Speaker 0 | 00:09.645
All right. Welcome everyone back to Dissecting Popular IT Nerds. Today we have Sean Endler on the phone. We’ve actually been talking already for like a half an hour about all kinds of things that are, I don’t know if I’d say top secret. It’s just things that I don’t know if we would really talk about. people like that out in the open. I’m just saying that, but, uh, Hey man, you know, welcome to the show. Um, you’re, you’re kind of, um, we’re, we’re in the midst of a transition, so to speak, or what’s going on. I mean, uh, what are we doing right now? And let’s just talk about that because I don’t know if we’ve really talked about that on the show yet. Kind of what does a transition look like? What is, um, career pathing look like just from even just an emotional standpoint with other. you know, IT things, man. What’s going on right now in your life?
Speaker 1 | 01:01.290
Hey, thanks for having me. Yeah, you know, right now, making a big transition, moving into a bit more of the business side of technology. Working, going to be working for a company that does disaster recovery as a service, backups and cloud hosting. And I’m going to be the technical operations guy, more or less the COO role. So getting a little acknowledgement into the operational side of the businesses. Um, you know, just making that move professionally. It’s been a good move professionally, but I have to admit the emotional toll has been traumatic. Um, it all started probably about December for me and my family. It was time to make a change from where I was at. You see, sometimes you see the writing on the wall with things or you just feel like you’ve plateaued.
Speaker 0 | 01:47.625
Oh, I think that, I don’t know, at least for me, whenever I had made, uh, in the corporate world, business changes before you just kind of know things get stale. or like you said, there’s the writing on the wall. It’s just this, I don’t know, like a feeling. I don’t really know how to describe it either, but yeah, you just know. Well, go ahead.
Speaker 1 | 02:04.838
Yeah. You know, that was just it for me. I just kind of knew it was time to change. Things are happening. And what a whirlwind, you know, at first I was extremely nervous. You know, you really don’t know what’s out there for you. You don’t know if you’re a good sell, right? You kind of have this lack of confidence in yourself, even though you’ve done a massive amount of things, right? You feel like you’ve got this resume. I was listening to your book. podcast yesterday with Miguel that you did recently. And you guys talked about the LinkedIn and it really made me self-conscious about my LinkedIn because I totally used it as like a resume builder and as a way to sort of get myself out there. And I kind of had to rethink that, but you know, I just, I threw myself out there. I spent time updating everything. I just made the jump. I didn’t know exactly what I was going to do. I really wasn’t sure because I had never been able to answer that question. So it’s like, oh, well, what do you do? What are you going to do with your life? What do you want to be? You know, they’ve been asking me that since I was like 16 years old. Right. What do you want to be when you grow up? And I still don’t even know what I want to be. I just know I love being in technology. I want to help companies grow and evolve.
Speaker 0 | 03:09.248
Just a little information on everyone out there listening. I stayed back in first grade. I pretty much stared out the window my entire life. I was a horrible, horrible student. I mean, horrible. I was the guy that was procrastinating. I should have been on my Apple 2C probably like, you know, doing all the things that the other guys do, or I probably should have had a Commodore. I should have been coding and been really interested in all these things. I just wanted to like play whatever video game it was. You know what I mean? Even in computer class, I just wanted to play Oregon Trail.
Speaker 1 | 03:39.092
So,
Speaker 0 | 03:40.714
you know, so years later, you know, pre-med dropped that. Dropped out of… you know, even though I probably could have been good at it, you really have to be like totally die hard to be a doctor. You have to be like die hard. So, you know, I dropped pre-med and chemistry and biology for what creative writing. Okay. And now I’m in technology. So, um, uh, yeah. So I’m like the last person that someone should be talking to about now more driven than I ever was though. So there’s something to be said about that as well too. You know, like, Hey, you’re, uh, Your honors role student works for my dropout seat.
Speaker 1 | 04:18.471
That’s right. 100%. But anyway,
Speaker 0 | 04:23.835
so I’m not saying that that’s you at all. I’m just, you know, everyone looks at themselves like that. I think everyone, maybe, I think a lot of us don’t give ourselves the credit due. I think we’re all hard on ourselves. At least I am. That’s the biggest piece of feedback that anyone’s ever given me. Phil, don’t be so hard on yourself. So anyways, I thought your LinkedIn profile. is pretty darn good. But what I look for in a LinkedIn profile, when I’m looking at people, I’m looking for, okay, does it say IT? Does it say IT director? Does it say CTO? So that’s what I’m looking for. But yeah. The, uh, we could probably do some things on here that would really, really fire this up. But, but, um, the, the only difference is you have someone of a beard right now. No one can see this. We’re not, you know, we’re not, you know, I don’t do video. I just do audio, but no one can see this, but you’ve, you’ve got a beard. So now in you’re so clean shaven in your LinkedIn profile, I guess, I don’t know which one, I don’t know what’s really better. Maybe the beard might scare some people every now and then like people throw money at me on the street.
Speaker 1 | 05:31.417
I’ve never been one to shell out for a headshot I’ve never done that I have no idea where to even go so that’s my engagement photo yours is pretty good mine was a they say good there’s a wife in that picture I didn’t even know hopefully
Speaker 0 | 05:51.010
she listens to this and is like yeah My wife took mine of the, of the, of mine with the old phone. So it’s not really a selfie. They say, don’t do selfies. I don’t know. Where are we going with this? I don’t know. But anyways, you, you, you kind of made the jump from here. Here’s the, here’s the key. The key point of this is, is there’s other people out there listening right now. They’re like, okay, I might want to make a career transition. I’m in a career transition, or I might even be unemployed and not have a job. And I’m scared. I don’t know where the money is going to come in next. I’m hoping that the stimulus check number three comes in real soon, whatever it is. And the truth is you have the skills, you have the ability, but what gave you, I think that one of the main differentiating factors is IT guys that just don’t keep the lights on, that just don’t go through the daily motion of I got to get up and I got to get. this workload off of my plate. And there’s another side to the story, which is a visionary business leader and how am I driving the business forward? And there’s a certain level of balance between the two. And sometimes you’ve got to be able to let some of the other crap kind of go, even though it builds up like this, I don’t know, pile of papers on the desk type of thing and sacrifice for the… the business making more money and driving it forward, whatever that is. So I don’t know what it was for you, but what helps you make a decision because you I’m sure like most people, when you, when you go, you have multiple decisions. You can go one, or you can go another route. What, what made you make the decision that you made to go where you’re going right now?
Speaker 1 | 07:39.801
You know, ultimately I think it came down to leadership for me, right. Coming from an education background. always going through those changes and transitions and making all those adjustments. I’ve always been in a leadership sort of visionary pain sort of path. I could have gone down the sysadmin. You know, I used to do some coding back in the day. I could have jumped into a boot camp, right, and became more of a developer. I could have done a lot of those things. I could have stayed just IT, right, just infrastructure. I’ve been the infrastructure guy. But really it came down to is I wanted to have an impact. And I sort of found this because I interviewed for a job where I would have been the director of IT curriculum. And I would have been writing IT training programs and security training programs. And the reason why I interviewed for that is because I wanted to have some impact. And maybe that’s the teacher in me from years ago because I didn’t get into education for the money, obviously. Right. I got into it to have an impact and make a change. But I don’t feel that that was pushing me enough. and challenging me enough and i really had to reflect on it’s like you could get up and have fun writing curriculum every day but maybe there was no pressure to to succeed or maybe there was maybe there’s a drama yeah i need the drama i do i honestly do i thought maybe i didn’t right when i was leaving this job i thought i don’t want the stress i don’t want the angst i don’t want the anxiety but i need that talent and i guess it’s how you perceive it right if you look breeze
Speaker 0 | 09:11.065
life into you Yeah. It gives life to people. When I think back to some of the best jobs that I had living in the corporate world, and maybe that’s why I put so much passion into this podcast with no known where it’s going to go in the future. This is a fully funded podcast, funded by a lot of our back end, by my other companies. But it’d be nice if we could monetize this someday, but it’s really just kind of a passion thing. But the jobs that I always liked in the past were always the startups. It wasn’t the big corporate bureaucracy. Cause I hated the corporate bureaucracy. Cause you’re kind of like in the corporate bureaucracy, it’s like, how do I climb my way to the top and kind of step on everyone else to get by? And I’m not saying that’s really how it is, but it’s like, I’ve got, I’ve got to, I’ve got to go through a review process. I’ve got to be meets expectations. I’ve got to exceed expectations on this. I’ve got to do this. I’ve got to play the politics to get here, to get there. I don’t want that. I want to be thrown into the startup where it’s like, look, um, everyone’s wearing multiple hats or kind of all wearing multiple hats and we’ve got to succeed and we’re trying to grow. And this is what we’re trying to build. And, uh, we need you to build it. I don’t care how you drink it from the fire hose, whatever it is, you know, I don’t know. Maybe that’s,
Speaker 1 | 10:29.230
no, I agree with you.
Speaker 0 | 10:30.551
Okay.
Speaker 1 | 10:31.511
That’s so hardly what it is for me. I’ve been, I’ve always been a bit of a Jack of all trades, right? Like I’ve total infrastructure background, a little bit of coding, you know, a little bit of leadership. I’ve got all these little pieces and I’ve never wanted to just do switching. just do routing or just do anything like that. I’ve always wanted to be a little bit more involved. And I think I needed, I needed that part of it. And I needed to still stay in a place that I could have an impact. Right. And I get a change. And you find that when you’re in the IT role, quote unquote, IT by that definition, sometimes you’re limited on how you can have a say in things. You’ve always got to prove yourself. You’ve always got to go to the boss and be like, look, man, this is the reason why you could do this. You know? And this is the reason why we’ve got to change this policy, change this procedure and change the way we operate. And, you know, I really kind of wanted to make that shift. I wanted to be in a position where I could I could have that kind of impact and still make a change and show some positivity to the business where I didn’t have to fight the notion of being in IT. Because, you know, before it was you’re our vendor. We talked about this earlier. The bosses always said, well, you’re our vendor. You got to do what we say. Well, now as I’m transitioning more into the operational side of it with an IT background, you know, I’m getting to have a bit more of that say on how we do things where IT is the foundation of what we do. And that’s the big transition. I think we’ve got two things happening in the world right now. One, we talked about earlier, we got that big security push. Everybody’s figuring out the security thing and they need the security and they don’t know what to do and they’re all over the place. But the other thing is, you know, we’re coming up with businesses that are tech as a foundation. You know, that is what they do and that’s how they operate. But they’ve got to integrate the business with it. You know, and to me, that’s what DevOps means, to use that term in a blanket way. It’s integrating IT, not just development, but integrating IT into the operations of the business and looking at things from that perspective. So for me, that’s why this job came up. And it was really, I don’t want to say dream come true because that’s a little cheesy, but it was really a great opportunity for me to bridge that gap and make that transition into. into having the leadership, being a jack of all trades, and being able to integrate the business into the technology and getting those two to go hand in hand because we’ve seen it more and more over the last decade. I mean, just because, you know, you’ve got to pick an HR system now. You can’t do it on file and paper. You can’t do it by hand. You know, HR ladies are using scripts. They’re running out the directory stuff. You know, we’re seeing it everywhere with CRMs, with ERPs, with all these different systems that, you know, you’ve got to have a technical mind now to go run the business. You can’t just come out with a BS or BA in business and think you’re going to go in and run a tech company. I mean, it just doesn’t work. You know, we’re seeing it with CEOs and startups. You know, there were all these developers or there were these tech guys that became these CEOs, and now they’re running businesses. Well, we need that everywhere. We need that IT mindset and that IT experience mentality to bleed over into the business because we’re going to help make these businesses run more effectively and efficiently, right, and to make more money because we’re going to streamline it. Security is going to be at the back. forefront of our thoughts and why we’re doing things. The technology and the staying in a position to be innovative is always huge. And I think business people, they always hindered that. They got in the way of that, in my opinion, because they didn’t know. They were afraid. They didn’t have that experience. They hadn’t gone through the growing pains that we all went through, living through changes in technology, having to grind it out inside the switching, plugging in the cables in the server room. dealing with all that kind of stuff. They haven’t been there before, so they don’t know. And now we’re bringing that knowledge of this past 15, 20 years of IT. We’re bringing that knowledge over to the business. And now we’re seeing that we need people like that. We need people to have that sort of mentality and have that experience to help us run our business because it doesn’t work the other way. So for me, that was really what made this exciting to me was that opportunity to step over. I’ve always debated on when the next play would be for me. Would it be more technical? Do I want to be in the weeds? Do I want to be living in the systems? Do I want to live in the command line? Right. Or do I want to stay in leadership? And when it came down to months and months of stress and anxiety, and I think this gray hair you see really has been more prevalent over the last three months than before, because I had no idea. And I had to kind of go through this experience. And I think sometimes when it comes to people making the transition, kind of go back to the original question here is you’ve got to just go in and get the experience. Because the first couple months for me were a crazy hard, no sleep, stress. tension, all kinds of things. But after a couple of months of experiencing it, then the next two months were great. I saw my value, you know, ultimately over the course of three months, I had six different job offers. I said no to a couple of them. You know, I said, no, this isn’t the right fit for me. It’s not what I’m looking to do. You know, I had all these different options that I didn’t think I would have when I went down there and I didn’t know where they’re the first couple of months, but just getting experience.
Speaker 0 | 15:38.724
No to job offers. That’s. There’s so many mind-blowing things that you just said, and I’m taking notes pretty fast here, but saying no to job offers is probably one of the most powerful things someone can do. I can clearly remember turning, I can clearly remember very clearly, and it was a massive transition point for me in my life, saying no to being probably the opportunity of being A, the number one leader. in this kind of like inside sales operation piece for a large tech company, one of the largest multi-billion dollar company with the opportunity to come lead that. And I can clearly remember saying no. And when I said no, something like shocking to me happened. I went from guy that’s just not a top executive. like an inside seal. I went from not just being a top executive to being someone that people want to loan money to. That’s a big difference because they went from like, Hey, we can tell that you’re turning us down. And I’m pretty disappointed in that. This was the conversation. I can tell that you’re turning us down. And I can’t say that I’m happy about that, but there’s no way that we, in there’s no way that we don’t want to not work with you. So Why, why basically like, first of all, why are you saying no to us? And what can we do to work with you? I said, well, because I just, I don’t want to work in the corporate world anymore and I want to start my own, you know, business. And this is what I see the marketplace doing. And this is how I see myself providing value in the marketplace. And this is where I want to go. Oh, well, what’s stopping you? I was like, honestly, I $240,000. I was like $240,000 to keep the light on and pay for my, I think I had. six kids at the time, you know, now I’ve got eight, you know, so like I had a responsibility as a father, you know, to like, you know, pay for, you know, keep the lights on.
Speaker 1 | 17:40.834
All right.
Speaker 0 | 17:41.535
And they’re like, okay, we’ll give it to you.
Speaker 1 | 17:43.816
Wow. I’m jealous. That’s crazy. I mean, I said no. And one of the big ones when I said no to the guy was, it was really cool. We had a great relationship. And you know, the first thing he said was, yeah, I could tell it was coming. I could just feel it. Right. And I’m like, well, you know, I still appreciate you and everything you have for me. And he’s like, but I want you to, I still want you to contribute. He’s like, will you consult for me? Stay on and be a consultant. See?
Speaker 0 | 18:06.020
Yeah, see.
Speaker 1 | 18:07.061
You know, and that opens doors for you. And it does things because the hardest thing for us in IT, I think, is to understand our value because we don’t see it. Right. We’re not on the other end of it. We don’t really know what’s going on. But you know how valuable and I know how valuable a really good IT guy is. I mean, they’re freaking priceless, to be honest with you. If you get somebody in there that loves and has a passion and can do these things. and just has that mindset and that thought, I mean, you’re going to do whatever you can to try and keep these people. Make them happy.
Speaker 0 | 18:36.444
Hey, thank you. Don’t just show up every day like, hey, computer turned on today.
Speaker 1 | 18:42.927
You know, you just can’t thank them enough because they’re a dime a dozen. And the way this world has grown and these things have changed, you get a ton of IT, don’t get me wrong, but there’s a difference between maybe the IT guy who can do it and the IT guy who sees it, right? He kind of sees the big picture. sees the value that they put. And I don’t think we value ourselves as often as we should. And it’s hard to do because of the role we play in the organization. We’re always going to be at the bottom, right? We’re always keeping the lights on, keeping things going.
Speaker 0 | 19:11.422
Never good enough. It’s never good enough. And when you’re in something that’s like never good enough, and there’s always more to do, it’s hard to think of yourself as, I don’t want to say successful, but it’s hard to think of yourself as like people really appreciate what I do because you yourself are so hard on yourself.
Speaker 1 | 19:28.757
No, you never can do it right.
Speaker 0 | 19:30.160
Yeah, you know what I mean? Like you yourself always know that it’s like a never-ending battle, right? It’s like appreciating. I always use the mailman as that, right? Like appreciating the mailman. No, because. They take a vacation and when they take a vacation or when there’s a holiday and the U.S. mail is shut down, it’s not really a holiday because they know they’re coming in twice as much mail, if not 10 times more because it’s during the holidays. Right. So how is that a vacation when you know you’re coming in the next day and it’s the job that never ends? It’s like the song that never ends.
Speaker 1 | 20:06.141
I’m telling you, it doesn’t.
Speaker 0 | 20:07.022
The song that never ends. It goes on and on. My friend, it’s like the mail, you know, it’s like, it’s just so like, I, um, but I guess again, that’s life, right? Like life’s not a destination or it’s a journey, not a destination, whatever. We’ve heard those. Um, but, uh, so I guess it’s a, yeah, I guess that’s kind of like maybe it, maybe there is a destination. I don’t know. Jeff Bezos, like, has he reached the, has he reached the end? No, it’s like never enough. It’s just an amazing thing to me when you think about that. Right.
Speaker 1 | 20:38.137
Like, I always see that picture of him in the office with Amazon on a piece of paper in the corner.
Speaker 0 | 20:43.481
Yeah. You know, like, like think about it. Let’s, let’s go back now. Let’s just go back in time. And there’s, well, first of all, I don’t know where, I don’t even know how to transition. Maybe we shouldn’t because should DevOps be a title? Should DevOps be like a new, should it be like a title? should be director of devops should it be um i mean instead of it director should it be like you know devops ninja should it be um that’d be awesome i’d love that wouldn’t that be a great title like i know what i know what devops means and i do it you know you know it’s to me it’s a it’s
Speaker 1 | 21:18.966
a to me it’s a and i think the biggest thing is when you look at it the first thing they always say in a devops transition is culture and that’s such a hard thing but you know we have these you we have these jobs that are out there now that are,
Speaker 0 | 21:30.373
Oh, one other thing too, because this is just kind of funny. Do you think it guys make up different titles and make up things that are really just because they’re like, want to separate themselves as technical, like nerds and superior people that we need?
Speaker 1 | 21:43.978
I’m a piece of nerd based on your quiz. Right. So we like all got,
Speaker 0 | 21:47.600
we didn’t make things up. Like we need to make up the crazy terms like DevOps and someone else looks at it and they’re like, Oh, so basically you’re like a project manager.
Speaker 1 | 21:56.343
Yeah. Right. Basically, that’s really all you are.
Speaker 0 | 21:59.241
Can we like, you know, like, no, no, no, no, no.
Speaker 1 | 22:02.002
Nobody wants to be like an active directory admin, right? Like that doesn’t sound cool. That’s not, that’s not fun. We got to have some, some cloud. Like it goes back to what we were saying, man, you got to get some.
Speaker 0 | 22:11.686
I’m good with the database. So we’re going to call it director of it.
Speaker 1 | 22:16.888
Perfect. Right. Yeah. Perfect. We got to get some clout somehow. We got to separate ourselves from just being, you know,
Speaker 0 | 22:23.771
normal people have no clue. what that means. Like how many, just out of curiosity, how many CEOs, if we went out there right now, the in America, know if we said, yeah, man, who’s your director of DevOps? What would they say?
Speaker 1 | 22:35.156
Clueless, clueless, clueless. I put the Phoenix Project book on my EVP’s desk and I let it sit there for, I’m not kidding you, a year, a year. And every time I went, I said, you have to read this. Let me send you the audible book. Let me do what I have to do. got to do this. What’s that about?
Speaker 0 | 22:53.148
Is that like about the like atomic bomb or something? Like, what’s that about? No,
Speaker 1 | 22:55.909
this is the,
Speaker 0 | 22:58.289
I know.
Speaker 1 | 22:58.509
Oh,
Speaker 0 | 23:01.190
thank God. Okay. What’s that about? Is that like, you know, like Area 51 or something?
Speaker 1 | 23:04.831
Yeah.
Speaker 0 | 23:06.272
Have a listen.
Speaker 1 | 23:06.732
Yeah, this is a great book. And you know that in the Unicorn Project, I mean, those are the ones that were transitions for me, right? I came across those when I was looking at this, because I’ve always had this niche. It started with the classroom. You know, you said that I was in the Native American Pueblo. Well, that was the bottom of the bottom. right? And they had no technology. They had nothing, man. They were just crap. And I started to try and integrate technology as much as I could into these places. And, you know, so that integration and that evolution of trying to implement technology and push it in everywhere I went led me down to that DevOps title one day. And I found that book, right? And I read that book and I listened to that book. And honestly, I know it’s so cheesy, but it was life-changing for me because it changed my entire perspective. So this last company I was with, Ultraman, they did software. They were a maintenance and mechanical and engineering logistics software.
Speaker 0 | 23:57.070
Here’s the key thing about, just before you go on with the Phoenix project, the weird thing about it though, and here’s the strange thing, is he fell into that role. He didn’t even ask for it.
Speaker 1 | 24:09.375
He turned down.
Speaker 0 | 24:10.916
He didn’t want anything to do that. He was an IT dude forced into a business. Yeah. save the life. It’s literally like it, it’s a real, and this is why I wrote this thing the other day and I was just doing it to really troll people, uh, which was, uh, I’m not a, uh, um like i was like i’m not a fan of comic books like i you know i don’t like george lucas like like all these you know i’m like saying like all these things like you know like a fan of stan lee i’m really not like i don’t care like you know no one’s special you know why because there’s real heroes in the world that don’t get you know like that story alone is insane like that’s like a real life I can, I can feel, I can just feel the corporate pressure. I can feel the pressure on like, honey, I’m coming home late today. I can feel the, the anxiety. I can feel the pressure from all aspects of that role. And, um, the thing, but the thing is, is right. Like he was like thrown into that. So that’s like it guy thrown into the business world. And now we’re going to, again, make up a title called DevOps and that’s what it’s called now. And,
Speaker 1 | 25:25.157
um,
Speaker 0 | 25:25.826
I don’t know where I’m going with that. I think the point is, is, uh, and back to the, you know, the, the Indian reservation and bringing technology in and kind of bringing a foundation and all that stuff. Um,
Speaker 1 | 25:38.397
But I think he’s paving the way, you know, those are the ones that are the things that hasn’t been that long, right? That’s 2014, 2013.
Speaker 0 | 25:44.422
Yeah, it has to happen.
Speaker 1 | 25:46.043
It’s the next generation, man. And we’re the next generation. You know, I’m in my early, early forties, right? I’m in my early forties. We’ve got 25 years. of work left let’s hope i work till i’m 70 and can i just say what does early
Speaker 0 | 25:56.879
40s mean so when you say 43
Speaker 1 | 25:58.759
43 okay good because i’m 44 is that still early 40s yeah you’re still good man you haven’t hit that five yeah then you’re mid right then you’re in the midpoint right so yeah so i’m 43 we’re the next generation of people and it’s going to happen right and then we’re going to be the ones that come in and transition because now we’re getting all these people that grew up with tech i mean i didn’t fully grow up with tech right i still had CD players. My dad’s car started an 8-track in it when I was a kid. We were on the evolution of all these things as they kind of came up. But this next generation…
Speaker 0 | 26:31.667
The first thing I thought of when you said we were bringing technology and I thought of the old overhead projectors with the clear… What did we call those?
Speaker 1 | 26:37.950
Oh my god, you’re killing me with the overhead pens and they were the clear sheets of…
Speaker 0 | 26:43.874
Basically the little mirror thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1 | 26:45.515
it was an overhead.
Speaker 0 | 26:48.156
Overhead projector, right? No, it’s not. What is it called?
Speaker 1 | 26:51.346
I got them. Yeah. But yeah, we lived and died on those. I came up writing on that. You know, the weird thing for me is I write really well on the chalkboard and you give me a dry erase marker and it’s horrible. But I was like,
Speaker 0 | 27:05.117
why are we doing this? I remember the dry erase marker. I was like, this seems weird. This does, this just seems like, isn’t this more expensive? Like, why are we writing?
Speaker 1 | 27:10.982
You want to be the kid that got to wash off those sheets of paper that the teacher would give you at the end of class. Right. She’d be like, Hey, I need to go rinse these clear sheets off. And you’d want to be that kid who got to go out and like, you know, clap the razors and go rinse off the overhead seats and stuff. So, you know, but we, we came up there and this next generation of kids, you know, my daughters, I’m sure your kids, you know, they’re living and dying in technology and they’re going to have a different perspective on it. They’re going to expect it in the business. They’re going to expect it in the jobs. They’re going to expect this from the companies that sell them things, you know,
Speaker 0 | 27:42.665
I hope you’re right about the next generation because I think about that too. I’m just waiting for the good old boys to die. Sorry, everyone. give me my pants let’s go the x and i like to i always like to hear when the x generation people are like the saviors you know like the x generation we’re like the small generation that are like the saviors you know we’re like in between millennials lost the lost generation right rumors but all responsibility falls on us we’re the only ones that care anymore you know that’s how i see it yeah
Speaker 1 | 28:09.203
we’re on that last my last boss is 35 years at the same company come on man come on you got to step away let somebody else do this it’s time Right? We need some new blood. We need some new thought processes.
Speaker 0 | 28:23.227
My brother worked 33 years at the same company.
Speaker 1 | 28:27.769
How? How’d you do that?
Speaker 0 | 28:29.170
Only to get laid off. Only to get laid off.
Speaker 1 | 28:31.711
Are you kidding me?
Speaker 0 | 28:32.912
33 years. Can you imagine? The IT guy there has been there for longer. And when I sat in with them and still on Lotus Notes.
Speaker 1 | 28:41.916
No, that’s what happens. That’s what happens.
Speaker 0 | 28:44.617
Lotus Notes. And I’m like, you know, I’m like. This wasn’t that long ago. This was like three or four years ago. I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re still on Lotus Notes. I hope not. That’s crazy.
Speaker 1 | 28:52.722
I got a terrible story with that one, right? This is the hypocritical myth of the whole situation. So I come on board. I was brought on board to make change, right? To implement change. So that’s why they brought me on. So I started with the school system here, and I revamped their entire support system here in Albuquerque. We got 165 schools in Albuquerque spread out. So I had 50,000 students, 2,500 teachers. Revamped the whole thing. caught wind of it and said, come over here, we’ll pay you. Right. And they doubled my salary. So my wife would have killed me if I said no. I had to take the opportunity. And then I go in and well, they had a couple of IT guys, real small IT guys. Right. And first thing is I get in there and they’re like, we want you to bring your own people over. We’re getting rid of these guys. And I’m like, okay. I’m like,
Speaker 0 | 29:38.572
uh… You got to fire them today, by the way.
Speaker 1 | 29:40.393
Yeah, exactly. You got to get rid of them. These guys have been doing this for nine years. You got to get rid of them and you better be on top of your game. And so the HR lady is like, well, yeah, you know, nine years. I think it’s time for them to do something new. And I looked at her and I said, well, hasn’t so-and-so been here for 30 years? Hasn’t so-and-so been here for 20 years? Well, yeah, isn’t it time for them to do something new? But it was time for the IT guys to go on and do something else because they had been there eight, nine years, but the leadership could be there 30 years, 20 years, 25 years, having not seen anything else, had not had any other experiences, had been with different companies that ran things differently, that did things differently, couldn’t inject that sort of change and that mentality into what they couldn’t. Just put a word around it. Couldn’t innovate.
Speaker 0 | 30:29.228
I get it. I get it. I can’t judge amount of time anyone’s been at the company because they could be completely stale and stagnant or they could be there for, and they could have made exceptional changes and grown the company like exponentially over time. So there’s the time factor is not really the issue, but it definitely is something that cause it’s kind of like looking at, like if I just scroll through your profile right now. first of all again being a next generation person like i like what i see because i see you know like on average three to four years at every company right we can judge it based on that we know that people do that they make a judgment within the first like seven seconds and like to move on or not but um it’s
Speaker 1 | 31:08.221
tough but you got to bring change and how do you get that in this world you can’t get comfortable the point is is like you really just
Speaker 0 | 31:15.074
Like anyone that’s gotten really comfortable in their role and sat there and think that it’s going to be there forever. I don’t care what it is. You really just, anything could happen at any moment.
Speaker 1 | 31:25.639
And we were development. We were software development. Think about how software development.
Speaker 0 | 31:29.401
Jobs got cancer and died. You know, like nothing, anything can happen at any moment.
Speaker 1 | 31:34.204
Yeah. And you got to be able to bring on. And the big thing for me is you, I’ve always thought of this, you know, because I came up in the restaurant businesses, managing and stuff. You’ve got to be training your replacement. Right. And you’ve got to be kind of working in to the next guy to come take your role. And if you’re not really doing that, you’re not trying to build your company up internally and give people opportunities and do things, then you’re really lacking that innovation.
Speaker 0 | 31:56.573
I do have a thing about restaurant guys, because that’s how I started as well. Everything. My very first job was dishwasher. I mean, cooking, cooks, everything. You know, I have seen it, done it. Right. And I think there’s something to be said about restaurant workers and technology, because anyone that’s been in restaurants, if you get into technology, you’re like. you can make money doing this stuff like i don’t have to work and sweat and like a hundred like this is amazing and everyone else is complaining what are you complaining about yes did you i’m out of here go work the line at ihop yeah then come talk to me about working right
Speaker 1 | 32:29.974
my dad had me work in maryland conservation corps when i was 13 and i’m at 5 a.m going chopping down trees you know
Speaker 0 | 32:36.918
I got to do that for my kids. Like where, what can I, where can I send my kids to start chopping down trees and stuff? I was having this conversation the other day with one of my kids. I was like, Oh really? Okay. Well, let’s pull up job core. I’m like, can I get you in? Can I, can I pay for this?
Speaker 1 | 32:54.009
Can I pay you to have my kid come work? I do. You know, I was free labor for him. He did. He was a teacher, right? So the summer job was Maryland conservation core and they would go clear out areas and top down trees and stuff. And I was free labor. you know, it seems like you get a worker’s permit. He made me, but he’s also old school, right? He’s a guy from the forties, you know, he grew up grinding and working. So he wanted me to have that. And I have to appreciate it because I work my butt off constantly whenever it comes to things. But, you know, I think that, you know, this next generation is going to have a different perspective and we got to get these people in, man, we got to get change in there. And when we got the old guys, the good old boys need to move on. God love them. Thank you for the opportunity. Thanks for what you built. You know, thanks for everything you’ve done, but it’s time. You know, it’s time for some new blood.
Speaker 0 | 33:36.036
It’s time for some new thoughts. We’re putting you on the wooden barge with all the sticks built up and we’re pouring gasoline on it. We’re floating you out in the ocean and lighting it.
Speaker 1 | 33:45.282
Thank you. Off the Valhalla. Thank you much for your time. Right. Go retire.
Speaker 0 | 33:53.007
Go enjoy it. Let’s bring in a bunch of DevOps guys now and block dissecting popular IT nerds. How do we how do we do a let’s do a you know, I’m not that stupid. We’re going to do a DDoS attack on you.
Speaker 1 | 34:04.194
Right? Wait until that happens, man. Wait until they all get beat down on that over the years. Microsoft stuff that happened. I wanted to go back to my last company and go in and be like, do you want to thank me? And they’re like, what do you mean? Because I got you off of Exchange 13. And 7, mind you, when I showed up. Exchange 2007 server and a 13 server.
Speaker 0 | 34:25.839
Hosted Outlook mailboxes.
Speaker 1 | 34:28.159
Yes, all day. The first thing I did. I’m like, off you go. I’m like, get out of this. I’m like, we’re not doing this nonsense. And lo and behold, guess who didn’t have to go through a bunch of hell the other day, the last week or whatever, when it came to that stuff.
Speaker 0 | 34:39.526
Do you think a lot of people are still hosting? Do you think people still have like hosted exchange, like on site? Do you think a lot of people, well, obviously I already answered the question because there’s people with Lotus Notes.
Speaker 1 | 34:48.208
So more than you would think. People are scared of subscription services. They see Microsoft hitting you every month and they freak out about it. But I’m like, you pay like 40 grand a year for this though.
Speaker 0 | 35:01.392
Yeah, I think it will. I think that will, I think there’s a lot of things are going to change. We don’t have time to talk about this other thing, which I was going to ask you about, you know, outsourcing help desk and level three, you know, Sally spreadsheet type of stuff. But everyone out there listening, by the way, I always forget to do this. If you like the show, if you like, you know, whatever we’re attempting to do over here, which is, you know, I’m sure. Drive IT into the future as a business force multiplier and highlight the IT saviors and maybe get HR to thank them from time to time for fixing the spreadsheet problems, whatever it is. Please, the four major sources of traffic and the people that take all of your data, and we should just know this, this should just be like common sense, right, are Google, Amazon, Facebook, and… Apple and Apple is the main driver of podcasts. So I don’t care if you’re a droid lover and you will only listen to this on other things. I need reviews on Apple podcasts. That means you need to just Google dissecting popular it nerds. And the first thing that’s going to pop up is iTunes, Apple podcasts, whatever it is, click on that, scroll to the bottom and give us your honest review. If you hate it and it’s a stupid find, give me a, give me a bad review, but I just need reviews. So scroll down and give me a review. Sean, the Last question, because you’re building DevOps inside a technology company. How does that feel shadowed inside? Are we working inside the realm, inside the world, so to speak, of the shadow of other big tech companies? Are we from a, to speak even in… um conspiracy theories type of speak are we inside the shadow inside kind of like the realm of other big tech companies does that make sense i’m trying to i’m trying to um you know like every like even if we’re going to drive marketing like i was just talking about like the four major drivers right we know like whatever it is like 49 cents every dollar spent online is spent on amazon or whatever it is are we working inside those frameworks Or can we build new frameworks in the future? Or is it pretty much we’re kind of setting the foundation here and Amazon and Azure and all these things are going to be pretty much it for the future. What’s the deal there?
Speaker 1 | 37:34.055
No, I think we’re on the precipice here. God love them. Thanks for doing what you do and showing us the way, but we’re all going to pave our own way. We’re going to look at the difference because Google and Amazon, those are still business people running it. They just have like… capital to hire all the IT people and all the tech people. But we’ve got to get that innovation and that change in there and the way we operate and the way we do things. So, you know, my goal is the company I’m going to, we’re competing ultimately with companies like Amazon and Google and Azure, you know, maybe looking for a different market or different people. We’re going to be competing with them. And the way we compete with them is to do things a little bit differently, right? It’s to offer different service, whether it be white glove, whether it be a different approach.
Speaker 0 | 38:19.691
Niche down. Maybe to just niche down into particular vertical markets and stuff like that. Like what I’ve learned is a lot of people that are going to compete with, say, a Google or compete with some of the big boys, they’ve got to really, like they say, the riches are in the niches. We’ve got to niche down and provide a very specific, like you said, white glove handhold service to X.
Speaker 1 | 38:38.284
Right. And the way I get across there is through, I think this comes from that Six Sigma approach that I got somewhere along the lines of the project management training I got, right? Was that effective and efficient? Because I think that being effective and efficient as a business is implementing technologies and staying innovative and staying on top of it. Automation, right? Automation, having clean, clear processes and procedures that support human resources, that are legally binding, that are all those good things that are in there. But we’re using IT and technology as a foundation. And I think that right there over the course of the next 10, 15 years is going to be hugely different. And it’s going to be a different perspective that we’re going to see for people. You know, we’re going to see a change come in and we’re not going to want to all buy into Amazon and we’re not going to want to all do that. Now, are they going to be there? Absolutely. I mean, come on, you know, AT&T, what’s Bell Atlantic? right? Was Verizon, was so-and-so. They’re just going to change the name and the logo somewhere along the lines. They’re too big to kill, but that doesn’t mean that we have to live in their shadow per se, right? We can just use them as an example of how to be successful and how to go in there. And I don’t think that in the world we live in a social media of exposed information, you know, everybody’s out there.
Speaker 0 | 39:49.593
I’m just using it as an example because I don’t know if I would bring up the baby bells and not as an example to mimic.
Speaker 1 | 39:55.858
Thank you.
Speaker 0 | 39:57.880
You know what I mean? I would use that as an example to not, you know, like, Hey, here’s how, here’s what not, here’s what we could not do and make your life a lot better.
Speaker 1 | 40:05.826
Right. Yeah. As examples of how to be successful, whether positive or negative. Right. Cause you always, you always look at that, but we get to be our own thing. We get to be changed and change is inevitable. And they’re kind of showing us a little bit with that. They’re kind of showing us how we can integrate business into technology, but they haven’t perfected it. And they’re going to be too big for their own britches. Just put it politely. Right. Because those CEOs and those CTOs and CIOs aren’t the ones that are going to make real change. Like you said, Bezos earlier, right? He wasn’t there when he started. He started off as some small guy and worked his way up. Well, that’s going to happen again. We just feel it right now. We’re just in it right now. So we think that that’s the only way. But Google wasn’t around 20 years ago. Amazon wasn’t around 20 years ago. These people weren’t around. And we had those big, overarching oil companies back in the day with Ford. right, with cars, and now you got Musk and these other people. It’s going to continue to evolve, and it’s going to continue to change. And we just have to look at the positives and negatives, and we’ve got to pave our own way. And we’ve got to be open to do things differently, and to kind of, you know, inflict change. I was looking at a job that was an innovation manager, and I thought that was such a great title. It might be complete BS, don’t get me wrong, but what a great title, where your job is to inflict change. change and to innovate.
Speaker 0 | 41:29.025
Yeah, man. Is that job still open? I might go back into the real, I might go back in the corporate world.
Speaker 1 | 41:34.968
I’m telling you. God, what a great title. And it was very tempting. Yeah.
Speaker 0 | 41:44.514
We have a talk to people job. I told you I exist to talk to the people because the engineers can’t do it.
Speaker 1 | 41:50.817
They don’t know how to do it. I just don’t think that companies are really, they may think they’re ready for that kind of a thing, but I don’t know that they’re really ready for it. They think they want to innovate and they say that, but they’re just not mature enough. And they’ve got some of the good old boys still floating around. Give it five years.
Speaker 0 | 42:08.507
The DevOps thing is big. The DevOps thing is basically taking technology and, and company policies, procedures, mapping and kind of like integrating the two. At least that’s how I see it. I worked for Starbucks for years. And I’m, there was process, process, process, process. And when things break down in my house every now and then, and things get out of control and the kids aren’t cleaning stuff up and everything, it brings me like right back to that. I’m like, okay, we’ve got to have a gold standard checklist. We’ve got to have, we’ve got to have the five ways of being. We’ve got to have a timer that goes off every hour.
Speaker 1 | 42:39.569
The pillars of keeping the house up, right?
Speaker 0 | 42:42.010
Yeah. You know, like immediately I’m like, we’ve got to go to Staples tonight and get the laminator and we’ve got to,
Speaker 1 | 42:46.694
you know, uh,
Speaker 0 | 42:48.075
uh, And then how can we do this with technology? Can I have tablets like, you know, Velcro to the walls where kids have to like check in and check out for chores?
Speaker 1 | 42:54.878
That’d be great. As they’re walking in, did you do your tours today? Like the old signing seats in the laboratories? Yeah. That janitors had to fill out?
Speaker 0 | 43:02.141
Yeah, we need that stuff. I’m thinking of getting, I was even, I almost bought the clock in and clock out box the other day. They still had it at Staples.
Speaker 1 | 43:09.204
That’d be hilarious. Please do the punch card. Have your kids do a punch card. I agree with that.
Speaker 0 | 43:15.107
Yeah, and then there’s like, you know, Some sort of digital dollar wallet thing that like I used to like pay them with something. Here’s how many, I wish I could control everything in the house, like the hot water. I wish I could control the water. Like, I mean, I really could do this as like, this could be like a reality show, like really turning your house into some kind of,
Speaker 1 | 43:33.855
you’re not an IOT guy. You’re not in home automation.
Speaker 0 | 43:36.757
It could, it’s all time though.
Speaker 1 | 43:38.417
Everything,
Speaker 0 | 43:39.298
everything is about how we manage our time. Right? Like I should have that. I should have everything in that. But then it becomes, then someone will be all over me on LinkedIn too, about how it’s insecure and hacking. And someone’s going to hack into my oven and turn it on 500 and open the garage door and you know, all that stuff, you know? So
Speaker 1 | 44:00.576
I mean, the worst thing for me was my router went down, right? I got the, I got a bunch of the home automation stuff and my wireless router crapped out on me. What hell that was for a day and a half. Everything stopped working. everything just stopped working. The whole place just went down, right? It was as bad as a disaster at a company, right? I’m like scrambling, running around.
Speaker 0 | 44:20.948
I mean, you can really take it to the next level. Even at Starbucks, we used to know how many steps it would take for someone to make a Frappuccino and we’d have all kinds of deployment maps. And like, you could, well, I can walk into any Starbucks not even, oh. These guys are a mess. They’re deployed.
Speaker 1 | 44:34.092
Get more efficient. Yeah.
Speaker 0 | 44:35.533
Isn’t standing here. This guy should be standing there. Why did they put the cash register here? Why did they do, you know, I mean, it’s, it gets wild.
Speaker 1 | 44:42.716
Have you seen any of Amazon’s trainings that they, that they have out there in the world? No. So Amazon has a bunch of trainings out there for you. If you’re doing an AWS search, it’s free, but they absolutely 100% have taken the Starbucks mentality and they use a coffee shop as the example.
Speaker 0 | 45:00.663
Perfect.
Speaker 1 | 45:01.692
and how they build the cloud the same way they built the coffee shop. Yeah, yeah. Right? Also, the guy doing this job, and here, and efficient, and you can absolutely 100% see, in my mind, I instantly thought of Starbucks. I think that’s how Starbucks came up, right? They had one dude running around like crazy, like, you know what? We need somebody over here doing this. We need somebody over here doing that, right? And they kind of worked their way through, and they built this process. Well, Amazon is absolutely using that to train people in the cloud.
Speaker 0 | 45:27.350
DevOps. It’s the Starbucks of the digital world. You know,
Speaker 1 | 45:31.633
I’m telling you, man, and that’s been a dream of mine and I had a real hard time. It was, do I go back into the tech and do I stay focused on that? Or do I try and push the DevOps thing? You know, do I, do I go sell security or do I push DevOps with security as a mindset? Uh, uh,
Speaker 0 | 45:48.405
this has been a pleasure. It’s been a pleasure having you on. What do you, I mean, I think we might’ve already, like, I think it might be clear, but to just ask it again, you know, for other guys out there listening that might be in any situation that you’ve been in, in a job transition position, maybe just, you know, whatever, what’s the, um, like, what’s your piece of advice, patience, keep hope alive. You know, is there anything that someone can do physically? Like, what should they do? Go say no to five people. I mean, although we were used to saying that, you know, go say, go apply to five jobs and just say no to it. I mean, what’s your piece of advice?
Speaker 1 | 46:23.560
You know, I think, I think honestly, it’s a bit of self-confidence. It just. be confident in you and what you do and you know who you are. I’m not going to tell you if you know what you’re going to do or what you want to do. That’s ridiculous to say that. The opportunities will come, you know, through self-confidence and positivity. A lot of things come out and get very universe on you if you want to get down and dirty like that. But, you know, have that confidence, know your value and be patient with the situation. Just know your value, know what you’re worth. And I know that’s hard when we got to put food on the table and we got to pay the bills. And if you’re unemployed. and you get a job offer, man, there’s nothing like getting that offer letter, right? There’s nothing like it, especially the first couple times around. But you know, know your values, know your comp, be confident in who you are, go out there, do your research, be patient with the situation. It takes a little longer than you might think it would, but you know, the right thing will come along and you have value. You know, it’s really about that. You have value. I tried to tell my wife that she’s not in IT, but she’s looking for a new job. And I’m like, you got to know your value. I mean, I would die to have somebody like you on my team. on the business side of things. You know, so you’re valuable. Somebody’s going to want to hire you. Somebody’s going to want to bring you in and you’re going to do wonderful like you’ve done here. You know, so self-confidence is very hard for us. IT, you get beat down. Every day something’s wrong. Every day something isn’t working. You haven’t met this goal. You haven’t obtained that goal and you’re constantly beating your head against the wall and you don’t realize your self-value and your self-worth. But you know, man, we’re an amazing group of people. Super intelligent. super capable. We can take on any task, tackle any problem, accomplish any goal, solution, problem solvers of the modern day world. You know, that’s what we do. And, you know, value yourself like that and good things will come to you.
Speaker 0 | 48:05.837
Man, you just devalued me so much. I just felt like I was worthless now.
Speaker 1 | 48:11.840
No, I’m jealous.
Speaker 0 | 48:12.320
I talk to all these valuable people. I talk to all these really valuable people. That’s what I do.
Speaker 1 | 48:18.343
No, you know, man, I’m jealous of you.
Speaker 0 | 48:19.983
You’re worth it. more than me.
Speaker 1 | 48:21.965
You know, if I could start my own gig and if I had the, if I had the guts to do what you did, you know, maybe I have a different path. You know, I’m jealous of you, man. I’m jealous of you.
Speaker 0 | 48:32.712
It starts with food stamps.
Speaker 1 | 48:36.094
It doesn’t always, right? So, you know,
Speaker 0 | 48:38.496
maybe one day. I’m not afraid to say that. Look, I worked for years paying taxes, okay? And my first month out, it only lasted for a month. I went and I applied for food stamps. I don’t tell many people this because you still think, you know, You still think people are going to judge you like, oh, you didn’t need to be on food stamps. That’s for like other people. No, man. I had eight kids. I worked for years. I am starting my own business. I have no, I have no, you know, ambition to stay on food stamps whatsoever. But I can tell you one thing. I need as much money as I could possibly have right now to keep everything afloat. So I’m applying for these damn food stamps. Okay. And I’m going to use this card, you know. They gave me $1,400 a month because I had a big family. That’s a lot of food. I was shocked. And just by plugging myself into the system, I had so much more appreciation. I love… experiencing crazy things. Recently, I was locked up for three days.
Speaker 1 | 49:35.554
I’m glad about it, man.
Speaker 0 | 49:37.415
And there’s that story is going to come up. I still, I need like two hours to tell that story, but I did nothing wrong. You know what I mean? I did that. It was just, but the appreciation for everything I had an appreciation for the assist system and an appreciation for why it happened. I had an appreciation for all the people that I was in there with all the people that learned everything. Right. You just, I don’t know what that, I don’t know what that is, but again, you know, I love that, that, you know, you’re an amazing group of people and you’re worth more than, you know, you know, whatever it is. So, um,
Speaker 1 | 50:08.486
Modern day workforce, man, we keep the, we keep the lights on, we keep the businesses running and they couldn’t do what they do without us. They couldn’t make those millions without us, man, on the back end.
Speaker 0 | 50:17.512
Appreciate you, man.
Speaker 1 | 50:20.514
Good luck to you. I hope we get to talk again someday. I appreciate it. Listening to what you do out there and I’m, I’m going to tout you out to everybody else too. Thank you. So thank you, sir.
Speaker 0 | 50:38.058
Thanks for watching
