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369- Leading Through Company Failure w/Tom Shock · You've Been Heard

• 0:09
  Speaker A: Welcome back to today's episode of Dissecting Popular IT Nerds. I'm your host, Doug Kameen, and today I'm talking with Tom Schock, the director of information technology at Shepherd Electric Supply. Welcome to the show, Tom.
• 0:22
  Speaker B: Thank you for having me.
• 0:23
  Speaker A: So. So, Tom, funny, before we start, one of the questions I always ask our guests, hey, you've been on this before and you're like, you know, I've actually been on this podcast before. It's true, you're coming back, you're circling back on us here, but it's in part because we're having a different interview today than we did before. So you were a guest here on the show, I think, a little, maybe around a year ago, maybe a little over a year ago. And you talked with one of my co hosts, Mike Kelly, and that conversation was very focused on cybersecurity and the nature of what it takes to stand up cybersecurity in a small, medium business environment, if I recall.
• 1:03
  Speaker B: Yep, that is correct.
• 1:04
  Speaker A: But today we're going to call this, we've started to kind of roll this out, but we'll call this the Dissecting Popular IT Nerds Leadership Series Interviews. That's kind of where I landed today. We're here to talk a little about leadership and background and that type of stuff. So different interview than before. But it's great to have you back on the show and have the chance to talk to you.
• 1:25
  Speaker B: Yeah, I'm truly looking forward to it.
• 1:27
  Speaker A: So, Tom, you're just to kind of kick off here. You've been at Shepherd Electric Supply for a number of years, so I think I get the benefit of cheating with LinkedIn, but a little over six years, it looks like. And so that's a place. One of the things that I always love asking folks who have had a fairly long tenure, more than like two or three years at a place is back by that point. I think about career paths and I personally think of anybody's career as having, I'll call them to borrow the Taylor Swift eras of three to five years. So each you come in, you probably have some goals, you set them out maybe in three, four, maybe five years at most. You've really achieved some of those. Then you have to decide. You come to an inflection point, do I leave? Do I stay? Do I go on? Is there new projects to work on? What, what does the next three to five year cycle look like? So I'm just curious from you, from a leadership perspective, how has that looked for you and how do you approach those types of inflection points and maybe do you see the same ones?
• 2:36
  Speaker B: Yeah. No. And in your kind of model is it affects very well with my history. So this is my third IT leadership position in the last 15 years. And they didn't all, you know, change up right. Exactly at five years. But you know, it was in that ballpark and I think, you know, you're again, your summary is pretty accurate. You kind of show up and my, I don't know, kind of niche is mid market companies, often privately owned. Albert no longer is that really are looking to kind of reinvest in it, maybe do some modernization. So yeah, you kind of show up and you spend the first six to eight weeks kind of evaluating our what's in place here and what needs to change and then you put some goals together and after three or four years you kind of are at a point where, hey, I've accomplished what I set out to accomplish. What do I do next? I think the difference that I've experienced at shepherd is they've grown significant significantly since I've been here. When I arrived in 2019, there were about 250 million in revenue. And this year we're coming over 500. So yeah, so it's, you know, and it's a very mature industry. Wholesale distribution of electrical components. I mean shepherd is literally 1892 was our founding date. So we're 100 and you know, something.
• 4:06
  Speaker A: 130 plus years old there. Yeah.
• 4:09
  Speaker B: So that kind of growth in a mature industry is interesting. You know, it makes for, you know, a continual challenge. Whereas if it had been maybe, you know, pretty steady sales, maybe it would be time to hey, you know, what's my next challenge kind of thing?
• 4:27
  Speaker A: Have you read into somebody who's like, like, like, you know, I've worked here since like 1977.
• 4:33
  Speaker B: Oh, there are a lot of long tenured people here. The, the guy who. We have a person on my team who just had his 28 year anniversary younger than I am. So I mean he's been here since like right out of college. But there are other people who truly are, you know, 40, you know, something years with the company. And it's interesting if you look at our, our, our total employee base, it's very much a barbell. We have a lot of people who are like, you know, five to seven years kind of contributable to that growth. Right. You know, you don't go from 250 to 500 without hiring a bunch of people. And then we have this kind of middle Part where there aren't a lot of people in the 10 year, 15 year range. And then we got a bunch of people who have been here, you know, the bulk of their career. So it's interesting how that kind of shakes out.
• 5:19
  Speaker A: So how. I think that's a really interesting question I have about leadership in that space. So how do you adjust and manage your leadership? Whether it's leadership for your team or a leader being a leader to the organization, you know, through the IT space, to those different constituencies of people. I mean, you've been there six years and you're talking to somebody who's been there, you know, 28, 40, you know, and, and you know, not to say like, oh, they, they, they're going to show up, be like, oh, I know better, or anything else like that. But I think it involves some nuance there and making sure you're respectful.
• 5:52
  Speaker B: Yeah. So I think that's where the intersection of corporate culture and leadership is really important. Shepherd has always had, and you know, not that, I mean, it just, it was a good fit with my personal leadership style. Their kind of overarching guide star is, you know, serve the customer. You know, it's a very, a relationship driven sale in the electrical distribution industry. The company is very much relationship oriented. And so once I, you know, kind of settled into that, it just makes things easy because to your point, when you're working with someone who's been here for much longer, we can always both fall back on that, you know, what decision or what path forward is going to best serve our customer. And that almost always leads to, you know, a joint, you know, jointly acceptable decision. Yeah.
• 6:47
  Speaker A: And I was thinking about my experience and my, where I currently work, you know, my, my boss, you know, is the CEO and she's been with our company like 20, 28 years. You know, like our CFO has been there 27 years and I've been there three. Coming up on three shortly. And you know, we have kind of a similar, like a similar distribution where once you, once your company's become long standing, you end up having a handful of folks that have been there for a long time and then, and then usually there's some sort of churn at the front end. So you would usually have a kind of like a, you know, a chunk of folks that are all in the relatively early periods of, you know, their time with the company, you know, one to three years type of deal or zero to five years. And then, you know, do, you know, do you have that distribution elsewhere? You know, so some companies do Some companies don't, but a lot of companies oftentimes that have been around for a long time have a handful of people that have been there since, you know, the company started, or forever, if you will, if the company is too old for them to be there for that long.
• 7:49
  Speaker B: Yep. Yeah. And shepherd, very much that's true for us as well.
• 7:52
  Speaker A: Yeah. Just, just, just so we're clear for the listeners, there is no one who is there from 1992, still around 1892.
• 7:59
  Speaker B: No, nobody here for that long. The people who've been here for a long time, they do like to say that the company was founded the same year that GE was founded.
• 8:09
  Speaker A: So that's interesting.
• 8:11
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 8:14
  Speaker A: So looking back at your, you know, your history, you mentioned you've been, this is your third, your third kind of stint, if you will, as a director of it. What do you think you've learned as you've moved through each opportunity that you've had? Because each one, you know, every, I think about, every time you have an experience, you learn something different from IT and you use it to grow. What do you think were the biggest takeaways that you got at each of your stints that you were at prior to being here?
• 8:43
  Speaker B: Yeah, so I think, at least from my leadership experience, it's when you step into the, you know, the slot, it's evaluating the team and the company and identifying, hey, what do they really need me to do? Because in that mid market, it's very much a place coach type role. And so in my first IT leadership position, it was very much application focused. And this is going back to 2012 and cybersecurity was a, IT just wasn't a thing. And then kind of 2015, 2017, that organization really needed an infrastructure overhaul. You know, server switches, VMware, Wi Fi, firewalls, just, they just were under invested and just needed everything to be refreshed. And so that's what I focused on. And then when I arrived at shepherd, they really had the application component well in hand. They had the, there were two people here who both were deep double digits. They weren't quite at 20 years, but they were like, you know, one was at 16 and one was at 18 and they had implemented the ERP was, that was currently in place. So, you know, there just wasn't a lot of, you know, things that weren't getting done and done well in that, in that area. So as an IT leader, it's kind of like, okay, well what, you know, what needs to improve. And for shepherd, that was very much cybersecurity and so that's where I spent the bulk of my time, you know, for the first probably 18 months, 24 months, just getting them to a place where, you know, we were not stable but secure enough. And then it's really kind of, you know, continuing as with everyone else. It's like a arms race. Right. It never ends. And I've been able to kind of shift back a little bit more and focus just on infrastructure as a whole and some applications. We've done some AI applications in the last year, which has been really interesting. You know, that's kind of like a wild west out there. Yeah.
• 10:53
  Speaker A: Thanks. So at each time you've, you've, you know, each step you've moved, like, what would you say was your biggest, like, I know you, you, you mentioned about, you know, cybersecurity and the transition from there from a leadership perspective itself, like the, the qualities of leadership that you grew into. What was your biggest, like, thing that you, you took away, like. And I, maybe I'll even, I'll share a little story from, from my smile background. So, you know, for many years I was at, I was in municipal it. I started in the private sector, actually. I started as a, in a public school district in it moved to the private sector, did IT consulting and then I moved back into municipal. It was a county CIO for many years. And then I, I moved to an adjacent county after being heavily recruited to go there only to find that the experience, I was brought in as a fix it person for that county and only to find that without diving deep into a huge story like the politics of the environment were very poor and the tolerance for essentially political warfare and whatever, much different than the environment I came from. And so I departed after a short period of time. But I still felt I learned a lot from an experience, even though it was largely a negative one for me. And my time at the prior county was excellent. I had no specific reason to leave other than I was like, well, I'd been here almost eight years and I felt like the next opportunity was to grow somewhere else. But even that experience, even though I was there a year and it didn't really work out very well, and, and I don't feel that it was, you know, it was, it was a negative experience overall. But in the long run it was a positive experience because it led to what I was doing now, led to new opportunities, led me to rethink how I approach some of my career pathing as well. You know, like, I was like, whoa, maybe I'm not looking inside the same market, maybe I should broaden my horizons and that type of stuff. So like, I just curious for you, like how some of those steps, you know, experiences that you've had that might, you know, kind of share, either sharing that or different lessons that you learned along the way.
• 13:08
  Speaker B: Yeah, well, I mean, I think you're right. It just in general, you always learn a tremendous amount more on the IT side when things don't go well. You know, I mean, anybody ever installs something that goes smooth, you're like, oh, that was easy. It's when things go south that you're like, oh, now I really understand how these things work because that tear it apart, you know, down to the start. So I think, you know, the change up is typically driven a bit from the top, from the ownership, you know, because these privately owned, you know, family owned, typically mid market companies, you know that sometimes it's second generation, third generation, there's just tons of nuance and dynamic and complexity there that, you know, just isn't really present with a kind of, I'm gonna use the word boring. But you know, a corporate structure where, you know, everyone's invested but no one is truly, you know, their name isn't on the front of the building kind of thing. You know, when you step into that, you really, I found kind of going in with a certain amount of flexibility and as you kind of described, hey, what's the, what's the nature of conversation and decision making in this organization? How, you know, are they, is it a collaborative process? Is it, you know, someone tells you what to do and you do it and then is, you know, as someone new being hired because, you know, you, you're bringing a certain expertise that perhaps either wasn't there or they didn't like, you know, the answers they were getting. You got to figure out how do you provide that expertise in a way that's going to be, you know, productive in your current environment. And that may not be the same recipe that's worked for you in the past.
• 14:56
  Speaker A: So you mentioned that some of the places you've been, you had to come in and by the time you got there, like special. If you consider yourself specialist in mid market it and particularly rebuilding organizations that may have either. I don't want to always describe it as like everybody failed before, then you got there, but maybe they just didn't, they didn't choose to invest in it up to that point. Then they're like, whoa, wait a minute, that's now a strategic imperative. But we got a problem Here, and we need to find somebody who's really got to be focused on that. How do you find the team to meet those needs?
• 15:37
  Speaker B: Um, so I mean, that's the benefit of getting through the old, right? You've got a whole, you know, long career of people to kind of tap, you know, if you, if you need your expertise. And so sometimes it's a function of you arrive at a new place and you, you know, reach back earlier in your career and find the right resource and ask them if they're looking for a, a new opportunity and bring them over. You know, that's one way to do it. I mean, there's also, I think, a lot of value in offering the people who have been there and maybe not, you know, it wasn't their only responsibility. A lot of times these smaller mid market companies, it kind of grows to the point where this person was like the customer service manager, but they also were doing most of the IT work except for, you know, the server stuff, and that fell to somebody else. And, and these companies kind of grow to a congregate, like, hey, we need, you know, a legitimate, you know, kind of career leader to guide this function and kind of consolidate everything and just, you know, make it, you know, as tightly run as, say, the accounting function. And you know, there's, there's utility in exploring that and just talking to the people who've been doing the work and just understanding, you know, what's your true mission? You know, if you could do this all day long, would you want to or you really want to get this off your plate? And you know, you get honest answers to those questions and then that helps you, helps guide how you kind of build what you need to build to make it, you know, professional area.
• 17:12
  Speaker A: So I'm gonna. Oh, excuse me one second. Like, I just got. There we go. That's better. Getting froggy there. So going back before you were a leader though, you, you know, you did some other things. Like, you know, you've worked in a couple of different places. When did you feel that you were, you made that transition from being, you know, a team member to a leader? Like a lot of times people can put their finger on that time. They're like, you know what? Like, I was in this meeting and like, or maybe not the specific meeting, but like, you know, I was in this job and this big project came up and I was like, I let a step up and I know I have the confidence, the confidence and comfort to do it. Like, how did you recognize that? Or did you, do you even Remember? Or kind of have your. Could you put your finger on that?
• 18:02
  Speaker B: Yeah. I think that for me, that desire started pretty early. You know, whether it be like, just in, you know, kind of teenage jobs, you know, being like, lead this or, you know, head whatever, you know, I think just the opportunity just kind of watch an operation say, I, I have ideas on how this can be more efficient or more fair or, you know, just generally better. And then as you kind of move through your career, you know, there are opportunities maybe just to lead a project and there's nobody on the project but you, but, you know, you get some autonomy there and you get to choose, you know, kind of how you tackle it. And the lessons that you learn and the, you know, the experience that you gain just prepares you to kind of step into that more formal leadership role. You know, I, I, I do subscribe to the belief that regardless of how gifted people are, there's a certain amount of luck in, in any person's career. And I was at a, you know, an age, you know, not quite 40, when, you know, I was sitting in a seat as, you know, I forget what my title was, but it wasn't. I wasn't leading the IT department, but the CIO of the department moved on, you know, and so that company was kind of at an inflection point. They could either, you know, go outside and try to find somebody, or they could, you know, promote from within. And, you know, they. I got an opportunity to run that department, and that was, you know, I was there for five years in that capacity, and that was, you know, my first IT leadership role, so.
• 19:33
  Speaker A: Nice. Nice. Yeah, that's a, It's a great opportunity. I remember for me when I was way back in the day, so my first leadership role came into me. It totally fell my lap. In my 20s, I was in IT service, like corporate IT. I worked for this dairy company, and then I had left and gone to an IT consulting firm. And I was just, you know, a systems engineer doing, you know, general consulting work. But within, like, four weeks of me starting, the guy who was the director of Technical services, like, just, I recall them being like, we can't find him and we, he can't. He's not reachable. And he kind of got, like, he, like, weirded out and just, you know, vanished. You know, like, like, it wasn't that they fired him. It wasn't that he just ghosted.
• 20:22
  Speaker B: Yeah. Back in the day when you could do that, you know.
• 20:24
  Speaker A: Now this is like 2005, you know, or 2004, and this dude, just like ghosts and they're like, guess you're in charge now. For the next three years I was in charge, you know, okay. You know, I was like, all right. But you know, but 26 year old me was not as good, you know, not as solid of a manager as, you know, 46 year old me is. So I'm thinking back about other things. So how did you get into technology? Like, or were you a technology person? Like, you know, so were people like when I was a kid, you know, I did computer stuff. My parents, it was always kind of assumed I would end up in the computer business and the technology business in some way. But was, was that, was that you, was that it was something else. Were you going to be a, you know, the next rock star? Are you going to be a doctor? What was, what's, what's the story?
• 21:15
  Speaker B: So I very much like a student of business, but not technology oriented. You know, my, my grandfather was, he worked at a textile mill that he invested in stock market. So he always kind of shared those, that insight and just kind of how that ownership arrangement, you know, existed. So I felt like just growing up, you know, I really had desire to be a, you know, the CEO of a company. Right. As a, like a little kid, not at all technologically oriented, not particularly into video games. I can clearly remember coming out of college, this is the early 90s, and my roommate talking about the Internet. He explained to me and he's saying I won't think there's much to that. So, you know, definitely not very, you know, in touch with trends and what was going to be important. But as I started out in my career, just you know, got first drive out of school in like a purchasing logistics type role, it became clear that technology was where the change was going to happen. That was going to be the transformational functional department, certainly for foreseeable future. And so the company where I was working this is again like mid-90s now. They replaced their kind of homegrown multi system solution with sop. And as many of those projects went, it did not go well. So anyone who could walk hawk and chew gum got pulled into the project team to try to, you know, write this ship. And I just found it to be a really good fit from like the functional part of it. And FTAP is very much a, you know, it's kind of an old school ERP. This is a R3. So you know, I'm not recurrent a die driven solution, but very process driven, which was a good fit for me. And so next Thing I knew I was kind of deep into, you know, the functional support of, you know, a major erp and that was, you know, kind of around your age, you know, like mid-20s. And it just kind of transformed into an opportunity to get deeper and deeper into technology, both on the infrastructure side and the data center side. And I did a little bit of development, so. So it really, you know, it was my entree that, you know, that kind of business, you know, first and then technology second, was really, you know, kind of the whole story of my career.
• 23:43
  Speaker A: Nice. So when you were a kid, what was your first. What was your first, like, experience with technology or computers or something like that?
• 23:49
  Speaker B: You know, I found, I remember it being terribly frustrating. My brother, my older brother was very much a technologist, and he had like a TRS 80. And I was going to, you know, type my. I was in high school maybe. Yeah, early high school. I was going to type a paper on it. And I just remember it, like, was not a fluid process. And my whole takeaway is, you know, this, you know, why can't this stuff just work? You know, why can't it do what I want it to do without having to really, you know, put a lot of effort or energy into it?
• 24:18
  Speaker A: So you're saying you wanted a Mac is what you really needed, right?
• 24:22
  Speaker B: Yeah, I wanted a Mac for the 1980s. You know, it's a super. So a little bit under the curve there. And so I just, you know, again, I found it frustrating. And, you know, when I was in school, I. I gravitated more toward the financial side, and that's where I. When I went back to school for an mba, I focused on finance just because it was, you know, it didn't have all the variability of technology that I felt made it, you know, challenging. But that choice has been helpful as well, because in two of my roles, I reported to the CFO at the leader of it. So I'm super familiar with what he thinks about day to day and his kind of vocabulary and vernacular. So we have a shorthand that I can kind of present technological choices, decisions in a way that he's like, okay, I get this. I can kind of provide my input, guidance, or if I need to make a client call, I can do it. But, you know, that's been, you know, really helpful, just that background.
• 25:26
  Speaker A: So, so what. What did you. What did you do on this TRS 80 to do? I mean, other than frustratingly try to match the keys?
• 25:33
  Speaker B: Because the recollection was like, it has like a. A cassette tape, like you, you know, it wrote to the cassette tape and then wrote back, as I'm sure it had like, you know, nothing in from a random RAM perspective. And it just was like, kludgy. I was like, this is awful. And like, getting it to print was like a small, you know, effort. You know, I mean, like, this is. This is. Anyway, I just. I really coming away from.
• 25:58
  Speaker A: I.
• 25:58
  Speaker B: My takeaway was I want to spend as little time with that kind of environment as humanly possible. And that was probably, you know, like at early high school. So, you know, if I was 15 by the time I was 25, you know, now I'm back in it. But on the functional side of SAP.
• 26:19
  Speaker A: I remember I had a TI99.4A, which is, you know, you could get a whole assembly for it, but it also would hook to your TV and, you know, so that it had a cartridge for games and stuff on the side. But it also had a. You could put a cassette recorder and record, know, stuff to. To. To tape. And I remember programming and logo. So after school programs as I was a kid, you know, it was mid-1980s, so still, you know, you know, like. Like what, seven, you know, eight, nine years old. And logo was like this basic or it was essentially a basic programming language. Like, literally basic programming in the basic language. And it was like, see, you would program this, like, turtle to go around, so you'd have to program like, you know, forward two left, one for, you know, so you would get it to do stuff. So. But it taught you the basic concepts of, like, how to. How to, you know, write a program and the language that goes with it. So in the 80s, you know, TRS. 80s, you. You used one. But it was not. It was. It was. We'll call it a humbling experience.
• 27:33
  Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely.
• 27:36
  Speaker A: So. So, you know, keeping on the trajectory here of the questions that we ask our. Our guests when we want to, you know, a little more about their history and stuff like that, you tell us something about your background or your history that people may not know or expect of you. You know, like, you know, I was the world, like, karate champion in, like, 1992. You know, like, I was Karate Kid or something like that. I was not. I'm just. No, no, I'm not that. I'm just saying I was. I was using that example of something you might have been. You know, somebody is like, oh, I was the world karate champion. And they're like, what is up with that? That's crazy.
• 28:14
  Speaker B: I mean, it's going to be pretty pedestrian. So I'M a dad of three girls, 22, 20 and 17. So that is, you know, in some. I mean, we're kind of, kind of coming out of the window where there's a lot to do there. You know, my two of my daughters are at school. They're home now, but you know, at school in the fall. But yeah, I mean, you know, I, I am very much a generalist back at home as well. You know, a little bit of home improvement, you know, quite a bit of cleaning. You know, it's just this. I feel like it's very much a domestic life when I'm not here. Work. I really endeavor not to do much technologically at home. Like, I don't deal with any of the whole like entertainment, subscription cable stuff. You know, I'm in like bus mentality. Right. I'm like, I don't think about that. I don't want, you know, I'm on Password. You got to talk to my wife. Yeah. She handles all that stuff.
• 29:11
  Speaker A: Yeah. So, so like. But so is there some non technical thing that you're like really good at or you love to do or anything else like that? Like, like is there, you know, what's the background hobby here?
• 29:20
  Speaker B: So I, I am good at home improvement prospect. It takes me a long time, but when I'm done, you know, I. Not too long ago, I, I legit a framing for a door that led out to our porch. And I mean it, it, I, I can do a good job, but I am just inherently slower than if, you know, I hire someone do it.
• 29:41
  Speaker A: Sure.
• 29:41
  Speaker B: You know, but the benefit is that, you know, I kind of get a sense, you know, we've been in this home for going on 10 years now. So it's one of those things where not terribly different from work. Right. You start to disassemble something so you can reassemble it to be better. When you do that, you kind of understand. All right, well, I have a, you know, pretty good idea of what, you know, how this is constructed and you know, what it's made of. And you know, there's a. I find that fulfilling so to have that kind of granular knowledge both at work and at home.
• 30:10
  Speaker A: Yeah, I share an affinity for taking stuff apart or building things, stuff like that. Like, I have a number of home improvement projects kind of always in process. I just a couple, just a couple of weeks ago I was painting. My house is mostly brick, but I have one part of it that's got siding on it and you know, something like, oh, that needs to be painted. So like here I am up on the roof, like paint the siding, getting the things done that need to get done.
• 30:36
  Speaker B: Yep.
• 30:38
  Speaker A: So, Tom, I'd love to talk a little bit with you about the qualities that you think make a good leader in, whether it's the IT space or just in a general sense, and how people can. Like how people can develop those skills and what things help you develop those skills. Yeah.
• 30:58
  Speaker B: So one of my earliest memories was an epiphany is probably a little bit too strong of a word, but just appreciating the consistency that a leader brings to every day and the importance that that has for the team that worked for that leader. Because I can remember as a, you know, younger employee, you know, you have, you know, sometimes very few interactions with, you know, an executive leader. And whether it's just walking down the hall and saying hello or, you know, if that person kind of, you know, gives you a gruff response or, you know, something less than engaging, you as a young employee kind of can read a lot into that. That really there's nothing involved there except for that executive leader was thinking about something else. Yep. But it's just having an appreciation for that as you move about, you know, the office space that, hey, you know, when you interact with people because of, you know, the role that you're in, you know, they're going to ascribe a lot more value to that interaction than perhaps you do. So be present and, you know, engaging. It doesn't mean you have to stop and talk to everybody about the dog, but, you know, just appreciate that, you know, that day in, day out, it provides a stability and a level of comfort to, you know, the organization and as a whole that, hey, you know, this place is being run by people who, you know, for lack of a better word, have their stuff together.
• 32:37
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. And I've absolutely, like. As you move up the ladder in an organization, especially if the organization is larger where you become. My organization has about 500 employees, so I do not know all the 500 employees that work there. Many of them don't work in the same location. They work in other cities. So I will only interact with them in periodic places. Or they might only see me as a figure in, say, an all staff meeting where I'm giving a presentation or something like that. You know, from my perspective, I get up and put my pants on one leg at a time just like everyone else. And I'm not saying they somehow don't think I don't put my pants on one leg at a time just like everyone else. But. But everything that comes out of my mouth, they're like, did you hear what Doug said? Right? They're like, oh, Doug talked to me the other day, and he was like, totally not, like, in a good place. Like, all of a sudden it means, like, this big thing, and you're like, dude, I just wasn't like, yeah, right, right, right. You know, but. But it is one of the. The, like, those key aspects of leadership is that, you know, you're just. Like you said, your presence is a real. Has a real impact on the people around you in the organization. And they. They try to take cues from how you. Even the things you don't say to them. You know, they're like, well, he didn't say hello today. Is there something wrong? Like, like, dude, like, I just was busy, you know, but. But, you know, like, it's. I mean, I say that, like, dude, like, like, oh, my God, they should totally understand. But. But, like, as the leader is also inherent on us to understand that that dynamic happens and that that setup is important for us as leaders to recognize and lean into how we. How we show up and the presence we have.
• 34:17
  Speaker B: Yeah. And it's particularly important when there's, you know, when times aren't great. So the. The first leadership role I had was with a company that eventually went out of business. So, you know, there were definitely windows of time there where everyone was like, you know, how are we doing right now? And, you know, if you walk around looking like, you know, yeah, payroll might not clear this, you know, that that's pretty Abbott, you know, you don't. And it's not terribly productive. I mean, I'm not saying you want to sugarcoat, you know, the message because everyone, you know, deserves to have some transparency so the nature of the organization. But again, if you've got a plan and you feel like, hey, this is the best plan we can put together and we're going to execute on it, then have confidence in that and try to project that because it makes a difference.
• 35:05
  Speaker A: Yeah, for sure. So actually, I'm glad you brought that up about. So you went through the experience of a business that wound down. You were in leadership in a business that had to wind down. So tell me a little more about how that. Like. Like, how do you have to show up as a leader? And what was. What was. What was the important parts for you? Like, because, you know, as a leader, you still have the same uncertainty that everybody else does. I'm sure, you know, you're like, oh, yeah, I'm going to lose My job at the end of this, like, so, so how did you, how did you navigate that?
• 35:36
  Speaker B: So I think, you know, shifting into a focus of, hey, it's important to me that all my, that my team, you know, finds a, you know, gets a step and get that, you know, and has a, a pathway out. You know, putting energy into that to me was in some ways it felt empowering. Like, you know, like we can't save this ship, but I can make sure that everybody on my team gets on a lifeboat. And that, you know, meaning that was fulfilling and a time when really, you know, it just felt like a huge failure. Right. You never be in a position of leadership when, you know, a company goes out of business and that's not exactly like a net success written all over. But so that was important and, and I found that valuable and you know, just the company handled it. You know, I mean every, and there's always opportunities for improved, but generally speaking they were pretty forthcoming so that it wasn't a shock. You know, there was a wind down period where we literally were in chapter 11 and there was an outside entity that comes in and you know, they become in charge of the checkbook and it's not, I wouldn't want to do it again, but very informative of you really get a sense of, oh, this is how that works. And now, and you know, much better than I did before kind of thing.
• 37:05
  Speaker A: I'd say, yeah, like, like, yeah, I don't, I would relish going through the experience, but I absolutely would be like, wow, there's a ton that I just now know about. I read into that with my, my wife sometimes. So she's, she's a public school administrator. She was a teacher and now she's moved into administration and as a, you know, as the principal, she's, you know, something might come up where she's like, you know, she'll share just kind of generically a story like, okay, we have to take this. You know, there's been a, you know, a behavior incident that has to result in us having some disciplinary stuff that we have to get a lawyer involved with. And you know, she's like, okay, I don't like this. You know, the first time through it's very like it's stressful and it's challenging, but after you've gone through it once, even if you don't want to go through it again, like the experience of learning, it is so valuable to understand that process and have that like, like, okay, like I know if this happens, like I'm not afraid of this the next time it comes up or I just have lessons that I was able to take and apply to other stuff because I know what, I know what the end game looks like.
• 38:09
  Speaker B: Yep. Yeah. And there's, you know, I mean, just like there's quite a few people in the IT world who probably had the opportunity to spin something up from nothing. And that's not a terribly uncommon, you know, history. Hey, we built this company for whatever and I got, you know, but to do the wind down, I mean, we were, you know, $150 million organization, so it wasn't a nothing entity. We had a presence in three states and, you know, you gotta plan for, you know, each location, you know, decommission and, you know, handoff, you know, and that kind of the ISP handoff date, kind of the last day that place is going to have connectivity and you kind of work backwards from there. And I mean, it's a learning experience. And you know, again, I'm not thrilled. Wouldn't want to do it again necessarily. But it's helpful to have an appreciation for how that.
• 38:56
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was just thinking about one of the things we talked about earlier in our discussion was I call it like the three to five year, you know, window of like experience. And you know, I also work in the mid market space, similar to you. I would consider myself to be a mid market expert in a lot of ways. The one thing I think about, about other guests that I've interviewed on the podcast though is that I talk and I think you talk as well as like three to five year windows. But I think about some of the people I've interviewed that are in private equity space, in leadership or private equity, and they would be like three to five years, that's like an eternity. Right? They'd be like, we're supposed to show up and make experience happen or make change happen in like 12 to 18 months. And 18 months is like the outside, you know, like the pressure that they face is pretty immense in that like private equity space for, for essentially results driven, you know, stuff like. So I think about the benefits of having the, you know, these like longer horizons in, in a, I'll call it a slower moving family business, but one that's taking a longer view. You know, your company that you're at has been around since 1892. So they're not like, oh my God, we have to do this in six months. If it takes 12, it takes 12. Like we've been around long enough, we could survive that.
• 40:08
  Speaker B: Yep. Yeah. Yeah, I, I, I certainly. And you know, and as a professional you get phone calls and I've had, you know, conversations with the private equity firm that's buying up, you know, four roofing companies on the east coast and looking for someone to come in and you know, bring them all onto the same platform and standardize everything, get it all tied up and to your point, do all that in 18 months. And you know, the hesitation I always had there is, you know, what is that, what is the customer experience going to be like while that business is running? Right, because the plane's still flying, you know, you're changing out the upholstery, you're reconfiguring the seats, you know, whatever, but you're in the air while you're doing it. And you know, those customers, like they don't really care whether you're owned by private equity or by, you know, the Jones family, you know, they're looking to get the roof put on, you know, professionally and you know, safely and all that. So I, I kind of shudder to imagine what it's going to look like, you know, in this next 10 year horizon because that is absolutely the trend, you know, for these mid market companies, you know, they're, they're probably in a lot of cases there is not a next generation who wants to take them over. So the natural logical step is to sell that asset, you know, and, and it's purchased by a private equity company. And I just feel like that's going to be really prevalent, but I don't know what the kind of overall outcome is going to be for the world at large, if you will.
• 41:41
  Speaker A: Yeah, it's funny, I just saw in the Wall Street Journal maybe six, eight weeks ago, my brother in law owns a pest control business and he bought it a few years ago and my father in law, so his father had been in a pest control businesses, started off a small one. So there's like a little history there. But so I, I sent this article to him because it struck me about how I think it was the headline was something to the effect of the, the hottest, the hottest job for, you know, the hottest job is going to work at your parents business now and, and, and how like in the current environment suddenly those jobs that didn't look very attractive, these pedestrian, you know, but, but you know, call them workaday businesses. Hey, our job is to produce these plastic parts that feed this thing and it turns out that it's like $30 million business, you know, so like perfectly acceptable business going to pay somebody's Paycheck. Right. But it's not, it's not glamorous. It's not, you know, over, you know, so what happens is you, you know, in the, in the last maybe 15 or 20 years, you would get a successful business, like say the one that you're in. The children of the owners would be like, no, I'm going to go and this business is going to pay me to get this fancy great education and go do this other thing. And all of a sudden now the current environment is sort of circling back a little bit to at least some more of those folks coming back and saying like, hey, you know what, maybe selling electrical equipment wasn't actually the worst thing in the world. And so I'd be interested to see just based on what you had said. You're right. There has been that trend over the last many years that next generation hasn't materialized behind the current one. There's a lot of roll up in private equity. Will that continue or will that start to diminish a little bit as well? Yep, agreed.
• 43:34
  Speaker B: I mean that's kind of like if you knew the answer to that question, right?
• 43:37
  Speaker A: Yeah. So anyways, we're coming up to the end of the podcast here. Tom and I always like to ask our guests right at the end what lessons would give to somebody who's coming up in leadership and you know, is looking for their either the first leadership roles or is early on and what, what, what things would advice would you give them.
• 43:59
  Speaker B: So I do, you know, I enjoy the, that mid market space because it allows me to do kind of be like a lead from the front type environment. And I totally recognize that if I, you know, took up a leadership role in a much larger urgent organization, my opportunities to touch technology would be, you know, pretty minimal. You know, you're going to be way more strategy, decision making, heating. But in the space that I'm in, you know, we're like about five or you know, 400 employees, 500 million in revenue. So it's a, it's a nice balance. You know, I find that, you know, leading from the front to be for me a very effective style kind of modeling. Hey, here's how I want our interactions with our customers. You know, the people who work at this organization need some assistance on the IT front, how that to go down. You know, I want them to walk away from that feeling, you know, good and you know, kind of the antithesis of the Saturday Night Live Jimmy Fallon skit. You know, you know, it was like move and you know, get there and does it for, I mean, or kind of the antithesis of what we're shooting for. And so, you know, the opportunities to do that, it's just it's a continual learning experience because you learn from the people who are experts in sales and finance and operations. And as a student of business I just always find that to be interesting and I find it fulfilling to be able to kind of take a headache, you know, out of their life or make things a little faster, a little easier by either fixing something that's broken or bringing something that an improvement to what they have been doing in the past.
• 45:47
  Speaker A: Thanks.
• 45:49
  Speaker B: All right.
• 45:49
  Speaker A: Well, Tom, thank you so much for investing your time with us on the podcast today.
• 45:54
  Speaker B: Absolutely. It was a true pleasure. I really appreciate it.
• 45:57
  Speaker A: That's a wrap on today's episode of dissecting popular it Nerds. I'm Doug Khabid and we look forward to coming to you on our next episode.