Speaker 0 | 00:09.585
All right, welcome everyone back to Dissecting Popular IT Nerds. And today we have Leslie Cothran on the show, IT Director at Universal Mental Health Services. Leslie, welcome to the show, man.
Speaker 1 | 00:25.213
Thank you, Phil. I’m glad to be here.
Speaker 0 | 00:26.914
Yeah, so we’re just going to kind of… begin where we left off last time. And you said you had missed the days when people were, you know, slipping food under the server room door and IT guys didn’t have to have any personality and we could just be robots. And you’re saying like, man, nowadays, IT people have to be salesmen. And that gets me excited because I, you know, usually IT and sales kind of like butt heads and it’s like, how do I block, you know? I do telecom. So it’s always like, how do I block people? Um, so that’s what, that’s what I’m coming in with a lot. And I kind of like that, you know, that theme we haven’t talked about that much, just it as, as a salespeople. And we were talking kind of just about, you know, the cost center and stuff. So where does that come into play for you? Like, how are you an it salesperson?
Speaker 1 | 01:19.244
Well, I mean, every, everything that I do here, I have to be able to sell it in some fashion to the people with the Kings to the kingdom. You know what I mean? I’ve got to be able to say, here’s why we need this service or this product or whatever it is that I’m trying to get through because I think it’s going to improve our IT infrastructure or whatever. I’ve got to be able to sell that and make them buy what I’m selling. And I mean, all the conferences and stuff that I go to, everybody’s talking about having a seat at the table. And basically that having a seat at the business table is being a salesperson for the business. I mean, I do miss those days of somebody slipping food under the door to me. I just want to sit at my desk and do IT work. But, you know, I just want to have this eye monitor right now. There’s a huge monitor in front of me that, you know, completely blocks out my view of my office door. But I just want to sit behind it and do my thing. be on my keyboard because I am naturally in this world, but that’s over. I mean, there’s no way that there are people that once you get to a certain level, that’s over. I mean, there are still techs that have to be strictly tech. You can have to be in that server room doing what they’re doing. I love those guys and thank you for those guys, but once you get to a certain level, you have to be able to sell this stuff to business.
Speaker 0 | 02:50.806
Wow. You just brought back a lot of memories. because I was actually an introvert in high school. I mean, I walked down the hallways with my head down. I was terrified to, I don’t want to say terrified to talk to people, but, you know, there was a lot of hazing going on in my school and stuff like that. And it just, in general, it was kind of like, dude, can I make it through school today without dying or getting, you know, publicly humiliated in some form or fashion. and uh right somehow i ended up with this podcast and in sales and i was like i will never do that and my friends we were playing like you know dungeons and dragons on old compact 386 you know and remember i don’t know we were playing x-wing and stuff like that you know and playing with you know action figures in high school and i don’t know that’s just probably it’s it’s cool it’s cool now But I remember I took a sales job and like, now I’m like, you know, my first job that was like, like a real kind of career job outside of being a Starbucks store manager. Like my first kind of job at like a Cisco startup was like, you know, you got to go out and like cold call 50 doors a day, 55 doors a day. And I was married and had two kids and there was just no turning back. I had to do this or I was going to starve. And, uh, I just remember how scary it was the first month. And then, uh, everyone it was scary for it was clearly scary for everyone else too because they all quit and uh i was the last man standing somehow but just because i was married and had kids everyone else was like i just totally definitely a motivator yeah but once you do it yeah man like once you force yourself to do something there’s something in that you know like confronting fears and kind of doing that so maybe that’s uh maybe
Speaker 1 | 04:43.390
that’s part of the story here um so anyways i i it definitely is for me i mean i i am really an introvert when I go home. And I can’t be. I can’t be in my job anymore. But when I go home, I have to recess, and I have to step back and recharge my batteries and refocus my brain and that kind of thing. Let’s still the introvert is still in there.
Speaker 0 | 05:10.412
I gotcha. It’s well, it doesn’t, it’s, it’s like, you know, genetics. Let’s go back. So let’s break it down for you though. Let’s break it down for you because it’s different for every it manager, right? So let’s break down a sale in your organization. So you’re at a, you know, mental health services, you know, you’ve got, if I remember correctly, 150 users, somewhere in that range. So we call that, you know, like mid market, not small business, not enterprise. You got enough end users to manage that it probably makes no sense. The ratio is probably way off. And I talk about this all the time. The end user to IT director ratio is always way too high and completely unrealistic. But you’ve got to make a sale. What was the hardest sale you ever had to make? What was the problem? What was maybe the solution? And how did you make that sale? All right.
Speaker 1 | 06:06.535
So, well, let me give you just a little bit more to the story there. So we actually, we have 150 users. That’s 150 people I’m directly supporting. And then we actually have over 900 employees. So those people are beyond the 150, the other, whatever my math is.
Speaker 0 | 06:26.811
How many, what’s your support staff? So we are at a thousand. What’s your support staff?
Speaker 1 | 06:31.355
Yeah, there’s me and a part-time IT. So 1.5. Correct. Correct. So the ratio is way off. But I do only mainly support those 150 people. The others are using a cloud-based service that comes with work. So it’s our clinical package. But the hardest fail, let’s see. You know, I really am very, very fortunate. I think. I do have to sell these things to the company, but I work for a very unusual in the healthcare space for people to be so forward-thinking. So I work for the folks on the board are very forward-thinking for technology. They like technology. So sometimes it’s easier to sell these things. One of the things that has made my job. immensely easier is our shift to SUAN services and firewall as a service. So the service that we went with combines the two, firewall as a service and SUAN. So not only did we eliminate me having to manage all these disparate firewalls across 10 different locations.
Speaker 0 | 07:59.956
Who’d you end up using?
Speaker 1 | 08:04.155
The provider is Kato Networks.
Speaker 0 | 08:06.357
Oh, I love Kato. I use Kato all the time.
Speaker 1 | 08:09.219
Okay. Yeah, Kato’s fantastic. So easily number one on my list of things I’ve done in my career that have been the best for the company that I work for.
Speaker 0 | 08:22.048
You know, I did a Kato rollout for one of my manufacturers, one of my global manufacturers, and we used Kato specifically for… a secure mobile phone access to the cloud, to the company, you know, to the company WAN, right. And then to get around the Chinese firewall, they were having issues with VPN, VPNs back to the United States when China would go into like Congress, you know, like their Congress would come into session. They would shut down all the international, like they basically like lock down the firewall, their country firewall. Right. And Cato was their way around that. I probably shouldn’t be, maybe we should keep that a secret. But well, you know, like Cato is like. Just the whole kind of like that, you know, leveraging their 10 gig MPLS, whatever, you know, global network is, it’s just a great model. And most people don’t, I don’t think many people know, really understand that model and understand that it exists and how it works. So this is going to sound like a plug for them. This is going to sound like a setup, but I do not remember us talking about Cato at all, but they are, they’re awesome.
Speaker 1 | 09:26.442
I promise we have not mentioned Cato. I’m very. Very pleased that you actually know who Cato is because when I started with him in 2016, we were kind of cutting edge at the moment. Cato was kind of new out of the gate.
Speaker 0 | 09:41.470
They are definitely on the edge. They’re definitely on the edge as far as SD-WAN goes. They’re like on another level. Right.
Speaker 1 | 09:49.037
But let’s be honest. That comes with price tag. So, I mean, it’s, you know,
Speaker 0 | 09:54.421
it’s a difficult deal. If you had MPLS, if you’ve got some old copper 5-meg MPLS, it’s not a price tag. It’s a crazy savings. And then the speed increase is astronomical. You know, I mean, because you could have, like, I mean, I can’t remember what their 100-meg throughput is. But, you know, 100-meg throughput compared to a 5-meg copper MPLS circuit, you know, or let’s be realistic. on net VPN with the carrier is that the price difference is night and day. But anyways, sorry. Go ahead. I get excited about Tato.
Speaker 1 | 10:32.049
You’re still on my thunder here. Stop it.
Speaker 0 | 10:34.191
Okay, sorry. So anyway, I think that’s part of the story too is like, you know, I want people to be encouraged to know like, you know, they can come to me for these types of solutions because I know things that, you know, that you would take, might take you. How long did it take you to find them? I’m just curious. And how did you find them?
Speaker 1 | 10:53.877
Okay, so I’m on the advisory board for a conference. And it was the first time I attended that particular conference. So it was before I was on the advisory board. But I went to that conference and I hate, I hate the lows of the showroom floor because it’s like dark. You know, I mean, there’s just you. There’s women in the water all around you. And. um all of my all my colleagues and um and people that were there um same as me and attendee uh kept talking about this company named tato so i i went into the children third floor and and just grabbed a business card and dropped mine and said here i want to talk to you guys and that was who was it who’d you end up talking with i’m just curious um it was a k levy and song
Speaker 0 | 11:48.400
uh mccarthy i’m mccarthy i love sean sean has you know what’s really cool is i was doing a demo for like a ring central thing one time and we had shipped out a demo phone and these guys had kato i didn’t know they had kato and they were trying to pull up like a ring central phone but the firewall was blocking like you know whatever the ip address or port whatever you know and i i i literally texted sean or email sean or something he’s like hold on a second He’s like, all right, it’s open. And like the phone turned right up. And I was like, that’s, that was great.
Speaker 1 | 12:23.065
Yeah, it truly is amazing. And I mean, he’s gone on to much bigger things with Cato, I’m pretty sure. So I don’t get to talk to him on a regular basis. But I mean, if I texted him right now, he would probably respond within minutes.
Speaker 0 | 12:36.776
They’re growing so fast. They’re growing. Yeah. I’m hoping that that doesn’t like handicap them because that always happens in some companies. I see them grow so fast. But they’re growing fast for a reason. So, all right, cool. This is awesome. We’re plugging things that I do.
Speaker 1 | 12:54.186
The sales process for me was I talked to these people. I like what I’m hearing a lot, and I’m tired of all of this management of all of these firewalls. That was the sales point for me rather than the S-U-N. It was more about the firewall of service and getting these devices in there and the security stuff in there that I could manage. from one point of access rather than having them go to each individual location and deal with a firewall that needs firmware updates and blah,
Speaker 0 | 13:23.394
blah, blah. I’m really glad that you’re saying this because I usually think my assumption, and that’s I shouldn’t ever assume, is that most IT directors don’t want to outsource their firewall or wouldn’t want someone touching that, and they get very kind of like, you know, this is my child type, don’t get away type of thing. So I usually, when I sell Cato, I’m not touching the firewall or we’re usually putting it outside the firewall. But now that you’re saying this, I’m going to push the fire. I’m going to push like, why are you so worried about holding your firewall, you know, get rid of it. But anyways, talk about it. I’m still one,
Speaker 1 | 13:56.872
I’m still 100% in control of it. I mean, I still, I go into their, their cloud based portal and I just make my security changes. But instead of having to make it 10 different times on 10 different devices, and maybe between since then I’m sure there’s other services and other platforms that do the same thing. But for me, that was brand new. And I’m not going to have to do firmware updates on 10 different firewalls. I’m not going to have to make this security change for a website you guys need access to or don’t need access to on 10 different firewalls. I’m sold. But, I mean, so I get the quote back from them. Kind of a large number that, you know, was or was not expected.
Speaker 0 | 14:39.340
It’s a monthly number. It’s not a one-time firewall upgrade. Yeah, I got you.
Speaker 1 | 14:45.306
Correct. Correct. I mean, that was actually my first foray also into a per-user approach. for whatever service or recurring MRC monthly recurring card. So that was really the first time that we kind of shifted some of that stuff to an operating expense rather than the capital expense. So I just had to gather information that I could offset the cost of going with Cato and using that monthly service as opposed to keeping things status quo. So of course the cost savings came through the SD-WAN and getting rid of MPLS and and pulling all the VPN stuff together and giving everybody those remote connections.
Speaker 0 | 15:27.732
Oh, so you did end up saving money.
Speaker 1 | 15:30.473
Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. Because, I mean, elimination of the MPLS stuff, which took me some time. I mean, my time is worth money as well, so I don’t know if I ended up saving anything or not. But on the books, it looks like we’re saving money in MPLS versus just having internet.
Speaker 0 | 15:53.219
what about the guys that are managing all the hardware firewalls what about the guys that don’t have what about the guys that don’t have mpls and are just doing sites true true yeah um you got to make a sale well let’s talk about how it made your life better well we won’t talk about how it made your life better let’s talk about how you made the sale oh you made the sale because you’re so you’re probably like did an roi and you’re like hey look we’re gonna eliminate this this this anyways you know right go ahead right right
Speaker 1 | 16:21.315
right so yeah i mean i just take those those numbers and say okay first of all they trust me implicitly thankfully uh and they are technology forward so i just take the numbers and say i believe that we can do this and save me some management time save me some trouble save me all of this stuff security posture can be increased and i think that we could save save us money over over uh
Speaker 0 | 16:50.879
Yeah, I know.
Speaker 1 | 16:51.959
Absolutely. I did not know at that point because we were still in some contracts with a dreaded vendor that I wasn’t certain that I could get out of. Let me ask you a question. I mean, I knew I could get out.
Speaker 0 | 17:05.609
Why were they dreaded? Why were they dreaded?
Speaker 1 | 17:10.172
Because they’re telecom. Is there really another answer to that? No, it’s dreaded because… The one I’m talking about in particular, and I don’t know if I can drop names or not, but they’re too big. You don’t need to. Yeah, nobody knows who’s talking to you. You can talk to one person over here, they’ll say one thing, talk to another person over here, they’ll say something else. And nobody is talking to one another internally in the company. Their service sucks.
Speaker 0 | 17:41.949
It’s just,
Speaker 1 | 17:42.309
you can go on and on.
Speaker 0 | 17:43.649
So in summary, if you need help, you’re calling 1-800-GO-POUND-SAND or KICKROCKS. Yes. And you’re dealing with low tech or let me escalate that. Let me open up a ticket, but in the seat, hourly worker.
Speaker 1 | 18:00.518
Right.
Speaker 0 | 18:01.199
At a bureaucratic, massively truncated political organization. And I say political like telecom. So there’s a reason why 33% of America, if you ask one, 33 out of a hundred people, if you ask them. what industry has the worst customer service? That’s all you have to ask. They will say telecom.
Speaker 1 | 18:26.908
Absolutely.
Speaker 0 | 18:27.888
Anyways, that’s why I have a job. Because I take care of that horrible, bad story that you just mentioned. Because I do know all those people on the back end through that bureaucratic craziness and how to make contracts disappear and how to do all that. So, anyways. So you sold, so there wasn’t a really big sale there. So, I mean, you sold them on, you sold them on, hey, this is going to make life easier. This can make my life easier. I’m going to be more productive and we’re going to eliminate all this old crap and we’re going to get away from a horrible bureaucratic nightmare.
Speaker 1 | 19:05.027
Correct. Okay. Absolutely. I mean, it was, it was a big sale because it was a shift in thinking just from, let’s, let’s go from this. Even taking a hardware, kind of a hardware thing, and turning it into a, speaking of firewalls, of course, it was a big deal to take something that was physical that we were replacing every, what, five to seven years or something, to something that we were going to start paying for monthly. So that was a big sale. But, I mean, in the end, it wasn’t a difficult sale because I was able to show that there’s a return on the best money.
Speaker 0 | 19:41.923
Well, it’s a big sale because you had to go present it. Do you remember presenting? Do you remember putting together a PowerPoint deck or anything like that?
Speaker 1 | 19:49.693
Well, let’s not. Let’s not oversell the company I’m working for. I mean, I’m… It’s not necessary for me to create a PowerPoint, but yes, in terms.
Speaker 0 | 20:00.864
You know what I mean. It wasn’t an email with like four bullet points, right? That was like, here’s what we’re paying now, here’s what we’re going to pay, and it’s going to take eight months, can I have permission? It wasn’t that,
Speaker 1 | 20:13.235
right? Right. Yeah, right. Correct. It was a discussion, yeah.
Speaker 0 | 20:18.820
Gotcha. I asked you last time. You’re a one-man shop with 1,000 end users. Most of them are operating in the cloud. You’re out on 50. I asked you, how the heck do you do that? And I guess I need to hear the answer one more time.
Speaker 1 | 20:40.874
Okay. The answer is very easy. It’s cloud. This is cloud product. I am converted. I mean, the more stuff that I can get to the cloud, the less management I have to do on site, the better off my life is.
Speaker 0 | 21:04.904
The first LLC I had to start up was called All Cloud Network. No one knows that that’s really my company name, but behind everything, behind Phil Howard Telecom, behind all that, the LLC’s name is All Cloud Network. Nice. For a reason. What? Is your, as an IT director, a one man, a one and a half man shop, which someone I’m hopefully someone from your company will listen to this and have pity upon you and, or they’ll say, good job. We hired the right guy.
Speaker 1 | 21:41.327
I’m totally, I’m totally downloading this and sending it to all of us.
Speaker 0 | 21:45.828
And we’re transcribing it and we’re sending it. What’s your biggest challenge? What’s your biggest challenge? period like as an it director if i asked you what’s your biggest struggle frustration challenge on a daily basis what is it um well there there are multiples um probably
Speaker 1 | 22:10.981
my biggest challenge is um just the overwhelming amount of stuff that comes my way um so i mean there things are coming to me from so many different avenues from i’m getting i’m getting uh emails text facebook messages linkedin messages snap tabs you know whatever and all of the snapchats from you’re getting snapchat as an it there are some people that in in my company that send me snapchat requests pictures through Snapchat of technical issues they’re having. That’s awesome. No lie. Oh my God. No lie. And I’m like, we have a method here. Let’s go through the appropriate method, the email to the support email address. Let’s handle this. Alas. So I’m getting stuff from…
Speaker 0 | 23:14.496
Can you please take a screenshot of one of your Snapchat messages with these problems? Because that is priceless. Please.
Speaker 1 | 23:23.960
The next time I get one, I will make sure I send it your way.
Speaker 0 | 23:27.621
And after you do that, then I want you to take a video of you deleting all of those apps on your cell phone. And then you send out an email and be like, guys, look at what I just did. This is what I just did. You will no longer be able to contact me. If you want, you can slip messages under the door.
Speaker 1 | 23:47.566
I’m the father of 19-year-old twins. to be realistic about how they’re going to contact me because kristen told me kristen told me just the other day um we were we were having a conversation and he said somebody texted me something and i said really somebody text you and he said that’s that’s bad snapchat somebody text me on that i’m like you call that x now okay
Speaker 0 | 24:19.284
This was like five years ago, and that just goes to show you the time. In jiu-jitsu class, one of our instructors once said, this kid asked me the other day, why is the save button on my computer this weird square thing?
Speaker 1 | 24:39.970
Awesome. He’s like,
Speaker 0 | 24:41.010
why? I don’t get it. He’s like, why is that the save icon?
Speaker 1 | 24:46.531
Wow. So there are moments in my career like, I think, oh, my God, I’m old. That’s one of them. Thanks. I appreciate that, Phil. Yeah.
Speaker 0 | 24:56.994
But it is not. And it is. It’s insane, man, because all of our, you know, all my kids, they don’t know it. They don’t know what it was like to not have a cell phone. They don’t know what it was like to leave the house and just, hey, he’ll come back whenever he does.
Speaker 1 | 25:13.138
There was something that one of my kids texted me one day. It hasn’t been very long. I can’t remember what it was, though, but it was something like that, like the three-and-a-half-inch floppy. They’re like, Dad, what is this?
Speaker 0 | 25:26.442
I’m like, oh,
Speaker 1 | 25:27.903
I quit. I quit.
Speaker 0 | 25:28.383
When we moved into our house, there was a box of them. I found a box of old floppies in this like closet up in the corner, like the previous people that lived here left. And it was, I wish I could remember the video games. Oh, I know what it was.
Speaker 1 | 25:42.929
It was Microfish. Christian, their alarm, one of the two of them came to me and said, this has to be on Microfish. What is Microfish? I’m like, I quit.
Speaker 0 | 25:52.593
This is how we look up. newspapers. Remember that? That was like, that was like a period of time. That was like, like you, the librarian, everyone in school from first grade to eighth grade got a presentation on this amazing new technology that’s available in the library and how you can look up, you know, when the Titanic, the Titanic sank. They hadn’t even found the Titanic yet, but anyways, now let’s sing a song about it. Okay.
Speaker 1 | 26:23.558
So my biggest challenge, overwhelmed with the amount of stuff that’s coming at me. It’s either from users, from vendors, from account executives, from the business leaders that are asking me how we’re going to do this and what we’re going to do here. So just the amount of stuff that comes at me, sometimes to an overwhelming point, that I’m like, I just have to step back from it. And, you know, I really am. As I stated before, I’m an introvert at heart, so sometimes answering people right on the fly is one of my weaknesses. They can send things to me, or in a meeting, they’ll be talking about something, and I can’t come up with great answers for them, but give me a minute. Give me 10 minutes in that server room back there just to mull this over, and I’ll come up with something for you. So just getting that amount of stuff coming to active daily on a regular basis is… It’s frustrating.
Speaker 0 | 27:25.195
You need a translator. You need one of those people that stands behind you and says, be quiet for a second. I’m freezing up. I’m frozen. So we talked last time about, and this is a common theme, super end users, end user cheerleaders. Who’s your counterpart? Who do you use within the organization as your super user? And do you kind of leverage that to help you? Do you have a poster child?
Speaker 1 | 27:55.575
I do have actually a couple of poster child children. I’ll go to those people. I mean, you have to. In a position such as mine where we have one in three-fourths people, full-time equivalents here, supporting 150 people, I have to rely on people that, first of all, I’m not in. where there are 10 officers, I can’t physically be in all of them. So I try to make sure that I have somebody that’s either in that region or in a particular office that is my IT go-to person. I try to empower those people. They’re easy to spot. They’re the ones that are sending me Snapchats laughing at other users that are making mistakes. You know?
Speaker 0 | 28:49.285
Look at this.
Speaker 1 | 28:49.685
They’re easy to spot.
Speaker 0 | 28:50.442
Yeah. This guy’s trying to plug his computer into the, you know.
Speaker 1 | 28:58.124
Exactly. And, you know, you can saw how good that six is. I mean, I can, somebody can be hired. We have, in this field, we have kind of a, unfortunately, a high turnover rate. You know, I see people come and go, and when people come, It’s like 10 minutes into it, I can spot, okay, well, they obviously can’t read those directions or they have some sort of IT block in their brain. So you can spot the people instantly that aren’t going to be the IT heroes. So it works the same way, though. You can spot instantly. I agree. Yeah. Yeah. You can spot them. They can just take what I’m sending them. I mean, I’m hitting them with the Office 365 account, and I’m hitting them now with this. unified calling stuff, and I hit them with just a tear of the instruction. If they can get through it. instantly and not have any kind of feedback for me. And it’s always step by step by step. And those people typically I’ll watch and I’ll say, okay, okay. They’ve been here for a year now and he’s really doing a really bang up job with all the stuff that he’s been assigned. So I can IT champion that person. I can have them be a ringleader for me. So yeah, with the number of users that I have, it’s almost something that I have to do.
Speaker 0 | 30:25.528
This has been one of the most enjoyable conversations I’ve ever had and one of the most disappointing at the same time. Disappointing because you did everything right without talking to me. And that’s the most disappointing piece about this. And so enjoyable because your philosophy and way of kind of like doing things and being able to do more with less is something that’s very… So it’s just going to really help any mid-market IT guys that kind of understand this and want to copy that model. And I’m just going to plug myself because anyone that wants to copy that model, I will be happy to help them do that and introduce them to you and have them be able to talk with you. And you can kind of coach them through that as well at the same time or if you’re okay with that. I mean, because I know you’re getting on Snapchat things already. You know, what’s your Snapchat handle or whatever? I’m probably like dating myself now. It’s not called a handle, dad.
Speaker 1 | 31:25.168
it’s like what’s that no but i get it i know what i i all of my social media is less lwc l-e-s-l-w-c so there you go l-e-s-l-w-c done yep yeah you know i don’t they don’t have snapchat i had to like i really i don’t even know i’m you had to draw a line i
Speaker 0 | 31:47.066
deleted twitter the other day i had to delete twitter it’s actually depressing when they say you get depressed from too much social media I just get on Twitter. That’s how I get my news now because it’s like a live, you know what I mean? There’s, I don’t ever watch the news. I have to get Twitter and like, you know, be influenced that way somehow. Uh, so I just deleted it. It was, it was just depressing. They say like, you know, just delete the news. And like, if something really bad happens or something you need to hear about, you’ll figure it out somehow. Someone will tell you.
Speaker 1 | 32:15.129
So I do, I do keep the stuff for, for the sake of, of communicating with my, my 19 year old twin. So, um, I, I, I keep it, but it is terribly depressing. So I’m just, I’ve pretty much siloed myself to Instagram. I’m looking at pretty pictures.
Speaker 0 | 32:33.720
For my twins, and I don’t have nine. The oldest is a 15-year-old. I just lock her in the house and don’t let her leave. And then… Perfect. Exactly. It is. It’s perfect. And then everyone else on the outside world tells me I’m oppressing them. And, you know… Anyways, anyone that wants to get in on my secret life story, you can join my newsletter. Okay, sir.
Speaker 1 | 32:56.561
One of the things I wanted to go back to real quick is… I don’t care.
Speaker 0 | 33:00.564
We can talk all day.
Speaker 1 | 33:02.506
I did it all on my own, but that’s because I hadn’t met you yet. And I didn’t do it all on my own. I have partners that I have worked with, and some of them are very similar to what you do. We just met a little bit too late for me to utilize your services. Otherwise, I’d do that one. I would totally be there.
Speaker 0 | 33:20.220
Yeah. Yeah. No, no, that’s cool. It happens. You know what I mean? Not everyone in the world can, can be connected with me. Um, as much as I would say that they have to be, um, man, this has been, uh, so great. So great. Um, please, uh, I’m going to, we’re going to have you please just, you know, Snapchat me the next time that you have, uh, that you have some kind of struggle or sale that you need to make. I guess, I guess in summary, this is about, you know, selling executive management and being able to present and break down the numbers and step out of the closet and break it down. I think sometimes maybe I think it’s easy because I have kind of the business acumen skills or I understand the numbers and I kind of understand how things affect the budget. If people don’t understand that, you know, please message me or message you and kind of just say, hey, this is the problem I’ve got. How do I sell this? right? So, that’s like a new service we need to do like an IT sales training and it’s really just about, you know, problem solving because that’s what it is at the end of the day. I’ve got a problem. How do I sell it to upper management and, you know, pay for this solution, I guess. So, sir, have a wonderful afternoon. Again, it’s been an absolute pleasure.
Speaker 1 | 34:43.431
It was my pleasure, Phil. I really have enjoyed having the conversation with you. Thank you.
44. How Top IT Introverts Sell to Executive Management
