In this conversation, Matt shares his extensive journey in the IT industry, highlighting the evolution of technology and the importance of a customer-first approach. He discusses the significant changes in security challenges, the necessity of proactive client engagement, and the value of hands-on experience in IT management. Matt emphasizes the need for empathy in customer service and the importance of training and education to enhance user experience. He also addresses the current talent gap in the IT landscape and how it affects client relationships. In this conversation, Shaytoya Marie and Matt discuss the balance between traditional and modern IT practices, emphasizing the importance of hands-on management, team empowerment, and effective communication with users. Matt shares his philosophy on disaster recovery, automation, and the evolving role of IT professionals, highlighting the significance of user-friendly solutions and the impact of AI on the industry. The discussion also touches on the necessity of understanding both technical and user perspectives to enhance customer interactions and improve IT services.

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Disclaimer: The opinions expressed by the guest speakers on this podcast are solely their own and do not necessarily represent the views or opinions of K&B Communications

Mentioned in this episode:

K&B Communications

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Welcome to the Las Vegas IT management podcast and today I have the pleasure to be

speaking with Matt who's been an IT professional for 33 years, which is a long time.

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Welcome Matt.

3

How's it going?

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Yes, very, very long time.

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I can only imagine the differences that you've seen within the last 33 years.

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Just curious, how did you get involved within this IT industry?

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Pretty much it was the nature of, know, just growing up, I grew up in Southern California,

but I'm a child of the late seventies, mid eighties.

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So along with music and everything else, the only thing that we had two things that we did

as kids, we went to bowling alleys or we went to arcades.

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And then we graduated from that into the malls, which still involve arcades.

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would, video games always blew me away.

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Even back, you know, when I was, you know, seven, eight years old, when it was still just

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Asteroids, when it came out in color was just like.

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Whoa, they got it in color now, it's four colors.

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And just through the years, I was always enamored by technology and I always watched how

the consoles got better from Atari to Nintendo.

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And when I got into my teenage years and high school, was still, you know, back then,

junior and senior year, if you were in good grades and everything, you basically only went

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half a day of school every year.

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So my junior and senior years, I was out of school at 12, 31 o'clock every afternoon.

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At the arcade, I started learning how to work on them.

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And from there, just graduated into everything.

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I got into IT, my mom had a computer she didn't want anymore.

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She told me if I didn't come get it, she was going to throw in the trash.

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And I went over there, got it.

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And I literally started my career on my dining room table going, okay, how's this thing

work?

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And went from there, started a computer store and just went through the ranks.

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is so awesome, Matt.

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Thank you for sharing that.

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I do really, really appreciate that.

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That's awesome.

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I'm sure there's been a lot of changes.

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I, you know, being a child, I grew up in the nineties, but I do remember those games that

you did talk about.

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So thank you for sharing that with me.

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you did mention so pretty much it was your mom that sparked that interest.

33

It was mom and life in general.

34

was always anything that had technology in it from remote control cars to arcade games to

I was a guy that sat there back in this is how old I am.

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We still had TV repair guys come to the house and fix the TV when it didn't work.

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And we'd move it out from the wall and they'd take the back off and I'd sit there and just

watch the guy work on it.

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And was just it was always ingrained in me.

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Whether it was mechanical or technical, it was something I was interested in.

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I learned how to tear my own bike apart as a kid and it just grew from there.

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But when it came to technology, I guess I saw it early.

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I got gifted enough to see it early.

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I knew it was going to be this huge breadth of just ever-changing, never the same thing,

never going to be boring, monotonous, repetitive.

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And that just grabbed my whole attention because at the time I was an electrician.

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You know, trying to figure out what I wanted to be when I grew up.

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I still had to work as, you know, 18, 19 year old running wires all day, every day, all

day, every day, all day, every day.

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Got old really quick where in 33 years of IT, it's never been repetitive.

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Even, even going from, for instance, to a car dealership, go from one dealership to

another dealership just to set them up.

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There's still some nuances and changes in the way that some people do things differently.

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You have to deal with it, mitigate it do it.

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it just keeps it fun.

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Got it.

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No, I could see that.

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And within 33 years of experiences in the industry, what are some of the biggest changes

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The way that it's the cat and mouse game of security versus the bad guys, know, the

constant Tom, call it the Tom and Jerry effect.

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It's been back and forth.

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It used to be so, so small and so every so often, you know, all this company got hacked

and they got, you know, a virus and slow down their computers.

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to where now you have ransomware where they can literally hijack your old business, take

it away from you, give us $3 million or you don't have it accompanying you anymore, that

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kind of thing.

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And then the other change, of course, has just been watching the technology get from the

size of a room down to the size of the phone.

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Anybody that's been in it 10 years has seen how fast computers have gotten just in a short

span.

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I can remember where...

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To do what we do with our iPhones now required at least a tote bag full of equipment to

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like that.

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To be able to do what you can do with an iPhone now, you had to have all of that.

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And that's the biggest change is how it's deflect everything in life.

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I use smart homes, so I have Alexa in my house and I control my lights and AC and things

like that.

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If you would have told me that in the 80s and even the 90s and hey, man, one day you'll be

able to tell your house what to do.

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I would have been like, yeah, most of it's come true, but get out of here with that one.

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And here I am.

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I do it on a daily basis now.

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It's Right.

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And a lot of us, especially in the 90s, there was a lot of movies about the things that

we're able to do now.

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But now, you know, it's came to true, the true, true life.

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And one of the things when I was asking you about, know, what, did you want to talk about?

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You mentioned that the customer first approach, but what inspired you to take a customer

first approach within your career and how has that shaped the way you operate today?

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My own frustrations with learning how to use these things myself, not literally being a

customer.

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Tech support in 94, 95 and the beginning of computers really starting to flow into

business, it wasn't there.

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If you were a child in the 90s, Nintendo used to have a little hotline.

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You could call the hotline and they'd walk you through playing Legend of Zelda.

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That is kind of what tech support was more like.

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If you were trying to use, because most people bought their computers at Sears or Kmart,

things like that, a home department store.

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So when you called, it's like maybe they were trying to teach you how to learn to use the

encyclopedia or understand how the sol— literally how the Solitaire game worked.

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But it was my frustration with what tech support wasn't.

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and how they would just, you could tell they were just reading a script in front of them

and they weren't really empathizing with the customer, listening to what, you know, why

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are they frustrated?

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What is their main issue?

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Is it really the computer or is it something they're trying to do?

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You know, just lack of empathy and attention to what it might be and just try to run

through a script.

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And it's, it's sorrowly, it's even out there today, a lot of MSPs, you call an MSP and

they start running you through this process of yada yada and it's like...

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I call you guys all the time, this happens every other Monday, you guys should have a

history of that, can you just reset my password please?

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You know, because there's those users out there, there's always a company that has

something legacy they don't want to upgrade, and the CEO is stuck with it, and know, the

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CEO is the CEO, as long as he says, I'm gonna keep using this, your odd job as the IT guy

is keep that going.

93

And what really got my attention to the customer first approach was the first time I ever

really interacted with Dell.

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And it was when remote support was just starting to get off the ground.

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And I was having a really bad issue with a computer that I just bought.

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It was $1,800.

97

I was pretty upset.

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And the Dell guy goes, hey, push this button and allow me to come in and see what you're

seeing and I can help you.

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That flipped my whole idea of what tech support was, should be, and how you treat a

customer.

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Because he was like, OK, I see you were trying to do that.

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And he immediately understood what I was having an issue trying to explain to him.

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And that's when I understood at that point in time and kept it that way since.

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Always understand what the customer's trying to do, why they're trying to do it, and why

they called you in the first place.

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Don't just, well, my word isn't working.

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okay, well, let's just go in and do all of this stuff.

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Understand why they're calling you in the first place, and it changes the day for you and

for them.

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That's true.

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And I've dealt with when people aren't willing to help you or just, you know, they're

trying to take out that customer first approach and it sucks.

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That really does suck.

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Yeah.

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It's like, why are you on the other end of the phone?

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You can tell you just don't want to be there.

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Go home.

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Right.

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Right.

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Exactly.

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And then when it comes many MSPs prioritize the bottom line over the customer care.

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How does your approach differ and why do you think this is super important?

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Part of it is

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Most of my career has been split between the East Coast and Vegas here.

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So I call it the West Coast.

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It really is two different worlds.

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And I don't want to say it's maybe just Vegas, but I've talked to some people and I've

done some work up in Reno and Reno is a little different.

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But a lot of the managed service providers here are, how many guys can I get in my room,

sitting at my desk, going through my tickets and just knocking out tickets all day?

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That's what they're worried about because they correlate the amount of tickets to happy

customers, which may or may not be true.

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You can have customers that just don't want to pick up the phone and call because maybe

they don't like the process.

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I've worked for a couple of managed service providers here in town that don't even take

their own inbound phone calls, which that floored me.

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If you have a first call closure metric in your ticket system and you don't take your

inbound call, where are you getting any first call closures?

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Because you're calling the customer back.

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That's not a first call call.

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But the customer is why you exist.

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And I worked for managed service providers where I worked.

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180 days, never visiting a customer site.

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And that struck me odd.

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It was like six months and I haven't been to see a customer.

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And then I had some customers, well, hey, when you guys gonna come out and see us, can we

have some stuff?

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And one thing I noticed over the years, unless you're standing there, there's always

something you're not being told as the IT guy.

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And if you've ever done the service work, you walk into a company where you're finishing

up a project for what you guys do at your company and...

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hey, since you're here, you know, I forgot to tell Mike about this thing.

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Every time I tried to do this, this act up.

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Can you handle that real quick?

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And it's an attention.

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And if you're not there, if you don't see the customer, if you're not visiting the

customer, you can't claim to be customer first, because if you're not, you're just driven

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about how many tickets are we closing everything else?

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Ticket closure doesn't mean happy customers.

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If you're just knocking out, you know, tickets are closed.

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Okay, closing the ticket still requires a message to go out to the customer and then you

wait on the confirmation of all of that.

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So there's a lot of backend things that get messed around.

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But in my opinion, if you're really about the customer first, you have a routine where at

least every two weeks at and at the absolute least every 30 days, you go out and visit the

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customer.

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Even if you take Dunkin Donuts and coffee, hey guys, nobody's called with any problems in

a month.

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I just want to come out and check on everything, take a look at things, bring y'all some

coffee and donuts, see how y'all are doing.

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And a lot of them don't do that anymore.

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They just put a value on how many tickets in my system are getting closed every day.

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the difference is how many customers you see hop from managed service provider to managed

service provider.

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And that's the one thing that here runs more rampant than what I experienced on the East

Coast.

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But I also understand it in the past 10 years as remote tools get more flexible and

available and automation becomes more rampant.

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Yeah, you can pull back from seeing the customer, but I do see a lot of businesses where

it's just like, well, we haven't been to their site in three months.

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So how do you know the server closet's okay?

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they tell us it's fine.

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You know, that kind of thing.

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And I know, I just, believe if somebody's paying you every month to manage their business

and their technology and keep them up and running, you should go out and see them once a

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month.

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Hi, Tom, how you doing?

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I want to come out and just look at everything, see, and take care of things while you're

there.

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know, somebody's moved some things around since you've been there last.

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Make sure the cables are neat, nobody's tripping.

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It's more than just a ticket system.

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Got it.

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No, I agree with you, but how does a someone keep up with their customers when it comes

to, making sure that they do those drop buys, but also with every other thing that's going

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on in that person's life or customers?

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It's that that becomes and it's having been a business owner as an MST many, years ago.

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I understand exactly what you're meaning.

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You can very easily get overrun by one or the other, so it becomes a self-discipline

thing.

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you're like me, whenever I put my schedule together, I'm always going to put a block

somewhere that I can absorb during a day for whatever it may be, whether, I got to write

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this extra document for this customer because the problem I fixed.

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It's going to require me to write this three-page triage, something like that.

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Use that same method in your, I need to go see this customer.

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Hey, I haven't seen ABC incorporated since July.

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I'm going out there Friday.

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Nobody can schedule me for anything between 9 and 11.

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I won't be here.

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be at the customer.

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can take calls, but that kind of thing.

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And it's a discipline and also keeping on top of what you, what did you do as a managed

service provider?

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I see there's a few managed service providers out there that have a really great breadth

of knowledge, but their entire team is a team of quarterbacks.

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You will never win a Superbowl if every position player is a quarterback.

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You got no defense, you got no free safety, you got nobody that can run down the field,

the other team's going to run all over you.

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That's exactly a way to parlay it into the working world.

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You can't take a team of quarterbacks into the game of life and win because you have no

defense against virus.

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You have no backup solutions.

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You have nobody going out there and making sure they're receiving the problems that are

coming in.

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Who's quarterbacking the business and what's happening and everything else?

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Everybody's just taking things on a whim.

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how you run the business in part discipline, making sure that you find that time for the

customers because you exist because of them and never forget that.

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Got it.

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Awesome.

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Agreed.

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Is there a software that you recommend just kind of keep up with this or is there one that

you've used in the past?

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Believe it or not, I do 99 % of my stuff just using Outlook.

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You you got your calendar, you got task lists in there and everything else for the MSP

side of things.

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Everything out there is beautiful from you have ConnectWise, you have everything.

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ConnectWise is a big boy for the major MSPs use that, integrates with your billing

software, things like that.

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But when it's just when you're a smaller company, three, four technicians, couple

engineers, whatever your software system is like that, you manage your bringing on your

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new clients based on how well you're taking care of your other clients.

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And you use your software to just keep track of everything.

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Your ticketing system, whatever ticketing system you use will integrate with your Outlook

and your system like that and keep your calendar for you.

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20 % you as a person staying on top of it and then 80 % what you have in place is your

systems to keep you organized.

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People that go out there and try to do everything on notepads and I remember like I used

to do in the 90s, I found out the hard way, you lose track sooner or later.

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Right.

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So many people try to do so and then they, as you said, lose track.

212

You also mentioned that you prefer an in-person client interactions like site visits, as

you mentioned, and lunch and learns.

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Can you share some examples where these personal touch points made a significant

difference within your clients?

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Basically, it all comes down to that can stick to the end user support and education side

of things.

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Like when you're out a new software package to the client and everybody needs to know how

to use it.

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Maybe it's something they've never used before.

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Maybe it's a significant upgrade that's going to change look and feel of a lot of things.

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Like maybe if you were

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If you were around in 2007, when office 2007 came out, a lot of people, including myself,

was like, what did you do to my program?

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Where is the new email button?

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Where did the calendar go?

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And, we all had to learn that.

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I found out because of that exact thing, office 2007, we tried to just send out some

documents.

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I was at the Spiegel Fashion Catalog as an IT guy back then.

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And we just tried to send out a few documents saying, hey, when you guys come in on

Monday, we're going to do this upgrade over the weekend.

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Have fun.

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And by Monday afternoon, we were all out in the parking lot smoking half a pack of

cigarettes every 30 seconds going, we can't handle the calls and too many of them.

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So we immediately turned around, rolled back.

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We literally rolled back the upgrade that night.

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And we said, OK, let's do a class and figured out we spent three days writing a class.

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We tested it with some people bringing it in and we figured out if we brought in 35, 40

people into a room with a presentation and ran through the simple things like this is how

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you do an email.

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Here's where they moved your stuff.

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Here's this new thing called the ribbon and this is why it's here.

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We went from getting 10 to 15 calls every hour on what people couldn't find in their

email, their calendar, whatever, to maybe one or two per day, just because we took that

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time to slow it down and give everybody an hour attention in 35, 40 people groups.

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Here's how you do it.

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And 45 minutes was, here's how you do it.

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And 15 minutes was anybody have any question and we live answered them.

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Well, how did I do this in the old outlook?

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How did I go on and do that right on screen?

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Here you go.

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And know, we showed them they retained it.

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whether you're training new software, especially you're doing security, a lot of managed

service providers, they just send out some test emails and then they'll call you back in

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to say, Hey, why did Melissa open that email?

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She should have said no, it spam.

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Now you're infected, you know, as tricks.

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And I don't think you should do that.

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I think you should show up and do a lunch and learn.

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I would come in with a laptop or a computer that I don't mind infecting with the virus

because I want people to, I don't want them to hear about it on the internet.

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I want them to see what that happens because it has the effect you needed to have when

you're trying to protect that organization, especially if they're into finances, holding

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any customer information that might be, know, privacy information, social security, things

like that.

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You always want to make sure that you can get that embedded.

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And every time that I've ever done it myself or experiences an end user,

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When you're in the class and they show you how to do it and they have key things that make

you remember, whatever those things are, you retain it as the end user much more.

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And every time I've ever done that versus not, the end result has been what we have time

to do otherwise because we don't have the phone calls of, why do we do this?

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This isn't working anymore.

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And that's the main difference is the lunch and learns, it shows that you care about the

customer and it's...

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It's you're there for them.

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It's not you're in an office waiting for them to call you and then you're you're kind of

reactive.

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It's more proactive from you as well for the customer.

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You're there.

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Hey guys, I'm here.

264

We covered all of this.

265

We had some donuts and coffee.

266

I got another 15 minutes.

267

What other questions do you have?

268

you know branch it out and show that you care and they take that not only to what they're

working on in the office, but they working on in their own life.

269

Like I've had people say, hey, you know how you showed us how to secure our phones.

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Thank you so much for that.

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I did that to my bank accounts.

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I feel so much better about having my phone and not worrying about my bank account getting

hacked on my phone.

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And it makes a huge difference in person versus just standing back and being reactive.

274

Got it.

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No, I totally agree with that.

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So thank you for sharing that.

277

What do you think is currently missing in the current IT landscapes when it comes to

client relationships and how do you address that in your work?

278

What I see declining, I won't say it's completely missing, but it's definitely what I call

the red flag in the industry that all of us old schoolers are going to look at.

279

Talent is getting tremendous.

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The talent that can come in and work on the issues and solve the problems, engineer the

systems.

281

They are great until you put an angry customer in their ear and then they literally fold

and ball up in the corner and it's like, no, don't yell at me.

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And I think that the handling, what's missing is that

283

ability for them to be thick skinned and handle that angry customer because what we do as

a living is IT guys 99.5 % of the time when we pick up the phone You already should know

284

as you lift into your ear somebody's angry because if you got a phone call something's not

working most likely and you have to relay that into how you treat the customer and what's

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missing is Both sides of that the techs that are incredible at being a tech but not so

much being customer reactive and empathizing You have to be a person

286

And at the same time, think another thing that's missing is the ability to relax the

customer right away.

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Like one of my favorite things in the world.

288

And I have yet for it to blow up in my face.

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Somebody hits me up.

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hey, man, my computer froze up.

291

Put a blanket on it.

292

I'll be right there.

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You always get a smile cracked when they read that.

294

He just told me to put a blanket on my computer.

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It's like he said it was freezing.

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I'll be right there.

297

Because you're trying to lighten the mood, take it off of them, because you're let them

sigh and relax.

298

Let them slow down a little bit to explain to you what's going on, which is going to allow

you to slow down to hear what's going on, solve the problem and move forward.

299

And I really think that's missing out every time in the past, even pre-COVID six years

where I've been in an MSP where we are taking a customer from one MSP into ours.

300

It's always been the same complaint.

301

just, they seem to only react and

302

You know they didn't really care about what I was saying and they just said, we'll go here

and do this here.

303

The document from Google.

304

And it's like, well, I could have just Googled that myself.

305

Why am I paying you?

306

And I think that's what's missing is the both sides of that interaction.

307

And one of the things I try to do in my approach is even if I'm working at a customer

where they have their own IT department, if I notice that kind of standoffishness, you

308

know, I try to have a conversation with them.

309

It's like, hey, you know,

310

lighten up to the customer a little bit.

311

know they're mad, but you're to that because this is what you want to do for the next 30

years.

312

That's what you're going to hear nine times out of 10 when you pick up the phone.

313

you know, like a customer, like a cashier that smiles at you every day at the store,

always smile when you pick up the phone.

314

And I'm here for you.

315

You called me.

316

I'm going to make sure that the region you called me goes bye bye.

317

Got it.

318

Thank you for sharing that.

319

Agreed.

320

You did mention to me you've done everything from cabling installations to setting up full

startups.

321

How has having such a wide range of hands-on experience influenced your approach to IT

management?

322

It especially helps on the backside of things when I need to understand the whole picture,

whether it be anything.

323

I'm helping this customer move from one office to a new office and we need to understand

all the infrastructure that needs to be in place prior to that move to

324

You know, going in and understanding, my internet is broken.

325

Having installed the whole everything from the green box into the building, into the modem

and out.

326

I all the key points that I need to worry about are in my head from doing that.

327

it's, it's, adds to the breadth of knowledge.

328

Similar to a race car driver if you have you have a hot shot race car driver that can

drive really good But he's never lifted a wrench in his life and that you have His

329

competition who can also drive really really good but can also get out of the car and

change the tire himself if he had to I Guarantee you in a race with bad roads The second

330

guy is gonna win the race every time because the other guy's gonna be sucking a cargo and

I got a flat guys come fiction it you're just gonna sit there with and it involves into

331

the IT because he understands

332

how the tire goes on the car, how the tire turns, what makes the tire turn, what makes the

engine work.

333

The more you understand about it, the better you can support it.

334

And the more that you can understand when you're that liaison between your end users that

you're getting ready move into the office and all the people that are involved with making

335

that office ready for you from your cabling contractors to any system contractors you

might have, third party vendors for point of sale systems, things like that.

336

It's a point of sale guy comes in and says, hey, everything is up and ready to go.

337

And it's like, that's great.

338

I haven't turned on the internet yet.

339

How'd you do that?

340

You know, those kinds of things.

341

it helps in more ways than one.

342

it always, it's the best application of that is in major projects, knowing how the project

goes from A to Z and understanding the workflow, whether I'm a lead on the project or just

343

a technician, having that knowledge helps me work around and be the best in the

situations.

344

Got it.

345

And that totally makes sense.

346

you know, technology changes.

347

Off very often as technology has evolved.

348

How have you balanced being old school in your customer approach with staying new school

in areas like automation, disaster recovery and cloud systems?

349

Cloud systems and disaster recovery.

350

I don't I don't give too much to automation.

351

There's a lot of automation I use on the backside for, know, things that have to be done

when you're adding users so that you don't have to go add them here, add them here, add

352

them here, you know, scripting on that side of things.

353

disaster recovery I will probably never trust automation period end of story.

354

I I am one and I will always check my own backups at least once every 30 days i'll go grab

a random backup and say somebody in accounting lost this file today.

355

Let's see if I can get it back I want to see that file come back.

356

I want to see it go into a folder I want to open it look at it say, okay disaster recovery

completed that's something i'm probably never going to change just because

357

I don't ever want to be that guy that said, trusted the system that failed.

358

And at the same time, the system failed automatically to notify me.

359

Your systems went down and now I don't have a way to get you back.

360

That's just a position no IT guy ever wants to be in.

361

But automation on the flip side of management, helping with patch management, watching

systems, I use that to my advantage.

362

And it actually helps with the old school approach.

363

I get somebody's server, I have my RMM system on there and it's monitoring what the server

is doing.

364

And I consistently see that every day around four o'clock it gets into the red and it's

just gonna have a problem one day.

365

I'll reach out, hey guys, how you doing?

366

You got 10 minutes?

367

I wanna talk about this thing I see with the server and see if I can mitigate it for you

this weekend, make sure it's not gonna interfere with anything.

368

And the eye-openings you get from the customers that come back later that usually ended up

calling either my supervisor or somebody else being like.

369

You know, Matt called me and told me the server was doing this and he explained it and

showed us what was happening.

370

He's going to fix it Friday.

371

He's like, that's awesome.

372

We don't have to worry about anything.

373

Everything's good.

374

As opposed to them getting a phone call after the disaster happens.

375

And it's like, Hey guys, everything is down, stay home.

376

And the first thing you have is now manager.

377

That's not, not only mad because all the systems are down.

378

Now he's going to pay all these people to stay home.

379

You don't have an ETA because you just found out what's broken and you know, snowballs

into a big mess.

380

Got it.

381

So that's a.

382

great way to kind of stay on top of it before an actual issue happens.

383

Is that what you're saying, Matt?

384

Yeah, it's automation definitely helps us out in that area because we can all the things

that we used to do going through a cadence of let's go check these systems, check these

385

systems out automated, we don't even need to worry about it as technicians.

386

And they will tell us, know, any of the, you know, reputable systems out there, hey, this

computer keeps having a hard drive issue every night, check the hard drive.

387

And if you ignore it, sooner or later, you're going to get tickets that, my computer will

come on.

388

And it's pretty solid.

389

I can say over the last 15, 20 years, it's done nothing but get better and better and more

efficient for us to keep us on top of that customer interaction.

390

And when it's used properly, it makes us better.

391

Got it.

392

Awesome.

393

Thank you, Matt.

394

What is your management philosophy and how do you ensure that your team members feel

empowered to contribute to projects?

395

If whether I'm managing a team or whether I'm part of a team or whether I've even been

asked, you know, just come in and be, you know, consultant to the team.

396

It's always the same.

397

The key word is team.

398

You need leadership in the focus of the project and the scope of the work and how to get

to the results.

399

But the leadership of the team comes from every member of the team.

400

if the team is put together properly and resource properly, like a football team,

everybody's resource for that position.

401

The management philosophy is everybody here helps everybody reach the end of the project.

402

What do we have to do to get it done?

403

And I learned that from also the Spiegel catalog company is where I had a lot of really

eye-opening experiences because I worked for some really great leadership with Tom Scott.

404

And one of the first things he ever did that really blew my mind that pertains to this is

we were doing a company wide refresh 400 brand new machines and we all met.

405

We had Hampton, Virginia and New York, New York offices and we all met at Hampton, New

York in the morning and he had to leave.

406

He was in a hurry.

407

He says, y'all blah, blah, blah, blah.

408

You guys are flighting out at 2 30.

409

You guys will land at 5 30.

410

I get there later this evening.

411

I'll see you there.

412

What we didn't know is he had to leave to go catch his flight to New York City.

413

When we got to the New York office, all of us got there.

414

The other five of us engineers got there at about 6 PM, got up to the fourth floor where

the pallets of computers were.

415

Tom Scott in a $300 dress shirt, roll all the way up to the edge of his arms, tie off,

dripping sweat, has already got 66 computers completely unboxed, set up and imaged.

416

And he's the CIO of the company making a quarter million dollars a year in 2007.

417

All of us looked at each other and said, we need to get to work.

418

that was the day I saw a leader in my opinion.

419

Boss went out the window.

420

guy telling me to scream into me what to do when out the window.

421

That's when I learned what leader man, because he was right there with us through the

whole project.

422

If we were on the ground crawling under desks, so was he.

423

He actually did more grabbing the old machines, putting them on carts and basically

busting them out of the building than any of us did.

424

to me, that was just incredible.

425

The guy made a quarter million dollars a year.

426

Didn't think at all about doing that at all.

427

He was just there with us in the trenches.

428

That's how you that's a team.

429

And that's how it works.

430

Got it.

431

No, and I totally, totally agree with you.

432

I could share with you many times and I've seen that, I think is awesome.

433

Can you discuss a time when your hands-on style led to a successful project overcome?

434

The majority of the ones that we do, whether it's a small project that I'm doing myself or

whether it's a team of us doing something together, anything that we do in the IT world

435

requires...

436

Even if it's a solo project, like I'm cleaning out the server closet because it's a mess,

I still need to collaborate with everybody that uses anything at work that travels through

437

that closet, whether it's data, whatever.

438

Having a hands-on approach and being there, I'm not a project coordinator that sits at a

desk and just tries to mitigate things on the phone back and forth to make sure everything

439

is okay.

440

I'm standing in the room saying, okay, guys, I'm about to do this, this part of this

project.

441

These are the people I know will be affected if I do it.

442

Is everybody good with me doing this now?

443

Do I need to wait?

444

And the hands-on approach has helped me in that respect of, again, just knowing the whole

process from the top down and being able to mitigate that and understand that everything

445

that I do has a consequence to one or multiple end users if I'm not collaborating with

everybody.

446

Got it.

447

And just from what I've seen so far, you just shared with us the importance of bridging

the gap between complex IT systems and the users who rely on them.

448

Why is this critical focus for you?

449

The more that they understand the nuances on both sides of what they're doing, it makes

their life a little bit easier when they have to call us.

450

back in the day in the mid 2000s, QuickBooks is what everybody used, but for us, it was a

nightmare.

451

When QuickBooks did updates on the weekends, it was like, anybody sleep last night?

452

No, I've been on the phone with QuickBooks for seven different people because nobody can

get into their payroll because QuickBooks updated everything last night.

453

in that.

454

How do I put it?

455

It's.

456

It was really tough because the user didn't understand why this always broke.

457

And eventually we'd have to break it down with key stakeholders and be like, so QuickBooks

used to be this simple little thing that ran on your computer, but now they've made it run

458

on this server and it interfaces with all these other things.

459

And if QuickBooks goes out and says, I need this from you to this system and the system

doesn't answer, QuickBooks doesn't know what to do.

460

And then when QuickBooks doesn't update and it sees a character, somebody mistyped in a

name, like a period in an actual name field.

461

QuickBooks was really bad for that.

462

If it said first name and somebody put a period in there, that would actually crash

QuickBooks back in the day.

463

But teaching those nuances to the end user helped alleviate them and also made them

understand to ease the frustration.

464

like, QuickBooks is down again.

465

Yeah, but it's because that update last night, call Matt, he'll have it fixed in a few

minutes and it eases the impact of everything.

466

And I always involve the customers in that.

467

as you could probably be aware, sometimes I've been told, Matt, you talk too much.

468

And I was like,

469

show me a customer that never complained about it and nobody can ever do that.

470

I like to make sure that my customers understand that I am a doctor for their machines in

no different capacity than their doctor is for their body.

471

The difference between me and a medical doctor is I'm playing with electricity and

silicone and copper parts.

472

They're playing with a heartbeat, blood and a human being.

473

But what we do, how we approach it, how we solve it, how we explain it is the same.

474

We have an oath not only to

475

fix the technology and the broken health in the technology, but to make sure the person

using it, i.e.

476

the brain using the body that broke, understands what he's using and what he can and can't

do.

477

like, Matt, you're 60 years old, stop jumping off a two-story house, you're gonna have a

broken leg every time.

478

You know, that kind of thing.

479

And it works across the board.

480

Got it.

481

Now that really does make sense.

482

So thank you for sharing that with me, Matt.

483

And what strategies do you use to explain technical issues in straightforward terms to

help users feel more confident with their technology?

484

I always try to use the simplest daily life things that I can find.

485

Like, hey, Matt, how come my internet's so slow here?

486

And at our other office, it was really fast.

487

Well, know, Mike, we just moved in.

488

And, you know, right now we're on a brand new street that's only got one lane.

489

You know, we were on the Santa Ana freeway where you were at before.

490

So we had eight lanes in both directions.

491

Right now, they're only bulldozing the one lane.

492

Cox will be out here next week and we'll have five lanes in each direction again.

493

And, okay, that makes sense, man.

494

I appreciate that.

495

And that's the best way to explain anything, especially in technologies.

496

Always find the simplest way to relate it to something that we do every day.

497

You know, it's like, hey, Matt, everybody's downloading Word and nobody can get any work

done because it's going so slow.

498

Well, that's because Microsoft sees that 50 of you from the same location.

499

are downloading the program right now, so they're pulling the switch back because they

don't want to make everybody else's life miserable, which is literally what they do.

500

so it's the simplest way.

501

The movie Contact from the 90s, a space movie about a cosmetologist, Occam's Razor,

sometimes the simplest explanation is just the way it is.

502

And that's

503

Exactly how internet traffic works, you know, your internet slow back in the 90s when we

were on America online and you picked up a phone and heard the car You couldn't download a

504

song in one day back then because we weren't even on one lane right that we were riding a

bike on the little dots that they put in between the lanes and Trying to you know, imagine

505

using a bicycle on that trying to carry a truckload of boxes And then they widen the

street.

506

Okay.

507

Now can make your platform bigger carry more boxes in a shorter box And that's exactly how

data traffic works

508

You know, they made the roads bigger than they made the trucks bigger than they made the

lanes bigger than they made the trucks bigger.

509

And now we have trucks that can carry trains in one load on the Internet.

510

You can download movies in 10 minutes.

511

You know, we're trying to do that in the 90s.

512

That's Monday.

513

I'll start downloading this now.

514

Hey, guys, I got Sunday's movie will be here on Saturday afternoon.

515

We can start watching it then.

516

And it didn't always explain it in the simplest terms, no matter what it is.

517

Even it was the way Matt, how come the update screwed everything up?

518

And it's like, so when you have a machine running around and it's always A, B, D, A, C, D,

A, B, C, D, you take out C and put a second D in there, now it's A, D, D.

519

The machine's gonna go, Wait a minute, nobody explain it.

520

And that's why those happen.

521

So to always use the simplest way to break it down and make them understand.

522

That goes back to some of the things I told you, the really great techs that don't have

the customer interaction.

523

Well, you know, I was doing the GPO and I sent it to map your drives for, know, blah,

blah.

524

The customer is going, what?

525

And so you remember always keeping an idea that you're talking to the customer and their

gear, not you and your team.

526

Got it.

527

And I think that's super important no matter what industry you're in.

528

And I feel like sometimes as we've been in an industry for a very long time, especially

with you being an industry for 33 years, sometimes you forget the customer may not.

529

may not understand, but not you, but other people.

530

It gets really hard, especially when you're in a routine of a lot of help desk tier one

and tier two people will get in, especially after an upgrade where it's just been Monday

531

morning, there's been nothing but call after call after call because Office 365 messed up.

532

So everybody had been resetting passwords.

533

Now somebody calls and it's not a password thing.

534

It's like, no, I don't have a problem with that.

535

I tried to this file in Adobe and you get jumbled and a lot of the text get things like

that.

536

Got it.

537

that's true.

538

Thank you for sharing that.

539

And what is your approach to ensuring that the IT solutions that you implement are not

only technically sound, but also user friendly?

540

I bet everything is a user.

541

Hype doesn't sell me.

542

You might get my attention with hype, like, this new product that's coming out, which is

really, really good, this is going to change the construction industry.

543

The iPad did that, especially when they came out with the Apple Pen.

544

Change not only the construction industry, the photo editing industry changed.

545

everything But the commercial didn't get me I had to put one in my hand and I had to see

what it could do myself as a user You know, okay.

546

What why is this gonna change the construction industry?

547

hey, you want that change?

548

I'm standing here and you want me to move that light from there to there?

549

Sign this change order and I email it to you, know, because I know you guys do cabling or

things like that I email it to you.

550

Hey customer.

551

So I want to this light over here So I'm gonna move this action light six inches.

552

Here's the change order.

553

We're good

554

And that changed the process of, okay, well, used to be, well, here's the change order.

555

I got it signed.

556

I'll take it back to the office, get in the system.

557

I'll bring the parts out with me tomorrow, blah, blah, blah, blah.

558

So, you know, proving that it will change the technology is what I do with everything that

I do.

559

Because I do that as the user.

560

like, okay, this is going to make my users 20 % more productive.

561

How?

562

Okay.

563

So, instead of taking this file from here and putting it here and then putting it here and

putting it here,

564

Now I can just go from here to here.

565

I'll buy that because that's going to make it.

566

So now I just took 50 % of my steps out of my employee process.

567

Let's go.

568

And the salesman will tell you it does that and they'll always tell you it does that.

569

And then 10 minutes after you bought it, you're going, you said it does this and it's

getting there doing a little tiny thing again, it's just spinning.

570

yeah, it does that too.

571

Like you didn't tell me that before I gave you the money.

572

And so I'm always that user because I'm, it's what I'm paid to do.

573

not only is your client advocate for IT, but I'm the guy that has to work on it.

574

And I'm not going to get yelled at later because, you told us to install this because you

said it was going to do that.

575

And that has happened to me many, many years ago where we were sold on this AutoCAD add-on

that was going to change the world and it didn't.

576

And I got yelled at because I believe the sale.

577

I didn't try it.

578

And that's when I immediately learned that would never happen to me again.

579

So I always approach the technology I'm going to implement as the customer.

580

as well as the technician.

581

I know all the things I'm going to ask how I'm going to keep this running, but how am I

going to make sure my users get what they're paying for?

582

Got it.

583

And that's very, very important.

584

And that makes people very happy.

585

Yes, does.

586

the IT field continues to evolve, what opportunities currently excite you the most?

587

Just to see how automation is just going to get better and better and better and allow us

to do what is

588

What I believe every IT guy's goal should be, and it pertains to the second half of this

question too, automation is going to make us better, which is going to free us up to do

589

more of the things that we lose in the day-to-day of what we do.

590

Any IT guy that tells you he has no open tickets that he needs to go work on, not telling

the truth.

591

I've been doing this 33 years, and there's always something that maybe you didn't put in a

ticket, but there's always something that you can go do that's going to make the

592

environment better.

593

Our main job is to work ourselves out of a job.

594

We will never succeed because technology is not going to move too fast.

595

But that should be our goal every day.

596

I don't want my customers calling me for resetting passwords.

597

So thank you NIST, a new thing that's come out lately.

598

The whole rule of thumb to change your password every 30, 60, 90 days is now no longer

recommended by NIST.

599

It actually is worse to do that than to set one good password, leave it alone, unless it

gets compromised.

600

and over the years security breaches are proven.

601

Well, yeah, it's because this person changed their password every 30 days.

602

They got tired of remembering these long passwords, so they made them simpler and simpler

and simpler and simpler.

603

You got hacked.

604

And that's going to free us up to take care of all those issues and go, hey, those things

we couldn't do before like Velcro and cable and all of that.

605

It's just going to get better and better and get us further towards that goal.

606

The idea for an IT guy is we should be calling you people

607

to say, this new technology is coming out and I want to introduce you to it more than

you're calling me with problems.

608

And that's where I see the future of technology, automation and AI is going to get better

and better to do help us do that job.

609

Technology is where I don't see AI ever fully taking over because you're still going to

need us, the human interaction of everything that goes on.

610

Same thing with the operating room.

611

AI is never going to take over an operating room because you're still going to need a

brain with the reality of

612

we got a hemorrhage.

613

What do we do now?

614

Kind of got it.

615

Understood.

616

You did mention AI and AI has been a popular topic lately.

617

What are your current thoughts about AI?

618

I actually use it to my advantage.

619

You know, I'm not going to lie when I have to sit down and write some some scripting to

automate some things.

620

I have chat, DBT on my phone and I look right.

621

Hey, chat, DBT, write me a script for blah, blah, blah, blah.

622

It does 90 % of the work I spend on.

623

5 % of the time reading it versus creating it I might have to edit a few things for my

specific need and I employ it and it works and it's it's a huge huge Advantage and it's

624

one of the things I can tell any IT guy out there if you think chat dbt is a bad thing

625

automate something I just hate chat dbt write me a script for this and

626

What used to take me two hours, I take 20 minutes from beginning to deployed.

627

And it's amazing.

628

Got it.

629

No, and I totally agree with you.

630

If you're not using it, you should be.

631

Yeah, even if you have to write a complicated email to some stakeholders, use Chat GPT.

632

It'll ease your stress of, is this the right kind of email etiquette for this?

633

It's an amazing piece of software.

634

Yeah, no, very true.

635

And then how do you see the role of IT professionals changing in the next decade?

636

and what advice would you give to those entering the field today?

637

I don't see the role changing too much.

638

We're still going to be that liaison between the non-technical and the technical.

639

We're still going to be the center between making it work, making the end users happy and

making the business thrive and the production behind it.

640

And that much isn't going to change.

641

The tools like I have in the last decade, the tools we use, how we approach it, how fast

we can do certain things, it's just going to get better.

642

And as far as anybody entering the field today,

643

Two things, love it or leave it, period.

644

Don't start there.

645

If this isn't something you know you're gonna love doing every day, find something else

now because this is going to burn you out faster than anything you've ever done if you

646

don't love it.

647

And absorb anything, everything, and everything, I say it from every single person you

work with.

648

And the more you can learn, the faster you can learn.

649

I mean, I've seen guys graduate levels of tears.

650

It took me five years back in the day.

651

I've seen them doing six months now because they're absorbing, reading, learning, doing,

and tertiary.

652

If once you get into a job and you get into a place where you just did an upgrade and you

have all these old computers and maybe they're going to donate all the old computers for

653

the client.

654

Hey boss, can I spend, can I give you 20 bucks to take one home so that I can set up a lab

at home?

655

Have a lab, have a place where you can work on things you're not sure of.

656

without being worried about breaking things you don't want to break.

657

You know, the computers I have in my office for testing what this virus might do or

testing this new product or things like that.

658

I don't care if it fries my hard drive.

659

I really don't.

660

It's what it's there for.

661

It's not production.

662

And it helps me learn.

663

And every project I've ever done, I've done in a lab before I've ever deployed it for a

customer.

664

And it's made things way better.

665

Got it.

666

Awesome.

667

And that's great.

668

Before you actually use it on a customer, you should practice it.

669

And is there anything that you would like to add or share with us?

670

Not that I can think of.

671

This was actually really fun.

672

This is the first time I've ever done a two way podcast like this.

673

Thanks for having me.

674

It was insightful for me to go over the questions and think about my own answers ahead of

time.

675

And yeah, just this is one of the greatest things I've ever done for a living.

676

I've had a lot of people offer me a lot of money.

677

to do other things for a living.

678

And I've turned it down because I've done IT across the board and in the medical field for

the military, for the automotive industry, for the entertainment field where I've gotten

679

to integrate it with audio and visual things.

680

And it's just, it's awesome.

681

It's really cool stuff.

682

You are muted, I think.

683

Yes.

684

My five year old is home today, so I do apologize about that.

685

No worries.

686

But yes, thank you so much, Matt.

687

And I totally agree with you, everything that you said.

688

I'm excited to learn more about you and spent some time today.

689

Would you like to just kind of share with everyone of how they could reach you if they're

interested in getting in contact with you?

690

Yeah, y'all, the best place to find me is on LinkedIn.

691

Let see.

692

I don't know my own profile off the top of my head.

693

I believe it's Las Vegas IT Pro on my, is my LinkedIn URL, but you can find me, Matt

Winchell, just searching me on LinkedIn.

694

I have video games as my background image, so it's kind of hard to miss me there.

695

And they're all old school games that we used to play as kids.

696

Everything you want to know about me, I have posts there.

697

They run the gamut of what I do.

698

have, you know, work from my cabling, even recent cabling work that I've done and setting

up, you know, systems for an audio video thing that's over at form shops all the way down

699

to, you know, videos I have on there on.

700

You know, don't be fooled by the managed service providers that, you know, want you to

believe that it takes 15 minutes to set your password.

701

have a video on my LinkedIn that says, this is how long the process takes.

702

And I play both sides of the phone call.

703

It's like, Matt, my password is reset.

704

okay.

705

We'll watch it.

706

I'm doing it on office 365 and the video is 42 seconds long.

707

Customers back to work.

708

So, know, I put a lot of stuff out there and always anybody can feel free to reach out.

709

If I, I give free advice without going too far into it.

710

If you want me to.

711

Look at what you think you're getting and help you decide, are you getting what you're

paying for?

712

I do that very unbiased.

713

I won't, I'd tell you, I don't want to know who your IT provider is.

714

What do feel you're not getting?

715

And I answer that with, this is what you should be looking for.

716

Not what I would provide, but this is what you should be looking for as an end user.

717

And I speak to them as an end user, what I would want in my business if I was searching

for that.

718

Awesome.

719

And we will put that in description.

720

So thank you for sharing that, Matt.

721

And it was a pleasure today.

722

You have a great day.