Speaker 0 | 00:09.603

Oh, hello everybody and welcome to another Dissecting Popular IT Nerds. Today it’s Mike Kelly and we’ve got James Alves. And James is the IT manager at Trevino Group and has just fairly recently started there. So tell us a little more about what’s going on in your daily life, James.

Speaker 1 | 00:30.732

Hey, how’s it going, Mike? Thanks for having me on the show. And yeah, absolutely. So I started out at the Trevino Group, I’d say about eight months ago. And, you know, I met with them about their goals with what they wanted to complete with their IT department. Originally, they were with a managed service provider. And that’s kind of the IT model that they were on for the past three, four years, you know, they were letting an outside company manage their IT infrastructure. And so… They wanted to get away from that and build a IT department internally. And so that’s kind of where they brought me in. And that’s what I’ve been doing for the past eight months. And it’s been successful. We’ve made a lot of progress and we’re doing great.

Speaker 0 | 01:13.984

So, you know, I find that interesting because so often I hear this, the opposite direction. That they’re looking to outsource into an MSP for whatever different reasons. I know that way back in the early days of my career, we had a small period of time where we used an MSP, but the service level difference was so huge that the company quickly wanted to go back to the internal. So I’m wondering about the culture shift and what you’ve seen, because when you came in, it had to have been used to the MSP culture. And the new culture that you’re bringing in by having an internal department, what kind of changes have you seen? What’s it been like experiencing that?

Speaker 1 | 02:05.633

Right on. So, yeah, when I was first brought on, I was extremely busy, man, because, you know, whenever I was introduced into their environment, the first thing I wanted to do was just audit everything, man. And they have multiple offices. So it involved a lot of traveling, a lot of moving around, a lot of documentation on. what they’re using, what type of equipment, you know, just learning their environment and the way that they operate as a company. I had never actually, you know, worked in a construction management company before. So not only that, just learning their business culture and the way that they conduct business. And so they, you know, this particular company was unhappy with the services received from the previous MSP. And so, you know, they were like, hey, you know what, let’s, you know, start our own department up. And, you know. The employees there are used to, you know, hey, if I have an issue, I’m going to go ahead and just submit a ticket via email or, you know, call in and then they’ll just wait for a response on that ticket. And I guess the level of service they were receiving was, you know, dissatisfactory. And so they decided to just put a fork in that and start building up their internal IT department and then, you know, start hiring on their own, you know. IT professionals to manage the environment. And so it’s been great, man. It’s just kept me busy. And before actually I took this role, I was working at an MSP. And so I kind of have experience on both sides of the playing field and I like it.

Speaker 0 | 03:40.655

What kind of timelines shifted for the company? So when they were used to the MSP and putting in the help desk tickets, which has got to be a really good thing for starting up the IT department. You’ve already got everybody used to that, so that’s good. But except for the remote locations or the locations that you didn’t have people in-house for, you had to have decreased the amount of time it took from call to resolution.

Speaker 1 | 04:09.639

Yes, absolutely. So whenever I was introduced into the environment, I was introduced into the environment. There was also, you know, some culture change, the way that they like to do things. So before they were a big email. If I need something, I’m going to email someone. And, you know, now they’re using Microsoft Teams and they’re, you know, getting more into that instant messaging system. And so, you know, nine times out of ten, someone has an issue at any one of our locations, it’s resolved, you know, probably within five to ten minutes. And, you know, one of the things that I’d like to do whenever I come into a new environment is I like to look at the trends and the common issues that people have. That way I can kind of, you know, come up with a solution. So that way, you know, let’s say 50 percent of my issues are coming from this type of technical issue. If I come up with a solution, then, you know, 50 percent of my workload goes away when it comes to, you know, support tickets. And I can focus on more of the infrastructure side and trying to make. things more efficient for the employees and the environment and so um you know it was pretty um rigorous whenever it came to going out to each location and figuring out what each location required in order to operate efficiently and so um it was a definite culture change but um i’ve gotten it to a point now where you know it’s like a well-oiled machine everything’s running smooth and you know everyone’s happy everyone’s excited and you know they no longer get headaches over you know technical issues that you know they’re having so um

Speaker 0 | 05:44.759

I know that within our organization, people are expecting instant askers, just like you’re talking about, you know, that five to 10 minutes. How many locations are you talking about?

Speaker 1 | 05:56.905

So right now we currently have four locations. We got a corporate office here in Houston. We have an office up in Dallas, an office in Galveston, and then an office in San Antonio. So we’re kind of, you know, spread apart, you know, around Texas.

Speaker 0 | 06:11.473

Yeah. And then did you.

Speaker 1 | 06:14.963

bring staff in at every one of the locations or just mainly at the corporate and then they do remote assist yeah absolutely so uh mainly just here at the corporate office uh we probably have around 100 employees total so um you know once we start scaling more with employees we’ll hire on more individuals to you know manage the technical environment um one of the main things uh that i can talk about whenever they were with the MSP, whenever I was first brought on, there was still, you know, some overlap in that contract that they had with them. So I got to work with that MSP a little bit, do some offboarding with them. So it’s not like I was walking into an environment completely unknown, not knowing, you know, what the administrative credentials were for the domain controller or something like that. So I was able to, you know, do a little bit of offboarding with them and kind of get situated so that I, you know, didn’t walk into an environment completely unknown.

Speaker 0 | 07:12.467

Yeah, that’s good. That’s always helpful because walking into that environment and just having to pick up all of the toys, so to speak, that somebody else has left around on the floor and then try to figure it out from there is never an easy thing to do.

Speaker 1 | 07:29.999

Yeah, absolutely. I’m not going to say it was perfect because off-boarding with this MSP… company they do a lot of work in the cloud so they use microsoft azure and so uh you know being under that msps tenant and you know things of that nature it was a little rocky trying to get everything situated but um we got it to a point now where it’s good um and then obviously transferring all the equipment over to our side internally and and not being you know under their name and under their scope uh that was a task as well because um it was I can kind of see the frustration that this company was having trying to get things completed with this MSP. And I’m not saying all MSPs operate this way. When I worked with the MSP that I worked with whenever I got out of the military, you know, I was extremely happy with, you know, the work environment. We got things done quickly and efficiently. And so, you know, having to work with this MSP and, you know, dealing with some of the things that. the employees here had to deal with, I can see why they decided to swap away.

Speaker 0 | 08:38.659

So, you know, we’ve had a heavy focus on talking about the MSP, the one that you work with, the one that you’re helping replace. A lot of my conversations lately with other IT leaders has been around MSPs, and there’s been a couple of them that have talked about that experience of working in an MSP. And now it gives you a really good experience so that not only are you learning different technologies, but you’re getting a broader look across more industries. What kind of experiences did you have at the MSP that you worked at after the military?

Speaker 1 | 09:23.525

Yeah, absolutely, man. So, yeah, working at a managed service provider is a. definite great way to get a lot of exposure to a lot of different technologies, a lot of different industries. And not only that, but really learn from the business side of things, what, you know, clients expect from you, you know, on their service agreement. And so when I worked with the MSP, I had never worked with an MSP before. I had been, you know, working IT with the United States Army for, you know, five years and eight months. And so when I transitioned out and started working with this MSP, I loved it because- Um, you know, I was working at dental clinics, hospitals, uh, uh, I was going over to accounting offices and I was dealing with Ubiquity, Dell, HP, Cisco. I was flying out installing Meraki switches and Meraki firewalls and stuff. And so it gave me so much exposure to a lot of different vendors. And, you know, coming from the military, I had primarily only worked with Cisco. I was an IT specialist and I would, you know, work mainly with just a Cisco environment. And, you know, And transitioning out, I got so much exposure to a lot of different vendors and it really gave me an idea of just how much is out there and how much, you know, you need to learn as an IT professional to stay ahead of the game and continue to grow with your industry. And so I’ll say it, you know, just like a lot of other professionals say it, an MSP is a really great way to start out your career because it gives you so much exposure.

Speaker 0 | 10:55.729

So you brought up the military experience, and I definitely wanted to dive into that a little more because I myself never was in the military. And by the way, thank you for your service.

Speaker 1 | 11:07.535

Absolutely, man.

Speaker 0 | 11:08.696

You know, especially here we are on the verge of Memorial Day weekend and definitely call that one out. Truly, thank you. The experiences that you had in the military, that had to have been a different environment. Absolutely. We always hear all of the stories about how the military and the level of technology in some areas, they’re like super far ahead of everybody else. But then in the implementation and everything, we hear stories or I’ve heard stories of it just being super slow. And just some of the things, the red tape, they make you go through to achieve a goal where. Being in the private industry, I can just go purchase the equipment, configure it, and get it done. Talk to me about some of those experiences. What stories do you have for me, brother?

Speaker 1 | 12:05.508

Right on, man. So, to kind of preface that question there, before I even joined the military, I had always knew that I wanted to work in the IT industry. And so, I had been into computers. I had… been into IT security from a young age. And so not to go too far off track, but, you know, when I was young, I remember, man, I was playing video games. And one day, you know, I was just sitting there playing video games. And out of nowhere, you know, my internet disconnected. And I’m like, you know, what’s going on here? And my internet stayed disconnected for about 30 minutes. And, you know, upon doing some research, I had learned that I had got DDoSed, you know, distributed denial of service. And, uh, so, you know, that led me to doing a bunch of research on what that was, how it worked and, you know, how to, um, you know, combat that. And then I started learning, you know, what is a static IP? What is a dynamic IP? Can I change my IP address so that they can no longer attack that same IP address? And, um, so that’s kind of really what’s what started it, man. And, uh,

Speaker 0 | 13:10.748

let’s stick with this for a second. Let’s follow this thread for a few more minutes. Cause like when I was a kid playing video games. Dude, I got to stand in line to be one of the kids, one of the first kids to play Asteroids at the local grocery store. That was the first video game I got to play.

Speaker 1 | 13:31.208

Wow.

Speaker 0 | 13:31.468

And I’m kind of aging myself. So, you know, having an online game that I’m playing and to get DDoSed and to lose the ability to play and then, you know, just not. getting stuck there and just going, well, dang, what happened? Um, the fact that you figured out what happened and then figured out how to remediate some of that. Um, it’s completely different experience. How old were you when you were dealing with this?

Speaker 1 | 14:01.029

Oh man, I middle school had to have been like sixth grade whenever I, you know, really started diving into, you know, what happened to me. And, and, uh, that’s kind of what started it at all.

Speaker 0 | 14:12.012

12 years old. Okay.

Speaker 1 | 14:13.852

Yeah. I was really young.

Speaker 0 | 14:16.229

So where’d you go to start learning about DDoS, about networking, finding out what the difference between a dynamic IP, a static IP, about the fact that you’re getting attacked and all you had to do was unplug your router, plug it back in, and you probably had a new IP address that they were no longer attacking the right one.

Speaker 1 | 14:37.793

Yes, yes. So, you know, I remember I had got DDoSed and eventually my internet came back online and I looked at my messages and some guy had messaged me bloating that he was the reason why I got disconnected. And I honestly just asked him, like, how did you do that? And he told me what he did. Then I started Googling and I found a security forum. And it’s not too popular now, but back in the day it was pretty popular. And a guy named Brian Krebs, he’s a… Cyber security journalist. Yeah, he’s an awesome guy. I love the work that he does. He’s covered this forum many times and it’s called hackforms.net ran by a guy named Jesse LaBroca out in Las Vegas. And I ended up on his website and… You know, I was just seeing all the stuff on there. There was a lot of people selling DDoS services. You know, they’re known as web stressors. And so people would go on this website and they would purchase a membership and they would utilize that with an IP sniffer. And, you know, back in the Xbox 360 days, you know, really just back in the day, if you were playing online, you were playing on peer to peer networks. And so you were connecting directly to someone. And whereas nowadays, most of the time you’re connecting to a game server that, you know. is DDoS protected, you know, has CloudFlare behind it or something like that. And so you can’t really snip the IPs of the people connecting to that server. All you’ll get is that server itself. And so it was so easy back in the day for somebody to just run this on their home network and scan all the IPs, you know, connecting to the host on the game that you’re playing. And, you know, they can get that IP address and punch it into a, you know, a website. And now they can get information on, you know, where you’re located. Um, the internet service provider that you use and things of that nature. And so once I started learning about how DDoSing worked and how to combat it, for me, it was simple. You just go to the command prompt, you IP config release, IP config renew, and you get a new IP address. I know it’s uncommon nowadays to be able to just do that because most ISPs, at least from my experience, will just issue you out a static IP address. What you see is what you get. And the only way you can change it is if you, you know, call in and get them to change it. And so, yeah, I went down the rabbit hole and I just started learning more and more about IT security. And, you know, that’s when I knew like, hey, you know, I really like this, you know, I like figuring things out. And when I went into the recruiter’s office for the United States Army, he gave me a huge list of jobs. The one job I wanted, IT specialist, wasn’t on there. I guess it wasn’t available. They didn’t have enough slots at the time. I don’t know what it was. So I told the guy, I was like, hey, listen, like, I’m very interested in joining, you know, but I’m only going to join if I get this job. And so after, you know, some pulling and some tugging, he was able to get me the job I enlisted. And I signed a five-year, eight-month contract as an IT specialist. And that’s kind of how I operated, you know, for the beginning parts. parts of my career and I honestly I loved it so getting brought up in the United States Army when it when it comes as an IT professional it was a great experience for me and you know depending on the type of unit that you get into yeah you’ll be working with older equipment newer equipment but it was it was it was awesome it really gave me a lot of experience and really put me where I am

Speaker 0 | 18:16.415

So, I mean, the majority of things that we’ve talked about so far when it comes to this avenue of cybersecurity have all been network-based. And as I’m sure you know, cybersecurity has gotten so much larger than that. But the fundamental layer is the networking. Without the interconnectivity, there’s no cyber. So what was your areas of focus? Because you obviously started with the networking. Did you go deeper? Did you go out to the different avenues of it? Did you learn about the vulnerabilities within the hardware and the OS and those kinds of things? Or did you mainly stick with the networking and that type of security?

Speaker 1 | 19:08.549

Yeah. So, I mean, when it comes to how I got into IT… One of the things that had happened to me, and I’m sure you probably know this term, but it’s called swatting. And so, yeah, so swatting is a prank that people play on individuals online. And so that happened to me at a very young age. It was actually on the news. And I was like, I think I was in like 10th grade when it had happened. Someone had pulled this on me. And so. Whenever they had did this, I found out that they had got into my Skype account and I used to have Skype credits attached to my Skype account. And so they made the phone call using my Skype account. And, you know, obviously the law enforcement showed up. They finally had determined it was a prank. And I eventually had to turn over my computer to the law enforcement so that they can go through and. do some sort of data forensics on it to see if they can figure out, you know, who had done this. I knew that they weren’t going to figure out who had done it. And so I started digging and I was trying to figure out how did they get into my Skype account? How did they, you know, do the things that they did? And so. And upon digging, I found that there was a website that I was a part of. It had got breached. It was, it had, it had been a part of a database breach. And so all the user credentials were de-hashed and put online. And so what had happened was this guy had, you know, got ahold of that database breach and he was specifically targeting me. And so from there, I had used the same password on that website that I did on Skype and they were able to get into my Skype account. And, um, Once you figure out someone’s name or phone number, you can pretty much figure out anything you want to know about them. And so they had probably used some online tools. I know there’s a tool called Spokio out there that you can use for trying to find information out about somebody online. A lot of private investigators will use it. And so after I had got swatted, some weird events started happening. Like, for instance, I got a phone call from the Social Security office asking if I had called them recently to get some information from them that they had, you know, possibly thought that it was an imposter. And it, in fact, was. And, you know, then I started doing research on my Social Security number and I realized that somebody opened up like a cable bill in my name in California or something. And, you know, I’m a kid. I’m in high school. I’ve never been to California in my life. And so for me, I was like. Like, wow, man, like, like, this is insane. Like, IT security is extremely important. And you got to be very careful, you know, how you conduct yourself online. Like, so that led me to being like, very, very, you know, I almost like any website I sign on nowadays, I use like 15 plus characters mixed. I used uppercase, lowercase, multiple symbols, and I don’t ever use the same password twice. And I’m constantly trying to check to see if any website that I’ve ever signed up on has been a part of a breach. And, you know, thankfully, ever since that incident, since I was a kid, you know, it’s never happened again. But, you know, imagine trying to explain to your dad or your mom, like, what just happened? You know, they didn’t know things like that even existed. You know, whenever I was in 10th grade and I was a victim of this prank, they still couldn’t comprehend it. I had to sit down and explain it to them. you know, what had happened. I was like, you know, so this happens to celebrities all the time. Um, and it’s a very, very deadly, you know, prank that, you know, these individuals will do. And, um, the, the specific person that had did this to me, uh, was using a IP relay system. Um, I can’t remember the name of the company that, that came out with this VoIP relay system, but the way that it works is, um, you can connect into a call, you can type stuff into a chat box, and then. the operator will relay that to the person that you’re connected to a phone call with. And so that’s what this guy was doing, man. And, you know, it’s a way they do it this way to remain anonymous, you know. And so that happened to me. And ever since then, man, I’ve always taken like IT security extremely important because I know what can happen if you don’t. And I’ve just been chugging along ever since and trying to learn as much as possible because, you know, we are in a growing industry and, you know, everything’s always changing. The trend nowadays is cybersecurity and AI. And I’m sure in the next five years, AI is going to be leveraged a lot more with what we do as professionals. And so there’s going to be new technologies coming out and new things coming out that we’re going to have to keep up with. And, yeah. So that’s kind of one of the things that keeps me excited. It reminds me kind of like, you know, operating a seam, you know, you’re going to keep drilling into that data until you finally figured it out. And so that’s one of the reasons why I love working in the IT industry.

Speaker 0 | 24:29.629

Yeah, it definitely keeps me interested. The cybersecurity has always been one of those interests for me. And coming from the era that I did, the majority of it was the… networking pieces, but man, you’ve brought up so many of the different things. The size of your password, because the more characters it is, each one adds so many more choices and takes so much longer. Passwords under eight characters anymore, any of them can be broken. Just through a brute force and the ways that we can test that. Yeah, and I have no idea how… AI being in the opposite side’s hands and in the black hat’s hands are going to add to all of this. And heck, even in… What we call the script kiddies, because, you know, the guy that was doing the wadding that got you, he was using tools that are existing out there. And he just read how to use them, leveraged those and went and did. It’s not like he had any specific extra skill set, except for the fact that he started playing with those things, got the experience in it and then started doing stuff with it.

Speaker 1 | 25:52.224

Yeah, man. And it kind of goes into the, you know, surface of, you know, user end user training. A lot of breaches happen because end users or, you know, operators or support teams are not really educated in the methodologies that these threat actors use in order to gain access to systems. Like there’s a lot of celebrities there, you know, social media accounts get hacked, their YouTubes get hacked and nine times out of 10, it’s due to social engineering. And so, you know. That happened to me whenever this person had called, you know, the Social Security office and was, you know, pretending to be me and got a little bit of information out of them before, you know, they, I guess, probably realized that it was not who they say they were. They were trying to pretend to be me. There’s this website, too. It’s called it’s it used to be only on the dark web, but now you can find it on the clear net. It’s called Docspin.com, I believe, or Docspin.net. Um, it’s somewhere it’s, it’s one of those, uh, extensions. And, um, my, my information was publicly posted on that website around the time that this had happened, um, back when I was in, you know, high school, middle school. And so, man, it took a lot of, uh, it took a lot of motivation and drive to try to get that off of there because one of the main things that that, uh, website. you know, advertises is, you know, once your information is posted, it’s never coming off. And this is not illegal because it’s public information. And so, um, you know, still to this day, that website’s on there and it’s crazy because there’s information, sensitive information on there that can be used, uh, to compromise people through social engineering. You know, um, the way that social engineering works is I’m going to gather as much information as I can on somebody so that I can impersonate them and call someone. and try to get into their systems. And it’s still very much a threat today and something that, you know, needs to be looked at, man.

Speaker 0 | 27:54.514

Yeah. And I’m assuming that it’s kind of, or it’s real close to where that term comes out, doxxed, you know, when all of our public information or information is posted. Not to mention, even if you got everything cleared off of it today and going forward, there’s still the way back. machine where you can go see any web page and what it had on it at any day or at any point in time in the past because they’re just doing that whole harvesting of every web page that they can get publicly access and yeah so that you can look at it and see what heck you can still find my space pages and if you even know what my space is oh yeah i remember it i remember it back in the day i’m not too big on uh social media but um i remember when myspace was the uh it was the wave back in the day man everybody was on there yeah all right so so i’ll tell me a little more about that the military experience and so you you got the job that you wanted so that’s that’s one of the lessons that’s out there is that you know you found something that you wanted and you worked towards that and you held out to get that you didn’t just take whatever they gave you um and so they started training you what was tell me a little more about that experience what was it like going into the military going into foreign countries and being an it specialist yeah

Speaker 1 | 29:26.579

right on so um you know when i joined the military man um pretty much all of my knowledge surrounding it was just you know research i had done online about it security cyber security you know DDoSing, social engineering, things of that nature. And so, you know, moving on to an IT specialist and working professionally as one, it was a little bit different, man. I was real in tune with Windows operating system, Windows Server and stuff like that, just because I had messed with it a lot before I was in the Army. And so part of my job as an IT specialist, though, was I was in charge of managing some Cisco equipment, you know, some Layer 3 switches. And we had something called a CPN node. And so they call it or it’s just a CPN. It’s a command post node. And so one of my main focuses as an IT specialist in the Army is that anytime we go out to a field, we go out to, you know, a deployment, whether it be Afghanistan, Germany or anywhere in the world, they want to train you to be able to set up a tactical network. And so one of my jobs was is I. I would set up the CPN node, which had… two layer, three switches in it. It had a couple of tack lanes, which are encryption devices that would encrypt the network coming in from the satellite dish that we had. And so I had to learn all of this. And so going into the military, one of my very first experiences was, you know, I got to my unit and they’re like, Hey, you know, we’re going to be doing a rotation in Europe and we’re leaving in like three months. And so I’m like, okay, you know, cool. Never been out of the country before. Let’s do it. Um, and so I remember whenever I got into the country, we were doing a field exercise in Romania and my, um, my NCO at the time, uh, he, he was basically, he looked at me and he’s like, Hey, you know, I had been, I had been doing a little bit of training on, uh, the CPN node and trying to learn, you know, how to configure a Cisco switch and stuff like that. Uh, we also had a Qcom server, so it was basically a voiceover IP for Cisco. And so, You know, I was in charge of managing all this. And I remember we’re in the tent. We had set up the CPN. It had power to it. Our STT, which was our satellite that was, you know, shooting up to a satellite in the sky somewhere, was providing the connection. It was on the bird. Everything was solid. And so now it was my job to go in there and get the job done. And so my my NCO looks at me and he’s like, hey, listen, he tells everyone he’s like, everyone get out of the tent. And so everyone just disperses out of the tent. And he looks at me, he’s like, hey, Alvis, he was like, you’re going to get this up. And if you don’t, you know, the mission is going to be a failure because of you. And so, you know, me as a young kid, I’m like, man, like, you know, it just the hammer just got dropped on me and now I’m on fire. And so I went in and I consult into the switch and, you know, I go over to the tunnel configs and I’m like looking at the mission set and I’m trying to. you know, figure this out. And it honestly wasn’t too hard of a task. So whenever we get a mission set, it has all the tunnel configs. So the IPs that you need to configure in and everything. And so all you got to do is just go line by line and punch it in. So I, you know, I console’d in, I interfaced into the tunnel configs, and I just punched them in, man, you know, saved my configs and boom, we were pumping, man. We had, we had nipper net up and we had the sipper net up and everything was working i didn’t even have to go into the tackling and you know messing around with some configs in there and and you know i explained that all to you in about five minutes but it took me about 45 minutes to an hour to get it done but uh the whole point of that exercise and i understand it well today was you know my nco just wanted to give me the confidence you know that hey you know if you don’t give up you’ll figure it out and so uh that kind of what That’s kind of what started my confidence as an IT professional. Nowadays, I thrive in taking on the tasks that no one can figure out or the unknown because I know that those are the sorts of tasks that’s going to grow me as an IT professional. And so anyone that I’ve ever worked with will tell you, man, if there’s something that someone can’t figure it out, I’m the guy that would go in there and sit there for hours and hours and hours until the job gets done. And I’d like to… think of that as a strength, but it’s also a weakness because you get tunnel vision. And, you know, to give you a bit of an example, when I was in Afghanistan, I wasn’t a satellite guy, but a lot of the technology that was inside of the satellite, I understood, you know, all the Cisco equipment and stuff. And so in Afghanistan, our backup network, in case our fiber went down, was a snap terminal, which is a sipper nipper access point. And it basically is our backup connection in case our fiber line goes down. And so what would happen is we would have to make sure that our backup connection is solid all the time and it’s always connected in case of an outage. So that way, if we’re running a mission, you know, in Afghanistan, we always have connectivity in case our main line goes down. And so I came into the office one day and my OIC was like, hey, Alvis, like, you know, the satellite’s down. We don’t know what’s wrong. And, uh, the soldier that had been trying to figure it out, um, who was the operator of that satellite, he, he couldn’t quite figure it out. And so I’m like, you know what, I’ll go take a look at it. And so I started looking at it at about 4 PM and it gets to be about midnight 30. So my OIC was checking in on me like every hour and kept asking me for updates. And I’m like, Hey, sir, I’m trying to figure it out. I’m trying to figure it out. And so, um, finally he comes in at midnight and he’s like, Hey, like. you gotta go, you gotta get some sleep, you know, you can, you know, attack it back tomorrow. And so one thing about me is I hate leaving, you know, things undone. And so When I went home that night and I laid in my bunk, I fell asleep and I was just constantly thinking about what did I miss? What could I do? And when I came back in the next day, I fixed it in five minutes and it was everything was good. And I just think all I needed was some sleep, man. I got tunnel vision and I kept retrying the things that I’d already tried again. And yeah, a good night’s rest to solve that. So, you know, sometimes a strength, sometimes a weakness.

Speaker 0 | 36:04.821

Yeah. You know, I’ve had. versions of that myself. And it’s like those times where I get that tunnel vision, I get stuck in my head and I’m running through all of the different solutions and trying to figure it out. And it’s amazing how sometimes just talking to another person instead of talking to myself, when I start describing what the issue is and what the problem is and where I’m at, that suddenly the dots connect. I’m wondering how much of this was your subconscious putting the dots together or whether you had a chance to like you said, you just finally relaxed a little bit, but you were still fighting it in your head to figure out what the issue was.

Speaker 1 | 36:58.031

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And a lot of people will tell you this in the military. Sometimes it sucks to be a little bit too good at your job because once you start completing a lot of other jobs, you become that guy. And so after I fixed that satellite, guess what? I was the satellite guy. And, you know, any mission that we had to run that involved the satellites would involve me too. And so I remember one day after I had fixed the satellite, it’s probably a month after in Afghanistan, my boss comes to me. He’s like, hey, we got to do a mission. We’re going to be sending you out to, I can’t remember the base, the name of the base in Afghanistan, but it involved me flying over to Shindan and then over to that location. And so I’m like, oh man. So I was going out as a one-man team. So I had this snap terminal, which was a lot of gear. And then I had all this radio equipment. And, you know, there’s a little bit of nervousness because I’m like, man, this is a lot of equipment. Like, I got to be in charge. I got to maintain this equipment. I got to make sure I, you know, remain accounted for this. I can’t lose anything. And, you know, so they send me on this mission. They fly me out and I get to Shindan at like 2 a.m. in the morning. And everyone gets off of the Chinook. And I’m just like, I’m just like, man, now I got to find a way to get this gear all the way over to storage. and secure it, you know, um, overnight. And so I had to go find a forklift that was randomly laying around somewhere on base. And I just drove it over there, started lifting it up one by one. And, uh, finally, after doing that, I found where my team was located because I had never been, um, on this, uh, small little fob before. And so finally, when I found that out, uh, they were able to kind of help me finish it up. And then, um, come to find out the mission that I was getting sent out to, everyone got pulled out because we had a couple, uh, soldiers, uh, pass away, um, due to, um, they call it green on blue. And so we had some, uh, Afghani soldiers, uh, shoot some of the soldiers, uh, that were, that they were working with, you know, and they’re supposed to be allies. And so, uh, the, uh, general that was over Afghanistan was like, you know what, we’re pulling all of our troops out of that base. And so that was the base that I was going to. And, uh, I ended up not having to do that. But when I got back and I dropped off that satellite, there was a new unit coming in. And they’re like, they’re like, hey, you know, you know how to work the snap terminals, right? And I’m like, yeah, you know, I know a little bit. I’ve been doing it. I’ve been doing it for about six months now. And so I had to, you know, teach a whole class. And that kind of goes on to once you once you learn something, you become that guy in the military. And I think really that that kind of translates over to the civilian side as well. You know, and so you can really kind of overwork yourself if you start dipping your hand in too many pots.

Speaker 0 | 39:55.023

Yeah, it’s, you know, we’re suffering from some of that, too. And I call it the only one, you know, because you become the person that everybody comes to for that specific thing. I’ve always been good at Excel, so I’ve got lots of people who come to me for their Excel issues still. to this day. And it’s, um, and I don’t do any of that stuff anymore. You know, the level of management that I’m working with, I, I of course do spreadsheets for myself, but, but yeah, the only one, um, there’s so many different ways It can be good, but if you’re not teaching others or that information’s not being shared amongst the team, then if something happens to that person, then the whole team is diminished. Because you’ve lost that guy that everybody can go to to help with the satellites or with the Cisco networking or whatever it happens to be, active directory. Um, email that guy.

Speaker 1 | 41:12.060

Oh yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 0 | 41:13.941

But like everything else, you know, it can be, Oh, we’re going to go get that guy. Or it’s, Oh, we’ve got to go talk to that guy. So, okay. Um, couple of different interesting stories from, from your time in the military. Then you get back to the U S and you start. working with an MSP and now you’re, you’re starting to broaden the horizons a lot more, or you’re still sticking with the, the networking? Because a lot of the stuff that you mentioned was still networking focused earlier when you were talking about the MSP.

Speaker 1 | 41:51.947

Yeah, no, no, no, absolutely, man. So, um, I, I’m the type of guy, uh, you know, as I explained to you in our emails, like I, I, I hate to, so whenever somebody asks you the question, you know, Where do you see yourself in the IT industry, you know, five years from now, you know, and, you know, most people will be like, I want to be the senior, most talented network engineer that’s in this organization, or I want to be the best cybersecurity analyst or cyber auditor, or I want to be the best system admin I can be or a system engineer. And, you know, for me, that question is so loaded, because, you know, I don’t want to focus on one domain, I like to learn. a little bit about everything because when I walk into an environment, uh, I want to be able to understand and know everything from A to Z what’s going on, regardless of what the issue is. I can at least know a little bit about it and I might be able to figure it out. And so that’s a lot, that’s a lot with just troubleshooting in general. Um, as long as you have that base knowledge and you can kind of understand, you know, a little bit of what’s going on, it can guide you to that right answer. And so, um, You know, I will tackle any issue when it comes to it being a technical issue just because I like learning. And so that’s kind of where I’m at now in my career is like, you know, I I’m enrolled into college and I’m pursuing my bachelor’s degree, but I’m also pursuing multiple certifications. And, you know, I’m always trying to find new ways to learn more. And so when I’m looking at like future positions, the two things I look at is. Will I grow in this position? Will I learn more about what it is to be an IT professional? Am I going to learn more on the technical aspect when it comes to XYZ? And then, you know, also the financial aspect. I take both those into consideration whenever it goes into moving into a new position because I want to make sure that, you know, it’s going to grow me. I’m not going to get into this position and I’m just going to, you know, be sitting there doing the same things that I always do every single day. Like. My mind doesn’t operate that way. I always got to be looking towards the next thing and trying to learn something new. And so, yeah, right now I’m studying SISP. I am going for my cloud computing degree in WGU. And I also do a really good resource is the TriHackMeRooms. I’ve been doing that for the past three to four weeks now, and I haven’t missed a day. And that’s also a really good resource because it’s practical.

Speaker 0 | 44:28.280

you know training that you can do it’s hands-on and so that’s another thing that i love is just hands-on training yeah and you know you’re you’re talking about a really important thing within our industry and just in general it doesn’t matter what industry or what what your specialty is it’s that continuous learning just keep learning and being able to apply those different things that you’re learning the the growing um you know You threw something in there and kind of dipped by it, but it’s really critical, which was the financial piece, the business side of the house. So I’m sure you didn’t have much of a chance to do that within the military, but as you went into the MSP, you probably had a little more experience with that piece. How did you get from the… Working at an MSP to being hired with an organization to replace an MSP did Um, did the people at the organization have some experience with you and kind of recruit you? Or was it a job that you heard about or saw the advertisement for and then went after it?

Speaker 1 | 45:48.729

Yeah, okay. Yeah, that’s a good question, Mike. So, um, yeah, when I was working with NMSP, um, I was, you know, doing a bunch of various different projects. And, you know, I did like working over there. But due to some personal reasons, I had to pull myself back. and kind of work in a different location. And so I did find this company and they were trying to find a new IT manager. And so I sat down, did some interviews with them and I found out, oh, this is really a position where they want somebody to build an internal IT department because they were unhappy with a previous MSP that they were using. And so right away, I was like, wow, like this will give me some… managerial experience, I’ll really be able to, you know, run my own project and, you know, learn from this, you know, and see more of a business aspect. Because whenever you’re going into, you know, the average business owner is not going to understand the importance of, you know, IT and how it works in their environment and how if you, you know, manage their infrastructure in a way where everything runs very smoothly, like a well-oiled machine, you know, now the productivity boosts. they go up, employees are, you know, producing more work and in a way that, that brings your company profit if you really think about it. And so, um, and then there’s the cybersecurity aspect that is so huge in today because a lot of, you know, MSSPs are going around and they’re like, Hey, if you don’t hire us, you’re vulnerable, you’re going to be vulnerable. You can get hit with ransomware and you know, this will happen to you. And while I, yeah, that is true, you know, um, but it’s really trying to get that message across. to the business owner and trying to level up their IT maturity within their organization, you know. And so that’s really was my main focus, you know, coming into this company was trying to level up their IT maturity so that, you know, now they understand the importance of it and they know that, you know, they need to replace all the end of life equipment. They need to source out money to get more advanced cybersecurity tools and, you know, you know, a big, um, next gen antivirus right now is Sentinel one, a lot of MSPs are using it. And that’s because, uh, it’s, it’s a really great tool, but there’s so many other great tools out there. And, um, you know, coming from a cybersecurity background, like there’s also a lot of vulnerabilities, like, uh, with multi-factor nowadays, um, a huge thing is multi-factor and people seem to think that, oh, if I, uh, If I introduce multi-factor in my environment, it will eliminate so many different vulnerabilities. And yes, that’s true. It will, you know, but multi-factor can be exploited. You know, one of the ways that it can be exploited, you could, let’s say this, let’s say your multi-factor, you know, you can get a code by a phone call, right? So let’s say you go to log into your machine and you punch in your phone number, you ask it to send you a phone call so that you can hear. you know, the code that it sends you. Well, if you don’t answer that phone call, it goes to your voicemail. And one of the ways that people can exploit this is if they spoof their phone number, you know, you go home, you set up a voiceover IP network and you wire shark spoof your number. Now, if you call that person’s number using their own phone number, it’s going to patch to their voicemail. And so if I’m trying to exploit somebody’s account, AOL does this, for instance, they’ll send you a code straight to the voicemail. and one of the ways that you can exploit that is if i know someone’s name and phone number i’m going to wait until the dead of the night and i’m going to uh spoof my number to their number until i can get into their uh voicemail and then i’m going to use the code sent to their voicemail and boom now i’m in their email and so there’s a lot of things that you got to look at you know they’re multi-factor is not an end-all be-all solution um next-gen antivirus isn’t and you an end-all be-all solution. Just because you have data backups does not mean that’s a disaster recovery plan. And, you know, just being able to differentiate all those things and explain it to, you know, the COO or the president of a business from a user level standpoint is very important. And that’s a really good skill to have in the IT industry.

Speaker 0 | 50:13.932

Oh, it is so important. I was hearing a story about this organization that… They had some internal IT security team, and the IT team had actively stopped an attack on a camera. or actually on the NVR for the cameras. And then they were trying to explain why, hey, you know, this system has this vulnerability and you’ve got people who want access to this camera system when they’re outside of the network. But by doing that, we’ve opened it up to the world and people have found it and they’re trying to exploit it. And the owner’s like, what? Why should I be worried? What are they going to do? See how many hot dogs I sell? And they didn’t understand that once that server was compromised, it’s inside the network that that’s the pivot point. That’s where they start looking for what’s the next place. How do I get towards something a little more valuable? Yes, I can see how many hot dogs are being sold, but it’s a stepping stone and it’s one step in. It’s like you’re talking about. Oh, recognizing that the multi-factor drops the code in voicemail if a human doesn’t pick it up. It doesn’t say, oh, wait, no human picked this up. I’m talking to a machine for a recording. Maybe I shouldn’t give the code because there’s plenty of algorithms to recognize that you went to voicemail versus an actual person.

Speaker 1 | 51:55.513

Yeah, absolutely, man. And, you know, there’s… Probably someone listening now that says, well, you know, like I got a I got a pin code on my voicemail, you know, so even if they do get into my my voicemail, how are they going to get in? Well, that voicemail pin code is four digits long, and I guarantee you that can be easily exploited. And there’s actually, you know, some tools right now being developed that could do such a thing. And so, you know, easy solution for that is just to remove, you know, the voicemail option. I think Microsoft is a really good. they do a really good job on their multi-factor. Um, and you know, I would actually encourage other people that are developing, you know, uh, MFA tools, uh, to kind of mimic what they do. And, uh, you know, you got duo out there, that’s pretty good. And so, um, you know, that’s part of what I like to do too, is I like to, you know, see the technologies that a lot of people are using. And then I like to find a way, like, you know, experiment with it and figure out, you know, like, can this be exploited? Is this secure? and I’ve been doing this with a buddy with SentinelOne. SentinelOne’s supposed to catch up anything that tries to change anything on a kernel level within the system. And so SentinelOne’s pretty good. I will say it is a really good tool, especially for the user that is going to open up their Outlook and just click on the Word file that’s attached to an email they received because… You know, a lot of users don’t realize that, you know, you can, there are vulnerabilities out there where someone can, you know, encrypt a payload, attach it to their email, send it to you. And it looks like a Word document. It acts like a Word document. The extension looks like a Word document. And then, you know, once you open up that Excel, there’s a macro in there that will install something in the background and you don’t even realize it, you know.

Speaker 0 | 53:51.285

That email that says… Hey, you missed the delivery of your new iPhone. What? Really?

Speaker 1 | 53:58.394

Yeah. Yeah, man. And, you know, phishing is a huge thing, man. I’m pretty sure anybody that has to, you know, deal with IT security in their organization always has to find a way to combat, you know, phishing in their environment. Because it’s one of those things, man, that is always going to be there because you can’t really block everything, you know. And, yeah. the AI tools for email and the ones that are going to scan emails. And, you know, they’re not that good yet. So that is another thing that’s very, very common.

Speaker 0 | 54:34.104

So one of the things that I always like to focus on when I’m talking to my peers here in dissecting popular IT nerds is I try to highlight. the things that helped us get out from the server room or, or the different narrow focuses in it into more of that management position. What do you, excuse me? What do you feel are the things that helped you be seen as a leader who could develop? an IT group for a company? What do you think that you’ve done that you built up within yourself? And what do you think that the leadership of Trevino Group saw in you to trust you with building that for them?

Speaker 1 | 55:33.330

So for one, you know, when I sat down with them and I discussed what they needed, I listened and I gave them a complete roadmap, A to Z, how I’m going to accomplish what they needed done. And I was very confident in my plan and I executed the plan exactly how I said I would. And I did it under budget. And so I guess the answer that you’re fishing for there is, you know, I was. I was very methodical and I understood exactly what they needed. And I was able to convey my message to them in a way that they could understand from a technical standpoint that, you know, I was going to show up on day one. I was going to do this and I was going to, you know, guide the IT department and get it built up in this fashion. And so it was really about confidence and knowing that I can execute the planned task at hand. And so. Uh, yeah, I think that’s really what kind of secured the position for me. Um, and not only that, but I’m always, I’m, I’m always trying to grow as a professional man and, and you, you’ll never meet an it professional that knows everything. Um, and so, cause there’s just,

Speaker 0 | 56:46.261

you’ll meet plenty of them. They will tell you they do.

Speaker 1 | 56:50.184

Yeah, man. I mean, it’s such a wide, wide range. Uh, you know, it’s, it’s such a very. wide topic. And that’s why, you know, in the IT industry, we have multiple different positions under that subtree, you know, and sometimes business owners don’t understand that they don’t understand the difference between a network administrator and a system administrator. They don’t know what a stock analyst is, and they don’t know any of those things. They just know, hey, this is my business. This is kind of what I want done. And really, the main things that they focus on is just like the IT support things. But They don’t know from an infrastructure side, like how important a lot of things are that makes their company run. And so just being able to explain that message and have someone that will listen to you and understand the importance of it is really key, in my opinion.

Speaker 0 | 57:42.448

And a nice play on going from fishing to me fishing on a comment. That one got me chuckling, even though I… I was muting so that there was no background noise. So what other things did you do to help? So the continuous education and just constant learning and listening and the plan, having a plan, having the confidence and executing, doing what you said. What else? What else helped turn you into a leader here? Is it your experience in the military?

Speaker 1 | 58:23.790

So, yeah, I mean, a lot of my confidence did come from the military because a lot of the times, Mike, I would be given a task in the military, man, and I would have no clue how to figure it out. Sometimes I wouldn’t even know where to start. But just trying, man, I remember to kind of give you an example. When I first joined the military, they’re very big on compliance. And so They would send you to go do these certifications and they would want you to get these certifications so that you would fall under a certain IAT level under the Department of Defense so that you can hold administrative credentials to be able to do your job and function more in the organization. And so one of the very first classes they sent me to was Security Plus. And as a brand new guy in the military who had just kind of started out his IAT career, I didn’t even know what Sec Plus was. I was just like, oh, SEC plus. OK, whatever. Let’s go do it. And so I was sitting in this class. It was a two week crash course. And they basically teach you whatever it is you need to know to pass that security plus exam. And so I’m sitting there and I’m going through the material. A lot of it’s fresh to me. And then two weeks later, here I am taking the exam and I ended up failing, man. And so it sucked. But I got another chance. And, you know, this was two years later. I had been working as an IT professional. I knew what SecPlus was. I knew going to that very first class, the type of material that was taught. And so I told my NCOIC at the time, I was like, hey, listen, if you send me to that class, I’m going to pass hands down, you know. And I needed my SecurityPlus credential so that I can get an administrative token whenever I was in Afghanistan so that I can, you know. create accounts and active directory and just have more rights on the network. And so, um, they sent me to this class and, um, I went through the two week class and you learn the very last domain on Friday and then they give you the weekend to study and then you take the exam on Monday. But my my leave had started on Friday. And so I’m like, man, you know, like I want to go home and see my family before I get sent off on a combat deployment. So I you know, I was super confident, man. I was studying every single day, falling asleep with the book in my face like I took it serious, extremely serious. And, you know, that. That literally started as soon as I told my NCYC, like, hey, if you send me, I’m going to pass. And so I begged my instructor. I was like, hey, could I please take the exam now? And he’s like, OK. I explained to him the situation. We went over to the room. He proctored me. I took the exam and I passed. And I was like, yeah, man. So it was a really good send off for me to go on leave. And then, you know, from there on, man, I went and I did my CCNA. I did my CASP and I just started passing certs left and right. And. It was really like, you know, SecPlus was kind of the, it gave me confidence that, you know, if I study hard enough, I try hard enough, I will accomplish whatever it is that I need to accomplish. And so that kind of helps me, you know, gain more certifications. And all the way up to my latest one, you know, I got certified in Microsoft Azure and now I’m hammering away at SysP. And I’m hoping to achieve that very shortly. You know, I’m only 27. And so I don’t go for… certifications because I want it to be like candy on my resume. I go for certifications because I want to keep up with, you know, what’s being used today, the most up-to-date, you know, knowledge whenever it comes to networking security and, and, you know, what do I need to know in the industry? And I’m always going to be doing that no matter how old I get. And it’s also taught me that, you know, a college degree from 10 years ago is not going to be as irrelevant as a college degree now. You know, because I.T. is always changing and these certifications are always updating. And so, you know, I just have a high level of confidence whenever it comes to doing my job and accomplishing whatever it is the mission is. And so I really convey my message across very well whenever it comes to explaining to business leaders what it is that I need to do and why it is that I need to do those things. And they understand it, man.

Speaker 0 | 62:48.677

It’s been a great conversation, James.

Speaker 1 | 62:51.126

And absolutely,

Speaker 0 | 62:51.806

Mike, I’m really enjoying this and I feel like we could keep going for for much longer. But I want to find out a little bit more about the personal life. You mentioned a couple of things that you’re doing. You’ve got a couple of different projects that you’re working on on the website that you’ve just released. You know, this is this is the part of the show where I like to do. One of my co-workers called it the I love me page. And then from there.

Speaker 1 | 63:20.718

the military and he said it was something that he learned there so you you may know of that but but i do i do uh so um the i love me book is actually a book that you know most military people keep and um it is just a book about your military career all your um deployments that you went on all your awards that you received um i still have my very first pt card that i took in basic training and um i’m not gonna lie sometimes i open it up man because going into basic training as a 120 pound, you know, five foot nine kid, you know, and getting out, uh, you know, extremely weak. I was just a huge runner. I didn’t really do a lot of pushups and sit-ups. And so I lacked in strength and, you know, looking at my PT score, you know, upon exiting out of basic training and just seeing the drastic change, um, you know, it motivates me, man. And so, uh, you know, yeah. So, um, I, there are some things that I’m working on the personal side. I do. IT consulting. And, you know, I started IT consulting mainly because, you know, I would work with people privately and, you know, I would help them fix issues. And they were like, hey, man, you know, you should do something, you know, you should start something up on your own. And so to kind of give you an idea, and what really kind of sparked me doing IT consulting on the side was There was this heart surgeon here in my hometown. He needed help installing a home network. His house was too big, way too big. He couldn’t, the Wi-Fi wouldn’t reach everywhere. He had this huge house. And so he wanted me to come out there and help him. install a whole new Wi-Fi network so that it will be everywhere, you know, in the backyard, leading down to the lake and everything. So, you know, I went out there for a couple of days. I installed a whole new Wi-Fi system. He was, you know, very happy with it. And then he actually had the pool guy out there at the time. And the pool guy was trying to figure out why he was unable to change the temperature to his pool using the phone app anymore. And so They were getting ready to charge him 10 to 15 grand to replace the whole pool system. They’re like, hey, it’s broken. You got to go buy a new one. And as I’m finishing up, he’s like, hey, James, do you mind? I know this ain’t really probably this is probably outside of your avenue, but can you come take a look at my pool system? They’re telling me that I might have to buy a new one, and I just want to have you look at it before I make that decision. And I’m like, you know what? Okay. So I go over. He shows me, hey, this is the box that It’s supposed to communicate with the pool. And so I’m looking at it and I start digging on the website and I find out that it was such an easy issue, man. It just wasn’t pulling an IP on the network. And so, you know, when he’s over there trying to communicate to it, it’s not even connected to his home network. And so I was able to install some software off the vendor’s website and change the IP, get it on the network, and it fixed. And then the pool guy was like, oh, man, like, um, yeah. you mind if I give you a, if you got a card or something, you know, like maybe if we had this issue in the future, you know, I can call you up. And, you know, after I fixed that, I had a conversation, uh, uh, over coffee with the, uh, the gentleman that I was installing the network for. And we sat for two hours, man, talking about like aliens and just everything. And, you know, he was like, Hey, you really should, you know, start up your own thing, you know? Um, and so, yeah, uh, just recently I, uh, I got contacted by a company. I had to go out to one of their, it was like an oil rig type office. And one of their Cisco switches has went down and their IT department isn’t local, you know. And so they wanted to hire me to go out there and replace their Cisco switch. And, you know, that was an easy job. And so I’ve been doing that on the side. There’s also another company I’m working on with some buddies. It’s a graphic design as a subscription. I’m a huge graphic. design guy. I’ve been doing graphic, uh, graphics since I was, as long as I can remember, man, like elementary school, I’ve, I’ve always loved doing digital graphics. And so, um, if you can kind of understand a lot of today’s market is headed towards subscription services. Um, so the OG of subscription services is real estate. You know, you pay your month, you pay your rent every, uh, month, you know, on the first or, uh, without, you know, a drop of the dime. And, uh, for instance, you got MSPs, uh, that’s subscription-based, you know, you got X amount of seats. All right. We’re going to charge you this amount, you know, per month, everything’s moving towards a subscription-based system. And I’m like, man, you know, like there’s a little bit of companies out there that are moving towards subscription-based whenever it comes to graphics and design. And, you know, but I saw this guy’s business model. um, that was doing it and he was quite successful. And I’m like, well, how can I make this better? How can I tune this? Um, and put this into a package that people want. And so, you know, I’m working with some buddies of mine and, and we’re actually very close to completing that project and, uh, getting everything online, man. And, um, I’m, I’m a constant, I love staying busy, man. I can’t, if I’m sitting at home, um, and I’m not doing anything, I will literally, and I’m not kidding, Mike, I’ll just drop down and start doing pushups. Like, um, um,

Speaker 0 | 68:52.651

I stayed extremely active. You know, you mentioned your age. So I grew up in a different era. I grew up where Revenge of the Nerds was like the beginning of talking about nerds and the pocket detectors. And of course, they were all weak and everything else. And I noticed how many people nowadays, especially in the IT, were making a concerted effort. to be healthy and to take care of ourselves. And you mentioned that you’re going to the gym and doing those kinds of things. And you know what? Don’t hold back. I believe you said that your, your consulting is at www.jbacyber.com. So, you know,

Speaker 1 | 69:36.968

it was correct.

Speaker 0 | 69:38.189

Completely welcome to upsell yourself. This is a part of the show for that. And the fact that you’re staying fit and healthy. I watched both my parents. Neither of them made it out of their 80s. Wow. And part of it, I think, or I definitely watched my father as he started to stop moving. He ended up getting one of those little scooters. And as he did that, his health just took a… five um because he wasn’t continuing to move and stay active and at that point i was like oh man i’m like i think i was 35 maybe 40 at that point i said yeah i need i need to stay in shape and i need to start moving now because i can’t wait till i’m 60 or 70 years old and then start trying to reverse this process yeah man and and you know physical health

Speaker 1 | 70:34.786

It is extremely important, man, just as important as mental health. And, you know, when I got out of the military, I had a jacked up right knee, man. I did a lot of running when I was in the military, man. I was running marathons. I was rucking, jumping out of helicopters. And so, you know, I remained extremely active in the military. And when I got out, you know, I would go to the park and I would just bust out 5, 10 miles, 15 miles. And, you know, I noticed I started having a knee problem. And I… I had to back away from it from a little bit and I just would stretch it out and, you know, try to take care of it the best way I can. And, um, you know, eventually that problem went away, but it scared me because I was like, man, if this problem doesn’t go away, I’m not going to be able to run. Like how else am I going to, you know, it really, I don’t want to be down and out, Mike. And I, you know, I got to stay active. I’ve even actually, uh, thought about putting a stationary bike in my office. Cause as you know, it guys, you know, you’re, you’re at the computer a lot and you know, you’re, you’re sitting down a lot and you’re not. you’re stationary. And so I’m like, man, I gotta, what can I do? You know? So like, what if I get a bike and I can just like bike while I’m looking at emails or something. And so, um, I think staying active is extremely important. And I try to, you know, stay in the gym five days out of the week and I eat pretty clean, pretty healthy. And, um, you know, I think that helps me as a professional to, you know, to, you know, just show up and have a clean mind, be active, you know, and. I guess it drives me more to go to work and to solve problems and be motivated and be happy to be there. You know, I think it all starts with yourself. And so, yeah, man, that’s that’s kind of what I do. And I’m always looking for ways to grow.

Speaker 0 | 72:16.689

And you know what? I think there’s another one of the hidden lessons in life, not just in IT and management and success. But. just in general with life. When you’re taking care of yourself like that, it’s that consistency and that small improvement on a regular basis where you learn that you’re not going to suddenly bulk out and be able to bust out those 100 sit-ups and those 100 push-ups. You’re going to have to work towards that goal. You can set that goal, but you’ve got to, you start out and you do what you can do. And you keep trying to improve that and work towards it. And the small improvements that lead towards the major, major milestone.

Speaker 1 | 73:03.912

Yeah, absolutely, man. I mean, when I got out of the military, you know, one of the things I told myself is I am not going to let myself go. I am going to continue to stay active. And, you know, I even called my buddies up that got out of the military. And the first thing I say when they get on the phone, Hey man, when’s the last time you went to the gym? You know, like I’m always, uh, you know, trying to keep my friends accountable, you know, to make sure that they’re doing the things to stay on top of their life as well. And I think that’s important whenever it becomes, whenever it comes to, you know, friendships and things, you know, you want to be that guy that kind of, you know, checks your friend and like, Hey man, like you haven’t been to the gym in X amount of days. I think it’s time to go. Or, you know, when’s the last time you went out for a run, you know, have you been dieting, you know, what’s your diet looking like? And, um, you know, just small things like that in your life man um staying you know a little bit active eating right i think it translates into the professional world as well and how you carry yourself as a professional it most definitely does it’s it’s something that i’ve noticed i see it with

Speaker 0 | 74:04.225

the the people my co-workers that are successful i see it with my peers and inside of the i.t industry and just in in the different industries that i interact with Those that are focused on that seem to have a little more focus and can stay on task and recognize, you know, getting something done today. I may not win the race, but I’m going to continue to work on it. And that slow is steady. Steady is fast.

Speaker 1 | 74:37.595

That’s right, Mike. You got it. You got it, buddy. All right.

Speaker 0 | 74:41.898

Well, James, it’s been a wonderful conversation. Is there anything else you want to bring up? promote or or anybody else want to pat on the back or add to the i love me book um

Speaker 1 | 74:54.702

No, sir, not really. I mean, you know, I like what you guys are doing. I did actually, you know, when I was originally reached out to I, you know, I’ve been I’ve listened to quite a few of y’all’s episodes and I like what you guys are doing. You know, I I had actually purchased the domain name, the Cyber Society, and I was thinking about doing like cybersecurity blogging and, you know, keeping up with, you know, cyber attacks going on in our industry and stuff. Due to all the other projects I’m running and things that I got my hand dipped in, I still have the domain. And that’s probably something I’ll do in the future when it comes to blogging and cybersecurity. But I really like what you guys are doing. I think that being able to have a platform that other IT professionals and business leaders can come to to figure out what else is going on in the industry with their peers and what else is out there. How else do people tackle these? problems that they face as an IT professional. And it really gives you a great insight, you know, and yeah, I will definitely listen to some episodes in the future when you guys drop in.

Speaker 0 | 75:58.305

Right on. Well, I’ll make sure to let you know as soon as this one drops and truly appreciate the time today, James. Thanks. It’s been a great conversation.

Speaker 1 | 76:06.811

Yes, sir. You have a good day.

Speaker 0 | 76:08.212

All right. You too. And everybody enjoy and keep listening to Dissecting Popular IT Nerds. Thank you very much. Thank