Speaker 0 | 00:08.438
oh yeah everyone yes we have we it’s okay we can start like this just randomly sometimes because that’s what we do on the show we just start randomly talking and i’m i uh that this is what’s so great is that that’s why i think this show is so good is because it should just be called recorded conversations that was an idea once i’ve had many iterations of what the show should be called you one was recorded conversations but then i was like well what did no one’s really gonna who’s gonna listen to that because they’re not gonna really know recorded conversations about what i don’t know maybe it could be you know spying yeah get it down a little bit yes yes so
welcome everyone back to dissecting popular it nerds today we’re talking with james is it who val who val oh man pretty close hueval hueval hueval yeah a little bit of french thing on there but yeah yeah My producer is French, Greg Leda. I’m like, vous avez parlé français? I tried to speak French with him, and he’s like, no, it’s Paris. It’s not Paris. It’s Paris. Anyways, director of technology at Johnstone Supply.
Speaker 1 | 01:16.887
Petit Group. We’re interesting because Johnstone Supply is a huge organization with sort of like a franchise, more like a co-op. And so you’ve got these different groups all across the United States. So we’re based in the southern region, spanning stores all the way from San Antonio to Mobile, Alabama.
Speaker 0 | 01:38.133
Mobile. Yeah. You know Mobile when you know Mobile. If you don’t know Mobile, you don’t know Mobile. I happen to be one that knows Mobile. And so anyways, I don’t know what that means. Not really much, I guess, because it’s Mobile. And that’s the joke.
Speaker 1 | 01:52.500
It’s fascinating because I’m actually based in New Orleans. And so, you know, we, of course, celebrate Mardi Gras down here pretty hard. And Mobile always likes to remind us that they did it first. So they do it differently, but they did it first.
Speaker 0 | 02:05.591
Little known facts. So what you you said, imposter syndrome. You relate with that. I relate with that. I never I that I wake up many times. today was kind of one of them moments before moments before we spoke moments before we spoke i was having this um yes always feeling behind you’re never going to be caught up you’re never going to be there life’s this destination not a journey not a destination type of thing it’s a a hopeful destination it is a hopeful destination that we’ll never get to so every day is the worst day of your life because every day is a little bit better, a little bit worse than the next day. So every day is the worst day of your life.
Speaker 1 | 02:57.799
Back to office space again. Yeah.
Speaker 0 | 03:01.001
See, see how we do this here. There’s just no rhyme or reason. It’s just put a guy with a beard that’s very ADD and stayed back in first grade and talk with IT people. And then there you go.
Speaker 1 | 03:12.507
Magic.
Speaker 0 | 03:14.708
It’s not magic. It’s reality. I don’t believe in magic. Well, I do believe in magic, but I don’t. this is reality um okay so anyways going on uh so imposter syndrome but people from the outside this is important thing to know is don’t be insecure i guess this is a psycho this is a psychology show we should just call this the psychology of it forget dissecting popular it nerds this long most ridiculous name that’s many people have made fun of me and they’re like that domain is absurd we did change the domain we do have two domains now we have popular it.net makes a lot of sense don’t go to dot com because it’s some other probably worthless uh some other company i don’t know it’s not really doing much i’m hopefully we’ll maybe they’ll sell us the domain someday uh but yeah the second popular it nerds was just this idea back in the day we just did a couple shows um and i guess that’s how we made the name so anyway psychology of it is the new show and uh imposter syndrome don’t be insecure Because you’re doing a good job. And the truth is you know more about technology than probably everyone in your company. And if there is someone that knows more about technology, they’re secretly trying to take your job. So I don’t know. Promote them.
Speaker 1 | 04:25.567
That’s right. Bring them in the fold. Don’t let shadow IT take over.
Speaker 0 | 04:29.109
Yes. Let them do your job for you. And just don’t worry about imposter syndrome anymore. There you go. You’re like, hey, look, he does it better than me. This is leadership. This is called leadership.
Speaker 1 | 04:41.256
it’s definitely something over the years that has gotten easier to deal with um because like you just can’t there’s too much information out there so like if you can just think about it a little logically you’re never going to know it all so why even make an attempt to know it all um but you know at the same time everything’s moving so fast that you’re right we’re just never never going to be caught up but somehow we manage to prioritize because we have to what things here’s what’s more important because what things slip through the cracks it’ll get you fired good point yeah uh you know a lot of those security issues right if they slip to the cracks and you don’t manage to uh you you miss that one glaring thing underneath the scenes that let the head let the attackers in i mean but even then like a ball
Speaker 0 | 05:27.437
That’s the worst subject of all is security because you’ll never know. Because that’s probably the worst imposter syndrome job. I mean, may the Lord above help you if you’re a CISO because it’s the unforgiving. I don’t know what that job is, but that job is the job that there’s thankless, I think.
Speaker 1 | 05:50.566
And if you do get-Take care of officers, right?
Speaker 0 | 05:52.207
I mean-If you do get a thank you, it’s like, you know it was like- well we have to we have to do it i guess yeah right i don’t you know it’s part of it’s part of hr policy and being a good leader you gotta thank everybody we don’t know what this guy does he doesn’t you know but thank you he’s doing something he looks really stressed out oh okay what do i do what am i gonna do with my life okay um so yeah that’s gotten better over time coffee is kicking so anyway security what slips through is going to get you fired obviously something that blows up the company um security-wise not physically that i mean that would be security also really if something literally blew up the company that would be a security problem also which may fall under it if you do cameras if you’re in charge of cameras probably not the physical security guys but yeah security will get you fired i don’t know is there anything that you can actually offer our listeners there um worry a lot about it
Speaker 1 | 06:54.801
yeah well i mean the man it’s a stacked game against us right i mean if the one little thing somebody can get in and and that’s it all of a sudden they’re in they’re going to look for a way to pivot around your network and get to the good stuff and if the attackers are going after you know your your goods for ransomware i mean man it’s going to suck but that’s where you know having good backups good backup practices and testing your disaster recovery program i mean that’s that’s something that if you can manage to do that you’re going to be prepared for the day that somebody does slip in and you know it could happen anytime you you don’t know it’s it’s so large you have all these things going on and you’ve got patching that’s happening constantly happy patch Tuesday yesterday you know um So you got to keep up with all that, all of your vulnerabilities, all your exploits. And then you got third party patching, which of course happens. And then there’s configuration issues. So even if you have all of your patches done correctly, is everything configured properly? There’s tools out there now that will go comb through your network and look for configuration issues. So you got to keep on top of all that. And then that’s just security. That’s not even balancing the business needs of the company. And that’s something that we struggle with. We have a lot of projects and a lot of demands to.
Speaker 0 | 08:12.913
keep doing things that will help progress the business forward security is not one of them right i don’t think we’re helping this situation at all we’re like if this was a psychology session we’re like yeah i mean yeah i i would um yep it’s pretty bad it’s pretty bad it’s pretty bad have you thought about a different job yeah you know maybe you know you said you know get through to the good stuff maybe once they get to the through the good stuff we could just put a big message there it says hi this is a message from the owner and ceo of the company if you take all of our stuff and completely sink the company thank you because now i can retire because i could care less i’m done i’m so done i’ve been looking for a reason to quit for years and there’s this little message that and then you can show a picture of all these employees and all these employees and all these people that we employ and we we help them put food on the table i hate them all so please um just please take everything uh that wouldn’t work giant thumbs up my wife thanks you right yes yes here’s my va here’s my house away from here’s my second house that we never get to go to that’s on the riviera you know something like this you know um please i will be here after you hack my company i will be here so take it all um okay so security multiple projects imposter syndrome okay so yeah how do you cope i’ve literally i in the book coming out i have this one little reddit i should i should flip to this right now let’s let’s solve this one right now i have this i don’t think i’ve ever shared this maybe i’ve shared it once a long time ago
Speaker 1 | 10:00.010
um keep talking some more about just keep talking keep talking about uh i don’t know he’s talking while you find your notes in your book yeah yeah congratulations on on getting that done by the way that sounds like a huge accomplishment um no i’m not done yet hold on and in that time we have found it see oh look at that super quick okay
Speaker 0 | 10:17.860
burnout dot earn out what’s i’m an english major what are those dot things called i think it’s a colon yeah i was thinking of quitting this role he’s only thinking about it we’re thinking about it now too we’re we’re thinking out loud rant it is one of the most neglected departments in my organization it’s a group of seven people wow they got a big how many people you guys have uh we’re three strong okay wow uh so you’ve got it worse than this guy we span across all of southern southern united states we’re huge and we’ve got we’ve got three No, I’m not. This is for fun and jest. Everyone, disclaimer. Everything here is a disclaimer. There’s a disclaimer. It’s one of the most neglected departments in my organization. It’s a group of seven people, again, seven, trying to manage an infrastructure that supports 2,000, he said, users. How many users do you have?
Speaker 1 | 11:19.918
We’re 200 users.
Speaker 0 | 11:21.319
Okay. Okay. So the ratio is better. You’re better.
Speaker 1 | 11:24.380
We’re balanced. We’re okay.
Speaker 0 | 11:25.761
200 is great. well you’re actually you’re you’re heavy you’re strong um the the ratio the average ratio of um of i.t staff to end users on this show when we take all of it is about one to a hundred so you’re like you’re better you’re like one to like 75 right what’s that math do you know math are you good with math math who does math i don’t know three and two hundred what’s three into two hundred that’s yeah three into twenty three and twenty is a little bit under seven that’s like six it’s like 60 or something six six something it’s like no no i got to carry a one and do it 10 60 and then we got to go three into 10 that’s three it’s 63 something in a decimal anyways there is all okay again it is one of the most neglected departments in my organization it’s a group of seven people trying to manage infrastructure that supports 2 000 users i should read this more like him um there’s always budgetary constraint when it comes to our department it’s a thankless profession where it seems like You have to know the answer to everything. Network routing and switching, virtual machines, firewalls, databases, backups, exchange. Exchange. They have an exchange. Yep. Don’t know what that is.
Speaker 1 | 12:46.370
On-prem exchange?
Speaker 0 | 12:47.171
2,000 users. PowerShell, Microsoft 365. So obviously we’ve got… We got both. We’re trying to go there. Azure, the list goes on and on. It’s exhausting. It is. Trying to keep up and we still get paid less than the average developer or business analyst. How do you guys manage to stay in this field for years? I’ve spent three years and as in… CIS admin slash tech support role. We’ve had enough. This job isn’t fulfilling. So to say the least, it is eating away at my soul. I’d like to quit, but this job, it pays the bills. Oh, that’s so sad. I wish I could find this guy. This is like. this is like uh if you if anyone out there is into jiu jitsu this is like watching um like i don’t know like a bullying video and then like the jiu jitsu instructor’s like find that man so i can give him training find this kid so i can give him some training um thankfully i don’t feel like that um
Speaker 1 | 14:00.131
you know the the imposter syndrome you know it it is what it is but the the i do enjoy my job i enjoy what i do i think most people do and yeah that’s why i chose to do
Speaker 0 | 14:12.198
in all seriousness, in all seriousness, that’s why I chose to do this show. Cause when I had a business coach, I don’t know, it might’ve been like four years, four or five years ago. Um, for me, it was small business owners. I hated working with small business owners. I hated working for small business. I hated working for, I just hated small business. Ironically, I have one. Um, but, um, I hated, uh, and I, so basically I hated working for myself. I hated supporting and working for people like me. But the people that I really loved working with was IT directors. I don’t know if it’s because we all, maybe the majority of us are all kind of the same age. We all come from a similar time period. We all have a love for, I don’t know, Atari and older video game systems in the days of old where you had to go to a movie theater to watch Rambo or First Blood. if anyone knows what i’m talking it was first blood right it was the first blood anywho um so no i i absolutely love this why would i do this whole podcast for years on this anyways if i hated it yeah so i mean i think there’s plenty of people out there that do meet
Speaker 1 | 15:21.317
that that kind of criteria of they’re burnt out they’re tired and it’s easy to have happen um just because the demands are high but you know at the same time we i think a lot of us in this industry really like a challenge we enjoy solving solutions. I mean, that’s the whole video game thing, right? You’re just constant feedback loop of solving problems. And that’s kind of what we do day to day. We’re solving problems.
Speaker 0 | 15:46.865
And that problem we need to solve today is imposter syndrome.
Speaker 1 | 15:51.529
I don’t know that I need to solve it. It’s just, I let it just float to the back of my head and say it is what it is. And that don’t, don’t let that stop me from, from doing my day to day. So it’s
Speaker 0 | 16:03.179
Okay. So this is the reality of it though. So the reality of is you get, you’re getting bombarded with a ton of things all the time. If we just showed up to work, if we just showed up to work as an it director or it leader, technology leader, whatever it is, um, we would have this crazy list. I have pages of it, pages of lists with bullet points and ideas and things that fly into our head. And then we’ve got all kinds of people coming out. It was, we got to fix this. And what about this? And I got this meeting and that meeting, and can I jump on your calendar and all that stuff?
Speaker 1 | 16:30.426
No, they’re asking you to, if they could be on your calendar, man.
Speaker 0 | 16:34.279
Hmm. Oh, you mean I just look at it? Oh, they just look at your availability and jump. Now I get randoms too. I get somebody, they figure, they find a way. I’m like, who are you? Why did we schedule this? Well, I saw your calendar link and I decided. What do you do as far to avoid, to stay on track? Is it the roadmap? Is it goal setting? Is it, is it meeting with executive management and finding out what the direction of the. the company is? Is it which who who deserves more of my love? Which child deserves more of my love that’s, you know, that that is entering in tickets correctly and, you know, and doing everything that we tell them to do. So we will give them some love this week. What is it? How do we do it?
Speaker 1 | 17:22.823
Yeah, it’s, it’s a large combination of things. We do get executive guidance on things we meet with our executives, you know, every month and a half. for our meetings and we report to them the things that we think are important and they report to us the things that they feel are important. Though generally speaking, they’ll be bringing up projects outside of that meeting. So it’s more or less being able to report on the status of those projects, where things are going, where we’re at, what we might need help with, any budgetary concerns, that kind of thing. So that’s super, super helpful. And if you’re an IT director and you don’t have the ears of some executives, learn how to do it. because you need you need them like they they know the direction that the company is heading they have the goals of what’s going on and hopefully they’re sharing that with you and if they’re not ask because that can align what you’re doing with what they want um now granted there are things that like we think are important like we have a security roadmap we’ve got um general things like hey we’ve got all these tickets and how do we start reducing the numbers of tickets so we can keep focusing more on the projects so you know just business efficiencies right so anything that we can do to make life better for the people around us then that’s a good thing um and then as far as you know the the walk-ins you know it it’s interesting because like I said we’ve got stores ranging from San Antonio to to Mobile so a lot of people just can’t walk in because they’re nowhere physically near us um so that that relies on other forms of communication phones uh the ticketing system email and you know we do our best to try to get people to use these things like so we’ve got a team of three people so we’ve got a phone system where if you dial a certain number it calls everybody in the i.t department please use that because if it’s a problem that anybody can solve then why wouldn’t you want to get somebody as soon as possible but you know of course people have their favorites right so they call they’ll try to call me or one of my colleagues that sits right across from me and like look if we’re in a meeting we can’t answer the call so i mean It only behooves them if they want to get their problem solved sooner. But if all things equal, we would really prefer the ticket because then we can prioritize it properly between what’s actually an issue and what else is going on. And sometimes we’ll ask people to do that if there’s a walk-in like, hey, I really want to help you right now, but there’s this other thing going on. And most people respond appropriately to that. They’re more like, oh, yeah, that sounds like a really big issue. I’ll go do that for you.
Speaker 0 | 19:57.212
have you blocked anyone blocked no there’s a there’s some people i want to block before but no no i don’t block where the phone rings and one of you guys pick up and they just start talking they’re like look man i don’t understand why you guys can’t make this thing work okay have you ever known anyone like that in your life they call up you know and and you know who it is because it’s like the caller id pops up and you’re like oh and then you you know what i mean and they know prepare yourself what’s crazy is that they know that you know that who’s calling and they know you’re doing that so when you answer the phone they’re just like you know i know you think you’re better than me but um you know i don’t know where like you know and this and they just start talking you know and if you don’t get this out on time i just don’t understand why you guys can’t do the you know what do you think like you think like you know if i just keep doing this you’re just gonna live you’re like there’s just really human beings like this on the face of this earth and um i would love to record you is this being recorded is this being recorded no i said i would love to record you you can’t record me um what is privacy i don’t know have you ever had that have you ever known anyone like that i i mean just a real like interesting uh it would be a lot of fun that would be thankfully not many i’ve known very very few people i’ve known people that you can’t you could if you made a movie about them people would be like this is this is just too over the top this is like you know this is like sci-fi it’s like you know at least in science fiction it’s you know it’s not real you know this can’t be real right this is a joke character good job this is a trope right no i think what you said is really um i never maybe this is very i’m a very uh keep it simple stupid uh methodology type of person like the simpler the better because with me people are always telling me phil less is more less is more less is more less is more slow down slow down slow down that’s just that’s just you got i think there’s a certain you need to know what your weaknesses are because they’re always going to be weaknesses and then just don’t focus on those at all focus on your strengths and just find somebody else to like cover the weak holes in your life yeah that’s what i mean we’ve got a team of people right and we we need to rely on them because they have they have skills that we don’t they’ve got strengths that we don’t and you want that you want to encourage that like if i had a team of me’s that would be bad oh man it the teamwork makes the green the dream work it absolutely does it’s it’s um i don’t know if people quite realize that until they’ve sacrificed something in their life for another person to be with them to work with that person and it seems like maybe you’re going to get less done in less in in longer time it seems you’re gonna get less done in longer time but it’s not it’s not that way what it really means is you can go goof off while someone else does the work for you that’s what it really means and then your life really gets better that’s what the point of a team is um no greg greg led all i love you i love you something like this i gotta learn a little french Um, it’s gonna be hopefully.
Speaker 1 | 23:19.288
So you said the, the teamwork part and, and that’s, I think that, that extends far beyond us. Cause I know you’ve had a lot of guests on the show that they are a singular it director with no team. They are the only person and, and their organization. Um, and so like, but it doesn’t really matter if you’re, if you’re that you have a team of people because we are still working across the company and that’s the cool. That’s one of the things I love this job is that yeah, it, we work with tech. technology but what does technology do it supports everything else so what we’re doing impacts every business unit in the company so that’s where like not just the teamwork of the people that I work with directly but the teamwork of all these other silos in the company that we don’t want to be siloed right we want to break that down and work with them because then we find out what’s really causing them grief how how what what are they doing that they could be doing more efficiently or is just causing them so much pain that they that they don’t want to work that job anymore you know you just made me want to go out and be an it director right you did you just made it seem so fun i just gotta show up to work i walk around the hallway talk with some people fix
Speaker 0 | 24:31.249
some issues you know what’s going on over here oh we got we got an app for that yeah we can do that we’re bringing a switch poe slap some chords together done get off oh yeah we gotta get off that exchange That’s strange. We need money. We need money, though. We need a lot of money. A lot of money. A lot of money. A lot of it. A lot, a lot,
Speaker 1 | 24:53.106
a lot. Back to the executives. You got to explain that ROI. And that, but that’s okay. That’s a good thing. If you can’t explain the value it brings, then like, why would anybody want to invest in it?
Speaker 0 | 25:04.640
Uh, yes. And again, as now have being my own kind of like, you know, having this thing is, I never thought we would have like 10 employees for this podcast. It’s 10. It’s crazy. Wow. I told him the other day, I started off with like, no, I was recording one. We didn’t want the ire. Ira Furestein, I think is, I don’t know if I’m pronouncing his right name back when he was like, you know, some big dude over at Nextiva and thought that was like a great company. And I mean, I’m not saying anything about Nextiva. Anywho, I did that podcast on my cell phone, sitting in line at Starbucks waiting to get like a coffee. Like I never thought, you know, I remember like, I’m late for the, we’re going to have to do this, record it on the cell phone, hit record on zoom. And like, that’s how we did that podcast. I never thought this thing would, would turn into anything back to what we were talking about i the goal setting i love that this is like there’s like two sections again keep it simple stupid this is how long it takes me to get to finish a thought um and who knows how long it’s going to take we don’t know yet the so we’re not there yet the we’ve got two sections of it goal setting never really thought of it this way the internal it goal setting like Like we got to be more efficient. We got to take care of the tickets. We got to upgrade the exchange server. No, we got to upgrade from Lotus Notes to Exchange. Then we’ve got to go from Exchange to, I don’t know, Google Mail. Google Mail. What’s that called? Gmail. We got to go Gmail. Oh, wait a second. Wait a second. No, we got to go back. Now we got to go to Teams. Now we got to go to Teams. Okay, so we got our internal IT roadmap.
Speaker 1 | 26:47.240
Yeah, the things we think are important.
Speaker 0 | 26:49.586
Yes. And then we’ve got, wait a second, where the real fun, that’s where that other guy on Reddit was just like wanting to just, I don’t want to say it, but he was done with his, his soul was affected. Managing tickets and exchange and systems and why doesn’t this work? Right? Because that’s all the IT was. But the fun is where the company goals come into play and they say, look, we’re trying to do this. because we need to do this and we’re getting, I don’t know, we’re getting destroyed by this other it podcast. They know who he is. They have no clue. They have no clue who this, who I am. Can you believe they don’t know who I am? Do you think you’re better than me? Do you really think you’re better than me? Um,
Speaker 1 | 27:35.993
this is competition we need.
Speaker 0 | 27:39.515
Uh, can you help us? Oh, we got all kinds of great ideas. Yeah. Great. Yeah. We got great ideas. Need money. Need a lot of money. but we can do it we can do it some of that money is going to go over to our ticketing system we’re just going to like move some things around and rob peter to pay paul so that we can get what we need that you’re not agreeing to pay us for and this because security no one cares about that so we’re going to take some of that money it’s going to go to security um a favorite saying that has been coming out of my brain for a while now for the last few years is that we can do anything we just can’t do everything so
Speaker 1 | 28:12.086
prioritize it what’s more important you already got these these projects that are are on the board so to speak and so you want to add more to it that’s fine at the expense of what and that’s okay like we’re all we have constraints and constraints aren’t a bad thing we just have to learn how to work within them that’s the teamwork that’s what’s so important and that’s why i um that’s
Speaker 0 | 28:31.418
why i love my guy greg greg i love you um he’s like he’s my integrator so you know how like every wild insane like person needs like you know like the visionary person they need the integrator they need the guy that keeps the gears going and like is like you cheer like again like are you sure because you had this because you had that’s why the book’s been sitting out for two years that’s why the book never got done because you decided we need to do this first and then this now we’re back to the book again you want to take the book off do you want to take the book off again no no no stick with it we got to finish it finish it you’ve already done the work yeah you know so that no that’s a really good point it’s um we can do anything us me absolutely i can do anything you I’m the right guy. Just so you know, I’m the guy that can do anything. But what’s going to suffer because of that? So yeah, what are the top priorities? What are the top three priorities, top five, whatever it is? What are they? So that’s great. So you’ve got your IT roadmap and then you’ve got your company. How do you balance between the two? Do you put someone in charge of the, do you bring someone up inside? Or like, how do we take balance between? the IT efficiencies and running an efficient IT department so that you don’t have a bunch of drive bys and your your three phones all ring at once and someone says something like hey I this doesn’t work my little scanner thing in the store or whatever it is I don’t know you know yeah
Speaker 1 | 29:56.727
I wish I had a great answer for that I don’t um it’s we’re right now at this current state in time we’re just kind of balancing between them and what we think is right. But there’s nothing in there that’s saying, okay, we have six business projects and three IT projects, and we’re trying to do them in this order.
Speaker 0 | 30:18.302
So we’ve come full circle now. We have finally finished our very first thought. We’ve finally finished our first thought, which is imposter syndrome. We’re back. We’ve come full circle all the way back to imposter syndrome. We know what we’re doing. We think we know what we’re doing. We’re never there.
Speaker 1 | 30:33.462
Yeah, it does tie back into that. Though, you know, that, that, I guess that’s where you get some of that external feedback from other people, your, your, your boss, other managers, other people in the company and just say, Hey, how are we doing? Are we, are we servicing you? Are we, are we, are we lacking in something? And we continue to get good feedback. So I just have to trust that people aren’t just blowing smoke up me. Right. And just. Say, okay, well, if that’s what you’re saying, I’m going to trust what you’re saying is true. And we’re going to keep on keeping on. That doesn’t mean that we still, still strive for improvement, but you know, that’s, if we’re doing a good job, then we’re hitting the mark somehow.
Speaker 0 | 31:12.466
So if they’re telling you that, then you’re doing, if they’re telling you that, then you’re probably, you’re doing more than good enough. You know, it was like, is there any dreams I can make come true for you? Is there any, like, you know, if in a, in a perfect world, is there anything that, you know, you almost have to go to that point. Right. Um. I have guys that I tell, like IT guys, again, this is a secret that’s coming out of the book, at the back of the book, I’ll give it to people now. When you’re trying to find a new IT job, like don’t just like actually go out and find the job, find the company that you want to work for, or find 20 of them and then go strategically go after that, the executive management in that company, because most likely if the executive management likes you then, and they have a job opening, you’ll have a better chance of getting that job than the person that just… I don’t know, applied online. So ask them. So my, what I tell people to do is go for, and I don’t know if this is, it’s worked a couple of times. I don’t, I haven’t tried this in bulk. I’m not a recruiter. We would be cool if we could turn up a recruiting company. Again, I’m not, that’s on, that’s one of those things. It’s like, Phil, are you sure you want to do this right now? Cause we do, we have a lot of, we have a lot of, we have access to a lot of very well-refined like IT leaders, like all over the place. And I don’t know, what do we do with them? i don’t know we just talk to them and hope everyone likes it but i mean we probably could do we could probably do a lot more one of those things being recruiting and i think and you tell me whether it’s a good idea i think it directors should go find the companies they want to work for have the dream 100 concept i don’t think you need 100 companies but if you the first 20 don’t work then get 20 more and keep going find the executive leader cto whatever call them say hey when it comes to i.t in your organization
Speaker 1 | 32:55.978
what’s your single biggest frustration problem or concern and then listen yeah and then for free help and then say hey i’ll work for free if you want for a little bit you know consulting yeah i mean it’s it’s true and we can apply that not even a job search though and that’s just talking with people within the company you
Speaker 0 | 33:15.874
know yeah what do you think of it oh yeah you guys are doing great no but really like what is there anything you know what what’s the what’s the most annoying thing then they’ll think Then they’ll think and come up with, no, really, what’s the thing that’s most frustrating in technology right now? What’s the thing that’s the biggest frustration, problem, or concern with you? Like, okay, we’re doing a great job. I get it. But there’s got to be something that just annoys the living daylights out of you.
Speaker 1 | 33:39.813
Yeah, right. Everybody’s got, like, what are you spending the most time on in your job? Because that’s probably something that could be improved upon, right? How can we make that process go better?
Speaker 0 | 33:51.146
One drive. It’s one drive. It annoys me. It’s just so disorganized and doesn’t work. I don’t know.
Speaker 1 | 33:57.709
Yeah. Maybe that turns into like a coaching opportunity or turns into a, uh, a knowledge base or a training. I don’t know, but like you’ve asked the questions and just see what happens. You don’t even have to make it about technology. What about your job do you not like? Maybe there’s a technological solution to it. Maybe not. Maybe it’s like that, that person sitting next to me, I hate them. Like, Oh, okay. I can’t really.
Speaker 0 | 34:20.838
help you with that one necessarily but my what my job is the job it’s the actual doing of the job if you could help me do less of it well actually there’s a thing called um ai and chat gpt and yeah you probably actually could do a lot of that i hate writing reports okay use um use chat gpt i say use use claude that’s the biggest that’s claude dash 2 dash 100k whatever amazon just spent like a billion or something on it
Speaker 1 | 34:50.870
it’s amazing i’m really curious to see because we you know we’re big into 365 shop and um the stuff they’re doing on the power platform i think is so cool and just like right now you can go to power apps and tell it hey i want you to build an app right now that collects expense receipts and in less than five minutes, it spits out a template. Now, is it perfect? No, by no means is it perfect. But I mean, it does a lot of the work.
Speaker 0 | 35:21.123
I mean-You say collects expense receipts. Were you like, I want you to search every email, every attachment, everything, and pull out all my receipts that I’ve never collected from-No,
Speaker 1 | 35:31.185
I’m just thinking more of like our-Ambitious. Department as an example. You know, they’ve got to collect expense receipts for people that want to submit expense reports. And it- That that’s just one of those things that I’ve heard. Oh yeah. This is a pain in the butt. Is there any way that we can improve that? I’m like, I think there is,
Speaker 0 | 35:45.437
but what are you? Okay. So walk me through this again, because now I literally went off into a thousand thoughts in my head of like, this is amazing. What can I use this for? So, but go again. So what did you do? You went where? Which one was it? Just chat to you.
Speaker 1 | 36:00.210
So power apps and Microsoft 365. Yeah. So they’re there. They have their co-pilot thing is what they’re really. what they’re calling it and pushing and so their co-pilot you can give the co-pilot the directions that you want and depending upon what product you’re using it will do whatever so in this case it’s dear co-pilot make an app that does x y and z and it’ll spit something out and usually i mean look that’s like probably 70 to 85 percent of the way there in terms of just the template the the app itself which is great and now you can give it some more feedback and say hey tweak this about it change this i want you to make it to where you can submit multiple things in a single ticket or something i don’t know and it will continue refining it and then you can take that across the finish line with whatever else you need to do so like that’s some really cool stuff that they’ve got going on and then um on the other side they’ve got power automate which will you know again set up a flow that does x y and z but now they’re setting up copilot to where it will analyze your flow and tell you hey i think you can make your flow better here this particular spot in your flow is where things are getting caught up. So like talk about some, some boosts in efficiency if you set that up, right? So those are some really cool things that I think are coming out. And that, that also comes into the whole idea of like, if you’re paying for an E1 or greater license, you have access to all of this now there’s in, in the number of people that I’ve talked to that have 365 environments with enterprise licensing, and they don’t even know what the stuff is. And I’m like, Oh man, you should. let me just show you what we’ve done and then they’re like oh man that’s really cool and some people go off and use it and some people are like that’s really cool and then they don’t do anything with it ever again but like just to know that it’s there and like you’re already paying for it it’s it’s you know make
Speaker 0 | 37:46.705
the most use of the products that you’re already paying for if you can oh that’s a that’s a that’s a black hole of subjects that is a black hole of subjects i yeah because i mean One thing we help people do is consolidate applications or like, hey, did you know that Microsoft has all these security products that are actually really good right now and you’re also paying for this, this, this, and this, and this? I mean, I just noticed it. Just happened to notice it that you could probably delete all these and stop paying for them. Don’t tell upper management because now you can spend that on security.
Speaker 1 | 38:26.399
There you go.
Speaker 0 | 38:27.524
uh get that other security product that they can’t the security i just blinked the security i just blinked he was like ah something nice happened today oh um top three security products top three security products yeah you just just came to my mind now that we’re talking about security you got anything that you really love um it’s microsoft i mean so um you know i’m i’m big
Speaker 1 | 38:56.148
for vulnerability scanners um just so you can have some idea of where things are at um so there’s there’s quite a few things out there you can even you know go get the whatever the free public fork of nessus was i forgot the name of it green green something um but i mean look like just something to know that your patching is working right and on on that note patching patching software um and i need to start getting i need to have some uh
Speaker 0 | 39:25.364
sound effects we’re gonna start you don’t get a soundboard just hit the button i have the sound board it just doesn’t for some reason when you’re using zoom it doesn’t come through but if i use my cell phone it does which is better anyways i need a um who is that stupid character in star wars like when they did the remake 20 years later what’s wrong with me yes oh the most hated person the most hated i i love jar jar just because of how much people hate him we need i need his sound effect keep going i’m gonna find this in the meantime you
Speaker 1 | 39:56.782
Is your patching working? Because if your patching isn’t working, then your vulnerability scanner will hopefully kind of highlight that. Like, oh, we have this thing set up and it’s doing all these things, but it’s not actually working. Oh, well, then that’s something we should probably go look into. So, you know, those are, I’ll consider patching software a security product, even though I guess not technically completely a security product. But yes, it serves a function in my mind for that.
Speaker 0 | 40:24.969
Yes, yes, yes.
Speaker 1 | 40:26.010
And then SD-WANs. I love SD-WANs.
Speaker 0 | 40:30.773
Can I take a guess? Wait, wait. Is this an app, though, or is this a provider?
Speaker 1 | 40:39.639
Both. technically, but yeah, it’s more of a provider.
Speaker 0 | 40:44.021
Bello Cloud, Cato Networks, what are we using?
Speaker 1 | 40:48.362
Can I not?
Speaker 0 | 40:50.463
Yes, of course. Security guy blinked twice. The security guy blinked twice. That was a test. That was a test. um we’re going to this very public podcast and announce all the inner workings of my company no no can we have your i need your um can i have your slash 28 uh can i get the range please and can i get a bunch of and uh your social security number while you’re at it please um but
Speaker 1 | 41:20.833
just just from a from a high level view it doesn’t really matter what sd when product you’re you’re using out there if you’re if you’re managing numerous locations like like we are like i mean okay you’re here you are you have all your rules in one place that you can now adjust and they’re all sudden every single location now has these new security rules protecting your company like hey that’s excellent um you know but it costs money like you said they got to spend that money uh but i’ll tell you too if we if we go to spin up a new store man it’s fast it’s super fast now for us to to bring up a new location. And that’s part of the reason that, you know, we, we are tech heavy because we want to be poised for that kind of growth. So. Excellent.
Speaker 0 | 42:10.804
Yeah. The power, you know, the AI stuff, we actually need to do a whole nother, we’re going to hold a group of shorts on that, on how people are actually using it because there’s so much of this like, well, I understand it just seems too gimmicky now. I’m like, it’s not gimmicky. It’s really not. There’s a lot of things that help. maybe from a more advanced standpoint i’m simplistic you know i’m like i’m using it to like i don’t know delete all my is there a good app that can just unsubscribe from everybody god please um the you know i can understand why people go that way though because like if every decade or so comes
Speaker 1 | 42:45.440
around and like oh it’s gonna be the new thing that’s gonna solve all these issues and you know like think about like in the 70s and 80s um you know like ai for chess you’re like oh my god ai and nothing happened not every single time it came up just like nothing really came of it but this time actually feels different like it’s actually being put to a lot of practical uses and so um is every company going to do a good job of it because you hear a company like oh yeah we’re going to use ai and they’re going to do this so if if it makes it’s great um if it doesn’t make sense well don’t don’t waste the time but i i think that this is this is the time that okay ai is finally going to start making a big difference in the in the lot in our lives and what we do chess everyone was like did you say ai for chess yeah they’re throwing learning models at chess to like play the players right and that was like a big a
Speaker 0 | 43:41.900
big deal and at the time um did they i’m just i mean i my kids are all playing chess right now and i’m like rating my kids on on who’s smarter in the family i’m like oh that’s the smartest one uh she she’s beating everybody i was like she’s literally she’s the smartest one dad what about i thought i was well clearly you’re not clearly you are not clearly you are not um your sister competitor streaks in your family i see oh it’s it’s it’s it’s it’s bad it’s really bad it’s um yeah it’s bad it uh so yeah no because then the kids then once they hear that now like the other ones like and i can never lose so now they’re like studying openings they’re like you know studying after hours like you know like really into it i cannot let my older brother beat me this is gonna be uh so yeah it was uh yeah a little bit of competitive streak i think it’s healthy maybe
Speaker 1 | 44:41.073
if it’s healthy it’s great it’s uh it’s when they’re like losing sleep because they’re trying to find these new chess strategies like oh oh that’s bad it could be
Speaker 0 | 44:53.044
depends on how much sleep oh yeah i know so imposter syndrome it’s just it is there’s nothing i don’t know what else to say about it i don’t think we’ve solved that issue other than say divide your department into two categories i.t efficiencies and making the company happy and just keep going forward and if they tell you you’re doing a good job be suspect of that, but accept it.
Speaker 1 | 45:16.282
Yeah. Hey, there you go. Good words.
Speaker 0 | 45:20.544
Any, any final, any, any final words of advice, any, any tips or, uh, I don’t know, is there anything that you do that, that you’re like, man, I just do this. It seems like common sense. It seems like common sense. I don’t know why this is like, why no one else does this, but it seems like common sense. Is there anything like you that you do? That’s like that.
Speaker 1 | 45:39.249
That’s a good question. Um, I. I’m always curious. I want to ask questions. So like, why does something work the way that it works? Um, and that’s just general life advice, right? If you can get to understanding the, how, how a thing operates, then you can bend it to your will. I don’t know. Um, so that seems like common sense to me, but it doesn’t feel like a great soundbite either.
Speaker 0 | 46:03.526
No, but there’s things that, okay. Well, it’s, there’s things that come raising children. I noticed a lot of things a lot of times. dude it’s the common sense like why would you not know how to do that but just because i’m 47 years old and you know i don’t know uh i don’t know you had a lot of practice yeah destroyed for destroyed for dishwashers you know you just know you don’t load a dishwasher like that it’s common sense you know um it’s like you know i speak to the engineers so the people don’t have to you know it’s uh it’s like calm your time three office days the uh Just a certain thing. We should come up with some Seinfeld stuff, I guess, you know? Yeah. So I don’t know. There’s got to be something. There’s got to be, I don’t know, they call them philisms in my house or something.
Speaker 1 | 46:53.226
Philisms. One thing that you guys harp on a good bit in a good way is just mentorship. If you don’t have a mentor, go find a mentor. And that’s common sense that I don’t even follow myself a lot of times. I don’t have an active mentor necessarily. But if I do, man, is it so much better? And you use the word business coach. I’m like, that’s a great example too, right? If you’ve got somebody that can help give you some guidance or just some outside perspective from the things that you’ve got going on, it’s so invaluable.
Speaker 0 | 47:29.325
It is. I have a very close friend of mine that I use. He’s more like a moral compass, moral values compass. He’s actually one of my recruiters. for the show, but he’s outside of, outside of work. He’s more of a moral compass, very, very close friend of mine. So he keeps me in check when I, you know, feel you shouldn’t say that. That’s just, it’s just wrong. You know what I mean? So he keeps me in check. You know what I mean? He keeps me in check, you know, and allows, you know, which then allows me to then take that and hand that off to the team and like, Hey, if I ever do this type of thing. um you have full reign to please remind me and remind me immediately and interrupt me in front of all kinds of people even if it’s embarrassing i don’t care please just tell me uh so that i don’t ever do that so i guess from a character and moral standpoint it’s very important i know we joke around a lot we’ve been joking around a lot but they’re actually the point of this is actually very very serious um i think you know um whatever that is sarcasm’s a behavioral derailer page 59 of the of starbucks handbook on your employee um i think review time every six months there’s a needs improvement uh meets expectations and uh i guess exceeds expectations yeah there’s a bunch of bullet points and uses sarcasm as a uses sarcasm as a means of communication that is under the behavioral derailer category that falls underneath the needs improvement section all right now take a take a note on that one The there’s a, that’s not burned into my memory at all. It’s not a, it’s definitely not a it’s not a nightmare, a recurring nightmare at all. It’s not, it’s not. Thank you so much for being on the show.
Speaker 1 | 49:19.951
And thanks for having me. And thanks for doing it. The show. I appreciate everything you guys do.
Speaker 0 | 49:23.535
I’m glad that you guys, I’m glad that people love it. I’m glad that people listen to it. It’s certainly a, a ton of fun. You technical people, you IT director people are the love of my life and I love talking with you and learning how things work and I don’t have to use a paper planner anymore and I can just keep everything in Excel and use my email as a database.
Speaker 1 | 49:46.241
There you go. Perfect. No problems with that at all. Thank you again, Bill.
Speaker 0 | 49:51.664
Yes, sir. Thank you.
Speaker 1 | 50:01.842
Thanks for
