Speaker 0 | 00:07.779

Welcome back, everyone, to Dissecting Popular IT Nerds. I’m your host, Doug Kameen, and today I’m talking with Jason Metzger, IT Manager at AC Corporation in Greensboro, North Carolina. Welcome to the show, Jason.

Speaker 1 | 00:20.464

Thank you. Thank you for having me on.

Speaker 0 | 00:22.866

So, Jason, we love getting on people who have… big backgrounds in leadership and variety of different types of IT work. You caught our eye as somebody who’s doing some great work in the field. Can you tell us a little bit about your background in IT and a little bit what you’re doing right now and a little bit about how you got to what you’re doing right now?

Speaker 1 | 00:47.169

So currently, I’m working for AC Corporation, which is where HVAC installers for corporation maintainers. It’s kind of a new gig for me and it is my first official management job. So I am new to the official management or leadership role. I feel like I’ve done it for a long time, leading specific teams and kind of stepping up to the plate when no one else would. But yeah, this is… the first time that I have the title to go with it. So it’s been a blessing, truly. And I’m excited to see what’s next.

Speaker 0 | 01:36.416

Nice. And you bring up a great point about how so much of the time when we get into, so many of us in IT, and especially as we move into leadership, you spend a ton of time not being the leader in title, but being the leader in practice. And I think that’s probably… a great, I’d love to dive into that a little bit more, because I think there’s probably some valuable insight that you could share that the listeners on the podcast would love to hear a little bit more about. So you’re new into being an official IT manager within the last year at AC Corporation, but for many, many years, and I’m just taking a quick peek at your, you know, I’m doing the cheat sheet here where I’m looking at your LinkedIn profile, but, you know, you did a ton of like systems administration work. You worked for companies like John Deere and Honda, you know, and stuff like that in the past. So where do you see yourself in the future? did you find, because leadership in IT is not just about having the title, it’s about doing the work. So where did you find that you were doing leadership work and how did that manifest in the roles you had before?

Speaker 1 | 02:37.965

I worked for an MSP and there was a lot of leadership opportunities there. We had a large group of level one techs that were learning the ropes and handling most of the initial contact calls and everything like that. And they constantly need, you know, pointers and little tricks and tips that you’ve picked up over the years, not just technical tips, but ways to handle people. And that is kind of, is a very critical thing when you’re in IT. And it’s something that is sorely lacking from my experience anyway. I’ve, um, working in the MSP, uh, really gave me a launching pad to, to work with other people and in my own field. Um, then moving to teams, uh, larger teams like, uh, Honda aircraft company, a good team there. And, uh, John Deere Kernersville. Yeah. Those are both. I mean, I hated to leave John Deere Kernsville. I had a fantastic team there. They’re a bunch of great guys. And the mentoring went back and forth. So it wasn’t just me doing it or somebody else doing it. We were constantly teaching each other. And that’s super important to break down the silos and even in a department.

Speaker 0 | 04:15.724

to make it a safe place to learn instead of like i gotta beat the next person out so that i get the promotion you know that’s what yeah so now it’s absolutely say you know sage advice about two-way mentoring and and and how the relationship even even when you’re the manager works works in both directions you know so so like were there were there any specific like tactics or anything else that you used that to try and and provide mentorship for the other the other folks that you were working with where you kind of like perceived like okay you know this is something i can really help them with and and you know but i i want to make sure i do it right you know so what did what what kind of ways did you approach that

Speaker 1 | 04:56.881

I think most IT guys, I can speak for myself, I’m a very prideful individual. And if I’m not approached appropriately about something that I could improve on and that I can learn from, I’m just going to kind of blow it off or get defensive. And so that’s one of the things I learned early on by the way I was reacting to people. And so I would talk to them as if… the way I would like to be spoken to and approached. And it was more like, Hey, you’re doing a fantastic job. Just wanted to share with you something that I’ve experienced in the past, you know, take it or leave it. And, uh, it might, might help you out. And, you know, that type of attitude going forward. Um, I feel like it breaks down a lot of walls and, uh, they’re not on their heels at that point. You know, they’re like, okay, I want to know what you have to offer here.

Speaker 0 | 05:54.749

So, yeah, so that, like, I think they used to call it, like, I’m sure they still call it this, but, like, the sandwich approach to, you know, criticisms are, you know, like, you’re doing great, pal. By the way, you know, there’s one thing you can improve on. By the way, you’re amazing. You know, and that’s so true. Like, so many of us in IT, we get into the work because we’re intelligent folks, you know, like, it generally requires a certain level of… of intuitive knowledge to do this. And right alongside that can kind of come a feeling of like, oh, I know what I’m doing. I don’t need you to tell me what’s up. I got this, man.

Speaker 2 | 06:33.955

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Speaker 0 | 08:53.362

The internal perception of like, I want to be perceived with so much of, so many folks at IT, there’s a, trying to think of how the best to describe it. There’s a, there’s a feeling that you’re expected to know a lot of things. And so, so it could really quickly fall into the trap of, you know, geez. If I, if I don’t know this, is somebody going to think like less of my, my abilities or capabilities and stuff like that? And actually, I guess I’ll, maybe I’ll kick that over to you. Like, how do you, how do you deal with, with that kind of feeling? Like, as you, you know, you, you shared like your, you know, prideful, you, you have prideful interest. You learned to build into that. So what, you know, how did you handle that type of aspect of it as well?

Speaker 1 | 09:35.220

Yeah, there’s a, there’s a couple of things that actually touches on a lot of things in my mind. Um, One of the things is the confidence comes from being able to admit that you were wrong, you made a mistake. And that is paramount because… We all heard, you know, being able to admit that you don’t know something is really critical. And it is. But I think it’s a step further when you can say, I made a mistake. I’m owning up to it. A lot of places, a lot of people encourage behaviors that cover up mistakes. And, you know, we see the Fortune 500 companies that we want to be as the companies who respond properly to. things that they’ve done wrong or threats that they’ve incurred in their organizations. So they’re up front, they’re out there saying, this is what happened. This is what we did about it. This is what we’re going to do about it in the future. And that’s kind of the proper response we need to have as individuals. And, you know, we’re not on a huge stage a lot of times, but sometimes it’s just between you and a coworker. I made a mistake.

Speaker 0 | 10:49.390

Yeah. Oh, for sure. And that’s… That’s such a, it’s such an important, I think there was a prior guest on the podcast who he and I had a conversation about that as well about having accountability without blame, you know, and the importance of that, like to be able to safely step forward and say, hey, this mistake was made. I understand how the mistake was made. you know it got around our process or that wasn’t you know there was a failure on my part to to do a step that i you know i just i missed and i’ll you know what but what’s the corrective action to do that not what’s the punishment going to be for having having missed it exactly i i totally like i have three children and uh talking to them is a lot more like management and

Speaker 1 | 11:36.448

uh what i’ve been trying to trying to impress upon them recently is you make a mistake it costs a lot of money and You can either count that as an expensive lesson or you can repeat that lesson and have to pay for it all over again. You just wasted your money the first go around. If you have a right mental outlook on things, even when you make mistakes, you’re going to come out on top.

Speaker 0 | 12:09.499

This is the old story. I’ll say it. and then watch, you know, somebody will fact check me and it’ll be, it’ll be, I’ll cite it incorrectly, but it wasn’t like the Henry, it was like the Henry Ford thing where he, somebody, you know, some factory issue happened and it cost $20,000. Of course, in like was an enormous sum of money. Uh, and, and, you know, the newspaper comes and interviews him and says, well, Hey, you know, you made this, this mistake was made, you know, maybe it was, maybe it’s Thomas Watson and IBM or one of the two, but, uh, you know, you know, this mistake. there’s an archie kind of who are you firing for this and he he responded back to say well you know i just spent that money teaching them how not to do it again you know and um yeah that’s one of those like business those business stories that gets passed on you know the myths of business so in your in your role here at ac corporation you know you mentioned you’re new you’re in your first year what what’s what’s the daily life like now and and what’s different for you like you’re you know you mentioned this is your first your first role in management so like you have you have almost like a fresh set of eyes for for the people listening to the podcast about i’ve made this transition you know in the in the recent past uh and here it’s like fresh in my mind what’s what’s so different about it yeah so um it’s

Speaker 1 | 13:25.590

it’s been great to i told my fiance that i feel like stepping into this role has been a very natural progression and it just uh it feels right um So many times I’ve wanted to stand up or stand in the gap between someone who’s being either mismanaged or mistreated and kind of just take the hit and the buffer. And now I have the opportunity to actually do that. And so it’s been nice to, you know, one of my employees is mistreated by some irate co-worker who… It’s just at the end of his rope. And that’s, it’s unfortunate. It happens. We’re all human. And to be able to, to step in between and go, no, no, we’re going to, we’re going to deal with this. We’re going to take care of this. And to say to my employee, nobody deserves to be treated like that. And I’m sorry you had to, to deal with that. You know, you should be able to wake up every morning, not dreading going to work. And that’s the kind of environment. I’d like to foster. I feel like there’s a famous quote, not so famous, maybe infamous, but a movie by Jimmy Stewart, Harvey in 1950. And his quote is, in this world, you can be oh so smart. or oh so pleasant and he said i’ve i’ve been smart for so many years and he said i recommend pleasant and that is that’s kind of one of my guiding quotes right um we’re also smart all the time in i.t you know like you said we we got to know everything and if we don’t know it we got to figure it out so if uh if you get to the point that you’re relying on that more than you’re relying on treating people with respect and kindness, then you’re not going to do so well. And there’s actually, I’m in North Carolina. So there’s a company that I’ve always been intrigued by and wanted to work at. One of the previous companies I’ve worked for was Superfeet Worldwide in Washington State. Phenomenal company, great culture, right? And that’s so important. So this company that I’ve looked at is… formerly known as N2 Publishing. And they’ve won accolades for being the best company in North Carolina for years and years. And their tagline, and they’re very upfront about this, we will not hire smart jerks.

Speaker 0 | 16:13.321

Yeah, they have a no jerks policy.

Speaker 1 | 16:15.621

Yeah. And that’s insanely… That’s where I want to work, right? Because it doesn’t matter how good you are at your job. If you can’t get along with everyone else, then that’s really going to be counterproductive for everyone.

Speaker 0 | 16:29.932

So, and actually, that leads right into the next thing I was going to ask you about, which was that, you know, looking through your history, you mentioned you were in Washington State, and now you’re in North Carolina. So you made a cross-country move. But going back even further, you know, we talked at the beginning of the episode. about how you’ve moved for your career. You’re a systems administrator, did a lot of different work in a number of different places. But before that, how did you come to be in technology? I guess it’s maybe the pertinent question that we ask people here on the podcast because everybody has a different story and some of it isn’t even technology related. There’s people who are like, oh, I was… I was a copywriter and somebody just was like, Hey, could you do this thing? And I happened to be good at it, you know? And so what’s your story?

Speaker 1 | 17:19.577

Yeah. I have a very sorted story, but I won’t bore you with all the details. I mean, you, you’ve seen LinkedIn profile. Um, I think it’s one of the things I’ve regretted the most is the spottiness of my profile. I’m here for three years, four years, three years, three years, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s been unfortunate events that have, um, landed me in different at different places at different times and uh coming from a blue collar family i think my dad worked 27 years in his first job and then um you know more than that in a second one before he retired and that is you know he was a cop in philadelphia for 27 years and wow you know i come from a law enforcement family and that’s what i was going to go into. I was even on the wait list and I passed all my tests and everything. And then strangely enough, it was my mother who talked me out of it. She said, you know what your father put us through with shift work and us not knowing if he was going to come home at night. So I didn’t want to do that. My future family. um decided to end to enter into the it world and go back to school and get a degree there um it was i love people i love working with people so that was kind of i was like i don’t want to sit behind a computer screen and program all day long although i love to program i just i want the interaction right so um i found out that i could do both and did the sysadmin route From an early age, my parents would hand me toys, and the first words out of their mouth was, don’t take this one apart, Jason.

Speaker 0 | 19:16.177

Oh,

Speaker 1 | 19:16.377

yeah. Take it apart, put it back together, have to figure out how it works. And that’s kind of IT in a nutshell right there. So the progression was natural. Went into, got my degree, and it was just a two-year degree, but I did it in a year. just over a year and uh jumped into my first job i my first boss jason kelly took a chance on me um he saw i had a great gpa but one of the first one of the last interview questions he gave me was um i remember this so clearly he’s like what’s the osi model and i was like Oh no. Because that’s like something they teach in the first quarter.

Speaker 0 | 20:04.797

All seven layers, man.

Speaker 1 | 20:06.137

Yeah. And I skipped two thirds of the first year. So I could not give it to him. And I think he walked out the door with me and he said, yeah, it would have been weird having two Jasons in the IT department. And that was what he left me with. And then a couple of days later. He offered me the job, but he was a great mentor, kind of showed me the ropes. And I got yelled at so much because I was such an idiot. And I can totally see that. But throughout my careers or throughout my jobs in my career, I’ve had some great mentors, some not so great managers, and it’s all taught me. um what i want to be and what i don’t want to be and what i want to do for others so it’s been good so i want to touch on the mentorship part that you you talked about a little bit uh when we do when

Speaker 0 | 21:15.286

when which you said you you added this gentleman jason another another jason so the other jason will call him on the podcast the other jason mentored you uh and and even when you were green you know you’re you’re fresh out of college you’re really transitioning into this work and you know you you acknowledge you know older you recognizes younger you made a ton of mistakes and probably deserved if you will to be like what are you doing man uh but he’s still but he’s stuck by you you know and that’s that’s like the one of the best things he saw the potential and he pushed you forward and he carried you through to to further success um like how I’m going to go out on a limb and I’ll just state, I’m going to say you’re probably doing that for other people right now.

Speaker 1 | 22:02.534

I really do hope so. I hope to my second boss, Mike Lindeman, he was fantastic as well. And the thing he brought to the table is he was so consistent every day in, day out. Didn’t matter what was happening in his personal life or corporate life. He was always. Just straight as an arrow. And I never, I never recognized that or appreciated that until after I didn’t have that anymore.

Speaker 0 | 22:35.431

Like the calm, the calm, like the not, I’m not going to freak out demeanor. Like, Oh, it was just, we’re like, we’re going to get this done. Billings burning down. They’re like, look, Billy’s on fire. Perhaps we should, let’s get to work on this.

Speaker 1 | 22:48.255

It’s just unshakable. Right. And then, uh, I have a bad day at home or whatever. I come in and the first person who walks in my door is going to hear about it. It’s not so bad anymore. But that’s the kind of attitude I want to have, which is consistency and safety for the employees that I’m over. And they don’t need to come in and be abused. So.

Speaker 0 | 23:20.464

So now you mentioned your father, your father was in law enforcement. And so I’m assuming that means you grew up in Philadelphia.

Speaker 1 | 23:27.227

Yeah. First decade of my life I was there.

Speaker 0 | 23:29.749

Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So now I live in upstate New York in the Binghamton area. So I’m only a couple hours away from Philadelphia from where I live. There you go. But the question I have is there’s having law enforcement, you know, father in law enforcement in your family, there’s a lot of. there’s probably a lot of lessons about leadership or followership that come from seeing the things that, that he did. Um, what, what, what things, what like big things that you take away from that? Do you think you apply today in the world that you, you know, how you approach your job in the daily work you do?

Speaker 1 | 24:07.312

Man, there’s a ton of stories that he’s passed on to me. I’ve heard him multiple times, but, uh, he, uh, he was a really, Good supervisor. And he was a great detective. So those are skills that I’m definitely going to use throughout my career. And being able to differentiate between what’s fact and what’s fiction is great. Being able to stand up to those who are in power over you that, you know, are not respecting. you know, logic and analytical thinking. That’s important. And doing what’s right. That’s what my dad taught me. Do what’s right. And I think that My dad’s consistency was going to work every day and not always enjoying it and just doing it and doing it well. And he was always preparing at home. I remember him watching Tour of Duty, which is an old military series. And he’s spit shining his boots and he’s putting military creases in his pants. And. He’s not getting paid for that. He just took real pride in what he did. And that’s something he’s passed on to me. And it’s something that it’s on my resume. It’s something I bring up when they say, why should we hire you? It’s because I’m going to do the best job I can possibly do with the most menial tasks you could possibly give me. And when no one’s looking, because… how it was trained and that’s how it was brought up.

Speaker 0 | 26:04.257

That’s a great background and kudos to your dad for his, thank you for his law enforcement service too. It’s a tough job. I was CIO of the counties here in the area that I live at for a number of years and I’ve worked with the law enforcement folks there. We supported all their work and it’s a challenging and at times thankless role. um in you know and being out there and doing that work um especially in a major city like philadelphia um where there’s just so many different things going on um so just going back into the past again uh because i love i love plumbing out the history of leaders and like all the different pieces and components that made you made you kind of like who you are you know this we’re dissecting popular it nerds so let’s dissect away uh but your first computer You mentioned they told you not to take apart all the various things you were given. But what was your first computer? Sometimes this defines the era in which somebody kind of comes up, right?

Speaker 1 | 27:09.755

Yeah. My parents, both of them, not very tech savvy whatsoever. But my mother identified that this computer thing is probably going to be a big thing, and we should probably jump into it. And so she talked my father into buying a leading edge or 86 E. And that was my first computer. And it was four megs of Ram. And, oh,

Speaker 0 | 27:39.268

that was a lot of bad.

Speaker 1 | 27:40.629

Yeah. I had a four four megahertz processor in it. No, not for. Sorry. Thirty three megahertz processor, I believe. Uh huh. And. Didn’t have a graphics card. Didn’t have a sound card. Didn’t have nothing.

Speaker 0 | 27:57.828

It didn’t have a modem. Did it have like a 1200 modem?

Speaker 1 | 28:01.331

It didn’t even have a modem. No, we didn’t have the Internet. And I try to tell my children that and they just it doesn’t make sense to them whatsoever.

Speaker 0 | 28:11.279

It’s it’s amazing to think about. So so think, you know, think about our kids. Yeah, I have two kids, too. And just like you, you talk about you talk to your kids about. how the past went down it you know for us this is like the recent past you know so now it’s like we’re we’re understanding the story of our parents where you know here we were in the the 90s you know the 80s the 90s and we’re getting this new thing and we’re like oh look at all this stuff and our parents are like you know we’re we’re at the time we were having our own trouble comprehending how it worked for them you know how exactly did this function you know what’s a party line for a phone you know what’s like you know and it just didn’t it didn’t compute for for us as to how different it could be in the past and it’s certainly the story of you know that’s the story of life right that’s sort of the circle of life and stuff um so those that computer what did you what did you use that computer for oh i destroyed that computer absolutely i mean that

Speaker 1 | 29:08.751

thing had to be rebuilt so many times and fixed so many times by various other people who uh my parents made friends with just for the sole purpose to you to get me out of trouble. And I remember as a kid, I would just sit there and take it all in. Everything that they would do, I would watch them and make sure that I could fix it next time, or I could figure out why I did this or that. And that was kind of a critical part of my growing up because we didn’t have the internet. I had a list that I kept in my nightstand and it was a list of questions that I had. Like how does geosynchronous orbit work and different things, you know, just many different things that I would think of, you know. I remember asking my chiropractor, who is very, very knowledgeable in a lot of things, what we were going to be using for internet medium in the next 20 years. And him just looking at this kid, me, and going, why are you asking me this? But I would soak people for their information as much as I could. And that was another mentor. told me, I was expressing that I can’t figure out something that this person doesn’t know. Everything I bring up, they know about. And he’s like, just soak it up, Jason. Just bleed them dry because that’s how you gain knowledge. And that’s how we had to do it before the internet. So fixing that computer, even when we got our new one, I remember that went to my bedroom and I kept tinkering with it and working on it for many years after it was viable so it’s just uh it was a good learning thing learning device and uh and my parents were were very they took a risk and i think it paid off several thousand dollars back then was was a lot of money and they they took the the leap and uh and now look at you know I’m an IT manager. Woohoo.

Speaker 0 | 31:27.806

Success. Yeah. It paid off. So the, you know, I was thinking, what? So this is more, this one’s more of just a, this question is just more, I call it humorous questions. You know, just like plumbing the depths of information that we can find out. Is there any old tech that you hang on to? Like, you’re almost like embarrassed to share. I still use this thing. I still have a Palm Pilot, for instance.

Speaker 1 | 31:57.324

I think I have every single phone that I’ve ever owned. They come out when we’re cleaning the garage or whatever, and my kids are like, what is this? They don’t understand what a desk phone is. I brought home a brand new state-of-the-art IP phone. I was testing it out from home. they took one look at that thing and went why do you have this old phone and i’m like this thing is brand spanking new like they just don’t they’re like if it has a cord it’s old so but i have yeah all all the phones i’ve ever owned and uh i don’t think i have anything else it’s super embarrassing i had to downsize a lot um and uh and thank goodness because there’s you I’ll give you a little insight to AC Corporation. And it kind of goes along the same path that you were going. This place is like you walk into the doors and it’s like going through a time machine. And, you know, we’re on stream, so I can’t actually show you. But there is a phone that was just retired that was 28 years old. And. That’s kind of an idea of how long they keep tech going here. And it’s a different era. We’re reinventing the entire office, the entire organization. A lot of low-hanging fruit. I mean, it’s all over the ground. It’s so low-hanging. And we’re still transitioning to using room resources and Outlook instead of writing the schedule out on a… laminated piece of paper on the outside of the conference door so it’s things like that that um the amount of paper that has been digitized and is still around here is phenomenal um if if we still smoked in the building it would be a problem so you know i just

Speaker 0 | 34:09.476

did a quick little click around on ac so like ac corporation they’ve been around since 1935 so like it’s you know in a build industrial machinery and one of the classic stories of industrial machinery work is that once like the machinery that builds machinery if you know if you will it literally never breaks like what does it i mean it has breakdowns but yeah the the tooling the dye machines you know the the you know the metal stamping machines and stuff like that they just they last forever and they have to yeah so like you’ll walk into this place and you’re like you eventually it feels like a time machine and it’s almost like it’s in some ways there’s like there’s a little opportunity for updates and in some ways it’s a testament to how ridiculously uh

Speaker 1 | 34:58.516

how ridiculously well it was done the first time as well you know like yeah yeah they’ve taken it kind of to a obnoxious level but it’s uh that’s kind of what they’ve done across the board they they describe themselves in my interview process as being lean and mean and it’s it’s true they’ve i mean my boss who is uh retiring here this year I’ll be taking his spot as director in IT. And he’s been with the company for, I think, 41 years. Wow. And he’s not the longest. There’s been many who’ve been here for half a century. That’s a phenomenally long time to be in a position in a company. That says something about the company. And it’s one of the reasons why I came here. I mean… It’s like you walked into the 70s when you walked through the door, but who cares? If people are staying here that long, then there’s got to be something to it. The culture has to be something.

Speaker 0 | 36:08.197

Doing something right.

Speaker 1 | 36:09.818

Yeah.

Speaker 2 | 36:11.179

Hey guys, this is Phil Howard, founder of Dissecting Popular IT Nerds. I just want to take a few minutes to address something. It has become fairly apparent, I’m sure all of you will agree over the years, that slow vendor response. vendor response times, vendors in general, the average is mediocre. Support is mediocre. Mediocrity is the name of the game. Not only is this a risk to your network security, because I’ve seen vendors on numerous occasions share sensitive information, but there’s also a direct correlation to your budget and your company’s bottom line. Not to mention the sales reps that are trying to sell you. and your CEO and your CFO on a daily basis. That causes a whole nother realm of problems that we don’t have time to address. Our back office program at Dissecting Popular IT Nerds, we’ve put together specifically for IT leadership and it’s on a mission to eliminate this mediocrity. And the best part is that we’re doing this in a way that will not cost your IT department a dime. So if you’d like us to help you out, get better pricing, better support, and jump on pressing issues in minutes, not days, then contact us now so we can get on a call with you and conduct a value discovery session where we find out what you have, why you have it, and where you want to go and how we can improve your life, your IT department, and your company’s bottom line. What you’re going to end up with is, number one, just faster support from partners who care about your organization’s uptime and bottom line. And because you’re going to be able to access our 1.2 billion in combined buying power, you’ll be able to benefit significantly from historical data. And on top of that, you’ll also benefit from the skills of hundreds of on-demand experts that we have working behind the scenes that are all attached to our back office support program. So if you’d like, again, none of this is ever going to cost you a dime. At the very least, it’s going to open your eyes to what’s possible. Let our back office team provide you the high-touch solutions and support that your IT team deserves so that you can stop calling 1-800-GIL-POUND-STAND for support. Now, if you’re wondering, what does this apply to? This applies to your ISPs, your telecom providers, all your application providers, whether you’re a Microsoft shop or a Google shop, what you might be paying for AWS, even Azure, co-location space. any of those vendors that you’re paying a monthly bill to, we can help you with. Hey, it’s Greg, the Frenchman secretly managing the podcast behind the curtain. To request your one-on-one call, contact us at internet at popularit.net.

Speaker 0 | 39:03.750

And remember,

Speaker 2 | 39:04.550

it will never cost you a dime.

Speaker 0 | 39:06.992

The people on the podcast can’t see this, but we’re talking on a video call. So in the background, I’m seeing Batman’s lair. So that’s not a sequence. That’s what we’re explaining.

Speaker 1 | 39:18.460

no that that is not um it’s a it’s actually i can’t i’m trying to take it off so you can see more but the batman lair thing actually came up um i started doing video um kind of announcements and walkthroughs uh to get away from the emails that nobody reads you know tlgr uh they just delete it or shelve it somewhere. I’ll read this later than I ever do. we got a new phone system i’m like i need some buy-in uh to this phone system i need people to be excited about and everything so my first email was like a one-liner it’s like i’ll save you the email here’s a video and it was a two-minute video and um i had planned a whole series where i had different backgrounds different locations uh and the first one came out and everybody’s calling me batman And I just earned a nickname here. And I said, well, I can’t change it now. So it’s kind of been a permanent fixture of my teams and stream and all that.

Speaker 0 | 40:34.603

That’s an amazing story. So that’s a great, it’s like a great leadership, a little leadership tidbit right there is you came in and you did something just. Out of the blue, kind of different. You know, you recognize that people are going to read your email. So you’re like, I’m going to get on video and I’m going to do this. And people loved it. Yeah. And that’s great.

Speaker 1 | 40:58.819

I love things like that that are win-win for everyone. It’s difficult. You walk into a place like this. They’ve been around forever. And the biggest fear for, I think, most of us humans is change. And so… they see the company reinventing itself and they get, they get a little nervous and that is perfectly understandable. And you gotta be sensitive with that, right? You have to say, okay, change has to happen, but we want to make it good change. We don’t want to lose the culture and the process. It’s something I learned at Superfeed. As you grow, things will shift, but I think that’s the key. The way you do business, the way you interact and have relations, that’s all something that you can maintain. And now I took my background off. You can see this is my blackboard, right? It’s actually a glass dry erase board. But I made it black because to kind of pay homage to the old chalkboards, the old blackboards. So. This is when I say I wrote it on my blackboard. I really, you know, I did.

Speaker 0 | 42:17.800

I do like that board. I’m not going to lie. I saw white ones throughout my offices where we’re doing our meeting rooms and stuff like that. I’m like, ooh, that’s a nice board you got there.

Speaker 1 | 42:31.285

It’s super helpful. It just gets my thoughts out on the wall, and then I can put them in a planner or whatever.

Speaker 0 | 42:40.289

So now… I’m going to ask this question because of the Batman thing. So, Star Trek or Star Wars? Or neither?

Speaker 1 | 42:50.195

Is there a both option?

Speaker 0 | 42:51.656

You can choose both. You can choose both.

Speaker 1 | 42:54.098

I’m a next generation kind of guy. That’s what I grew up on. So, Picard is my guy. And as far as Star Wars, I love it all. It’s hard to keep up with the new stuff. It is. the cadence is is probably enough for a normal person but when you’re burning the wick at both ends uh not you’re not keeping up with some of these series but i enjoy both of them uh equally now

Speaker 0 | 43:27.561

i i have no specific issue with star wars although i am i would i would put myself very squarely in the star trek camp uh i’m a i’m a big i’m a big star trek guy and actually right with my my older son we he and i are I’ve introduced him to Star Trek and he loves it. So we’ve been steadily working our way through all the different series. We’re currently in the middle of next generation right now. So we did Deep Space Nine and, and Star Trek Enterprise. And then we actually, we started with the, the, the newest, well, now it’s not the newest, newest, but Star Trek Discovery, which is one of the newer ones. And just, so, so yeah, but I think there’s, and it’s, as I’m watching the next generation, I, there were so many like classic leadership. lessons that were built into that show all the time you know i think about how you know people like you and i who grew up in that era when that was all fresh stuff on tv you know that was the new show and and the the the lessons that we took away uh that we probably use to this day you know that we don’t even think about you know uh my son uh and i just watched oh what was the there was we haven’t gotten to the one with uh what is it the you know darmuk when the walls fell you know that the gentleman who who speaks in metaphors all the time yeah but we did we did have the packlets you know though you know can you make us go uh you know we’re strong yeah and if you think about the tactics that everybody used to get around this and stuff like that and how they how they solved the different problems so it’s there’s like I share that with my son, thinking about how it influenced me and the way that I think about stuff and even leadership and stuff like that. And I know it influenced us so dramatically over time.

Speaker 1 | 45:11.405

Yeah, for sure. And you have a lot of the actors that were involved, Patrick Stewart, one of them, that their co-workers rave about them. because of their mentorship, their leadership. And it wasn’t just the characters that they were playing, but there’s something behind the scenes going on that really allowed them to go the distance that they did in their series. And that’s pretty cool to hear that it wasn’t just a book or a screenwrite. It’s actual real life for these people, the way they act.

Speaker 0 | 45:56.080

that’s pretty neat yeah living into your values is that it’s like that’s that happens so much with celebrity where there’s the perception of the celebrity and the values that they have and then there’s that at some point in the future we get kind of like you know deflated expectations because the reality turns out to not not match up with uh you know what what had been either put forward or what we believed and uh you know so many of those folks in those shows in in like the star trek shows and stuff like that where they they truly do live into the values that they’ve Or at least they appear to now, you know, I mean, like, who knows, maybe, maybe life will change and we’ll find something out, you know, there’ll be some tell a book.

Speaker 1 | 46:32.045

So true.

Speaker 0 | 46:33.586

So having when you’re living, you went from, you went from Philadelphia, so Pennsylvania to Washington state, and then, and then you moved back across the country to North Carolina. And this is, there’s another set of kind of humorous questions that I sometimes ask our guests, since I live in the Northeast US. So things like, is it soda or pop from where you come from?

Speaker 1 | 46:59.611

It’s soda.

Speaker 0 | 47:00.472

I mean,

Speaker 1 | 47:01.593

it’s not even soda. I mean,

Speaker 0 | 47:02.874

it’s Coke.

Speaker 1 | 47:04.796

It’s what flavor of Coke? Yeah. That’s kind of, we got a culture shock when we moved to Washington State and they were saying pop and you’re like, what is going on here? And I think for the most part, that’s kind of waned. It was more the older. the older culture there that is just stuck in the pop era. But yeah, it’s good to be back to the East Coast. The West Coast and East Coast do things way differently. I like both sides, but the food on the East Coast is superior in the most every way. I’ve gained so much weight since I came back. It’s crazy.

Speaker 0 | 47:53.232

So getting back to the, we’re on a leadership podcast. I want to make sure we’re going to close out strong with some leadership lessons here. So what do you, I think we’ve talked about, you’ve shared various tidbits over the course of the interview here. But if you’re giving advice, what advice do you want to share to our listeners about being a leader in the IT space? that you know if you you want to you’ve got maybe two or three things that you want to just run down and you say these are the most important things to me and how i how i live into my values i uh i don’t know if i can give a whole lot i just uh i can tell you how i would like to live and you

Speaker 1 | 48:34.700

know i’m not patting myself on the back because i am learning and trying to do better every day and uh that is kind of one of the the points that i’d like people don’t know is that uh you gotta approach things humbly because if you if you don’t you will be humble that that is we’ve all been there and it’s inevitable uh and treat people with kindness and respect it’s we’ve we’ve all had um instances where we’ve not done that and it’s not been done to us and it doesn’t feel good And so, yeah, be kind, be respectful and be humble, I guess would be my three things that I would recommend for anyone. It doesn’t have to be IT. You can be in any position in any field and you will benefit from those things. There’s Simon Sinek. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of him. He’s kind of a motivational speaker.

Speaker 0 | 49:42.113

I have, yes.

Speaker 1 | 49:43.555

Yeah, Simon Sinek. he echoes a lot of my morals and my beliefs and I really like what he has to say I think if If you tune into some of his stuff, you might you might hear something that you’re like, this just makes sense. Why don’t we just do this? But we’re so caught up in the whole game, you know.

Speaker 0 | 50:09.706

That was great. Thank you. So, Jason, thank you so much for being on the Dissecting Popularity Nerds podcast. So everyone looking forward to the next episode. Jason, thank you for your time and investing it with all of us and our listeners today. We definitely appreciate it. And we wish you the best in your future endeavors as well.

Speaker 1 | 50:34.355

Well, thank you very much and wish you the best as well.