Speaker 0 | 00:05.117

All right, welcome everyone back to Dissecting Popular IT Nerds. I’m really, I’m kind of upset because my Donald Trump sound effects are not going through the board like I need them to be because I just wanted, you know, I just wanted to hear him say thank you very much. And we’re going to build a wall. Let’s see what else. I don’t think I have any really good vaccination sound effects for him. Anywho. We have Nathan Lauderdale on the show, director of information technology with a past life in, I would say, large government contracting space. Not space as in flying into outer space, the space as in the contracting space, unless you have had any. I’m still waiting for someone that’s actually gone into outer space and doesn’t lie about it. I think everyone does. I think it’s really a make-believe space, but that’s for another time. I need to see it myself. Known for coming into the mid-market space, cleaning up wires and messes and old silos and unifying them together. And I would like to say increasing business productivity, making money with IT, stepping out of the cost set, being pigeonholed as a cost center and fixing. broken, not just keeping the blinky lights on. That’s what you do. That sound like a fair statement?

Speaker 1 | 01:37.429

Yeah. Whether I chose it or not, it’s just kind of,

Speaker 0 | 01:39.631

I think I just sounded like a salesperson for a second. Does that sound like a fair statement? Are you following me? Can I move on?

Speaker 1 | 01:46.416

And I agree. Sure.

Speaker 0 | 01:47.696

Yeah. So I guess let’s start with a history of how you got into technology. What was your first computer? Did you drink out of the fire hose as a child? What happened there? How’d you get into this thing?

Speaker 1 | 02:08.352

So, no, the first computer that I remember, I think, was a Pentium 2 Gateway, something like that. But I had, like, no access to it. I probably played, like, DuckTales or something on it. I mean, you know, I was not a computer kid at all. I was a video game kid, for sure.

Speaker 0 | 02:24.125

At least it wasn’t Pong. My first video game was Pong. like literally we had pong you had to attach it with a screwdriver to the back of a tv that you pulled with a button that you had to pull straight out and went beep anyways um you had ducktails and a pentium too okay my first computer was the texas instruments with the cartridge and i think my fourth computer was a 386 so nice to you for that one i’m gonna drink some coffee asking you the questions no no you just reminded me of a really great interview that i had one time where i walked into the interview and Here’s a tip for everybody. Tip for everybody. IT directors, IT people, personnel, CTOs, whatever it is. People trying to get a job, even if it’s a lowly help desk person. Trying to get a new job. What you need to do is have as many people as you know call the person hiring before then and tell them how awesome you are and how they have to hire you or really they’re really missing out. If you can find a way. If you can find a way to make that happen, you will be able to control at least a somewhat portion of your destiny, whether you walk into a total circus act of a company that you’re working for or not. That I can’t control. But what I can tell you is that I did walk into a job one time and my favorite boss ever, Donna Wank, I call you out many times on the show. You probably don’t listen to this show at all. I should tag you on this. She said, Phil, I don’t know whether. I should be interviewing you or you should be interviewing me because so many people called me and told me that I needed to hire you before. So it was pretty much, I was like, whoa, in the back of my head, I’m like, oh, this is going well. This is going real good. And I asked her, and this is why, if you really want to know whether you can trust your boss or not, whether you have a really good boss, you ask them this question, why should I come work for you? And if they say, Phil, because we suck less. then you know you can trust that person. Not that that’s- That’s simple,

Speaker 1 | 04:26.558

huh? We suck less. Not even going to compare, just we suck less, dot, dot, dot.

Speaker 0 | 04:31.823

Yes, like, I can run with that. I can run with that.

Speaker 1 | 04:36.167

Sold.

Speaker 0 | 04:36.427

I’ll put the- Because now I know I can take it. My family,

Speaker 1 | 04:38.849

my wife, all on the line. But no,

Speaker 0 | 04:40.730

but think about it. Think about it. Now you know not only does the person need you and want you, and everyone’s called and said that ahead of time, you know that you’re walking into a place where you can- easily make a difference.

Speaker 1 | 04:54.841

Okay, I follow now.

Speaker 0 | 04:56.342

You understand? You need to be successful. You want to set yourself up for success. You don’t want to go into a place where… You know, it’s like, everyone’s like, I don’t know, Elon Musk and, and, you know, these crazy developers and you’re like, I don’t know, can I, can I, can I do this? You know, can I, can I match up to him? No, you want to walk into a place where like, you’re instantly, instantly going to be successful. That’s just, I don’t know. I like startups and cleanup. I liked doing cleanup work and then, you know, building, I like building things. So,

Speaker 1 | 05:28.147

and yeah. No, absolutely.

Speaker 0 | 05:29.807

Which is a reason why many IT directors, you know, which. brings it brings, you know, how many places have you gone into as of recent or in the past 10 years? We don’t need to mention any names or anything like that. Um, where you’ve been able to make a difference in the network and how many other it directors do you think are out there right now?

Speaker 1 | 05:47.875

Um, so every position that I’ve held since government work or working with the air force has been that position. So like four companies in a row.

Speaker 0 | 05:58.259

And you may be, let’s go two or three back and just describe what you walked into day one. And I don’t know where you want to take this. I’ll let you take this where you want to, but from a lead, again, this is an it leadership show. Sure. What, I guess, what are you seeing or what kind of insights can you provide of when you walk into a place, what you see, how do you attack it from the beginning? You might have a staff, you might not have a staff. Maybe you’re shortly or about to not have a staff and need to hire a new staff. I don’t know. Yeah.

Speaker 1 | 06:30.953

Um, so a caveat on that is most of the places that I’ve worked have been smaller businesses and I am in Oklahoma. So throw that out there. I can’t say this would be what I run into anywhere you go,

Speaker 0 | 06:42.777

but so the Midwest,

Speaker 1 | 06:45.718

so here, where’s Oklahoma? Don’t you dare.

Speaker 0 | 06:52.400

I really couldn’t. I’m being honest. If I had to pinpoint it on the map, I would say I think it’s like somewhere near Colorado, maybe upper left.

Speaker 1 | 07:00.145

Directly above Texas.

Speaker 0 | 07:03.127

Oh, okay. Yeah. Oh, yeah. The Okies. Yeah. I think I read about that in like Grapes of Wrath or something. Yeah. Yeah. Sand pit of Nowhereville or something. What would they call it? The sand something? Anyways, who cares?

Speaker 1 | 07:18.698

You’re really getting a beautiful picture for my homestay. I appreciate it.

Speaker 0 | 07:22.501

Again, it’s, we got to walk into success. We need to go in somewhere where you can be successful easily. Anywho. Love Oklahoma. Go on.

Speaker 1 | 07:31.406

No, it’s fantastic. The first job that I took, I wasn’t actually even supposed to, well, I wasn’t taking an IT director’s job that I knew of. I was being hired to replace somebody, but that was not disseminated to me in the interview. I was just being hired as support. And six months later, it was like, he’s out, you’re in. help us out. And then they gave me like the whole backstory. And that was my introduction to, um, like, you know, someone who’s been hired for the job, who’s able to speak the lingo enough, more so than anyone else in the company who didn’t have the money to hire recruiters. Right. So they can’t verify. So they bring someone in who’s like the controller, you know, of the company. And they’re asking questions that they can’t really verify whether you’re answering them correctly or not. And so they hire somebody. And then he’s in place and he’s basically able to run the show and no one can really question him because he has the title of director of IT.

Speaker 0 | 08:22.699

Wow. Multiple problems. Wow. People don’t know what technology is. Problem number one that are in the leadership of the company. And, um, yeah, maybe don’t know how to hire either, but they, um, they are blessed with you and then, and don’t know how to be truthful. Hey, by the way, we’re, we’re hiring you to, um, Take this little job up. We’re going to pull the rug out. So anyways, we call that drinking from the fire hose.

Speaker 1 | 08:49.024

Yeah.

Speaker 0 | 08:50.244

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-GOLD-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. And remember, it will never cost you a dime.

Speaker 1 | 11:46.095

The blessing wasn’t a blessing until like three years in. The first two years were awful.

Speaker 0 | 11:51.758

Please describe me. Paint a picture.

Speaker 1 | 11:55.996

Well, for me, I had never, because I was always government, I had never dealt with an ERP system. This was a fully, they manufactured water well drilling equipment, 30 ton massive pieces of equipment. And so they had an inventory of, I don’t know, six, $7 million down to nuts and bolts. And they were sending stuff. It was a worldwide company. We had stuff in the Middle East, we had stuff, Canada, we had stuff everywhere. So I didn’t even know what an ERP was. And this guy’s replaced, and then I’m in charge. So it was just constantly being on the phone with the vendors, letting them know the situation, trying to clean stuff up, getting servers up to date that had been atrophied for multiple years.

Speaker 0 | 12:39.839

Okay, I have to ask a couple questions. I have to ask a couple questions. Did the owner or whoever hired you know what an ERP is?

Speaker 1 | 12:49.086

Yes, because she was the controller. And so they were very heavy into at least the GL side of it. So what was,

Speaker 0 | 12:56.930

um, just out of curiosity, what was your experience working with ERP vendors in general?

Speaker 1 | 13:01.051

Um, not great. Not great. The, the, the company that we worked with there, I’ve never heard of since it was TCM. They were based out of Wisconsin. Um, and they were, uh, they seemed to like really want to safeguard their information, even though you had already bought and paid for it, I guess, because they wanted the hours, like they wanted you to pay them to fix stuff for them. So if that were the case, then they would get in and do what they could.

Speaker 0 | 13:28.155

Hours or days? Because I’m of the opinion that people should respond in hours, not days. But I find as of recent that mediocrity is kind of the name of the game and people respond in days, not hours, maybe weeks.

Speaker 1 | 13:40.742

No, they would respond in hours.

Speaker 0 | 13:42.883

That’s good. So they were good. Okay. Yeah.

Speaker 1 | 13:47.146

Maybe I was more upset with the product. The product wasn’t great.

Speaker 0 | 13:50.247

So. Weird servers, atrophying.

Speaker 1 | 13:53.441

What is that? No lifecycle to speak of. So like seven-year-old machines that engineers are trying to use AutoCAD and all sorts of other stuff for that’s taking them like 30 minutes to just open a single drawing that has 2000 parts on it. So that was actually where I kind of won some trust over. We had gotten a quote from Dell and Dell had specced out these air-quoted engineering spec machines that were going to run us like five grand a piece. And so I was like, okay. So I look at the spec sheet and I’m like, no. I mean, at this point, it’s 2000, what, 2016? I was like, we can build these with better specs for less than half the cost. We ended up building 30 machines, put them all together, sent them out, and we spent, I think we were quoted as, we would have had to spend like $150,000 or something like that. And we spent, I don’t know, it was like maybe 40.

Speaker 0 | 14:47.205

See, this is where I think a, MBO. Are you familiar with MBOs? Most IT directors are not at a mid-market level, I think. How big was the company? How many end users? Because you said small business.

Speaker 1 | 14:59.828

It was very small.

Speaker 0 | 15:01.210

You had stuff in the Middle East. You had $6 million worth of… But that’s still, I mean…

Speaker 1 | 15:04.754

That was mostly sales.

Speaker 0 | 15:06.616

Okay. So less than a hundred, you were all by yourself.

Speaker 1 | 15:11.879

Uh, yes. Uh, yeah. For like two years there, I was all by myself.

Speaker 0 | 15:16.281

Okay. MBOs, like I would say maybe you get into them at 400 users or more. Basically it’s a management by business objectives. So there should be a bonus structure and I’m, I’m a fan of IT leadership, pushing numbers and results. Because to get out of the pigeonhole, like IT is just a cost center. We’re just going to pay you a salary, keep the lights on. There’s no incentive to, I don’t know, automate, streamline, do these different things. You’re just getting paid a salary and there’s no, like, yeah, you might want to get a raise. You might want to move to like a C-level or a VP of IT or something like that. But if the IT leader. so to speak, doesn’t care about his title, and he cares more about driving revenue and really kind of building the company and being like a real kind of business executive from that standpoint, then he can go to executive management. He can say, hey, look, here’s our budget right now. Here’s how much money we’re making right now. What I’m going to do is you’re going to keep paying me my general salary. But if I can point to you and show a return on investment on our IT spend and I can correlate things that we do that affect the budget say I don’t know cost of goods or labor spend or more streamlining and and more production and things like this and I can show you that we’ve you know saved money and cut costs here then I want a bonus that correlates with that management by business objective so here’s the objectives mr president right boom so if I can do x y and z I should get paid for that Literally, you just had some other guy that has no MBO or doesn’t have any numbers attached to it because numbers don’t lie, people lie, right? So if you actually have a results-oriented thing attached to your role, and then you’re not afraid to execute on that and have that extra layer of pressure because people just want to show up to work every day and keep the lights on, that’s not what we should be about, right? You know what I mean? If you actually want to produce some results, then I think that’s very powerful in that. Now, And what it does is it separates the people that care from the people that don’t care. Clearly you cared. Clearly you said, no, that’s stupid. We’re not paying $150,000. I can build that for $40,000. It’s, it’s like, no, I’m not going to just sign that piece of paper because it allows me to move on to the next thing. Yeah.

Speaker 1 | 17:47.897

Yeah. Uh, that was, yeah, I would not have been smart enough to even consider that as being an option.

Speaker 0 | 17:53.640

You don’t know what we don’t know. Right. We don’t know what we don’t know. I’m just in like a, I’m just like a kind of a. a guy that stayed back in first grade that just talks with a bunch of it guys all the day all day long and have like a history and i’m like 47 now so like i heard about this you know like whoa mbo what’s that you know and and someone explained it to me like that maybe six years ago and i was like yeah that’s cool yeah we gotta put that on the show so now i just sound really smart no i like being brutally honest with myself okay um and i think everyone should be right where everyone that’s the other thing too is we all need to look at each other and realize that we’re all human beings we’re all going to live less than most likely less than 100 years we’re all dealing with the same problems we’re all you know what i mean like let’s stop like like uh putting people at heart like right we’re all probably have vast amounts of ignorance uh we all need to work together yeah yeah well the more we work together too that’s teamwork that’s a whole nother thing but anyway let’s get back to your nightmare stories and and fix up fix up things so uh what else did you see um uh servers atrophying I don’t know what, what else was going on? What kind of silos did we have?

Speaker 1 | 19:02.737

There was a lot of programs that had been purchased without IT’s knowledge to fix things because IT had basically proven themselves not to respond in time to help people out. You know, they would come to IT initially with an initiative. Yeah. And then get no response or be told no. And they’d be like, well, I’ll prove you wrong. And then they do it. And then they send you the information. It’s like, but we still need you to configure it. We’ve already purchased it, but now I need you to tie all this in. So there was a lot of that. Well,

Speaker 0 | 19:27.357

we got a new ERP. We got a new ERP. Well,

Speaker 1 | 19:30.499

I think that didn’t happen.

Speaker 0 | 19:33.262

Actually,

Speaker 1 | 19:33.682

no, they did. So they didn’t need a new ERP. They did need to update it, though, because it was like five or six years out of spec. And there were multiple like built in application features that they could have used just by upgrading. And that was stymied by people just not willing to test it. We had. We had installed the update. We had pushed it out in a test environment. I had created like six machines in a test room where people from all different departments were supposed to come look at their, you know,

Speaker 0 | 20:08.637

look at your… What made you know to do that? What made you know to have other people come in and check it out? Common sense.

Speaker 1 | 20:16.088

Yeah, I didn’t really, no one told me. It was just like, we’re going to do this.

Speaker 0 | 20:19.531

Can you imagine how many people don’t do that? It’s kind of crazy. Like hospitals roll out a whole software system for a hospital. Nurses, doctors, everything are expected now to use this wireless roll around machine. It’s amazing to me how many people don’t do that. They don’t get cheerleaders. They don’t ask, hey, can you… test out this software and tell me what’s wrong with it like it’s amazing no hospital seems terrifying with all of the legal amplification um ah then what they’ve got to do with nah when’s the last big when’s the last big hippa case that’s popped out you know they’re all run by insurance companies and vaccinate vaccinators and people like this that all make a ton of money i mean really i mean come on we just probably you know we just rolled out a worldwide global vaccination and you know, and made everyone basically had Congress sign off on, you can’t sue me. And even if we kill, I don’t know how many thousands of people via side effects that we don’t know are going to happen yet, but vaccine works.

Speaker 1 | 21:21.057

Yeah.

Speaker 0 | 21:21.938

Sorry. I don’t know. I’m trying to like trigger people and just create likes on the podcast, by the way. So no,

Speaker 1 | 21:27.840

I mean, we can lock arms on this one. I’m not vaccinated for the same reason. It’s like, it seems like a lot really fast.

Speaker 0 | 21:35.240

i was trying to hold out as long as possible if it prevented me from getting on an airplane at one point i was like really contemplating and i was looking at like okay how do i detox real quick what do i need to do like can i get someone to like give me uh you know like a fake vaccination and squirt it on the floor because uh i feel like i’m pretty healthy and i’m not going to uh uh die uh everyone in my family got coven i’ve had covered three times by the way no at least twice at least twice i got it we all got it at once in my daughter was the only one in the family that didn’t get it we all live next to each other coughing on each other sharing food it’s a bunch of kids it’s a completely probably unsterile environment and um we all got covid except for one child she just didn’t get it and there was no um like hey quarantine and go sleep in this room and shut the door there was none of that like you know and uh it’s a whole thing it’s just so people wearing gloves in the supermarket and that just the whole thing was just wild so I did exactly what Joe Rogan said to do because that’s where you get your medical information, right? So I immediately ordered ivermectin from India. No, I had ivermectin ordered from India ahead of time because I wasn’t going to go ask my doctor because I know he would think I was a quack because everyone in my family is a doctor. Everyone in my family is like a nurse. My dad was a urologist. My sister’s an RN. Her husband’s an anesthesiologist. My uncle’s an ophthalmologist, surgeon. My grandfather, pediatrician. So everyone thinks you’re a quack. You’re like, no, no, no vaccine, no vaccine. Oh, you’re wild. What are you? Idiot. You have science. It’s science. Anywho, sorry for that.

Speaker 1 | 23:04.325

That was with Logan, though, pretty much.

Speaker 0 | 23:06.206

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 | 23:07.867

I’m so concerned with it, though, is that there was such a political push on it.

Speaker 0 | 23:12.070

It was wild. And then you look at history, and you look back at the Spanish flu, and we could go down this dark floor. But anyways, ordered ivermectin, took that. What else did I take along with it? Doxycycline, all this. Basically, whatever Joe Rogan said. And then I went, and I paid two grand, and I got the IV NAD drip. So he also went and got an NAD drip, which is supposed to like shed the mitochondria of your cells and get all the crap out of your system from the. Anyways, I was better. I was better in two days. Like I was boom, like perfect. Two days. Just like he said, just like, I mean, it was just like that. And my son was sick for two weeks because I wasn’t going to spend two grand on him to go. I’m like, look, you’re young. Like, you know, build up your immunity. you know i’m old the dwight shrewd method oh i have a dwight shrewd sound effect if my sound effects were only working oh my gosh how do i get this sound effect or maybe i can play it through the it’s just not going to work anyways go ahead i’ll

Speaker 1 | 24:15.848

get it i hope you did not get it amidst the other nine of you getting it she needs to give blood and have it tested

Speaker 0 | 24:23.584

sure maybe she got maybe she was one of those like secret carriers you know like the non the not what did we call that the non uh non um no but we tested her with those stupid tests with those stupid fake tests everyone’s gonna get mad all the biopharmaceutical guys that have had on the show i’m not you’re boycotted what do you mean you don’t fly to the moon um i’m sorry and that completes and that completes this part of the conspiracy theory part of the show And I only have people on that are unvaccinated. That would… Whenever I’m about to do something, I think, would an idiot do that? And if they would, I do not do that thing. Sorry. All right. Anywho, how do we even segue from that? Maybe lying on Sarbanes-Oxley audits or PCI compliance or something? Know anything about that?

Speaker 1 | 25:12.638

Man, yeah. So there’s a company that I worked for that had to do PCI yearly. And they had essentially been taking the years past PCI documents that they had submitted and just changed the date on it and resubmitted it to avoid all of the ins and outs of it, which was fine. Well, it wasn’t fine. But now PCI is going from 3.1 to 4.0. And there’s all sorts of… massive increases on what you have to prove. So, I mean, they would have been found out eventually. The problem is that I was the one holding the bag when I walked into the company. So that’s what we’re dealing with right now is trying to get compliant for 4.0 after.

Speaker 0 | 25:57.520

Let’s just go back to cash, but that’s not going to happen because the world organization, global organization is going to turn us into some digital currency to control our carbon footprint. But I would say let’s just go back to cash.

Speaker 1 | 26:08.124

We need chips. Maybe in our foreheads or in our right hand.

Speaker 0 | 26:12.530

Can you invent that? Can we get paid on that? Can we sell that on Dissecting Popular IT Nerds? Can we push that on Dissecting Popular IT Nerds? The truth comes out.

Speaker 1 | 26:24.513

How many people can we piss off in one second?

Speaker 0 | 26:28.114

No one listens to this show, don’t worry. But they will now. Okay, so Sarbanes-Oxley. In reality, though… When dealing with so many businesses on a daily basis, I don’t know, whatever, 7-Eleven, I don’t buy Slurpees, but I’m going to buy Slurpee. And whatever it is, how many people really are… I remember getting yelled at when working at some corporate company, like, that’s a Sarbanes-Oxley violation. I’m going to report you to HR. And then we’re kind of like, oh, yeah, okay, but… And then nothing happens. How many people are really… It’s kind of how close can we get? Isn’t it? It’s not really like you can really be fully compliant. Do you think you can or?

Speaker 1 | 27:12.194

So in the instance, like in what you just said, like if someone had done something and they’re going to report it to HR or whatever, that’s going to come up in the audit. The audits are extremely thorough, but you can always mitigate by like writing a document that’s like, oh, we’ve done this to implicate and these are the changes that we’ve made and you sign it like, okay, you’re fine. And then it’s up to you whether or not you actually do what you said you were going to do, but there’s documentation that says you were going to do it. And so they’ll move forward.

Speaker 0 | 27:36.190

Okay. There’s no one who plays around it. Okay. So anyways, PCI compliance, Sarbanes actually, you could probably hire a consultant to do that. Another, if you’re really… Yeah, okay. So check, that’s just like a checkbox. I guess we need to do that. You’re really passionate about IT imposters and, I don’t know, IT coasters. You’re probably, I mean, you’re speaking with one right now. So, um,

Speaker 1 | 28:08.088

which are, which one you’re, are you a coaster or an imposter?

Speaker 0 | 28:11.390

I don’t know. I got a flip flop. I think, um, when I just want to like go, I don’t know, surfing or something, I guess you’d be coasting on that one. Um, and then the rest of the rest of the time I’m an imposter. So it’s kind of like, it was, it’s like back to that whole MBO thing, right? Like, I know, I know what an MBO is, um, you should do it. So,

Speaker 1 | 28:32.144

but are you ever going to implement one?

Speaker 0 | 28:33.878

I mean, do I need one? I’m like, I run a podcast. What am I going to do? I should run an MBO for myself, right? I will not pay myself the money that I don’t make off this podcast. If I will spend less money on this podcast, if I do not do said thing. Anywho, no, but really being serious, trying to be serious on this episode. I really am. I just have a really a lot of, you’re a lot of fun to talk with.

Speaker 1 | 28:58.715

Yeah,

Speaker 0 | 28:58.915

I’m good. Talk to me. How many imposters are out there? I would say. 85 to 90 percent uh yeah probably so and again not it’s because people it’s because most a lot of it guys get into the job that they can get into because they’re natural leaders they can naturally talk to people they are i can’t think of the word right now um i don’t know high energy people people they know how to bring the right people together put teams together would you call that an imposter uh

Speaker 1 | 29:31.190

No, because it depends on like, so if you have a leader who isn’t super techie themselves, but knows how to hire the people, can leverage that out and the mission is being accomplished. The only struggle they’re going to have is earning the respect of the people that are doing the work because they can’t answer to it. But if they can still fill those positions and lead and the missions are being accomplished, then I don’t know that’s necessarily an IT imposter. I mean. Unless they’re claiming that they do have the knowledge. And then when they’re called to the mat, they’re like, you know, fall all over themselves. I would respect someone who’s like, listen, I’m not the IT guy, but here’s what we need to do. And I’m pretty sure we can make this happen if we, you know, whatever. And then they make it happen. I’m not upset.

Speaker 0 | 30:15.228

You didn’t wrestle, did you?

Speaker 1 | 30:16.666

I did not. I had a buddy that wrestled. So if I curiously, I kind of did, he practiced with me all the time, but, uh,

Speaker 0 | 30:23.410

you said called in the mat. So I immediately thought wrestling. Oh yeah. Yeah. Slamming it in Midwest states and, you know, Oklahoma and wrestling and stuff like that. So,

Speaker 1 | 30:31.376

yeah, man. Uh, but no, yeah, probably 85%. And again, I don’t know that that’s obviously there needs to be responsibility taken for the person who is the quote unquote imposter, but a lot of that is, is born out of a company who just doesn’t know. how to hire. Doesn’t know the questions to ask, can’t validate it. So I guess really a call to them would be like, please hire a recruiter. It’s worth the money and the long-term, the possible damage that can be done with your company. What kind of growth? Well, that gets tricky too, because some of them are slimy.

Speaker 0 | 31:04.173

Yeah. I mean, but sometimes too, it’s again, it’s about having all your friends call the right person to get you the job, but they’ve got, they can’t just lie, obviously. But There needs to be some way of demonstrable, I think that’s the right word, success. For example, maybe you’re a recruiter and you found your guy on Dissecting Popular IT Nerds and you know he can demonstrate success because you listened to an amazing interview from Nathan Lauderdale, so you know he’s got success. Or maybe there’s some other key pieces to that. What are some of the questions that you would ask then? when you’re looking for someone that’s talented, how do you snuff out the imposters?

Speaker 1 | 31:46.414

I look for real world experience. I don’t really care necessarily if you have certificates, because I’m so and I’ve had this conversation with people in interviews is like, listen, if you’re a hobbyist, let’s talk about it. If you went to school, let’s talk about that. But generally, the person who’s the hobbyist. they enjoy what they’re doing so they spend time doing it and it’s built-in practice whether they want to call it practice or not and they will completely destroy a kid coming out of a four-year degree versus the kid who’s just just likes doing it for the same amount of time he’s going to just waylay that person and it sucks because you just paid for a degree but you’re not good at your job um and because you don’t like it yeah you were doing it a lot of times the interest is there to start and then all of the curriculum that they’re forced through um can sometimes snuff that out they’re like listen i do this for school i’m not like i don’t want to do this on my off time and then by the time they get there it is more about like the well at least i’ll make money and so they do they kind of become the eight skate person for a while until something again sparks their interest that makes them go okay yeah let’s uh yeah

Speaker 0 | 32:52.932

it reminds me of this guy uh ryan levesque he wrote the book uh called the ask method um And he’s from Goffstown, New Hampshire, this like little small town next to St. Anselm College where I went to school my first year of college. And he majored in Chinese, majored in Chinese. He was the last in his class, meaning I’m showing up for classes, trying to learn Mandarin. Yeah. You know, whatever the classes are, we’re studying, you know, you’re reading books, memorizing verb conjugation, whatever it is, last in his class. Decided that’s not going to work. I’m going to do this exchange program. where I go live in China, I have to sign a document that forces me to speak in Chinese. If I speak any English, I’m kicked out of the program, like kicked out of school. I think it was Brown. He might’ve gone to Brown, some Ivy league, you know, Ivy league school or something.

Speaker 1 | 33:42.557

And a document like that exists.

Speaker 0 | 33:44.940

It was on it on like an exchange program. It’s like, we’re going to, you’re going to do this program. You are forced to speak only in, only in Chinese, but that is it. You are not allowed to speak in. If you use English, if you type in English, whatever it is, right? So kind of like an honor system, right? Like, I don’t know. I think if you ever cheated on an exam or something that bars you from getting into Harvard or something like that. Dude comes back, crazy fluent in Chinese, top of the class. There’s no classes left for him to take. He has to have a special like sidelined, like, you know, the professor has to do things with him on the side in order for him to continue his education and graduate or whatever. So it’s just an example of, yeah, I went to school, I took the classes, but there’s an application aspect to it versus the guy that’s been, yeah, you know, in his house hacking or doing whatever he’s doing and screwing around building computers and all that stuff. Like, I’ve never seen like a skinnier white dude speak perfect Chinese. It was so amazing. I was like, please just keep it because we’re at a conference and he got up and spoke and he had to order something like from like, you know, in Chinese off the menu or something. I can’t remember what it was, but it was like. perfect with all the like the right accent and the nat and it was just and i just wanted to hear him just speak in chinese the whole time because it was just like i can’t believe this is coming out of this guy’s mouth Um,

Speaker 1 | 35:05.868

the other aspect of what you mentioned though, is he also put himself in a position where it’s like do or die. So that is where you are going to excel like crazy and where a coaster will become not a coaster anymore because you’re like, you,

Speaker 0 | 35:19.714

you have asked him that too. Yeah. I just wanted to ask him so bad. Like this was like a big business leadership conference. I could care less about business leadership at that point. I just want to talk about how you learn this language. I didn’t even care. So when I got a chance to ask him, like after being on stage and all this stuff. Like, dude, I just got to know about the Chinese. I was like, wow. He’s like, well, after two weeks of just saying, hello, how are you? He’s like, you get, he’s like, you get pretty bored and it’s like really awkward and you just have to, like, you just have to learn to start speaking. So anyways, I would, I would love to do that to myself. Sounds very, very stressful. So what, there’s a, there’s a point to that though. The point is like really get out of your comfort zone and throw yourself and really kind of like, I don’t know, leap off the cliff or leap and the net will appear or whatever those, those, all those cliche sayings are. yeah what is it uh indiana jones and uh we’re gonna bring in hollywood now you want to go talk about hollywood now okay now let’s bring up that next the next um i was just talking about the leap of faith man he’s got to step onto a bridge that doesn’t exist that’s all i’m not trying to stir the pot no no no all right what was that like there was like some like like boxer or something that showed up on like i don’t know i i really try to stay off social media even though this is all social media and he’s talked about like what was that like the what’s that so-called place in the woods where they’re like sacrificing people in hollywood and all the like it’s a guy like the giant owl statue or something like that yeah yeah what

Speaker 1 | 36:44.294

was that anyways i don’t remember see that’s what i think something island but yes yes um so

Speaker 0 | 36:52.252

Well, you kind of had to do that, though. You came in. So why weren’t you in a posture? You came in. You knew nothing about ERP. You’re like, yeah, they made the mistake with me, and I just happened to be a fast learner and passionate enough. There’s a learning curve to technology. Do some people not have that learning curve, the technology learning curve?

Speaker 1 | 37:06.622

So it may be a learning curve, but the other aspect of it is thinking outside the box. I just called the ERP system people and was like, hey, here’s the situation. Give me a crash course. I couldn’t have figured it out on my own. Not. Not while the train’s fully loaded going 80 miles an hour down the rail. I couldn’t have. But I also looked at the contractors like, well, do we have hours built in? Is there training? What kind of support do we have? And so I just called them up and told them what happened. And they helped me out. I’m not going to take credit for saying like, yeah, I looked at it and I was able to crack the code and whatever.

Speaker 0 | 37:41.046

But you did learn something.

Speaker 1 | 37:43.648

Do what?

Speaker 0 | 37:44.449

But you did learn.

Speaker 1 | 37:46.150

Oh, a lot. Yeah. They were able to.

Speaker 0 | 37:48.632

explain like the whole flow of the program and all that stuff the so how did you break the news to um how’d you break the news to the company like hey i just i don’t maybe maybe they knew it was a really bad situation they knew they had a bad leader already but is there some level i’m assuming you uncovered more stuff i’m assuming you uncovered more things and had to break the news to people maybe we need to spend more money how do you move along that kind of technology roadmap um it’s tough

Speaker 1 | 38:17.732

Because they they just got rid of someone that they thought they could trust for you know five plus years and you’re in there going like yeah, but trust me, so You still have to have those conversations But it’s just follow through just making sure that everything that you say and make no promises that you can’t guarantee And if you don’t know something just say you don’t know until you can come back with the answer and just be reliable Respond when called on do all of those things and then the trust comes back and then when you do go to them say hey I know this sucks to hear, but like, you know, our budget is this, but we’re going to need to spend 30 grand more because of this popped up and it’s not been dealt with for six years. You know, they’re going to grimace because they don’t spend the money, but they’re going to trust you on it.

Speaker 0 | 38:58.513

What’s your biggest piece of advice for being successful in liking what you do? Because I think a lot of people like, uh, in the, in the book that we just released speaking the language of business, it is by yours truly. Um, I was searching for burnout syndrome or something, and a Reddit post came up, and it was just IT guys, just a whole long stream of just, it’s underappreciated, everyone hates IT. It’s just like, it’s a constant onslaught of tickets. It’s like, no one appreciates us. It’s just so freaking old and expletive, expletive, and I’m just like, I think I’m done. I’m burned out. I think I’m going to go. How do you guys do this day in and day out? How do you survive in this business? What do you say to that?

Speaker 1 | 39:52.627

I mean, that’s tough because I don’t know who they’re working with. The communication aspect of it, to be able to paint the picture for where IT is actually in the roadmap of the company is the biggest part. If you don’t even have the ability to come to the table. I mean, try to elbow your way in, I guess. Get somebody’s ear, at least one person, and then if they have any leeway, then start working your way that way.

Speaker 0 | 40:17.800

Do you think it’s just a complainer syndrome? Do you think there’s just 80% of the world complains and doesn’t take responsibility for their own life and they’re just miserable? I have a feeling it could be that.

Speaker 1 | 40:29.149

There’s definitely some of that. And social media has bred that from everybody. It gives everyone a platform where it’s like they feel like they are…

Speaker 0 | 40:37.336

the ones to be listened to because they just have the ability to type or video themselves just it’s a disease of them it’s a disease of america which is like everyone’s entitled to an opinion everyone’s entitled to their opinion with no with no massive career work or experience it’s it’s like you know like when the kid you know it’s just like everyone thinks they can do a better job than the boss and then when the boss are like oh my i’m responsible for all this in people’s lives and it’s it’s very stressful

Speaker 1 | 41:04.632

If you marry the two, you probably have 100% of the problem. There’s definitely companies that don’t have the… They’ve never had a relationship with someone in IT to actually be able to know what that picture looked like. I had mentioned to someone who I’m working with now, it’s like, you know, when I got here, it was 2023, we were still running production data on 2008 servers. And they said, yeah, I didn’t know that. It’s like, well…

Speaker 0 | 41:28.439

Yeah, I mean, we were on… xp man and we were like running lotus notes i love talking about lotus notes lately it’s like the newest thing it’s not new it’s old it’s the newest old thing the so you’ve been in these situations though you’ve been in these like kind of like really difficult situations and i mean have you ever walked into a situation like that and been handed over a team and had to create relationships with people that had already been there for a long time that might be wondering like why not me why him this that type of thing or i don’t know any of that stuff you

Speaker 1 | 42:00.460

I, yeah, kind of the, the company that I’m at now, I found out after maybe three to six months afterwards that they were all, they had all posted their resumes and they were all looking to leave. Um,

Speaker 0 | 42:11.549

this is great. This is what I want to say.

Speaker 1 | 42:13.410

They had been not great,

Speaker 0 | 42:14.531

but it’s, it’s, it’s great. Good. Go ahead. Yeah.

Speaker 1 | 42:17.534

They had, so when I got there, they basically said, don’t ask for anything. Cause the answer is no, if it costs money, they’re not going to do it at all.

Speaker 0 | 42:23.438

Oh, you hate that. And you’re like, oh, there’s my first roadblock. Okay. Well,

Speaker 1 | 42:27.061

but no, what I said to them was. I have the benefit of being this stupid new guy who hasn’t asked and I don’t know. Yes. I get to go and look them in the eyes and be like, hey, turn this stuff. Yeah. And I said, so I’m going to do that. And worse, they tell me is no. And then we have the conversation on it. But everything that I brought to them with a plan, like why we needed it, what it was going to resolve. There were other cyber insurance policy stuff that they had already signed before I got there, that they were actually meeting. There was a whole bunch of stuff involved that was like, kind of ratcheting up the reasons why you kind of have to do this. Otherwise you’re going to be paying for an insurance policy. That’s never going to pay you a dime if, and when something happens as I was able to bring that to the table and kind of paint the picture for why they needed it and what it was going to do and the costs involved. Like part of it was, we didn’t have a CISO. There was no one on staff to do security logs policy. And so we brought in, uh, I heard you’re a fan of dark trace.

Speaker 0 | 43:24.893

I’ve been a fan of dark trace. I have, um, I’ve spoken with a lot of CISOs recently, and some have been middle of the road now. I guess maybe, you know, it was like great when they first came out. Maybe it’s still great. I’m still a big fan. I’m a fan of AI-driven self-learning, understanding what end users are doing, and when it’s a non-end user, and all of the like, you know, kind of Terminator 2 technology.

Speaker 1 | 43:52.996

Yeah. I mean, it was perfect for us. It saved us. So, but…

Speaker 0 | 43:57.880

That’s a good point, because most people don’t want to invest in security. Okay, new Switch, get it. Faster internet, get it. I don’t know, the old Nortel phone system and Mitel and Avaya phone systems that we all need to marry together, okay, we’ll do that soon. Security? We haven’t gotten hacked. We haven’t gotten sued.

Speaker 1 | 44:17.678

Yeah, it’s never happened. That’s their response.

Speaker 0 | 44:20.600

That’s a hard sale, so you did that, but you did that, so that’s like…

Speaker 1 | 44:24.144

a big well they kind of paved the way for me a little bit though because they had already signed up for this cyber insurance policy that they didn’t actually meet so they needed it i was just this is how you’re going to fill it in two weeks i was given two weeks to read over it and make sure that it was all good and then when i came back to him said there’s a lot of holes here and i’m not going to put my name on it so

Speaker 0 | 44:44.701

this is what i like i like that i’m not going to put my name on the unless you give me a raise um you’re gonna start your first and then I will still only put my name on it when you fix this stuff. We’ll have to use that money to buy this stuff. Um, okay. So, so dark trace, did that help check a lot of the boxes?

Speaker 1 | 45:04.279

A ton. It checked like,

Speaker 0 | 45:06.060

single boxes i like it five or six yeah um and for the cost of one cso with a team of like 12 people and by the way we’re in the midst of making dark trace a potential sponsor agnostic vendor possibility choice on the on the back end of dissecting popular 18 years so if anyone wants to talk about great security products and you want to know you real life scenarios. You don’t want to just be sold a dog and pony show where the sales reps are coming in and tell you this, this, and this, and then try to kind of, I don’t know, uh, you know, Hey, and if you can make a decision by the end of this month, we will take off 10%. Just here’s a little note. They will always do that. It’s the end of the quarter. It’s the end of the year. And I’m just telling you, executives got more budget. We’re willing to do a lot more now than we are going to be willing to do on January 1st. Lie. Um, if you would like vendor agnostic support, and very, very biased advice. I don’t know. Greg, can we throw some kind of contact in here? Greg the Frenchman, can you put a little, I don’t know, some kind of blip? Can we make an advertisement here? Keep all this in there because it’s kind of, I don’t know, funny, entertaining. Thank you. Okay. For something that we do. We’ve got to somehow try to make money somewhere, and we’re going to make the vendors pay for it, and we’re going to kick their sales reps out in the teeth. Oh, I like saying that. We’re going to kick sales reps in the teeth. kick to the face, whatever you want to do. We’re going to give you the advice and we’re going to help you make that decision without these people. Kick to the face. At Dissecting Popular IT Nerds, we expect to win and we expect our IT directors to win. And one of those areas where we know that we can help you win is internet service providers. As an IT director tasked with managing internet connectivity, few vendor relationships can prove more painfully frustrating than the one with your internet service provider. The array of challenges seems… never ending from unreliable uptime and insufficient bandwidth to poor customer service and hidden fees. It’s like getting stuck in rush hour traffic. Dealing with ISPs can try once patients even on the best of days. So whether you are managing one location or a hundred locations, our back office support team and vendor partners are the best in the industry. And the best part about this is none of this will ever cost you a dime. due to the partnership and the sponsors that we have behind the scenes of Dissecting Popular IT Nerds. Let us show you how we can manage away the mediocrity and hit it out of the park. We start by mapping all of the available fiber routes, and we use our $1.2 billion in combined customer buying power in massive economy of scale to map all of your locations, to overcome construction fees, to use industry historical data. to encourage providers to compete for the lowest possible pricing, to negotiate the lowest rates guaranteed, and to provide fast response times in hours, not days. And we leverage aggregators and wholesale relationship to ensure you get the best possible pricing available in the marketplace. And on top of all of this, you get proactive network monitoring and proactive alerts so that you’re not left calling 1-800-GO-POUND-SAN to enter in a ticket number and wonder, why is my internet connection down? In short, We are the partner that you have always wanted, who understands your needs, your frustrations, and knows what you need without you having to ask. So, we’re still human, but we are some of the best, and we aim to win. This all starts with a value discovery call where we find out what you have, why you have it, and what’s on your roadmap. All you need to do is email internet at popularit.net and say, I want help managing all of my internet garbage. Please make my life easier. Thank you. and we’ll get right on it for you. Have a wonderful day.

Speaker 1 | 48:55.558

Okay. I was going to say, a glimpse into your past with vendors, man. You literally lit up. This is obviously an audible show, but for those of you who want a picture painted, he could not help but show all of his teeth and smile huge when he’s kicked in the teeth. Oh, my gosh. You lit up so much.

Speaker 0 | 49:11.990

Spitting out chiclets. Spitting out chiclets. What else did we say? I have a buddy that’s a… he’s like the regional VP of Comcast. Justin Sessions, we’re going to give you a shout out too. Comcast, does it get any, we’re not going to fill in that blank, but Justin, we love you. And we used to get together and talk about an ex-company that you used to work for. And we had all these like sayings that people used to say and like box of junk, which was like, it was really, and I’m not saying Cisco is a box of junk. I’m just saying that this one particular, Cisco 2800 series router that used to get into place and people used to oversell a remote VPN like it was like You know like I don’t know like this The, well, it would be appropriate to call it the space project, right? It would be anyways, it was, we used to say that backs of junk, getting teeth kicked in, spitting out chicklets. We used to have all kinds of names for different sales reps. And they would, the stories I could do a whole show, but I would be, I would be dead. I think I would definitely disappear if we, if we told the stories, if we told the actual crazy stories, it makes the wolf of wall street look like put him to shame, crazy stuff. Yeesh. I think we heard about a crazy, drugged up, drunk sales rep one time that met with a bunch of… He met with some kind of IT directors or something, and they made him change all these things in the contract and handwrite things in. And all this stuff, this sales rep was like, yeah, no problem, dude. Wrote it all in. They signed it, and he handed that contract in. It was very, very funny. It was very funny. We had a person that worked at an old company that was one of the, one of the tiger woods, uh, girls too. That was hilarious. We’re all wondering how she showed up in like a BMW and like new like purses and stuff. And this is, you’re right. I probably am going to get shut down. Uh, after this show, we have hit on every bad topic that would get me banned. There’s more where that came from folks. Uh, any who, um,

Speaker 1 | 51:22.170

You need to do a cutting room floor montage of all the stuff that gets edited out, like all the brain farts, all of the rat holes. That would be so entertaining.

Speaker 0 | 51:31.715

Greg, can we do that? We can. We are going to come out with the IT Director’s Urban Dictionary because we’ve been using AI to pull out all of the different terms that everyone uses. Herding cats, for example, it’s metaphor-free for end users. Yep. We love you end users. We really do. But herding cats. I mean, there’s just so many. Single pane of glass. A term that a sales rep will use to make it seem like their software GUI is more than it should be or something like that. This has been an absolute pleasure. I’m giving you the last, I don’t know, three to five minutes to talk about whatever you want, provide advice. And. I don’t know, make a difference in someone’s lives. Because a lot of times, I think IT leadership in general, it’s such a new thing, right? Like, we didn’t have it back in the day. Like, you had a Pentium 2, you’re playing DuckTales, you know what I mean? Like, there was no, maybe there was a network. I doubt, if you log, maybe dial up to a messaging board. I don’t know. So, it’s so new that when I ask a lot of IT directors, What’s the end game? What’s the goal? How are you going to change the world? Everything? I don’t know. We get a lot of, I don’t know. So what is it?

Speaker 1 | 52:53.804

For me, it has been making sure that I’m looking at the company as a conglomerate of people and not just a money-making machine, figuring out how people take the ways that they see the company and then trying to communicate in those ways. Because obviously the goal, the company is paying everyone’s salary. We want the company to do well. But we also don’t want to make such quick rash decisions that we pay less in the front. But then six months to a year down the line, we’re also paying another double that to clean up all the mess that we didn’t consider.

Speaker 0 | 53:29.881

So you get a new meaning. It’s a whole new meaning to the metaphor of network. Like, how do you manage your network? What do you mean? Like giggy or people?

Speaker 1 | 53:41.167

Yeah, both.

Speaker 0 | 53:43.248

I think I just cried a little bit.

Speaker 1 | 53:46.650

Yeah, I don’t know. That’s where I’m at. I mean, obviously, I enjoy the thing. I feel like I could be doing anything. The thing I like about IT is someone comes to me with a problem, and I’m able to fix it, and I get to see their reaction and see the difference that it makes for them. I mean, I literally could have been a mechanic and gotten the same thing. I just happen to be in IT. So dealing with people, and then in order to be useful to them, keeping up with everything that’s going on. everyone’s talking about AI. That’s the new commercial. You got to say AI. Everyone’s talking about AI.

Speaker 0 | 54:20.063

It’s like the cloud. Yeah, it’s like the cloud. Yes.

Speaker 1 | 54:22.204

Yeah, it really is. Could it be beneficial? Sure. Would it be beneficial if we tried to plug that in straight into where I’m at now? Absolutely not. Our foundation has so many cracks in it. We’ve got to fix all that stuff before we could build a house on it that wouldn’t cave in on itself. And you end up spending a bunch of money for something that you’re not going to be able to keep up because there’s not enough.

Speaker 0 | 54:43.698

We can make a simple AI bot to summarize all the complaints and find all the cracks. How much more useful would it be to instead of send out a like, how was your experience here? What do you hate about us? Now we’re going to just remove that stuff. I haven’t gotten that yet. I’ve never gotten that response from a company that I’ve done business with. What did you hate about it? Your experience there? I don’t know. Let me think really hard about that. Hmm. Nothing. Good. We’re doing a good job. I hated this. We’re going to eliminate that. I don’t know what’s more powerful. Hmm. What could we do? What do you really want in a, what do you really want in a mechanic drywall specialist? I don’t know.

Speaker 1 | 55:26.800

Honesty. That’s it. I just want honesty.

Speaker 0 | 55:29.381

I just want them to show up and do the work fast and efficient. clean and perfect and just do what you say you’re going to do. I just, that’s such a, that’s such a thing. I don’t know why that has to be such a thing. Do what you say you’re going to do. Why does that have to be? Why does that have to be a tagline? I guess it’s good because it makes us again, able to choose a place to go into a place that where it’s like, there’s a bunch of fires going on and we can put out a couple of fires and look really, really good because we’re going to do what we say we’re going to do. Yeah. Mr. Lauderdale, thank you so much for being on the show. Thank you for being a leader. Thank you for being passionate about what you do. And thank you for saving America and keeping the wheels of industry turning in a perceived dying economy where it’s all doom and gloom and everything’s going to fall apart. You are one of the cogs of a really, truly great American. Thank you. Wow. I just felt like saying that. I’ve never said truly great American. No, not at all. Not at all. Not at all. Because you know why? Because I learned from the Starbucks company handbook years ago that sarcasm, sarcasm is a behavioral derailer and that will get you a tick off on your, um, annual review. I don’t know if I’m being sarcastic, I will be very obvious about it. Um, but no, um, really thank you so much for being on dissection.

Speaker 1 | 56:49.569

No, thank you, man. I really appreciate all that you guys are doing. This is fantastic. Thanks for, uh, taking an hour to spend with me.

Speaker 0 | 56:56.166

Yes, sir.