Speaker 0 | 00:01.040

All right.

Speaker 1 | 00:10.402

Welcome everyone back to Dissecting Popular IT Nurse. Today we have Miguel Uri. I got to see. I screwed it up, man. Look what I did. Urrutia. Am I doing this right? I got to try and do it right.

Speaker 0 | 00:23.966

No worries. It’s Urrutia, but close enough.

Speaker 1 | 00:29.748

You’re like, look, guy, seriously, don’t do that. Anyways, man, Director of Information Technology at Linecal Americas. You guys do pharmaceutical stuff, and you’ve got some, A, a really good kind of, I want to call it, you know, like, you know, turnaround stories. But, you know, before we get to that, I always like to ask everybody. what their first experience of technology was or even better yet, what was your first computer?

Speaker 0 | 01:03.165

Great question. And funny enough, I did take your, your, your survey or your questionnaire that you have on your site. And it came back like I’m a piece, what do you call it? A piece of nerd.

Speaker 1 | 01:16.449

I had to make all these up. You know, I was thinking that we used to, I had Aaron Siemens on the show years ago and he’s like, you know, we’re out of the days of where people used to just sleep. slip pizzas under the door to uh it you know and and put in and we didn’t have to talk to them you know like it people have to be able to talk with people now so that’s where i came up with the pizza nerd but but go ahead but yeah then i when i said pizza dude i haven’t heard that in a while but let me go check the myth uh you

Speaker 0 | 01:42.851

know google searches and i the urban myths and when i look at the urban myth i’m like Jesus, I mean, I’m a stalker inside introverted. You know, that type of, I’m like.

Speaker 1 | 01:53.173

I didn’t think about any of this. I didn’t think about any of this when I was making up the, when I made up the nerd quiz, what kind of nerd you are. Just so you know, I was, I was sitting with my wife and I was like, I need, I was like, we need to brainstorm right now. We need to brainstorm like all these different kinds of nerds. Like what kind of nerds are there out there? She’s like, well, there’s a clipboard nerd. And then I was like Googling stuff. I was like, well, let’s see. I was like, we were talking about some pizzas under the server room door. So that’s like pizza nerd. Let’s see, we’ve got karate nerds. We’ve got, you know, we’re like brainstorming all these. I should actually put the list together of all the different nerds. And I was trying to think, how do we match up a different, completely ridiculous stereotype to various different types of people in IT? And I didn’t even have enough options for the different. groups or titles that people are under, right? So you’re, you’re it director, we’ve got CTOs, we’ve got, uh, software development, we’ve got, um, systems integrators, we’ve got help desk guys, the help desk guy, by the way, he was like warrior nerd. And that’s because they’re kind of like in the trenches all the time. And I had like, you know, one of the things from, uh, like, uh, oh gosh, like, you know, some anyways, some, some. Anyways, if people out there listening, if you want to go to dissectingpopularitnerds.com and scroll down to what kind of nerd you are, just go through and pick different titles and stuff and you’ll see the different types of nerd outcomes. But I need more, you know, even like the security nerd. That was my favorite. That was like the boxing one because they’re always taking punches, you know, and they’re always fighting for like budgeted dollars. Yeah. So anyways. Um, so anyways, you came out as a pizza nerd. I never thought was smart enough to check urban legends are just terrible. So, uh, you’re some kind of introvert. So according to, to urban legends in Google, you’re an introverted something else. But anyways, that clearly that’s not, that’s really not the, uh, not the case if you’re in it leadership nowadays and, uh, you’re on there, you know, so obviously the show is like a huge success and it’s one of the biggest podcasts in the world. So um and here you are kudos yeah you know for that i mean i think i need to get in some like um sound effects too i want i really want to i really want to um bring in as mary mary as many it stereotypes as possible so i was thinking of like some kind of i need a russian guy to um say some things in russian you know that have to do with hacking you know i just think that’d be if we had you know if we had some uh I had this guy, Felix Gorovatsky, and I was thinking of doing like a play on like Baba Booey. And instead he’d be like, Gorovatsky. You know, like every time we’d have that sound effect or something. Anyways, if you have any great ideas, let me know. So, anywho, back to Pizza Nerd Days, introverts. What happened? Like, what was the story back in the day? How did you get started in this, I don’t know, spaghetti of Cat5?

Speaker 0 | 04:57.485

Yes. Yeah. So I just started back, I can say the Commodore days and that’s because of my brother, right? He’s 12 years older than me. So he looked up to them very well.

Speaker 1 | 05:11.851

How old is your brother? We can ask how old your brother is and inadvertently ask you your age.

Speaker 0 | 05:19.074

Yeah. No problem. My brother’s, I think now he’s 54, 52 years old. So give or take I’m in the 40s.

Speaker 1 | 05:26.397

that’s uh i’m still young man so good good so yeah climbing the hill but uh you’re at the edge of the commodore edge of the commodore days okay we didn’t have pong maybe you had pong we had pong you know anywho um yeah so go ahead commodore so

Speaker 0 | 05:43.070

yeah so it started with commodore i’m like man this is fascinating and uh once uh you know i got in school then i got sat down on my macintosh in the 80s and just seeing the you know the black screen with the green uh lettering and doing math math functions, you know, basic math, right? Subtraction and addition, and just hearing the computer hum was something that just took me down to a rabbit hole after that and haven’t moved back. So it took me, it’s taken me still an amazing journey, starting way back then to where I’m at now.

Speaker 1 | 06:15.302

And what was, what was back then like, paint a picture for me, because everyone’s got a different Everyone’s got a different story. I was growing up in a small town of 1,200 people. And, you know, I don’t know, we were going to school, there was a computer lab. And I think we hit the computer lab maybe in fourth grade. You know, what was your kind of environment? Did anyone care about computers? Did you have any other friends that were… I didn’t really have friends that were super involved into computers, I think, until like sixth grade. And we started getting the catalogs with, you know, where you could order, you know, I don’t know, like towers and stuff. buy motherboards and put computers together.

Speaker 0 | 06:56.683

Yeah, good one. So I’m originally, I was raised in Philadelphia. So I’m a Philly, Philly boy at heart.

Speaker 1 | 07:03.628

Where in Philly?

Speaker 0 | 07:04.128

I live here in Florida. I was in Alany, Northeast Philly.

Speaker 1 | 07:08.952

Okay.

Speaker 0 | 07:10.533

So yeah, it’s Northeast and I grew part of my life in North Philly. That’s where I got introduced to the computers, believe it or not. North Philadelphia, urban city, Catholic school. Also through high school.

Speaker 1 | 07:24.246

Did you have nuns in class?

Speaker 0 | 07:27.327

I knew you were going to ask that. Yes, they used to hit us with rulers. And, you know, back in the day, they had the wood pointers for the chalkboard.

Speaker 1 | 07:35.091

Good.

Speaker 0 | 07:35.751

Yeah,

Speaker 1 | 07:35.911

they still do that. My friend, who I was immediately thinking of when we were talking about that, he went to Catholic school. And then he transferred to my school in like sixth grade. And he was, he had gone to Catholic school. And of course he knew like, like English grammar really well because they like drill English grammar, at least at his school. They did. I was like, I don’t know what like a past participle is and all this stuff. And he was like, what are you talking about? And, but they had clappers too. The nuns there had clappers. So they had, and nothing against the Catholics. My mother-in-law is Catholic. And, uh. And my wife used to be Catholic and she’s from Nebraska. So I can talk about this stuff. And I’m from Massachusetts where it’s pretty much half divided. You’re either like Catholic or Protestant. But the nuns there had clappers, which was basically like a two by four cut with a hinge on it. So that you could like whip it back and forth. And the two pieces of wood would like smack together and make like a big loud sound to get kids’attention. Oh, yeah. We should go back to that. I think we should go back to that. You know, there’s… Yeah. And this show is really not regulated yet, so I don’t think I’ll get in trouble for that. Anyways, did it do you any good? Let me just, did you come through childhood traumatized by getting whipped with rulers and wooden sticks?

Speaker 0 | 09:00.301

Not at all. I think I turned out all right.

Speaker 1 | 09:02.462

Probably not, you know, not traumatized as, yeah, not as traumatized as getting trolled on Facebook or something, you know, or some psychological thing that we’ve got to deal with now. Okay. So North Philly. Rough neighborhood, non-rough neighborhood, murders, no murders. Oh,

Speaker 0 | 09:19.941

yeah, yeah, yeah. This is like back in the day that was not Philly was, yeah, it was tough.

Speaker 1 | 09:25.925

People don’t know Philly. People don’t really know Philly unless you’ve been there and like in you, in your, in the neighborhood that you might not have ever, never been in before, you know, like I got a lot of friends from Germantown and stuff and people just, you know, they just, I don’t know, it’s just, it’s different. So you grew up in a rough neighborhood. What was that like? It has nothing to do with IT. I’m just asking you because I’m curious.

Speaker 0 | 09:48.749

Sure. No, I mean, I’ll be frank with you, right? You always have to be looking over your shoulders. To this day, I still have that habit, right? Walking from school, especially, is worth. the excitement happens when kids get beat up or get mugged, you know, or they like a hat, they want to steal it from you. Yeah. That was the norm coming home. So we always had to, you know, go in groups or, you know, be, be part of something to stay after school and computers played part of that. So it helped me get out of trouble and, and took me to a different journey.

Speaker 1 | 10:24.431

There’s a lot to be said about that. We should have, I mean, I don’t know what kind of like. you know, programs that are for stuff like that, but I’m sure there’s some nonprofits in that area that would be very helpful from a technology standpoint, because look at what people can do with, look, and that’s kind of back to some of the themes and points of the show is really to help grow the value of it, connect the bridge between not just nerdy it and look, I can, I can fix your computer and I can make everything work, but I can connect the dots to business and a technology. help grow the value of the business, impact the bottom line, and make a difference in the business. So why don’t we just use that to transition to maybe some of the business transitions or stories or successes that you’ve been able to make happen over the years? What’s one of the bigger things that you as a technology leader has been able to accomplish?

Speaker 0 | 11:21.873

Yeah, great question. Absolutely. So nowadays, or Even four or five years ago, like you’re saying, right, the sense of being in IT was this person in a closet and, you know, just taking orders from business units to make things happen for them. That’s all changed. And the way it’s changed is now, you know, you have a voice when it comes to the strategies for the business, a vision. Maybe then, and again, this goes out to also the business leaders that have come up. as well in these organizations that have now put IT or technology in the high level in the tabletops, right? Into the strategies and saying, hey, IT guy, if you want to know what technology is out there to make us, you know, the leading edge company or cutting edge technology and how do we put that in place? So it started back, honestly, in the city of Doral. That’s where I started the strategy part of it in 2014. Wait,

Speaker 1 | 12:25.665

Doral, like in Florida, like where the golf course is?

Speaker 0 | 12:29.266

Yes. Right next to Trump Doral. Definitely. Yeah. So that city of Doral is independent, not independent, incorporated city with the county, right? Miami-Dade County and the state of Florida. So it’s part of many other cities that are incorporated. So, you know, I got there. I got poached in LinkedIn, honestly, by a great man. He’s my mentor. His name is Greg. So Greg was the director of IT at that moment. And he brought me in, right? He brought me in with that, his vision, his mentality already going in full force because he had table talks with these leadership of the mayor and, you know, the council and all that good stuff.

Speaker 1 | 13:12.319

So hold on. We got to slow down. We got to slow down. Hold the thought. Hold the thought. And the only reason I’m stopping this is because there’s a lot of people that I sign up questions on LinkedIn all the time. what’s your single biggest frustration problem or concern right now? So people are like, well, I don’t know. You know, I’m looking at getting this certification and I don’t know which school to go to, or like, you know, Phil, I’d love to be on the podcast, but like, like, you know, fully focused on just finding a job right now. And you see, you know, all of this recruiter ghosted me the other day. And I’m, I’m putting together, I haven’t put it together yet. And it’s, it’s, it’s one of those things that you keep marinating on, marinating on and you write down points and you write down. points and you add another strategy and you add another tip and you add another way to do it. But you said that he poached you on LinkedIn. So what did you do to be poachable? Um, you know what I mean? Like coachable, poachable. I kind of like that. Um, be more poachable. Um, what, what was it, what stood out on your profile? Like, or what did you do to make people come to you? Because If we could get people to come to us and offer us the dream job or grow our career or get us involved or be willing to, like you said, mentor you. And that’s another thing that we need to talk about. But was there anything in particular that it was? And just being completely frank and honest here. Like, what was it?

Speaker 0 | 14:40.876

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So, listen, a lot of folks that go into LinkedIn, it’s not all about me, right? It’s definitely not. That mentality has to go away. It’s all about me, look at my skills, look at my accomplishment, why I’m not getting a job.

Speaker 1 | 14:56.041

Yep, yep.

Speaker 0 | 14:57.555

And honestly, you have to network virtually and you have to collaborate. And meaning by that is if you like the company or you like someone that works for a company and you like their article or they post this something, comment back. If you don’t agree with it, be professional. You don’t agree, but if you do agree with it, kudos him or kudos her. And that goes a long way.

Speaker 1 | 15:22.205

Yeah, yeah. So that’s what I was saying. And a lot of people put their LinkedIn profile like a resume. But your LinkedIn profile shouldn’t be, again, about me. It should be about what you can do for others. It really should be something that’s more of a company. It should be more of a, I mean, I guess it’s a professional profile, but it should be more of a company facing webpage for people that when they look at it, right, they can see immediately you understand their problems and how you’re like solving their problems versus, you know, look at me, I can, you know, answer tickets from the help. desk and I’ve got this, this, this, and this certification. Well, that’s all fun and great, but how about I reduced this much in labor and decreased controllable costs and did this, this, and this, and this is how I do it from this particular strategy by working with executive management from this point of view. And then to your point, find people that you like and would companies that you would want to work with or work for, follow them, like them, add into that, and then you be proactive in going after them. Because there should be no reason why a good IT leader should need a recruiter. They should be able to target the companies that they want to work for, and those companies should want them, but then go after those companies and go right to the top and get right in front of a C-level executive and have the ability to speak the language of business. and show them how you can make a difference in to their company does that sound absolutely does that sound like you know so i what i want to do is put together through a collaboration with other it leaders a sim somewhat simple but a way to organize your profile that’s a a company facing profile so that when people see you they see like okay this is how this guy can can affect our vision and company and then give it leaders the tools to go after the companies that they want to work for and then be proactive in their approach, as opposed to rely on some, you know, nothing against recruiters because they got to do the same thing. They got to do the same thing, but, and they’ve got to, you know, maybe link the dots and find these people also. And you’d be making their job a lot easier. But when I asked God, he’s like, you know, these, I’m like, why? He’s like, I need this certification. I was like, why? Why do you need that certification if you already have the tools to do it? Like, you know, some DevOps cert or ITIL or whatever it is, right? Because recruiters are asking for it. I’m like, okay. So that’s so shallow, really. I mean, because it’s just a very kind of like high level way to, it’s just a way to filter you out. It’s like another tag. It’s like we’re tagging you. Like, okay, here’s a tag, an ITIL tag. Now you’re just like, you’re in a group with like another thousand people. Like, who cares? Anyways. Right. Sorry. You hit like a, struck a nerve. So back to Greg, back to Greg poaching you. He poached you because why? Were you liking his stuff and commenting on it and showing and then, and then networking with him? Like, what was it?

Speaker 0 | 18:36.855

Well, that’s, that’s part of the pie, right? I mean, if you want to look at the whole pie, you know, you have to be a brand, right? You have to be a brand of yourself. That doesn’t mean you have to go there and sell yourself, you know, to sell your soul that way. But,

Speaker 1 | 18:50.802

you know,

Speaker 0 | 18:53.444

accomplishment is one. Two, your experience. Three, you know, your interpersonal skills. You have to be a well-rounded individual to be part of the IT leadership if that’s what your goal is. That’s what I’ve learned, right? You have to understand the whole business. understand the technical side of the business and at the same time understand how to manage the people so with Greg he the way he approached me one he liked what I was what I was posting two I like what he was posting and and and you know sidetracked you a little bit I’ve gotten my three positions has been through LinkedIn by the way yeah so from from City of the Route to Kaseya to now Linacle it’s all been LinkedIn And it has been through just conversations. They message me, hey, you know, I have this opportunity or listen, in the future, if you want an opportunity, I saw this post that you put or I didn’t know that you were into whatever. And that’s something that our company is looking for. Why don’t we start a conversation? Same thing with you, Phil. I met you through LinkedIn and here we are, you know, after taking your awesome quiz and we’re in a podcast. So we’re working on it.

Speaker 1 | 20:11.286

I’m glad that you say it’s awesome. I’m working on it. I’m working on it. So this is like a labor of love and process, but I love what you’re saying right now. So keep going. Yeah.

Speaker 0 | 20:22.169

So. So yeah. So then with Greg, he, Hey, Hey, listen, I need you to interview, come in, just like that. Come in, go apply and come interview. That that’s a simple, I was like, wow, is this the feature?

Speaker 1 | 20:36.151

Yeah. Cause you know, what’s interesting about that is I would, I would assume his HR department, which was became your HR department or whatever it was needed, you know, so many candidates that needed to be interviewed in a process. And what of the top three candidates, you know, like, you know, Miguel is the guy, but you were already chosen. Right. And the other candidates could have just been like a, you know, kind of like when you do like, we already know who the best product is, but we got to have five, we got to put out five bits and we got to put out five bits. I’m not saying that that was the case, but a lot of times that is the case. A lot of times that someone’s walking in the interviews are formality.

Speaker 0 | 21:21.346

Yeah. No, I mean, don’t get me wrong. I had to compete with a lot of talented people. He probably did that with other candidates as well. Right. And put them through the application process, you know, just to get candidates in. Maybe at that time they didn’t have the candidate pool that they were looking for. So he got creative. The man went out of the, you know, his ordinary procedures and said, I’m going to go out of the box and get candidates in, you know, and that’s what happened. I, you know, I don’t think just because I got the job was because through LinkedIn. The opportunity came from LinkedIn that I had to do my job and present myself well to get the job, if that makes sense.

Speaker 1 | 21:58.653

Absolutely. Absolutely. Now, fast forward, because there’s a lot we could talk about there. The main point is LinkedIn, personal brand, connecting, human connection, one-to-one connection, demonstrating the fact that… I would assume culturally and personality wise, two people get along. Cause it’s great. It’s great when you work somewhere and you feel like you’re working with your best friends. It’s another thing when you work somewhere and you, and you feel like you’re underneath like the microscope, right? You know what I mean? So like when you’re, when you’re underneath the microscope, it’s like a stressful thing. Ticket comes in in the middle of the night. whatever it is, phone rings, it’s just a very stressful, miserable life. But when you feel like you’re working on a team of a group of people with a common, where you trust each other and no one’s really kind of questioning someone’s integrity, then it’s a different feeling. It’s a different feeling. So that’s what can come out of being outgoing yourself, personal brand, et cetera, if you agree. Yeah,

Speaker 0 | 23:09.109

100%. Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 1 | 23:10.971

So how is he a mentor? Because mentorship comes up a lot. It’s a theme that comes up on this show. And I would say it’s growing, but I would say 50-50 down the middle. A lot of people didn’t have mentors. A lot of people in IT were like, no, man, it was so new back in the day when we were coding on Commodores that we’re all kind of cut from the same thing. They’re like, really? I didn’t have any mentors. And if you had some people that were mentors, it was like, you know, the old crone, like, dude that was using. punch cards. He was like using punch cards, like an Einstein guy, you know what I mean? Or, or it was someone that was not in it that was in accounting or something and taught the it guy, like the language of, you know, look, here’s what I need for you to get this approved for the budget. And then like, you know, his eyes opened and he was like, Oh, I don’t need to talk about nerdy stuff. I need to talk about this is going to make us money and save us money. And don’t worry, I’ll be within budget. If you followed my, I’ve drank, I’ve drank this like my third cup of coffee today. So I’m pretty high right now.

Speaker 0 | 24:17.955

No, absolutely. Right. So we do have those leaders now that, yeah.

Speaker 1 | 24:22.916

How is he a mentor? So how is he a mentor to you? How is he a mentor to you?

Speaker 0 | 24:27.358

Definitely. So yeah, for the mentorship, I, you know, you don’t go up to somebody and say, Hey, can you be my mentor?

Speaker 1 | 24:33.479

It just happens. It just happens. It just happens. Yeah.

Speaker 0 | 24:36.520

We click, right. We click that work. The man has met, he’s knowledgeable. of IT. He had many years under his belt before I met him. So his outgoing personality is what makes him his charm, right? He’s a likable guy. And on top of that, he’s a technical nerd. So, you know, you get both words. I was like, man, I want to be cool as you and be an influential piece on the table so that we can get budgets. Right. So you get money. And he says, sure, man. So, yeah, it’s been like that since we’re still, even though I’ve switched jobs, my communication with him, we still communicate to this day. And he gives me valuable advice of, you know, of leadership in the technical world.

Speaker 1 | 25:20.201

Link. First of all, you got to send him this episode when we’re done and we’re done recording this song. Send it to him and give him a personal invite for me to come be on the show because that would be cool.

Speaker 0 | 25:30.789

Oh, yeah. You’ll love him. I definitely will. I mean, he’s now the assistant city manager for the city of Fort Lauderdale. He can give you stories. He can give you stories. So absolutely count on that, Phil.

Speaker 1 | 25:42.139

Yeah, we just need a story show. Yeah, we should just do a story show. I was thinking of doing some different, like what other funny things could we have that would be, you know, that would be good for the show. By the way, everyone out there listening right now, I’m supposed to do these commercial breaks. It’s not really a commercial break. It’s me asking everyone listening, if you like this show, if you like Dissecting Popular IT Nerds, go to Apple Podcasts because of the four major marketing engines in the world, Apple, Facebook, yes, believe it or not, Amazon, and Google. Apple rules the world of podcasts, whether you like it or not. So I need people to go to Apple Podcasts. search Dissecting Popular IT Nerds, scroll to the bottom and give us your honest review. Because if I can get over 140 reviews, it’s going to most likely put me in the top 100. And I’ve been looking at this stuff. So anyways, running the numbers. With that being said, do you remember any particular conversation? Let me ask you the hard question. Did you ever have a screw up or something that was like a really hard pill to swallow? And he delivered that pill to you and you totally took that pill because you respected where it was coming from.

Speaker 0 | 26:56.412

Yes, absolutely. And that was when I first started with the city. We had a project to do and he’s been, you know, he’s like my approach was so newbie, you can say, with networking because I started as a network analyst for the city at that time. And something just didn’t go right. And, you know, he told me straight up. You know, this is not the way to do things. And he was, but the way he delivers it, right? It’s like he’s smacking you, but at the same time, he’s being very diplomatic about it, that you don’t take it that hard. Like, you just say, you’re right. I screwed up and, you know, I’ll get up to bat again and try to swing again and get a home run out of it.

Speaker 1 | 27:41.527

Are you allowed to say what the screw up was? Do you even remember what it was on a networking issue? Was it just a technical thing or what was it? Or was it a personal thing? Yeah,

Speaker 0 | 27:48.731

it’s just a technical thing. I really don’t remember the details. I just remember the memory of him just, you know.

Speaker 1 | 27:54.716

Okay. You plugged in a hundred phones and you didn’t use the land port. You used like… Yeah. Okay. All right. What was the… So can you break that down though? Like, you know, can you break that down how the feedback came? Like if you had to have a coaching conversation with someone nowadays, like how does it go?

Speaker 0 | 28:16.698

Yeah. I mean, now being on the seat that he was, you know, I can give you my stories of being on the other side, right.

Speaker 1 | 28:24.483

Cause sometimes it’s harder from the, sometimes it’s harder from the leadership’s point of view. I found having a staff of 20 people, the most stressful point in my life. And it was very stressful because you’ve got other like larger executives looking down on you and how you do things. And then you’ve got a whole group of people that you need their support and you need them to do a good job. And then they’re all looking at you too. Like, does this guy really know like how to be a leader? And you know, you’ve got to now have these coaching conversations. So when you’re new, it can be very, very, it can take like two years to kind of like really understand how to work with a diverse group of people. Yeah.

Speaker 0 | 29:11.145

So totally agree. Right. And I, that, that experience, you just brought me to this, that experience when, you know, through my journey, I had a 19 director. She was, she’s a phenomenal lady. She’s the one that really, you know, posed me to be who I am as a leader when it comes to positions, right. How to market myself, but she’s, she’s, you know, gave me a great opportunity to manage a team of 15 people. And, and honestly I had experience of managing other resources, but these were seniors, right? There were a couple of seniors position that I needed to modify. And man, let me tell you, ones and zeros are very easy to deal with. But personalities… personalities that’s that’s a whole game you know it’s a different ball game especially with senior technical resources because hey i know it all right and uh you’re not going to change the way i do things uh yeah especially yeah especially if they’re stuck in their arrogant ways yeah call it i call it the legacy mindset right yes so very hard to change those characters but some of them do sway after a while They have to understand the program and, you know, you got to give them a different perspective. Right. That’s my job. And that’s what I learned under her administration is, you know, you got to persuade. You got to let them know this is the way, you know, I understand your challenges. I understand that change is difficult. But at the end of the day, we’re here to do a job. And if the company’s vision is to go this way and it’s a positive one, you got to do it. You know, if not, it’s not your team for you, unfortunately.

Speaker 1 | 30:54.117

Yeah. So from a business perspective, so you’ve got your team management perspective, you’ve got a technology supporting the business perspective. How do you manage that change? I released an episode today that was titled… change is not prejudiced. People are right. Like people are prejudiced to change. And, uh, what, you know, so like, how do you make that, you know, you mentioned you came into organization, you know, and you really kind of in, in 90 days were able to kind of lift the entire IT department. Was it one of those things where you came in and there, there was legacy mindsets and you’re like, and the people were like, ah, cause I’ve, I’ve walked into that situation before I’ve walked in that. Situation from a consulting perspective, from a telecom perspective, from many perspectives. And people have said, you know, don’t feel if you’re going to come in here and tell us we need to recable the entire facility, you might as well turn around and walk out. And like the first bullet point on my list of things to tell them was to recable the entire facility. Right. I was like, OK, you know, like, how am I going to like, you know, like, don’t say that, but we’re going to get around to it. And then by the end of. You know, like a month later, after like, you know, going through presentations and showing ROI and getting, you know, quotes from end users and talking with end users throughout the facility. And then going and presenting to the board, you know, I had to come finally to like the final bullet point, which was like the solution, which was re-cable the entire facility. Because they are on a 1 meg T1 with 110 end users. and RJ like 11 cabling and 25 points of failure on hubs not switches, hubs you know and like all kinds of crazy stuff you know it was just like an insane asylum it was an insane asylum is what it was but it was a zoo literally it was a zoo literally it was a zoo like animals but it was a zoo but it was also a zoo you know And by the end of the presentation, I was like, so, you know, you spend $85,000 on break fix. You’ve got this, this, this, and this. You’ve got these bottlenecks you’re spending here. People are wasting productivity. It takes five minutes for someone to receive an email. You have no security. Your sense of security is just the fact that no one would ever try to hack you because you’ve got a single T1, you know. And the solution is you’re going to spend $50,000 on recabling. You’ve got to spend this, this. And this was a nonprofit, right? And I’m taking pictures of servers with like, there’s, they had servers that were basically, you know, machines with no case on the outside and a fan pointing at the server, you know, like absolutely the worst situation you never see. Right. And at the end there was like, you know, like an 80 year old guy, nothing wrong. You know, I’m saying that because when we talk about legacy technology, not that 80 year olds are legacy technologists, but you know, the. biggest stereotype there would, you would think that this would be the guy that would shut it down. Right. And he was like, I have one question for you, Phil, why would we not do this? And I was like, well, you said it. So it’s the truth, not me. You know? So anyways what was the story when you came in? Because I love these turnaround stories.

Speaker 0 | 34:33.900

Sure. So this is, you know, during my current tenure with the company. And again, I need to say that this humor, you know, any Any opinions of mine does not reflect the company I work for. Just wanted to make that clear.

Speaker 1 | 34:47.834

Yeah, I say that too. Any guests that are on my show or anything that comes out of my mouth that could be misconstrued as anything, there is some disclaimer in my website somewhere like that. Okay. Yes, yes. This is make-believe. This is make-believe.

Speaker 0 | 35:01.978

Yes, this is make-believe, yeah. So, yeah, so I got the job right out. The CEO is phenomenal, right? For Linico Americas, her name is Vida Linoche. And she has, man, she is savvy. Like when I mean, I met one of the best bosses so far. She is one of them. She gets it right. She gets technology. So anyhow, I got into a scenario where she was desperately, the IT department was bleeding, but bleeding financially, right? And she’s like, listen, yeah. if you really want to make a difference here, here, here’s something, look at these plans. Tell me what you can do. I said, wow. And, and, and, and I said, okay, let me look at it. And I said, you know what? And myself, I was like, I’m going to make this happen in 90 days. Like I put myself on that goal mindset. Right. So.

Speaker 1 | 35:54.102

Do you have a reason why 90 days or did, or do you use that as your general philosophy in 90 day, a 90 day planning philosophy?

Speaker 0 | 36:01.966

It’s just a general philosophy. And.

Speaker 1 | 36:04.408

and gets me going right gets my motor skills one of my um one of the best coaching programs i went ever went through was from like an ex-hockey coach his name’s todd herman and he has a program called the 90-day year and um his whole his whole program is about breaking goals down into 90 days and then into two-week sprints nice i’ll look into that so anyways um well you just kind of did it naturally like 90 days is like yeah It’s a chunk of time that’s not too long, but not too short where you can actually really accomplish something in that period of time, you know, and push yourself. It’s not too, it’s not too out of the box. It’s not too far off. You know what I mean? Anyways.

Speaker 0 | 36:49.327

Yeah, so definitely the 90 days, right? So I did this mythology just going, you know, let’s align, let’s analyze, let’s assess, and let’s advise, you know, a roadmap. philosophy. So I got all the pain points. I understood the plan. I needed to know where to go and I just needed to execute. Right. So I did my due diligence. You have to do your due diligence, especially dealing with C-level. They don’t want you to waste their time and give them a whole scenario of how you’re going to fix it. Just, just run timelines and budget and you know, what’s the outcome it’s, it’s going to help us. Right. That’s the main line. Yep. Slogan night. So yes, facts, just give them the facts. And that’s what I did. Right. So, um, It was a great year for me. Unfortunately, we went, we are going through this pandemic, but it was like a, a perfect story. We can say, cause I got hired a month or two weeks before this whole Corona or COVID-19 started. And, um, it just gave me an opportunity to really dig in and make things happen. So, uh, long story short in that 90 days, I was able to give them what they wanted, um, or what they, what they deemed. to be a necessary change within the organization and how I made it better for them when it came to the technology. So there’s like,

Speaker 1 | 38:07.023

I mean, there’s really no disclaimer. There’s no disclaimer needed there because they did the right thing. A, by bringing you in, by noticing that there was a gap, right. And then you filled in the gap. So it’s not like, it’s not like any like, okay, good. Like, you know, kudos to them. Right. Like you didn’t pull a Sears. You know what I mean? You didn’t pull a Toys R Us. You know what I mean?

Speaker 0 | 38:29.947

Exactly.

Speaker 1 | 38:31.128

Good for you. Was there any key pieces that were, that maybe, so COVID-19 drove a lot of hurried upgrades. For some people, they were already in the process of that upgrade and it only further cemented their great decisions, right? What were some of the biggest, were there any highlights or upgrades? upgrades or things that you did that really improved productivity or whatever it is you guys were trying to accomplish for the benefit of other listeners out there?

Speaker 0 | 39:06.117

Absolutely. So they were, I’ll take this technology, right? Just an example, Skype, right? They were on Skype. Nothing against Skype. I think it’s a good program, you know, but there’s Microsoft Teams was really,

Speaker 1 | 39:18.387

I was kind of hoping you’re going to say Teams and not like, you know, some other thing. I was like, yeah, Skype, why not Teams? Yeah. Teams. Yeah. Was there, how do you make that? It’s funny that you say that because I’ve got Teams open right now. I’ve got Skype open. I’ve got for homeschooling purposes for my kids. I’ve got, you know, I’ve got an Outlook account to manage home network. And then I’ve got Zoom open, which we’re doing this on and I’m getting ready to migrate everything to, I’ve gone from a G suite to a, I never thought I would be a Microsoft, like, you know. complete lover, but I am now. I find it so easy to communicate with people on teams outside of the organization. Um, it’s from a growing the business perspective, right? It’s almost impossible to get ahold of someone on email. It’s easier to get ahold of someone on, uh, via snail mail than it is on email. It’s maybe possible to get ahold of them on telephone. It’s easier to get ahold of them on text messaging. But the one thing that most people kind of, and I don’t want to say put their guard down to, but let’s say I find you on LinkedIn. And you get like, you’re an IT guy. So you get hammered by like sales guys all day long. You get people vomiting in your inbox with like two paragraphs and links and read this. And I’d like to make a professional introduction and we’re in the same link and blah, blah, blah. Right. But if I send you a message externally, like from teams to teams, and I say, hey, man, I had a quick question for you. And you’re getting it in teams. You’re kind of like, wow, like. This guy was able to search and see that I’m, you know, A, I’ve got Teams to begin with. Like, yeah, sure. And I’ve had so many conversations with people just by doing a quick Teams video call that I probably wouldn’t normally have with someone if I had gone any other route. So anyways, that’s just the Teams piece. And I don’t see that happening in Zoom. I don’t see that happening in Zoom. Like, you know, adding someone to your Zoom messenger. Just no one’s doing that. But yeah,

Speaker 0 | 41:31.671

I do have straight. I do have straight guidelines with that, even though it’s a great way to have external communications. Internally, I don’t allow other domains. We only, you know, just the security hat. I put my security hat on.

Speaker 1 | 41:45.737

Well, good for you. Well, good for you. Yeah. That just goes to show how many people allow Phil Howard into their domain.

Speaker 0 | 41:53.000

It’s amazing. It’s awesome.

Speaker 1 | 41:55.721

But go ahead.

Speaker 0 | 41:58.562

Yeah. So, yeah, there I got to be. I got to be, you know.

Speaker 1 | 42:02.544

put my white hat on us and now we don’t we don’t do that so but it could be but would you allow them to add if they emailed you or they would you allow a particular group of customers or high-level customers your accounts right after after the right approvals yes absolutely okay so good so regardless um i mean i don’t know what the percentage of world of the world is that uses uh microsoft over g suite now it’s got to be astronomically one-sided Any clue on those statistics?

Speaker 0 | 42:34.041

I don’t, honestly. I know Microsoft has. Yes, Phil, you should. You should.

Speaker 1 | 42:41.324

It’s my fault. It has numbers. My fault. Yes,

Speaker 0 | 42:43.545

it’s your fault, Phil.

Speaker 1 | 42:44.946

Okay, good. See, this is called taking responsibility. That’s another leadership characteristic. So anyways, you guys were on Skype. You moved to Teams. How many end users moved to Teams?

Speaker 0 | 43:00.188

Yeah. So for this company, it was pretty easy. Like my kids say, easy peasy. It was only 100. However, my previous organization that I was with had over a thousand and they we did the same exercise. So I learned a lot from my previous organization coming over to where I’m at now. So. So, yeah. So in length of all, like twelve hundred, you know, same same type of challenges you can have. And. Honestly, the most challenging is just the mindset of the end user. That’s pretty much where you come with the walls. Yeah. You know, I don’t like this.

Speaker 1 | 43:41.581

I could summarize your struggles and every other IT director’s struggles probably on the face of this earth down to five things. And one of those five things is end user training. I would say the other. is dealing with silos and legacy technology, creating silos in the organization that you have to manage.

Speaker 0 | 44:05.434

Amazing. Yes, true.

Speaker 1 | 44:06.494

Do you agree? Let’s see. The other one would be having to deal with poor technical support from your vendors, any of them.

Speaker 0 | 44:17.497

Yes.

Speaker 1 | 44:19.258

What was the other one? The fourth would be confidently taking decision direction. and planning and the fourth or fifth one, did we have a fifth one? I had it really boiled down to like, like four. Um, and I, and I only know that because I’ve a done so many interviews and a ton of, um,

Speaker 0 | 44:42.697

uh,

Speaker 1 | 44:45.599

surveys, the wrong word, talking with people, talking with, uh, with it managers. And I only did that as an eye-opener for myself because I’m always thinking, like, if you had asked me, like, three years ago, you know, what’s this IT guy’s problem? Or, you know, what is he really, like, what keeps him up at night? I don’t know. It could be he doesn’t have this feature in this, you know, thing. He doesn’t have this. He doesn’t have that. But it’s not. At the end of the day. Your job is to support end users and to create a culture of technology that’s very easy to use. Yes. And part of that issue is the diversity of your end users and training them to use technology. That’s true. So what was the…

Speaker 0 | 45:28.623

There’s always a light. There’s always a light. Sorry, Phil. There’s always a light at the end of the tunnel, right? And training and the end user training, all that keeps some directors up all night. of course, is money and security. But other than that, you know, the end training after it’s done and over with, and they already have like 90 days into this new technology or software that they’re getting used to. I did a survey at the end of the year of last year, and I went out and say, okay, tell me now, would you rather pick Skype or do you like Teams? 98% or 99% pick Teams over Skype. any day now.

Speaker 1 | 46:11.967

They better. I’m just pulling up Skype right now and why is that so great? What’s the difference? The messengers on the left, what was their like, I wonder what their complaint was. Let’s see. Teams.

Speaker 0 | 46:28.373

They saw too many buttons on Teams. Oh my god. Files and chat and calendars.

Speaker 1 | 46:35.976

Damn. Damn this calendar. there’s a help button why i don’t want to help why amazing amazing yeah um but they love it that’s uh yeah once you start using once you start using teams um i’m probably going to get hammered now by some of my sponsors but you know once you start using teams um no it is it’s it’s great um your biggest learning moment you was, well, we haven’t talked about cryptocurrency or blockchain at all, and I’m not going to even go there because it’s an impossibility. That’s such a deep subject. Like asking, if I was to ask, how about this one for end users? Here’s a good question. How does blockchain work? Well, blockchain is too much of a, how does cryptocurrency work? That would be a good. I went down that road one day for an episode, and I realized it was so far above my head in all these software guys. I’m going to stereotype software guys right now that have little to no personality or that think that they’re smarter than everybody else. I can tell. It was a comic book guy. I can tell by talking to you that you know nothing about how money… or the economy works. It’s like, okay. You’re right. We’re not doing this. But cybersecurity, what’s your biggest learning moment around cybersecurity?

Speaker 0 | 48:15.228

Sure. Cybersecurity is what I learned a lot actually was at the city and here where I’m at now at Linacle. So again, it all depends on leadership. So what I learned in cybersecurity is we were getting hammered. I’ll take you back. where the Miss Universe pageant was held actually at the Trump hotel and the city was hosting the event. The website, the city website got hit ever. Not known because, you know, it’s a little city.

Speaker 1 | 48:46.784

Like DDoS attack or what?

Speaker 0 | 48:48.745

Exactly, a DDoS attack.

Speaker 1 | 48:51.006

See, I’m not that dumb.

Speaker 0 | 48:53.688

No, you’re not.

Speaker 1 | 48:55.068

We don’t have to describe what a DDoS attack is. everyone that you know that’s the one thing that millennials do know because they play a lot of xbox or something you know they’re gonna know what a ddos attack is because they’re doing it to their other like gamer like teams and stuff anyways oh yeah i was talking with my nephew like my nephew he’s you know he’s getting ready to go to college and he’s like yo you did a show on on ddos attacks he’s like you know i was like how do you know about that he’s like oh you know i’m doing and then he was like way into cryptocurrency and stuff as well at you know 17 or 16 whatever age he was he’s like well Because I have a really good team with whatever game they’re playing on Xbox. And we got hit with a DDoS attack. And now we’ve got to turn up a server. And I was like, oh my gosh. Anyways. So anyways. You guys got hit. Trump Hotel, whoever it was, got hit with a DDoS attack. What did you guys do on that public-facing IP? How did you guys figure that out? Or what was going on?

Speaker 0 | 49:50.671

Yeah, so I was tasked to look into it. And I got the old famous old wasp. uh site and uh got my my cool tool cali linux um and got the authorization from my boss to you know do my sweep and see what what was going on and we found a hidden text within the the website that was causing also an issue besides denial of service. So, you know, that, that opened my eyes, you know, with, with what I studied and, you know, put it into action. I’m like, wow, I really liked this. You know, I really like to play detective.

Speaker 1 | 50:24.409

So we got,

Speaker 0 | 50:26.270

we got, we got, we got the, okay. After we, you know, presented the, the facts, we got approved to put in a security awareness budget program, program. So we got funded right immediately. So yeah, that was an awesome experience. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1 | 50:42.041

Classic.

Speaker 0 | 50:42.642

post-apocalyptic uh security failure gets funded that sounds like a great it sounds like a great title for a show yeah um okay you know i was a newbie it wasn’t it wasn’t something major you know but it was an eye-opener um it helped us because it protects because we we had i had the response you know the team had the responsibility for the police department and city hall so that little incident could have gotten a little bit

Speaker 1 | 51:11.654

figure right so yeah it definitely wasn’t i um for anyone out there listening and i think we’ve already given some amazing advice out there but what’s the main theme and a lot of times you can’t you can’t teach things but people can be taught people really they really can have a like a an awakening they can they can like come out of their you like the Undertaker and WWF or whatever that was back, you can have like an IT awakening and an aha moment. And this is your opportunity to provide that awakening for them. What would you say is like the theme or common theme or main piece of advice that you would give to anyone out there that might be 28 years old? Yeah. I get people all the time. Like, I think there’s a, people have visions of grandeur at a young age too, that they’re going to walk right into a role right away. And they don’t realize that it’s kind of this cumulative experience over the years. That is kind of how you end up where you’re at in life, but the decisions that you make can absolutely affect those experiences that you then experience, which give you experience. What would that main theme or piece of advice would be that, that has helped you get where you.

Speaker 0 | 52:38.894

where you’re at right now that could people could change or alter people could you know maybe insert into their life yeah i the number one i think is don’t look at the dollar sign uh we get paid pretty well what we do but that all depends again like you’re saying right you got to compound your skills you have to compound your passion you have to be a passionate person when it comes to technology there’s no no answer but but you know there’s there’s no way around it uh If you’re not passionate what you do any job, but with technology, you have to be passionate. You have to find or try to find that needle in the haystack. That honestly, that’s IT in a nutshell, because it’s always going to be a challenge. IT is never the same every day.

Speaker 1 | 53:24.260

What’s the needle in the haystack? What’s the needle in the haystack?

Speaker 0 | 53:27.881

Right. So the needle in the haystack is, you know, when you’re starting off in help desk, right? Well, how do I solve, you know, do I tell them control or delete? Do I, you know? be fragged their hard drive you know then you go into your engineering role and you’d be like okay help text was cool now i gotta find that other neuron hazard do i like software do i like network do i like management you know there’s so many branches uh we don’t save lives but we do save businesses for when there’s an outage so it’s the same thing as being a doctor right you have to figure out your specialists where you’re really going to shine at and work at those skills um you The horizons is, you know, the sky’s the limit. You know, that’s what I was told when I was a kid. And it’s so true. Never stop learning. Don’t think you know it all. Don’t think you’re an expert. Nobody’s an expert in technology. You can be a specialist of something that you do and you do it every day. But there’s going to be someone else out there that does it way better and you can learn from them. So never stop learning. That’s the main goal. Always look for that needle in the haystack and never stop learning.

Speaker 1 | 54:34.565

Well. I’m definitely going to disagree with you. IT definitely has saved lives in many instances by providing links to specific things, bringing internet to where the internet has been out to help ambulances get to wherever they need to get, basically maybe supporting first-line workers, allowing doctors to do remote surgery in a battlefield, whatever it is. We all work together. Thank you so much for being on the show. It’s been an absolute pleasure. And I look forward to having you on the show again with any of your mentors or however you guys want to collaborate in the future. I really appreciate it.

Speaker 0 | 55:14.274

Absolutely, Phil. Thank you for having me. I think you’re doing an outstanding, phenomenal piece of work with your content and everything that you’re doing for us, the IT guys, nerds out there in the world to bring it to one platform and, you know, just decompress everything that they have or they go through to make a better experience for the next person up. So thank you.