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Overcoming the IT Talent Gap: Hands-On Management and Strategies
Episode 1629th October 2024 • Las Vegas IT Management • K&B Communications
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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

K&B Communications is a professional data cabling company specializing in low voltage contracting. They provide top-notch installation services for data Cat 6 cable, fiber optics, and advanced security systems. Hiring Announcement: K&B Communications is currently hiring experienced project managers. If you or someone you know has the expertise and is looking for a new opportunity, please reach out.

Transcripts

Speaker:

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.

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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

barely hitting:

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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.

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It was mom and life in general.

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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

've seen since you started in:

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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

and what a cell phone was in:

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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We covered all of this.

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We had some donuts and coffee.

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I got another 15 minutes.

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What other questions do you have?

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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.

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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.

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Got it.

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No, I totally agree with that.

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So thank you for sharing that.

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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?

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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.

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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.

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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

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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

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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

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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.

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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.

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Put a blanket on it.

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I'll be right there.

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You always get a smile cracked when they read that.

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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.

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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

It's worth every bit of the:

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.

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