Speaker 0 | 00:09.458

All right, welcome everyone back to Dissecting Popular IT Nards. Today, we have Dana Majeed on the show, and it’s live now. It’s not going to be live later when we release this show, but out of Lincoln, Nebraska, which is kind of near and dear to me because my wife… is from Omaha, Nebraska. And I don’t know what’s going on in Nebraska other than, you know, the Cornhuskers and a football team. And I make fun of her regularly for this and all in play and fun, of course, for being from Nebraska. And I’m from Massachusetts. So, you know, anyways, you know, East Coast person, welcome to the show, sir. What’s going on in Lincoln nowadays?

Speaker 1 | 00:52.821

Thank you. Well, I appreciate you having me on the show. Yeah. Going back to what you were just saying, you know, that’s kind of a… All people really know about Nebraska is just, you know, football and corn.

Speaker 0 | 01:03.858

Yeah.

Speaker 1 | 01:06.419

But, you know, all in all, Lincoln is, for me, Lincoln is home, you know. Lincoln is home. Nebraska is probably, it’s a big state, but definitely.

Speaker 0 | 01:16.924

It’s a big state with a lot of nothing in it. And then there’s a couple cities in the middle of it, you know. Is Lincoln, keep going. So. Anyways, but we got plastics. We have plastics manufacturing. I’m assuming that’s going on inside of OPCE. You work for OPCE, your IT manager at OPCE. What’s going on there? What do you do? What’s your daily life look like? How big are you guys? How many end users do you have to help out on a daily basis? What’s the story?

Speaker 1 | 01:44.090

Yeah, so Plastic Companies Enterprises, it’s a company which actually has three companies under them. hti plastics apex plastics and linked plastics so you know i work at the headquarters with two of our companies being in lincoln and one of our other companies being in brookfield missouri so as the i.t manager i oversee the i.t infrastructure uh for the company uh when i direct the iit uh for the company as well and uh we have a total of three individuals on our team um definitely something that you know something new every day Something new every day keeps us busy and we really enjoy it.

Speaker 0 | 02:27.195

How did you get started in IT? What was your first computer? What was your first experience with technology?

Speaker 1 | 02:31.297

Great question. I started working around and messing with PCs when I was, I would say, maybe about 12 years old. I remember my father bought my brother a PC. Every other day, he’d be like, what’s wrong with it? What’s wrong with it? It’s brand new. Little did he know I was doing, kind of messing around with it and teaching myself in the process. So, you know, I kind of gained a lot of experience from that.

Speaker 0 | 02:53.870

What was the PC? What was it? Oh,

Speaker 1 | 02:55.951

it was an XP. It was so long ago, man.

Speaker 0 | 02:59.634

So long ago. My first computer was a Texas Instruments. The thing ran on a cartridge. XP was, you still actually run into people on XP every now and then. It’s possible.

Speaker 1 | 03:12.602

Yeah. Yeah. You know, a lot of my experience, a lot of older software that has to run on some. certain older os models we actually have a xp in our uh in our house that’s disconnected from the network that we just use to run a specific machine uh just because that machine only works on xp yeah only works on xp and it does what we needed to do so we just take it off the network obviously it’s like we’re still using peach tree accounting for this section of like the you

Speaker 0 | 03:46.242

know something like that yeah but i mean i don’t know

Speaker 1 | 03:50.048

I’ve had a long, long time experience in IT. I think the first time that I actually, so I was about, I’d say, 15 years old during the early stages of MySpace days, I’m sure you’re familiar with. I used to do a lot of HTML coding, a lot of website building. I was just so fascinated by all the different features of it. I never really knew that I had a passion for it. So one day I was… I downloaded something without really understanding the security and aspects of it. All of a sudden, it came up on my screen. It said, I need you to send me all your money. And I thought maybe it was a regular pop-up, but I couldn’t close that. I was like, what’s going on? And it took me about two minutes to realize that I’m a hack. I got hacked. Whenever I downloaded, whatever malware I downloaded, this guy is on my PC. And I’m like, oh, what do I got to do now? I can’t let my brother or my dad find out. They’re going to be like, what are you doing? You know, looking at stuff. It’s. So what I did is I just disconnected the internet, disconnected the internet, did a hard shut off, turned it back on. And then I just went ahead and did a system recovery to two weeks back. And that’s how I was able to get rid of that. And ever since then, I just kind of built a passion for IT. And I just started, you know, just doing a lot of things on the side, just kind of get my hands into it and the hardware and so on.

Speaker 0 | 05:16.141

So what year was that? Let’s go back in time. What year was that?

Speaker 1 | 05:19.682

Well, let’s see here. This would have been in 2000, I would say 2006, 2007 or so. 2007, that’s it.

Speaker 0 | 05:28.144

7, 8, around there. So think of how far, I mean, if we saw MySpace right now, if we went back to that, right? So yeah, it was like the beginnings of social media. That’s right. That, it would look archaic right now, but that was only 2006. My kids would be like, what are you talking about? I wasn’t even born yet, some of these kids. But like, I’m just going to go ahead and just, you know, MySpace. I just want to Google this because I need to get, you know, I need to get some visual images of MySpace. And. Yeah, it’s always the same one that pops up. That’s, so think of how dangerous, if security was an issue back then, what is it now?

Speaker 1 | 06:10.707

Yes, absolutely.

Speaker 0 | 06:12.588

Like if you could, or you’re like, wow, I just unplugged the internet and, you know, did a, yeah, and did a, I had a, I don’t know, some kind of mirrored backup or something like that. Would that work now?

Speaker 1 | 06:25.956

Yeah.

Speaker 0 | 06:26.796

No. I don’t think it would work. No, it would definitely not work. Well, not in every situation, right? And I’m not the security expert, so I’m asking you. What do you guys do? What are you guys doing for security? What are some of the things that I guess that we worry about nowadays compared to back then?

Speaker 1 | 06:43.017

So I think in today’s environment, with all the different end users that you have, I think the number one important thing is to set the foundation for the end user devices. Setting the devices as secure as possible, anywhere from an Active Directory domain, for example. You set the groups and you set the rights to the specific user. But aside from that, you also want to be able to make sure that the device, the end user device, is set accordingly. And that’s kind of one thing that…

Speaker 0 | 07:22.242

How about just the end user?

Speaker 1 | 07:24.804

Well, that… goes into educating them in the process as well. So I do send periodic emails out in my current role where I just kind of remind certain individuals about certain updates or certain cases and so on. But it’s definitely changed a lot, especially because attackers have become extremely, extremely brilliant and they know how to get their way and they know how to use social engineering and just a lot of different ways for them to… gather the information that they need and, you know, try to do their best to trick someone or try to get into their network, you know? And so obviously our role set up, we’ve been able to do fairly good job in maintaining our security and continuing to add to that security and keeping our users educated in the process.

Speaker 0 | 08:21.294

How did you end up getting started in IT, I guess? At what point were you like, this is going to be, you know, we had the, you know, we’ve got the MySpace thing.

Speaker 1 | 08:29.720

Yeah.

Speaker 0 | 08:30.340

Like what advice do you have to like people out there listening? Like how, because one thing that I deal with, you’re, the fact that MySpace was one of the things that got you into IT. I’m used to most of the people that I talk with were what we were doing with punch cards or we were doing with floppy disks or the internet wasn’t even a thing yet. Right. So like. not only was the internet a thing when you got started, like social media was a thing, right? So when I look at my kids, they’re like, they don’t even know a time where there was no device. They don’t know a time prior to the internet being invented. So you’re, you’re on the, on the timeline of things, you’re kind of in the middle, right? So it’s interesting because I have a lot of, I guess, younger people that I mentor nowadays. And this is why I want to ask you this question. is because a lot of times it’s like, well, should I get certifications? How do I get started in IT? I actually got the question the other day, you know, this Azure thing is kind of a big deal. You know, maybe I should get started in that. You know, should I take some courses? And sometimes I just go blank because I don’t know. It’s just, it’s such a different world now. And me being 47 and a lot of people being in the industry that have been in the industry for a long time since the inception of everything. It’s a different paradigm shift and it’s definitely a different world for you. So I don’t know where to tell people on, on, on where to begin. I kind of tell them, well, you got to pick a space or you got to pick my space. You got to pick a space. What’s your space? It’s my space. The, what do you pick? What would your advice be if you had to give advice to say, I don’t know, I just graduated from college and I’m looking to get started in IT? What’s your advice?

Speaker 1 | 10:11.716

Great question. I think the number one advice that I always give to anyone that wants to learn IT is to do a lot of independent research on yourself as far as what you’re going to like in the IT sec. From my experience, I really like an overall view of IT. I know some people specifically focus on networking, some specifically focus on security, some on Active Directory. But usually, anytime you enter any of those areas, you tend to learn a lot more about the other areas in that process. So from my experience, I’ll be honest with you, Phil, I haven’t had any certifications since I’ve gotten into my journey of IT. And the reason for that is because everything that I learned in the process was from one, from experience and two, from studying on the site. And I think it also helps with, you know, taking advantage of the resources. I mean, today YouTube has so many great options to learn from. There’s a lot of study courses out there. So you have to start somewhere. You have to definitely start somewhere.

Speaker 0 | 11:21.710

Well, yeah. Like someone might not even know what Active Directory is.

Speaker 1 | 11:24.852

Exactly.

Speaker 0 | 11:25.673

Yeah. Right.

Speaker 1 | 11:26.113

Exactly.

Speaker 0 | 11:26.894

Like you say that, but there’s people that are like, I don’t, they wouldn’t know where to begin. Like there’s no course on Mr. Beast, for example. There’s no course on, I mean, there is, I mean, it’s just not through college. Like how do you, like in marketing, for example, in college, like how to, there’s a course on entrepreneurship and there’s a course on small business management. But is there a course on, I don’t know how to start up a podcast and monetize it? Probably not. Right. And if there was. you wouldn’t you know it would be too i don’t know if it if it would if it would work and we have this uh argument a lot like do you need certifications are you not clearly you do not but how did you i guess my question is how did you get started did you did

Speaker 1 | 12:12.225

you go to any type of school did you just say hey i want to get started here like let’s just go back in time what was your first it job so uh in 2012 while i was in college my second year uh in college was my junior year if i remember correctly uh i remember my father he said hey uh you know because at that time i majored in finance and management management leadership organizations and and i realized my junior year i was like you know what i don’t really have a passion for this what you know like the management side well like accounting like i don’t have a this is boring especially because you know i like to you know i’m very you know i’m very good at multitasking i like to you know

Speaker 0 | 12:53.818

Mine was the opposite, just so you know. Mine was creative writing. So I really liked my major, but I was like, I’m not going to make any money with this. I’m going to be a creative writer. Anyways, keep going.

Speaker 1 | 13:06.141

My father was like, hey, you’re good at computers. Because I was fixing all my family members’friends. And he was like, why don’t you just make a Craigslist ad? You’re always, because I used to do a lot of buying and selling phones. And I used to fix phones. I got into technology side, looked at what a motherboard is, looked at what a RAM does. you know, and I knew all that basic stuff.

Speaker 0 | 13:25.547

So all goes back to Craigslist. Before Craigslist, it was that before Craigslist, just so you know, for me to again, date me, it all goes back to the classified ads. And I know there’s someone out there listening right now. There’s someone out there listening right now that remembers the dude that was like, I made a million dollars showing tiny little classified ads in the newspaper. There’s people out there right now that knows what I’m talking about. I’m going to Google this guy right now. Keep going.

Speaker 1 | 13:49.741

So in 2012. Luckily, I made it Craigslist ad and I had like two people respond within like a couple of days. And I just started, you know, slowly built a small business from there and built my experience more. Started again, doing a lot of research on the side. I do a lot of research. Even until today, I’m constantly, you know, proving myself. And from there, I got into my real IT role for a company here in town and worked as a client analyst slash systems administrator. And I think so.

Speaker 0 | 14:21.038

banks and the rest is history from there and by the way by the way it was don lapree for anyone that remembers no i’m talking about don lapree it was an ad on tv all the time don lapree d-o-n-l-a-p-r-e unfortunately i believe he i believe he died of something but this guy was the dude that we saw all the time on tv and then it morphed into craigslist and it wasn’t it wasn’t tiny classified ads anymore it’s it’s craigslist now and you know how many people start how many businesses have started on craigslist a lot you know so okay what do you need to do to get into it the Craigslist way. And that would be a, um, that would be a good book for you to write. I think we could do that. We could do that. Do you, okay. So we’re going to take, um, the, this, this is the part of the show. You can choose your own adventure. We’ll call this the choose your own adventure part of the show. And as I would like to say, it’s what did you do before the invention of the internet? But I don’t know if that even applies to you. So this would be cartoons. to any of that everyone knows everyone knows what that is you know like i used to wake up and you’d see those like colored bars on the screen yeah and then the national anthem would come on and then i can’t remember what the first cartoon was it’s probably usually something lame like romper room or something was the first one before you got to anything good uh my favorite was what

Speaker 1 | 15:51.208

was your favorite cartoon there we go what was it mine you know i had a lot favorite ones but i really like the batman shows in the mornings you know

Speaker 0 | 15:59.832

that in the morning uh i’m pretty sure mine was voltron and that was after school at like 4 30 in the afternoon so that um okay so the other section of the show though is really do you do you believe in and it wouldn’t believe or um subscribe to any conspiracy theories oh that’s a tough question mine everyone know ever i’m gonna let everyone know i’m kind of uh you I’m coming forward with this. I’m coming forward with this officially. I’m not, it’s not official yet because I don’t know yet, but the evidence is overwhelming to me. At least I’ve been reading the evidence and I’m not saying yes or no. I’m not saying yes or no, but did man actually land on the moon is, is probably my biggest thing that I’ve been reading a ton of on lately because I find it absolutely fascinating, right? In a world where everything that we do, we do better. Okay, so do you remember the first iPhone? The iPhone, was it the iPhone 3? I guess, was that even the model? Do you remember the first iPhone? Has it gotten better?

Speaker 1 | 17:02.026

Oh, absolutely.

Speaker 0 | 17:03.066

Do you remember, like, the first airplane? Are we doing better? Right? So, we haven’t gone back to the moon. You can’t tell me that we shouldn’t have tons of people walking around on the moon by now. But we have not gone back. Why? Because NASA supposedly erased all the files by mistake or taped over the tapes. Right? Now. 1969 is when we went to the moon. Can you think of the difference of technology between now and then? It’s fun. It’s ridiculous. Yeah. But there was no GPS back then. There was no cell phone back then. There was definitely no home computer back then. Yet we flew 220,000 miles to the moon and back. So 480,000 mile round trip and reentered the Earth’s atmosphere at 37,000 miles per hour. Okay, this is just some facts. These are the printed facts. The so-called facts that we re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere at 37,000 miles per hour. The speed of a speeding bullet. Speed of a speeding bullet doesn’t make any sense. The fastest bullet, you know, close to is 4,000 feet per second. We re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere at 37,000 feet per second. Is that right? Is that the right? miles per hour i gotta do this math here anyways that’s uh that’s it for my conspiracy theory so i’m but this is really your you know i shouldn’t go off on this because it really gets me a little uh this is it’s really fascinating to look up these facts what what is is there anything that you have subscribed to and this is just for the this is the fun part of the show well i’m actually surprised by everything you just mentioned because i never even knew any of that exactly we just believe it it’s it’s just go

Speaker 1 | 18:46.098

ahead you’re making me think now i feel

Speaker 0 | 18:48.640

That’s exactly, exactly. That’s why we have this section of the show. Just, you know, go ahead.

Speaker 1 | 18:54.622

I guess going similar to kind of what you mentioned, I always question the pictures we get from Mars and all these different, and 4K.

Speaker 0 | 19:06.028

Yes, yes.

Speaker 1 | 19:08.048

I’m like, well, let me ask, you know, my camera does not take pictures like that. What kind of camera? I mean. Think about it this way. Think about the technology. How is it able to get a 4K image uploaded? I mean, those satellites are so far apart. I mean, we’re talking about… Math is going to be definitely out, but we’re talking about hundreds of thousands of miles away, you know?

Speaker 0 | 19:32.914

Yes, there’s a thing called latency and jitter and bandwidth. And there’s… Yes, we can’t circumvent the speed of light, but… I find it to be, yes, quite amazing that we did land a rover. Land a rover. Does that even make sense? Let’s just see. How many miles away is Mars? How dare you, Phil? This is not a show on IT anymore. Away is Mars. well

Speaker 1 | 20:05.600

194.94 million miles away yeah sometimes i have a hard time with my cell you know my cell reception i’ll be in one room and i’ll go to the other and i’m like why is my cell phone not getting the right coverage you know and

Speaker 0 | 20:24.230

then i think about that and i’m just kind of so mars is 194 million miles away what is the circumference of the earth if you you Believe the Earth is a round globe, and we’re not going to go there, because there’s other people that don’t, you know. But regardless, it’s 24,000, well, let’s just round up, 24,000, 855 miles in circumference. So the Earth itself is fairly large as far as, you know, cell phone coverage goes. Let’s just round it up to 25,000 miles. Um, and you know, the communication issues that we have with that, let alone, uh, I would never suggest you use satellite internet for your business, maybe tertiary in a very, very hard to reach area where you can’t get it. Um, so we do have to tile this, tie this back into it somehow, but yes, the earth 25,000 miles in, um, sorry, diameter or circumference the same. No diameter. Um, although. yes, we do believe that maybe possibly it bulges or spins, you know, at certain portions that it’s not a perfect ball, uh, possibly, um, versus 194 million miles away Mars. So yes. So that completes this portion of the conspiracy portion of dissecting popular it nerds. Thank you for participating. Um, that was definitely enjoyable. The, so back to, uh, back to you. IT leadership. One thing that I find is, which is interesting with IT because of the speed of digital transformation and the changing of the landscape so fast. What are the, well, first of all, what are your goals as far as IT leadership is concerned? Where do you see yourself in the future? Realistically, I really want to know what’s the end game for it minded people because i find a lot of people that are climbing the corporate ladder and this is just you know so to speak and looking to get into the c-suite c uh you know cio cto level um billion people wanting to get into cso security roles which is um another whole nother subject what’s the end game for all of us uh technology people you know the way i see it bill uh very crucial to continuously

Speaker 1 | 22:50.920

keep yourself updated with technology as as important as it is to keep yourself up with technology it’s also important to understand how it works in the process especially from my experience i think one thing that really separated me from a lot of those individuals that i’ve worked with previously and so on um you know attitude makes a huge difference as well you know just having that attitude to want to learn you know because i learned from my former job the cfo he said you know what I’m willing to hire somebody in a position, even if they’re not qualified, as long as they’re willing to learn and willing to put in that work. So I think that, you know, most companies, even in IT, I know most, you know, job descriptions will say, hey, you need this many years of experience or you need this many years of experience. But in reality, you know, they’ll look at your resume and they’ll be like, you know what, let’s talk to this person. And I think most managers in leadership role are able to read who they interview and they see that. They see that aura, that energy that comes from that candidate about how much passion they have for the role they’re applying for or NIT and how much they’re willing to want to grow. And so I think, you know, just kind of having that attitude and continuously educating yourself in the process. I mean, that’s definitely going to separate you a lot from a lot of those individuals who have their certificates and so on. I mean, I made an individual years ago who had multiple certifications. But. They’re not have the right attitude as far as knowing how to really communicate and so on. So that kind of pushed them really backwards compared to where they could have been.

Speaker 0 | 24:25.980

I do think you can waste a lot of time on certificates and going down the rabbit hole of applying to jobs on company websites and making sure that you fit different roles and emailing different HR directors, etc. And I think you can… bang your head up against the wall for 12 months to get a job that you’re ultimately not happy with. And I have a… process that anyone that’s, and I do think I should do like a little download for this on the website or for people that are looking into to get a job. And I’m not saying that you don’t go about it that way. I’m not saying you stop, you know, stop, you know, you know, updating your resume, which I don’t think you personally should ever update a resume. I think you should have a professional resume writer do that for you. And this is for people that are growing in IT. You should absolutely pay the $300 or $350 at resumeriters.com or whatever that is and have a professional person do your resume. We should probably provide those services on this podcast somehow for free or something. Anyways, too many ideas. The what you said makes sense and the advice from a higher level, a C level, and that is when you apply for a job, you should be personable or, you know, what you just said, like have a personality. It’s not all about. It’s not all about certifications. It should be about how you can help the company grow or how you can help XYZ CEO achieve his goals. And my theory about this is I think LinkedIn is a good way to do it. I think there’s other outlets as well, but I think you should have a top 20 companies that you want to work for. If you really want to go out there and go crazy, make it a dream 100. There’s like this idea of a dream 100 of a top. 100 companies that you would love to work for. And then I think you should reach out to definitely not the HR director. I think you should reach out to either the CTO, CIO, or the CEO of the company. And I think you should ask them when it comes to technology, what’s your single biggest frustration, problem, or concern right now? And then when they give you that answer, I think you should say thank you and offer a way to help solve that problem. Or if you can solve that problem, then you’ve now found out what’s… driving them nuts. And I think if you do that with a hundred different companies and you ask a hundred different CEOs and CTOs and et cetera, what’s your single biggest problem, frustration, or concern when it comes to IT? I think you’re going to learn a damn lot. And I think you’re going to be able to find creative ways to solve those issues without having to get a certification and apply through HR to a templated job description, if that makes sense.

Speaker 1 | 27:09.035

I think that’s a brilliant idea. Actually, yeah. not heard of that idea before. So I think that’s definitely for anybody who wants to get their foot in the door, even just, you know, learn more in the process, because the best advice you can get, obviously, is for somebody who’s in a position of leadership and deals with that type of work. And, you know, it’s definitely something that’s, that can be an option. And, you know, at the end of the day, it all goes back down to the individual’s willingness to want to learn as well. Do I I recommend certifications. Absolutely. If you think if you want to do a certification, go right away. You know, for me personally, Phil, I’m not really an ABCD guy on a test. You know, I look at a test. I mean, you if you told me explain the OSI model. Right. I’ll go and I’ll explain it to you. And I’ll say, here’s what the OSI model does. And you will. Oh, perfect. He knows exactly what he’s talking about. Will you give me an exam? You know, because I’m not really good with exams. That’s just probably maybe one of the reasons why. I never really went for a life certificate. That’s just kind of how I am. But I know there’s other individuals, Bill, who study and boom, they’ll get like three, four certificates in one year. They’ll study two months each certificate and they’re on a roll. But when it comes to the job, it can be sometimes difficult because the experience sometimes needs to catch up to that as well. Whereas from my experience, although I did a lot of hands-on, I also did a lot of research on the side. I studied on the side and even did a lot, you know, study for a lot of certs, but did it in the way that works for me. So I think you have to figure out what really works for you. And once you figure out what really works for you, kind of build up on that, you know, and be in a networking group of individuals who are in IT. I know on Facebook, there’s a lot of IT individuals, a lot of MSPs out there that have groups and so on. And so reaching out, asking questions and, you know, making, you know, if you can get your hands on a laptop. computer, make a VM, you know, VMware has their, you know, free VM where you can do what you want on. It’s kind of, it’s got to learn from there.

Speaker 0 | 29:07.594

A lot of things actually came to mind now that you said all of that. The first one being, if there was a model that you could go learn in school to be successful, everyone would do it, right? If there was a business model, if you could just go to business school and it was like, I’m going to go to business school on how to make a billion dollar business. If you could do that and be successful, Then I don’t know if the answer is not everyone would, everyone would do it, or there’d be certainly more people doing that. And there would be a trail of. like, you know, breadcrumbs leading to that. And I do think there is a trail. I do think that you’ll find, like, if you’ve analyzed Jeff Bezos and, you know, you analyze the great businesses of the world, I think what you’ll find is that a lot of them broke the mold or did things very differently or creatively, kind of like you’re speaking. It might be a certain type of, you know, person, you know, there’s certain other themes to like grit and never giving up and mindset. And you have a lot of people talking about this on a, on a regular basis, but There is something to that. And if you could just learn it in school, then it would be too easy. I think part of it is like anything in life. If if and we were talking about this before the call about, you know, learning any language, right? Because I particularly am taking Arabic right now, which I find to be probably the second hardest language in the world, I would think probably Mandarin or Chinese might be the hardest, you know, but the language has a different alphabet. it goes from right to left. It doesn’t go from left to right. Right. And I remember thinking like, this is going to be like so much fun. Right. No, it’s not. It’s absolutely puts my mind into like, it’s probably one of the most stressful things and one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. So no one ever starts any project saying this is going to be so impossible and it’s going to be really hard and difficult. And that’s why I’m doing it. No. No one started a business because they thought it was going to be one of the most difficult things they ever did, right? Like, they started it because they were, like, really passionate about something and had a drive that made them never, ever quit. I think that that’s, like, a certain piece to this, right? Otherwise, everyone, yeah, would just go get certifications and, like, that would be it. There has to be a certain drive to these things. What was the other piece? I totally forgot that you were saying earlier. You have to refresh my mind. What were you just talking about? You said your trajectory right before this.

Speaker 1 | 31:40.044

As far as my goal, you meant?

Speaker 0 | 31:41.905

I think so. Yeah, I think so. It was like, you know, kind of like what’s the end game, I guess.

Speaker 1 | 31:46.487

Yeah, yeah. So for me, you know, the position that I’m in.

Speaker 0 | 31:52.029

Oh, I know what it was. I’m sorry. You said you were giving advice on forums. And. Oh, I guess my question is, is in, in, in constantly be learning, right. And it’s not necessarily, you know, just book smarts and getting certifications. It’s kind of like always be learning and always be getting your hands dirty and getting your hands in the mix of things. What’s your advice in that realm? How do you do that? So for you, like, you know, if it’s a forum or something, what is it for you? Where do you find your, I want to know where you find yourself hanging out and going when it comes to technology stuff.

Speaker 1 | 32:22.028

Absolutely. I mean, kind of what I was mentioning, Facebook has been a. tremendous factor in my research and interesting that you say that because i’m sure a lot of it guys would say like never go on facebook yeah well that’s the beauty about facebook is that they have uh groups that you can join i’m not maybe more than 10 groups or so it groups and i’m in one that’s specifically on linux i’m another one that’s specifically on secure i’m in another group that’s specifically on the msp side because i know i had a lot of experience in msp side and so you know end up In those groups, you can ask questions. I’m in a group, it’s called a CCNA course. It’s got 50,000 members. We all help each other as far as, hey, what do you have in misunderstanding?

Speaker 0 | 33:08.888

What’s the most helpful group when it comes to being an IT director on Facebook?

Speaker 1 | 33:14.972

You know, I’ve gotten a lot of benefit from all of them, but there is one that I’m currently in. It’s an MSP group that I learn a lot from because a lot of them are also IT directors in that.

Speaker 0 | 33:26.340

uh it’s not chris weiser by any chance is it yes it is it is you see how i i didn’t you didn’t even tell me i’m just like you didn’t know he’s he’s well known he’s well known um i like chris very smart guy i’ve spoken to him previously before well you should probably share this podcast in his group since we’re plugging him for free and he probably doesn’t even know who i am i think i spoke with like one of his assistants at one time because i’m not a big um i just i don’t play in the msp space as much. I’m more in the kind of like enterprise, um, higher level space, but he’s, he does a lot of good for, um, the MSPs that are serving, you know, small business owners in, in, in higher up, right. And helping, um, uh, it guys and MSP owners grow their business. I mean, that’s, that’s what he is known for. Um, and I think he’s done a very, very good job at it. And I think before him before he was around it was you know it was robin robbins she’s been around a lot longer and just she’s just like a i don’t want to say older i don’t mean that in like an older age wise but she was in a you know msps before the i guess before the myspace ages you know what i mean it was like um but chris does a lot for um yeah the a lot for the msp space um right now in this modern age so yeah Yes. Yes. Very, very helpful. Um, it has been a pleasure having you on the show. Um, any final words of advice or, um, if there was like, if there was that one single thing that you could tell, um, Anyone out there that’s in, you know, system admin group or is running the help desk and wants to grow in IT or young guys getting out of college and wanting to work in IT? Is there any, what would be your one major piece of advice?

Speaker 1 | 35:22.000

You know, I think one thing that a lot of us shy away from is asking questions when we need them answered. And I think being in the right groups and knowing the resources to go to. So if you can, you know. Ask the right questions. I think that’s going to be a very, very good foundation for you to build upon and learn more about IT. Because if there’s something that even I myself right now, if I don’t know it, I’ll write it on my phone. I’ll write like, hey, how is this set up or how does this affect this and so on. I think once you get your question where it needs to be, then you can ask the right person, get their input and try to connect all the dots. And there’s always so much to learn. I always say continue to learn it and get a mentor if you can or have someone that can help you to learn or answer all your questions. And I think it’s going to set you up and get your foundation to where it needs to be.

Speaker 0 | 36:15.755

So ask early and often and very specific. That’s right. Thank you, sir.

Speaker 1 | 36:21.040

Well, I appreciate it. Thank you for having me on the show, Phil. Thank