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356- Bankrupted by ERP with Arick Helmlinger · You've Been Heard

• 0:02
  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 Eric Helblinger, IT manager of business systems and data at Ricks Industries. Welcome to the show, Eric.
• 0:14
  Speaker B: Hey, thanks for having me, Doug. Really appreciate it. Glad to be here.
• 0:19
  Speaker A: So, Eric, you're coming to us from California, so you're a west coast guy. Could you tell us a little bit about. Well, let's start by Rick's Industries and what you do there. Like what's, what's, what's the story of there?
• 0:32
  Speaker B: Yeah. So Rick's Industries is. God, what are they now been in business. The company themselves have been in business since 1878. So they'd been around the block a few times. Sorry, I had to look at my, my little placard that said when the year was found. I drew a blank there for a second. But yeah. So they've been in business since 1878 making compressors. They make compressors for pretty much any industrial area. So they make compressors from the size of a basketball all the way up to ones that need to be taken out on semi truck, on the flatbed of a semi truck and put assembled, say on an aircraft carrier to lift up planes on an aircraft carrier. So we're in all facets of industrial. Manu. Industrial or sorry, in all, in all facets of industrial. For that. You're not going to find us in Sears. You're not going to find us, you know, in general places. But you know, if you're, if you're a company who needs a compressor for a specific need, you're going to come to Rick's. You know, my prior boss used to say we're kind of like the John Deere of air compressors, right? We're not the cheapest. We're not, we're not, we're definitely not the cheapest. But we're going to make what you need, we're going to get you what you need and we're going to be reliable and we're going to stand behind our product. So, you know, it's, it's great. It's a family run company, small business, roughly about 200 employees in the company. We actually just broke, I think we finally just broke 200 this year. I've been there now going on 11 years and have seen the company grow from, you know, a small, you know, sub 50 million dollar company to getting close to $100 million company now. So it's been, it's been an Exciting time to, to be with the company as they grow.
• 2:29
  Speaker A: That's pretty awesome. So there are two things I would bet you. What I want to talk about your history there because you've been there a long time. You mentioned Sears. You're not going to find them in Sears, but nobody's going to find a Sears nowadays anyways, right? Like the last one closed. Right, Last one. I think they finally closed their last, like, retail store. So. But, you know, you mentioned you've been at Rick's for 11 years and you know, I have the benefit of being able to cheat with your LinkedIn profile here, the podcast. So I'm looking. And, and you. That this is where you, you ascended from being like in the staff ranks to being in management and leadership ranks, right?
• 3:03
  Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, that's correct, Doug. So, yeah, I, you know, I was, I'm a software developer by trade. Right. I love, I love getting my hands dirty. I love making something out of nothing, coming up with an idea and building out, building that out. And so, you know, try to keep this story short, but I was software developing for a project management company in the Bay Area for about a year and a half and started to see the writing on the wall. So, you know, I was like, when. Best time to look for a job is when you've got a job. So this kind of floated the market. And out of the blue, this company in Benicia, California, which I had never even heard of Benicia, until they reached out to me, reached out to me and said, hey, they're looking for a software developer. Do you want to apply? I said, sure. Great. So I went for the interview and things went well. And I was their first on staff developer in the company. And, you know, just, I've kind of started to grow with the company and as my boss started to ascend the ranks, that was kind of when I just decided that the only way I'm going to get better and the only way I'm going to start to improve my life and kind of get to where I want to be is if I shoot my shot. So when he got promoted from director of IT to CIO at the company, I just came up to him and I said, do we have somebody to fill your role? Because in my head, when he got up to that C suite level, there was a void in IT leadership. And so I was like, you know, if you don't have somebody in mind or you don't really have an idea of who you want to fill this role, I'd like to, you know, I'D like to be considered for. And so three or four weeks went by and I was like, well, maybe, maybe they don't need. Feel they don't need this role or whatever. And my boss came to me and he said, put a job description in front of me. I was like, holy crap, this is incredible. And so it was an it.
• 5:02
  Speaker A: All I had to do was ask, right?
• 5:03
  Speaker B: Exactly. If you don't ask, if you don't ask, you're never going to get it type of deal. So yeah, so he put an IT supervisor role in front of me and said, what I want you to do is go to this AMA training in San Francisco to kind of get some leadership training. Because I'd never been in a leadership role before. It was a two day intensive kind of how to deal with difficult people, how to deal with situations. And I feel it gave me kind of the building blocks to kind of just kind of learn how to deal with difficult situations. Because you know, when you're put into a situation as a brand new leader, you don't necessarily have the skill set. You don't know how to react, you don't know how to listen to people necessarily. Some people, natural born leaders and they ascend to that. Most people, I would say, don't have that skill set. So I sat in this two day course a couple of weeks later, promoted to supervisor, started to really find my groove there, right? Really started to enjoy kind of this leadership and mentoring role. And you know, then fast forward a couple years later they promoted me to IT manager. And again, same, same thing. Just kind of, kind of doing what I do and kind of leading the team in. In the process of being promoted to manager, I brought on four new people to my team. Had to let a few people go due to performance issues or not just the wrong fit, you know, kind of par for the course with management. But if anybody ever says firing is easy, you got to cut them loose. Because to me and anybody I've ever talked to who's had to let people go, and you probably know this, Doug, it's the, it's the worst day in.
• 6:44
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• 7:38
  Speaker A: Yeah, going through. So I. Sorry, I think I wouldn't. It's been a long time since I've had to let somebody go. I mean I've been participants in situations where people have had to let go, but I have had the fortune of. It's been a number of years since I've had somebody on the team that I've had to truly been like, nope, not working out, you gotta go. But, but it is, it is very tough.
• 8:01
  Speaker B: So. Yeah. So long story short, you know, or I guess long story long in this case, you know, Ben, Ben Doo. And I was really the IT manager in the company for an. Oversaw hardware software, kind of oversaw the entire department for about four years. The cio, my original boss, he was lucky, is lucky enough to have retired. And so when that retirement happened, they brought in a brand new cio and after sitting down and talking with my new cio, he basically came and said to me look, you, you're good on the software side of the house. You understand data, you understand software, you don't. Hardware is not my jam. I'll do it, but it's not my jam. So he said what I want to do is I want to move you over to systems and data. So. And we want to promote our security guy into the manager of infrastructure because he's the hardware guy. He's, he can run circles around me in hardware, which is why I hired him. So then, yeah, so that puts me now in my current spot where it's software and data. So I deal with our ERP system, I deal with the databases, I deal with any, any moving pieces for software in the company and anything that has to, it has to really deal, deal around data. So data warehousing and things of that nature. And I really kind of rediscovered a joy, if you will, in the job with this new role of being able to put my focus where I want it to be. And that's, you know, in the software side of the house.
• 9:35
  Speaker A: That's pretty cool. So this will be topical for me just because I'm in my job. We're implementing a new ERP system, we're implementing netsuite and going through the whole, you know, the whole shooting Batch, like so erp, the CRM sides, the workforce management, payroll, you know, all of it. And you mentioned. I, I thought about this because you mentioned ERP and like, so, so what have you been doing? Or how, how, you know, how have you been, like, when you've gone through some of those implementations. Cause they're tough. Like, I was talking to some friend of mine, like for an IT manager, a CIO or somebody else. Like, an ERP implementation is literally like the hardest single implementation you could do because it touches everyone. Everyone's always pissed off about it, nobod satisfied with the product that you get, and you end up usually having to drag people over the finish line to.
• 10:22
  Speaker B: Get it completed 100%. So we actually did our, did our ERP system almost five years ago. So is it okay to swear on the podcast?
• 10:35
  Speaker A: Sure you can, a little bit.
• 10:38
  Speaker B: Just want to make sure before I start, like, it's fine.
• 10:41
  Speaker A: We could do that. Our listeners, the listeners of this podcast can handle you swearing a little bit.
• 10:47
  Speaker B: Okay. I just want to make sure it wasn't like a G rated podcast or anything.
• 10:50
  Speaker A: So.
• 10:50
  Speaker B: No, we're all good. So we had the perfect storm for our ERP. So of course, think back to five years ago. March 2020. Go to lockdown. We are two months into our ERP rollout and we are a mom and pop company. We have never worked from home before in our life. We had three people who had a VPN login, myself, my boss and our net, our network administrator. March 20th comes around, we get the order, everybody go home. Literally. We are dealing with people working from home for the first time, people trying to connect to a VPN for the first time, people trying to figure out how to deal with their kids and family, people on teams meetings all day long. And we're trying to roll out an ERP system because we were five months from go live. They wanted to do it in nine months, we did it in 10 and we did it all remotely.
• 11:52
  Speaker A: What's. Is it okay to ask? Is it okay to ask what erp?
• 11:56
  Speaker B: Yeah, it's. It's infor Cloud Suite industrial.
• 11:59
  Speaker A: Okay. Oh yeah. Of the specialist vertical erp.
• 12:03
  Speaker B: Yeah. So needless to say, we did it. We're still five years later feeling the effects of that rollout, but had we have pumped the brakes on it, we would probably be restarting. We probably would have had to restart two years ago from the beginning and revisit everything. And who knows, we'd still probably be in the rollout. So it still gives me nightmares. It keeps Me up at night. And to your point, yeah, everybody's affected by it. Everybody's pissed off about one thing or another. It doesn't do certain. I still question some of the logic behind the CSI side of the house and why they did what they did. We're cloud based so we don't have control over really anything which good and bad. We were on prem before, but now we're cloud based and you know, at this point we're getting there. But yeah, it's definitely one of the hardest software implementations I've ever been through.
• 13:06
  Speaker A: Um, yeah, I mean even at Biden, you know, we're, as I mentioned, you know, we're rolling out kind of at every netsuites at everything erp. And one of the things that we're like, like bringing together all the coordination is real challenge and, and like, and it's, it exacerbated in our organization because my organization is where, where we specialize in social services work mostly in the mental health space. So there's a high level of empathy and accommodation of like, hey, we're, you know, how are we feeling about this? What are we doing? Which when you get down to like, the brass tacks of implementing a tool can be really difficult to overcome because there's a natural tendency in the organization to want to be like, oh, they're feeling stressed about the thing that's happening to them. But for these ERP implementations, every time you accommodate that, it's a delay, you know, so like, like, you know, if you want to stick to your plan and you don't want to pay for two systems and you want to get off of the old one and get out of its expenses and all this other stuff like that. You have to ultimately figure out how to move your teams into a place where they have to, I would say, just accept the inevitable because that's not, you know, the goal isn't to be mean, but you're doing a hard thing. You know, we picked a hard thing to do and hard things are. If they, if it wasn't hard, it would be easy. So like, hard things often are somewhat stressful. They have challenging moments, they have challenging times. They have times when we're like, oh my God, why did we even pick this darn thing?
• 14:36
  Speaker B: 100%. Yeah. And you actually brought up something that you know, I hear all the time right, is the this is hard, this is hard. I don't know about you, but one of the things we, I still hear five years later is why don't we, why don't we do. Can we just go back to our old ERP system? Can we just go back and we're like, no, we're five years in. We did this for a reason. This is why we're here. Put your big boy pants on. It's work. Work is supposed to be hard. It's not. If it was easy, it wouldn't be work.
• 15:09
  Speaker A: Right.
• 15:10
  Speaker B: And I don't know if you've ever experienced this, Doug, but one thing we, I experience all the time is people getting people to change, fundamentally change and think about how they're doing their job. That, I think is the hardest part of a new ERP system.
• 15:24
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 15:24
  Speaker B: You know, you bring it in and you've got the op. You've got the. Finally the opportunity to think about how you do your job. Can you do your job more effectively? And I'd say 90% of the employees that we have at our company, at Rick's, they might be looking at this and say, I don't want to. This is how I've done it. I just want to do it this way. So I want the system to work like I've always done it. Instead of, wait a minute. If we do, if we think outside the box and rethink this process in its entirety, we might be able to get more efficient by using the tool the way it was designed instead of trying to shoehorn the way we've done it into the system.
• 16:07
  Speaker A: Yeah. And so this is the second time I've been through an ERP implementation, although this one is particularly challenging for my organization and myself as a leader. The prior one was back when I was a county CIO and we implemented a vertical ERP called munis. So it's all municipal based type of accounting and payroll and those types of things. And at the county, when I was the CIO of that kind of CIO of two different counties over the years. So that one was. I was CIO there for a long time, like eight years. And that implementation went fairly well. You know, it had its challenges. People were frustrated at various times or what, whatever about, you know, about the product and the tools. You know, this isn't as good as this or it's, you know, whatever the case may be. But we had very few like, like sacred things in, in our, in the mix. Like we were like, oh, we're moving from a homegrown home built as 400 application to an off the shelf commercial system. Things are going to be different. There's going to be. We need to adhere to how they do it and not Just say like, just like you said, I've done it this way. I want the system to mimic that, but do it electronically. And as a result, like we ended up with a ton of efficiency gains. Like, we had things like paper processes. You know, you had to print out a po. You have to wait for the PO to print, then print it, then attach your supporting documentation and staple it. And then there was a cover sheet and then you had to send it down to the, you know, the, the, the clerk of the legislator's office. And we, you know, we wiped away all that, took it all electronic. And so there was a ton of like, efficiency gains, but it always wasn't distributed evenly. Like, maybe our old payroll system wasn't as good as our new payroll. The old payroll system was better than the new payroll system that's baked into it. But at least it, you know, it was all integrated. On the other hand, the other county I worked at for a shorter period of time, a number of years before I got there, they had done an implementation of PeopleSoft and now they were. That county was about 2,000 employees. And that's about the smallest, like enterprise size you can be to warrant the expense and the support needed to keep a PeopleSoft implementation going. And in PeopleSoft you often have to have, you need to be able to support programmers too. Like, PeopleSoft is kind of like a blank box, you know, like, it's like it's a, a box filled with parts that you have to have people to assemble it and build all the integrations between the various things and customize it to suit your needs. So they had hired these teams to come in and program it. But you could see a really distinct outcome based on which teams were working with which groups. So there was like one team was very determined. The consulting team was like, no, you will have a new system, so don't replicate your old processes into that system. Here's how we'll evaluate it. And then the other team was very much like, just gave in when they were told, like, oh, here's, here's the seven steps that we do it. Please replicate this in PeopleSoft. And so half of their ERP ran it still to this day does just terribly, you know, it runs terribly because they have all these processes that adding the pieces in electronically actually made it harder and made the execution more difficult and kludgy for them. Uh, but you know that so, so like going back to what you had mentioned before, the, the point of having a real mindset when you come in that things are different, but Even sometimes steps back may not they. They may seem different if you're gaining overall, which is actually a thing we're running into in my current implementation where we have like a NetSuite. NetSuite's payroll system is not that great. Uh, it does the job, but it's not fancy. And so, like, we are encountering a scenario where the team is like, well, this product is not awesome. They're right. The product isn't very awesome, the payroll side, you know, but it's because it's a bolt on to their erp. Their ERP is good, you know, and the benefit of seeing the whole system integrated over time is where that value is going to start accruing. But you have to get through the difficult part and the teams have to accept that there's a larger goal at play.
• 20:27
  Speaker B: Absolutely.
• 20:27
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 20:27
  Speaker B: And that, you know, that's definitely one of, I would say is the hardest part is convincing the people who don't understand the inner workings of this. Right. That it's going to be better in the long run. I will say that, you know, my former boss did tell me that one of the ERP upgrades they tried to do almost bankrupted the company.
• 20:49
  Speaker A: Mm.
• 20:50
  Speaker B: They implemented it. They didn't implement it. Right. And they actually, after I want to say two or three months of using it, had to say, we can't use this anymore because if we keep using this, we're not going to be in business anymore. So they actually rolled back an ERP implementation because after Go Live, it wasn't doing what it needed to do and it was going to cost too much. So the fact that we did this in nine months during COVID completely remote is a testament, I would say, to the employees. But, yeah, they're still moaning. But it's not like. It's not like our old system. It's not as fast. There's this, there's that, it's web based, there's a lot of moving parts. There's things that happen. It's not on prem anymore. We don't have direct access to our printers anymore. It's. It's going to be a little bit slower, but you can get to it from home, you can get to it from anywhere.
• 21:46
  Speaker A: You've built flexibility in exchange for some, I would say, a small to moderate decrease in responsiveness.
• 21:56
  Speaker B: Exactly.
• 21:57
  Speaker A: So I appreciate you sharing your background about how you became, how you moved up into management. And I think it's a great story to share where you're just basically asked, you said, hey, you know what? I. I could do this and I want to do it, and that kind of won the day for you. But going back in time, your college days or before that, or whatever the case may be, did you always set out, if I asked you, if I came to you at, I don't know, 16, 18, I would say early college days, were you like, I'm going to be a programmer for the rest of my life, or you're going to be like, I'm going to work in it or whatever the case may be, what would you. What was your goal?
• 22:35
  Speaker B: Honestly, so out of high school, I didn't really know what I wanted to do. You know, I was, I was young, I was enjoying life. I knew I wanted to get into business and do something in business related. So straight out of high school, went to University of Arizona and started the business program there. I'll put it nicely, Arizona and myself, as much as I love the school, we had a difference in how they wanted to proceed. I didn't want to learn, they wanted me to learn. So we had to part ways. So took a small hiatus there for a little bit and started kind of getting into just kind of working full time. College. I was actually, again, I'm going to date myself here multiple times. I was working at Radio Shack.
• 23:28
  Speaker A: Nice.
• 23:30
  Speaker B: Selling little conductors and batteries and trying to sell cell phones where we could and paid my bills in college. And then fast forward. I started doing customer support for Sears when they were selling computers. Their computers.
• 23:47
  Speaker A: Sears Surfaces again, exactly twice in the same podcast. Sears the Surface twice.
• 23:52
  Speaker B: So I started doing the customer support for their PC division. So after the text had troubleshot something, if you're Packard Bell, your Compaq, if it needed somebody to come out on site and actually do the work, we were the person, we were the people you talked to.
• 24:06
  Speaker A: Oh, yeah, okay.
• 24:08
  Speaker B: And again, it was, it was a job. It paid the bills, it got done what I needed done. But again, I still really didn't know the direction of what. So I started talking to some people in the PC support division. I was like, this is actually really cool what you guys are doing here. You know, you're. You're looking at this, you're hearing some problems. You're starting to diagnose problems. You're doing this, you're doing that, you're fixing, you're actually fixing somebody. You're making somebody happy. You're not just a whipping boy for why isn't my tech out here? This is great. So again, we'll fast forward through all the funds. I'll fast forward A little bit of time, moved into that department where I started doing hardware support. And this is kind of where I started to realize that I really like computers. I had never really, really worked with computers. I was not a gamer growing up as a kid very much, you know, I played. I played a few computer games here and there, but I wasn't, you know, a hardcore gamer. I didn't really. And I'm still not into the video game scene or anything like that. I'm more of a just, just a computer guy, but really, really found a love for fixing computers. And then, you know, I was like, I've got this really ancient Packard belt computer that needs to be upgraded. Started talking to the guys I work with and they're like, yeah, why don't we go to the shop and buy all the components and build a computer? I'm like, I've never built a computer. I didn't have any code. So go acquire all the components, go home, go back to my apartment and built the computer for the first time. And that was, I think, really what sparked my love for computers was just getting to build this thing with my hands from the ground up, exactly the specs I wanted, I wanted to. And that was just kind of like, oh, great. I really, really, really like this. This is fun. This is, this is what I call fun. So started doing that and I was like, okay, this is, this is good. But I don't really want to do tech support for end users my entire life. So a buddy of mine was working for another company making some software, and he was doing quality control testing for them. And again, I'm like, I never done this before. Let me see what we can do here. So shoot. My shot, my shot there. And applied for the position and got hired on as a QC engineer. Quality control for software testing.
• 26:34
  Speaker A: Okay.
• 26:34
  Speaker B: And I think that's really what sparked my love for software because that was really the first time I really, really dove into software. Really started to discover, hey, if you make a couple tweaks to something, you can actually understand why it broke. Or you can actually dive into, into the code with the developers and say, when I do X, Y and Z, it's breaking right here. And to see them kind of look through their code and go, oh, yeah, this is what caused it. Hit a few keystrokes, push a few buttons and say, okay, it's ready, it's ready to test again. That. That really, really got me excited about software. So, of course, this time, during this time, I still hadn't gone back to school and we'll fast forward to when early 2000s, when the dot bomb era hit and all these companies started to downsize. Now I'm sure some of our listeners don't know the dot bomb era, so I won't go into it, but we're.
• 27:25
  Speaker A: Gonna assume that they all know exactly what we're talking about.
• 27:28
  Speaker B: Exactly. So this was the very first time I been laid off at a company. They downsized Iowa's collateral damage with the downsizing and because I was, you know, one of many people who got laid off during this time and I didn't have a degree. This was kind of what got me back into school was I really like it, I really like software. I'm really, really excited about this. But I don't have a degree so nobody's going to hire me. I'm a non degree person. Whereas there's a hundred people with college degrees who have been doing the same thing I'm doing.
• 28:02
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 28:03
  Speaker B: So that got me back into doing, you know, got me back into my education. And then we'll just kind of fast forward through that. I was working on odd jobs here and there while I was attending school and started working for, started working for a company that made back software. They were, they were one of the original Efax companies.
• 28:26
  Speaker A: Oh, did you say Kofax? Efax, Efax Effects. Okay. Yeah.
• 28:32
  Speaker B: Company called Right Fax.
• 28:34
  Speaker A: I remember I had Right Fax equipment software. I, you know, that was, that was one of the. So when I was working at the county, we had a Right Fax server. I think it was fantastic. It was, it was a cool piece of software. Like to be able to aggregate like you know, the, yeah, the faxing boards, you know to basically I was able to get rid of like a dozen or more two dozen fax lines spread throughout with a corresponding telephone charge. You know, hey, 20 bucks a month for this, 20 times 12. Consolidate that into a bank in the core of our network with like four lines instead. So you can take that cost and like instead of you know, 600amonth where suddenly we're only spending like, like 80.
• 29:16
  Speaker B: Exactly. And actually I got, I got way ahead of myself. So Right Fax was actually before the QC job. This was the right fax position actually was what got me into software as I'm rethinking this all. So I got, I was doing tech support for them for their enterprise division and I got a phone call at 4am because I was on call, had to be in the office at 5:30. I'm like, this is Ridiculous, man. I cannot, I don't want to be on call 247 waking up all the hours of the morning. So that was, that was actually what pushed me into software to the QC role that I got.
• 29:52
  Speaker A: That's cool.
• 29:53
  Speaker B: So, yeah, so I'm back in school, I'm doing odd jobs here and there. I'm working for some really cool companies, having a good old time, making some education software and really, really just finding my love for software at this point. And so that, you know, at that point I was like, this is, I'm invested now. Software is where it's at. And you know, I'm not, you know, I won't say I'm the greatest developer, but I'm a solid developer and I, I still, I still love getting my hands dirty and really, you know, talking shop. You know, I kind of, through my years, I'd say I'm a jack of all, master of nothing.
• 30:28
  Speaker A: That's many of us right here. That's the story of the bid market, man. And say you're not a specialist in much of anything most of the time.
• 30:35
  Speaker B: Exactly.
• 30:37
  Speaker A: So we're coming up towards the end of the podcast here and a couple, couple more things I always want to make sure to ask or cover with our guests. So one more humorous side here. So you tell something that somebody wouldn't expect or doesn't a non tech thing somebody wouldn't expect or know about you. I always share an example of myself. I have a couple that I know. So I once DJed a wedding.
• 31:03
  Speaker B: Impressive. Not many, I mean people who know me know this but you know, not many people would guess this. I used to be really into backpacking and outdoors. I still love the outdoors. I still love getting outside but you know, I did, I was lucky enough to backpack the Grand Canyon one time.
• 31:20
  Speaker A: That's cool.
• 31:21
  Speaker B: We were going to do rim to rim to rim one weekend but it was a hundred degrees at the base of the canyon that weekend. It was a crazy heat wave. So our second day was going to be a 40 mile trek if we did that and we just looked at each other and said it's not worth it.
• 31:37
  Speaker A: Hard pass.
• 31:39
  Speaker B: We just stayed local and had had a great time to this day. Probably one of the best trips I've been on for a hiking trip. So yeah, that's, that's fun. And then, you know, my wife and I, we love to travel. So we like to travel to a different. We try to pick somewhere new every single year that we've never been to. And usually it's an international trip that we go on. At least we go on one international trip a year and several trips throughout. So like to travel.
• 32:09
  Speaker A: That's fun. That's cool. Nice. Thanks for sharing. So the last thing I always ask our guests is about advice. So you know this podcast is about leadership and your leadership journey. I appreciate you sharing your background and how you came to be an IT leader. And it's the stories we just shared about, like implementations of tools and software and ERPs in particular. But if you're talking to somebody who is coming up in the market, you know, they're early in their career, what advice would you want to give to them?
• 32:37
  Speaker B: So that the best advice I could say is one, trust your gut. You know, if you're, if you're getting into this leadership role, trust your gut. If you think, if you feel that it's the right decision, trust it. Don't try to doubt yourself. If you have any doubts, it's not the right decision. The other thing I can, I really, really can't stress enough is put people in positions to do the work who know more about it than you. You're not going to know everything right. Having people around you who are smarter than you in a particular area will make you, as a leader, be able to lead. You're not in the weeds having to do the work for them that is key. You don't need to do everything. You don't need to have your hands in everything, right? Keeping, Keep being able to trust the employees that you have below you to do the job and do the job right so that you can focus on leading the company. That is a huge asset. And I don't know, I don't think enough people understand that. I can say I didn't understand that when I first got into leadership, I thought I had to do everything. I had to know everything. And my days were long, you know, long, stressful days. I was jumping around. I never, I was running around like a chicken with my head cut off all day long until I started to realize that I need to let them do the work. I need to check in on them from time to time, make sure it's getting done. But I need to have that trust and I need to know that they know more about this than I do.
• 34:10
  Speaker A: That's awesome. Yeah, I heaven it's. A lot of folks think that, like, I want to be. I want to be knowledgeable enough to be a BS meter, but not so knowledgeable that, like, I could do the work. I don't need to know how to do it anymore, you know, like, and that. And not. Not from like a. Exactly what you said. It's not from a perspective of, like, I'm above the work or anything else like that, but, like, I can't possibly know everything. So. So. But there's always going to be people who know more than I do. And you have that faith. But I want to know. I want to know just enough that if you're. If you're, you know, you've tried to snow me, I know what's going on.
• 34:42
  Speaker B: Exactly. Exactly how. Be able to sniff the BS out.
• 34:46
  Speaker A: That's right. That's right. So, Eric, thank you so much for investing your time with us on the podcast today.
• 34:51
  Speaker B: Absolutely. Doug, it's been a pleasure. I had a great conversation. Love talking shop, if, you know, if you can call us talk and shop. But it was fun to know that we're not alone in our ERP transition either.
• 35:02
  Speaker A: For sure. For sure. So that's a wrap on today's episode of Dissecting Popular IT Nerds. I'm Doug Kabien, and we look forward to coming to you on our next episode.