget i.t is not revenue generating department oh i totally disagree i totally disagree no no no no there is more to it okay so
Speaker 1 | 36:43.286
With that in mind, the expectations of contributing to business success and growth, you have to figure that out as an IT leader. And you do that by understanding operations of other departments. If I don’t know what they do, how they do it, there is no way I can provide value to the business. So stepping outside technology and learning about their operations, then you can bring your knowledge and technology. You can see that there is so much data sitting there. It’s not being utilized. They can provide so much value and revenue to the business in addition to what it does already. Then you use your technology, utilize that data, show your C-level people, hey, here’s what’s missing. We already have this. Let’s use it. Once you get a return on that,
Speaker 0 | 37:45.252
then you can ask for your $5 million and you’ll retire. Well, I mean, look at Amazon. I’m pretty sure Jeff Bezos was an IT nerd working in his garage. And I’m pretty sure he’s an IT company. Well, I mean, technology company. It’s just, I guess it’s all how you look at it. But yeah, if you’re working for the good old boys pumping oil out of Texas or something, nothing. against them. I’m just using this as an example. And we’ve always been trucking oil this same way and IT just please make sure that the phones still work and then I can send an email. In that case, maybe it doesn’t matter that much. But there is a level of forward thinking that I think IT can literally generate money in many circumstances. They can definitely save money. They can definitely make things more efficient. Now, if you don’t call that making money, okay, fine, I understand. But I have seen… IT makes some tweaks to say, I don’t know, the ERP or something like that. And literally observe all departments and sit in on all departments and make a very significant change. IT might, you might have an old company that doesn’t have an online presence. And IT brings in an entirely, an online marketplace to. Maybe you don’t call that IT, but maybe they bring online marketplace to a level of the business that didn’t even exist before. And now your revenue goes up 20%. So that’s, I just get, I get really triggered when, uh, when we talk about IT and being a, um, it has been an absolute pleasure having you on the show. The, is there. Is there anything very special that you’ve learned over time that would be very beneficial to everyone out there listening? Was there anything like an aha moment or a crisis averted that you have something to share with the listeners? Sure.
Speaker 1 | 39:50.975
Don’t sacrifice your people to save the numbers. Sacrifice the numbers to save the people. That’s pretty much it.
Speaker 0 | 40:02.507
What does that mean?
Speaker 1 | 40:04.429
It means, you know, we don’t measure. We don’t look at our revenue in a decade. We go quarter by quarter. And if we are below expectations or projections, we’re going to start cutting costs. That’s why we sacrifice people to save the numbers. But you have to put, regardless if it is IT or any other department or business or industry, you have to put your people first. You have to put your people first. Make them feel comfortable and safe. If they feel like that, they will… provide outstanding service to your customers once your customers get great service you’re going to make your shareholders happy so it’s always in that order happy employees happy customers happy shareholders not
Speaker 0 | 40:59.227
the other way around robert thank you so much for being on the show uh really appreciate you being on dissecting popular it nerds And when you figure out when you cash out with a 5 million or more, I think when you cash out with 5 million or more, please come right back on the show. So we can make that the final show and we’ll just we’ll close that one out.
Speaker 1 | 41:27.065
You got it. Thank you for having me. Great conversation.
