Speaker 0 | 00:08.478
Welcome, everyone, back to Dissecting Popular IT Nerds today, talking with Daniel Domburger. And off to go surfing in Costa Rica, which is, I mean, really the more important thing in life. You know, we could talk about keeping the network up and running and how you might be present during while you’re out, you know. surfing you know for a four-hour sesh you know like and someone’s entering in tickets i’m sure they’re all going to be answered perfectly on time um so congratulations on that that’s super awesome at bio one north america and what it looks like you guys do is like a lot of micro pipetting over there which i don’t know you know if you’re ever in if you ever took science class or inorganic chemistry um you did a lot of micro pipetting at least back in the day now we probably have some ai thing that does that for us but But tell me a little bit about yourself. Austrian. I think you’re the first Austrian out of 240 episodes. Can we first let’s play the game. And this is a new game that we’re coming up with today. It’s some famous Austrians in American history. Go.
Speaker 1 | 01:13.829
Arnold Schwarzenegger. That’s easy.
Speaker 0 | 01:16.390
Hey, baby. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, really, I mean, I’m a fan. I really am a fan. And it’s not because of all the Oscars he won. Which is a trick question. If you ever play the game battle of the sexes, one of the questions in there is like for the women is like, how many Oscars is Arnold? It’s like zero. But the guy did everything he said he would do. He said, I will be Mr. Olympian. Amazing. First of all, not easy, not an easy task. He did it. Then he said, I’m going to be a famous Hollywood actor. Did it? Absolutely. No one can say that. I don’t know. First of all, famous Arnold movie.
Speaker 1 | 01:59.072
what’s your famous arnold movie uh terminator 2 probably i mean i mean you can you can like you can like the schwarzenegger movies for two reasons i feel for the sake of them being good terminator 2 i think is a very good movie objectively speaking but also it has a lot to do with it i mean true yeah i mean i haven’t seen the the liquid metal where is it right but but but i also do like Hercules in New York, one of his super early ones when his English isn’t, I mean, mine isn’t great either, but his wasn’t where it should be for a movie like that. And it’s just trashy for that sake. And he’s a little clumsy at that time still. It’s phenomenal. I mean, if you’ve got a group of friends, I can very much recommend watching that.
Speaker 0 | 02:47.626
Oh, and then Weird Al Yankovic did like a whole, he did like a whole scene on that. And like, we should go back to that. Don’t you know the Dewey Decimal System? I’m not even doing good. I should go to you. I love it. This is great. This is starting off so good. This is so IT. This is more IT than anyone knows. This is as real as it gets. I also love that you were totally skeptical of me before. Let’s go through the first thoughts because I just want to go. Someone connected with you on LinkedIn.
Speaker 1 | 03:19.773
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 0 | 03:20.333
Oh, no, actually, you didn’t even know. It wasn’t even me. It was like one of my guys that was. you know, I don’t know, phishing, sending you phishing emails or something like that. You know, hey, do you want to be on this podcast? I said, can you pop your IT nudes? And you thought what? Exactly what you should think, by the way, and what everyone else thinks. Zero trust. But what did you really think?
Speaker 1 | 03:36.484
I mean, since everyone is doing that, just selling something, first of all, probably phone systems, because that seems to be popular. But yeah, you know, you get a lot of crap in LinkedIn. And I just thought it’s one of those messages.
Speaker 0 | 03:48.973
It’s kind of funny that you got me on that one, because I used to, I am. Do you know I changed my name from the most bearded man in telecom to the most bearded man in technology? Because everyone thought he can’t really be doing… I do know a lot about phone systems. By the way, do you need one?
Speaker 1 | 04:04.342
I’m good. I mean, that would be hilarious. If you come back and now it’s about selling me some soft phone solution, I would probably just go ahead and buy it, to be honest.
Speaker 0 | 04:15.749
We could go through the worst soft phones. We could also play worst telecom. phone system ever we’ll play that later on but okay so um all right so okay so number one terminator 2 and opening scene just amazing i mean opening scene for terminator 2 it’s just so good i mean it doesn’t get much better um i think that’s it and there you go um also um he had a great steroid stack i mean honestly like if you talk with arnold he’s just like everyone was doing it What are you talking about? It’s normal. What do you mean? Like, yeah, the doctor just gave you Deca and testosterone. I mean, that’s like the gold standard. So if you’re going to start doing steroids, there you go. You got Arnold. If you want. And then, and then what was the third? I’m going to go to the highest level possible in American, in the American government. He can’t be president because he’s, I guess, a foreigner, which I think is race racist, absolutely racist. He should be able to be president.
Speaker 1 | 05:13.182
of the united states and um i’m not getting political i don’t even vote just so you know that’s i’m being completely sarcastic which is a behavioral derailer i’m told um let’s just go but it’s a it’s a it’s a good icebreaker actually because i mean me coming to the us um 2021 when the pandemic hit and you you said it you know we do a medical devices so i mean that is the reason why i’m here it got a little crazier than anyone over here thought it would and they sent someone from headquarter from Austria over here. So that is me coming over. And the experience that Arnold shared in the Netflix documentary, I mean, he just packed his stuff and went. So I was backed up by company and all that. And I came over here and tried doing my thing. So that is the first parallel. Like someone in the US reached out to me and someone reached out to Arnold as well. Just come over here and do what you do best, right? And in my case, it was a little less exciting. It was just… doing IT over here and then helping the folks grow a little. But yeah, that’s what brought me over here. And yeah, then you find all those differences. Like, you know, you talk about racism, but it’s about those differences that Arnold probably found back in the day that I found as well. And he talks about the mindset differences. And I think that’s a very, very valuable experience for me where Austrians are like a light version of Germans, which are known to be very square and, you know, straightforward, structured. structured, take their time when making decisions. And Americans tend to be fast-paced and just go ahead and do it. I mean, Nike, just do it. That is the American way of doing things. And that also applies to IT pretty well. And what I always figured out and what I agree with him very strongly is actually, if you combine the structured, slow and skeptical approach that you have in Europe or in Austria specifically, and combine it with the fast-paced world you find here in the US, you get a very powerful set of tools that you can use for day-to-day to make decisions quick. But think of it through a little. Like building a house in the US is just woods and you just build it. And then also you build for two lifetimes. But if you combine it, you get a very reasonable approach to some problems. And yeah, I had to learn. that not everything we do in Austria is perfect and makes a whole lot of sense. But I also saw that if you do something too fast in IT, it just won’t hold up to the first storm that hits you. Stig Brodersen So that mix that Arnold describes also very much applies to IT. And that was a very fun experience for me in the last three years over here.
Speaker 0 | 08:01.430
Yeah. It’s like buying a phone system. I mean, you just buy that phone system too quick. I mean, you’re screwed for like three to five years. Forget about it. No, but being more serious, there’s so much to hit on there. The Austrian method to IT. That’s like a book. That’s your book. That’s your first book, the Austrian IT method. There we go. Done. You’re on your way. You are on your way. The Austrian IT method, which is combining, which is German light. it’s the german light router you know um it’s the siemens light siemens light um no in all seriousness how do you apply that to your roadmap in in it and building a network in it is there anything particular that you would see that we did over here that was just i don’t know too fast and furious open for security vulnerabilities whatever it is what is your what is your slow fast methodology um yeah i mean easiest
Speaker 1 | 08:59.722
to share with your audience is probably new software because everyone can kind of relate to that right usually what’s what is happening over here is you have some subject matter expert that needs that software to do something better than they were able to do yesterday right and whereas in austria you would do a whole freaking analysis on return on investment on uh is it actually making sense uh and you maybe basically ask everyone and their mom whether it is okay okay to get that piece of software in here because it has to match the strategy it has to match global standards um then we have legal uh more legal um i think restrictions in a way like with gdpr like the data privacy stuff that we they were so happy to have about in in europe and and then it gets slowly right and then you have that subject matter expert that has a has a has a great idea maybe right like this is a phenomenal idea to solve a problem And then, you know, you lose that individual by just being complicated about it, right? And asking all those questions that no one has answers for. And then it’s about who’s deciding. um, where those 20 bucks come from. I’m over exaggerating here, but that that’s basically what happens.
Speaker 0 | 10:16.313
You can have a bunch of people that buy and implement a bunch of crap in the United States without thinking about it. It’s basically what you’re saying. And in Australia, you’re saying, well, we’re just, sometimes we’re too slow to take action because you got to ask everyone and your mom, like you said, and everyone’s very paranoid and we got to make, you know, we got to, I don’t know, analysis by over paralysis or paralysis over analysis, whatever they call that. Right. So there’s a fine balance in between what you get by clearly taking people from Austria and putting them in the United States, which may just be the it may just be the solution. Stop hiring people in the US. Done deal. And so which is something that we we focus a lot about on the show. We basically. If you look at the good leaders, and you have the classic 80-20 rule, you have 80% of people are just kind of getting by, showing up to work. Probably contracts are coming up last minute. They’re making decisions, firing from the hip because they need to really quickly. There’s tickets coming into the ticketing system. People are complaining. They’re drinking from the fire hose every day, and they’re making decisions. just quickly because they can, because people have money and then the budget gets decided based on that. Whereas then if you look at the top 20% of the top 5% of the IT leaders, they are empowering their people. So they’re good at delegation. Again, another Austrian, Arnold, this whole show is going to be the Arnold Austrian show. You know what I mean? You know, if you look at when he talks, he always says, it’s always about the people around you, the people that you surround yourself with. So even though he himself is the big deal, it was always about the people he was around himself. He was a You know, it’s about, it’s about your lifting partner and he won’t let you eat the hamburger bun. You know what I mean? And the people that you surround yourself with at the table when you’re eating, it’s about the people that you surround yourself with everywhere. And so the good leaders surround themselves with good people, empower their people, probably allow their people to coach up. And then the second thing is, is they talk with people. They go around and like they do, they talk with everyone and their mother, like you said. They want to make sure that there is a return on investment. They want to make sure that if we are going to buy this particular piece of software, that it works. Most likely, they are doing a proof of concept. They’re putting things through tests and trials and all this stuff, and then they’re making a decision. And then if you take maybe the smart, which I don’t really know if this is smart. It’s just he’s a dude that was in the military and in leadership, Colin Powell, which people love to quote all the time. He says, Basically get yourself 70%. I think it’s 70% of the way there. He said, as long as you get 70% of the information, you’ve got enough information to make a decision, then you can make the decision. So you’ve got enough information, but you haven’t taken so painfully long that there’s now even a new software that just erupted in that time. And sometimes people take so long to make a decision. By the time they make the decision, there’s already three new products that are better than the product they’re waiting to make the decision on. I’ve literally seen that happen.
Speaker 1 | 13:21.632
Oh yeah,
Speaker 0 | 13:22.072
absolutely.
Speaker 1 | 13:23.013
Absolutely.
Speaker 0 | 13:24.133
Three to five years to pull the trigger on a, just so happened to be a contact center. It happened to be a telecom thing. By that time, we moved to the cloud. It wasn’t even like it was, literally it happened during that time and you could wait. Think of the, like you mentioned COVID. Think of the people that were waiting to make a decision prior to COVID on some sort of like server-based solution that was probably realistic, right? And then COVID hit and they’re like, well, that’s done. Or how about the guys in May that took forever to make the decision and then COVID hit? Even worse.
Speaker 1 | 13:55.718
Absolutely. And I mean, COVID showed plenty of things. I mean, also with in the US being a lot faster with losing individuals in your employment or colleagues elsewhere that make those calls, but also to bring in new people. So, you know, you kind of lose more and more traction the longer you wait in volatile times like that, right? So if you drag something out, like in… Three years in COVID time is an eternity, right? I mean, the world changed three times in those three years. And the people that make the decision also changed probably three or four times, right? So the longer you wait, the longer you have the problem you were initially trying to solve with that software, right? So that is really what I learned. Getting off my Austrian horse here and being like, you know what? Maybe we just got to go sometime, you know? And… And what we figured out was a pretty good concept was to just give decision makers or subject matter expert a little bit of a framework where they can roam around freely. Like, of course, some security stuff needs to be done, right? But that is a checklist you can send your vendors. It needs to be compliant to those three rules. But that is also something you can check right away. And I mean, obviously you got to deal with the budget anyways, but as soon as you hit those things, let’s get the show on the road. I mean, if it’s nothing crazy, but let’s try it and maybe fail two or three times. But with every failure, we have implemented new software that solved the problem good enough and we made it better in the next iteration and all that. Instead of just sitting on our hands and wait for the perfect software, that is never going to show up because as you indicated correctly. If you just wait too long, the question you were asking initially becomes irrelevant, maybe, right? So that is the good mix between just running into the wall head on and overthinking the wall, right? And it’s that golden path that you also mentioned briefly that is tricky to find these days to make a good, solid decision that people will support you for or with.
Speaker 0 | 16:09.764
along the way um that is happening fast i love the example of speaking a foreign language as well so english i’m assuming is english your second third fourth fifth language what language is it second yeah so when you at some point you’ve just got to kind of like jump into the pool and start speaking the language right yeah and i i highly i just have so much respect for people that have learned a second language because anyone that has just been privileged to just speak english their whole life and has never learned another language really don’t understand how i i think it’s very difficult to really learn another language significantly to the point where you understand the the culture of the language right the like every language has like a a soul to it i don’t really know how to describe it you know what i mean so yeah you know you can say a saying like in in in like, I don’t know, don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. I don’t know. There’s some saying in English, you know what I mean? It makes sense in English, but if you translate it into another language, they’re like, nah, it just doesn’t, uh, it doesn’t ring true or it doesn’t, you know, there’s like a certain spirit to a language. I don’t, and I haven’t quite experienced that yet. Cause I haven’t had that like language breakthrough. I’m learning Arabic and I speak with my friends and I’m starting to speak it now. When I go to another country, I can speak it. Like I’m going, I’ve been to Morocco twice this year. You start to get the feel, you know, but it’s very, they kind of look at you like, yeah, I know I translated something, but you’re looking at me like an idiot. So I know that I said something stupid. What was that for you? Like, how did it, did you already speak English fluently when you came here prior to COVID or did it happen in a year? Like what happened?
Speaker 1 | 17:58.646
Yeah, more or less. I mean, we learned English at school. I mean, probably these days it starts earlier than back when I was at school. But I would say. say by the age of 14 you get you have english class a couple times a week and i get more and more practice you know with with actually going to ireland actually for a week to just train on that and i was always working in an international field so i’m talking to you like right now that was part of my job for a long time but but yeah it definitely hits you when you move out to the u.s and then the cultural flavor starts starts coming in as well um and and and you said it you said it correctly you got to translate you know the meaning but you got to translate the culture as well if i would speak to people around here like austrians speak to one another it would seem very rude right because we don’t sugarcoat anything it’s just we say what we we say what we think right and that is a that is a that is a powerful tool at times but in day to day you want to sugarcoat a little i mean i’m located here in north carolina right so It’s the South. People are very soft spoken. I was getting in some, I wouldn’t say trouble, but people were getting confused on emails that I was sending out that were directly addressing what I wanted to say and not asking how everyone’s taste was. So it’s those little things that are trickier than the phrases that you bring up. You learn that out of context.
Speaker 0 | 19:33.516
what what’s throwing a baby had the best water like means don’t throw the baby out with the bath water it’s some old thing because i don’t my understanding is that you would draw one bathtub full of water back in the day and the whole family would use the bath water so by and the oldest started first so by the time the baby got to the bath water which makes no sense because the baby should really go first if they probably have the i don’t know the weakest and most sensitive skin and stuff You know, but anyways, by the time we got to the baby, the bath water was black. So, you know, don’t throw the baby out with the bath water. I go, this is my understanding. Could be completely wrong.
Speaker 1 | 20:09.727
Yeah. Did you? Yeah. That cultural translation is hard is what I was trying to say, right?
Speaker 0 | 20:16.765
So if I go to Austria, the East Coast, upper East Coast mentality will fit right in. I can just be like, what’s wrong with you? Oh,
Speaker 1 | 20:23.010
100%. I felt right at home when I was traveling to New York. And you know you have waiter’s rolling eyes when you go to a restaurant.
Speaker 0 | 20:32.357
You’re in Boston. Yeah, you wicked, stupid mother. What’s wrong with you? Oh, so I’d fit right in in Austria. Okay, good. Yeah. You realize Americans are very horrible with geography. The majority of Americans are culturally stupid. I’m saying that everyone can bash me now and get mad and my ratings can go down. But most Americans are culturally stupid. I guarantee you that I would say if I asked one out of, I would guess one out of 10 people would know where Austria even is. I had to, I’m looking at it on the map right now. I don’t even know what the Czech Republic is. You got some other countries, Hungary. Uh, let’s see what else we got around you. Slovakia. What’s, um, Leichenstein.
Speaker 1 | 21:14.745
Oh yeah. That’s, that’s one of those dwarf countries. I think you can walk through it from West end to East end. I’m not, I’m not even kidding. You can look it up. It’s,
Speaker 0 | 21:23.313
it’s not Switzerland. Never even heard of Switzerland. that’s probably one of the what do you guys even speak for language like see this is so let’s do a little let’s do some history this is the time now making dumb americans smarter by the second what language do you guys speak in austria uh
Speaker 1 | 21:45.207
yeah first language is german okay there you go we speak german that’s why i like german light but it’s it’s it’s um it’s a weird dialect weird accent it’s like it’s like saying scottish folks speak english on paper right it’s it i mean it is english but if i would send you over to i don’t know countryside scotland right i mean you would probably struggle and the same the same is if uh germans come over to austria right if i would start talking to my friends and
Speaker 0 | 22:15.358
you would have someone from germany i mean you get it like you could like you guys would understand 80 of it but there’d be some weird like you know yeah when i go to england it’s much more proper you I find the people with an English accent, I’m more apt to trust them. It makes no sense. Because it sounds more refined. They don’t say trash. Like, hey, can you go take out the trash? Like, the rubbish, please. Sir, could you go take out the rubbish? That’s rubbish. And A, you understand what I’m saying. It just sounds more refined. So I’m more trustworthy of them. So probably more apt to be hacked. So.
Speaker 1 | 22:54.050
uh anyways they shipped you off to the united states do you like it better here austria um that’s that’s hard to say i like i like living here like like off work it’s it’s a lot easier for me to come around here i mean you you mention it like americans are open-minded in general curious when they hear that i’m not from here and and then ask questions invite me for barbecues for no reason whatsoever so free food so you can survive right right okay i’m I’m having a blast over here, right? But for work, it’s a little trickier because, again, it’s Southern mentality. It’s not as fast as I would like to see some things happening or not as direct as I would like to see things.
Speaker 0 | 23:35.497
Which is the opposite of what you just said at the beginning of the show anyways. It’s faster but slower.
Speaker 1 | 23:42.079
Yeah, it’s faster but it’s not in a sense of, you know, I need this done. And that sense of urgency that… this raises would be just higher in Austria than it would be here. I got you. Also comes with the territory of the level of frustration when things start to change and people start just changing things is a lot lower in Austria. It’s always a sense of urgency and need for change.
Speaker 0 | 24:10.309
Give me an example. Give me an example.
Speaker 1 | 24:12.430
Like if you have a crappy process, like the process is you grab that piece of paper, scan it over here, grab the PDF, print it on an X. period. That’s where the next one signs it off. Right. In, in Austria, people would tend to be like, yeah, you know what? I’m not doing that. I’m not, I’m, I’m, I’m too smart to, to actually do that kind of crap. Let’s change that right now. And I will make it my baby to make that work. Right. And in the U S it’s like, yeah, well, that’s what it is. So, you know,
Speaker 0 | 24:38.406
this is the way we’ve always done it is the way it’s going to be done.
Speaker 1 | 24:41.508
Yep.
Speaker 0 | 24:41.809
And, uh, yeah. Um, well, I’m sorry, but we have 15 PBXs at all different phone systems at every, at every location. I got to keep bringing up the phones because you said for some reason, people were telling me what’s the number part of the show. This is the part of the show where we ask you who is the most annoying phone vendor to call you every day, every single day, nonstop all the time. And I’m, and I could take a guess first. Yeah.
Speaker 1 | 25:10.224
Do you want to say it’s on three or something?
Speaker 0 | 25:14.025
What’d you say? Oh, on three? Do you want to count to three and we say it and then-Give me three choices and just tell me yes or no, it’s one of those three. Okay. So I’m going to tell you three providers and you’re going to tell me, yes, it’s one of them. And if I hit them right away, you can just say, yes, that’s them.
Speaker 1 | 25:32.414
Yeah.
Speaker 0 | 25:33.414
Ring central.
Speaker 1 | 25:34.295
That’s it.
Speaker 0 | 25:37.224
I wish I had, I need some better sound. I need some sound effects. I was using, I used, I used, I had, who was that stupid Star Wars character in their first remake? I had his voice that I used to play.
Speaker 1 | 25:52.948
Jar Jar?
Speaker 0 | 25:53.988
Jar Jar Banks. I had his voice. I had his voice. And then I, I made the stupid mistake of reaching out to Disney and being like, Hey, can I like get permission to use this way? And they’re like, absolutely not. it is you know like only used for people because there’s so many jar jar banks haters that if you look up the people that actually are allowed to talk about jar jar banks they’re all they’re they’re all like he’s so awesome he’s like the best character ever oh ring essential we love you we love you where’s my money i’m gonna start advertising you give me the money we’re gonna leave i’m doing this show for free for so long We’re actually ranked 11th. I’m still, I don’t have, I just need to pay somebody. Maybe I need an Austrian to be like, that’s it. We’re going to get sponsors. They’re going to pay us now. Can you do a good Arnold impression?
Speaker 1 | 26:48.514
Let’s see. It’s not a tumor. Is that good enough?
Speaker 0 | 26:56.680
Yes.
Speaker 1 | 26:57.341
That’s police.
Speaker 0 | 27:00.924
I should have you record like some, like an intro. an intro for this. Like back home, is everyone like watching Arnold at home? Is he like loved back home as much as he’s loved here, you think? Or more?
Speaker 1 | 27:13.712
I wouldn’t think so. I mean, he was more famous in the 80s. Yeah. And since he went to politics years and years ago, you know, that doesn’t affect us Austrians all that much.
Speaker 0 | 27:23.638
Yeah, it probably hurts you. Well, I’m like, where’s our money? Where’s our money? I don’t know what we’re talking about. Let’s talk about IT somehow. So what do you actually, how many people are on your team? How many end users do you have? What’s the biggest problem right now? I don’t know. What’s your single biggest frustration, problem, or concern when it comes to managing IT in the United States coming overseas from Austria?
Speaker 1 | 27:53.081
That’s tricky. Let me start by just setting the stage for what my organization is like. So we have 500 users, give or take. And we manage the whole site with four in my team and with me. So five altogether. Okay.
Speaker 0 | 28:09.015
So just so everyone knows, I have done this math and I say it over and over again. It’s in the book. Everyone knows this if you listen to the show, but I’m going to reiterate it once again. And I could have said this, I could have made, I’ve gotten so good at this stuff, like the RingCentral.
Speaker 1 | 28:24.541
That was pretty, pretty amazing. Yeah.
Speaker 0 | 28:26.722
I mean, there’s only hundreds of them. There’s only hundreds of literally. My second was going to be Zoom. My third was going to be Vonage. Maybe Nextiva. I’m sure you guys have been hit by one of them too, at least.
Speaker 1 | 28:39.230
It’s only RingCentral for me, I guess.
Speaker 0 | 28:41.551
AT&T or Avaya, also RingCentral, or has been before, just white-labeled. So anyways, another one is, I could have said your ratio from end users to IT staff is 1 to 100. Which is right on. You’ve got 500 end users. You’ve got five people. Okay, great. So every 100 people, you have one person supporting them, telling them, stop taking the piece of paper to the copy machine, which we need to call Xerox, which is not a company anymore, to convert that into a PDF, to take it, then print it off the machine, to take it to the fax machine, to fax it to someone’s email. Yeah.
Speaker 1 | 29:24.405
Yeah.
Speaker 0 | 29:25.466
Okay. So anyways, go ahead. So you got 500 users, you got five people. I don’t know where we’re going with this. What’s your biggest, you said lay of the land. Okay.
Speaker 1 | 29:32.615
Yeah, I started to, like the easiest thing for me is just the classic support. Like my computer breaks, we fix that. That is classic IT stuff. What is the most frustrating piece on the other end of the spectrum is probably those projects that get into a size where we have to ask the mothership for their opinion on something.
Speaker 0 | 29:55.967
Who’s the mothership?
Speaker 1 | 29:57.452
Like Austria, right? It’s headquarters.
Speaker 0 | 29:59.034
Is that where headquarters is? Because it says you have 500 people in the United States or 500 people in company wide?
Speaker 1 | 30:06.024
No, it’s a couple thousand company wide and 500 in the States. Yeah.
Speaker 0 | 30:10.594
Okay. So, all right. So you’re like, you’re like, I don’t know. I’m trying to think of like the, I wish there was a good metaphor. Maybe you can come up with a metaphor.
Speaker 1 | 30:21.523
Like for our relationship to the mothership. Yeah.
Speaker 0 | 30:24.065
So there’s 500 over here. There’s another 500 in Austria and your own entity over here in the United States. I mean, if I look at the company, it says, it says in Monroe, North Carolina, but then they’re Kremsmünster.
Speaker 1 | 30:38.250
Yeah, that’s that’s that’s that’s that right.
Speaker 0 | 30:40.910
Yeah.
Speaker 1 | 30:42.451
Yeah.
Speaker 0 | 30:43.431
My brother lives in Germany, by the way, so I could maybe genetically somehow that comes off on me. But he’s very to the point, by the way. Chris Howard. OK.
Speaker 1 | 30:55.914
And and and that is the tricky piece. Like you got to you got to translate back to Austria. This is what we need. Like we need that piece of software that you don’t understand why. But in the US. Customs is trickier. We need that. And we need that amount of money to get that. This is where it’s getting tricky. We have probably a skill to do it, but not the authority yet to do it. And that is the trickiest piece for me. Because I understand the whole synergy effects kind of thinking and cost making sense for all of us.
Speaker 0 | 31:27.838
Gotcha. Gotcha.
Speaker 1 | 31:29.319
But bringing in the local flavor and selling that, that it’s, yeah, that is what we need. And.
Speaker 0 | 31:36.886
we gotta do this we’re american now don’t you understand we’re american now what exactly dang it we’re american oh no slow down we have to talk with everybody first exactly slow down wait till third quarter when we can have a meeting about this okay hold on for nine months we’re gonna have a meeting someday and then you’ll have five minutes during that meeting uh nope yeah
Speaker 1 | 32:00.993
that’s that sort of thing that that that really
Speaker 0 | 32:03.818
uh it grinds our our gears and makes us inefficient at times right so um that kind of what are some of the um so have you had any wins or ways to overcome that or ways uh to get around it or is it why don’t we just do it and say i had this great idea of why don’t we just get hacked pay someone to hack our company give us what we need and then just like hey i don’t know how this happened but look at the benefits well you just got up i i i think the the
Speaker 1 | 32:33.178
The wins that we had was really when we did a good job with something, you know, just lead by example. We showed we can pull it off. We showed the results. That’s what they like to see, right? And this is a slow progress thing. So it feels like since you were asking for the analogy, it feels like you have that family gathering and you’re on the kids table and then you turn 14 and you want to sit with the grownups, but they don’t really listen to you in the way they listen to other grownups. So that is what the US affiliate became in the last couple of years.
Speaker 0 | 33:03.108
And then you beat Uncle George at chess.
Speaker 1 | 33:06.150
Exactly.
Speaker 0 | 33:06.730
And they’re like, all right, how’d you do that? Come on over to the table.
Speaker 1 | 33:10.673
Oh, yeah, that sort of thing. And that’s how we show up and just get things done every once in a while.
Speaker 0 | 33:17.958
That’s a good point. Numbers don’t lie. People lie. So numbers, results matter. I’ve always been a results guy. I’ve always said, I don’t care. Show me results. Give me proof, give me numbers, give me this type of thing. So how can you do that if you need a new piece of software, though? Get the vendor to give you, I don’t know, free service for a while or something? I don’t know.
Speaker 1 | 33:40.035
Well, it’s basically, you start off with the problem, right? Like, for example…
Speaker 0 | 33:44.377
Do you have a PowerPoint deck you use? Like, how do you present these things?
Speaker 1 | 33:49.119
Yeah, pretty much.
Speaker 0 | 33:52.180
How many slides?
Speaker 1 | 33:53.621
10 or less, I would say.
Speaker 0 | 33:55.274
Okay, good. I’m a big fan of five or less. No way. I forget about the first slide is before and after that slide one.
Speaker 1 | 34:07.520
Okay. Basically.
Speaker 0 | 34:08.921
Yeah. Yeah. Second slide is why we should do this. Third slide is a way of saying you’re stupid if you don’t. Third slide was, if you don’t do this, here’s your other option, which is also buying what I need. Yeah. And then the fourth slide is. The last resort, which is also buying what I need. But anyways, go ahead.
Speaker 1 | 34:28.513
Yeah, it’s basically that. Here’s the problem that I have. I checked with everyone that you would ask me to check with, right? I did that. I did my homework. Then I calculated like, okay, new software would result in X, Y, and Z expectations. Existing software with bolt-on solutions that sort of Frankenstein your way out of it would be this and that. And here’s the return on investment. I expect to get our money back within, I don’t know, 18 months. I mean, that is basically it, right? And then you just garnish it with just hard hitters.
Speaker 0 | 35:06.178
IT, is it a cost center or can we generate new revenue for the business? Should IT be responsible? I guess my question is, how do you love your job and make more money in IT?
Speaker 1 | 35:20.215
You got to work with the people, right? And I think the times are long gone when we could sit in our office and get the IT order slid under the door into our basement offices and just do it, right? We got to be out there and understand people the way they want to be understood. and speak their language, right? And translate all the complexity we deal with into human readable language and work with our folks out there that actually make the company money, right?
Speaker 0 | 35:53.771
Are you sure you haven’t listened to this show before?
Speaker 1 | 35:56.833
I have just read your five lines in the LinkedIn description, but yeah.
Speaker 0 | 36:01.776
Did I put anything about slipping stuff under the door? Because Aaron Siemens, episode 23. Oh no. We’re at like 200 and… 37 episodes now, by the way. But like 200 episodes ago, he said, you know, IT used to be the place where we hid in a closet and people slipped pizzas under the door to us to get something done.
Speaker 1 | 36:23.836
I didn’t steal that from anyone.
Speaker 0 | 36:25.916
I was just like, the fact that you said that shows how true it really is.
Speaker 1 | 36:32.958
Absolutely. And that is, sorry that I was interrupting you there, but that is such a tricky thing. tricky piece to pull off because, I mean, again, four people versus 400 users, right? You can’t be out there all the time. We got to get work done too. And that is where it’s getting really tricky. How do you set up an organization where you can be an enabler, right? And actually be like, hey, I Googled something the other day, dear key user, dear process owner, this could solve the problem we had for so long. And I got the manpower to do it right away, right?
Speaker 0 | 37:04.834
I mean-I’m glad that you admitted. I’m just a better Googler. Like, I mean, honestly, like that’s number one. Like what does IT really do? I mean, sure, yeah. Pretty much Google everything. I mean, you expect us to do everything. So how can we possibly know everything? Right. Now it might be ChatGPT. I used that in the last episode this morning, which was fun. We went through like a whole, my secrets clawed. My secret weapons, actually, Poe.com. Again, free advertising for everybody seems to come through. Seems to come through dissecting popular IT nerds. If you guys want to pay me someday, I’ll do this more. Poe.com. That’s every IT director out there. You can thank me later. Thank me later. Please write me episodes. I don’t tell me to put you on an email blast list. Let me sell you a phone system maybe. I don’t know. Something like that. Poe.com. P-O-E.com. Gonna love it. You’re gonna love it. You’re gonna love it. That’s probably their new… And who are Poe.com? Someone out there, would you please just pay me some money? I’m broke. I want to be like Arnold. Do you believe in any conspiracy theories? Any conspiracy theories? Is the world flat? Did we go to the moon? I don’t know. Something. Arnold’s really a lizard person. What is it?
Speaker 1 | 38:30.527
Yeah. I mean, I think some events in history are weird, right? The way they went. down. I mean, 9-11 feels like an odd one. It feels that things don’t really match up. Am I saying it’s an inside job like the theory states? No, I’m just saying it was a little weird.
Speaker 0 | 38:50.258
Building seven. Exactly. It’s a very sensitive subject. It’s a very sensitive subject.
Speaker 1 | 38:53.959
I see that. Yeah. But I’m just thinking it’s a weird-No,
Speaker 0 | 38:56.500
I’m with you. I’m with you. I’m all about the truth. And I’d rather live the truth than live a lie. And propaganda is very, very powerful. It’s very, very powerful. I mean, even Hitler, the minister of propaganda for Hitler said, we’re just going to tell a big enough lie. We’re going to tell it over and over again until the people believe us. So it’s a very, and I come from a very, my family’s interesting. Actually, half my family’s highly conservative. Every picture you’ve seen of taking of George Bush fishing was taken from my dad’s boat. So my dad has a house, he lives in Kennebunk. Like Kennebunk. port right next and he has a he’s a retired doctor and the pentagon called one day and they said dr howard you have a charter fishing business we’d like to rent your boat the press secretary to take pictures of george bush so every picture taken of george bush was taken from my dad’s boat like no joke if you see george bush senior 41 or 43 fishing that picture was taken from my dad’s boat i’m not kidding you i’m serious um so like you American conservative culture, even military culture and everything is very, very… I mean, it’s just very diehard American. But what’s also interesting, my chiropractor is diehard American. I mean, like American, like Navy, Sea, America. Like if I sit down and go with him, we talk military stuff, and I do jiu-jitsu, and he loves that. We talk all that. But he’s like, yeah, he’s skeptic of 9-11 too. He’s like, no, that Building 7 doesn’t just drop out of nowhere like that, can perfectly implode with, you know, like, no.
Speaker 1 | 40:34.472
But I love it. watching theories like the flat earth one that really got me good i mean i’m like that is that is good stuff you know i like like if you don’t follow the mainstream yeah if you don’t follow the mainstream people covering it up like if you follow uh what is it eric debay eric debay i
Speaker 0 | 40:51.764
doesn’t ring a bell i don’t know any specific name in that area it’s like the more you watch it you’re like you’re like gig wait a second like this actually kind of like you know i kind of i kind of went down that dark hole for a moment because uh um i was looking at the different like like other models for other like universal models that makes that mathematically makes sense like that even um like stephen hawking this stuff like you know you can’t prove you can’t prove that the sun’s the center of the solar system just like you can’t prove that the earth’s not like there’s multiple mathematical equations at work it’s just like like modern day science refuses to say that like you know humans are special so like you know this one anyways they gotta pick one But I’m not smart enough. I need to have more smart people on the show that do understand that. But, you know, see, we just need to bring Europeans on. Not everything’s American-centric, although America, we invented everything. Oh, we should have a part of the show that’s like, please, inventions that didn’t come out of America. You know one?
Speaker 1 | 41:57.736
Let’s see.
Speaker 0 | 41:58.977
Now we’re going to go pro-American. We’re going to go pro-America show. America!
Speaker 1 | 42:02.774
Yeah, I’m just stuck on what has been invented, you know, because I do think…
Speaker 0 | 42:07.095
Major inventions that haven’t come out of America. I mean, if there was one, it probably is Germany.
Speaker 1 | 42:12.256
Yeah, probably, but… The phone system.
Speaker 0 | 42:16.477
The phone system was… Oh,
Speaker 1 | 42:18.598
yes. But radioactiveness, I mean…
Speaker 0 | 42:21.659
Okay. It’s kind of like a discovery. I mean, what about… You’re saying created elements, radioactive elements that were created that did not exist naturally.
Speaker 1 | 42:31.981
Yeah.
Speaker 0 | 42:32.398
basically you know we invented we don’t even know who it was if i talk on my my producers um greg ledal he’s from he’s from france like paris he’s like no paris paris paris gotta say all right back to the language again um i’m glad that we’ve ended on this completely um well but also you know i’m glad that we’ve landed on this note that has completely made anyone that that took anything that we’ve said this entire show you and dumped it down the drain like, I can’t believe anything that those guys say. They’re out of their minds. Out of their minds. I mean,
Speaker 1 | 43:10.217
Arnold. In general, when we talk inventions, what is an easy answer is everything before America was even there, right? I mean,
Speaker 0 | 43:19.941
that is pretty simple,
Speaker 1 | 43:22.822
right? Yeah, exactly, right? I mean, we just had a couple hundred years more time to invent stuff before you were.
Speaker 0 | 43:32.006
part of it it’s pretty amazing it’s pretty absurd i’m waiting for someone to catch up and i think what it is is because everyone’s got to talk to everyone and their mother before they make a decision on it oh yeah and over here we’ll just fail on a bunch of things first yeah you know we could crash a bunch of planes before one takes off true yeah or we’ll just film it yeah or i mean first person in the moon or we’ll just fake it just fake it till you make it
Speaker 1 | 44:00.314
but look at all the big the the big guys out there i mean i i think i mean elon musk is not american but very american in the way he does things it’s not his first company that turned out to be tesla or or uh paypal you know i mean he crushed a whole bunch of companies before that happened amazon not the first company that was successful and i think that’s a that’s a very teaching kind of kind of moment I think that’s very inspiring, especially for me that is very, I was very scared of failure and just doing something wrong. Just do it, you know, and make it less wrong the next time.
Speaker 0 | 44:38.522
Yeah, if you have a problem with any sort of insecurity or fears or scared of your own shadow or depression, anxiety, I’m speaking clearly about myself in high school. And just. Yeah, just get out and do it. Because most people, I mean, I just. when I think back about it, yeah, I was scared of my shadow in high school. Couldn’t talk to anybody, none of that. And I think it was through just sheer forcing of having to do something in order to survive. You learn a lot. And you probably, in you coming over to America and doing things and stepping out of your, just stepping out of your comfort zone, I think is the, as I think is the thing, stepping out of your comfort zone, which may be just stepping out of your server closet. just stepping out of your server closet and talking with humanoids oh yeah basically what it is you have to go talk with humans and um they’re gonna probably say some stupid things and you need to stop yourself from saying are you an idiot and um yes but yeah that’s that’s basically it’s right and i’m lucky to have a whole bunch of folks on my team that
Speaker 1 | 45:53.281
i mean all of them every single one of those four i mean they they understand that you know it’s it’s out there where you get the ideas from
Speaker 0 | 46:01.604
Are you the only Austrian on the team or did we send more people over?
Speaker 1 | 46:06.107
I’m not the only Austrian in the company here, but I’m the only Austrian in IT over here.
Speaker 0 | 46:11.470
It’s like, yeah, it was like the alien mothership sent over someone from Austria. And now you got a bunch of Americans in North Carolina. Is it North Carolina?
Speaker 1 | 46:20.156
Yeah, North Carolina. Yeah.
Speaker 0 | 46:22.438
At least you surf. I mean, that makes you human and you’re going to Costa Rica. So let’s tie it all back to that. No, I would. I think it would be fun to have your entire team on a show and just talk to the whole team and be like, Hey, um, now Daniel, you’re going to leave the room and we’re going to let your team talk about you. So what’s it like? What’s it like? Oh,
Speaker 1 | 46:40.648
I would, I would, I would love that. Actually. I, I think that would be very helpful for me as well to, to, to hear it like unbiased from someone like you leading them to, to, to find answers. I mean, that it’s gotta be.
Speaker 0 | 46:54.794
And then I’ll leave the room and you can run the podcast for 10 minutes. Like, so. What does everyone really think about this guy live? Here’s the number. You guys can call in. And yes. So by the way, you guys do manufacture blood collection, urine collection, manufacturing, biotechnology, pharma, capillary blood draw. We didn’t even, you know, it’s funny that you mentioned 9-11. We didn’t even go to, we didn’t even go to COVID. We didn’t even go to, yeah, that it’s, there was a manufactured virus that this was like, you know, this was, I can’t say who. really put it out there because then my show would come to an end. And by the way, again, if I die and disappear, this is the second time today.
Speaker 1 | 47:37.151
Um, but you’ll hear from big pharma. Yeah.
Speaker 0 | 47:40.432
Urine collection. I have my second, my, my dream job would be a marketing coordinator for a urine collection company. And the reason why is because I think, and no one can see this right now, I’m holding up a coffee cup as I always thought that a great idea. Would be to take the urine collection cup and put a handle on the side and turn it into a coffee mug. Cause that would be hilarious because you’d be drinking out of a cup that says urine sample. Um,
Speaker 1 | 48:10.282
and I’ll call next to, to our product management right away. I mean,
Speaker 0 | 48:13.705
give those away. And there’d be great gag gifts and that’s a double meaning there. You get it. All right. There you go.
Speaker 1 | 48:24.673
Million dollar idea.
Speaker 0 | 48:26.275
I just, you know. I don’t know. Maybe it’s Daniel. Thank you very much for being on dissecting popular it nerds. It has been a, this has been a, it’s been a lot of fun for me. I don’t know about you, but it’s been more fun for me than probably all the listeners and everyone else out there. Thank you, sir.
Speaker 1 | 48:40.625
Yeah. Thank you for having me. It was a fun for me just as well.
