Speaker 0 | 00:09.500

All right, well, welcome back to Dissecting Popular IT Nerds. This is Mike Kelly, and today I’m proud to introduce Sean Hardy, who has just recently retired from 20 years of active service to our country. Sean, with a heartfelt thank you for your service. I’m going to turn the microphone over to you and let you tell us a little about your history and your experiences.

Speaker 1 | 00:32.009

How you doing, Mike? Thank you for having me on here. I really appreciate it. So, yeah, so my name is Sean. I just retired from the from the Air Force after 20 years. Spent most of my time in communications. Grew up down in Florida before I joined the military. Grew up in Florida. And then I was a 19 year old kid who didn’t really have any direction, didn’t have a way to pay for college. I was having a hard time paying rent. So I said, you know what, I’m going to go join the military. And that’s, in a nutshell, that’s basically what I did. I went the next day and started talking to a recruiter. And about nine months later, I was at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, my first day of basic training. So I did basic training and did follow-on training over at Keesler Air Force Base down in Biloxi, Mississippi, where I became a… visual imagery and intrusion detection systems apprentice. And what that is, is basically the Air Force took two jobs and matched them together. So I was a physical security specialist, think like ADT or BRINCS. I was able to work on all those systems, but I was also trained on video production maintenance. So part of my training was done up in Fort Meade, Maryland, right outside of Baltimore. where I learned television studio maintenance, camera maintenance, television maintenance, all of that stuff. So once I graduated from there, that was about a year-long year of training. Went on to over to Korea, Osan Air Base in Korea, where I was continuing my work as an intrusion detection specialist. We maintained all the low-voltage wiring. card readers, RFID scanners, stuff like that. We did that for just about a year. From there, I went over to Vandenberg Air Force Base out in California in Santa Barbara County. From there, we had a space launch mission. There, I maintained a television production studio where we broadcast our space launches live to the NASA channel and to other partners. Did that for about three years. I deployed out of Denver to Djibouti, Africa, over in the Horn of Africa, just north of Somalia. And over there, I was tasked to be a combat camera maintainer. So I would maintain the equipment for all the combat photographers and all the combat videographers. I showed up and I didn’t have any equipment to actually do my job. So I didn’t have it. inch. I didn’t have tools. I didn’t have anything. Uh, there was nothing in place there. So I said, I don’t, I don’t really know what I can be doing here. And they said, well, can you shoot? I said, I absolutely can shoot. Uh, before I joined the military, I was actually a videographer and a video editor, uh, down in, uh, down in Florida, uh, in a retirement community called the villages. Uh, so leverage that, that skill, uh, that I had before the military. And I said, absolutely, I can shoot, I can edit, I can do whatever you guys need me to do. Uh, so from there, I went out and did, uh, military to military training. Documented that, documented training between the French, the Jebushians, went up to Ethiopia for a stint, did some documents and training up there. So that was all really cool. One of the coolest things, though, that I did was I am credited with creating the first podcast in the United States Central Command area of responsibility. So we had a humanitarian mission primarily out there in the Horn of Africa. And we would create podcasts and video blogs showcasing the services that we offered from the military base, veterinarian services, health services to the local population. And what we were trying to do is we were trying to win hearts and minds out there. They’re a very vulnerable population out there at the time. And so, you know, whoever was going to. whatever organization came out there and gave this area the most help, we’re going to be the ones that they kind of followed. So it was a wonderful mission. It was fantastic. I would get. different people from around the local area that spoke the different languages. I think we had four or five different languages that we would do each podcast in, English, Arabic, French, Somali, maybe a few more too. It’s been a long time.

Speaker 0 | 05:20.143

Was it a single podcast or a single recording and then the overlays, or did you have different personalities reproduce with native speaking?

Speaker 1 | 05:30.411

Yeah, so that’s exactly it. So I worked for the public affairs office, and the public affairs officers would write the content, and then I would have to go out and find these local people that we trusted to translate our English podcast into the native language. Then we would upload it to our servers, and they would download it through RSS feeds. This was 2006, 2007, so podcasting was in the early 2000s. Very, very early if it’s still so I don’t I don’t know how many how many downloads we we we got, you know, internet is not back then it was not readily available. So, but I am credited with creating the first podcast out there. So that was really cool. It was a fantastic experience.

Speaker 0 | 06:18.951

And ironically, this is I believe you were just saying prior to the call that this is your first interview on a podcast. So And it’s only 17 years later.

Speaker 1 | 06:31.737

That’s it. Nothing big. So it’s definitely cool to be a part of this podcast here after having a very, very early experience with the technology.

Speaker 0 | 06:44.287

So how did you go from doing video production and doing some podcasts into IT? Because part of your career was focused around the IT aspect.

Speaker 1 | 06:55.619

Yeah, it was. So after I left the Horn of Africa, I came back home to California where I decided that I want to be a drill sergeant. And that’s a very important piece to this story. You’re a poor eight-year-old. So in the Air Force, we call them military training instructors. So I went to San Antonio, Texas, Lackland Air Force Base and became a military training instructor for four and a half years. Now, while I was doing that training and molding the young men and women to wear the uniform, the Air Force decided to do away with my former career field. So visual imagery intrusion detection systems, VIDS for short, if I refer to it, VIDS went away and they made everyone in my career in my old career field a network operations technician. So while I was marching down the street, the Air Force was. changing my entire career path for the better. So after I was done being a military training instructor, I went back to the force and now I’m a network technician. At the time, I wasn’t able to tell you the difference between a router and a switch. I had no idea. You know, if you wanted me to march a group of people down the street and, you know, do that, I could do that. If you wanted me to set up cameras to document a space launch, I could do that. But when we were talking about slash 29s and subnetting VLANs, I had no idea. So it was quite a jump for me to do that. But that’s how I became an IT guy, basically.

Speaker 0 | 08:40.199

So what kind of training did they provide for you at that point? Or was it just more on the job and you just had to learn?

Speaker 1 | 08:47.102

Yeah, so… So based on my rank, I was a tech sergeant at the time in E6, and I was the non-commissioned officer in charge. So I was responsible for, I wouldn’t say I had 25 airmen underneath me. So my job was to get them to train, make sure that they were trained, make sure they had the classes that came down the pipeline for us. Meanwhile, I’m in the office writing their performance reports, doing budget analysis and all this stuff. So it took me two years to get into a training class for my career field. So, you know, while they’re out there programming the routers and switches, I’m sitting there. I have no idea what you guys are doing. Just please go do it and don’t get me in trouble. You know, at the two year mark, I was finally able to kind of be selfish a little bit and get myself into a class. And that was a class where I learned the fundamentals of routing and switching. Cisco call manager, VLANs, all that stuff. It was a two-week course, 7 a.m. until 4 p.m. uh monday through friday for two weeks and we were able to cram a lot of stuff in that course and at the time i was actually an hr manager human resources manager uh or uh major in college because going back to my military training instructor time i was like i don’t know what i’m gonna do i can’t uh you know this is the only thing i’m good at so i was going for an hr degree because of that two-week class it was so good it was so interesting i at the end of that i dropped out of that that school and started a an uh, networking degree. So it was a fantastic class and it changed the entire trajectory of my, of my, uh, my life basically, you know, without that class, I would not be where I’m at right now.

Speaker 0 | 10:40.002

Oh, and they actually, you got blended right away. I mean, in all honesty, I’m seeing three separate things happening to you at once. One, you’re learning how to lead. You’re, you’re looking at the budget, you’re handling the management aspect of that, that group. And then, um, networking. and phones at the same time. Now, yes, they are severely intertwined, but those two specialties are typically like complete schools of study by themselves. I managed to foster one employee or coworker into having both of those. And we burned him out pretty quickly because he was doing both. But that’s interesting that they were teaching you that. And I just got to mention. You know, you’re talking about intrusion detection and it being the physical intrusion detection. Every time I hear intrusion detection, I’m automatically thinking of, you know, like trying to find a watch and snort. That’s how old I am. I used the old system snort at the beginning of that, looking for that intrusion detection. And hey, has somebody gotten into our network? And so keep going. Tell us a little more about, okay, so you’ve gotten some of that training. What year are we talking about now?

Speaker 1 | 11:54.847

So right now we’re talking. So I got there in 2012. So 2014 is whenever I finally got into that training course and was able to learn the kind of deep dive into routing and switching and telephones. And, you know, you mentioned that they are two broad different things. So it was actually a really cool unit that I was attached to. I was attached to a combat communications squadron down in Warner Robins, Georgia, central Georgia. And we had to be the jack of all trades and kind of the master of all as well. So it was a really cool unit because what we would do, our mission was to load up all of our equipment on these aircraft pallets, stack them about seven feet tall and load them in the back of a C-130 cargo aircraft, deploy out to wherever it is that we’re needed. and set up a network within 72 hours. And you’re talking the satellite communication link to pull services, and you’re talking the routers and switches and all the server infrastructure and all that stuff. So we were tasked to do that within 72 hours.

Speaker 0 | 13:12.328

And you’re doing this, like, in the middle of nowhere, too.

Speaker 1 | 13:15.111

You’re setting up nowhere.

Speaker 0 | 13:16.352

Yeah, there’s no address. You’re not asking for a circuit to be there. You’re…

Speaker 1 | 13:19.995

dropped in and you’ve got the satellite communications that wow absolutely so we were we were considered one of the first groups to go into a a new base and open up a new base so we had civil engineers attached to us and they would run our hvac they would run our our power spot our uh our generators and all that stuff and you know sometimes uh i would have our civil engineers our hvac technicians out there making cat5 cables for us because we’re just we’re short-handed and you know teach them how to do it real quick and they’d be over there splicing cables and stuff so we we all really had to be uh knowledgeable in all aspects of everything so that’s that’s why we did telephones routers switches uh and all that stuff and you know if a class came available uh to to go for one of my guys to go to satcom i would send them out to that to that class just because we’ve had to be well versed in in all aspects of what what our team did how many on on a typical one of those

Speaker 0 | 14:17.651

deployments, how many endpoints would you be dealing with as far as just the phones and, and, you know, of course the networking pieces, but.

Speaker 1 | 14:25.895

Yeah, sure. So some of our buildouts, we’re supplying 200 endpoints on, in these mirror-based environments. But, you know, as soon as, as soon as everything was up and running, the mission could go forward and, you know, we could, we could start doing what we were tasked to do. whether that be in Jordan and Kuwait and Iraq, Afghanistan or Northern Africa, they had a really great mission. So, you know, whatever the mission called for is what we would provide. We weren’t really bound by anything. So if we needed 10 endpoints we could deploy a kit that would supply that if we needed 500 we could build out a kit that would supply that and typically our teams were uh between 9 and 15 people uh that were doing all this that that includes our civil engineers that were supplying the hvac and the power production so between nine and nine and fifteen people were doing this we had uh we had several teams assigned to our squadron that would go out and do this

Speaker 0 | 15:33.148

And so how many of these were like pre-existing structures that you suddenly layered this into? Or was it more often than not the tents that we see on TV or in movies?

Speaker 1 | 15:48.494

So a lot of times it was that. A lot of times it was the tents. Gosh, I can’t remember the name of it. It’s been a while now. But yeah, I mean, you know, what you see on the movies was a lot of times what we were operating in. And. uh you know out there in the middle of the deserts uh you know it gets really hot in those things i mean they basically become ovens so uh it it was it was very difficult at times to to get this stuff up and going so so okay um i’m used to having

Speaker 0 | 16:19.424

network closets that if they hit 70 degrees or 75 degrees some of that cisco networking equipment just saying i don’t want to work and too hot um and how did you guys deal with that out there

Speaker 1 | 16:33.068

Yeah, so we had some of the best HVAC technicians out there. We would deploy out heavy-duty HVAC systems and pipe in the AC straight into the tank, and we would set our equipment right in front of the racks so that it would stay at a good temperature. But if the HVAC went down, it was a bad day for everybody. We’re not just providing services to the Air Force. A lot of times we’re— providing services to the army navy marine corps uh and a lot of times they have assets up in the air or you know out in the field and you know everything runs over ip now uh all of our all everything we have runs on ip so if our links go down you know bad things can happen so uh you know the the maintenance that that our hvac guys put into those things were was amazing and you know a lot of credit goes to them and so i mean

Speaker 0 | 17:31.164

I imagine this is like a completely different world than what I’m used to and what you’re starting to find out about of, you know, in the, in the private sector, I put out a, I build that request. I put everything together in it. These are all the things that I need, bring that to somebody. And they’re like looking at the budget and going, nah, you got to mark 20% off of this, but still make all of that happen. And, and you were probably like, okay, I need this for this kit. And you just got it.

Speaker 1 | 18:02.608

Am I right? Yeah, so the acquisition process, so the equipment is called Theater Deployable Communication, so TDC equipment. And it’s all centrally managed out of Hanscom Air Force Base up near Boston, Massachusetts. And they have a whole warehouse full of this stuff. So anytime that something would go wrong, anytime that we would need a new piece of equipment, we would just reach out to them and and they would supply it to us they would send it down to us so we didn’t really have to go out and purchase too much per se we would just reach out to them and you know their budget was probably ridiculous i don’t even want to know how much money uh that that organization had and had to maintain uh but acquisition for us because we were such a high priority asset and not saying that we were the highest priority uh team out there because there’s definitely other teams out there that are you know more specialized in what they can do and i can touch on that a little bit too but you know whenever we needed something we pretty much got it for the most part okay so you don’t didn’t have to fight for the resources and and

Speaker 0 | 19:11.581

scrabble for it because they they knew that lives were involved because now now it’s about the almighty dollar now what you’re going to be fighting with is is making sure that whatever you do

Speaker 1 | 19:24.256

brings value to the organization and and more value than what it costs for you to do whatever you’re doing um so it was so tightly managed that you know whenever a uh whenever a router went down in one of these kits because we had to do preventative maintenance inspections on them all the time so whenever a router went down on it it got reported up to all the way up to the highest highest level uh that it would that it needed to go uh as you know and you you’d have a one-star general being told that, hey, this one single router is down and this one kit. That probably won’t be used for another year is down. So, you know, whenever the general gets briefed on something like that, it usually gets fixed pretty quickly.

Speaker 0 | 20:08.704

Okay. Just the thought of all of that and how different it was. So when doing those kinds of deployments, what lesson or what did you learn from doing that that has become kind of one of the tenets or one of the axioms of? of what you do and how you work today. What did you learn from doing that? You know,

Speaker 1 | 20:33.536

what’s probably the biggest lesson that I took away from, from that role and, and future roles too, is that you really need to understand what your people are doing. You know, at my level, I don’t need to be the expert on routing and switching. I don’t need to be the expert on active directory or, or, you know, the firewall. I don’t need to be on the keyboard writing those things, but I need to understand the language. And that’s why it was so important for me to get into that two-week class that I mentioned and how I view that as a turning point. Because before that, I had no idea what my airmen were doing. I had absolutely no idea that they would be talking to me and it would be like Charlie Brown’s mom off screen. And so that’s kind of how I feel my role as an IT director now is I don’t need to know everything. I don’t need to know the… nuts and bolts of how they’re getting the job done. But I do need to understand the language. I need to be able to relay that and translate that into a way that a doctor can understand because I am in the healthcare industry now. So I need to be able to translate the technical jargon into something that a doctor can understand. Obviously, doctors are very smart, but they’re not technologists by nature. Most of them are not technologists by nature. So uh whenever they’re controlling the budget i need to be able to say this is what we need this is why we need it and here’s a little bit about how this thing works so yeah and then well um another question about the infrastructure and what you were building and the goals behind everything um so

Speaker 0 | 22:15.997

you’re setting up your first one in to help set up the communications the ip communications um did it the did it stay to just the voice in the video or did it expand out to um all of the regular data set data points so all the laptops all of the machines any of those kinds of things were you also the backbone for that yes

Speaker 1 | 22:40.012

so our team our team was and so we had a uh uh someone who’s their entire job their air force specialty code uh afsc their entire afsc was to do desktop laptop support and deploy these machines out to all the different users. And you’re talking different networks too. So you have unclassified, which is Nippernet. Classified to the secret level is SipperNet. And then to the top secret level, the intelligence network is called JWIGS. So we had to support all of these different networks to include the computer assets associated with it. So you’re not going to put a… a unclass computer on a classified network so you have to manage all all of those things we had to build out all these networks there were some times where we were building three similar networks but with different classification levels that they were able to handle uh so yeah we i mean we had to handle everything our team of nine to fifteen airmen had to do absolutely every if it if it plugged into a wall and pulled an ip address we were the ones doing it yeah that’s that’s um i

Speaker 0 | 23:48.268

laugh because i always say if it runs electricity or code it’s my fault somehow and so now if it plugs into a wall or if it pulls an ip address and that was your job and okay interesting and then having that what did you man so much i want to dive deep into those technologies and the things that you guys had to do but but it’s not about that it’s about learning um the things that you picked up and learned along the way and and so i mean I assume that it’s somewhat, and now that I use that word, I’m like, whoa, wait a minute. I assume it was easier to manage those kinds of teams, the military teams, than the private sector teams. I know you’ve got how many, what, like four months?

Speaker 1 | 24:37.614

Yeah, in fact, today is my four-month mark in the seat at my company. So, yeah, four months. So the biggest difference in managing a military team versus my private sector team is, you know, I have reliable data on what my airmen are trained on. I know exactly their blocks of instruction. I know how long they were in training for. I know the milestones that they were required to meet in order to get their qualification badge to put on their uniform. So whenever someone shows up, I can say, hey, what’s your AFSC? Oh, I’m a 1 Delta 7X whatever. And I’ll say, okay, I know that you went through this, these blocks of instruction, this training. Hey, I need you to go build a Cat 5 table. uh run into that wall over there for me or you’re this you’re this afsc i need you to go set up that satellite terminal for me so we can pull services out here in the private sector i have no no way of knowing what my team is is trained on uh you know they’re they’re wonderful people they’re they’re they’re super smart guys but i don’t know what their what their history is you know if i say hey we need to build this product out uh who do you think could do that you know sometimes neither one of my guys can can do that and you know we have to go to another resource to to try to sort that out or have to put them in training class so i would say that’s the biggest difference in uh military versus private sector i.t personnel is just knowing exactly what i’m getting versus having to use those interpersonal relationship skills to kind of kind of figure it out and then say okay you don’t have this training let’s get you this training because this is the service that we need. So let’s get you trained up on this stuff.

Speaker 0 | 26:28.698

Yeah, and see, one of the things that I always ran into was, okay, if they don’t know it, do I go out and do I take the time to grow that skill? Because there’s always that time, the time investment in it. And or do I go out there and hire that skill? Or do I outsource that skill? And these are all… things that you’re going to get to face and run into and deal with coming up.

Speaker 1 | 26:55.596

So right now, right now, what I’m doing is I’m, I’m outsourcing a lot of it, but I’m internally growing them. So I know, so I eventually can stop outsourcing things. Yeah. So.

Speaker 0 | 27:06.362

Yeah. Then that way you have better control over it and more knowledge with it and what’s going on. That was, at least that was one of the things that our, our organization always liked. Cause they like to be able to just reach out and grab me and say, Hey,

Speaker 1 | 27:18.529

shush.

Speaker 0 | 27:20.462

And I’m sure the military is more like that than, you know, saying, hey, go let them know that they got to go fix this.

Speaker 1 | 27:27.263

Yeah, yeah. So, you know, I mean, there’s a thing in the military and in the private sector at some places, too. But they’ll give you your job description and then they’ll say, and other duties as required. That could be anything. Hey, now we’re going to fill sandbags. Well, that’s something. Yes, it is. It’s your job.

Speaker 0 | 27:46.509

Yeah, we done told you it is. You are.

Speaker 1 | 27:49.446

Yeah, exactly. What’s your name? Oh, it’s Airman. So, you know, all Airmen go do this job.

Speaker 0 | 27:58.110

Oh, man. So have you run into any resistance from the private sector yet or around some of those things? So that’s not my job or he was wrong. It’s their fault. They need to fix it.

Speaker 1 | 28:08.676

No, no, I haven’t. And yeah, one of the things because, you know, my team is real small. But one of the things that I’m having to do is I’m having to be that. that guy who says that you know just because the software application is not running i don’t i can’t fix it i don’t know how to fix it that’s we that’s a that’s a cloud-based product you know i can submit a trouble ticket but i can’t go in and fix this so learning how to diplomatically say hey not really my lane but let me see what i can do to to try to help assist this or find the right person because you know i’m still finding my footing out here so i don’t want to be the guy saying not my job but having to figure out the proper way to say let me help you find a solution to this problem that i don’t know right now um so

Speaker 0 | 29:02.755

i’m wondering you know when when we started off the discussion one of the things that you talked a lot about was was creating documentation and in the private sector creating documentation at least in my experience, and hopefully it’s not something that I bring to the team, getting that documentation created and getting that follow through and having that made so that, you know, when people cycle through or there’s new opportunities or whatever, that there’s assets there for the next person to learn from. It sounds like you ended up with that as kind of a fundamental.

Speaker 1 | 29:41.782

um is it something that you’re pushing today as you’re working at the new it is because so so it is fundamental to the military because you know after every exercise after every deployment after every mission you have to write an after action report basically summarizing to granular to the granular detail uh what what went good what worked bad uh and creating this whole this whole lessons learned uh documentation uh in your after actions report so that’s ingrained in me uh the issue that i’m facing now at my at my company is you know we’ve been we’ve been spread pretty thin uh so my guys have been uh they like to say before i got there they were just keeping the lights on. So they didn’t have time to write down their lessons learned or their after action reports or document a lot of this stuff. And before they came on, there’s not a whole lot of that information out there. We don’t have service logs. We don’t have a robust ticketing system where we can go back and pull up, oh, this problem happened a year and a half ago, and this is what we did for it. So it is something that I’m… definitely trying to get after because it’s so important. I mean, you know, you’re doomed to fail if you keep continuing to repeat history and you’re going to repeat history if you don’t learn from the mistakes.

Speaker 0 | 31:03.378

Right. And that’s, that’s, you know, it seems, wow. That tells me so much about the organization that you’re at and now it makes me, so it adds lots of questions. Like how large is the organization that you’re at now? How many, how many people are you supporting?

Speaker 1 | 31:21.842

So just under 500. So we’re, let’s see. So we are acquiring different healthcare organizations, different healthcare companies. So we have a presence here in Houston. We have a presence in Dallas, Austin, and out in California. So it’s about 500 people throughout the entire enterprise, but I’m primarily focused on our Houston. employees and that’s about 225 employees and how much of this is is acquisition over the last say 12 to 24 months that you know of yeah so uh let’s see 19 19 19 is uh uh so we have 35 locations and 19 of those are uh acquisitions over in the last 24 months

Speaker 0 | 32:18.646

Wow. And out of all of those locations, nobody had a help desk or an ITSM, as they like to call them now?

Speaker 1 | 32:26.829

So out in California, we do use a service provider out there because we don’t have a full-time employee. So we do outsource our IT needs to a managed service provider out there, and they do a phenomenal job. And their historical knowledge is pretty vast. Up in the Dallas area, we have one. One team member. I don’t know what the historical documentation is up there. This person has been with the company for many, many years. So a lot of his information is probably stored in his head. Need to get that information down on paper. And then here in the Houston area, we have two full time employees. And like I said, they just haven’t really had the time to document a lot of this stuff. Just because they’re there. they’ve been keeping the lights on basically.

Speaker 0 | 33:19.579

So. Wow. Okay. So those are some of your challenges. And so here, I ask you for another one of the life lessons here. What from your military background, as you step into this role and you’re starting to, I’m assuming you’re starting to see the whole environment and you’re starting to do more. Quick question. How many people are on the team now?

Speaker 1 | 33:45.470

On my IT team, I have two here, one in Austin and an MSP out in California. So three full-time employees and then myself, so four.

Speaker 0 | 33:55.274

Okay. Damn. All right. So, yeah, that’s a bit of a challenge. What from what you’ve learned in the military are the things that you just feel like, oh, man, I’ve got to have this built and set up and. I need this foundation so that I can continue to move forward and be the resource that this organization is looking for.

Speaker 1 | 34:21.988

So the first thing that comes to mind, and I don’t know if this is the question that you’re asking, but this is the first thing that comes to mind. Most of my success in the military, if not all my success, is my ability to build relationships. You know, once you establish a good, solid relationship with a person. you know a team an organization leadership you can move mountains you know a happy employee will gladly go above and beyond if they know that you have their back at the end of the day uh building those relationships and having someone who who works with me that trusts me they’re more willing to take chances and you know if if something goes great i’m going to give them all credit in the world if something goes bad i’m going to take ownership of that failure uh and i i i think i think it’s moving i think that skill is coming over to the uh private sector and I like to think that I’ve established these relationships with my team and my peers and my superiors that they like me, that they trust me, and that they’re willing to let me have a place at the table to either represent them or represent the interests of the company. So building relationships is probably the most important thing to me.

Speaker 0 | 35:43.557

Okay, cool. Yeah, I’m looking for those key takeaways to help us promote this and just, you know, learn from your experience. What are some of the key takeaways? what are those things that you’ve found? And so building the relationships and trust, building trust is like so important on all levels of it. From the guy that’s answering help desk all the way up to a, yes, sir. We’ll make that happen. And he’s going to be able to trust that you will.

Speaker 1 | 36:14.840

Absolutely. And, you know, I, my, my CEO, he trusts me. I hope. And I know that he does because I was just able to get a $200,000 contract on his desk and signed. And that’s not something that the CEO of a company is going to take lightly. And he’s not going to sit there and dig down into the weeds to try to understand everything that we’re doing. But he trusts me that I’m making the right decision for the company and that this decision is going to… save the company money make the company money and it’s not going to cost us money uh it’s not going to cost us in excess so uh you know i i feel like in my four months that i’ve built those relationships with the with the c-suite and with the vice presidents uh in the company that they they trust my technical abilities and my technical opinion and

Speaker 0 | 37:13.642

how big was the team in the military you mentioned it one time 25 i think all right so uh so it it

Speaker 1 | 37:20.188

it varied from from uh organization to organization uh so down in uh down in uh georgia when i was doing combat communications i had i directly uh oversaw about 25 between 25 and 40 uh airmen uh then uh my last assignment uh i just got home from korea back in back in march of this year in 23 uh there i had 140 women uh so uh you know wide wide scope of responsibility there. Anywhere from, I think the smallest number that I led in the latter half of my career was five. So between five and 140 people. And you know, those 140, they’re not direct reports. I had nine direct reports and, you know, the chain of command filtered down. But at the end of the day, I was responsible for the actions of all 140 of those. uh,

Speaker 0 | 38:20.397

uh, early. Yeah. Oh, okay. Yeah. And that’s, that’s quite the team to, to have the experience working with. And yeah, you gotta have those layers because otherwise trying to direct report 140 people, no way, but nine, nine’s hard to do.

Speaker 1 | 38:36.971

140 would be, be impossible. But one thing that I did try to do with, with my team of 140 is I tried to establish a relationship with as many as I could. you know i might not know your first name i might not know your birthday but you know whenever i walk into the office because i was the i was the senior i was a senior mass sergeant and i was in charge of the entire operations uh we call them flights in the air force i was in charge of the all the operations flights and when i’d visit the different work centers uh you know i i wanted them to not clam up or not not be shy or be like oh the seniors here you know let’s uh you know mind our p’s and q’s i wanted them to be themselves uh and you know at the end of my tour there i i really think that i uh was successful in that because like i said if people like you and people understand what your intent is and they respect you you get a lot more done you get a lot more done you know if i want one situation where we had i had to bring in my crew uh on a saturday and nobody likes to do that especially in the military because you know we’re already uh spread pretty thin and taxed pretty hard uh physically. So I had to bring him in on Saturday and I showed up on Saturday with him and I was doing everything that I possibly could to make their Saturday just a little bit easier. I think that earned me. a little bit of credibility i’ll say a lot of credit i think i think it helped establish who i was as a leader because that was pretty early on my i think that was actually my second weekend when i got to korea so uh you know being able to establish that credibility as a as a leader i think really helped uh during my time there yeah versus sitting back and just saying go do this i told you go do It would have been easy just to sit at my apartment while the guys went out and fixed the telephones in the elevators. I didn’t have to be there. Nobody told me to be there, but it was important that I threw my uniform on. I went in there and I helped out everywhere that I could because on Saturday, I’m taking them away from their family. I’m taking them away from something that they wanted to do because the last thing they wanted to do was go fix those telephones in the elevators. Seeing me there, I think hopefully…

Speaker 0 | 40:52.370

made it a little bit more a little bit easier for them to uh stomach to spend their saturday doing that no it’s guaranteed it did i mean i’ve worked for both kinds and i much more appreciate the guy that’s standing next to me helping me versus the guy that’s standing behind us telling

Speaker 1 | 41:12.784

us yeah yeah you know it’s important it was important to me to do that uh because like i said i could very easily just say it at home I didn’t have to do that, but it was important for me to do that.

Speaker 0 | 41:24.312

So what do you think was one of the hardest things that you faced in your career? What’s one of those things that you struggled with that you overcame? And, you know, what was, does anything come to mind? Does anything jump out?

Speaker 1 | 41:40.846

Yeah, so I think the biggest thing that I struggled with was, you know, PCS, Permanent Change of Station. I moved. I think seven times in the military. And my situation is unique because I never did the same thing twice. So I started off in intrusion detection, then I did video production, then I became a military training instructor. Then I was a network technician down in combat communications. Then I went and did satellite communications up for a joint special operations command. Then I went back to San Antonio to do cyber operations. And then my final assignment was over in Korea where I was the operations superintendent. So knowing that you’re going to move every three to four years and knowing that you’re going to be doing something different every single time, that was a struggle. Because when I got hired on Joint Special Operations Command to run a satellite communications hub, I knew nothing about satellites. I knew nothing about how they worked. It was all voodoo magic to me. None of it made any sense, but here I am getting paid to sit in this seat. manage this extremely high priority satellite network for these special operators on the ground who rely on their ability to communicate with their teammates. And I’m sitting here in my air conditioned office in Fort Bragg, North Carolina, and not really understanding how to do my job. So, you know, just getting thrown into the sharks was, it was always difficult. But I always was successful for the most part. It wasn’t without turbulence and difficulty, but that was probably the most challenging thing is moving to a new duty station and having to learn an entirely new skill each and every time. And it wasn’t supposed to be like that. The military and the Air Force and the way our job codes are designed, it’s not supposed to be like that. But… The way my career path led me, I did a different job every single time. Not including the time that I went to Kuwait as a project manager and had no idea how to manage a project. Didn’t even know project management terminology. So that was probably the biggest hurdle that I had to overcome.

Speaker 0 | 44:07.819

It seems like learning the terminology would be the hard part there. that all of your experiences prior to that learning how to deploy and do all of these things those skills were probably innate in you by that point it was just now translating and and learning oh you mean i can’t even put it into words but but something that you were used to doing like all of the planning all of the pre-work and all of the um design you know you already had that and you would think about all that stuff as you start working on a project And some project managers are just like, okay, let’s start moving and wait. There’s a lot of, if you do it right, there’s a lot of work that happens prior to moving at all.

Speaker 1 | 44:50.226

Yeah. Yeah. And so, you know, I got, I got placed in this project management office. And I didn’t know any of the terminology. I’d have to go to these meetings. They’d be talking about KPIs and all this stuff. And it was my lieutenant, who was a project manager by trade, who was running these meetings. And finally, I had to be like, sir, I don’t know what you’re talking about. He gave me some resources. And he just told me to relax. You’re doing a great job. Continue what you’re doing. Everything else will come to you. And that’s exactly what I did. I stopped worrying about the terminology. KPIs and this and that. And I just started doing my job. And it ended up being a very successful deployment. And it was actually another career-defining moment for me because I started to love project management. And as a director of IT now, I see myself as basically a project manager or program manager. And I’m sitting for my PMP pretty soon. So it was one of the career-defining moments that I was. absolutely terrified to do and didn’t know if I was doing a good job at it. But then, you know, like you said, all the other experiences I had throughout the military, I’ve been doing project management for the entire time. I just didn’t know it. I feel like that’s probably what a lot of project managers, they probably have that light bulb moment that says, I know how to do this. I’ve been doing this for a long time. I just wasn’t calling it project management. So in all honesty,

Speaker 0 | 46:19.456

there’s one other thing that’s like that. But. Now, I agree with you on the project management. For the PMP, you got to be able to show those things. You got to show years of doing it. So I have a question on that. But sales, everything is sales. And, you know, I grew up telling myself I’m never going to be a salesperson because, you know, the car salesman and the cold calls that we used to get. We used to. I told myself I was never going to do sales. And then one day as I’m working. delivering food as I’m waiting at the table, I’m like, oh man, everything is sales.

Speaker 1 | 46:55.546

Absolutely.

Speaker 0 | 46:57.327

So, you know, it was one of those light bulb moments, but it was more of a facepalm. And so when you decided that you were going to go after your PMP, I’m assuming that you didn’t decide that three years ago because PMPs, last I’d looked at it, they require proof of three years of doing projects. But you’ve got that.

Speaker 1 | 47:19.234

Yeah.

Speaker 0 | 47:20.074

And so the thought of PMP came after?

Speaker 1 | 47:23.837

So, you know, I so I want to get my PMP pretty much as soon as I learned about it and learned that I like project management. So it was a little bit over three years ago. But what I wanted to do is I wanted the military to pay for us. And so so there’s a program that I actually participated in after I left Korea. uh called skill bridge with uh onward to opportunity an organization called onward to opportunity and what they do is they uh they pay for your boot camp they pay for your training and they pay for your uh certification voucher uh and i you can get that all for free as a as a retiring or a separating military member uh under certain certain certain circumstances so that was always kind of my goal you know whenever i go to retire from the from the air force I’m going to do the SkillBridge program with Onward to Opportunity, and that’s how I’m going to get my PMP. And so that’s exactly what I’m doing. I came home from Korea back in March of this year. I went through the boot camp, and I did all the training. And actually, last night is when I got the voucher approved and submitted for the test. So in mid-January, I’m going to be sitting for my PMP. I pushed it out a little bit just because I want to be super solid that I’m going to pass it. that you know there’s nothing worse than having to retake i had to i had to retake uh cc e and t uh back uh back a couple years ago and nothing worse than having to retake a test so i want to i want to make sure that i’m really ready for it okay well and and i can just tell from your personality that

Speaker 0 | 49:00.234

you will be um and then you know so i’m i’m wondering that as you’re moving into the private sector and the the military career has sunsetted And all of these different skills that you’ve learned and brought, it seems like it was a wonderful choice for you to land a job as, I believe it’s director of IT, right?

Speaker 1 | 49:27.275

Yeah, director of IT.

Speaker 0 | 49:29.856

And it seems like you’d fit almost anywhere, but you ended up in an area that requires some compliance that I’m next to positive you haven’t had to deal with at all. So what struggles or what challenges and opportunities are you seeing there?

Speaker 1 | 49:50.580

So we’re mandated by law to be HIPAA compliant with all of our… uh with all our software partner processes and you know everything and so thankfully you know the company’s been around that i work for it’s been around since 1952. so they you know for the most part everything is HIPAA compliant so uh what i have to do is whenever i’m looking at a new software hardware product uh i the first thing out of my mouth is are we HIPAA compliant does your product keep me in compliance with uh with HIPAA And, you know, for the most part, I haven’t had a situation where they say, no, we’re not. But it is always the first question out of my mouth. Now, one thing that I’ve had to do is I have had to say to a few different people within my organization is I’m not the HIPAA compliance officer. If we need someone who innately understands HIPAA, because I’ll ask those questions, but I cannot be the HIPAA compliance officer. So that has been one thing to that. To it, a very, very small amount. It has been a challenge because when I was onboarding, I had to read a three-page document that explains our HIPAA compliance. And we get done with the three-page document, sign at the bottom, and boom, you’re now an expert, right? Right. Unfortunately, that’s not how it works. So it has been a little bit of a… a little bit of a challenge uh understanding all the all the new terminology and making sure i’m asking the right questions and you know one of the the thoughts that hit me as you were talking about that is um every vendor right

Speaker 0 | 51:37.058

i’m sorry you know sorry those of you that i work with and and i’m not being able to kick any of you but vendors lie so they’re all going to tell you they’re compliant and so learning how to to um Check that. It’s going to be a key component, whether you’re doing it or whether somebody else is doing it. And then the learning how bringing a new system in, even though it’s HIPAA compliant and how it interacts with somebody else or some other system, does that break that compliance? Because there’s going to be times where that interaction rubs the edge or pushes that boundary. So,

Speaker 1 | 52:17.992

you know, the fines are hefty. And, you know, if I bring on a software product or a hardware product that moves us out of compliance and we get hit with a fine, you know, I’m no longer the director of IT anymore. You know, they’re now searching for a new director of IT. So it is very, very important that we maintain that and that I do my due diligence with these different vendors to make sure that we maintain our compliance. You know that. Like I said, the fines are hefty and extensive. And if it’s my fault, it’s my fault. And I have to own that. And then I have to change my LinkedIn banner to open to work.

Speaker 0 | 53:02.414

Yeah, that’s not fun.

Speaker 1 | 53:06.937

Hopefully, I don’t have to do it for a long time. Hopefully, this train keeps on rolling.

Speaker 0 | 53:13.721

Yeah, no. wish you the best with it. I mean, it seems like you’re going to succeed wherever you’re at. Just my talking with you and what I’m learning of you tells me that you’re going to do well, which, you know what, brings up a question about a topic that you said that you suffered from when we did our pre-call, and that was imposter syndrome. Talk to me about, you know, that’s another one of those things that I think you had to overcome or just get rid of.

Speaker 1 | 53:48.358

So, so the imposter syndrome. So imposter syndrome is very real. You know, whenever I got the first call from our HR team saying, Hey, we’d like for you to interview. Let’s sit down and let me ask you a couple of questions. You know, I answered the question and I’m like, they’re not going to call me back because I don’t have an experience in healthcare. You know, that was, that was cool, but they’re never going to call me back. a couple days later i get an email from uh from hr saying uh the cfo wants to interview me and you know that interview goes fantastic he asked me a couple uh technology questions that i uh that i i’m able to answer confidently and i’m like well you know but i i did kind of flub on uh flub on one of the one of the questions so like yeah you know he’s not gonna call it back well i get it i get another call back and now we’re interviewing with this outside consultant uh And I’m like, okay, this is the nail in the coffin. After I meet with this consultant, he’s going to throw some curveballs at me, and I’m never moving past this round. It was a wonderful conversation, and it was fantastic. It was a wonderful experience. Then I get an email saying, the CEO and the VP of ops want to interview you. well uh okay okay let’s i don’t know why they want to interview me but okay let’s do it next thing i know i’m getting a i’m getting a job offer uh with the salary types to it and so the whole time i’m thinking why me why did they hire me versus someone who has health care experience why me why why not someone with a longer resume or more experience out here in the private sector or you know just just the questions like It was my own internal battle to justify why they wanted me on their team. And even when I onboarded, I was here for weeks and months, and I kept on asking myself, why me? What makes me more special than anybody else? Why did they hire me? I don’t understand. What makes me qualified? And it was to the point where I was like, how do I justify this to myself? Do I need to go get an MBA? so I can understand the terminology. There’s that terminology thing again. Do I need to go get an MBA so that I feel like I belong here? And when I told my wife that, she was like, just be content. They hired you because you’re good for the job. They hired you because you’re a likable person. They hired you because of your experience. You don’t need an MBA, is what she told me. She was like, just be content with where you’re at. You don’t need to always be doing something else to prove yourself. And it was that moment where I was like, you know what? You’re right. You’re right. Let me settle down in this position, really understand what I’m doing and why they hired me. And that was because I’m qualified. And last week I got a contract. I think I mentioned it earlier. I got a contract signed by the CEO that’s going to completely change our network. And in that moment, I felt, okay, I belong here. You know, they trust me. They like me. uh you’re not gonna fire me uh yet but you know i i belong here uh because they signed this contract that i’ve been trying to negotiate for for months now i belong here and you know i’m sure i’m still going to go back and forth uh at some point and uh say why me again but in this moment and today i feel like i belong so I think it’s going to be an ongoing struggle with the imposter syndrome. But right now, I’m content. I’m happy. I feel like I belong where I’m at.

Speaker 0 | 57:28.617

So I got two little things for you. Number one, why not you? What have you done that makes it so you shouldn’t be there? You know, so hit yourself with that question. And then it’s, to me, it’s not natural. Um, although it’s something that I’ve started to do is go ask them, go ask them, Hey, you know, I’m here. I’ve been here for a little while. I I’m getting some things done, but I just want to know, what was it about my interview that had you hand me up to the CFO? Um, or, you know, go to the CFO. Hey, what was it about my interview that, that, you know, had you pass me to the outside consultant or. And talk to all of them. Find out. And they’re going to appreciate you having that curiosity, and you’re going to appreciate the answers because it’s going to help give you more of that validation that you already have it, you’re just not trusting it. And you build trust with others. You build trust with yourself.

Speaker 1 | 58:37.499

Yeah. Yeah. You know, I think a lot of former military that transitioned to the private sector or I think a lot of us struggle with the imposter syndrome because it’s so easy just to raise your right hand and reenlist again. I couldn’t reenlist. They weren’t kicking me out or anything. I chose to retire and to go from this guaranteed paycheck where I’ve been doing this for 20 years. I know I can do it blindfolded at this point. It’s hard to transition to the outside world, to the real world, so to speak. And then when someone takes a gamble on you. a risk by hiring you and paying you the salary you you have to ask yourself why but i i’m starting to understand my why and i’m starting to really feel uh at home now cool

Speaker 0 | 59:28.574

so is there anything else any other lessons that that you know that took you that career all of the those years to learn that you want to help those are coming behind us Those that are listening to us, is there any other nuggets of wisdom that you’d like to toss their way?

Speaker 1 | 59:52.994

to help them besides you know obviously speak the business and yeah so uh you know honestly you know building relationships was i think the key to my success in the military and hopefully out here in the private sector but another thing is taking risks being willing to take a risk on on yourself on uh on a product on a service on what just be willing to take a risk but you know the the the paved road is always easy but you know sometimes the best adventures are found off the path and so you know i was i was in a very comfortable spot when i was working in that combat communications uh squadron uh someone reached out to me from joint special operations command uh just a cold email and said hey we want you to come interview and by the way i was in kuwait at the time i was in the i was in kuwait whenever i got this email hey once you come in a research job I had no idea how they got my information. I said, hey, I’m in Kuwait. I’m deployed. You can’t leave Kuwait to come interview for a job. Give me six months and I can do it. They said, no, you can come. Just go ask the question. They’ll say yes. So I did that. I went and asked the question. And sure enough, they said yes because of who Joint Special Operations Command is. They said yes. And so a week later, I was on a plane from Kuwait to Raleigh, North Carolina. to go interview for this job that i had no details on none whatsoever they didn’t even tell me any details whenever i was interviewing for the job it was more of a personality test can we work with this guy type of interview and you know they asked me a couple of technical questions that uh i had to be honest with them and said i don’t know i i do not know the answer for that but if you guys take a chance on me i will become the best the best person that you have still having absolutely no idea what i’m doing so i go back to kuwait uh, after the interview, it’s a week long interview. Uh, so I go back to Kuwait and then I get a, get an email saying, Hey, congratulations. You got the job. We want you here in, uh, June of next year. And I’m like, okay, well, this is turning my life completely upside down. My wife had a wonderful job that she was working at. We had just bought our first house. We had a, uh, less than one year old baby. So we were comfortable in Georgia, but then I said, Hey, this is a, I told my wife, I said, this is a good thing. I don’t know what it is. but this is a good thing only good things are going to come from this and so i took a chance on it and another one of those career defining moments i i went up there i started working satellite communications gave me that breadth of experience i met some wonderful people up there and uh you know it exposed me to things that you read about in the newspapers or that they make movies about uh it it gave me a firsthand look into what what it is that we do out there As a military, it was one of those career-defining moments. And I could have very easily not taken the job because I didn’t have to.

Speaker 0 | 62:58.261

You could have ignored that email.

Speaker 1 | 63:01.162

I could have ignored the email and life would have went on. I might still be living in Georgia 10 years later right now, but I took a chance on it. And I went up there and it was a wonderful, wonderful experience. propelled my military career to to you know i i was in the e8 a senior mass sergeant it only goes to e9 so i i made it to almost to the top and i probably could have continued going if i wanted to continue uh wearing the uniform uh but without that job you know i don’t know i don’t know if i would have made this as high as i did so take chances uh trust yourself uh you know The world is wonderful, and if you take a chance to experience it, most of the time only good things will happen. I’m not saying every chance is good.

Speaker 0 | 63:51.189

You know, you are absolutely right that that move is part of what movies are made of and stuff. If I’m not mistaken, there’s a book about it already called Team of Teams, but I had to look it up just because I couldn’t remember his name, but General Stanley McChrystal.

Speaker 1 | 64:10.737

And…

Speaker 0 | 64:11.654

Um, if am I right,

Speaker 1 | 64:13.434

is that because he was. So General Crystal was a commander of joint special operations command, uh, a few years before I got there. Uh, but yeah, no, I’ve read the book. It’s a wonderful book. And, you know, I recommend that to everybody. It is a fantastic book, especially for, for your audience, uh, for IT and CIOs out there. There’s a lot of, a lot of wonderful, uh, nuggets of knowledge in that book. Anything by. uh by uh general mcchrystal uh admiral mcraven also wrote a fantastic book uh make your bed it’s called make your bed it’s real short you can you can read it in one afternoon You know, the premise is start your day every day by making your bed. And, you know, the small things matter.

Speaker 0 | 65:02.093

Yeah. No, I recognize that book, too, and that title. And, you know, it’s been a meme on multiple of the social media apps. Well, you know, Sean, this has been an awesome discussion. I really enjoyed this time. Thank you for sharing with us.

Speaker 1 | 65:20.260

Yeah, thank you for inviting me. This has been a wonderful, wonderful experience. Cool.

Speaker 0 | 65:24.586

And, and, you know, audience, um, everybody out there, um, Sean is looking to grow the LinkedIn network. So please look him up, find him, uh, make that request and, and, uh, he’ll, he’ll make sure that you’re not an imposter or a bot and then reach out to you. Um, and if you enjoyed the show, please leave a comment, hit like, you know, let us know on those, on those social medias, on wherever you’re finding this podcast. please let us know what you think because we need that feedback so that we can get better and so that we can make sure that we’re bringing you the right content. Sean, thank you.

Speaker 1 | 66:02.172

Thank you so much, Mike. I really appreciate it.