Speaker 0 | 00:05.321
All right, welcome everyone back to Dissecting Popular Nerds. Today we have a true nerd. You can’t see Larry Miller right now, but if you could see the background, there’s various different Star Wars things and depictions of the universe in various different ways. So, Larry, welcome to the show, man.
Speaker 1 | 00:22.686
Thank you for having me. Yeah.
Speaker 0 | 00:24.406
So, you know, last time we were talking, we were talking about the world. the word millennial and, and throwing that term around with, you know, no regard for, um, you know, respect for the term whatsoever. So let’s just throw this term millennial around and the, in the birth of the internet and why you, why, well, first of all, why do you hate the, why do you hate the word millennial?
Speaker 1 | 00:47.120
Well, I don’t really care for it in the sense that you’re, you’re, you’re stereotyping a group of people that really have a bad rap about their, about that. generation. I have a sister that’s some 18 years younger than me and she’s considered a millennial, but she is one of the hardest working people I’ve ever met. And I’ve met some 20 year olds who are still kind of fallen to that realm and they, they’ve done the hardest to be the best human being they can. And they’ve risen above a lot of Gen Xers. And there’s just, there’s a stereotypical way of thinking about these people that, um, They just got a bad rap that I don’t think they deserve. It just hurts the whole society of how they are not getting the dust due to their work ethic, I guess. That’s what I’m trying to say.
Speaker 0 | 01:46.327
Now, do you think that’s just in general because maybe, possibly, America in general has this disease with… never settling for mediocrity. And I only say that because I’m overseas at the moment right now. I’m visiting a friend. We were talking last night and I was like, why is it that America invents absolutely everything? Like literally, how is that possible? That just about every major invention, I don’t know, and you correct me if I’m wrong, things like electricity, the car, computer. I don’t know. I guess there’s some debate on where the internet really came from. And I said, you know, why is it? Can’t someone just come up with an app that makes like, you know, a billion dollars? Like even like Uber, for example, because I’m overseas and it doesn’t matter where I’m at. I can pull up the app on Uber. It somehow translates, takes money out of my bank account. No one asked me if I’m money laundering or anything like that. It still converts all the money and I get a ride to wherever I’m going. And he said, you know what I think? I think it’s that everyone in America is kind of living on their own little island. by themselves and we don’t settle for mediocre.
Speaker 1 | 02:55.465
Truly, I agree with that 100%.
Speaker 0 | 02:57.365
And the stereotype of the millennial is,
Speaker 1 | 03:00.506
oh,
Speaker 0 | 03:01.186
I’m kind of, you know, lived with my parents up until the time I’m, you know, whatever, you know, 36, I’ve got, well, 36, they wouldn’t be a millennial, would they? Yeah, they would be a millennial. You know, I’ve got, yeah, I’ve got loans, you know, I’m sitting on the couch drinking my kale smoothie. you know, whatever it is. Do you think it’s that the older generation, the work hard generation, and that’s not to say that the millennials don’t work hard, but do you think that’s maybe where the mixed match is happening? And they were born into, you know, after the birth of the internet.
Speaker 1 | 03:36.416
Well, to talk about that, the work hard mentality. So you and I, we’re around the same age, I think. So I think you and I were brought up in a generation where We were taught to work hard. So our whole, we only do what we were taught. So we were taught to work hard. So we work hard and so that translates into our everyday life. Our children, we didn’t want to work so hard, so we taught our children to work smarter. And what that translates is, is they are trying to fix things that are broken. when we were trying to work so hard. And so that mind shift, I think, has changed how they are doing their everyday lives. So they work smart on their phones because they’re trying to build those things that you mentioned so we don’t have to work so hard. Because our generation, the Gen X generation, we have more tradespeople than any other time in the history of… I don’t know if the facts are accurate, but more about there’s more trade people in the world than they are in the Gen X generation than they are in the millennial generation. And we’re trying to catch up. And the millennial generation doesn’t want to work in the plumber field. They don’t want to do a carpenter. They don’t want to do, they want to work, find something to build a robot so they can, don’t have to go work so hard. And on top of that, our generation has been teaching our children that they’re entitled. And I don’t want to say that so glibly, but basically our children have been taught, okay, you do great. You’re going to get it. an award. You’re going to do great and you’re going to get this plaque just for a participant.
Speaker 0 | 05:32.673
What if they don’t do great? If they don’t do great, do they still get a plaque?
Speaker 1 | 05:36.375
Most likely. And it’s unfortunate because they’re setting themselves up to actually fail because they don’t understand the sense of failure. And our children need to understand that things happen and we do fail at things. That’s a life lesson. You have to learn how to be a better human being by actually failing. Because if you don’t have that sense of failure.
Speaker 0 | 06:03.309
But the irony is that we’re setting people up for failure then. That’s the irony of it. Now that when people fail, they’re not prepared to fail.
Speaker 1 | 06:10.932
For sure.
Speaker 0 | 06:12.613
So we should send them to failure school. We should send them to failure school.
Speaker 1 | 06:16.414
Well, it’s funny you say that. I think every human being should go through two years of some sort of structured. Maybe go to the military, go to school where you’re told to do X, Y, and Z. Because if you’re not taught to be, I guess the word I’m going to use is submissive, to somebody else, basically become a servant to somebody else. We don’t teach our society as a whole, I think, in my opinion, is that we don’t teach… Well,
Speaker 0 | 06:49.992
that’s what you just did. You just hit the nail on the head by saying my opinion. That’s what you’re saying. Everyone’s entitled to their own opinion. So we have a bunch of people that have opinions. Everyone has their own opinion, but there’s not enough people that are just willing to, like you said, serve. We’ve got a bunch of, what’s the term, a bunch of chiefs and not enough Indians. Correct. And people that haven’t earned the title chief.
Speaker 1 | 07:16.030
It’s very predominant in our society today. And everybody wants to be the one in charge.
Speaker 0 | 07:21.694
And just to layer that in, because this was, this was really echoes the conversation I was having last night, which was he, my friend was thinking, you know, and just so you know, I’m actually in, I’m in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia right now. And he was, and he was saying over here, he said a lot of the, you know, the kids grow up just being told what to do. They almost can’t think on their own because they’re just used to like, you know, do this, do that. We’re talking about the structure in the school. And I was just comparing the two different societies because it’s almost like, you know, like a mirror opposite, right? It’s like the perfect opposite example of it. And he’s like, over here, it’s just, you know, it’s almost like they can’t think on their own. They’re told what to do, but they have a very kind of, I don’t want to say like, it is tribal, but I want to say tribal as much as it is kind of, it is tribal. more of like a community kind of like together you all like kind of work together fail together type of mentality right um but there’s no um he’s like like he teaches right so he teaches in school he’s like there’s no like the kids like if you told them to do this like like and they had to like do like think on their own or something like that just wouldn’t happen like there needs to be like direct instructions which is the opposite of what you’re saying right now we need to send kids to school and just give them direct orders and they need to learn to serve and follow a kind of like a structured plan for a while
Speaker 1 | 08:47.254
I do think that’s important that we teach all humans, actually, how to understand that you need to have a little bit of humility. You need to understand that there are people that are suffering and or need assistance that are above and beyond your own personal self-gain. There’s people out there that need to understand that they need help more than you do. And I don’t think… We don’t teach our children that unless they’re brought up in a religious home. A lot of times they don’t get that type of thought process. And with the advent of social media and everybody’s bombarding with so much information these days.
Speaker 0 | 09:34.338
And a lot of negative. Yeah,
Speaker 1 | 09:36.119
and it’s all negative. And we’re not, I don’t know, I’m sure you’ve heard of Gary Vaynerchuk. And he… He’s doing his best and it’s very difficult from his point of view. I notice it happening a lot with more motivational speakers that they’re trying to give positivity. And if we start talking more about positivity versus the negativity, I think we as a society would actually grow. And there’s certain things in our climate today, both naturally in the world as well as politically and socially, that it’s very, we’re getting bombarded with four horrible thought processes that’s bringing us down. And we need to start bringing people back up.
Speaker 0 | 10:28.027
Well, Gary layers that all back into business and marketing. So I think his ultimate intention is one of not necessarily, I don’t know if I believe him 100%. I’ll just be honest with you.
Speaker 1 | 10:38.389
No, no, no. I agree with you.
Speaker 0 | 10:39.890
I have my thing with Gary V. Because ultimately he’s trying to sell wine, right? So ultimately, if a bunch of kids die due to even one drunk driver due to his marketing advertising to wine, it’s not worth it to me. But that’s just my own personal opinion.
Speaker 1 | 10:54.094
I totally agree with you. Um,
Speaker 0 | 10:56.414
so. How do we lay this all back into, because how this whole conversation got started was with the birth of the internet and how, I don’t know, let’s just say millennial software engineer doesn’t really understand why the internet works a certain way, which is fascinating.
Speaker 1 | 11:14.670
Yeah, because they don’t even know how to turn on a computer practically. So they live in front of this little tiny device, which is so funny because, you know, we had these. gigantic rooms filled back in the day when the internet first and computers first came into into play there’s as big as a first floor on an office building and now they’re the you can hold in your hand uh enough power that to take you to the moon because that’s the technology has grown leaps and bounds in the last 50 years and i i have kids that i so i work on computers for for everybody from young and old and I am I had a kid he did he got a brand new laptop his mom and dad wanted me to have him set it up and he didn’t he couldn’t find the power button it was it was literally right on the front of the computer but he he didn’t know how to and then when he what is this control delete what is this password thing I just use my fingerprint to open up my phone I can’t figure do I need a password what’s the password how long ago is that I think it was like eight but I mean it was okay But I get that, you know, but kids today are so laser focused on, you know, TikTok or Snapchat or Instagram or wherever, they’re not paying attention to the everyday skills that we’re using on our computers. You know, how to use a full-fledged keyboard with a 10 keypad. And, you know, when they start going into the workforce, they’re still going to need the basic skills on how to turn on a computer, how to use Microsoft Word.
Speaker 0 | 12:53.791
I was a little shocked. I mean, again, back to the same, back to the same, I was having this discussion again last night with another guy that was saying, you know, we have to take this like college preparatory technology course. And like the instructor asked, and they’re young, you know, these are kids like just, you know, in college, just entering college. And the instructor asked them how many of them knew what Microsoft was. Raise your hand, please. He said, I think two people reached him.
Speaker 1 | 13:27.092
That’s horrible.
Speaker 0 | 13:29.272
That’s pretty scary. I was like, I was actually pretty shocked. I was like, you’re kidding me, right? Like, no, honestly, like you’re joking, right? And he’s like, no, I’m dead serious. Now, of course, this is like more of a melting pot, you know, mix of probably like, you know, foreigners and whatever class he was in, you know, so there’s probably like people from Africa and all over the world in this class. So I could see that being more, but still.
Speaker 1 | 13:55.200
not knowing. Here’s two things that resonate with me though. So the kids today, they will be in our workforce within 15 years running our world basically. So they live and breathe on their phone. So we have to start selling and start interacting with that mindset going forward because they’re going to want to start doing business that way. I mentioned earlier in the conversation about working smarter. So they’re going to… want to start working their smart way inside of those environments where they are communicating at a different level, they’re working at a different level, because that’s how they handle their particular communication methodologies.
Speaker 0 | 14:38.327
Entering trouble tickets via Snapchat.
Speaker 1 | 14:41.168
Exactly, exactly.
Speaker 0 | 14:42.609
I have people that have that. I have IT directors that have that problem. I get a ticket from Snapchat. I get a ticket from Instagram. I get a ticket from this. I’m like, are you nuts? That is just insane.
Speaker 1 | 14:55.169
The other side of that is, so we have a lot of old guys, you know, with companies that have been like, let’s just say Ford or Chrysler or GM,
Speaker 0 | 15:08.738
the very old 75 year old lawyer in a law firm.
Speaker 1 | 15:12.380
Exactly.
Speaker 0 | 15:13.501
Yeah.
Speaker 1 | 15:14.742
So he, if it’s not broken, we’re not going to fix it. Right.
Speaker 0 | 15:18.444
So where’s my line button on my, on my Avaya phone?
Speaker 1 | 15:22.327
Exactly. So they are. They have established an environment that’s worked for them. They bring in a lot of revenue. They do very well in their environments. Well, these kids are going to start coming into those workforces. They have to start de-learning what they’ve learned before to start using basically maybe a DOS-based system, hypothetically. And that DOS-based system, they don’t know how to use a DOS-based system. I worked for a company a few years ago. they still had green screen environment for their, for the point of sale. And these kids that are coming into this environment, they’re starting to learn, you know, they have all these skills that are coming out of college and doing the best and greatest, but they come back into this workforce and now they have to start using DOS based commands to go to the next screen.
Speaker 0 | 16:13.580
Look, they may have gotten that. They may have gotten that experience at Blackjack Pizza in Colorado. Okay. Cause I remember running an appointment with like Blackjack Pizza like eight years ago and it was still a DOS based, a DOS based pizza delivery system. And there was no changing it because it was like written for them. So, you know, it works,
Speaker 1 | 16:29.270
right?
Speaker 0 | 16:29.730
Yeah. We were trying to figure out how do we map like, you know, VPNs back to like headquarters to download this information. I can’t, I just can’t remember what it was, but you know, shout out to Blackjack Pizza. If you guys hear this, why are you telling them? Why are you telling everyone our weakness? Anyways, or our strength, or our strength, should I say. Now, to play the opposite here, there are plenty of smart millennials. There are plenty of software developers. There are plenty of, I mean, millennial IT directors that I work with on a daily basis. And some of them call me and say, Phil, you know, like, I don’t want to deal with this phone stuff. Can you help me? And I actually have an interesting situation right now where I’m dealing with a company. um run by a very forward-thinking millennial i would say older generation millennial one of one of the like you know the elders one of the elders and um you know he likes the the kind of forward thinking uh hosted in the cloud voice over ip right and but then he also has the maybe some baby boomers that you know run the company very very well that still need a phone system with with like line buttons on it you know like line one line two line three you So there’s kind of like this hybrid, you know, hybrid approach where we’re going, we need a, you know, a company that kind of meets in the middle that has all of the forward thinking, future proofing, whatever you want to call it, technology in the cloud, you know, PBX phone system, but also has the ability to program a SIP based phone to mimic a you know, you’ll mimic an old school key system. So we can, so that when that Avaya phone gets ripped out, you still have got line line items and stuff like that. So that’s, that’s kind of the solution, but he wants, he would prefer to just say, you know, let’s not do that at all and have everyone have soft phones, but you know, he’s very, very smart. And then there’s another millennial that I talked to the other day that basically laughed at me and said, Phil, I can tell you really don’t know much at all about how money works. Cause we were having a Bitcoin conversation and it was way over. like way over my head, you know, and there was this real kind of like arrogant, you know, like software mindset of like, you’re an idiot. I shouldn’t even spend time talking with you. Obviously, there’s some very smart millennials out there that, you know, understand this world very, very well. So I guess my point would be, let’s have that same conversation on they weren’t around for the birth of the internet. Is there still going to be problematic things to them that when they look at something, they say, why are we doing it this way? Because that’s fascinating, again, to me, is, you know, they’re probably going to be like, you know, why can’t we have four-digit flight codes? And they may understand it, but they may not.
Speaker 1 | 19:16.007
Right. I think we need to, I mean, we’re having this conversation now. And I think more and more people need to have this kind of conversation, a hard conversation about, you know, we have these differences. How do we get through them? Let’s sit down and, you know.
Speaker 0 | 19:36.529
as a collective and figure out what’s a happy medium because a lot of people don’t understand what’s what the differences are because they don’t want to most people change on a daily basis let’s be honest though like even if we have that conversation by the time we’re done having that conversation it’s already changed for
Speaker 1 | 19:53.959
sure for sure I agree with you. But it’s very difficult because we humans, and I think you mentioned it earlier, we all have a central way of thinking about ourselves. And we don’t really want to work past our own bubble of life. And if we can’t work through that, I think it’s going to take an alien attack of the planet just to make sure people start working together. That’s really what it comes down to. And who knows if that’s ever going to happen, but I think it’s, I wish we could find a really good collective way of thinking in this planet. And I’m sure you’re seeing it over where you are today. You know, they have different countries on different parts of the world have different ways of thinking. And there’s actually a study that says the more you travel, the more you become more. earth conscious, the more you become people conscious because you see how the other side lives. If you live in your bubble, let’s say in America, like where we are today, we all have these little bubbles of life that nobody wants to…
Speaker 0 | 21:07.138
They don’t even know. I was on the phone last night and I was like, what are we doing? Are we going to Shake Shack or are we going to Raising Cane’s or are we going to Texas Roadhouse? And I was talking with… like a ring central like we were going over some like how we were going to engineer something or something at the time and he kind of laughed he’s like what he’s like you just you’re in you’re in saudi arabia and you’re going to shake shack i’m like yeah you know and my father who was like 84 you know is like be careful be careful you know he thinks i’m coming over to like you know like a desert and people are like riding camels and like you know there’s like machine guns and bombs going off everywhere you know something like that you know he’s careful over there and i sent him a picture of like like McDonald’s, like written in Arabic. He said, oh, he’s like, good, good. You can get a hamburger.
Speaker 1 | 21:54.840
It’s like, come on, like,
Speaker 0 | 21:56.681
I’m serious. Like you said, that’s true. Like the more you travel, the more, over here, for example, everything starts, the whole day starts at like, like five o’clock in the morning. And then everyone takes a nap from like one to three. Like everything shuts down. All the stores shut down. Nothing’s open from like one to three. And then everything’s back open again all the way until like, you know, whatever. than 10 o’clock at night it’s just proper siesta i like that yes yeah it’s it’s um yeah it’s very different you know because i needed to rent a car and my friends like oh we’ll just go at like nine o’clock i was like the car rental place open at nine he’s like yeah um so anyways um complete side note but what so is there is there a difference um why is the internet the way it is in other words why do you think people if you had to put yourself in the in the shoes of a millennial smart IT director? How does he view the internet?
Speaker 1 | 22:51.738
I have my two cents about this. The internet’s only been around since, what,
Speaker 0 | 23:00.143
1993, 94? Mind-blowing. It’s mind-blowing.
Speaker 1 | 23:02.985
So it’s not even 30 years old, right? If you looked at the internet, the way it’s progressed, they talked about the Web 1.0, Web 2.0, Web… even if they’ve mentioned Web 3.0 yet, but it’s really only less than 30 years old. So what it’s going to do, the internet acts like a 30-year-old. When it gets to maybe 50, 60 years old, I think it’ll be very well tenured, if you want to call it that.
Speaker 0 | 23:33.656
You’re making predictions here. You’re making predictions here. So we’re going to have to follow this up. We’re going to pull this out of the vault 30 years from now. Like it’s not acting like a 50-year-old.
Speaker 1 | 23:43.899
Well, so… I’m 52 years old, so I have a little bit of tenure on me. I have a little bit of know-how in my life. I’ve been working in IT for 20-some-odd years, 25 years. And I’ve seen that just what’s happened in the last four years, a friend of mine were talking about this last night, Facebook Live wasn’t even a thing four years ago. And everybody uses it all day long, every day. And it’s changed. the way we communicate. But it’s doing exactly what a 30 year old would be doing inside of this, this bubble of the internet, because it’s, if you could think back when you were 30 years old, what were you doing? You were out having a good time in life. You were out having a party and you were out enjoying whatever you can about the world and not really caring about, unless you had kids, what’s going on tomorrow, because today is all about me. And. It still has that same mentality. When I was a teenager, like back in the web 2.0, we were having the funky graphics, all the, the, the, it’s kind of like what Snapchat and TikTok are doing today, it’s all the, you know, the funky overlays, the lot of GIFs that are happening. There’s a lot of, that was web 2.0 in its infancy, so to speak. But today it’s taken that to the next level, which is, okay, a 14 year old loves TikTok, a 14 year old loves Snapchat because they can talk to their friends and they disappear just as quickly. And that’s a whole other topic where you can talk about what, how kids are communicating in respect to. social media.
Speaker 0 | 25:21.672
That’s like a psychology conversation.
Speaker 1 | 25:25.534
That’s like a childhood conversation. Exactly. And it’s also about a psychology of how we communicate. So this conversation, even though it’s being recorded, it’s just a conversation. And that’s how sales tactics are changing today. They’re making it more about a conversation. Instead of making it a sales pitch, they’re making it more about how can I help you succeed? in your business needs. And we talked about earlier about how we can just be more of a servant to things. So sales, from my point of view, what I’ve seen in my 52 years of life, has become more of a servant mentality when you’re trying to try to sell something.
Speaker 0 | 26:08.627
It should always be that way. I think that’s the 80-20 rule. And I’m a big Zig Ziglar fan, and I always have been. And he’s always said, you’ve got to sell on the same side as the customer. You got to sell on the same side of the table, not on the opposite side of the table. You’ve got to be an assistant buyer. And he says, I hate the word pitch. He’s like, I think it’s a dirty word. And he’s like, I completely agree with that. And so I always learned, and the only reason why I think I was ever successful is because I came from a servant industry. I came from serving coffee, right? Believe it or not. And got into technology. And I really, really believed in that. strongly kind of the servant mentality the selling on the other side of the table being an assistant buyer and helping people you know because otherwise you’ve got just people trying to sell one product and it’s a whatever square peg into a round hole type of thing and i think that’s the 80 20 i think 20 of this of the sales sales people out there are like somewhat good and the other 80 percent are you know churn and burn trying to hit quota chase a product you know trying to ram a product on your throat type of thing but anyways um but keep going you
Speaker 1 | 27:14.312
Okay. Where was
Speaker 0 | 27:16.274
I? I was,
Speaker 1 | 27:16.674
um,
Speaker 0 | 27:17.535
social media forcing more social attitude. Like you have to be realer. It’s too easy to find information. In other words, my comment on that would be is it’s too easy for someone to Google something nowadays. They don’t need you to tell them the information because within two seconds, they can find this. No one cares about your, your value vomit inside the inbox on LinkedIn and sending me white papers and all this stuff because within two seconds, I can Google everything and get all your information. So how are you really serving the end user or how are you really?
Speaker 1 | 27:44.840
So, so that brings to, so I have, I have a daughter in college right now. And so she’s, and I feel a real, real, real bad for, excuse me, this generation in their schooling, because there is a plus side and a minus side to that. One, they have instant access to everything, but they’re also bombarded to it with all this information that they have to disseminate through. But you got to, you got to, they have to figure out. how to write a paper that’s not plagiarized, that’s unique to their own, but at the same time, you can’t look up on the Internet unless you need to do some sourcing. So you’re talking about early in the conversation, how did they view the Internet today? They probably either love it or they hate it, because a kid that really wants to be educated and wants to try and…
Speaker 0 | 28:41.604
be unique about their their education it’s already been done on the internet they have to they have to record like 80,000 80 podcasts and then they have to like translate all the podcasts into text and then they have to pull out keywords and they can get you know say something about something they got to do real research because and that takes a lot of time and it’s not easy and what what we’re asking people so they really have to be laser focused on what they want to do and that’s a big problem in college nowadays because everyone tells you you have to go to college because if you don’t go to college, you’re a loser and you won’t have money. You won’t be able to get a loan and go become an indentured servant or whatever. So what are the chances of a kid at that age really being super laser focused and knowing what they want to do? I think if you’re like, you know, you want to be a doctor and you can actually go through that pain and suffering and become a doctor, which is like everyone in my family, then okay, you know you’re going to school to be a doctor or you know you’re going to school to be an engineer or you know you’re going to a school. And then even that they have their subcategories. But if it’s anything other than that, it’s, you know, like,
Speaker 1 | 29:39.456
liberal arts like most people you know you get a ba you know d’s get degrees um i don’t know that’s part goes back to um a lot of what you’re talking about in the early in the conversation about how our kids were taught our kids and so our kids are brought up a specific way and so you have those unique kids that are want to be a doctor those unique kids that want to be a specific trade or a specific industry there’s other kids and probably the 80 percent of those kids that don’t know what they want to do and do they because we we taught them to be smarter well there’s so many physical based you
Speaker 0 | 30:22.864
jobs out in this world that they don’t know how to do that because we don’t we didn’t teach them it’s our fault i think in a lot of ways but there’s some kids that rise above that the self-awareness of them of themselves that kind of thing but there’s which we don’t teach also we don’t teach like goal we don’t teach character goal setting vision we don’t teach like you know some of the basics around there they
Speaker 1 | 30:44.830
can get people really excited yep and so i think we just have a Maybe the next generation or the generation after that, maybe they’ll figure it out. Sure, they’ll do it right the first time. But, you know, maybe we can, every generation is supposed to be a little bit better. Every generation is supposed to be a little bit more in tune with what’s going on in the world. But, you know.
Speaker 0 | 31:04.942
A little bit better and a little bit worse at the same time. Do you think most people fall into IT? Since we’re talking about this, IT teachers. I talk to a lot of guys and they’re like, I kind of just fell into IT. And then other guys are like, no, I always want to do this.
Speaker 1 | 31:20.744
Well, I’ve been in IT since IT was in Word, and I’ve been in IT since before the internet. And so I absolutely fell into it. But the kids today, and the younger generation, I should say, they, you know, I really wish that we had some sort of vetting process for a lot of the IT folks out there. because if you know how to take a computer apart, put it back together potentially, and then maybe even know enough about Word or Excel, guess what? You’re an IT guy or IT gal. So you have instantly become an IT person because you’re more in tune with what the IT is happening in that environment that you’re working at potentially.
Speaker 0 | 32:17.979
So do you have a lot of mice? For example, I’m not an IT guy, but I am my family’s IT guy.
Speaker 1 | 32:25.343
Exactly. See, just setting up this podcast, using Zoom, understanding that you can press record to record this to send it off to get edited or you edit yourself, you potentially could do all that. And most people, I’d say 95% of the people of the planet. I can probably guarantee you don’t know how to do what we’re doing right now.
Speaker 0 | 32:51.442
And I was a creative writing major, so this is a lot about the next generation.
Speaker 1 | 32:58.407
I think a lot of people are living in a technology age. And so, you know, people say, oh, I’m not tech savvy. Well, you know, you’re much more tech savvy than you realize. You have a lot more know-how than the generation before you, for one. Probably more savvy than probably 50% of… all the baby boomers.
Speaker 0 | 33:19.160
You know what that is? You know what you’re saying, which is, I think, fairly mind-blowing, is most people underestimate themselves. Most people don’t even know what their own talents are. You know, they think, yeah, I don’t have anything. They don’t know how to pull out. A lot of people don’t know how to pull out their own strengths and then kind of magnify them. And one thing that I’m finding that’s really interesting in IT as well is I ask a lot of people, If they had any great mentors, and I would say 80% of them say no, which is surprising to me. Why do IT directors, IT leaders, CTOs, technology leaders, why are they telling me they don’t have great mentors? Some do. Some are telling me they have great mentors, but why are so many saying, no, I didn’t. I just did it on my own. And is that a problem?
Speaker 1 | 34:06.663
Well, yes, it is. It’s a monumental problem because what’s happening is, as I mentioned earlier in the conversation, is that. Next generation is going to be the ones that are defining our futures. And if we can’t give them the tools, and I’m just not saying IT tools, just tools in general on how to be a better human, how to be a better technologist, better futurist, better whatever you want to call them, they have the potentiality of failure as well. And I think we’re trying to… You mentioned this before, this round, square, square, I can’t say the word.
Speaker 0 | 34:48.173
Square, but they’re going to be a round hole. Yeah,
Speaker 1 | 34:50.374
yeah. And into our society. And it’s, I think it’s hurting us more than helping us. We could find a group of, and I think it’s more male-based mentors in this. And I have a lot of African-American friends and they are, they’re struggling to be a good mentor to the next generation of the African-American man. And it’s, I think we need to have more of that mindset across the board because The way you treat each other and the way males treat women in this society is just abysmal. And we need to try and make a better stance on how we treat each other, let alone treating the female species of the planet. And it really resonates with me because I have two daughters, and I want them to be in a society that treats them equally and fairly. not only from their bodies, but to the other aid, to everything. And this is a deeper conversation for a different time, but I mean, it just really resonates with me. And I think to be the best mentor to anybody is to literally take the time and find your own inner peace so you can help somebody else. And you and me, Phil, need to… As our generation goes through, it needs to help each other so we can help the younger generation.
Speaker 0 | 36:34.357
I think it has a lot to do with back to servant leadership again and just being able to serve. But really honestly being able to serve and how are you thinking and what are you thinking of and what are you doing when no one else is around and you’re all by yourself in the room? Is it me, me, me? Or are we really trying to do something that’s a little bit bigger? I have four daughters, by the way, so I feel for you there.
Speaker 1 | 36:56.363
Yes, and I feel for you.
Speaker 0 | 36:59.052
four daughters and four boys so it’s kind of oh my word uh so that’s um yeah that that is a topic for another time but i think i think the mentorship is um is a key is a key piece especially and then it also goes back into how do we how do we determine what level of skill base does any does anyone have in it and why are recruiters um not you able to really recruit effectively unless they can. I don’t know. That’s also another subject as well. How do we know? And how does anyone that’s hiring an IT director who’s supposed to be hiring someone to provide a, you’re basically hiring for someone in hoping that they’re the right hire, that they have the tech, the level of technology knowledge because you don’t have the knowledge that they have. You need to hire that person. That’s a, that’s a very interesting. Right.
Speaker 1 | 37:51.474
I think it comes down to like having, like, When you’re a doctor or you’re a lawyer, in those fields, you have to, basically the word practice is what they call themselves. They’re practicing law, they’re practicing medicine. We don’t call it practicing IT because, and we should, because it’s really an evolving field and it’s always growing. I mean, daily Moore’s law is like, it’s not in two years anymore, it’s more like 60 seconds. And it… Every time you turn around, there’s something new happening in this field. And we have to literally stay ahead of the game if we want to be successful in it.
Speaker 0 | 38:30.651
We should call it establishing. We should call it establishing, constantly establishing IT.
Speaker 1 | 38:35.473
Exactly. And I fully agree with that. And I think we should take that mindset and apply it to IT. We should apply it so they should have a full-fledged internship. Or like a journeyman for an electrician, you need to have… an X amount of time before you can be qualified as an IT professional. Um, yeah, we, it’s not been around long enough.
Speaker 0 | 38:59.609
But my, uh, I love the trade. I think the trade school mentality, I think that, you know, that used to be kind of like, I don’t know, poop food or whatever back in the day, but you know, you used to laugh at the guys that, you know, went to trade school or whatever. Now they’re all, you know, own their own business and have like a bunch of trucks running on the street and they’re all making half a million a year or whatever it is. You know, I think there’s a lot to be said. I think that’s the schooling of the future, to be honest with you. Um, you know, where you really, you know, uh, that’s just, that’s the schooling of the future. And my friends, um, he’s going to school is to be an electrician right now. And he’s, he’s, it’s funny because he’s underneath one of the best electricians in, in the state, right? Like this huge contractor guy. And it’s just funny. I was, I was thinking to him, he’s like, you know, we don’t really just go hit the breaker downstairs. We just take two wires and bang them together and make the breaker flip that way. I was like, right. he’s like you know you learn a lot of tricks of the trade that uh you know might not necessarily be always true but um it just goes to show you know like there’s certain things you can’t learn Well, just about all of us, once we leave school, everything that we use on a daily basis, we learn being out in the real world. All right, so final message. If there’s anything you wanted to deliver to the listeners out there, this was a much deeper conversation than I thought it would be. But any final message, anything that you wanted to deliver to the technology leaders, because this is mostly technology leaders that listen to the show. Any message, any final words?
Speaker 1 | 40:30.874
Well, I think the last topic that we just touched on is probably the most relevant, is I think we need to be better servant leaders to not only our staff, to our future generation of employees, if you want to call them that. Just try and be, look at it from their point of view. Look at it from inside of their shoes. And it’s really not about you. It’s all about making sure that your customer’s customer is happy. And what I mean by that is because if you’re an IT, let’s say, director, the other employees in the company are really your first-level customer. Your second-level customer is actually the people that are paying the money for your services or your product. So your customer’s customer, if they’re happy, then… Everybody in the company is happy. So you need to try and make their everyday IT needs for your first initial customer the best experience as it can be, or your customer’s customer is not going to be happy. Yeah.
Speaker 0 | 41:43.418
And back to the coffee business at Starbucks, we call that connect, discover, respond. Connect with your people, discover what their problems are, what’s going on, what are their everyday struggles, pain points, problems, and then respond to those. Um, Larry, been, been, uh, been a pleasure, man. I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day and thank you so much for being on the show.
Speaker 1 | 42:05.199
Thank you. Thanks again for having me.
