Speaker 0 | 00:02.572
And, and I’ve been, you know, I’ve been planning on years to tell this story. And this is really supposed to be all about you. But since, I don’t know, we’ve been talking about it.
Speaker 1 | 00:12.035
Sure.
Speaker 0 | 00:12.315
And you asked, like I was saying, I love Egypt. Egypt does not love me. And the second time I went to visit Egypt, the first time I went, I went with my kids. So I had, you know, innocent looking kids with me. They’re like, you know, come on in, you know, don’t, Oh, you’re American. Don’t, don’t even go through security. Like you don’t even need to put your badge through the, uh, through the, um, you know, metal detector at the end. They’re like, no, no, no, this is, this is not for you. And like some guy grabbed me and walked me around the whole security line because he saw my passport was American. And it was like, you know, just come right out here and like just walked me right out through the thing. I was like, Oh wow, this is, this is nice. Second time I went without innocent looking kids. I went by myself. And I have a long beard and I was immediately profiled. Immediately like, stop here, wait here. We need to question you. Stop here. We need to question you. Stop here. We need to question you. All the way until, I don’t know, six hours later, come in here. We need to question you one more time into this room. I’m like, okay. So walk into that room. Click. You hear the door close behind me and lock. I turn around. I’m like, what? Where’d the, where’d the police officer go? Like, oh, this door has no handle on it. So it was like a one-way door, like a door with a handle on it on the other side. But on when it, when it shut on the other side, it locked and there’s no, no handle. And I looked down this kind of like dimly lit hall. It’s kind of like a light flickering. I can imagine this like out of a movie, but it’s, this is, this is real life. This is real life. And I see a lot of smoke. Walk down, room opens up. I start to see like these metal bunk beds appear. Some legs hanging off the bed. And I’m in a room now with, I don’t know, 40 to 45 looking scruffy. Some scruffy, not all scruffy. Some were, you know, good looking and in reasonable clothes.
Speaker 1 | 02:19.286
This coming from the most bearded man.
Speaker 0 | 02:22.628
yeah yeah exactly you know what i mean no i’m just careful no so uh all of them smoking cigarettes and i’m a bit of a health nut now i i you know yeah and uh i mean this room was like you know they say like no smoking in restaurants this was this was like 45 guys smoking in a i don’t know maybe 700 square foot cement room with very small windows and a bunch of metal bunk beds and when i say that my heart started racing like a thousand beats per second it was like and for some reason when i have this these moments of adrenaline rush this like odd calmness comes over me of of how to respond in these situations and i’m i take arabic i’m uh i’m trying to learn arabic and uh so i but at the time i knew a little bit i knew like you know like i would say level one first year level arabic and i’m like holy crap i’m in jail and uh the uh the um so all these guys are looking at me all smoking cigarettes and they all kind of like pause and look at me and there’s this old like long table in two busted up long benches that were like worn out airport benches that they like threw in this room. And just the whole, you know, the mattresses were like these kind of like worn out things on these metal bunk beds. And this guy takes a puff as a cigarette and looks up at me and they’re all looking at me. And again, this moment of calmness and midst crazy anxiety came over me and I was like, Salam Alaikum. it’s like to the whole room i’m like peace be with you peace be with you to the whole room and the guy’s smoking the cigarettes like what are you coming up it’s like sit down he motions like sit down next to him and i feel like you couldn’t breathe the first the first like six hours i thought i was gonna throw up so sit down next to this guy And on the tables, like some, I guess you could call it whole wheat pita bread that looked like they may have cooked it on the concrete outside. Some busted up half-eaten carrots that they would either give to us or the donkeys. You know, big carrots, like big pieces. Carrots like I’ve never seen this size before in these boxes of government feta cheese where you would kind of like bite off the corner of this like carton that’s like half the size of a milk carton that you had when we were a long time ago in school. And you’d squeeze this feta cheese out under the bread. No one ate the carrots. salty government cheese but there was somehow this weird leftover pizza on the table with some olives on it i don’t know how it was there i do know how it was there later on but uh this guy that was smoking the cigarette he points at the pizza and he’s like like take it like go ahead and i had not eaten in 36 hours so i had the whole flight from new york to this to questioning to them which I ultimately find out they, I ultimately found out that they thought I was a Turkish spy with a fake passport. Even though when the police officer requested me, I was like, I’ll show you my Facebook. Look, it was snowing in Maine when I left, when I left, you know, earlier today or whenever it was yesterday to get here. Look, it’s snowing. Here’s my family. Give me that phone. You can’t have a phone. So that was dumb. Confiscated my phone. And over the next, three and a half days, which I did not know how long I was going to be locked up in there. I knew nothing. They told me nothing. They would not let me make a phone call. None of that. I thought, is this the end? Are they going to throw me in Scorpion prison, which is a famous prison in Egypt somewhere and throw away the key. And I’m just one of those guys that disappeared at the face of the map, no way to call or reach out to anyone. And, uh, but I wouldn’t take it back for anything because it’s one of those experiences in my life. Interestingly, there was probably 20 to 25 Palestinians in there that because the Gaza Strip’s been blown up and there’s no, you know, and at the time now just all of Gaza’s blown up, but at the time, you know, there had been an airport, but that had been, you know, blown up and destroyed. So they have to fly. Like if any of them are traveling and they can get out, right. Then if they can get out of Gaza and they can travel, then they first go to like. egypt and then egypt kind of throws them in this jail as like a halfway house and then takes them via bus to the to the entrance of gaza so that they’re safe because they don’t want them going there during certain times of day where it’s much more violent than than normal and one of the stories that stood out as i asked one of the the more handsome looking guys was like hey you know what’s going on are you married like he said i found out that he was an engineer and stuff like so you married you got kids he’s like why would i get married why would i want to bring you any kids up in this world do you have any idea what we live like he’s like there’s no electricity most of the time and these are like good looking healthy looking smart kids you know that had like you know degrees and stuff they’re just sitting there smoking constantly they use one cigarette to light the next cigarette that story goes on and on and on but that’s just a snapshot everyone everyone give a like to the episode or a comment if you would like me to do just a solo episode where i don’t know we could just have a bunch of people ask me so what was it like then then what happened what about the guy that got handcuffed to the top bunk What about the other little family and the little 13-year-old kid that was crying, you know, totally terrified because he thought we were all going to rape him? Or the, I don’t know, the guy that came in and threw up and had a seizure on the floor and they just left him there lifeless for a while. There’s more to this story.
Speaker 1 | 08:34.892
Phil, it sounds like you could do a whole episode, but you could do a whole series on Phil’s world travels and extreme adventures. What will Phil get into next? Will he end up in prison? Will he be chased by some rogue agent in the street?
Speaker 0 | 08:58.265
It’s ridiculous. Guys, I’m just trying to run an IT podcast for the mid-market leadership. Can we just have a normal life?
Speaker 1 | 09:10.530
Trying to run his podcast in another country.
Speaker 0 | 09:13.792
Totally wild.
Speaker 1 | 09:14.392
Find out next.
Speaker 0 | 09:15.997
Yeah, totally wild. I probably, I think I had planned. I did have my mics with me too. Like, but that all I had to like go find my luggage and how eventually they, they like sent me back to the United States with an agent on the plane the whole time, like whatever their version of the FBI is all the way back to New York. And then when I got to New York and when I’m coming into immigration, the immigration police officer was like, so how was your trip to Egypt? I was like, it didn’t go quite as planned. He’s like, why? I was like, they locked me up right away in jail for three days. He’s like, oh man, that sucks. All right, go ahead. And he just let me out. No questioning, nothing. Just like, all right, go ahead. Man, that’s terrible. All right, bye. It’s just the whole thing is just insane. So man, how do we segue? Let’s segue to something much more exciting.
Speaker 1 | 10:01.066
you know um john john introduce yourself please just introduce yourself however you would like sure absolutely um hello everyone my name is john scarpa um i am the director of it at arty abbott we are a chemical manufacturing company in we have two offices in southern california and in barberton ohio but we operate throughout the United States, as well as in Canada, Mexico. So I guess you’d say North America. We sell our product, distribute it, and manufacture it. We also do some overseas, and we partner with a lot of big names in our industry, such as Dow, Ward Chemical, and Arlinxio. So it’s a little bit about the company that I work for. I work in the IT space. As the Director of IT, I… oversee really all IT operations within my company or previous companies that I’ve worked for. What I focus on is making sure that we provide the best product and service for our company, for our customer, which is our internal customer, as well as our public-facing customers that work with our company. Anything that I can do to help drive revenue and reduce costs and you know decrease complexity within our company uh that’s what my team focuses on and what it’s on sounds pretty simple um the
Speaker 0 | 11:45.976
here here’s the there’s actually something very deep that comes out of all this which is you have to do a ton of stuff as an i.t leader And what many of us fail to take responsibility for is that’s the general expectations. Stuff works. People can use their computers. The internet doesn’t go down. I don’t know what else. We don’t get hacked, right? Stuff like this. And it takes quite a bit to do just that. And I think one of the, well, you tell me, I think one of the reasons why a lot of people get jaded in the tech industry or tech leadership or tech position in the mid market space is that they want to be recognized for that or get a high five or a standing ovation for that. When in reality, the end users, your customers, the executives kind of just say that that’s like. the run of the mill general expectations. If you do that, like, okay, great. Yeah. Like, of course they want you or what they’re really, I think what they’re really wanting is more of what you said, which is how can I help drive more revenue? How can I make the company more efficient and save, I don’t know, save somewhere, cut costs or something like that. Okay. And we’ve been talking about that for a long time, but how did you, I think what’s deeper is how do you recognize that and make that jump and get to that realization? Was there, was there any failures along the way or real, just big, like aha moments, or let’s just start with the biggest failures in your life. Love that mine was getting on a plane to Egypt. That’s one of them. Although it was a learning experience and I learned from it and I, you know, you fail forward. So I knew you would think I would not get on the plane to Egypt again, but I’m not kidding you. I did it again a year later. And guess what? Same jail, same people, same guards.
Speaker 1 | 14:07.034
Right. So I’m going to latch on to specifically kind of the last point that you mentioned. because there’s a lot to unpack right with everything that you just said um you know first and foremost um to some of your earlier points it is multifaceted right it is not just uh keeping the lights on and anything that anything and everything that is electronic or data right it is absolutely you know your utmost responsibility is to protect the company and protect the company assets, which includes obviously the data of the company. So, you know, we implement many, many standards successfully in order to do that. And we work with great partners in order to, you know. keep the company secure, safe, protected, always readily available, things like that, right? So I don’t want to disregard that because you opened with that. And I want to make that clear that that’s a huge part of IT. If you’re not regularly working with a partner to have kind of experts come in and help penetration tests within your organization, then you’re not really doing IT right.
Speaker 0 | 15:31.279
Well, let’s define that then.
Speaker 1 | 15:32.299
You need to be open to that.
Speaker 0 | 15:33.901
Let’s dig in because I think that’s a good point. We didn’t even really, this could go anywhere, but I would love to know what is a good partner to you.
Speaker 1 | 15:43.348
Yeah. So to kind of what’s a good partner, right? So I would say in IT, you need to be open to partnering with several companies. So I will use an example, like the organization that Phil works for. They do everything from services to telecom and are a really great partner in that aspect, right? There’s someone that you can lean on and talk to and say, hey, like you need to be open with yourself and realize that with your internal IT team, as great as it may be, as great of a job as you may be doing, either leading that or being a part of it. you will never be able to do everything. And so finding great partners is something you should really focus on in order to be successful in IT. And realize that there are a lot of areas you’re not going to be good at. So we all learn from opening ourselves up to partners. So if I work with a company like Phil’s, I might say, hey, Phil, you know, I’ve got to make sure that I’m NIST compliant. Do you have any partners in this space that would help us become NIST compliant? because our company just successfully won a government contract. So you might be arguing that you need to be NIST compliant because it’s just the right thing to do to be better at security and to make sure that your company is not successful to viruses. But you can help solve that is, look, if we become compliant with the security standard, we will gain more customers in, you know. government space, aerospace, any type of company that needs a service, any industry that has to be secure. It could be like a transportation company that has to follow those security standards, right?
Speaker 0 | 17:41.114
Yeah. And there’s a little bit of a race to that right now, even because there’s kind of like a timeline for that NIST compliant thing. And there’s all this kind of like cloudy, no pun intended, kind of like, hey, when do we have to be? Well, you don’t really have to be yet. You have to start the process. So. There is kind of a way to stand out if you’re that IT leader as well, if you can partner with the right people to become NIST compliant before maybe everyone else that’s racing to it. I don’t know. It might say something about you as a company and your level of ability to implement security standards. And it’ll give you, your customers, the perception that you can implement and be more secure, faster, better, stronger than maybe…
Speaker 1 | 18:26.047
your competition right and so there’s a ton of standards i just happen to pick one um but you know there’s nis there’s iso there’s far as dfars etc goes on a lot of these standards are really really similar if you download their document you make a spreadsheet you make sure that your team is meeting all of these standards and again you work with outside companies that specialize in these standards and can help you implement them well But what you need to be open to is you are not always going to be the smartest guy in the room. Anything that you do, you’re going to learn from. And so something that Phil and I talked about a little bit previously to getting on this podcast was you cannot be afraid to fail, right? And so my aspect is I don’t know everything. I will never claim to know everything. I will never claim to always be the smartest guy in the room. but I’m not afraid to try and fail and learn something by failing, by pushing my limits and pushing myself. And I don’t mean like I’m trying to fail. Nobody tries to fail, but it’s something to say, hey, this is something new that we need to do. We need to accomplish this task. I’m going to develop a project plan. I’m going to find the right partners. i’m gonna get an executive sponsor you know i’m gonna talk to my boss which is usually the cfo or maybe chief operating officer or sometimes a ceo at a company and i’m going to tell them This is our plan. This is what we’d like to do. I’d like you to help me, you know, with rallying the troops appropriately. And we’re going to set out to accomplish this mission. And maybe our mission might be we need to implement these security standards so that we can satisfy this customer requirement, because this is something that’s going to open us up to a whole bunch of other customers, not just the single customer we’re chasing. and it’s gonna you know help us grow our business and allow us to chase you know more revenue and believe me if you come to any chief executive and you tell them that you are going to do something that could potentially help them get more customers or can win certain sales they’re going to listen to that and if you tell them look i’m going to be completely open with you this may not be my area of expertise and i will tell you i’ve spent 20 plus years implementing security standards so pretty knowledgeable on it but i don’t claim to be the expert at everything but if i tell them i’m going to hire this company and i’m we’re going to try to implement this and there might be some speed bumps along the way they’re going to be a lot more understanding and open to you being truthful and honest with them and you know then not certainly make your life less stressful yes absolutely how fast can you get it done
Speaker 0 | 21:29.352
in your head you’re thinking we can get it done maybe in five months ten months we can get it done in ten months under promise you know you don’t sell yourself short on this this idea of being humble and not and knowing that you’re not always the smartest guy in the room there’s this kind of dual duality i don’t know dichotomy i’m just throwing words out right now between that and the um idea of oh what’s why is this why is this concept failing me right now imposter syndrome so yeah i’ve had people talk about imposter syndrome on both sides you And the more that I’ve really, I’ve really been honestly reading about it deeply and really kind of like going into this deep for well over a month now. And it’s, you know, when you kind of have this thought pattern that, that you think about something or there’s a topic, it tends to show up like everywhere in your life. And you’re just like, oh, is it just like, is it like the six degrees of separation thing? And now all of a sudden no one’s talking about it. Cause I mentioned it and it traveled like this worm virus or something. And now everyone’s talking about it, but there’s. there’s the imposter syndrome where the person is legitimately an imposter, right? And then there’s the imposter syndrome, which is I’m just really insecure about my level of ability. And that’s kind of holding me back and giving me the paralysis by over-analysis problem. And what I’ve my, what I’ve boiled this all down to is that we’re all imposters. And if we don’t act as if and lead with confidence. And we don’t project a certain level of confidence to executive management who has absolutely no clue what we’re talking about anyways, right? They don’t want to hear about nuts and bolts and NAT port forwarding and IP addressing. And I don’t know why Fortinet has the edge over Meraki or something. And I’m not saying that they do. I’m not saying that they do. Yeah. Yeah, just throwing that out there. And yet this idea of being humble, which I added to our values list, which we were going over last time, a secret values list, everybody, secret values list, and John’s seen it. John has seen the secret values list. And what do you think about our list of values? I’m going to share a screen with you right now so you can just describe this list of values without us actually going over them. I just want, let’s just review this again, because I want people to really be hyped about this when we do the ultimate reveal. And I may, maybe I’ll reveal one value set one value a day, but I just added humble to it, which it could have probably fall. All right. I’ll reveal one. It could have maybe fall, fell under, you know, ownership, right? you know, versus just getting the job versus responsibility and focusing on things that you can, you can change and, and, you know, and responding with ownership to continually improve my organization, my environment, humble, knowing you’re not always the smartest guy in the room. That’s what I added to it. And you helped kind of curate these two. But imposter syndrome falls somewhere in there. Being humble enough to know you don’t know everything, but also taking ownership in a space where maybe you are actually the smartest guy in the room because you’re at the executive roundtable, but you’re the best guy for the position. I don’t, any thoughts there?
Speaker 1 | 25:22.002
Yeah. So first and foremost, to the community, Phil’s kind of sharing a list right now that, you know, him and I have kind of talked to. previously and one of the things we talked about was the fact that you kind of have to have like a moral compass that’s like driving you as an individual right so like at any company I believe very much in the mission statement of the company and I usually print that out and like post it in my wall of my office right and then I will also post like an internal like I’ll make a like a mission statement for like my department which is IT and i’ll kind of make sure that you know our group is kind of following that and thinking about it regularly right and so uh what phil’s kind of done which is amazing is this is not just me this is hundreds of people he’s talked to over the past you know several years right um that he’s been hosting his podcast but he’s kind of just gathered different thoughts from different individuals with their permission and he said oh i love that thought could i use that thought as part of like my values and so he’s really just accumulated this uh amazing set of values that he’s using to kind of drive his company and his podcast and i mean he talks about strategic time management and trust and confidentiality and things like proactive leadership and ownership and just uh it’s a really i i’m quoted as saying when i first saw this list my my comment was basically this is one of the best lists of it values i’ve ever seen i just said wow it’s super impressive um well there is a quote something that someone said to me a long time ago that stuck with me for a long time i have no clue who said it and it was like basically if
Speaker 0 | 27:17.741
we say it no matter what right like if you say it if i say it and we’re speaking to somebody else it’s it’s it’s um suspect but if they say it it’s real just like if you’re giving a presentation to your executive management right if you’re constantly telling and telling and telling right and they’re not nodding their head or they’re not really engaged or they’re not it’s not about them right then it’s just you speaking right so if someone asks you after hey did it go great yeah it went awesome like that’s suspect if you ask the people that you gave the talk to How was that presentation without you in the room, without anyone else around, without you there so they can talk about you behind your back? And they say, yeah, that’s really promising. I’m really excited about that, about our IT department’s strategic roadmap. I think I’m really hopeful. Then it’s real. So I’m not just, you know, I could make up a bunch of a list of values, but this is like, this is from you guys. I’m just the host of a podcast that got locked up in Egypt, you know?
Speaker 1 | 28:27.770
Exactly. But you learn something from getting locked up, right? So kind of the moral of the story, everyone, is that, you know, again, we kind of talked a little bit about like security, like, very early in my career, I really started as like a programmer developer, that was kind of how I got started. And I knew nothing about security, right? Like I was, I was a programming very early in my life and I kind of got started like at like one of my uncle’s companies where my uncle was like a high executive there was a very small company and so I just kind of fell into IT where it was like I knew a bit of networking I knew a bit of programming and I was developing small apps for like this company and you know I didn’t necessarily know you know like security very well even though I was learning it in college and so forth. And it’s like, I had to admit that I wasn’t the smartest guy in the room. And I had to admit that even though you guys think I’m brilliant, because I’m able to create these applications, and I’ve been able to successfully kind of, you know, start leading a small team. These are areas that are not my strength. And I was smart enough to say, hey, I’m not the smartest guy in the room. I’m absolutely going to fail at this. But… Let’s get some outside help. Let’s leverage some technology providers out there that do know this really well, and let’s get them to help us understand this and implement it. And it was by admitting that I wasn’t the smartest guy, admitting that this is something I’m likely to fail at and tell upper management that like this isn’t one of my core strengths. That’s how I was able to get help and learn it by getting the right help. And so keep going.
Speaker 0 | 30:31.988
Keep going.
Speaker 1 | 30:32.549
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so like. Whether you’re Phil and you’re traveling into a country that you may not know the laws or the rules very well, and you’re basically risking getting locked up because you made a mistake, or you’re somebody who’s implementing a new technology standard for a company, and it’s not something that you know very well at that point in my career, and I’m not saying I’m an expert at it. I lean on a lot of really smart companies and organizations to help us implement. these standards and look that was 20 plus years ago i’ve learned a tremendous amount about it but it’s not like something i focus on every day right i lead a team um what i realize is by admitting that you’re not smartest guy in the room by willing to take a risk and risk failing at something you’re able to learn and grow like that’s the moral of the story except i
Speaker 0 | 31:34.078
Also believe, and I’m believing more and more and more every day that teamwork makes the dream work. I think there’s levels to that. I think there’s like, yeah, yeah, we’re on a team. Yeah, yeah, we’re on a team. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then there’s like, oh, wow, the team accomplished something. And then there’s like. We only hired hell yeses to be on the team. And the team like blew it out of the water. And then there was like, let’s all get together and think about what we could do that would really be like, I don’t know, life altering. Or really put our heads together and see how we can eliminate all our competition. You know, it’s highly, I think people highly underrate. the power of the team. Now, with that being said, there’s another duality. There’s another dilemma. There’s another dilemma. And that dilemma is when do we outsource and find the experts? And when do we upskill? And the dilemma is, and I think this comes from possibly maybe a fear of being an imposter. When in reality, you’re faking it anyways. You’re pretending. So you are the imposter. You are what you feared the most. And being humble and let me start over. There’s the when do we outsource and when do we upscale our current employees? And is there a point where we are wasting too much time upskilling our current employees? Because right now, going on right now, there’s this perception and maybe a reality that the mid-market IT space is imploding, that there is a shrinking of jobs, and that IT leadership is getting paid less money. I’m hearing this over and over again. So there’s this fear that, no, no, no, we can’t outsource because they’re going to lay us, they’re going to lay the team off, and I’ve got to protect the team. So we’re going to upskill and bring this in-house because if we don’t take care of this aspect of the company that someone else could be paid for, we’re going to lose our jobs. Do you see how those two go together?
Speaker 1 | 34:07.732
Yes. If there’s one thing I could say to the community, you get paid based on the value that you bring to the company. And if I would say sometimes that’s perceived value and you really have to be your own champion and a champion for your team. You’ve always got to put your team first. Building your team is extremely important. And by put your team first, what I’m saying is. before yourself, right? And you’ve always got to be looking for how to build the skill set of your team and how to build the trust of your team. You’ve got to have your team trust you. You’ve got to have your team trust each other. You’ve got to have your team sharing knowledge. Every week, I have a weekly IT meeting and You know, we go over the statistics, right, of how we’re doing on tickets and projects and things like that very, very briefly. We spend the utmost limited amount of time in that space because everybody knows it. They can view those reports at any time. The most important thing we do at those meetings is share any things that we’re working on where we might be struggling in that we can get help from other members of the team. and any areas that we feel like is like an accomplishment that we want to share with the team for their knowledge and maybe training, cross-training.
Speaker 0 | 35:44.243
How big is the team? How big is the team?
Speaker 1 | 35:49.644
Our team is not very big. So the company that I work for, just for everyone’s perspective right now, I would call, you know, small to medium business. We’re certainly over 100 employees, but we’re under 200 employees total. We’re somewhere in the middle of that. And revenue-wise, we’re sure over 100 million. But again, we’re under 200, just to give people some perspective. So my internal IT team is fairly small. We’re talking four to five individuals that are very, very talented. individuals and that’s a little bit of give and take. So the reason I say like four to five is I’ve had people come and go at different times, of course, as anybody has, right? I’ve also led like I’ve also worked for much bigger companies where I’ve led 15, 20, you know, plus individuals, right? I’ve been in charge of much larger teams, but for the most part, I’ve worked for small companies and those small companies can literally be, you know, two people where we’re only serving 20. 30, 50 individuals, or it can be a much bigger set. My IT team for the size of our company is actually pretty big. There are a lot of people that work with a lot less.
Speaker 0 | 37:08.869
Anyone with 200 people, the average is two.
Speaker 1 | 37:12.972
That’s extremely true. And that’s very, very common. And they will probably outsource a lot more than we do. And I would say they also, I have nothing, it’s outsourcing. In fact, I do it a lot. It also depends on what you are doing and the value that you’re providing.
Speaker 0 | 37:33.222
Type of company. Yeah, type of company.
Speaker 1 | 37:34.663
And the type of company. So I’ve been able to really build my IT team. And the reason I’ve been able to build my team is because I’ve raised the value of IT significantly within my organization because I started with two. And I’ve been able to raise with the value a lot more. And I’ll explain that. Um, when I came into the company that I came into, and I certainly am not saying anything negative about the company, like terrific company to work for.
Speaker 0 | 38:08.824
One thing real quick before you get into this.
Speaker 1 | 38:11.525
Sure.
Speaker 0 | 38:11.966
Please describe to me what the value of IT means to you, because that could mean a lot of things. When you say I raised the value of T IT, let’s just say we title this episode.
Speaker 1 | 38:25.832
how to raise the value of it in your organization three simple steps i don’t know whatever what does value mean to you um so the value that i t provides to a company is and
Speaker 0 | 38:42.823
i’m okay if it’s a like it means we’re worth more money it means we drive more revenue it means we we’re more efficient we we can i can literally put a number to it in an equation and we could probably do some kind of like i don’t know pre-calculus equation or something i don’t know
Speaker 1 | 38:56.120
i yeah well that’s that’s literally the answer i mean how how phil stated it is is a pretty good way to state it um the way that you make i.t valuable to a company is by increasing revenue reducing costs and decreasing complexity in the simplest form right so what do i mean by that um IT is not just about infrastructure and security, though that’s a huge part of it. So I do not want to discourage people that work in that area because that’s a huge part of it. But it’s how can you leverage that infrastructure? How can you leverage that security? How can you leverage your ERP, your CRM, your corporate performance management software? your HRIS software, whatever software or solutions you’re implementing at a company, whether it’s security or it’s your forward-facing applications that your team uses to process orders or assist customers. It’s how can you leverage that technology. to increase revenue or decrease costs, to automate, to reduce complexity, to simplify the business. That is how you will win the game. So literally every proposal that I put on the desk of my CFO to review or that I present to my steering committee, which are the other directors that I work with, along with our most senior management. any proposal that I bring forward, I have to actually have run the numbers on that. And granted, you’re estimating the outcomes, but you’re using data that you’ve gathered and you are, you know, pushing it a little bit, right? You need to make sure that you’re not going to oversell. You want to undersell. You should be exceeding the numbers that you’re projecting against is my point. So if I say that, hey, by way. working with Phil and his company, we are going to be able to expand more internationally, right? We’re gonna have an international plan that will allow us to chart into other countries more. So we’re both going to be able to expand more internationally, which is going to support our telecommunications and our ability to talk to get more international customers. And we’re going to be able to reduce costs by doing that, by redoing our phone systems and the way that that works. And I’ve analyzed the numbers against our current spend. I’ve analyzed our need to expand internationally. These are customers that are wanting to talk to us. That one of our barriers in being able to talk to those customers is that it’s too expensive for us to do so. And, you know, if we’re able to talk to these customers, we have a potential to get this additional revenue. So you can sell the solutions that you are implementing within your company to executive management by being able to talk the business language that they speak, which is things like EBITDA, net operating margin. You know, how am I going to… you know be able to make the cost of goods sold better by having more efficient demand planning solution right so it’s important to understand the business language and be able to speak to the business that’s how you’re going to increase the value of it you have
Speaker 0 | 42:59.669
you ever done a presentation Have you ever done a presentation on this where you present a, is it a specific, I don’t know, what’s your presentation process when you go in front of executive management?
Speaker 1 | 43:17.667
Sure. So, T is an old acronym.
Speaker 0 | 43:23.952
I mean, is there a template? Is there like a fairly good template?
Speaker 1 | 43:26.394
There is a template. So. Always apply the KISS principle, right?
Speaker 0 | 43:34.551
For sure.
Speaker 1 | 43:35.011
Keep it simple, stupid, right?
Speaker 0 | 43:36.612
Absolutely. Mine’s like, my first slide is like, total cost before. Second slide, total cost after. Third slide, savings. Then the next slide is, now what are the actual, like, what can we expect? You know, like, you know, literally five stupid slides. Yeah. Why should we not do this? Good question. Sign here. Okay.
Speaker 1 | 44:01.406
So I’m a firm believer in keep it simple, stupid, right? And as Phil alluded to in your presentations, keep your slides very focused, very simple. And then a given rule of thumb for me is your presentation should literally be no more than five slides. Like if you’re going into like the 10, 12 slide realm of your presentation, people are not going to remember what you’re telling them. They’re going to… grab a few things out of that and that’s all they’re going to remember. So you might as well just try to focus. And so the first thing you do is a brain dump, right? You need to get everything out. You need to brain dump everything that you’re trying to say and you need to make it as simple as possible. And so there are a lot of really good methodologies to do this. The methodology that I really like, and this is kind of a Six Sigma thing for any people that follow. Six Sigma or any of that type of. methodology or practice. If you don’t, if you’ve never heard of that, look it up. There are a lot of great YouTube videos that will explain it. There are courses and classes you can take, right? You can become a six in a black belt. And trust me, I believe very highly in all of that. I think it’s a great practice, but I’ll just kind of water it down for the people who are listening. So there’s a process called the A3 process. And what the A3 process is essentially, It sounds more complex than it is, but I’ll boil it down and try to be simple. It is basically figure out what your current state is, figure out what the state is that you want to get to. What’s like, where are you now? Where’s your end goal? And you want to make this as clear as possible in your presentation. And so if you follow the A3 process, the idea is to be able to present on like one sheet of paper that’s an a3 sheet of paper which is like a larger like 11 by 17 sheet of paper it’s like your whole idea should be able to fit on this piece of paper right but to boil down the process you figure out what your current state is where you want to be what your measurables of your current state is and what those measurables should look like when you get to the end you then figure out what are potential solutions and you should try to brainstorm through lots of different solutions, right? So whenever I go to do any solution, I will partner with several providers and I will try to get, you know, competitive quotes, right? Multiple competitive quotes. You absolutely need to do that. And there are certain providers that I like more than others, right? I will have certain relationships I build over time. with certain providers that i really value that partnership and um but you can’t solely rely on one provider you need to get multiple quotes and i don’t mean any disrespect to any providers i work with that’s just a practice you need to do what’s in the best interest of your company so you need to get multiple competitive quotes and so i am open to providers i tell providers like somebody like a phil with his company or somebody like a cw that i partner with or whoever the company is that I partner with and I’m name dropping at this point, but that’s okay. You know, it might be Dell. It might be CW. It might be Phil. It might be XYZ company, right? I’m getting quotes from these different companies.
Speaker 0 | 47:40.205
By the way, CDW by just real quick, just, just a shout out to CW, CDW I’m ready to accept sponsors. Just want to let you know, we are accepting sponsors, CDW. I don’t know who’s in charge over there, but come on, come on down. um um my point is i do get mixed i do get the thing with it and just not a side note it all depends on the people and um we’re going to get to your your ppt thing too as well but and i’m not trying to cut you off but it depends on the people i’ve known people that hate i mean with a passion hate windstream and lumen and at&t and verizon and i don’t I could list a whole bunch of other usual suspects out there. We could go down the lane, then we could go into ERP and we could go into Salesforce and we could go into, I don’t know, different applications. But it comes down to who’s your special team over there, who do you know on the inside, who cares, and who can get something done for you in the bureaucracy of the system.
Speaker 1 | 48:50.072
Sure. Look, all of us have had bad experiences. You know, there was a particular telecom provider that I did not have the greatest experience with. And, you know, obviously I get you can get locked in vendor locked in contract. And I was very vocal to that provider that I’m not having good experience. I’m not happy. You know, if I could leave, I would leave kind of statement. And I don’t like to tell anybody that, but I feel like it’s better to not sugarcoat it and tell them how it is and hope that they improve. And I’m going to choose not to ever publicly blast anybody in that way. But if there’s a good provider that I do work with, you know, I did a project with a company called Ad Tech that they were a great company to work with. I will give praise where praise is due. Right. I think that’s a worthy thing to do. You should acknowledge the companies that you work with that have done a good job.
Speaker 0 | 49:51.630
yeah my and my point was not to bash uh the winston horizon 18. these are the big yeah yeah it’s right the thing is if you’ve got if you know like look i know three of the head engineers and in the knock over there and i don’t have to call 1-800-abc-t-257-25 hit whatever go pound sand then you know okay great um but anyways back to back to rewind back to where we left off yeah um deciding on part so basically what we’re talking about is we’re like strategic partners and yeah
Speaker 1 | 50:30.354
And so we had a couple of segues, right? So one thing you were saying was, how do you know when to grow your internal team? How do you know that your team’s providing value, which I think we’ve covered pretty well? How do you know, like, when to outsource, when not to outsource? So again, in order to effectively grow IT, you need to prove that you’re you’re providing a value to a company. So you need to understand, you really need to know everything you can about the company that you work for. And you need to learn like, what is their best selling product? Why is it their best selling product? What is their product that doesn’t sell well? Why is it not selling well at the particular time? What are the processes that work really well for them? What are processes that don’t work really well for them? The more you learn and understand the business as a whole, the better leader you are going to be within your own IT space, right?
Speaker 0 | 51:37.711
And let’s not forget what could be.
Speaker 1 | 51:38.951
And you don’t need to be the expert of everything. Yeah.
Speaker 0 | 51:40.912
Let’s not forget what could be because it could be the best product. And well, what are all the channels that we’re delivering that product through? Well, what about this channel? What about that channel that we never touched?
Speaker 1 | 51:49.737
Yeah, exactly. So the more you learn about your company, what it does and the processes that it do. the more you can, this will probably be taken the wrong way, but like you’re not inserting IT, you’re trying to focus on how IT can help. And so when I talk to business leaders, I often ask them the question of, what areas are you struggling with in customer service? What processes are just kind of a pain for you. What are your pain points? And they’ll very openly have candid conversations and say, you know, I really just wish we could have better visibility on, you know, when we get our product, when our product is available, you know, when I could fulfill customer orders better, or maybe we just really would need better visibility on, you know, our customers if they’re, you know, in our call queue. Or maybe we just need better visibility on, you know, how fast our turnaround time is on customer complaints. You know, they’ll be very open and vocal to you about where their struggles are. And when you hear that, you need to find ways to solve their problems. And you’re not always going to be able to solve them with internal resources, right? You’re going to have to sometimes look elsewhere and partner. And, and. the best strength you can have as a leader is to identify what your team’s strengths are and what your team’s weaknesses are and where they can get better and how you can improve your team’s strengths and weaknesses. So often the conversation I have with my team is, hey, man, you are a great programmer, but maybe you’ve never been exposed to EDI before. So we’re going to partner with a really great EDI provider because we really want to automate order entry. And a lot of these companies that we work with, they speak this language. And this isn’t a language you’ve been exposed to, right? Like you’re a.NET programmer or you’re a, you know, whatever it is they specialize in, right? Like SQL programmer or, you know, PHP or whatever it is that they do. they just may not specialize in that language that thing you know maybe they’re a great bi person but they don’t know crystal reports right and so what you’re gonna do is you’re gonna partner with a company that does that really really well and you’re gonna bring your internal staff along for the ride you’re not just gonna outsource it directly what i like to do is say look i’m going to partner with you i want you to really help us but This guy is going to be like, he’s going to help manage this project. And I’m going to choose like one of my IT admins, or if it’s like a security project, my IT admin is going to learn. with the security company that’s helping us. If it’s a programming, like an automation project, my programmer, I’m going to take them along the ride and they’re going to learn this technology, at least a good part of it. They’re not going to be an overnight expert, but they’re going to get exposed to it. It’s going to raise their internal skillset. So they’re going to become more valuable to themselves. They’re going to become more valuable to you. They’re going to become more valuable to the company. They’re going to become more valuable out there on the open market if they choose to ever leave. And that’s okay. You cannot be afraid of that. You should always focus on growing your team and their skill set.
Speaker 0 | 55:43.197
It’s going to force renewal, regrowth, renewal, and lack of stagnation. And I think a lot of teams get stagnant and happy just clocking in and clocking out. We can’t have that if you really want to grow.
Speaker 1 | 55:54.260
Can I have it? A happy employee is a employee that’s always learning and growing.
Speaker 0 | 56:00.898
You have an acronym, PPT. Yes. Fire away.
Speaker 1 | 56:06.363
Yeah. So I like to talk about this within my own company and with different individuals outside of my company. I believe very much in people, process, technology. And it’s something I learned along the way. You know, so. Very early in my career, I made the mistake that most people do. I would get hyper excited about a new technology. It would be like, oh my gosh, this new automation technology I learned is so amazing. I can just automate our whole company using this technology, right? This is very early in my career. I would make that mistake.
Speaker 0 | 56:49.616
Call out, shout out to Greg Liddell. Shout out to Greg Liddell. Because every day we have conversations like, Phil, Phil, I know you tell me to stop telling you every shiny object, the shiny object. This one really is it. This one really is it. For real, this time you need to look at this one. Anyways, Greg, I love you.
Speaker 1 | 57:08.919
To chase the shiny objects. And Greg is particularly good at that, right? Shout out to Greg. Anyways, so it’s human nature to want to chase the shiny object. I can’t tell you enough how many executives are like, oh my gosh, this new AI technology I saw the other day is. awesome. And they’ll bring it to IT and they’ll be like, can we implement this in our company? And don’t get me wrong, I can be like that too. We all love the new shiny technology, but the people and the process must always come first. So very early in my career, I made the mistake of thinking I could just take technology and implement it in a company because, look, this is going to automate order entry. It’s going to save money. And the reality is and it’s going to free those people to do their best work so whenever i think automation i think you’re not doing it to eliminate people you’re doing it to free people so that they can provide a better higher value look doing order entry or data entry is pretty low value for a company if you could take this your You’re not trying to eliminate jobs. You’re trying to use automation to take more gain work and do something free those people to do something better. Anyways, don’t chase the technology, chase the people and the process first, and think of how you can use technology to support those people. If there’s one message people get out of this podcast, it’s that people and process come first. The technology should be used. to focus on what people are telling you is a problem, what people are telling you about their process and how their process maybe doesn’t work for them today. And use the technology to support and change that process in a good way.
Speaker 0 | 59:19.451
So what if you And the other thing that you mentioned earlier is you mentioned, you know, so you mentioned about going out and starting to search and keeping your mind open and all this stuff. And when we do that, it’s like, you know, you’re opening your mind to the shiny object world and the insanity out there. It’s a very, very, very big thing to say, go out and searching. So I want to just a couple of things. An example of this people process technology. in the real world, at least what I’ve experienced was when I first started this podcast. I started the podcast to serve, really to serve people consuming the, I don’t know, technology, consuming technology. And I thought it was, you know, I thought what people would want to have a podcast about is what we’ve got, we’re searching, there’s all these vendors and they’re… coming from all different angles at all the times and they’re calling me and they’re showing up in my linkedin box and they’re asking if i get five minutes on your calendar and they’re like you know hey i just want to remind you did you see this this email and you’re like oh my gosh so i figured out what people want is they they want the podcast they want a podcast about vendors so i started interviewing all these vendors and you had mentioned that you know you’d heard one of my really old podcasts with you know inky and and and dave and you know yeah yeah so and just you just
Speaker 1 | 60:52.868
I only happen to know about that because I, I heard it on Phil’s podcast.
Speaker 0 | 60:57.730
The irony of all that is like, you were, is like, people really didn’t want that or maybe they do. Maybe we should mix in a few more vendor interviews that have really cool stories. Cause he has a really cool story of, you know, you know, building crash bandicoot and graduating from MIT and, you know, being a whatever billionaire or however, you know, selling that Sony PlayStation open game. And, you know, that was really cool. But what I found is that what people, really wanted to hear, the more we asked, the more we asked the listeners is they wanted to hear from IT directors and their stories, and it just kind of fell into place. So one of the things that people can do to make sure that they start with the people process technology first is exactly what you said. And there’s a very simple way to do it. Go out to your people, go to their meetings and just ask them, Hey. When it comes to the IT department here at this company, what’s your single biggest frustration, problem, or concern?
Speaker 1 | 61:54.544
Just listen.
Speaker 0 | 61:55.745
Just listen.
Speaker 1 | 61:57.227
It’s listen. Yeah. And it’s not just the leaders. If you are in IT,
Speaker 0 | 62:05.794
whether you’re a student, you can’t build the process. If you try to go serve the people first with some sort of process or some sort of technology without first. asking that question. It sounds stupid. It sounds simple, right? It really does. But it’s not. Because once you ask that question, you’ve got to ask it of everybody. And what you’re going to find, if you only ask one person, it’s going to be a problem because you’re going to think this is it. No. You ask all 200 people in your organization or 50 of them via the various different segments and departments when it comes to marketing. And when it comes to the technology department serving marketing, when it comes to the technology department serving operations, when it comes to the technology department serving HR, what’s your single biggest problem or frustrator? What you’re going to find is you’re going to get a bunch of answers back. Give them a paragraph. Let them write a paragraph. Give them a little one question survey. Not five questions on all this. Not multiple choices. Just an open box. Just write whatever you want. It’s completely anonymous. I don’t even know who you are. Unless you’re a one person department. No, I know that’s a Sally in HR. But the point is you’re going to get all these answers back. But what you’re going to find is even if you surveyed a hundred people, those hundred people are only going to have three to four. common themes that come back at you those you can knock out you can knock it out of the park and then you can hear how they speak how they speak to technology and they’re not going to say oh um you know the the fiber mucks in the basements constantly dropping connection they’re not going to say that they’re going to say the you know the thingy i don’t know whatever the the phalange uh if someone’s going to catch that someone’s going to catch that um the phalange someone’s going to catch that yeah the phalange is broken okay and uh that shows you that you’re in the right demographic to listen to this podcast the you know you’re gonna get these three themes back and they’re all gonna be saying it with this language and then you can go back to your you can go back to your end users and you can act like a complete um imposter by using their language and in that case imposture is a good thing because you took put the people first you listen to them you understand their language and spit it back out to them and now you can actually build a process to fix what they care about even though you might know that there’s a bunch of other issues but you can start with their problems even though you know that there’s this massive security gap that you need to focus on and no one gives a crap about that because they’re feeding you some other kind of language but once you solve their thing as meaningless as it might seem to you or as simple, you know, they will listen to the bigger things that there’ll be open ears to.
Speaker 1 | 65:02.382
the stuff that they might not know about yeah look like 30 years ago you know the internet was the next big thing right and then it was cloud computing and then it was mobile and then it was you know today it’s ai right um yeah exactly generate generative ai and those are amazing technologies look that we all should be looking into in it and figuring out how they can help our organization but the people have to come first like number one statement that you should ingrain in yourself is value your people your people are the most valuable asset in your company they’re also the most expensive asset in your company right they’re also the most productive asset in your company like your people make or break your company you your company literally the focus of any company should always be to build the best team that they can Exactly.
Speaker 0 | 66:03.859
So why waste your people’s, why waste your most, why waste your most expensive people’s, why waste, why waste your most expensive commodity on something that you can outsource? Don’t, don’t have your people doing $10 an hour tasks. Keep going. I just, I just like a lot of people do that. They have, they’re like, we, we can, our IT, our IT teams can get laid off. We gotta, we gotta protect our people. Yeah, but they’re going to get, it’s going to happen anyways. If you don’t, why having them do a $10 task, have them do something that’s like going to produce and then. look at how you can change the face of the company.
Speaker 1 | 66:36.704
Yeah. Like, I mean, a lot of our, you know, there are people that, one thing I love like about RD app is that they’re very much like a company that promotes, you know, within and does a great job of that where they hire people, they, you know, will help with people’s like education expenses. Sometimes they will host regular training. kind of internal training. They really try to focus on growing people. And so you might have somebody who started in customer service, moved into product management, moved to account management. And it’s not to say like, you know, any of those departments are better than the other has nothing to do with that, but they’ve kind of learned different skills along the way and they figured out where they might be the most valuable to the company. And so like what we try to do is take technology and say, what is like repetitive tasks that like you just don’t that are take consuming your time that are just not really that valuable to the company. And we can take that task and figure out a way to automate it, figure out a way to, you know, use the latest and greatest technology to do and free you to do. something that is more valuable to yourself, that’s more fulfilling for you, that raises your value personally and within the company, you know, and we’re firm believers that like, look, if anybody ever like leaves, you know, we hope that they learned and grew along the way and that, you know, whatever’s best for them is what’s best for them. But we want to increase their value at all times. And so people come first. My boss, when he hired me, you know, he was a firm belief that I had internally, and it was something that stuck with me. He said, we put people before profit. And it’s like, that was like a very impactful statement to me. We will spend money to educate our people or to get the right technology or to make the business better. Because we know in the long run, if we invest in our people, invest in our business, we’re going to be more profitable. We’re going to provide better service to our end customer.
Speaker 0 | 69:04.920
Ironically, you have to profit to pay for your people.
Speaker 1 | 69:09.023
Oh, absolutely. And the thing is, if you focus the right way, like we started with a smaller IT department, like most companies do, because I don’t want to knock the previous administration, but they’re focusing on the wrong things. the attitude of service was, okay, you asked us for a report, we’ll provide you back with a quick report. We were serving our customer previously, but we weren’t saying, how could we make it so they don’t have to ask us for a report in the future? How can we make really good BI dashboards where they can filter the reports? their own way we can train them on how to use the technology efficiently and they don’t need to quit keep asking us for a report over and over and over again like Don’t get me wrong. You can go into SQL and just type a few lines of code and produce what they want and send it back to them. But you’re not enabling them to help themselves. You’re not enabling them with better information. You’re not enabling them with a tool that they can actually use to drive sales better.
Speaker 0 | 70:25.162
I think what you’re saying is they may have been focusing on the what versus the why, which comes back to the people again. which is really focused on why are they asking for this report what are they trying to achieve what are their dreams what are their goals what can you help like if the i.t department came in and we could help you you know i don’t know hit your you said sales hit hit quota you know hit 20 over 100 to quota and you know a third the time and what if you could do it yeah and then you could you know take the rest of the time off and have more time with your family and what if the We could reinvest in our people more and hire more people. That’s kind of the why around that person’s goals and jobs. It’s not just like, okay, what do you need? Okay, yeah, I can pump that out. That’s not putting the people first, their dreams, goals, aspirations, which we all have, which I think is what you’re getting at.
Speaker 1 | 71:26.160
Yeah, so I’m going to throw a couple terms out really quick. So in the IT world, we’re all familiar with what an operating system is, right? Windows, Linux, Apple, et cetera, VMware, whatever, right? There is a term called the enterprise operating system, EOS. And what it stands for is not a technical operating system, but like how a business operates, okay? And to boil it down to like it’s simple. simplest forms, you have to understand your people and your process, kind of coming back to my people process technology thing. And you’ve got to figure out how to like leverage the technology to support the business. So like something I’m a firm believer in is building strong relationships, not only with my C-suite, not only with my other directors and colleagues that I work with every day, but with every person. I walk in the office and some of us are more remote than others, right? I’m hybrid. I work half part-time at home, part-time in the office. But I take time out of my day. Every time I go into my current office or visit one of our other offices, like I travel often and try to visit our other offices, I make time to walk in and greet, you know, people in the lab, people in the warehouse floor, people, you know, in the finance department, like. You need to just spend a few minutes, talk to people, like listen to them, ask them about, you know, things outside of work, build relationships is really, really important. That’s something every person, regardless of IT or any, any position in the company, you should do. Relationships are important because the more you build a relationship, the more people will trust you. Okay. And that’s important. You need to build rapport and trust. Then when you meet with leaders. you ask them really you know I you need to understand the company’s like mission so like our company will have what’s called a wig so and this is part of the EOS thing so wig is a wildly important goal and so you might have kind of a you should most companies should have like a single wig for like the year and then you’ll have different like goals each quarter that will roll up to that wig. So we’ll have like, say, between three to five, like, enterprise wide projects that will support our wig, our wildly important goal. So those enterprise projects are per quarter. So you have, you know, three to five enterprise projects per quarter. And each quarter, you’ll get those projects done. And those projects will support the wig for like the whole year, basically. the wildly important goal so maybe the wildly important goal is to you know um increase you know revenue through customer satisfaction to x number right and so you might focus on you know the the company might say these are the four enterprise projects that support that wig and so what i do is i talk to leaders and i say hey um we all understand what the current enterprise projects are. What can I do to better support you? to meet your goals within that enterprise project what are your complaints what are your frustrations tell me about your process and how can i help you meet your targets if you help people reach their targets and their goals the sky’s the limit they will trust you they will partner with you um you will be successful in your journey there’s no doubt in my mind about that and that’s how we change the face of it yep it’s about people first it’s about understanding their process understanding their complaints uh understanding how you can help them improve their process how can you support their process it’s letting them be the process owners and you playing a supporting role using technology too change and modernize that process. And so that’s why we put people, processes, and technology together to support the goals of the people, support the goals of the company, and overall, you will be successful.
Speaker 0 | 76:12.736
John, I would love to talk to you all day. We could talk about a billion things. Maybe a billion is a little bit too excessive, but I would definitely love to talk more about your thoughts around growth mindset and mental health surrounding it. the corporate American life and burnout and hybrid workspace and leaving a legacy and what’s the end game for IT. So I would love to have you back, whether it be giving a private presentation to our VIP guests that have all been on the show behind the scenes. Yes, that’s a, what do we call that? That is a foreshadowing. It’s a foreshadowing, a foreshadowing of something amazing to come. You know, what if we really could change the face of IT? What if we could be amongst a group of peers that were relevant, where we could have relevant discussions without salespeople involved and without it being a mixed bag of people that didn’t understand each other, where we could have more sophisticated conversations? What if we could have, yeah, weekly meetings where we actually were able to hot seat or think tank problems that… One of us were dealing with cross-train and provide various different specialty trainings that we could share amongst and upskill existing employees. And when we do go and outsource, like, do we really just need to go out to the ether and try and figure it out and trust maybe a handful of vendors? Or is there a better way? Is there maybe possibly could there be maybe? I think there is. It’s been an absolute pleasure. having you on dissecting popular it nerds thank you sir any final words of wisdom just
Speaker 1 | 78:08.906
believe in yourself trust in your process people i would not be where i am today without great mentors great team that i work with your people are everything. Your team is everything.
Speaker 0 | 78:26.876
Teamwork makes the dream work. Colleagues constantly iterating, lots of patience. Things always take longer than expected.
Speaker 1 | 78:36.823
This is true.
Speaker 0 | 78:38.044
So multiply by three and then they’ll take shorter then. And then you’ll be like, wow, it didn’t take a… Redesigning that website didn’t take five years.
Speaker 1 | 78:49.311
Hey, learn from your mistakes. there’s every mistake you make you’re gonna thank you phil the pleasure is all mine all right have a great day all right thank you all right
