Speaker 0 | 00:09.924

That wasn’t heard of. And then we just did the same thing. Cisco came along and was like, hey, we got this thing.

Speaker 1 | 00:18.588

It’s called dynamic allocation. You’re going to be selling these things called T1s. So we’re going to put in the Cisco IAD. We’re going to call it… you know we had the whole presentation revolved around this dynamic allocation drawing that we would do on a board like it was you know some kind of like special science or something yeah like you know now you you know when you’re not on the phone you could be using that bandwidth doesn’t that make sense you know like as opposed to that if i can find this t1 and stuff and people like what i’m like plus it’s t1 uh we got free really Well, no, actually we were, man, frame relays, we were replacing those back, this was in Denver, this was back when I was in Denver. But the, okay, so talk to me, man. What’s your day job right now? What’s your day to day?

Speaker 0 | 01:07.518

Right now, I’m a little job for VAC. So I’m managing the infrastructure of our network, doing security as well.

Speaker 1 | 01:21.704

I find, I want, I like that you, there’s something, there was something on your profile about like, you know, volunteering inner city youth groups and trying to teach the youth to, I don’t know. There’s a lot of problems with the youth nowadays, so there could be numerous things. But my normal thing would be is, oh, have good character, speak clearly, have confidence, maybe goal planning, maybe realize that you can. do a lot if you put your mind to it, you know, things like that. And the fact that you grew up in Baltimore and I know how hard Baltimore can be. I know how hard Germantown can be. I know how hard South side of DC can be. Um, I just, how’d you, how’d you get to where you, how’d you get to where you are now?

Speaker 0 | 02:10.514

Somebody helped me. And honestly, that, that, that’s where the motivation came from. You know, like you said, coming from Baltimore. I saw what was around me. I mean, I think I was honestly probably one of the lucky few that had a dad and mom in the same household. Like that was in my, you know, area in vicinity. And still though, your influences are around you, right? So when you grow up, you got to think, I want to, as a kid, I want to be the superhero on TV or the superhero that I see every day, which was probably a drug dealer. It was probably some… some type of gangster, somebody, now I don’t want to say gangster, but we, you know, we classify, use words like that. But, you know, when you grow up, you see that, that’s what I want to be, and that’s what you strive for. But I had somebody at my high school who stepped in and just, his name was Henry Conway, actually, he stepped in, showed me electronics. You know, it was a trade, it was something to do, I kind of liked it, soldering boards and things like that. And then

Speaker 1 | 03:13.932

It was a trade back then. Kind of interesting. Like, what year was that? What year did you graduate high school?

Speaker 0 | 03:18.373

I graduated in 96. So I took this trade in 92. It was like just electronics. Yeah.

Speaker 1 | 03:25.015

You still call it a trade nowadays? Would we still call this a trade or we call it more of a profession?

Speaker 0 | 03:30.796

They actually call them trades in Baltimore. But actually, and that’s another thing trying to address. They’re trying to get rid of the trade schools in Baltimore.

Speaker 1 | 03:39.479

That’s stupid.

Speaker 0 | 03:40.779

Yeah. The kids might have had a skill. Again, like I know it worked for me. Definitely. I got to see the world and everything.

Speaker 1 | 03:47.370

In general, I think education, considering that I’ve been through it and I was fortunate enough to have a college education. I don’t know how much it did for me. Maybe it helped me, I don’t know, write emails really well. Yeah. But I see a future in, I don’t know if I’d call it a trade school, but I see a future in more of that format of. apprenticeship and learning hands-on and there’s a certain amount of you know when it comes to technology there’s a certain amount of like you need to know what an ip address is you need to know you know networking terms you need to understand all that but what you learn in school and what you learn hands-on is obviously two different things and that goes with any trade whether it be heating and air conditioning electricity numerous various different things and then if we layer in goal setting character development and how to run a small business, I think those people even just statistically, A, make way more money and work for themselves. Some of them may hate working for themselves and it might be like, you know, like a lot of work. Maybe they’re not doing it right. But, um, I think from the trade school aspect of learning is great. Whether we call IT a trade versus a profession now, because I look at IT as like, IT people are like professionals. They’re business force multipliers. They save the company from harm, all these things.

Speaker 0 | 05:22.788

We’re part of business. And I think, though, that’s the story. I think that’s, you know, when a kid comes up, right, and I see a lawyer. right? You just think, I want to be a lawyer. I want to be a doctor. They make a lot of money. You know, I want to be an IT, right? You hear that all the time, right? I want to make a lot of money, but understand it’s not what you think. Like again, I started in the trade of electronics that didn’t get me IT, you know, that got me to something that got me to something else that got me to IT. And that’s what I want to show. Like, cause really they’re not giving that kind of information out. How do I get over here to IT? How do I get myself to your point, ready for business? How do I sell myself? How do I get these programs that, again, integrate with the business? You know, not just, hey, I have this awesome program. That don’t mean anybody’s going to buy it. How is it going to bring benefit to it?

Speaker 1 | 06:19.608

There’s a lot. That’s a whole nother episode. That’s a whole episode of like, I got this awesome thing. Why should someone buy it? How do we ask questions? How do we act like a doctor? And like, you know. basically fill a need and solve a problem. As what would your advice be to, like, if you could, do you, do you ever look around you and you think, man, there’s all these people working for, I don’t know, 15 bucks an hour or seven, whatever. What’s minimum wage now in Maryland? It’s gotta be high actually.

Speaker 0 | 06:51.485

Yeah. It’s like 15, 17, something like that. I’m not even sure.

Speaker 1 | 06:55.446

Okay. Do you ever look around all those people and just want to be like getting to IT, man?

Speaker 0 | 07:01.382

I do.

Speaker 1 | 07:02.242

Not like because you’re going to be like rich or something, but because like it’s a real field.

Speaker 0 | 07:06.165

It’s a real thing. And that’s, I have a podcast and that’s what it’s based on. It’s really based on, hey, look at me. I come from your same place and you can get over here and just live a different life. Forget the money. The money going to come at whatever you work hard at, right? I believe that. Over here, I learned, like you said, I learned about financial, just financial literacy. I didn’t learn about stocks and crypto and blockchain and all of that stuff until I got in a different crowd of people. And in this world, these things all kind of coexist. So that’s what I’m talking about in the podcast. I want you to know more than just IT. What is IT? That hole is a black hole, right? Cybersecurity. We could talk. We could go on and on and on. And that’s what you want to, you want to, I want to tell these kids, look, I know you think this is cool, right? This is what you see every day, but let me show you the same person that you are. You could do this and you could change your life. You can see so much.

Speaker 1 | 08:09.001

The podcast is Trip Talk

Speaker 0 | 08:11.562

Tech. Yes, sir.

Speaker 1 | 08:14.063

And we can just Google Trip Talk Tech, T-R-I-P-P, oh, Trip Talk, T-R-I-P-P-T-A-L-K, Tech. I’m assuming we can Google that and you pop up.

Speaker 0 | 08:25.347

Yeah, you can go. It’ll pop up. It’s just a YouTube. Nothing huge. But again, just try to, and hopefully it gets bigger because my end goal is, it’s like you said, hopefully I can tie this in with some education programs. You know, if a cybersecurity wants to step in, a cybersecurity company wants to step in and say, hey, we’re going to offer education courses because we know it’s the next fleet of kids we’re going to need in the knock. You know? Hey. You know what? Let me give away a couple of seats in that program and then we get some kids plugged in. Again, give them opportunities that they don’t know that are there. Let them fly.

Speaker 1 | 09:06.236

So what do we do with the kids in high school right now?

Speaker 0 | 09:10.139

We got to get them these type of programs. Like, you know, IBM has that skill set program. But how many people know about it?

Speaker 1 | 09:15.382

They don’t know about it. What is it?

Speaker 0 | 09:17.784

It’s like a little, they got a website out there. I’ll get you the address, but I don’t have it right off the top of my head. But they teach you little small skills about cloud security, you know, security in general.

Speaker 1 | 09:32.913

There’s got to be like a pathway into this stuff. So you volunteer at Swing to Soar. Tell me a little bit about it.

Speaker 0 | 09:40.517

Swing to Soar is an organization I created about three years ago. Same type of grab. I went into the inner city. Just went knocking on the school’s door. Like, hey, I know you don’t have any programs and you’re dealing with golf. Because my son was a Division I basketball player. I was in that heavy AAU basketball scene. Uh-huh, uh-huh. You know. A lot of kids get squeezed out. You don’t make it. So again, when I got an IT, I learned how to play golf. And then I started listening to these conversations out here. And I’m realizing life is not what I thought it was, you know? And again, I just want to show-Give me an example.

Speaker 1 | 10:18.625

Give me an example.

Speaker 0 | 10:21.286

Again,

Speaker 1 | 10:21.646

I’m going to-What did you think life was before? What did you think life was before? And what was like a moment for you?

Speaker 0 | 10:27.927

I’ll be honest. I thought life was what I was told in school. right you work harder than everybody in the school building you’re gonna get paid the most money right you you get work hard as every harder than the man next to you every man you become the boss you make the most money right so i just worked hard as i could day in day out any alert that came through the phone i was the first one to grab i just wanted to be that guy but then i realized one day everybody in the summertime kept asking me to cover but three and four guys would be leaving that ship I’d be like, okay, I got y’all. You know, again, being that guy.

Speaker 1 | 11:05.155

Were they playing golf?

Speaker 0 | 11:06.876

Yeah, they were even playing golf. I didn’t know what was going on. And then I asked about a month or two, and I’m like, well, hold on. All summer, nobody’s here. What’s going on? They was like, why don’t you come out and play some golf? I didn’t know how to play no golf.

Speaker 1 | 11:19.605

And then you realized more business got done. Anyways, go ahead.

Speaker 0 | 11:23.668

Dedicated two years to golf, learned how to play, started playing well enough to get invited. And then you just start listening. Like you said, man, this position is about to open up because this person is going to hit.

Speaker 1 | 11:38.175

Golf takes dedication, man. I grew up.

Speaker 0 | 11:41.076

A little bit, but once you get it, it’s fun.

Speaker 1 | 11:44.017

You got to go to the driving range. You got to play a couple times a week.

Speaker 0 | 11:47.378

You got to play. You got to play. That’s not a lot, but once you get good or once you even just get into whatever good is for you. It’s addictive. Love it.

Speaker 1 | 11:55.120

It can be addictive. I grew up in a golfing family, so it’s kind of a dying breed in my family. My dad’s a doctor, so my dad’s a retired doctor. So golf was like, you just did that. So I grew up playing golf. And I have eight kids now, so you just can’t leave and play 18 hours of golf. You just can’t do that. So I got into jujitsu now. So I do just as much. I find you can do jujitsu in the studio early in the morning too. There’s a lot of kind of like… I don’t know, middle-aged executives wanting to, that are into MMA and wanting to do jujitsu now too. So it’s kind of a similar type of thing.

Speaker 0 | 12:34.779

And to that point, right? Like that’s the second part of my, the second niche to the podcast, like the mental health aspect, right? Think about what you just said. You got eight kids, you’re doing the podcast, you’re doing well. I know you’re successful with that. You probably got your regular everyday jobs. You need time, right? And most of us at IT, what we do, we pound the schedule. You give the work all, you give the business almost probably three, two thirds of your day, right? Because you go home, that problem didn’t go away. You’re trying to figure out how to fix it tomorrow. You got your family, you got your kids, they got their problems. Get up, do it again. And sometimes that stuff just mounts up for you,

Speaker 1 | 13:14.461

right? I want to know what the end game. I ask people that all the time. What’s the end game? What’s the end game for IT? Because I worry, I worry about… all my IT brethren, you’re right, that are out there like, I’m just showing up to work the next day and then trying to make it to whatever, CIO, CTO, whatever that role is. And then what’s that? Because I don’t see 10 years from now, most people retiring with some kind of pension in IT. I just don’t see that. Maybe a 401k and that’s kind of a joke too.

Speaker 0 | 13:44.700

Because you wasn’t around anyway. Because again, by the time you got that three to five year window, 10 maybe. You can push it. Yeah. Where are you going to retire from?

Speaker 1 | 13:57.062

I’m already retired.

Speaker 0 | 13:58.663

There you go.

Speaker 1 | 14:00.003

My mentality was I’m always working, but always not working. If I want to do something, I just do it.

Speaker 0 | 14:07.285

Well.

Speaker 1 | 14:08.465

So, okay. So what was a mentor in high school got you into, what did we call it back then?

Speaker 0 | 14:19.109

electronics, electronics.

Speaker 1 | 14:20.410

I was going to say electricity, electronics. Exactly.

Speaker 0 | 14:22.692

Go ahead. Then they brought a program up to from Baltimore City. Actually, they had a shortage on, I think, technicians. So they ran what they call a trade or they ran a business of IAS out of our high school. And I got drafted to go out of the electronic class. the rest was history. I think I first played with a 386, 486 machine.

Speaker 1 | 14:53.181

Yep.

Speaker 0 | 14:54.441

And Windows 3 won and got it installed off all the disks. And then probably maybe almost at the end of class, I think four months later, They came out with Windows 95. Slug and pray.

Speaker 1 | 15:15.098

I can’t remember. Could we only open one program at a time? I’m trying to remember the old Windows. Could you only click on one window?

Speaker 0 | 15:20.741

Windows 3.1, it would take that one block window, and that’s it.

Speaker 1 | 15:24.183

Win.exe, hit enter, load it, click on a window, exit out of a window.

Speaker 0 | 15:32.328

Watch it start up in DOS. and then it pops the visual. Yeah,

Speaker 1 | 15:35.669

yeah,

Speaker 0 | 15:35.929

yeah. Made it a winner.

Speaker 1 | 15:37.189

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Okay. All right. So, we’re on from there. Then what? What happened next?

Speaker 0 | 15:44.291

And after that, again, my life’s been a bunch of hookups. After that,

Speaker 1 | 15:50.473

probably something, there’s something to be said there then. Like, so, hey guys, I hate to say it, but there’s nothing you can really do. Just get hooked up.

Speaker 0 | 15:57.635

Yeah, yeah. You got to be blessed. But look for, that’s why I’m giving it back.

Speaker 1 | 16:01.776

Network, network. Network. Network. Talk with people. You know, be curious. Have curiosity.

Speaker 0 | 16:09.883

Ask questions. I think that’s what happened. I asked a lot of questions. I actually asked a question to this guy, Ken Sandler. At the time, he was like King Exchange. Like he was writing books for Microsoft Exchange at the time. And it was like Exchange 4.0. And the city had Novell Network 4.1 and GroupWise. they were working on a project with the company that took me on next meridian resources which was a consultant firm that had a contract at the city and honestly i took my time after work and just sat with him this guy was he just showed me the ropes i i had a liking to the group wise the mail portion what

Speaker 1 | 16:51.518

were you doing at work at the time yep No, what were you doing at work at the time? If you’re sitting for free after.

Speaker 0 | 16:58.738

I was just the help desk guy working. Well,

Speaker 1 | 17:00.638

it’s not true. I’m the help desk guy.

Speaker 0 | 17:03.419

No, no, I’m just saying.

Speaker 1 | 17:04.879

I was just covering while people were out playing golf.

Speaker 0 | 17:07.860

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was just covering. But yeah, that’s how they actually looked at me too. Like, yeah, just the help desk guy. But you’re right. I just worked. And honestly, one skill, that’s a great point you made. Because one skill I think I learned from that has carried me on now is the people part. You learn how to deal with people.

Speaker 1 | 17:26.969

Then users.

Speaker 0 | 17:28.430

Yep. Just understand their frustration. You understand what makes them, again, how sometimes IT prevents their job from being done. You can connect with that. And as you move up in the ranks, you hear those problems and you have more of a heart to get into the bottom of.

Speaker 1 | 17:48.675

What’s the most common frustration? What’s the most common problem that businesses have in technology? You’ve got companies that see technology as a business force multiplier. They’ve got the right applications. They’ve got the right systems in place. It’s keep it simple, stupid. The technology is simple. It’s easy to use. And then you’ve got other companies. What’s the most common problem? that most companies have that the IT guys can come in and just feel like, wow, I can’t believe you’re doing this. That’s stupid.

Speaker 0 | 18:31.485

I really think it is the collaboration with the IT team. I see a lot of companies who treat IT as a separate entity. So when that happens, I see a lot of times your marketing team buys their own software and engineering buys their own software.

Speaker 1 | 18:51.656

Like a shadow IT.

Speaker 0 | 18:53.597

Exactly. And what happens is IT wants to have single sign-on throughout the company globally. But how can you do that if you get a software, somebody buys a software that isn’t compatible with your single sign-on vendor or who you’re using? But nobody had that conversation. But this now, this software that they purchased is mission critical for their purpose. So you can’t get rid of it. So now you have this hodgepodge and you never really have that continuity that you want to be able to support your network. That’s where I’ve seen when you had control to be able to not control. I’ll say once you had that collaboration where they looked at IT as a business unit, they run those decisions together. I think that’s the most successful I’ve seen businesses.

Speaker 1 | 19:38.215

So let’s put together a trip talk checklist for almost like a top five. We could go in and we could do some consulting and we could say, um, On a scale of one to 10, how well do you believe sales slash operations slash whatever collaborates with IT?

Speaker 0 | 20:04.882

How would you get that collaboration?

Speaker 1 | 20:07.683

How would we even measure that one? But anyways, collaboration, number one. What’s number two? Let’s do a top five.

Speaker 0 | 20:16.825

Top five. I say collaboration definitely with the business. Two, buy-in. You need… the business to buy into with that idea that we again need to collaborate that we need to be together on a decision um because again without that buy-in they’re going to still make their own moves then i would say third you need uh i think you need a strong executive management on the it One that isn’t afraid to speak up and say no if they have to. And one that’s going to stand strong on the suggestions.

Speaker 1 | 21:04.404

Is that from a business leadership standpoint? From someone that knows and understands the vision of the company, the purpose of the business? Are you saying from that standpoint?

Speaker 0 | 21:15.509

Yeah, so I would say the whole leadership team. So you do probably have that CEO who knows the vision of the company. But I think. whoever is the CTO or CISO, they have to be able to step up in those situations and say, hey, I know we want to go this direction, but we got to do this because X and be able to sell that ticket.

Speaker 1 | 21:38.089

You just said sales and IT in the same sentence. Do you think IT guys are afraid of selling? Do you think a lot of IT guys are afraid to sell or don’t know how to sell or think it’s something other than what it really is?

Speaker 0 | 21:51.776

I think that last, I think they, I really think we believe we’re doing something that when that we, we think we aren’t sales guys, but you really are selling these solutions to the business.

Speaker 1 | 22:04.083

Okay. Collaboration with it, buy-in executive management, selling it, being able to sell it. What are the major massive gaping holes do we hit? Do companies have,

Speaker 0 | 22:19.371

I think, uh, communication from IT. I’ve seen very successful businesses witness transparency. A lot of times I’ve seen IT, again, things happen.

Speaker 1 | 22:35.005

Is it bad communication? And when I say bad communication, I’m sorry, maybe it’s like…

Speaker 0 | 22:41.912

It’s not enough. Think about it. Maintenance windows, right? You don’t have a good team that communicates and saying, hey, we’re going to take down the freaking ERP system.

Speaker 1 | 22:53.498

I see those maintenance emails all the time. People see those maintenance emails all the time. Hey, by the way, on two o’clock in the morning, on whatever night, we’re going to do this. Most people are like, okay, whatever.

Speaker 0 | 23:05.843

Yeah, and again, I think that’s all about the communication from IT. And I think there’s more than just maintenance that has to come and how you put it out there, whether that’s, say, SharePoint, right? Uh-huh. We have to be consistent on what we’re doing. If that’s a monthly security reminder, you just get used to reading things from IT where you’re reading. Somebody, again, it has to have buy-in and it goes right back to your five, right? You’re coming right back down to five. I need to pull these people in. I got to capture you.

Speaker 1 | 23:34.982

How do we capture them?

Speaker 0 | 23:37.544

That content, that communication. Now, again, that changes. Like last, what was it, October, we had a security awareness month. So we had different programs we ran all month. We might do slides all week. We might do some SharePoint emails. So again, you’re used to seeing things from IT. So you’re not just, again, you get these weird emails. Hey, yeah, we’re going to take this server down at two in the morning. Who cares? Nobody really cares until they wake up and the application isn’t working in the morning. So, you know, so I think also communication, talking to the right people. You’re right. I’m not going to blast the email out to the whole company because I’m taking down engineering.

Speaker 1 | 24:20.078

I’m just trying to think of the last company that I ever worked for in the real corporate world where I knew, actually knew any of the IT guys, any of them. And I worked in technology companies and I worked in technology companies.

Speaker 0 | 24:38.464

So think about it. If you walk around my company and you ask them who I am, and I’m just saying that because whatever, or anybody on my team, that was a thing. Now, when I first came on, they did not like that, right? Because most IT people, they don’t want to go around and making no face drops. And hey, if I can solve the issue remotely, you know, if I can RDP to your desktop and take-Who didn’t like that?

Speaker 1 | 25:00.819

Who didn’t like that? Yeah, right. Are you saying end users didn’t like that? Or other people in IT, they’re like, wait a second, this guy’s going to take my job.

Speaker 0 | 25:08.601

Support don’t want to go, you don’t want to go touch a desk, right? You want to, most people want to do everything remote. Hands off. Okay. And I just promote it a different way. I think you have to, again, the more you get, I put a face to it, the more you do phishing campaigns, right? The more you put a face to it, the more people are aware. So now it’s like, hey, let me listen to what Keith has to say versus this is another one on damn emails that IT sent in to inform me about nothing I care about. But it’s a slide to that, right? The holiday parties. We got to show up and dress up. Yeah. I know the geeks don’t never really do that, but we got to come out and do the company thing. That integrates us in part of our communication. It gets us in again. Now we’re doing our lunch and lunch. More people are going to come out.

Speaker 1 | 25:59.732

Oh, I like lunch and learn. That’s a great idea. I haven’t heard that in a while. Lunch and learn is great. Who doesn’t want to come in for burritos?

Speaker 0 | 26:08.878

Gotta love it.

Speaker 1 | 26:09.559

Nacho station, taco station, whatever. I’m hungry right now. Right. Yeah. Okay. Come in. Lunch and learn, you know, it’s just way underrated. Lunch and learn, just, you know, it’ll never get old. The lunch and learn. Okay, so we got IT communication. First of all, you’re really not the geek. I know you’re not. You’re already good looking. You dress up well and you play golf. So, you know what I mean? I had a manager once that was like, you know why we’re better? We were like, why? I don’t know. Why are we better? And he was like, because we’re better looking. We’re better. And number three, we’re better looking.

Speaker 0 | 26:48.676

We’re better looking.

Speaker 1 | 26:50.197

It made no sense whatsoever. And that’s really not why we were better. But it was funny. It was great. All right, we got five things. And what’s interesting is most of them are the theme here. For people out there listening, the theme is some, I would say connect, discover, and respond with people. Um, we’ve got collaboration, uh, collaboration with it to avoid a ridiculous silos that you end up getting thrown in your lap that you don’t want to manage. Like some crazy program that, uh, we can’t log into with single sign on because some sales guy and marketing department, uh, just thought it would be cool to, I don’t know, throw up click funnels or something. I don’t know. Um, some other application. Okay. We’ve got. A buy-in in general. Just getting people’s buy-in to work, I guess, with IT, period. Any type of buy-in.

Speaker 0 | 27:55.532

Any type of buy-in, yep.

Speaker 1 | 27:57.413

We’re trying to, you know, I just, you know, dual-factor authentication or any of this type of stuff. You know, how we sign into programs and everything. It’s going to take buy-in from people to start doing things the way that… they didn’t do them for years, which created a massive security hole. The ability to sell IT and to probably, for a lot of people, it’s probably to the ability, really what that is, this is what it comes down to. This is the ability to step out of your comfort zone and learn a skill that you probably never wanted to learn, which would be the ability to ask questions and push people and to push for approval on things and to not turn your tail and run away the second your IT budget gets shot down immediately. It’s like the first time you ask for a raise. I remember the very first job I ever had was washing dishes and I asked for a raise and he was like, nope. And I was like, okay,

Speaker 0 | 29:05.695

goodbye. It’s like, what do I do after this?

Speaker 1 | 29:07.217

You know, I was like, uh… I could have at least, you know, if I, and then if I had just known the advice I was giving to everyone years and years later, the question would be why? Just ask why, why can’t I do a race? Uh, but I just ran away. Um, okay. So yeah, there’s a lot to be said about that comfort zone thing. Uh, I kind of like Tim Ferriss’s idea. He has these little exercises you have to do in the four hour work week. I think it was a four hour work week years ago. And one of them is you just have to go down, like walk down the middle of the street. and lay down in the middle of the street and play dead for like 30 seconds. Just pass out on the ground and just be able to deal with what people are doing in the middle of what’s going to happen. All right. IT communication. IT needs to communicate more with people. That’s point four. We need a fifth one. What’s that? Fifth one.

Speaker 0 | 30:06.392

Fifth one. Make companies. Keep it simple. I think you made that point. Again, the less convoluted your systems are, the less vendors you got to bring into the mix because everybody, you know, do the finger pointing. Oh,

Speaker 1 | 30:23.028

finger pointing. That’s like near and dear to my heart. That’s like, you know, the phones aren’t working because of the internet provider. Well, no, it’s not us. Clearly, our latency and jitters is perfect and we have no outages. So it’s clearly your phone vendor.

Speaker 0 | 30:42.624

Go back, call them. No,

Speaker 1 | 30:44.124

it’s not them. It’s your cabling guy, JMSP, that came in and did the punchdown block wrong or something like this.

Speaker 0 | 30:51.606

Everything looks good till the LEC. We’ll send the LEC out. Yeah, the LEC will be out in five hours.

Speaker 1 | 30:57.508

I never understood that when I first got into this thing called the ISP world and telecom stuff. I don’t understand. What do you mean the last mile? Like, what do you mean? I don’t get it. What do you mean Verizon delivers the last mile? Why wouldn’t you just be with Verizon then? I don’t get it. Well, you don’t understand because we got our own network and it’s better and it’s managed and we’ve got a NOC and we can deliver all these other applications. But why do we have to use Verizon? People don’t get that.

Speaker 0 | 31:26.839

In their data center.

Speaker 1 | 31:32.143

So simplification. How do we simplify vendors? What’s your vendor philosophy?

Speaker 0 | 31:37.628

My vendor philosophy.

Speaker 1 | 31:39.649

What vendors do you like working with? So if I asked every IT manager what his top four hatreds are in life, one of them is vendors that are slow to respond or don’t jive well or don’t vibe well with your IT team or take days to respond or when you call them, they act really stupid. This is one of the top four things that IT guys hate. Would you agree that that’s one of them? Like, you know, poor vendor support.

Speaker 0 | 32:10.877

Poor vendor support. I think one that’s very difficult to work with. AT&T can’t get nobody on the phone.

Speaker 1 | 32:20.400

That’s the second episode in a row that someone said AT&T. And by the way, AT&T, I am a fan. Just want to let you know. Not a fan of calling 1-800. I’m not a fan of calling 1-800-GO-POUND-SAND, option 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 26, 7, 8, 9, 10. Wait an hour and then go somewhere else. But I am a fan of partnering with you and providing good customer care that is not 1-800-GO-POUND-SAND. So we will use you as the last mile.

Speaker 0 | 32:49.134

And don’t get me wrong. I mean, we got places out. We love AT&T. We use the services when it’s working. It’s working. Just to support.

Speaker 1 | 32:58.919

Yeah, it’s tough.

Speaker 0 | 33:00.300

be long for it on that side.

Speaker 1 | 33:03.022

I’ve told this story a thousand times. I’m going to tell it to you this time. I went in for a job interview once. It was completely teed up for me. It’s like who you know, right? Like hookups, right? Who you’ve been hooked. I was really hooked up for this job interview. I was hooked up. I went into the job interview and Donna Wank, if you’re out there listening, you probably haven’t heard this, but I’ll tag you on LinkedIn. I’ll tag you. I’ll tag you. Donna Wank was there. She’s like, Phil, um, I don’t know whether I should be interviewing you or you should be interviewing me because I believe you should have this job. Before I was even in the interview, I was trying not to smile, but I was like, okay, let’s see. How much money am I going to get? What did you say to that? How much money?

Speaker 0 | 33:49.957

Hey, you went back to those dishwasher days. You were like, I’m not going to blow this one.

Speaker 1 | 33:55.041

But I asked her, I said, okay. Okay, so. I guess, why should I come work for you? Because we suck less. That was her answer. I was like, fair enough. Word of a sign. It’s like, fair enough. That’s the honest, most honest answer I’ve ever heard.

Speaker 0 | 34:14.967

Hey, if somebody could be that real with you.

Speaker 1 | 34:16.667

From a telecom company, you know? Honestly, like, we, and that’s the sad thing. That’s the sad thing about a lot of the… massive vendors that we have to deal with. You know, the AT&Ts, the Verizons, I call them the usual suspects.

Speaker 0 | 34:33.341

Yeah.

Speaker 1 | 34:35.144

Yeah. It’s really about how do we kind of manage and… navigate this bureaucracy of people. And you just need to know that. You need to know that kind of, that’s my day job. My day job is to just know these bureaucracies. It’s not that I’m smarter than anyone else. It’s not that I’m technically smarter than anyone else. It’s just that I’ve chose to know all of these companies and act on my IT director’s best behalf, act on their behalf. And tell them, like, when you go to do vendors this way, you need to do it this way. You need to do it with a special team. You need to do a special team of people that provide you enterprise level support and can navigate all of these companies that are quite frankly mediocre when it comes to customer service.

Speaker 0 | 35:28.995

Hey, I definitely, that’s a dope service you provide because we actually use somebody at this way to do exactly that because I’ve been burned. You can’t just go out there and pick, say, hey, I want 50 megs, 100 megs, a gig circuit, and just say, I’ll pick somebody. You got to know somebody.

Speaker 1 | 35:51.429

Yeah, it is. And you have to have good advisors. You have to have people that are really what we would call carrier agnostic, absolutely biased. We want biased people for sure. But yeah, so. Okay, simplification, I guess that would be simplifying life. So Keith, Trip, we’ve got the top five. Collaboration with IT to avoid silos, which is more work for IT. If you have a bunch of silos, you’ve got to manage. Buy-in with IT to make your job just easier. People know who you are. They like you. They listen to your message. They respect you. Because number three, you’re really good at selling. You have executive management. You have some sort of leadership vision team. You’re able to sell IT. Number four, have a team collectively that communicates. more than needed, let’s just say. If you haven’t communicated, if you don’t know if you’ve communicated enough, communicate some more. And simplifying things as much as possible, just in general, because that makes sense, I think. People can tend to overcomplicate things. IT, if you have that engineering mindset, you can definitely tend to overcomplicate things.

Speaker 0 | 37:24.119

You always overcook it. You know, somebody… comes out with a new technology and it’s like that bolts on well and then you look back at it three years later and you’re like man we could have just used this module within this software that we are right now instead it is bolt on it now i gotta manage and now that management turned crazy you know yeah

Speaker 1 | 37:44.153

yeah um we’ve talked about all kinds of random things what’s the if you had a um I did hit record a long time ago, by the way. So if we decide that we want to make this into it, by the way, you are being recorded. So we’re going to, so we’ll make this conversation into an episode. But if you had, what do you want to send out there to the listeners out there? One piece of advice, IT advice, whether it be for the youth or, you know, whatever it is. Do you have a youth group? Do you have a group of youth that listen to you that we can send this out to and we can say, like, what can we do? What can we give back?

Speaker 0 | 38:26.452

We just give it out to the whole channel. And really, the only thing I would give back is, especially on the IT side, it’s a big world. And I think it’s a big enough world for everybody that wants to jump in.

Speaker 1 | 38:39.926

If people want to put it this way. When I first started out in this technology world, I started out in a, again, Cisco startup sales organization. And I can still remember when I came to D.C. and opened up an office in Northern Virginia. It was in Reston. I can remember the recruiter. So we had a recruiter that came from Colorado. I had come from Colorado at the time, originally from Massachusetts. But I remember sitting down with the recruiter and we were talking about the different types of people because there’s all these, you know, you have like college kids basically fill out these forms and, you know, whatever their psychological, like this person’s going to be good for the job, right? And you get, I just had to take whoever they gave me on my team, which was like 20 people. And I could look right away out at the parking lot. I could look at their cars. I could look at whatever it was. And I can remember this one girl from Baltimore with two car seats in the back of the car. And I was like, that girl’s hungry. She’s going to be good. Oh,

Speaker 0 | 39:44.672

really?

Speaker 1 | 39:44.852

Yes. Do you know what I mean? Like, she’s going to be, she’s good. This guy’s going to be hungry, this, that. And she was. So I guess that would be one thing too, is there’s a lot of ways to get started out in technology from the ground up, even if it’s like. You’re in Comcast territory. A lot of people don’t get a job at Comcast.

Speaker 0 | 40:07.488

Comcast, all these knots coming up, man. Cyber security.

Speaker 1 | 40:11.872

I remember my first job in a call center working for Quest Wireless out in Denver. Loved it. It was better than… I was working on dropping wings before and working at restaurants and working the drive-thru. And the call center was like, I was like, I can sit down. and this job and talk on the phone. This is amazing.

Speaker 0 | 40:33.629

And you learn, man. And then you learn something else. And like you said, I just think it’s so much opportunity. And I’m just encouraging everybody to just go after it. It’s there. I’m the same guy as you. I knew nothing.

Speaker 1 | 40:46.914

You took golf lessons? Maybe take golf lessons.

Speaker 0 | 40:49.475

I took golf lessons. I’m not a college graduate. It works. I’m telling you. You just got to apply yourself. You got to do some learning. You got to do some work. I’m not saying it’s easy in my fellow ITers, but it’s also not rocket science. Go get it.

Speaker 1 | 41:07.876

I do have that conversation a lot, whether you need a college education, whether you even need a master’s degree, whether certifications count. There’s a big debate around that.

Speaker 0 | 41:19.042

Certifications, I won’t lie, right? I’m like you. When I came up, I came up in Cisco in the 2000s to start my VOIP experience. Back then, CCNA, CCNP, CCIE, that was like God, right? But now with all of these, being a manager now, and I’m looking at people coming in with all of these CCNPs, but don’t even know how to sub that. It’s like you can go out there and pass any test you want, buy a test, and remember all this. So I don’t know if it holds as much. But again, for you, I think personally, if you… you know, hey, you’re doing it the right way. You’re trying to learn. You’re using it for your mark and your bar. Definitely go out and get your search. But I don’t think you have to go and get it to be able to secure yourself a job in this space. I think that’s all. Maybe it gets you a better opportunity to get that interview. But again, just like you said, man, you might find somebody that knows somebody that’ll give you a shot just by, you know, experience.

Speaker 1 | 42:24.209

Personally, I don’t believe you need, personally, I just need you. I just believe you need to be really good at technology. Because if I was a CEO of a company and I was hiring someone for technology, I want someone that knows what they’re doing, has legitimate experience, and can show how they’ve increased productivity in a company. Don’t care if you have a college. I don’t care if you have a degree or not.

Speaker 0 | 42:50.081

It’s all about, like you said, it’s all about numbers, right? If you can produce numbers from that IT space. And that goes back to if we can integrate ourselves in business, right? Because before we weren’t showing those numbers, that’s selling. We weren’t, we weren’t telling them how we were saving money. We, we, we on the other side of that, how much money we spend, can I have more?

Speaker 1 | 43:10.810

And yeah, again, the people that worked really hard in school and worked their butt off and got straight A’s, not all of them got the highest paying job. We know that.

Speaker 0 | 43:20.814

Nope.

Speaker 1 | 43:22.074

Too bad. Keith Tripp. Uh, everyone, Google trip, talk tech. Did I get that right? Trip,

Speaker 0 | 43:29.526

talk tech, man.

Speaker 1 | 43:30.527

I appreciate Google trip, talk tech. Thank you so much, man.

Speaker 0 | 43:33.849

Hey man. I thank you, man. I appreciate the time.