Speaker 0 | 00:00.420
All right, welcome everyone back to dissecting popular it nerds today. A little interesting start to the day. We’re all very busy. We’re speaking with Dennis Zesh from Wausau. Am I doing this right again? Did I screw that up? Okay. Wausau.
Speaker 1 | 00:15.066
Wausau.
Speaker 0 | 00:15.946
Wausau. I screwed up again for the second time. Wausau supply company. Really cool stuff, man. You guys are doing over there. I mean, it’s from like a, like a building supply stuff. So if anyone likes, you know, if people like go into like. If you want Home Depot and steroids and you want all that type of stuff, then that’s your company. But how did you get into the I mean, you really are kind of like a visionary. I mean, just from talking with you and seeing what you guys are doing over there, you really have a seat at the executive roundtable, so to speak, and really are a part of the visionary leadership of taking your company into the digital future but let’s go back in time first how did you even get into this thing called technology what was your first computer uh my first computer is when he uh gateway 2000 same i don’t know if that was my first computer that was my third computer but was it a pentium or 486 or what yeah i think it was a bit no i think it was a pentium at that time actually pentium pentium one so okay And did that have anything, did technology have any part in your childhood growing up or is it, I just ended up in IT due to any, you know. Right.
Speaker 1 | 01:30.409
You know, made full, full disclosure. So no, I don’t think growing up, um, I mean things like video game systems like Nintendo’s and Atari’s and all that stuff. Right. But, um, how did I end up in IT? It was the mid nineties, graduated college and there was two jobs for everybody basically. Right. The recruiters were everywhere. Um, I kind of. bounced around a little bit in different majors, but had an interest in business. And in the school I went to had a management information systems major. And the combination of technology with business was interesting to me, at least. I definitely had that interest in business, but building technology solutions was interesting. And that has held true for the last 27 years.
Speaker 0 | 02:17.749
Is there a certain role that… It’s interesting because I would say 90% of the people who… come on this show that are in some sort of IT leadership role, unless you’re really young and kind of a savant when it comes to this type of stuff, which we do have a few, most of them, their story is like that because there was no school. It was the school of kind of hard knocks where we came together. And then, you know, because this role, this IT leadership role has really been defined and is being defined right now. Moving forward, do you believe that, how do you think this role of technology leadership? should be defined and it should, should it be something that you go to school with, or can you even go to school about it? Should we just throw people in a room and break a bunch of stuff and be like, Hey, here’s how you fix it.
Speaker 1 | 03:01.771
Yeah. Um, so project-based work has always been my thing, right? I’ve never reported out on keeping the lights on. Um, you know, I know the place has to run and the place has to be secure and reliable, but the value add from, um, the IT role perspective in a big way comes from people that can initiate. drive change, take on whatever role is required in a team that is doing a transformational project, right? IT, because it sits somewhere in the middle, it seems like it’s a chance to work with all different business stakeholders, all different business disciplines. So you end up in a, you have an opportunity to bring all those people and those things together to kind of more quickly and more effectively drive change, I think. um it’s kind of just what we do right and our whole life our whole career is about changing things for the better or like you said maybe breaking it down but building it back up more efficiently um more effectively so back to the the question about what what how do you teach it i think it’s it’s got to be a lot of project-based stuff right i mean you have to know theory and you have to know definitions and that sort of thing but then you really have to know how to work with um
Speaker 0 | 04:20.072
multi-discipline teams cross-functional teams no absolutely because the the very annoying and almost insulting thing is to call the it guy that the guy that keeps the blinky lights on or it’s just the guy that keeps the systems running or he’s the guy that implements all the systems for us when in reality it should be the guy that has a vision into how do we when you say a project like i mean why would we be in a project to begin with right what what is the purpose of the project which would be to either serve some level of customer or to raise a some KPI and some, you know, particular, maybe a customer experience score, or how do we make more money here doing this? Uh,
Speaker 1 | 04:57.566
yeah, a really good example from, from my past is how do we. sustained growth, right? And how then with a, and this isn’t from Wausau Supply, but it holds true at many manufacturing companies. We were in a situation where we were over capacity, right? The whole, the industry had changed, capacity had changed. So we had more work than we knew what to do with. So we really needed to have a good tool to provide visibility of our schedule, to understand how to make good decisions on what jobs to take based on margin, right? When I first got to this company, the system was kind of just an electronic notebook, right? So schedule changes would happen. The schedulers would scramble to try to maybe make some adjustments on just the mainline machines out a week. We put in a system that a schedule change would get blown across the entire time horizon and across all of the manufacturing operations. And it ultimately provided the visibility that allowed us to double the company’s revenue over the course of five years. Where you couldn’t have sustained that otherwise, unless you added a ton of staff. But even then, I don’t think you could have sustained or supported that without that type of system.
Speaker 0 | 06:07.687
Okay, so we’ll get back to that. Let’s take a fun question in the meantime. All your C-level executives die in a flaming inferno, okay? And you have to single-handedly save the company. What would you do to drive efficiency and become a filthy rich tycoon? This could be an imaginary company. It doesn’t have to be your particular company. You could be like, hey, everything’s working fine right now. We’re already doing…
Speaker 1 | 06:29.747
You made me a little sick to my stomach with that question.
Speaker 0 | 06:33.089
No, no. We’re trying to brainstorm other questions that would make the show more fun. So that’s one. You need to take that one or I have a follow-up question. You can pass on that one if you’d like the second question.
Speaker 1 | 06:42.837
I could take a stab at answering that one, but it really starts with bringing people together. If there’s good succession planning going on, and I think there is. and people are prepared for a next man up situation. Back to IT being that, you know, I hate to use buzzword cliche terms, but that glue, that conduit that brings all the different disciplines together. I think an IT person, a good IT leader could step up in that situation and help develop a plan and help bring the right people together to keep things moving forward.
Speaker 0 | 07:18.694
Well, you brought up a good point. You said you have to always have those people that are ready to replace you in your role. And I remember I always had, I had one, I don’t know, your boss or whatever you want to call him back in the day. He always said, he’s like, yes, you’re ready to be promoted, but you can’t be promoted until you have the guy that’s going to replace you.
Speaker 1 | 07:34.962
Right.
Speaker 0 | 07:35.723
Right. So basically like a good, a good leader, a good, whatever manager or something, whatever position you’re in, in the company, like if people want to grow or be promoted or, you know, which I think most people would want to, if they’re in a career of some sort. should always be really teaching and leveling up the people that are below them because then that that actually tells you that you’re ready for like kind of like the next piece yeah which really right you have to trust you have to let people go so far and potentially even fail
Speaker 1 | 08:03.954
a little bit because that’s where the learning happens right i mean um try this give guidance but also trust and and let people do their jobs if you want to even call it that or not just their current job Let them do, give them opportunities to do that. The tasks that would be required of that leveled up position, read it and let them get so far before maybe sometimes you have to jump in and help, but oftentimes it, it, it pays off.
Speaker 0 | 08:34.654
Let them, let them fail and be uncomfortable on the first 50% of the task for 50% of the time and then help fill in and then let them take 75% and then let them take 90 or a hundred. we’re just making stuff up off the top of our head see this should be like a whole methodology now right somebody should be writing it down you know i’ll call this uh i know we’re gonna call this but it’s gonna um the uh howard zesh tech uh something i don’t know uh okay next question um we go to world war three it’s made up of security attacks and drones or skynet is real skynet is real right like you know we’re you know uh How would you fight this battle or how would you protect your fellow man from cyber attacks and crazy drones attacking as an IT guy? You’re put in charge. The smoke clears and it’s like you, you’re staying there like, hey, we need you. You’re the leader. You’re the guy with the most technology knowledge. What would you do?
Speaker 1 | 09:29.494
It would start first. This is no lie. It’s funny. And this is what comes right to mind. I said this to you in a different conversation. I love working on the business side, but man, I love meeting up with the… technical specialists that are passionate about what they do and that’s what they want to do, right? So you need those people on your team and then you need to give them a tool. I think of some MDR solutions that I’ve come across where You’ve got network sensors, you’ve got endpoint sensors and agents, other logging mechanisms, all reporting to the same central database. But then you have feeds coming from in the wild type attacks and that sort of thing that you can correlate them to say, oh, wow, if this is going on here and now I’m starting to see patterns of activity in my own company to get out ahead of those things. So you need the tool, but you absolutely need the people that are passionate about it. So how would I help? it all goes back to bringing the right people and tools together to, to solve that problem. I think it does.
Speaker 0 | 10:28.317
It’s, it’s actually when people said they’re scared of like AI and they’re scared of the new thing. I’m not, I’m kind of like a glass half old guy. So I see it as like, I’m like a glass half full guy, but I actually did get kind of scared the other day when my wife came to me and she’s like, did you see this the other day? That guy that was on like whatever. And I looked at it and I was like, cause like, this is fake. I was just like, honey, I was like, this is, like this is clearly ai like this is fake yeah right she’s no it’s not it’s real i’m like no it’s fake i trust me it’s fake and it took like a good 15 minutes of convincing and like looking up and showing other stuff to eventually get to the point was like see it’s a parody yeah and um and she’s not a she’s not dumb so i was like if you can be i was like if you can be you know like spoofed or whatever think of like the rest of Think of the rest of like, you know, just general end users or just think of, you know, I think of my father who’s going to be 90 in a month or something. You know, this it’s going to just be very believable and able to just kind of like put whatever you want to put in front of someone’s eyes.
Speaker 1 | 11:36.642
Yeah, as long as you say it confidently with what looks like a little bit of rationale. Plus, we said we’re all busy, right? People are too busy to take a second and think about what they’re seeing at times as well. So yeah, that is a little bit worrisome.
Speaker 0 | 11:50.458
As far as ongoing development for yourself or stuff that’s like in the tech world that just like you really love, like, do you have any do you have a YouTube channel or an Instagram person that you follow that you just love? Like you love when this person posts or a new or a new video comes up or something like what’s your favorite YouTube channel or like Instagram thing? Like for me, it’s like, unfortunately, it’s like it’s like kook fails or something. It’s a surfing thing. And I just love seeing people just like. you know, get trashed on waves and everything. And I just like, it’s one of those things that if I get caught in that stream, I’ll waste, you know, five, 10 minutes watching surfing videos. But, but what is it for you in the tech world?
Speaker 1 | 12:28.252
It’s well, yeah, in the tech world, I don’t, I mean, I’m, I’m on LinkedIn a lot. I do, but, but so much of my feed is now, um, personal development within, um, leadership roles basically. So I do enjoy reading about that. How do you, how do you interact with your team? How, you know, how do you build trust? How do you get people excited? And I don’t know that I even need to read that. I might be able to write some of that stuff. But the whole idea of how do you get excited about what you’re doing when you’re, especially on the application side of IT, right?
Speaker 0 | 12:59.826
Sweet. Give us something, man. How do we get people excited? Help me out. I want to get people excited.
Speaker 1 | 13:05.169
Yeah. I mean, at the end of the day, a lot of what I do with my team is really just build efficient ways to collect data, but not for the sake of collecting data, right? What are we going to turn around and do with that data? It’s going to make… a salesperson’s life easier because when they wake up on monday morning they can look at everything they did last week what appointments what opportunities do i have um and essentially have somebody telling them here’s what you should be working on to start your week right um pricing analysis things uh you
Speaker 0 | 13:33.567
know walking through that that’s actually pretty sweet like have you ever given a sales guy something he’s like dude i love it because usually they’re complete two separate roles usually the sales people don’t even know who it is no i know it so you
Speaker 1 | 13:46.234
yeah at this company it’s it’s really becoming a great partnership with sales and marketing and um we we recently went live with a lead to opportunity um crm process and a lot of what we saw as we were rolling it out is once people saw ideas on what could be possible oh i can do that well if i can do that here’s what the way i really need to be able to capture that so i can see it So we can have better conversations with our customers at the end of the year in terms of better partnerships and that sort of thing. So what I’m seeing here especially is as we put prototypes or starting projects out in front of people and they start to see what’s possible, they very quickly start asking for more and meaningful more, right? Not just move this field over there, that field over there, but literally better ways to capture data. With the understanding of how it would be reported out on later.
Speaker 0 | 14:42.407
That’s actually really deep. I don’t think you realize, I don’t think you realize how deep that is, what you really, that’s actually really deep. And what, and what I mean by that is that this could be the biggest learning actually from this show, which is how do you get. How do you get your end users, your customers, like whatever you want to call them. We don’t want to call them end users. Everyone knows end user. It’s not an end user, but like, you know, we shouldn’t use that term because some people refer to them as end losers, which is the bad way, which is the bad term. But it’s so funny. I can’t help but say it. But how do you get, well, first of all, the fact that how do you get sales and the best relationship is sales and IT? Are you kidding me? That’s like an oxymoron or something. I don’t know what that is. That’s like it shouldn’t be. But like, how do you get your people, your end users, your salespeople, your marketing people, and your CW executives to ask you for more? Like, I want more. You got to spend more.
Speaker 1 | 15:37.868
You can have more of my team.
Speaker 0 | 15:39.289
Have you seen that? Have you seen that budget where IT is only a 3% on the entire line item? Or IT is a 3% line item? That’s actually pretty deep. How do you get people excited about IT and asking for more? Especially the salespeople. Because I’ve come from a background of I worked at Starbucks. Then that was it. That was 20 years ago. Then I worked for a Cisco startup and I was in entry-level sales and worked my way up to inside sales. Sales manager, sales training, blah, blah, blah, all that stuff until I left and then went on to consulting and everything. But the CRM and SQL, they used to call SQL. I got to enter these numbers into SQL. It was always felt like… there was no value in the crm there was no value in the crm and there was no value in the reporting other than it was going to be upper management micromanaging you like was real michael scott it was real michael scott the office type stuff you know it was just like pointless crap so you’ve
Speaker 1 | 16:43.383
killed that you’ve slayed that yeah definitely made huge progress but so i’ll to add to that though because i don’t want to take all the credit right not really You have to have the right executive sponsor, right? The right sales leader that knows how to kind of instill that excitement. Like one of the things that I’ve heard is, man, when I was selling, I would have loved to have been able to go to one screen to check out open orders, check out currently active quotes that maybe could be closing this month. So as I’m going into a sales call, we can talk about that. What are the open support cases, maybe warranty claim cases and that sort of thing? really really quickly in the tool that’s in my hand even if it’s on a phone great right um really be able to quickly get the whole picture of what’s going on with that customer without having to run around asking that it guy to run a sequel for you and then compile that and then go through hard copies of things on your desk um that idea that you can get a really quick look at how that customer might be feeling is a big deal so back to that it’s you know it’s not there’s management level visibility there that can help in a big way, right? We’re busy, right? So we don’t have all the time in the world. So we have to be working on the opportunities, the biggest revenue potential, the customers that make sense to be working with, right? We have to make good decisions on where to prioritize our time. And that data at a management level helps, but also at the individual salesperson level, it helps as well.
Speaker 0 | 18:19.947
Is there a particular CRM that you love over others?
Speaker 1 | 18:23.489
There isn’t. Right? I mean, the one I’m working in, that’s a great question too. But if we just go back to me for a second, what I’m doing right now is my favorite thing, right? Like what tool am I working in? What project do I have going? I think it’s been said in my career that the ability to really focus and get transformational things done was a strength, right? The whole idea of, ah, we’re not just running around keeping the lights on. We’re, we’ve identified a great opportunity and we’re going to attack it and we’re going to get it done. My team operates the same way. So yeah, no, no real brand alliance, no specific tool alliance. We’re using D365 CRM right now.
Speaker 0 | 19:05.697
Okay, cool. There’s a, that we could do a whole series on that alone. Right. You know, you really could. I’d love to. I would love to, I would love to go full, full on Microsoft just for the podcast.
Speaker 1 | 19:21.887
Yes. That would be interesting.
Speaker 0 | 19:23.007
It probably wouldn’t make sense from like a monetary standpoint because I, you know, I want like, you know, power BI, I want all these boards. I want like, I want like everything, you know? And they’re like, oh yeah, sure. Nothing for, you can have that for 20 grand a month for your little rinky dink small team. You know? So instead I’ve got to have like, you know, 20 to 30 apps and, you know, hire a guy just to, to put those all together for the podcast. Yep. The. What’s, what about your, your methodology? Is there like, do you guys, are you guys like, you have all these Kanban boards going on and waterfall stuff and scrub, scrub masters and stuff like that, or scrub masters? I mean, uh, what? How do you organize? Do you have daily meetings, weekly meetings? Is there two-week sprints? What do you like doing the most? What do we say? You get into this rhythm. How do you find that? What’s the right rhythm for your team and how do you find that?
Speaker 1 | 20:16.959
It depends on the project for sure, but it is funny. In the time I’ve been here, we’ve gotten into this feeling of five-month projects and they resemble waterfall, but they’re a little… They’re also very hybrid-like, so we do get into the two-week sprint. Why is that? We got into one project, my team and I, and it became very necessary to say, all right, let’s only plan for the next week, right? Let’s say here’s what is of the utmost importance to get this thing going, to establish some momentum, and then we’ll come back. We’ll talk about what we did last week and what we’re going to do for the next week. We did that for like four weeks. This was on a project that was um struggling a little bit now the team was in a groove momentum momentum was established and now all of a sudden it became all right now we got some longer running things that have to get done over the next three months let’s say but we also got to do we got to keep sprinting this thing out that became more two week so all of a sudden we were in a all right we got a two-week sprint going on but also uh
Speaker 0 | 21:17.219
maybe data preparation for deliverable like how are you guys communicating then when are you having official meetings like how does it
Speaker 1 | 21:24.704
how does it look because i like i love this idea of creating momentum yes so weekly meetings for sure because if you don’t have at least weekly um monday tuesday monday morning tuesday afternoon what’s like what’s yeah that’s funny so there was a lot of thursday mornings for the the status type meeting on this one um but then there was breakout sessions specific to topic almost daily i would say right and then even to it people in a working session in a room daily as well um another project though we did We literally did every morning meetings and then a weekly status report out with some of the higher level project people.
Speaker 0 | 22:02.610
Were they working meetings or was it like 15 minutes? Who’s doing this? Who’s doing that? Go.
Speaker 1 | 22:07.293
They were a split between who’s doing what, who’s assigned to what, but then also working sessions. So they were about an hour and there were pretty big teams in there. But there was a user acceptance testing going on, which was more. which is less official than maybe what I just made it sound like, right? It’s more rapid prototyping, I would say. All right, we need to see if this scenario works, the right people are on the call, and go through the testing to see what the result was. So a lot of working sessions as well, not just who’s doing what, did you get it done yesterday, and what are you doing going into tomorrow. There was working sessions as well.
Speaker 0 | 22:47.255
In-person, Zoom, Teams, what were you guys doing?
Speaker 1 | 22:51.020
One project was a lot of in-person because it was more of an internal team, but then we used Teams mostly, internally especially, but even on this other project that I’m describing now was Teams. A bunch of people, a number of people in a room, but then that had a lot of external developers and external resources as well.
Speaker 0 | 23:10.572
Awesome. Sorry, I think the details of all this is fascinating. As far as communicating to the C-suite and stuff like that, are you communicating to them and giving updates or do they even care? Like what’s kind of the, what’s the, hey, I’m making sure that this is, this is the type of communication that they want or this is what’s necessary. And do you map all this out and put this stuff out or you just know to do it kind of naturally? Yes.
Speaker 1 | 23:37.128
I, I’ve been doing this stuff for a long time, right. And communicating to executives for a long time. So I know what to do, but we’re in the process as an IT department. Um, where we’re mapping it out into making it more formal, but not in a bureaucratic, not in a slow anything down kind of a way, just in a more organized, really in a more organized way that makes it more sustainable.
Speaker 0 | 23:59.725
Love it. Um, okay. Last couple of questions here. Top, um, you get, you get your choice here. Top three security vendors or worst sales experience ever. I’m practicing with different things. We’re trying to break up. We’re trying to, you know, we’re trying to break up this podcast so that it’s not just this one long monotone stream of just talking the whole time, which I can do is great. But I don’t think people love listening. You know, we got to break this thing up a little bit. So we need top three security vendors or worst sales experience ever.
Speaker 1 | 24:27.368
So let’s go worst sales experience ever.
Speaker 0 | 24:30.850
Yes. And I think,
Speaker 1 | 24:33.672
and I don’t even know if it was me getting sold. I kind of came into a situation where I think. The sales experience for the decision makers prior to me was bad and it was related to an ERP system. And the idea that a relationship was going to be established to develop that system to meet the company’s needs exactly. So I think… The expectation of what could be done in a short amount of time from a software development perspective was skewed. Now, I don’t know.
Speaker 0 | 25:07.371
In other words, it was way over-promised and vastly under-delivered.
Speaker 1 | 25:10.654
Way under-delivered, yep.
Speaker 0 | 25:12.275
Okay.
Speaker 1 | 25:12.595
Now, but was it because the decision makers were hearing what they wanted to hear? Or was it because they were being told that? I guess maybe, I don’t know. So I’m not sure. It was a bad sales experience overall, but I’m not sure where all of the responsibility lied.
Speaker 0 | 25:27.524
um just miscommunication across the board i think was the problem so it’s basically like we’re going to build this custom cr erp for you erp for you and it wasn’t at this company by the way yeah full disclosure and the so we’re going to build this custom erp for you and it’s going to do everything that you ever wanted to and it’s going to be a dream come true and it’s going to take uh two months yeah
Speaker 1 | 25:48.316
maybe a little bit more than two months but pretty close to that yeah non-disruptive easy to use um okay and uh
Speaker 0 | 25:55.300
And everyone, like, was there a POC or how, how was there some kind of demonstration of proof of concept that this is actually possible?
Speaker 1 | 26:02.983
Yeah, no, it was X’s on a requirements list.
Speaker 0 | 26:07.426
Wow. Okay. So then what happened?
Speaker 1 | 26:09.527
So yeah, no, I don’t know how full I can go, but it didn’t work. Put it that way.
Speaker 0 | 26:13.609
So nothing happened. It was a complete failure and we had to go to a different ERP. Yep. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. The ERP things can be really miserable. I happen to know a few people right now that are just really going through it. It’s like, it’s just, it can be really, really bad. It can be really bad because it’s so, there’s so many moving parts. Whatever ended up happening at the end, were they like, hey, sorry, like too bad, you know, like, I guess we’re just going to part ways.
Speaker 1 | 26:40.740
Or separate ways. That’s what happened. And that’s about all I probably can say on that. Now, I was part of an ERP implementation 13 years ago to get it. a different company that went great. And that was across four manufacturing facilities, um, a major distribution center. So it was a big deal and it, it, it got live. There was definitely learning curve, productivity, um, dips, but got built back and became really strong quickly.
Speaker 0 | 27:07.279
So, so when choosing an ERP, what should be the right, what should be the right sales process? Should there be some kind of like some kind of proof of concept or should there be some kind of verification of, you can do what you say you’re going to do type of thing?
Speaker 1 | 27:20.505
I think so. But is it practical, right? Well,
Speaker 0 | 27:23.728
some projects are so big, it’s almost impossible to like, from a software development standpoint, like how do you pick a good software developer?
Speaker 1 | 27:29.512
Right, and should you even be picking a developer when you’re talking ERP or, right?
Speaker 0 | 27:33.754
Exactly. Or should you be picking a product that needs to be like, you know, custom fit to you or something like that?
Speaker 1 | 27:41.039
Or with a realization that it is only going to get you 80% there and you’re going to have to find… Right. You got to put the right people on the team and convince them that, hey, we’re going to use this thing as designed. And then maybe staff appropriately. Not that that’s practical either, but knowing that there’s going to be learning curve and a productivity dip. How do you protect yourself against that? Especially if you’re trying to go away from antiquated on-premise to more modern cloud-based for other reasons, right? Not just for efficiencies, but for better integration capabilities so that you can put… more state-of-the-art bolt-on products in place more easily, right? So you’re not limited. Maybe that’s the real benefit versus just getting to the system in the first place.
Speaker 0 | 28:27.190
Yeah. I think this idea of coming to terms with the fact, just in general, as a general concept across the world, this idea that a software product can be perfect is what 90% of the people think can happen. But in reality, it can never happen. Right. It never happened. So it’s like, it’s like coming to terms with the fact that you will always be in some level of imperfection and chaos when it comes to your systems and technology.
Speaker 1 | 28:57.823
Exactly. That’s exactly right. Everything’s a starting point, something to build off of. Right. And then you solve or you, you deliver on an opportunity and that spawns 10 more. Right. And now you got to make a good decision on which way to go next.
Speaker 0 | 29:11.186
And this is the reason why people. live off the grid in a zert is eventually this is why they they eventually realized that i’m going to revert back to i don’t know i’m just gonna have 40 chickens live in a zert and a couple cows running around in milk and i’m gonna you know have a greenhouse and screw this yep
Speaker 1 | 29:31.678
i hear i hear that type of conversation more and more yeah i’m not saying it yet but i hear it i might be somewhere i know i think you might have another in another realm somewhere
Speaker 0 | 29:43.804
uh okay do you have any top do you have any really favorite vendors do you have like if you if you think in your head right now what’s your what’s your most favorite vendors because i’m gonna because i want to go after these people and ask them to sponsor the show that’s why i’m asking these questions selfishly all the time what is your absolute favorite venue like these guys just knock it out of the park every day all day yeah i
Speaker 1 | 30:03.716
So I,
Speaker 0 | 30:04.396
you can say, you can say I’m biased, but I mean, there’s, there must be someone that you love and it might be the else rep. It might actually be the rep, not the company, you know, because sometimes, because people buy from people that they like, right. People buy from people. They don’t, you know, they don’t buy from, you know, an app and then, you know, but I guess they do sometimes.
Speaker 1 | 30:21.729
Yeah. I’m out of, yeah. Maybe I won’t throw any names out there if that’s, if that’s all right.
Speaker 0 | 30:26.953
Okay. No problem. Yeah. Um. That tells me that you’re a secure company and ready for World War III, and people can hear off what I’m talking about. Great. It has been a pleasure having you on the show. Is there anything, any one thing that you wanted, you know, if you had one message to deliver out to your colleagues and other IT leaders out there? Is there something that you learned along the way that is, you know, profound or something that you fell upon that you never quite realized or something or any message that you’d like to deliver?
Speaker 1 | 30:53.473
Yeah. Okay. I’ll say this in my career. I think persistence. is is everything right stay with it you get live on something know right away that the next round of improvements is coming um the next big project is now clear because you just got that one done but it really comes back to you you can get through it but you have to stay with it you have to be you have to have a high sense of urgency in the right moment but otherwise it is and i know people talk about it being a marathon or a long game but you got to drift in and out of that at the appropriate times both with yourself and with your teams So just staying with it in persistence, perseverance, whatever the word is, will help you do a lot of great things.
Speaker 0 | 31:35.650
That’s actually really spot on. I can relate with that a lot. You know, being able to have a sense of urgency when you need it, but also at the same time, go to bed when you need to and realize that you’re going to feel a lot better the next morning. Like there’s some points where you just got so much burnout and so much eye strain and. you’re like, man, exhausted. And then you wake up the next day and you’re ready to go again.
Speaker 1 | 32:01.370
Members of my team and I left on a Friday in a hopeless situation. And by 10 o’clock the following Monday, we had everything figured out. Right? It’s crazy. And that’s a recent story.
Speaker 0 | 32:11.837
I love that. I actually love that. We left in a hopeless situation, went to bed, woke up, we’re like, ah, it’s not that bad. Thank you so much for being on Dissecting Pop, the righty nerd. It’s been a pleasure. Actually, some very good mind-blowing moments here.
Speaker 1 | 32:26.207
All right. Thank you.
