Speaker 0 | 00:01.060
All right, good morning, good day, good afternoon, everyone. Here we are at another episode of Dissecting Popular IT Nerds. And today we have Joshua Stewart. Josh, I believe you prefer to go by Josh. Go ahead.
Speaker 1 | 00:26.196
No, that works. You know, as an IT nerd, it’s Josh, Joshua, sometimes Stuart, go by the last name. Or, hey, this is broken. Get over here and fix it. I go by that, too. So, you know, whatever we need.
Speaker 0 | 00:43.745
Oh, man, allergies. Had to answer to that a few too many times myself. All right. Well, Josh is the director of IT over at 1888. Is it 1888 Technologies?
Speaker 1 | 00:57.437
1888 Industrial Services.
Speaker 0 | 01:00.640
That’s right. That’s right. I’m sorry about that. And go ahead and introduce yourself to the listeners and tell us a little about your history and what you do. What’s unique about your industry?
Speaker 1 | 01:12.708
Yeah. Well, hello, fellow IT geeks and nerds and everyone else listening or interested in this. As Mike said, my name is… Joshua Stewart. I am the IT Director here at 1888 Industrial Services. 1888 is an oil and gas company. So we are kind of an outlier in technology space because oil and gas is just as old as everything else. They operate under things like it’s, you know, the 1920s, 1930s. A lot of handshake deals and backroom type of deals and your word is your bond. So In this industry, things are a lot different and a lot slower to adapt to things because you deal with a lot of people that are very used to face-to-face interactions and handshakes. And that’s not necessarily how things can get done anymore, especially since post-pandemic. That screwed everything up for everybody and put everyone into a spot to where it’s, oh, we can’t always do this face-to-face or anything like that. So it’s been a very slow adaption process in this field and industry. But, you know, things are starting to move along and they’re starting to adapt to things like cybersecurity, which was a very big pain. And they’re starting to adapt to things like cloud and storage and all that fun stuff. So, you know, it’s an opportunity here to expose a lot of people to different new technologies that are going on. And it’s great for myself because, you know. It keeps you interested in what’s coming up, and you get to view all this new tech that gets to come out and see how it’s going to work for you. So that’s kind of the story of 1888 and where we’re at and a little bit about my background right there.
Speaker 0 | 03:04.148
Cool. You know, I got a co-worker who ironically is heading up the cybersecurity group for us, and he’s done some work in oil and gas. but I think they were doing pipelines. Do you guys have to deal with pipelines?
Speaker 1 | 03:20.613
Deal with pipelines a little bit. We do a lot of construction on well sites. So we build the compressors and the, you know, the redundant pump measures and everything like that, that kind of helps their drills pull everything out. Okay.
Speaker 0 | 03:37.360
So the, the reason I was asking was around the, like the PLC technology, because there’s, there’s a technology that hasn’t moved. that meter hasn’t moved much in the last few decades. I think it’s, it’s starting to move a lot more, but are you having to deal with any of the, what’s PLC stand for? Something controller, primary physical.
Speaker 1 | 04:01.639
Yeah. So programmable logic controllers.
Speaker 0 | 04:06.343
That’s it.
Speaker 1 | 04:08.225
Yeah. So. We don’t necessarily deal with a lot of that. That’s a lot more related to the rigs and those drills themselves. So PLC, in this instance, is a lot more on that side for whoever we’re working with. So we build sites for companies like Chevron and Occidental and ConocoPhillips, places like those. So they have a lot of these things in place. So we really just come in from a company standpoint and kind of do the grunt work for them. So I mean, from the IT perspective for our guys out of the field, there’s not a whole lot there. But internally, when it comes to building the projects, when it comes to mapping out the construction sites and all of that, that becomes where the fun begins for me. And that’s been a good trip to figure out some of the different technologies that exist in this space that you’re not used to seeing maybe in normal corporate jobs.
Speaker 0 | 05:20.940
You know, one of the things that immediately hits… What comes to mind is your connectivity. How are you getting connectivity? Because you got to be out in the middle of nowhere in a lot of places.
Speaker 1 | 05:33.465
I don’t know how you guys do with dropping some company names and stuff like that. So hashtag Verizon. Hashtag they’re amazing. We have a really good representative with Verizon Wireless. It’s who we use corporately for our stuff. for cellular stuff. And they partner with a company called CSG who makes these enterprise style mobile hotspots. And these things are a lot more powerful than just a normal hotspot that you may have in your backpack or the hotspot on your iPhone or Android that you could use there. These are built so the data doesn’t get scaled down when you hit a certain level. So it’s really meant to work like a portable office in a way, the way these things are built. And the size of these things, they’re relatively small, probably about the size of a mini PC, maybe a little bit smaller than that. But the power that these put out will get you at least, you know, LTE signal in the middle of nowhere. where you typically wouldn’t have anything. So it utilizes these internal boosters. It has a little bit of the satellite technology built into it. So there really hasn’t been a site yet, knock on wood, that we’ve run into to where these haven’t worked. And you can attach up to 50 devices, fairly comfortable on one of these things. So we usually have two or three at a site for all the workers and stuff that’s going on. And then we actually program those to act as uh we we put the virtual vpn gateway on so they act as you know normal wi-fi like you’re in our building so you don’t lose functionality to some of your uh folders or programs internally that you need to have access to that require those those type of vpn connections what was the name of the device again so it’s by a company called csg and they have a bunch of different models the one we use is the csg m106
Speaker 0 | 07:46.832
sorry Got a little bit of interest in that, so I’m making a note for myself offline. So as I was looking at your LinkedIn, I noticed something that really kind of stuck out. Actually, I saw two things that stuck out that you’ve been doing on the side, it seems. So Sparta Sports and Entertainment. Tell me more about that.
Speaker 1 | 08:07.938
Yeah. So Sparta Sports and Entertainment, they are in this Mountain West region. the largest mixed martial arts combat sports promotion that operate in this area that is not UFC or Bellator. So they’re very regional based. They have a lot of up and coming professional fighters, guys that are typically getting, you know, their first couple of fights before they move on to a UFC or a Bellator guys and girls. And they have a bunch of amateurs that are wanting to get their feet wet and see if fighting in combat sports is what they want to do. So they’ve been in existence for going on close to 20 years. And they actually have a huge event coming up April 29th in Loveland, Colorado, at the Budweiser Arena, Budweiser Event Center. called Army vs. Marines 14, so it’s AVM 14. And basically what this card is and what they do is they take professional fighters and amateur fighters that are associated with our military and armed forces, and those are going to be the men and women that are fighting in the ring and in the octagon that night. So it’s kind of cool. You know, again, it’s completely different than the IT. side of things, but there’s a lot of bleed over that really actually goes into it more than you would really think. Um, but yeah, no, it’s, it’s super fun. And I’m actually the, uh, the ring announcer for them. Now I started doing that, uh, um, for them in January of this year, but I’ve been doing some ring announcing on and off, uh, for about the last five or six years. Apparently, I just have a voice for it is what they tell me. Cool.
Speaker 0 | 10:06.542
Right on. So wait a minute. You mean you don’t leave the office, go home, and just sit at a computer at home and jack in and stay a nerd the whole time?
Speaker 1 | 10:18.710
No, that’s what my mobile phone is for. I put in my AirPods, and I just continue to be a nerd and listen to in all seriousness, I’ll listen to this podcast or I’ll listen to other podcasts and stuff like that and you know continue to grow my knowledge i attend a lot of these virtual conferences on my uh on my iphone or my ipad um throw my earbuds in and and listen to these conferences and just continue to learn it’s one of these one of those things you can never really fully unplug you know that yeah
Speaker 0 | 10:50.968
yeah i do that’s why i was saying that facetiously i you know we i’m constantly learning or doing something with technology but But I do have a life and interest outside of the computers and the world there. And it was just, that’s one of the reasons that it stuck out to me was that, you know, and I just, it’s got to be fun being the ring announcer. You got to have some of the best seats, man.
Speaker 1 | 11:17.880
I have some great seats. And what’s really funny is, at least for me, you know, when I was a kid growing up, like most kids. My age, you know, you played baseball in the front yard with your friends and did a lot of those things like yard baseball or football or street hockey, stuff like that. And I was the kid to imagine we’re all playing and if we’re playing baseball, someone comes up to bat. I step away off of whatever field or yard we’re playing in and I would announce them like we were playing at like Dodger Stadium. But, you know, playing at the the big A in Anaheim because I’m from California originally. And I always did that from the age of like four. And it was one of those things to where I was called out of the blue, like I said, five or six years ago by a company in Oklahoma. And they were like, hey, we need a ring announcer. We heard you have a voice. Do you want to do it? And for me, it was like childhood dream come true. Yes, I’ll do it. And it was at this hole-in-the-wall VFW bar in Clinton, Oklahoma. And there was, I think, maybe 50 or 60 people there. And I went full just, you know, I acted like we were in Square Garden. Like, I went full on for these guys and girls that fought. And since then, they were like… holy crap, you’re pretty good. So I just kind of move around and find other promotions. And right now, like I said, with Sparta doing it, and for me, kind of Sparta is that top tier rung. Like, I don’t have an, I have a career in IT. That’s why we’re having this conversation. So I don’t want to go, I don’t want to go to, you know, join some other organizations and do it. But if the opportunity is there, I will. and I’ll continue to do my IT work.
Speaker 0 | 13:24.464
Yeah, I mean, our world has changed a little bit and our ability to do multiple things from different places has definitely expanded. Although I am definitely a believer in switch tasking versus multitasking. What are your thoughts about that? Because I find myself really failing if I try to do that, air quotes, multitasking, doing two things.
Speaker 1 | 13:51.423
at the same time you know that’s uh it’s actually very good it i guess it depends on what you’re doing it’s how i feel about it right um i i times where multitasking um is easy for me to do um but typically that’s you know in the environment like here at you know here at 1888 I find it fairly easy to multitask with a bunch of the different duties that come with being a director of IT and the technology piece. But then if you start to bleed in, you know, anything that’s kind of outside of the scope of technology, then I tend to follow you to where, you know, multitasking is out the window. And now we’re just going to focus on the tasks as they come up. and kind of try to stay focused that way. When you get that bleed over, it’s a double-edged sword because that bleed over can be a downfall, and then sometimes it can be amazing. You know, as we continue to work on… complex issues in the IT field, there’s a lot of times to where when you take that step back and you focus on another task, a light bulb will go off. It could be related to the other task or not, but that refocus tends to help you out what another solution would be or find outside of the box ideas to come up with new ways to do things. And that’s how the innovation keeps going.
Speaker 0 | 15:34.294
Definitely. I experienced a lot of that too. You know, I kind of walk back my statement a little bit. Like I can listen to a podcast or an audio book while I’m driving and I don’t have a problem with that multitasking. But if I’m trying to listen to the same podcast or audio book while working on an issue at work, I quickly find myself much more focused on the task. And like half an hour I’ll go by in the book and I know that I have not listened to anything in that time period. It’s been playing in my ears. It’s been going on, but I have not heard or retained any of it. And so that’s where I was thinking. And like what you’re talking about with the multiple tasks at the office, you know, I’ll have many tasks that need to be accomplished in a day, but I can only focus on one and give it my true attention. And then I have to disengage from that one and then move to the next one. I can’t, I’m not very good at juggling too. I thought I was, but I’ve come to realize that the lack of focus causes issues with both.
Speaker 1 | 16:44.201
Yeah, no, and I think it depends too on what that task is, right? Like there’s going to be times to where, and I’m sure you’ve experienced it as well, to where you can bite those two tasks. But then there’s a bunch of times where you can’t. And to me, that’s kind of where time management comes into play to figure out your priorities and things like that. And then structuring the time around those or your day around those, depending on how big they are and what the impacts are. And that’s when I run into those things all the time, I have. I am blessed in my office to have a giant wall that they painted with the whiteboard paint. So you could draw all over my walls and all over my walls. I have, you know, those little side notes. You know, I do have like most people. I do have a form of ADHD, but I have it’s not hyperactive. It’s hypo. So it’s kind of the reverse of, and I have all these little scatter notes all over my wall that help me with those things. Because it’ll be like that to where, okay, I can’t focus on this. I’ll jot it down real quick. And then when I go to build my schedule for later in the day or for the next week or whatever it is, I kind of use those notes to kind of guide and structure what’s going to get worked on and when it’s going to get worked on.
Speaker 0 | 18:19.140
Okay. Um, tell me a little more about your, some of your history. Tell me, um, about where you started and how you got into it. And, and, you know, you talked about being an announcer and how that was kind of a dream from the beginning. How did, how did you end up, um, telling other nerds what to do?
Speaker 1 | 18:41.301
So, you know, again, an interesting story. Um, so I was never really a computer. nerd, so to speak, growing up. It wasn’t until I was probably about 13 or 14 years old. My mom was working for retirement bank doing IRAs and 401ks. And she had been working there for probably 10 to 15 years at that point. And she would bring home every year, a bunch of outdated computer equipment. So the bank would pull out hard drives and say, hey, we have all these computers. You guys can take them. And my mom would take them and bring them home. So I had a basement full of literal just junk computers that had, you know, some pieces here, some pieces there. And I, you know, one day was sitting downstairs and… looking at them and going, I wonder what it would take to take these apart and fix them and put them back together and do all that. So I kind of self-taught. Again, this is a time before, you know, Google and YouTube and all of that. You know, you’re reading, I mean, it’s very, very early internet to where everything was blog posts because it was still, you know, kind of DOS based. And you had to know exactly where you were going for things. So, you know, a lot of it was computer articles and a lot of computer articles, a lot of articles about computers in old magazines. Right. and stuff like that. And then just talking around with friends and everything like that. So I took this wall full of computers and would Frankenstein them and put them back together and make them work. And, you know, I always looked at it more as a hobby or something to do after school as a teenager. And then, you know, you kind of fast forward through life and about 15 years ago, 17 years ago, actually. Um, I ended up getting a job at that same place. My mom was working and I started as, um, just a normal processor inputting, you know, customer client names and, and addresses and opening up their IRA accounts for their retirements. And I did that for a couple of years, um, and still would mess around with computers on the side at home and, and everything like that. And, uh, Just one day out of the blue, they had posted internally a position for help desk and kind of a light bulb went off and went, wait a second. I can actually make money doing what I really enjoy doing on the side, like doing at home. It was something I never put together. I mean, my first job, I worked at Sam Goody as a kid in high school. So that tells you how old I am. For those of you that don’t know, Sam Goody was a place where you could buy records, which are those big vinyl things that are making a comeback right now. And at the time, cassette tapes and some CDs. So it was a music store. You didn’t go to iTunes. We didn’t have that way back then. So I always did stuff like that and customer-facing, customer service jobs. And then when this came up, it was… that realization. And at this company, I had some absolutely amazing human beings, managers, David Sokol, one of them, Chris Kelly, another one. These guys really kind of took me under their wing and taught me. very basic help desk things, but then gave me tools to be like, figure out what you want to do. They would put me in situations to learn as much as I could and figure out ways that I wanted to go. And one of the cool things for me was coming from the world of being an actual end user, a customer. It gave me a perspective to go for IT groups to go, hey. We may not think this is a priority, but this is how things work. And these are the procedures for our end users, for people on the floor, for customer care, for this, for that. And this is why this would be a higher priority or a bigger issue. So because of that background and having those conversations, it helps then kind of better the IT organization in a whole because we can refocus on things and start to solve problems. in a different way where now all of a sudden, you know, IT is no longer the black sheep in a, in a company that’s always getting blamed for stuff, but they’re going, wow, they’ve been a lot more responsive. They’ve been this there’s they’re driving, you know, some, some change in innovation. And that really bit me with that bug to go, all right, you know, I want to obviously continue to grow my career here and I want to get, you know, as is. far as I can go and learn as much as I can. So I, at that point in time and with those managers and the people that I had that, that trained me and kind of, you know, brought me into the family of IT, they taught me, you can never learn too much. There’s no one that will ever know everything about IT. I know there’s some of us out there that like to say that. But the, the, The truth is Google is a friend and it’s a friend for a reason because you can’t remember everything. Um, and one thing I’ve found through all of that is, you know, as long as you can say, I don’t know, but I will find out if you don’t say no, but you say, I don’t know, let me find out. It’s a huge difference for people. And it shows that now you want to learn and you’re going to figure out a solution to the issues and the problems and whatever they are. And it goes from there. So, I mean, it’s just been, again, because of my customer service background and all the other jobs that I had had and then going into the IT field. You know, I am, there’s a few of us out here, a few extroverts that are in the IT field, but we’re few and far between. But I am one of those. And yeah, it’s just, it’s been, it’s been a journey to go through and it’s helped, helped push me to where I’m at now.
Speaker 0 | 25:57.885
You know, my… I always associate myself with a geek versus a nerd. And I think that really has to do with the fact that when I was growing up, you know, Revenge of the Nerds was out. And so the stereotypical nerd was the guy with the pocket protector, skinny, super tall, and total geek and not physical at all. And half of the people on my team are fitness focused. And… Um, there are more and more extroverts getting into our field too. Um, so that some of that is breaking, but there are those ones that still like to just, you know, the introverts you’re right. Um,
Speaker 1 | 26:46.817
I, I would like to say real quick to that point. I am a proud member of Lambda, Lambda, Lambda, because we’re friends of the nerds. So
Speaker 0 | 26:57.861
I don’t mind. identifying as a nerd but my kids have told me that a definition of a nerd and i’ve heard it both ways now that a nerd is somebody who finds something and becomes super knowledgeable about that one thing so you know an anime nerd or you know it’s not just a technology nerd it doesn’t just mean that that you know technology now it can be any given topic yeah you know
Speaker 1 | 27:28.078
that’s interesting. I always looked at it kind of the reverse. Like, if you knew a lot about a topic like anime or, you know, IT for that matter, or, you know, whatever it may be, I always looked at that as, you’re a geek. And to your point, I always associated nerd with Revenge of the Nerds. The pocket protector. Yep. Pocket protector. Take on the glasses. uh you know uh the daily swirlies uh stuff like that so but i mean obviously that definition has changed and the interpretation has changed over over the decades but i mean like i have a 16 year old daughter who is an absolute anime geek right like she is 100 in i couldn’t tell you one thing from another when it comes to anime but She will fire these things off. She does the cosplay and the makeup and the dress up and all of that. But to me, that’s, no, you are a total geek with this stuff, right? But again, it’s just, I think it’s also regional based. Like everyone grows up what you consider a geek and a nerd. But, you know, there’s so much bleed over there where they really could be both the same thing.
Speaker 0 | 28:50.841
Yeah, they can. I mean, it definitely is. is just kind of a personal preference and experiential. You know, that was something else that I, I think you and I kind of both grew up in that time where movies were, you got to see them at the theater while they were out. Otherwise you missed it. You watched the three, maybe four channels of TV that were out there for a while. And. There was no time slipping of shows. So if you missed that episode, it was years before it went into reruns. So we had a shared experience back then. And now there’s so much out there that the experiences, people can choose the experiences and the when they consume them.
Speaker 1 | 29:47.244
Yeah, it’s and that’s so. It’s so fascinating and it’s so cool. I mean, that just shows you, again, from an IT perspective, the innovation that exists, the cloud-based. stuff and kind of all of this remote access stuff that that really does morph into you know what what you use on a daily basis for work purposes in corporate jobs or jobs that require you kind of more of that traditional office type thing um and a lot of that you can really attribute to you know the the tech like a netflix and and like even you know before the netflix the red box That was the initiative or the big innovative thing. And then you get the Netflix and now you have all of these streaming things. But then if you look at tech that kind of goes along with it, we totally take our cues from those industries and those innovations on. Now you have things like your shared OneDrives and SharePoint and Google Drive and things like that. to be able to get access on demand to now your files and folders and shared content. So it’s very much kind of the same thing. And it’s so interesting to see where, again, the entertainment pieces go because we’re not far behind in doing something very similar in the IT field.
Speaker 0 | 31:19.849
Right. I’m trying to think of how the well, one of the things that’s my organization and even I’m still struggling to adapt to or leverage as well as I can, but like the multi-tenancy. So having the shared documents and having everybody work from the same file can be a great, actually, I haven’t found the downside of it yet because with the auto versioning and everything else that’s out there, you can always get back to where it was. But instead of the…
Speaker 1 | 31:58.352
15 or 500 copies of it that get thrown around in email that are static so here’s something very interesting that it with you bringing that up with this is actually in here at 1888 and in the oil and gas industry this is a big deal so one of the biggest issues so i which again it’s not necessarily an issue because to your point you’ve got the auto saves and you’ve got the restore points on documents and and everything like that but here just as an example we have a uh a dreaded excel spreadsheet that is probably 10 years old that has all of these formulas and all of this data and so i know All you IT people out there and people getting into the industry, you’re going to find these all over the place. These are the dreaded sheets where you’re like, no, why are we doing it this way? But that’s how they’ve done it here for so long. So these sheets, if they open up on, so we use OneDrive here at 1888 and SharePoint. So when you open up for the document on the shared drive. it automatically, even if you have autosave on, it’ll start to refresh and say, hey, there was a change made, someone opened it. They may not have changed anything yet, but it’s going to do that across the board. One of the things that we have found here is that if two people open up the same document, a lot of people here like to turn autosave off so they can make changes and not push the change up to the cloud. They don’t impact any of that stuff. But when they do that, it ends up creating that local copy, like you were talking about, like it’s shared in emails all over the place. And changes still get made on the actual autosave. And we have seen a couple times, oh, I go to save the changes on my offline one. Oh, there were other changes. Do you want us to merge these? Okay, merge them. But it doesn’t always happen that way. So we end up with a lot of times where we get that document that, hey, I just worked on this thing for three hours and made all these changes and they were there. And now all of a sudden, an hour later, they’re gone. And that’s because someone overwrote that file with their auto saved one or with their non auto saved one. Right. So, oh,
Speaker 0 | 34:44.394
man.
Speaker 1 | 34:45.654
Yes. So. Again, it’s a fairly easy thing to fix then. It’s like, all right, restore, take this one, merge them, right? There’s that manual piece that you have to do there. But that is one of the challenges that we’ve seen here.
Speaker 0 | 35:06.192
um and the other imagine the nightmare on that one when somebody doesn’t realize like they make their changes on a friday afternoon take monday and tuesday off and then by then multiple other people have touched this thing worked on it and then they open it up and go where’s all my stuff and then trying to untangle that mess oh
Speaker 1 | 35:28.105
man tell you what that has been a you It’s really a tale of my life every two to three weeks is that something like that tends to happen. No. So you try to build policies and procedures and try to educate the users as best you can. And this is how the documents work. Here’s a best practice. Here’s what we want to do.
Speaker 0 | 35:54.415
Yep.
Speaker 1 | 35:57.457
As we all know, users are users. And I can say that as a user. in the IT and be like, they don’t know what they’re talking about. I’d still do it my way. It would break. And I’d be like, I totally should have listened to them. It’s how users still are today. And so the same thing happens. And quite literally, yesterday, this exact same thing happened. I had our CFO come into my office and go, I’m pulling different data than what, you know. one of our accountants are pulling. And sure enough, that’s exactly what happened. The accountant was working off a locally stored copy of whatever spreadsheet they were on. And yes, it’s pointing at the server and it’s supposed to be pulling the data out of the database, but he’s not updating that sheet. And because he’s not updating and saving that change, Whoever just opens this file, they’re going to see the historical data, not the new stuff. And that’s kind of where a lot of this went. And trying to explain that to both the CFO and one of the accountants, they were like, but if it’s coming from this place, it should all be the same. And it’s not putting together that you’re not wrong, but you’re referencing a file. And where’s your file at? And that’s the first thing it’s going to do. Yeah.
Speaker 0 | 37:30.032
Oh, man. And try to explain that one sometimes. And because, of course, their computers are probably desktop computers in different rooms. It’s not very easy for you to bring them right next to each other and say, look, look at where this one is. Look at where that one is. You’re having to grab them by the hand and bring them from office to office if you can.
Speaker 1 | 37:51.629
The great thing here is, and this is a lot of places and you can think pandemic for it, but a lot of places. finally went all right we’re going full laptop um and really phased out desktops and 1888 was one of those to where it was hey we got to continue to do work remotely everyone gets a laptop and they quickly phased out all of their desktops so um here now there are zero desktops in this entire environment um and because of that one of the things i was able to do um you you know, very quickly into my tenure here was migrate full off of on-prem AD to Azure Cloud AD. Now everything here is 100% cloud. We have no on-site servers. We have a couple of virtual servers for some of our things, but nothing on-prem. It has completely lightened that footprint and that budget piece from an IT perspective. So, you know. the board looks at it and they go, hey, you have saved us X amount of money a year because we don’t have to pay for maintenance or change this equipment or do this and do that. So for them, it’s great. For me, from an IT perspective, it just grows, again, where we can go and where we can actually do things from. So we’re not, you know, we have offices, but we’re not tied to them anymore.
Speaker 0 | 39:25.496
So I want to step back into another, an earlier part of our conversation. We were talking about how, where you came from, where you came into IT. And I heard something and we talked about it a little bit before this interview. And that was that, so you came from a world of customer service and some of your earliest managers gave you lots of opportunities to learn and to grow. And you mentioned how you’ve brought that forth in your career and you’re using that as one of your primary tenets of leadership. So tell me a little more about that.
Speaker 1 | 40:08.512
Yeah. So again, with my everything, and I always joke with people, they’re like, what have you done in your careers? And I’m like, it’s easier to ask me what I haven’t done because that list is a lot shorter and easier to go through. So I’ve been exposed to a lot of different things, a lot of different ways of doing business, a lot of different ways on how to lead people and manage people. So like, let me kind of preference everything with saying, you know, I played team sports. I am one of those kids. I played baseball and hockey and soccer my entire life and through high school up to college. And the idea of team always instilled in me. And because of that, you kind of learn like. on a sports team you know there’s going to be leaders on the sports team and those are the guys that kind of help rally and push and and teach and do all of those things and I kind of always gravitated that way now I wasn’t always the best player on the field you know nine times out of ten I wasn’t you know in the top ten but I had the skill and the knowledge of what needed to get done and And was very good at working with teammates and stuff to where, you know, that leadership type of ability started to come out. In IT, when I ran into the managers that really took me under the wing, they still understood that concept of team and what it means to be on a team and what it means to be a true leader. I think we’ve all seen the memes and stuff out there about, you know, a manager. There’s the one I could think of. Stick figures, the guy sitting in a throne, and it says manager, and it shows people pulling him. And then it has the one with leader where the guy’s not in the chair, but he’s in front of the guys, and they’re all pulling it together. And I think that’s one of the better illustrations if you’re just trying to picture it, what the difference between managing and is. So I tend to do that in my style of… management leadership. It’s very much the lead by example, lead by doing. And a lot of that, again, I learned from those early IT managers. And it’s, again, when I bring on new staff or we’re looking to hire and bring them on, to me, I don’t necessarily care about what your experience is. What I care about is, do you have knowledge? Do you know where to look or what to do if you don’t have the knowledge? And Google. And I’ve said that in interviews. I actually said that in my interview for 1888. They were like, what do you do with this? And they asked some very, very long technical question. And I looked at them and I go, honestly, with how much things change in IT, I honestly can’t remember what the proper way to do that would be. So honestly, I would pull up. you know, web browser, I’d pull up Google and I’d find the most current way to do this. And that’s how I’d fix that problem. And you know what? Most people, most managers, senior leadership, C-level, 100% will be, thank you for that honesty. And like it shows big, that’s what they want, right? They want people that are going to be honest and upfront with them. And so I teach that. um, with people that I bring on is don’t know, tell me you don’t know. And then let’s put you in a situation or in a spot to where and no, and we can learn and let me give you resources to do that. And no, here’s this. And here’s that. I’m not a guy who sits in my office and closes the door all day and says, don’t talk to me. I’m a guy that has my door open. Literally. Out of a 10 hour day, my door is open nine and a half hours. The half hour it’s closed is because I’ve had enough and I feel like going off the space on the equipment in my office. But, you know, other than that, like come in and talk to me, come in and ask the questions. And I’m very much one of those. And I will when something comes up, I go sit with my guys and I go, OK, where are we at? What’s going on? What’s your trouble? What’s your stopping point? What are you dealing with? And it’s not just in a professional level. There’s a lot of personal stuff these guys and girls deal with, too. And it bleeds into work. Like I always tried a long time ago to go, look, when you walk in the door, as soon as you hit the door, you leave your personal stuff in a bag outside, leave for the day, pick it back up. And that’s so much easier said than done.
Speaker 0 | 45:26.589
Oh, yeah.
Speaker 1 | 45:27.850
And so you’re always going to have that kind of bleed through and bleed over. So we’re human. Show it. Right. Don’t be afraid to just be like. I’m having a rough day. Or if you’re a manager, if you’re in the role, guys, I’m here for you. Door is open. We can close it and talk if we have to. Tell me what I can do to help you. Tell me what I can do to assist you and get past this, whatever it may be. But I’m big at giving them tools. I’m big at putting people in opportunities to learn more. you know if i have a brand new uh i do this a lot with we get a lot of interns so we’re in greeley colorado we’re right up the street from um the university of northern colorado unc here in greeley um and we do internships and i’m very big on this with with the interns when they come in is it goes you know about what you learned in school because that is about 10 years old already um And that’s the unfortunate thing with schools. It’s going to teach you all that old stuff. So it goes, let’s let’s forget that. And and let’s start over. But what do you know? Show me what you know on a computer. Show me where the physical stuff is. If you don’t know, that’s fine. I’m going to sit here and take the time to teach you like I’m not. It’s not below me. I still as a director now will get under desks and plug in cables. No, I don’t want to be a a 50, 60 year old director or eventual CIO or anything like that, that is getting under a desk. If I have to, I will, right? Like it’s not beneath me. And I think that’s a big thing for people in leadership roles, management roles, or even people that are just getting into the field or aspiring to advance, that you’re not going to leave something behind. The second you leave something behind is the second you kind of, you throw in the towel and you start to lose a little bit of who you are internally and what got you to where you’re at.
Speaker 0 | 47:49.666
You know, the philosophy I like to throw out there is follow up, follow through. Because that leaving something behind, you know, I like to make sure that whoever I’m helping agrees that whatever we were working on is done. And then I’ll come back real soon after that. Hey, everything’s still good. And that’s the follow up. And then follow through is coming back like two weeks later because there’s so many times that that they hold on to problems. The people just find some different kind of workaround or or just continue to struggle with the problem versus asking for help. You know that that saying, I don’t know. And the skill of asking for help seem to be those weird things that many of us are afraid to admit. Hey, I need some help. Or, hey, I don’t know, but I’ll go figure it out. Let’s go.
Speaker 1 | 48:51.374
No, and that’s so big. I think to kind of add to that, the biggest thing I tell people, and I truly do practice this myself, and I do because I’ve worked. with my mom um it’s 100 how would i explain this to my mom and then how would i help my mom right so it’s very much to your point that you know the the following through on it um and then you know and doing the extra follow-up taking that extra step to me it’s that’s exactly what i would do with my mom or my dad right or even my grandparents um No, I will take the time. They don’t necessarily understand tech. I will take the time to sit there and explain it to them. I will take the time. And I literally do this with everyone I go sit to, depending on what the issue is. If it’s something that user can fix themselves without admin, like something as simple as changing your display orientation. Do I take the time and sit there and go, all right, here’s how we can do this in the future. This is. probably how this happened, why you ran into this issue. You know what? Here’s a quick way for you to fix it. And if they remember, great. If they don’t, great. But I would do that for my mom, right? Like I’m going to sit there and take the time. You know, people call it white glove, like a white glove customer service experience or something like that. But to me, it’s just like, my mom is one of the most important people in my life. You know, my dad, most important people in my life. I’m going to take the time and make sure that it works right. and works the way they need it to before I disengage. And once I disengage, to your point, there’s always that follow-up. Hey, is everything still going all right? Have you run into that issue again? What’s going on? And 100%, I’ve done that from the very beginning. So like I said, almost 17 years total now, I believe, in IT as a whole. And it’s been every day, every year. Everyone is my mom or my dad, and that’s how I treat them. And it’s such a different experience, even for us in IT, when you get that from them, because things do get tough. And IT does get the stuff that rolls downhill on us quite frequently. All the time. Right. But when you tend to have a relationship with your vendors, with your clients, that shows that you actually do have that type of care, the empathy that you show for what the issue is. I’ve heard you guys talk about this in the podcast a lot. To users, their issue is the most important thing in the world. 100%. They don’t care what else is going on. If they can’t do one thing, that’s the most important thing. So to me, as soon as I’m able to get to that person, again, like treating them like my parents, that is the most important issue on the planet to me at the time then. And I’m going to treat it as such, right? If to them it’s the end of the world, to me, as soon as I’m there, it’s the end of the world. Armageddon is happening. The gates have opened up,
Speaker 0 | 52:41.043
right?
Speaker 1 | 52:42.503
And that’s how I’m going to act and behave and resolve their issue with that 100% focus. Now, in the back of my mind, and honestly, am I really like, did I run out of my office right away to do this? No, no, I did not, right? There is a hierarchy in a way things work, but as soon as you get to them, if you make them feel like, oh, you actually believe what my issue is. Oh, you understand that this is the end of the world. I can’t do this. And you’re acting like that. When stuff rolls downhill on IT, they’re a lot more forgiving to be like, oh, no, they get it. They’ve just had quite a bit to do. There’s been a lot. And I’ve seen that all of the places I’ve been. That is one of the great things with it. is it kind of starts to change that culture and that persona of IT to where it becomes, no, they care. So then the company starts to care right back and starts to give you a little bit more grace, a little bit more leeway when it comes to the downhill stuff. So it just helps soften blows. So basically, just with all of that being said and everything else, you just got to treat them, you know, really how you would treat your parents or you would treat anybody else. They always use the term customer service, right? And I tend to use it as well, but I try to go more where I think of it as a guest service instead of a customer service, right? Like a guest in your home, you’re going to treat them with a little bit more dignity and respect, not that you’re not going to do that anyway at their desk or anything like that. If you treat them like they’re a guest in your home or you treat them like it’s your parents or family members, things tend to work out just a little bit better.
Speaker 0 | 54:44.048
Yeah, you know, I’ve actually never really heard of it in that sense of as guest service. You know, I think of some of the resorts and places that I’ve been and they always push that kind of a culture. And you’re right. That’s I prefer to receive that kind of service. And I’m much more appreciative of it. And when somebody’s trying and putting that. level of service into it, I’m willing to forgive a little bit more of the outcome not being perfect with that kind of service. But it also is something that I’m much more appreciative of too.
Speaker 1 | 55:26.572
Yeah. And the users, you know, they are our customers right at the end of the day and they show that same appreciation. You know, it could… It could be many different things, but to your point, yeah, when we go on a vacation and you’re at a resort or anything like that, that’s exactly what it is. You are a lot more forgiving to things that happen in those situations because of the way they go about it. So I try to do that. Again, in the help desk area, you do it when you’re dealing with network issues, anything that you have going on from the IT perspective. If you could handle things a little bit. it differently like that, like I’ve said, it tends to work out just a little bit better.
Speaker 0 | 56:14.914
You know, I was talking with a co-worker just the other day and asking him about some of the service that we were providing. And he was telling me that he didn’t think that the co-workers on the IT team felt like it was end of the world, Armageddon’s coming. And afraid that they’re going to lose their jobs if they don’t get this fixed. And I was thinking to myself, you know what? I’m kind of glad that that’s the case. When I’m working with, you just brought up networking, and that’s why I’m thinking this. When I’m talking to that network technician that I’m trying to get help from to get a site connected again, I want them on my side as an ally, not as somebody that I’m beating up and trying to get them. I’m threatening them to get the connection fixed so that they can get the blinky light blinking and get me off the phone as fast as possible. I want them involved in the problem and owning it as much as I am.
Speaker 1 | 57:25.065
Right. Yeah, and that’s the biggest thing to that last point, owning it, right? If something’s not working from the IT perspective for us, own it. I don’t know how many times I sit in front of a customer and go, oh, this is completely our mess up. We pushed out updates. Apparently, we didn’t catch this in the test environment. So I apologize for this inconvenience. Let’s go ahead and take care of it. But you do it. There’s no reason to sit there and be like, well, I don’t know what the issue is when you know darn well what it is. Again, this just all plays into the same perspective of. As long as you’re going to be upfront and honest and transparent with not only your end users, but then management, executive leadership that you’re going to work with, those are the things that count for you when things are going wrong. Oh, you know what? We trust that he’s going to get this resolved the right way, and we know he’s not going to sit there and make excuses about it. He’s not going to pass the buck somewhere else. He’s not going to say that this is an issue when it’s ours, right? It’s like, he’s going to own it or she’s going to own it, whoever’s working on it. So it’s an easier thing said than done, right? Like there’s always, there’s always those instances where you look at it and you’re like, you know what, uh, telling my wife that I, uh, had to work a little bit longer, uh, instead of going to the comic book store, um, which I do quite frequently. Um, you know, nerd you know what she’s exactly uh she’s she’s not gonna get mad right like oh an extra 20 minutes at work instead of her knowing that you know i’m spending 20 minutes picking out comic books um or baseball cards for that matter i do that as well um but we think that and then at the end of the day you’re like why did i is it really that big of a deal that it was 20 minutes at the store And you kind of transfer that into the work environment. You go, is it really a big deal that we go, oh, we didn’t catch this break of an update in our test environment. We’re catching it now. Right. Like, again, that shows that you’re taking ownership of whatever the issue is, whatever the problem is, and then that you’re taking the steps to fix it and correct it and keep it from happening in the future. Right. And those are the things, again, just as a whole. if you kind of look at it that way, it just, it’s kind of a little bit of a light bulb moment to go, you know what? I wouldn’t want. If my internet’s not working in my house, I don’t want them to say, well, we don’t know what the issue is and pass the buck. You know, if they cut a line doing construction, then tell me you cut a line doing construction. Right. And that’s happened. I don’t know how many times we have an office in Midland, Texas. And down there, it’s growing so much in the oil and gas business. We have a line cut, it seems, probably once a month from them doing some type of construction down there. And, you know, the. It’s great. The company we work with down there is when it happens and we report the issue, you know, within an hour, it’s usually a call back going up. Yep. It looks like a construction crew in the area nicked one of the lines, broke some of the fiber. We’re dispatching someone out to replace the line and it’s usually back up and running within a couple hours. But I want to continue doing business with that company as our Internet provider because they haven’t sat there and tried to, you know, pass off something. And it’s the same in our industry. You’re going to get people that come back to you or want to keep working with you because you have that level of transparency and honesty.
Speaker 0 | 61:18.657
So if you could summarize that thought into a sentence, what would you come up with?
Speaker 1 | 61:25.763
Summarize it into a sentence. I realize what I’m asking you, man. 100%. But I’ll take a golden rule that we all learned as kids. Do unto others. Yeah.
Speaker 0 | 61:42.213
How about what, have you heard the platinum rule?
Speaker 1 | 61:46.755
I’m afraid I’m not familiar with this one.
Speaker 0 | 61:49.596
It’s a new twist on it. You know, the do unto others as you’d have them do unto you. But I’ve heard this one referred to as the platinum rule is to. not treat others how you’d want to be treated yourself, but to treat others the way they want to be treated. And it’s one of the newer sayings, I think, coming from that younger generation that we talked about a little bit, but they also started to learn that work-life balance too. So what about other thoughts? You got any other thoughts or things that you want to help pass on to others or, you know, those critical lessons? that it took you years of blood, sweat, and crawling under desks to recognize?
Speaker 1 | 62:38.237
Yeah, you know, one of the first things, a little bit of a story, kind of. Several years ago, I was doing an interview trying to find a new tech to bring in, and part of the interview process, we have you meet with the team, see how, you know. see how things are going to work. And we have them ask questions to see how your thought process works. And one of the people that we interviewed, one of the questions I like to ask just to see how your brain works is, you know, you’re working on a Windows 10 computer and all of a sudden get the blue screen of death, B-S-O-D. And I called it B-S-O-D for a reason. I didn’t say blue screen. I just said, working on the Windows 10. get a bsod what do you do and the response from the interviewee was what’s bsod and for me that was like oh you’ve got to be kidding me like this is this is the blue screen like 100 and so you kind of explain it you go oh well blue screen they’re like oh i’ve never heard it called bsod before i completely reimagined a computer and to me it was like you all right, so this person throws their hands up when they run into a problem. If you don’t know what a blue screen of death is, B-S-O-D, it’s when Windows gives you that dreaded blue screen. And in the bottom corner, typically in the bottom left-hand corner, you have a little code that tells you, hey, error happened because driver X failed or whatever it may be.
Speaker 0 | 64:25.962
Yeah, there’s all kinds of different reasons for those, folks, if you’re not familiar with them.
Speaker 1 | 64:31.943
Right. So one of the things there is, hey, there’s a tip, right? And I did it in the interview. It was, all right, so when you get the screen, you have the code there. So it doesn’t mean that the computer’s toast. It doesn’t mean that something is completely wrong. It means we need to do a little bit of digging and figure out, was it a driver update? Was it? a printer was, you know, something failed within that software wise, typically that we just need to refresh. Um, and that’s it. And that’s the biggest thing I’ll tell anybody is. No matter what your issue is, you can’t jump straight to, up, I have to re-image your computer. Up, we have to reset a network router. You have to go through the steps. And I am a 100% true believer in the OSI model, right? Following those seven steps, the seven tiers. And you could do that with… Any single one of our issues that we run into in the tech space. And really, you can use the same principles when you run into issues. You know, if you’re working with projects that intertwine between departments, like with software deploys, things like an ERP solution, if you need to do one of those and deploy that, or voice solutions. No matter what it is, if you follow this basic model, right, you’re going to be able to. work to the right solution without really skipping anything or just going, Oh, I don’t know what it is. Go to the end. Right. And that’s how you’re going to learn. Put yourself in the fire, right? Like 100%. If I have an issue on anything, tinker around with it. Don’t be afraid to break a computer, honestly, because the worst thing you’re going to do when you break it is all right, we’re going to have to reimage it.
Speaker 0 | 66:39.758
As long as you don’t release the magic smoke.
Speaker 1 | 66:42.821
Right. And again, caveat to this, make sure you back up whoever’s data is on there before you take her around. I’ve been there before, too. Yeah.
Speaker 0 | 66:55.352
Please save a copy of everything.
Speaker 1 | 66:59.556
You know what? Let that be the new platinum rule. Save the data. Please. um, then that, I mean, as long as people are willing to not accept failure, because failure is 100% going to happen. Right. So accept it, embrace it and learn from that. Don’t, don’t get disturbed from it. If you break your computer, once go back to that state where you were at before you bricked it and try again. Don’t try the same thing.
Speaker 0 | 67:35.846
You remind me of another saying that we have out there, and I’m going to have to nicen it up just a little bit because we try not to cuss too much on the podcast, but RTFM. And to flip that towards what you’re saying, and I don’t know how many users on the floor do this immediately, but RTFM, read the flippin’error message. Because there’s so many times they see an error message and they… I swear, they just throw their hands up, oh, IT! And it’s something like, hey, this recipient does not exist at the destination system. And they’re just like, oh, this is an IT problem. It’s an error. And no, you misspelled Mike. It’s usually M-I-K-E, not M-K-I-E.
Speaker 1 | 68:30.021
Not just for tech people, for normal users.
Speaker 0 | 68:33.126
For everybody.
Speaker 1 | 68:35.567
Mike, I run into that on a daily basis here at 1888 to where it’s things like that. Oh, I can’t send email. And you go over and look and you’re like, that’s not our email address. What? Oh, I thought I typed it right. Like, 100%. Take a moment.
Speaker 0 | 68:54.575
Breathe. Read the whole thing. Look and see what you can understand. And just like you were talking about with the BSOD, look at the error message, search for the error message, and see what comes up. Because it may be something simple. You may only have to go in and edit the registry.
Speaker 1 | 69:15.470
Right. And to be honest, I mean, every time something like that happens, I quote, it’s an older movie quote from a comedy. And I know most of us IT professionals. This is a favorite pastime of ours to trade movie quotes. And so the one I go with in this instance is it’s called reading. Left to right, up and down, you put words together to make a sentence. And obviously, I can’t say that to my users or anything, but it’s the first thought in your head when you’re like, you totally misspelled this or didn’t put the right thing in. But again, take that as an example. Keep it light for yourself. Like there’s no reason to get stressed out over someone typing the wrong thing in an email, right? There’s. You’re going to get stressed regardless of what happens in your career path in this field, in any field for that matter. But you can tell yourself little stories, throw yourself little movie quotes, music lines, whatever works for you. And you’re going to get through the day a little bit happier, a little less stressed out. And you know what? Sometimes throw those movie lines at your customers, and it’ll catch them off guard, and they’ll laugh, and it’ll lighten the whole mood. Again. don’t be afraid to try new things. It kind of goes all right back to that.
Speaker 0 | 70:42.275
Yeah. Try new things. Don’t be afraid to fail because it’s the first step in learning and go and do.
Speaker 1 | 70:51.082
Absolutely.
Speaker 0 | 70:52.784
Do not be afraid to say, I don’t know.
Speaker 1 | 70:57.427
I don’t know. As long as you’re honest, I don’t know, but let me find out. Right. It goes back to one of the other things that people say a lot is like, don’t bring me just a problem. Bring me the problem and a potential solution.
Speaker 0 | 71:13.184
See, you’re twisting it a little bit. I keep hearing it lately as don’t bring me problems, bring me solutions. And I much prefer your approach because there’s sometimes where I get, I’ve got a hammer. So everything looks like a nail. And there are plenty of times where a shim. is what is needed versus a nail or a screw or trying to hammer a screw in. So, yeah, potential solution. Think it through and see if you can come up with something, and let’s see if we can make it even better.
Speaker 1 | 71:49.522
And if you can’t come up with one when you bring me the problem, then let’s talk about it, right? Like, set up a meeting. For me, it’s set up a 15-minute meeting, come in. Here’s the problem. I’m having trouble finding a solution for this. Do you have any thoughts? Like, let’s brainstorm it together. Let’s work it through. And I’m a big fan of the Pixar model, right, where it’s basically you knock down office cubicle walls, and you have more of that collaborative environment, you know, where you can actually look at somebody instead of a wall. I do that. I have a bullpen for my staff, and that bullpen is… just set up like that to where desks are not facing walls. We are facing each other. And it’s meant to drive those conversations to find different solutions and, you know, to work through different problems in a different way and give it a different perspective.
Speaker 0 | 72:47.935
Yeah, you make me think of something else that I want to bring up too. It’s not just, you know, what’s the problem, but also look for the goal. Ask for what the goal is, because there’s lots of times where… We get the problem and we get focused on the problem and not the goal. And typically between the problem and the goal is the solution.
Speaker 1 | 73:12.939
100% correct.
Speaker 0 | 73:16.100
And so it’s, you know, it’s something that I definitely try to remind all of the help desk guys. You got to know what their goal is because they’re going to give you a solution. But sometimes understanding the problem. Understanding the goal, we may have better tools to achieve it and faster and or it’s already solved. They just don’t know about it.
Speaker 1 | 73:39.289
Exactly. And that’s why don’t be afraid to ask those questions because I don’t know how many times in true story, we talk to each other all the time. You know, internally, externally, you know, we have our networking that we have. contacts with and everything like that. But I don’t know how many times maybe we’re running a problem through each other or, you know, trying to figure out a solution. And quite frankly, I’ll turn to my mom and she’ll be like, oh, I saw this commercial for this tool. And you’re like, I’d never heard of that. You look at it, you’re like, oh crap, that actually might work for what we’re looking for, you know? And, or if you’re old like me and you have kids. My oldest is 16, and she tinkers with computers and stuff all the time. I learn new stuff from her all the time. And you’re like, I’ve been doing this for 20-plus years at this point, tinkering with computers and everything else. And I have a 16-year-old who’s teaching me new technology that’s out there. She was actually the one who was showing me how chat GPT works. And I was like, holy, oh, my goodness. Like, this makes some… things a lot easier, could make things a lot harder. But that’s, you know what, that piece right there. Remember, in all the times that you try to make things easier for people. You’ve got to be, it’s a fine line because making things easier could very easily make things a lot harder.
Speaker 0 | 75:15.221
Yeah, I’ve complicated way too many things myself.
Speaker 1 | 75:18.603
Yeah, we all have, sir. We all have.
Speaker 0 | 75:22.744
All right. Hey, I saw something else in your resume that I thought was really kind of cool. So tell me a little more about Big Stewie.
Speaker 1 | 75:32.109
Well, for those of you that don’t know. or didn’t pay attention in the beginning. My last name is Stuart. And there’s a million Joshes in this world. And growing up, you know, we always tried to figure out, like I would have two or three different Joshes in each class as a kid. And it was always like, oh, so this one’s Josh, this one’s Joshua. We’ll call the other one, you know, whatever. And I was actually about three years old. And I only remember this because it’s on video. So there’s video proof of this that exists. But my father played professional baseball. He was drafted by the Mariners in the early 80s. He just played minor league ball with them before he became a police officer. But it was basically like a spring training game, batting practice thing. And on the tape, they’re calling him Stewie. And it kind of… from that point, there’s always that memory that goes, Oh, Stewie, Stewie, Stewie goes with the last name. Um, so they used to call him big Stewie. Um, he’s just a big muscular guy. And then, uh, for me growing up, it just kind of took hold in, in middle school, high school, where kids would start calling you Stewie based on the last name. Um, so I kind of took that and ran with it and just decided, uh, you know, when I was 16 years old and I loved music. I wanted to start, you know, playing music at parties. And it turned into doing it at weddings and bar mitzvahs and corporate events and everything else. And then you start thinking of names that go with it, you know, because you have like DJ Khaled. Shout out DJ Khaled. Follow me on Twitter because I have no followers. DJ Khaled, I will just steal all yours. Right. Or like. Diplo or Skrillex, like all these guys, all these musicians have names. So I just went to the well and went, you know what? People call me Stewie. All right. So DJ Stewie, which there’s already one that exists in the world. So I curse that person’s name every day. And I went, well, what else can I do? And I just took the line from my dad and went, big Stewie. All right. Big Stewie it is. So I go. by DJ Big Stewie when I do some of these events and stuff. And when I started doing that when I was 16, you know, you kind of have to start a DJ business because unfortunately the government wants to track everything that we do income wise and other ways, but that’s for a different day. And Big Stewie Entertainment was born. So I do quite a bit of nowadays. I don’t do necessarily like weddings or anything like that anymore. Um, but I do a lot of corporate events. I do a lot of charity events, um, every year. Um, and it’s a great way. And it, it honestly fits in with the announcing that we talked about earlier in the show. Um, you know, that’s kind of where people were like, oh, you have a, you have a voice for radio. Um, cause my face is not for TV and, and it just, it morphed from there and it was like, okay, I can do this. I can. I could turn on the radio voice. And all of a sudden it’s like, all right, well, now you can do the announcer. And so I started doing that. So they kind of bled together. And that’s really where all those opportunities, you know, started to come from. So, yeah, you ever need any DJ services in the Colorado region or in the mountain region? Honestly, I’ve done it all over the country. So feel free to reach out. The Real Big Stew. On Twitter, TheRealBigStew on Twitter. You can follow me there.
Speaker 0 | 79:31.576
Right on. Yeah, I was going to give you that chance and ask you, is there anything you wanted to promote? Got anything else you wanted to promote?
Speaker 1 | 79:39.339
So one other thing, if you don’t mind. So as I mentioned, my dad played baseball. He was also then a police officer after his baseball career. He just recently retired after 38 years in law enforcement. He retired as a deputy chief. He worked last with Loveland PD in Loveland, Colorado, and he has decided to dip his toes in the podcast waters. So he actually has a show. It’s really geared towards police officers. It covers search and seizure of the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution. And it’s really helpful for really anybody that has interest in it. You know, lawyers, police officers are just normal people. So it’s called The Corner. Website’s thecornerpod.com. You can find it on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Rumble. exists everywhere. So check that out. Or if you know anybody that, you know, works in law enforcement or wants to learn more about certain things from those aspects, you’ll pass it along. But again, that’s thecornerpod.com for the website. Again, podcast is called The Corner with Eric Stewart. And that’s it.
Speaker 0 | 80:53.373
Cool. Well, Josh, Stewie, it’s been a wonderful conversation. Thank you for the insights. Thank you for the time. Definitely been an enjoyable conversation. So thanking you from Dissecting Popular IT Nerds, Mike Kelly, your co-host. Everyone have a wonderful day. Thanks again, Josh.
Speaker 1 | 81:13.724
Thank you.
