Speaker 0 | 00:09.586

Welcome back to Dissecting Popular IT Nerds. Today has been a long day coming. I have tried to reschedule this meeting maybe at least five times. Greg has rescheduled the meeting a couple times. But we are talking with a, as you put it, four-time CIO. That should be an award. This should be some kind of thing, you know. Greg. I hope I pronounced that right.

Speaker 1 | 00:31.557

You did.

Speaker 0 | 00:32.577

Oh, good. You know, I make a fool out of myself on a daily basis. My kids like to remind me. The assistant city manager, but really that’s what are titles nowadays anyways, right? We can just call you big deal. You know, you’re almost like a political figure in the IT world. Would you say that that’s a, is that a true statement?

Speaker 1 | 00:53.689

Well, I would say that I’m an advocate and I’m someone that’s a proponent. and make sure that we have priority on technology, smart technology for smart cities, so that we could have a lot of opportunities for a lot of the startups and a lot of the new generations that are up and coming. So I appreciate you inviting me on this show of yours. And I also want to commend you for all the things that you’re doing. This movement is so necessary. I think a lot of people need to realize that. it is possible and you can put a lot of sweat equity and put a lot of, you know, momentum in place to get a lot of things done and, and to reach the top. And so, you know, I’m happy to share my story with anyone that wants to know how to advance.

Speaker 0 | 01:43.162

Yeah. And we are speaking about IT, IT guys, believe it or not. Yes. And, and in the future of even our counterparts in the, you know, of women as well, even though they. occupy a very small percentage of the IT world space. And that is, I don’t know why that is. We’d have to really go back into history and look at it as to why that is. And probably some other, probably numerous reasons, but that is not what this show is about right now. Tell me a little bit about South Florida and where you’re at and what the IT, I want to talk a little bit about the, I guess, landscape. You’re in the public sector. Give me a little bit of what’s going on down there and how you see it from a technology leadership. perspective?

Speaker 1 | 02:24.976

So, you know, there’s a big demand for housing, affordable housing, job opportunity, growth. There’s a lot of people migrating from California, Silicon Valley, from New York. There’s a lot of great tax incentives for startups, a lot of opportunities to provide that support that you need to, you know, get your business up and running. running. And so we see that, you know, as a city and someone that’s in the public sector, we need to support these avenues, these initiatives, this new generation that is coming and thriving, you know, within the community. And, you know, we offer, you know, a variety of programs that are helpful. We have, you know, programs that provide the training, the support. for those individuals that are just starting a business. And we want to make sure that there’s ample infrastructure, you know, making sure that we have, you know, good affordable housing code and zoning laws that will make sure that, you know, this is a destination for everyone. So that’s a little bit about what I do. Yeah,

Speaker 0 | 03:44.810

well, let’s get real specific on what you do. Sure. So really, what does your job look like on a daily basis? And if it helps to say, hey, look, Phil, I came from, you know, whatever helped us this.

Speaker 1 | 03:59.582

Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally.

Speaker 0 | 04:00.823

What do you do right now? What do you do right now on a daily basis?

Speaker 1 | 04:03.523

On a daily basis, I attend a lot of meetings. I bring teams together. I support different departments, a lot of integration. We have a lot of technology that we have harnessed throughout the years. And what I’m… working with right now is the different departments making sure that these systems the data sets talk to each other and we’re trying to build um a level of of data structure that will enable us to get some ai in place so that’s what i’m currently at the moment doing i um those systems are legacy and

Speaker 0 | 04:39.040

we’re trying to patch things together is that you know that probably doesn’t exist in the world of course of course certainly so um you will find that

Speaker 1 | 04:47.728

You know, government’s very structured. It has a lot of, you know, there’s a lot of laws, ordinances that make it very complex. And so a lot of these systems are legacy and we are certainly on the path of transformation. And that is where, you know, we’re pushing systems to the cloud. As you alluded, I’m a four-time CIO and I’ve pushed a lot of systems to the cloud. My philosophy is that in the data closet, you should only have switches and routers, you know, and be lean. But, you know, right now. there are still agencies out there that need to go to the cloud. You need a lot of data architects, security personnel, a lot of project managers that are, you know, with the new agile approach. So I want to say there’s ample opportunity out there, you know, to be part of this tech transformation.

Speaker 0 | 05:49.469

I was writing some fearful IT copy. before I got on this, because I have these moments where I’m thinking, what’s really the problem? People are asking me, you know, what do you do sometimes? And you wonder really what you do and how do you help people? And one of these lines that I wrote, it’s almost like IT poetry. Some people ask me sometimes, is this poetry? What is this? Is this poetry or is this IT? But would you say… I would say… Would you say the technology as a team, your team in general, or just kind of maybe across the landscape in the United States, are a lot of technology leaders short-staffed? Because you mentioned bringing in project managers and agile and all this. And my thought was, you know, a lot of people don’t have the time to know what’s out there from a technology standpoint across the, you know, again, across the marketplace. They might not have the historical data or they do have the historical data, but they can’t sift and sort through. that data kind of like what you’re just alluding to. And they can’t prove something that they need to prove to executive management, but they don’t have the time or access or staff to do that. So there’s this kind of like, I don’t know, dark, dark area.

Speaker 1 | 07:09.417

So what I want to say about that is, you know, I’m sure that there are individuals listening to your podcast that probably say, you know, it’s not possible. It is hard, you know, for me to, to. develop some type of transformation, it’s going to require a lot of effort. And it’s probably, you know, something that I won’t be able to achieve. What I want to tell you is that it starts with small wins, right? So it starts with looking at certain systems that can, the low hanging fruits. What are systems out there that can perhaps go from a spreadsheet to maybe a cloud-based, you know, Google type of… data repository, what are some of the systems out there that perhaps can make use of the Amazon cloud or perhaps make use of the existing Azure infrastructure that perhaps is part of your subscription that your organization has? And what I want to say about that is you need to look for opportunities within your area, within your ecosystem. create those small wins, you gain momentum, the management will pick up and we’ll see that, hey, you know, this individual here is interested in growing, you know, and then that certainly opens the door for promotion, for opportunity, for growth, development. And so, you know, I want to just challenge everyone out there to seek opportunities from within, volunteer when someone places a challenge in front of you, you know, look at Look at how you can take that and hack it. You know, how can we perhaps look at it from a different lens and create an opportunity for the organization to add value and an opportunity for us to grow? So, you know, I want to say that in my past, right, as a CIO, that’s how I got to be a CIO. It’s by, you know, looking at further into. a complex situation? Is there another alternative? Perhaps is, can we partner with someone, maybe a startup that wants to prove themselves and maybe by, by pursuing the dilemma together, maybe both of us can create a win-win situation. So I just want to, you know, put that out there. There’s, there’s a lot of people that want to make a change, want to make a difference. And, and, and sometimes, you know, that is the motivator and it’s up to you to make, find those opportunities from within.

Speaker 0 | 09:49.193

I was, yeah. I was speaking with, interestingly enough, one time an enterprise procurement manager, and she said, I’d prefer to work with the startup or the newly emerging business because they’re hungry. They’re going to provide personalized support and they’re not going to throw me into some bureaucratic system. I can’t remember what exactly what the solution was that we were talking about. It might have been like, I think they were looking to like replace an Avaya phone system. And they said, you know, we just, we’re just kind of stuck in this bureaucratic thing and all of our end users don’t care. And, you know, so she was saying, I like bringing in. you know, a small business partner in this sense, in this case, that we can partner with.

Speaker 1 | 10:31.868

Absolutely.

Speaker 0 | 10:32.988

What do you do when you’re drinking from the fire hose? And I have a list of questions, but this is going off, just since this is just a great thing. What about that IT technology leader that’s just literally drinking from the fire hose all day, every day, don’t have a moment to take a breath? What do you do?

Speaker 1 | 10:47.914

One of the things you want to do is you got to realize you can’t do it by yourself. You got to surround yourself with competent people. You have to. build a winning team. You have to assess who are your colleagues and what do they have? What value do they bring to the table? And, you know, you want to look at those complex situations that are nonstop and you tackle those with a team approach, not as a singular approach. And by doing that, you know, you’re going to find that you’re going to create a lot of synergy and a lot of people. are going to pay attention to that. You know, I think leadership is very important today within the technology space. You need individuals that are committed, that have passion. And so, you know, I’d like to say that you got to take on these challenges with that group focus and like that, you can certainly overcome the challenges and you can rely on each other and build that trust. you know, to gain those accomplishments together. You know, I can’t stress that enough. I see sometimes, you know, tech folks that they get to, you know, to themselves or they don’t like to share. Sometimes maybe it’s, you know, they want to, you know, secure their future and the organization. But, you know, many times…

Speaker 0 | 12:18.694

The only one that knows how to do it best.

Speaker 1 | 12:20.535

Right, right. And I remember… You know, someone said, you know, when you’re the only one that knows how to do a certain thing, that’s not job security. That’s job insecurity, because when you are the single point of failure, they’re just going to bring in another system that has greater redundancy. And that’s it. You know, so, you know, I want to encourage everyone out there, you know, to consider how can I build my team? How can I get to know my colleagues further and build that trust so that trust will then build. commitment and then commitment builds performance.

Speaker 0 | 12:56.952

These things can roll over into your home life too, just so you know. Like I know my daughter is going to be a good leader because she, whenever she’s the one babysitting, she’s like delegating everything and doing nothing. I’m like, wow, you’re going to work out just like me. Great. My son’s at home. He’s like, no one’s helping. I’m doing it all. I’m like, Oh, see, you know, it’s anyways. My wife hates, she won’t let anyone do the laundry. I’m like, why? You’ve got so much laundry. Teach the kids to do the laundry. Stop this madness. This is insane. You know, eight kids worth of laundry. Like, forget about it. No, they don’t know how to fold. I’m like, teach them how to fold. They won’t fold, right? I’m like, who cares?

Speaker 1 | 13:31.396

Yeah, definitely, definitely. You know, and, you know, sharing is caring. And also sharing knowledge is also very important. I think that one of the best things that technologists can do is sharpen their soft skills, improve communication skills. You know, think about this. If you’re a startup, you know, who do you have to convey, to convince, to influence so that they can support you? If you’re within an organization, who do you have to talk to? Who do you have to write the email so that you can get the authorization to move forward? Or if you are, you know, an entrepreneur, you’re how are you going to convince your business partner or your customer that you have the right product? If you communicate appropriately, you’re certainly going to get the job, the, you’re going to get, you know, the, the, the purchase order, you’re going to get that, that opportunity, you know, to, to prove yourself. You know, I want to mention an app out there that is very helpful. If I may, it’s a free app. It’s called a WordTune. um word tuned and what that does is it helps you um you express what you want you type it in and it gives it to you like in five or six different ways via artificial intelligence and so You know, using tools as such.

Speaker 0 | 15:00.822

Word, WordTune,

Speaker 1 | 15:02.463

W-R-D-Tune. Yes, WordTune.

Speaker 0 | 15:04.926

I thought that was such a joke app at first when I saw that. I’m an English major, I’m a creative writing English major, right? I’m like, what?

Speaker 1 | 15:12.712

Yeah, no, no,

Speaker 0 | 15:13.573

no. Who’s going to use this?

Speaker 1 | 15:17.216

Yeah, no, and I’m going to tell you, you know, from, you know.

Speaker 0 | 15:20.198

Oh, here we go, example.

Speaker 1 | 15:21.920

Yeah, going from.

Speaker 0 | 15:23.461

IT guy, please pull up this application and use this.

Speaker 1 | 15:26.708

Yeah, definitely. Because, you know, I’m going to tell you, I had a struggle going from CIO to the executive suite, you know, as an assistant city manager. I had a hard time because I lost my writing skills. You know, you write casual emails and formal writing. And, you know, but, you know, you need you need those skills like to draw up business plans, drop strategy plans. And that’s what, you know, that’s what technologists, you know, need to all. always have in mind you know you need to um dialogue with people that are not technologists how do you convey to them how do you how do you reason with them how do you convince them that you know what you’re saying is the best approach you know so those are some of the things that can help out you know today land the next opportunity the next um you know uh promotion so

Speaker 0 | 16:16.952

Working in the public space, I’m looking up this word tune thing. Let’s see if I can pull it up in the meantime so we can do a funny test on this. When I told you I needed it in by this day, word tune. Okay.

Speaker 1 | 16:31.621

Yeah, word tune. Word tune it out.

Speaker 0 | 16:33.682

Before I send this email, you write an email sometimes. I don’t know if you’ve ever written an email for just like psychological. What do they call it? Where you like, you like write a letter to someone, but you don’t actually send it. What would we call that? Sometimes I write an email and you send it to yourself or you send it to someone you trust first and like, should I send this? And like, absolutely not. Do not send it.

Speaker 1 | 16:55.177

Great. Yes, go ahead.

Speaker 0 | 16:58.880

Working in the public space. What is the secret? What’s this, you know, if you’ve ever been involved, I don’t know if you’re involved in any nonprofits or volunteer your time in anything that you might be passionate about. But when you do that, it’s kind of like choosing your family. You can’t always choose your family. Like you’re stuck with them forever, right? You have to. All these people, there’s people in your family that you just, the personalities are, and you can’t, it’s just different. Right. You mentioned sharpening your soft skills. How have you learned to work with a greater team or people that you can’t choose all the time?

Speaker 1 | 17:37.994

Yeah. So, so Phil, you know, you know, you always have to stay fresh, you know? So. Sometimes you need to look outside of your role. Like you’ve mentioned, you volunteer time. For instance, I volunteer time with the Boys and Girls Club, with different organizations like police, athletic league, mentoring. I was part of Big Brothers Big Sisters. And what that helped me develop were, you know, soft skills, mentoring skills, facilitation skills. I really got involved. What really boosted me up was getting involved with this organization called the Project Management Institute. It’s a nonprofit. It’s a global nonprofit. And I actually volunteered, you know, there on, you know, to teach people how to get their project management certification. And by volunteering, one day, one of the local universities needed a substitute teacher. And they called this nonprofit. Hey, do you know anybody that can teach? I said, I know this guy named Greg. And I went over, I didn’t even know I was getting paid. You know, so that was about 14 years ago. And I’ve been teaching ever since, you know, on Saturdays. So, you know, like that, you know, you start out not thinking about how much money am I going to make or how is this going to support me? But rather like what what experience do I gain out of this? What skill set do I do I get to improve or do I get to perfect? Like, if you look at it through that lens, you’re certainly going to open up to. um, you know, more opportunities and that’s going to be personal growth, professional growth. And that’s what you can take to the table. That’s where you add value to your stakeholders and to your organization, your team, and so on.

Speaker 0 | 19:24.837

Any other, any other examples? I could say, go get a surfboard and go out into the surfing lineup. You’re going to learn a lot of different ways to communicate with people there. You go to Jiu Jitsu, go to the boxing club. You’re going to learn a different set of soft skills there. There’s a lot of different ways to.

Speaker 1 | 19:40.704

And you know what I’m going to tell you, like, don’t like this is another advice I tell people that you want to grow. Like, don’t wait to be asked. And this is what I mean by that. Look, cryptocurrency is like on the rise right now. Right. So maybe you can take a course on cryptocurrency. Learn it. Right. Learn it very well so that when, you know, people start taking payments or when your organization wants to transform itself and be part of that movement, you’re the expert. People know that you are on the up and up on that. Right. Things like as such. Right. For instance, you know, I was a programmer and, you know, I remember that as a programmer, I needed to rely a lot on security folks. And I. I would go back and forth with security individuals to, you know, make the application better. So what I did was, you know, let me get my CISSP so I can like, like talk and dialogue in their, in their language. Right. And that improved, you know, our, our, our delivery, you know, so don’t, don’t wait.

Speaker 0 | 20:47.975

You just gave two unbelievably amazing examples. I actually just, you just blew my mind. In other words, For anyone out there listening, right? Pick a somewhat hot topic in the news, whatever, Bitcoin, cryptocurrency, blockchain.

Speaker 1 | 21:05.656

Yeah.

Speaker 0 | 21:06.296

No one knows about this stuff in your organization. I guarantee you it’s way over their head. They have no clue.

Speaker 1 | 21:10.978

Right.

Speaker 0 | 21:11.898

Right. And now you’re the, now you’re the company expert. You’re instantly famous. Right. Amazing. And then you could apply it to, like you said, you could apply it to actually, hey, now we can take payments. Now we’re kind of leader in this space, piece, whatever. Second amazing thing is the massive miscommunication between security and software guys.

Speaker 1 | 21:32.185

Yeah.

Speaker 0 | 21:33.046

Who would, who would go figure like, Hey, I’m actually going to go learn to be, uh, it’s like, like engineering is like the sales, like deal killer department or something like that. Well, I’m just right. Engineer or the engineer goes and becomes a sales guy. Um, wow. Yeah. So simple. So,

Speaker 1 | 21:51.631

so, so, I mean, I’m going to tell you like, you know, I, As a CIO, I thought to myself, as a CIO, I improve an organization and I bring technology to an organization. So how can I go beyond that? How can I how can I improve a community? Right. How can I how can I bring technology to a community so that the community is improved? Not only my organization, but the entire community. And I’m going to tell you right now, I’m an assistant city manager. I was a city manager for a smaller city here in South Florida. I delivered smart technology where we changed all the water meters across all the 22,000 homes so that we can take meter reads, you know, digitally, you know, instead of sending people out there. You know, so I want to tell you, like, sometimes you’ve got to think beyond what’s in front of you. You need to look at the potential and sometimes you need to meditate. You know, I ask everyone to take time throughout the day, meditate before you start your day. And think about the journey that’s before you, how you can make it there. Look at yourself five years from now, 10 years from now. Take a notebook. You know, the other day, I remember I did, I started using Evernote like in 2009, 2010. And there was a note there that said all the things that I wanted to do. I put the car I wanted to buy, the things I wanted to buy for my wife. I put all, you know, like I wanted to do for my parents. I put there, you know, the degrees I wanted to get. And then one day I opened up that Evernote. I said, this is an old from 2009. I looked at it and let me tell you, and it was 2019. And I almost cried. I did cry. All right. Because I did all those things. And so when you put that perspective in the back of your mind, that’s going to be your motivator subconsciously for any little decision that you make. Anything that, you know, you’re going to you’re going to you make decisions throughout the day. Right. You make thousands of decisions throughout the day. Should I wake up? Should I stay asleep? OK, I’m up. Should I should I stay on on looking at social media or should I start getting ready? Or should I meditate? Right. You know, should I should I should I dress, you know, casual or formal? You know, you make decisions throughout the day. So those decisions will accumulate and be cumulative. okay, values for your future, right? So that’s something, I mean, that’s helped me out, meditation, putting it in writing, doing a vision diagram, you know, like your goals.

Speaker 0 | 24:36.282

I knew you were that guy. I was thinking about what I was going to ask you the other day before the meeting that we rescheduled again. I was thinking about you in the shower. Oh. Do you ever have your deepest thoughts in the shower? You’re having these moments like, I need my notebook here. I was thinking.

Speaker 1 | 24:53.779

You know what? You know what? I do. In fact, that’s what I do. You know, my wife says, why do you take so long? I said, because, you know, I’m focusing on the day. What am I going to bring? And the warm water just does it for me.

Speaker 0 | 25:08.128

Or you’re driving, drinking that coffee. You’re driving. Yes. You know, you kind of be like, yes. So I’m just, you know, I have a knack for being truthful. But yeah, no, the prayer thing for sure. And I had the same thing. I was working at Starbucks. And the irony is I worked for a company called. my first Cisco startup company that I worked for is this company called C beyond. I don’t know if you ever remember hearing them, but it’s just ironic because it was like seeing beyond. We used to joke around with like, well, I’m already are beyond. But, but yes, I did a similar, I took a Franklin Covey course years ago when I was a Starbucks manager, we did that list and I found the list because I went back and I wanted to go through with my kids. Like I’m like, What’s your personal mission statement? What are the roles we play in the family? What’s your vision? All that type of stuff. Yeah. And I looked at the old bucket list and it was, yeah, it was like everything had been checked off. Like, yeah. You know, it was like, it was like visit, like, you know, like it was like Africa or something like that. And, you know, I’ve been to at least Egypt twice. It was nice. I was locked up in jail in Egypt. So see a couple of months ago for four days. Cause they thought it was a fun time. That was light bulb. Never take it back for anything. That’s another show. Well, the, so that, that question that I was going to ask you that I was thinking about in deep thought while in the shower was when you’re having a low energy moment, when you’re having a slow day, when you’re just like, yeah, that day where you’re like, man, I’m just not feeling it today. What is it that keeps you going? What’s like, what’s your personal mission? What is it that’s like, no, because if I fail at this, this will not happen. In other words, what is that thing that keeps you going?

Speaker 1 | 26:50.280

So, you know, I want to share something that I’ve learned through my studies. It’s a study from the University of Maryland. This was in 1984. They did a study that said that throughout the day, we process 20 to 60,000 thoughts per day. Okay, that’s a lot. And that was in 1984, prior to social media, prior to technology. So imagine today that number must be much greater. The study also went on to say that per day, right, with those stats, we have more than 80% of our thoughts or up to 80% of our thoughts are negative and not true. And so the majority of our thoughts are negative. The majority of our thoughts are not true. And that’s something you need to realize. Because there will be a choke point. There will be a point where you start to, you know, to fail throughout the day or throughout the week. And you need to realize that a lot of people out there, you know, are depending on you. My family’s depending on me. The community’s depending on me. My team’s depending on me. And I also want to say that it’s okay to fail. It’s okay to get it wrong. All right. A lot of people needed to get it wrong. Look at Elon Musk. How many times? He probably had to, you know, deliver a prototype that failed. Look at what he has been able to do. You know, look at different people that in the past, you know, and how much effort, investment, you know, they’ve placed into, you know, the innovation that they’re trying to bring. So it’s okay to be wrong. It’s okay to fail. It’s okay to, you know, feel, you know, like, like I haven’t done much, but, you know, you got to realize you’re. You’re in the game. You’re in the seat. You’ve got to make it happen. And just realize that there are people out there. Your loved ones are depending on you. There are people that are looking at you. They’re watching you. And the junior people are also, you know, they’re counting on your success. And so having that in mind, that keeps me going. That keeps the flow going, the juice going.

Speaker 0 | 29:06.265

You really put on the pressure there. You really put on the pressure. Yeah, it reminds me of the famous Edison quote, right? He found out 10,000 ways not to invent a life bulb.

Speaker 1 | 29:13.598

That’s right. Right. Yeah, definitely.

Speaker 0 | 29:17.079

All right. Well, geez, no pressure. Everyone’s depending on you and your family’s going to starve to death. So now,

Speaker 1 | 29:25.564

you know, I think, you know, the other thing I want to mention is it’s also very important to balance it out. You’ve mentioned, Phil, that, you know, you have family, your daughter and so on. I think it’s very important to to realize that you need to balance it out. It’s not just about work. Make sure that you set time. aside for, you know, your loved ones, because that’s your emotional support. You know, so when you fail, those are the people that are going to pick you up. Those are people that are going to inspire you to do more. And if you don’t have those, then you’re not going to have that motivation. You know, so I encourage you to set time, set boundaries. and balance your time throughout the week.

Speaker 0 | 30:04.540

Yeah, that’s probably one of the biggest learnings for me is I’ve been going 110% pretty much my whole life. And only recently over the last couple of years have I learned to, you know, that it’s okay to spend time. It’s okay to not, you know, not every single thought that enters your brain has to be executed. So not 60,000 thoughts a day. So that’s, you know, how do you… How do you, I guess, make a difference? How do you care? The question would be, how do you care? You got someone that doesn’t care. You just show up to work every day. So is there even a potion for that?

Speaker 1 | 30:40.979

Is there something? Oh yeah.

Speaker 0 | 30:42.900

Oh yeah. That happens. Oh, and by the way, and the other thing that made me think is that 80% of the thoughts that were negative, one of the things that really helped me out a long time ago was Zig Ziegler. You know, it just always makes me think, you know, quit your stinking thinking. Cause it’s constantly what a lot of people are doing.

Speaker 1 | 30:56.966

I’m glad that you mentioned Zig Ziegler. Um, I. Also follow Les Brown. Les Brown is a motivational speaker.

Speaker 0 | 31:07.384

Yeah, just go download his audios. Everyone out there right now, go to audible.com, download. There’s you at the top, Les Brown, and put it in the car, and you’ll be leaping out of your car like, I can conquer the world.

Speaker 1 | 31:18.871

That’s right. But you need that. You need that because you’ve got 60,000 thoughts and 80% that are not true and negative. So you need that affirmation. You need that support. But going back to your question. Your question was, how do you deal with people that don’t care, disengage? So, you know, one of the things that I’ve learned through time is to improve my emotional intelligence, the EI. So it’s not about, you know, being successful. It’s not just about like learning technology and knowing about certs and getting your certs under your belt. But it’s also how do you work with others and how do you engage those individuals that are. perhaps not wanting to support, collaborate, or they wish you fail, right? So you got to use some EI. Yeah,

Speaker 0 | 32:09.805

you got to have the tough conversations too.

Speaker 1 | 32:11.826

Well, before you go in there, you got to know, you got to understand what are their triggers. Like, you know, like with you, Phil, I could tell that two things from just talking to you. You value your family a lot and you like to get things done, right? So if I’m going to come to you, I’m going to, and I want you to do, to do something and you’re resistant. What I’m probably going to come to you is with like, Hey, you know what? Um, Phil, let’s, let’s get on this project. You know, I think that, you know, this is going to really, uh, be a great experience. And I’m sure like, once we finished, I know your family, you know, it’s going to take time away from your family, but your family is going to be very proud of you. Boom. I subtly said that at the end, right? Your family will be proud of you. That’s going to like, trigger you. Maybe, maybe, it may, it may, it may prompt you to like say, oh, you know, I’m engaged. You know, I want to know, I want to be part of that team. I want to see what Greg’s up to, right? But I got to know a little bit about you. So, so again, remember what I said at the very beginning, get to know your colleagues. What are they like? What makes them tick? What prompts them? What is their motivator? Is it, is it, is it their family? What, what do they value a lot? Is it their knowledge? Is it having a sense of purpose? Is it accomplishing? Is it reward recognition? And like that, we’re going to engage them better.

Speaker 0 | 33:34.040

I came from a sales background after I got out of Starbucks. So we knew like every way. We just did everything we could to, it was like, okay, we got money for a reward. We’ve got recognition for award. We’ve got hit your quota, get, take the rest of the month off for your free time award. I mean, it was, that was ridiculous. It was a boiler room. That was back at CB on. I should get some CB on people. We should talk about some crazy shows. It’s better. Nice. It would be better than a reality show, honestly. Um, but yeah, no, the, the emotional intelligence, also a great book. It’s a book. Can, uh,

Speaker 1 | 34:08.178

anyone out there, Daniel Goldman, emotional intelligence, uh, 2.0.

Speaker 0 | 34:12.000

Yeah. Uh, super good. Uh, first break, all the rules was a big one for me. That helped me. Oh, nice. I don’t know if you’ve read that, but, uh, yeah. That was life-altering too, as far as conducting interviews and sit-downs with people and making sure to kind of connect, discover, respond, I guess, with your team. You mentioned networking was one of the biggest things you learned and you wish you had learned it earlier on in your career. What was the biggest door networking has ever opened up for you?

Speaker 1 | 34:42.952

So, again, it was the Project Management Institute. I learned, I’ve networked with so many people. you know and i learned something there i want to leave you with this um somebody somebody told me you want a piece of the pie right and so if you want a piece of the pie you know P-I-E. The first letter P is for performance. So you need to be very good at what you do. That is, you need to have all your certs. You need to be, if you’re a programmer, make sure you know how to code very well. If you’re a security expert, make sure you know all the techniques, the hazards, the risks, and how to encounter them. So that’s P. That’s performance. The next one is image. And I’m not saying how you look. What do people say when you’re not in the room? That’s your image. What do you leave behind? What is the sense that you leave people with when you leave the room, right? So that’s image. So P-I, right? And then the last one is E, exposure. You know, I think that after I graduated the University of Miami with my engineering degrees, I did not get much exposure. So I was in my cubicle programming, just, you know, getting stuff done. But I never got any exposure. And so it was until I started to get into these professional organizations like the Project Management Institute, like Toastmasters International. It was until then that, you know, I got that opportunity to get exposure, network with individuals and get to know, you know, those colleagues that are doing the same thing as I’m trying to do. And so we bounce off from each other ideas. and concepts and we help each other out. We have a, you know, a support system, a professional support system. So I encourage, you know, individuals out there, you know, go beyond, you know, LinkedIn, connect, do some phone calls, you know, don’t just, you know, like, you know, the, the posts, but have some meaningful conversations that can help you learn from your colleagues and, and, and get to know about what they’re doing. That’s going to inspire you. That’s going to motivate you. And it’s going to help you. you know, go beyond what you’re doing today.

Speaker 0 | 36:57.928

Yeah, the phone can be very intimidating to some people. I learned it in a very early stage. And I love the phone. I absolutely love the phone. Just call people and just start talking to them like you’ve known them for 50 years.

Speaker 1 | 37:11.692

No, it takes some time.

Speaker 0 | 37:13.893

How you doing? He’s like, who is this? Who am I talking to?

Speaker 1 | 37:16.213

Let me tell you. Let me tell you. So let me tell you, I meet a lot of people on LinkedIn. Yeah. And, you know, like now, you know, people are starting to beep. back up physically. Today, I went to a professional event today at noon. That’s why I’m dressed like this. With a tie and everything.

Speaker 0 | 37:33.199

Almost every day. That used to be me. I used to be clean. Now people throw money at me on the street.

Speaker 1 | 37:41.462

But, you know, and since I’ve already made that connection with LinkedIn, it’s like we’ve already known each other when we see each other in person. I’m meeting them in person for the first time. So what I want to say with that is, you know, expand your your network capabilities, you know, electronically, digitally pick up the phone, you know, and just, you know, see who’s out there that you who you can learn from.

Speaker 0 | 38:08.960

Last thing, man, what’s your end game? Last thing, really, what’s your end game? If I gave you 20 million dollars today, would you quit? And I mean, honestly, I want to know a true financial. Would you quit?

Speaker 1 | 38:18.285

I’d like to teach as many people as possible what I’ve learned. I’d like to, you know, work for university and be a professor. That’s where I’m going to.

Speaker 0 | 38:31.311

Teaching.

Speaker 1 | 38:31.831

Yeah. Teach others, you know, what I’ve learned. Yes, absolutely.

Speaker 0 | 38:36.393

So much education. I loved education after I graduated. That’s the sad thing. Yeah. Yeah. I loved education. I loved learning after I graduated. And now I spend more. I mean, I have spent so much money. on other courses and marketing and various different things and learning different things that is probably equal to a college education. I have to have spent at least a hundred thousand dollars over the last four years, I would think. And that’s like a fairly reasonable college education, I would think, you know, because there’s so much stuff that’s not taught.

Speaker 1 | 39:10.007

Right.

Speaker 0 | 39:10.607

Wouldn’t learn in school. This is one thing that it’s surprising to me that they don’t teach kids even just personal self-image, personal image, like. I don’t know, goal setting,

Speaker 1 | 39:23.037

right.

Speaker 0 | 39:23.657

You know, all of this stuff that we learned, they really don’t, they really don’t teach in school.

Speaker 1 | 39:28.700

Financial management, you know, how to, you know, manage your revenue. Right. Yeah.

Speaker 0 | 39:33.703

I didn’t know what a P&L was until I, until I got, you know, went through the Starbucks course. They gave me like a master’s in business, you know, flow through pop profit, you know, cost of goods. I mean, I guess if I went and got my business degree, I wouldn’t do all that stuff, but I didn’t. So. It has been an absolute pleasure.

Speaker 1 | 39:51.414

Same here.

Speaker 0 | 39:53.237

We haven’t talked much technology. I mean, we could have gotten to the nitty gritty on Azure and Amazon and stuff like that and migrate people to the cloud. But I’ve been an absolute pleasure talking to you. If you had any, you know, any message you wanted to send out to people out there listening, young entrepreneurs, or what is it?

Speaker 1 | 40:11.255

Never stop learning. Never stop learning. That’s, that’s what I want to say.

Speaker 0 | 40:18.158

Thank you so much, man. Have a great weekend. Hey,

Speaker 1 | 40:19.999

Phillip. Thank you so much, man. I hope you keep doing this. A lot of people will certainly benefit. I certainly benefit. And I appreciate you, you know, having me on and being able to. Collaborate and support your cause.

Speaker 0 | 40:33.129

Yeah, man. Anytime.