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366- IT's Pushback Problem w/ Dr. Charles Harris Jr. · You've Been Heard

• 0:09
  Speaker A: Welcome back to Dissecting Pipes or IT Nerds.
• 0:11
  Speaker B: We're.
• 0:11
  Speaker A: We're live inside of our community right now. So if you, if you're like a really special person, like a, like you have, you know, a C level ito, Ito cio, IT director, manager, you could be in the community right now chatting live with the doctor. Dr. Harris. Kind of a big deal, man. Transformational CIO. I mean, Tampa Bay Buccaneers. It's kind of cool. It's kind of a cool job. I mean, maybe it is, you know, it's pretty good. So I don't know how much you know about our show, but we are a. We like to talk about IT leadership being kind of lonely at the top because IT directors oftentimes have a lot of pressure to make everything in the company work properly and work properly for everyone. And then when they have to go explain how that needs to work to the people that are either in the boardroom or at the executive roundtable, sometimes it's a little bit difficult to describe actually what you need to accomplish. So there's this weird seat that IT guys sit in. We call it the loneliest seat in the business where you have a lot of pressure on you. You've got a team below you that you've got to support and then you've got to explain and make everything happen to executive management. And they don't always really understand the choices that need to be made. Kind of like a doctor telling you, look, I need to cut this out. And you're like, well, why? How this, you know, I mean, and you could explain all day long and the person is still going to be scared that you got to cut something out of them.
• 1:41
  Speaker B: Yep, yep. Yeah.
• 1:44
  Speaker A: So what, how do you deal with that? How do you specifically deal with. You got any specific stories or anything like that of how you've overcome this, this lonely role? Or is it just a hopeless thing for us and we're just always going to be lonely anyways?
• 2:00
  Speaker B: That is an interesting insight. It probably will continue to be like that. Right. So one thing that I realize is that we are in this position for a reason. Right? Is this is what we chose as our, our penance to the world to, to be the, the, the gatekeepers to this technology thing. And as it grows, you know, there's this level of. Chances are most of them will never get it. And there is so much to juggle in this position that know. It becomes. Where do you educate? You would almost have to give them a, a mini certification level understanding of what you need to do. In order for them to be comfortable with what, what you need to do. And for me, it's, it really goes around building trust is that you may not understand it, but, you know, I give me time so that you can trust what I say in order to progress forward. And I think one of the biggest areas, one of the biggest areas we have with this is security. Cyber security. It. Is it. Even for security folks, I think it's a pretty daunting task. We, I just recently got done with a conference, with an NFL conference on security. And this conference was everything from physical to cybersecurity and everything in between. And some of that scares even me knowing, you know, what's, what's out there, what the potentials are, being able to convey to the rest of my organization, not only their level of responsibility behind keeping us safe, but also behind the needs that we have, whether it's resources, whether it's tools, whether it's, you know, an increased focus in certain areas. That is one of the hardest areas for me. Just because security is this. It's just not a set it, forget it type of thing. It's a constant battle that you have to fight. And on top of that fact, it's an ever evolving area that whatever you thought you had covered, somebody figured out a way around it and you got to figure out the next layer of defense behind it. So you definitely hit the nail on the head. It's, it's, it's, it's probably never going to go away.
• 4:38
  Speaker A: Ladies and gentlemen, IT leaders. Before we move ahead, this podcast is not just a stream, it's a stage. And if you are an IT leader with something to say, we want to hear it. Join us live, interact with the host and guest. And if you've got the insight and courage to step up, we promote you to the mic. Apply now@popularitnerds.com waitlist if you have what it takes, join our growing network of over 160 senior IT leaders. Where real voices shape real conversations. Wow. You said a bunch of things. You brought up a lot of topics that we could go in depth on for a long time. We of them learning, learning and training, Learning and training, which has. I've kind of gone down this real, like, exciting. I wake up in the morning really excited about learning and training.
• 5:25
  Speaker B: I.
• 5:26
  Speaker A: Something hit me with AI the other day. You know, before, it was kind of like this AI thing was just like, yeah, like it's here. Like, we gotta do it, we gotta get ready. You know, we got all this stuff. And then I went Down a rabbit hole, talking about single source of truth. And then we had a round table. And in the roundtable we were talking about security and end users. Accessing security. I mean, just, you know, accessing a database or dipping into a database with AI tools. And how do we segment that? We can't do that because you have this single source of truth. And how could you really segment a single source of truth? It doesn't even make any sense. Right. How do we divide that? And it kind of led down this like, theoretical hole of, well, maybe we could do it this way and maybe we could do it this way. So let's just go back to the trust thing because we've talked a lot about, okay, we built the trust. I got hired because of the trust. They trusted me for this much time. And then the trust went away. Almost like a shower. Like you gotta take a shower every day. You've gotta bathe in this trust or like, re. Earn people's trust every day. Because so many things are happening and they're. But, you know, executive management is bombarded with things. And what. How do we build trust or how do we gain kind of this long standing partnership which we've been talking about for years on this podcast. We've been talking about getting a seat at the executive roundtable, but it's not really a seat. It's more of a, kind of like a revolving seat. Yeah, it's more of a. The seat's there one day and it might not be there the next day, or the seats there one day and then you come in and there's three other seats that are open with other IT consultants that are sitting there too. And you're like, well, I don't.
• 7:05
  Speaker B: Who.
• 7:05
  Speaker A: Who's got the bigger seat in the room? So how do we build that trust? Do we have to constantly be demonstrating, demonstrating this. Is it a public thing? Is it. Is it executive? I guess we call it executive presence. Some people. Other call it personal branding, which is more of a fake thing. That might not be a fake thing, it might be a real thing, but it's kind of like a questionable thing. Whereas executive branding might be. Or executive presence, I think might be a better way of saying it. How do we build the trust? Do we. Do we just make people money in it? What is it?
• 7:39
  Speaker B: So, and I found that that is very different for different organizations. Right. Is that trust? And I feel like part of that trust lacks oftentimes because the organization doesn't understand the importance of technology within their organization. Right. Is when you have an Industry that is not that in its origin was not driven by technology. Then it. It starts to be it. The beginning evolution is technology is impeding on the work that they are used to doing. As it increases, it become, you know, it's. It clearly is now seen as enabler. But they don't understand the people that you have there in your IT department, their important role of continuing to. To enable the organization to do things like make money, to market, to do all those great things that they do. And so therefore I've seen a lot of organizations where the trust is just a lack of trust in the technology, especially when you have a leadership that is not engaged in it. Right. If you're not engaged in it, then to you, the IT and the technology is just a necessary evil. And I don't think you'll ever get to that point of building that trust because in essence, the core of what you do is something they wish they didn't have to deal with. And you often become like, support would just. You need to fix it when it's. When it's ready. But all that other stuff, well, leave off to the side.
• 9:24
  Speaker A: Okay, so you're at a conference, speaking to a bunch of CEOs. Let's give some advice then. So you said a couple things, you said they don't understand. And it's because sometimes technology makes jobs slower and sometimes it is our fault. Sometimes we massively over complicate things. Sometimes we bring in a. A process to do this to a process to do this. And then all of a sudden, operations is this crazy, complicated process to do one little simple thing. I run into it myself because we're in the kind of like, weird growth phase where we never thought this podcast would take off and there'd be like, you know, like 15 people involved in all this stuff. And we feel like we're in this like, weird, mushy middle area where we've got. Why do we have 10 tools just to set an appointment to book a podcast with five other people involved? Can I.
• 10:03
  Speaker B: Why?
• 10:04
  Speaker A: When at the beginning it used to just me like, hey man, you want to come on the podcast? And it was an email, like, can we just go back to that? Like, that would be easier. Like, why do I have to have three people involved now just to set a meeting, invite? Like, that was where technology failed, we failed. Now I was just like, wait, Phil, aren't you the technology podcast guy? And you just tell us that you yourself are failing at it. But there's that aspect of like, where too much technology can kind of screw it up. And we can kind of screw ourselves up by trying to like that's not always the answer. Sometimes the answer is no technology. It is a phone call. So but with that being said, what do they, what's the advice? You're standing in front of an obvious. We need to speak to, we need to speak to all the CEOs. You, you're, you're on, you're defending all of your IT brethren in this world and you want to tell these guys that you need to understand this one thing about, about technology. If you don't understand this one thing about technology, you're going to continue to be this non Amazon effect company like Sears that just went under when because you didn't embrace technology. What is it that what is. Let's just go through some of these points, like what's the most single biggest common point technology thing that you would say executive C levels don't understand.
• 11:14
  Speaker B: Technology is your business. I don't care what industry you're in, it is your business. You are not able to move forward in any capacity. I would and I'm just throwing out a number with about 90% of the organizations you're at. We're at a point now that everything from computers, databases, you know, let's just put aside AI, let's put aside all the creative stuff. Is that your marketing strategies, your social platforms, everything by which you are enabled by is technology. And if you can't embrace it from, for just about every organization, you are going to be left behind. Right. Even even in a service industry. Right. In order to accommodate for growth, what do you need? You need some form of technology, you need ease of access, you need ease of communication. Just like you said, as things grow, you either are going to add a number of bodies or you're going to add technology. And I'll tell you the technology most times are cheaper than adding a bunch of bodies to something that you need to do to complicate it. And in order to enable that, then you have to be able to partner with your technology leader to find out what the best solution. Because maybe technology isn't the answer, but they're going to be the be the person who's going to help you. A good technology person will help you manage or figure out the process that will work with the current technology you have in order to be optimized. Because it's hard to get better without seeing the big picture. And from my seat I am forced to see a big picture. I need to know what my marketing business, what Their job is, I need to know my salespeople, I need to know their workflow, their processes. I need to know my finance people. What systems are you using? I mean, we get to the point where we're pulled into, you know, all the compliances that are involved in finance, hipaa, everything else. This puts us in the thick of every single department. Most departments don't have to know their counterparts. Business we do. And we're the, we're the business.
• 13:33
  Speaker A: Okay, so we, we've converted them. They're a believer now. They know the technologies of the business. So now they want to talk with every salesperson. Everything they read in every magazine, they're like, hey guys, what are we going to do? How are we going to do AI? Are we implementing AI yet? Right, so now what? So how do we kind of like control the control this monster? I guess like we got to use technology. It's, it's a win, right? So a lot of times we see things get handed down from upper management. Hey, here's a new CRM. I read this in Time magazine. I did this. I figured this out. What about a. Right, your step one sounds like no, we got to go through each section of the business. We need to know what marketing's workflow is. We need to know what systems they're using. We need to sit down with them. We need to find out what's your biggest single frustration problem, concern when it comes to the business? What's your stopping points? What's your, I don't want to call them roadblocks or whatever. Do you have like a methodology for how you go in and fix crap? If you were to talk with a random guy and hey, what's wrong with your company? Where would you start?
• 14:31
  Speaker B: My start is always, what are we trying to accomplish? What problem are we trying to solve? And keep that focus all the way through. It's easy in technology to get caught up in the bells and whistles and what ifs and you know, this has that. And trying to do technology for technology sake. I want to solve a problem. I want to get better somewhere. I want to look back after an implementation and see improvement. I want to quantify. I want some return on investment when I do it, rather than just saying, yes, we have AI in our organization. No, I want to know what is AI supposed to do that we can't do ourselves? But what we have, my initiative always for particularly new technology. But you know, when, particularly when you talk about AI is I don't want to be the driver. I want the business to be the driver. And I want to be, be in the position to offer the opportunity for us to have a think tank of what exactly are we going to accomplish. I want to keep everybody grounded, right? Everybody's going to have their initiatives. I want to keep you grounded with what it's going to take, what it's going to cost, what resources we have to be able to not only implement but also manage it after the fact. So I'm going to give you real information, but behind that, I want the business to be the driver of what you want to fix. Because I could see an issue that you have, but it may not be as important to you as this secondary issue that you really want to solve. So I, you know, I want to offer them the opportunity in some level to be the driver in a lot of these initiatives. But on the, in the same hand, I want to have, have some type of guardrails to offer you the opportunity to that whatever you're doing, you're invested. Not me bringing you something and saying this is what you're going to use. I want you to be invested in your solution. But I need you to communicate with me in order to think through the entire process and say, is this really value added? And here are some of the other options or challenges you may run to, you know, because what happens a lot of times is you'll have people that, in an organization that will just bring you a solution and say, I need this. This is going to solve my problem. Here's the solution I need you to implement. We've thought through nothing. We've not talked about requirements. We haven't figured out how it fits into the enterprise properly. It's what you and your department have decided that you want to use within the organization.
• 17:05
  Speaker A: So that's a cultural IT problem. So how do you set that message or how do you send that cultural how what should the culture of it be? So there's a couple of things here. There's the no one knows who you are. We're going to make decisions on our own. There's no culture of it. They don't understand policies in place. There might not be a security policy in place. There's all kinds of things we could go off there, but this is just like a ton of things we could go into that area. So let's just call it the culture of it. Because if you solve the culture problem, then all those other problems may fall into place. So we have. I never talked about this culture of it just came up sound. This sounds beautiful. It really does it sounds like a thing? Sounds a. Well, it sounds like a book we could write. I mean, the culture of it in your organization, is there one. Is there a culture of it? And I'm writing this down because we might read that book. So you got this culture of it, which could really touch on all kinds of things. And I want you to. The other point that I wanted to ask you as well is how do you stop this? Kind of a side note, like, let's say we do have the culture of it before we get to that part, but how do you stop people from second guessing you or what do you do to continuously learn so that they're not like, do I have the right guy in place? Technology is so complicated. I. I want to trust him. I want to believe everything that he said, but I kind of want to talk Gartner at the same time. And I trust you know what this place says. And we all know that a lot of those are pay to play models. And I want to do a whole stint someday on, like, Stump the. I wanted to, like, Stump the Gartner. What do we call them? The sanity checker. You want to sanity check the sanity checker? Does that make sense? Because I had a guy on the show, he's like, yeah, it was kind of funny because we had the sanity check dude that we had the consultant in from Cartner, and I asked him a couple questions, I stumped him. And you know what I mean? Like, what if it's. It's usually like, it's usually the other way around. Usually it's like, we got to bring in Gardner to make sure that everything's okay. And then they did. And then like, they're like, wow, we don't even know how to answer that. And then I was like, well, okay, get out. And I'm not saying anything. I'm not trying to, like, bash Gardner. That's not the point. The point is, like, how do you stop people from second guessing you or trusting you? And I think part of it might have to do with, well, we've got to be continuously learning and there, there is a chance we're not perfect. Right? It's like, how does. How do you know you got the best doctor in the world? Well, you search ChatGPT and you get your Birmingham hip replacement done from the top guy that invented it, and you fly all the way to Birmingham and you get it done. That's what you do. That's. I'm in a little bit of pain right now. Not everyone has that ability. Not everyone has that ability to do that with their organization. So sometimes we've got to just, you know, how do we, how do you stop that second guessing?
• 19:50
  Speaker B: Honestly, I think I'm still searching for that answer the net. And you know, my focus is always the wins. Right? Is. And it probably will lend to reminders. Right? Is constantly reminders like look, I've did these 10 projects already for you and they, they're going off stellar. Trust me for the 11th. Right. And, and trust me for my choices. I try to, you know, as you get into an organization, my goal is to have a string of positive engagements that make you think about how positive the next engagement can become. Right. A lot of it lends to a combination of honing in on process right. Within an organization to say from the top down, no new technology comes into the organization without some form of process that involves it. Right. That's at least a stopgate that changes behavior. You try to alter behavior. With that altering behavior, you can get to a point where people are automatically driven to hey, this worked for me last time. Let's do the same work again. To solve the next problem or to do the next thing. And I think that's what we strive for in this position, right? Is to get that trust, to get that reputation. No, we're not on the COVID of, you know, tech magazine right now, but there's still good work being done. I mean only so many people can get that, that, those positions. And honestly, even when you're talking about organizations like, like Gartner, they're doing the exact same you're doing thing you're doing, except on the grander scale. They have a handful of other CIOs to ask them the question of what did you do when you ran into this problem? And they're just consolidating it so they're not doing anything different. It's just more heads, more resources, more people who've seen more things. But that's, that's what this job is, right? Because you're going to run into things that everybody's going to have their little nuances to how they want their systems to run, how they want work to be. And you have to be the problem solver to consolidate all this knowledge, all this experience into solving that problem. And that's exactly what this job becomes. Because, you know, whereas I've, I've had the, the privilege of being experience a lot of different industries, right? I've been in satellite communications, transportation, education, healthcare, and I've seen business done a lot of different ways. It Is it everywhere? But there's these little nuances to how people want to perform their jobs and what systems will do what for you. But ultimately you have to figure out how to take their wants and needs and let them know what's in it for them because that's really what's going to win people over. If they feel like whatever you're solutioning is explicitly for them, they'll be on board with it. Why? Because you're going to make my job easier. You're going to make things better for me. But it's figuring out how to relay that message that what I'm doing is for you. Whether it's keeping you secure, whether it's improving efficiency, it's for you. And I always tell people like the IT department is probably the only department that their budget is not for them. We don't buy a whole lot for us. We don't do a whole lot for us. Everything is for the organization, marketing. Their whole budget is for them for something they can do in marketing.
• 23:45
  Speaker A: Well, we should figure that out. And I have some solutions to that that I've used in the past, which is, it's called. Yeah. Billing account codes. It's like, would you like all of your Microsoft licenses divided by account codes per department? Oh, hey, here's your Microsoft share. And here's your Microsoft share. That's not part of my budget. That's part of your budget. Pull that one off. Some people pull that off.
• 24:13
  Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. And you know, that's a smart way to do it because, because it, it offers transparency to. When you bring that multi million dollar budget up, you're like, I didn't request any of this. Like, I don't, I don't need that data warehouse. I don't need that data lake. I don't, I don't need the new tool. This is what they need.
• 24:34
  Speaker A: Just start putting the marketing person's name on it and sending it to the, to the cfo. Thank you. We're g. There's an AI for that. I'm sure the. And I do think we should build some sort of some. I was honestly thinking like some kind of system and IT scorecards. I know we have all this stuff but I mean you could, if you want to pay for any of that stuff, you can have crazy IT scorecards and coming in this. But you know, for the most part We're Mid Market IT and Fortune 5000 Space. It's not crazy Fortune. It's not, you know, enterprise where they can pay 120,000, although we have had plenty of people that have paid between 60 to $120,000 a year just to have Gartner as a sanity check. Which is amazing to me. And that's why we have our community too. Everyone, if you'd like, you can join the community and have a hundred ctos and probably a whole dozen of them, sanity check your decision for you, and you can go right to your CEO and you can be like, I ran this by 100 CTO, CIOs, IT directors and VPs of IT that are all famous because they've been on dissecting popular IT nerds and they said it was a bad idea. Don't do it. Don't switch the CRM. So we're not going to do it. The culture of it, though, I like this idea. Like, what if we were to build a book called the Culture of It? Where would we start? If you were to come in, what should the culture of it be? Should it be friendly? Constantly going around knowing everybody? What is it? Where would we start? It's a matter of also executive management and other departments understanding how IT processes work. Maybe what ITIL is, which is basically common sense. I mean, what is it?
• 26:15
  Speaker B: I think this is the driver.
• 26:18
  Speaker A: We talked about business, how we got on. That was the business being the driver.
• 26:21
  Speaker B: Right?
• 26:21
  Speaker A: Right. So it is kind of like we want to say it's a support role because it is. And it's in, in our. Our end users are our customers. But we also, but I also want to challenge everybody to say if, if it's just a support role, then we stick. We stay stuck in the cost center mentality, when in reality it is a business force multiplier. So it's not just a support role. It's really. It should be something that David jumped on. David, if you want to chat in the thing and ask any questions, this is great. We, we finally got someone to jump on the live stream today. This is great inside the community. So this is why we're doing it live. So. So, David, if you catch on to any of this, what we're talking about, we're talking about the culture of it right now. If you got any ideas of what should be involved in the culture it, throw it in the chat.
• 27:04
  Speaker B: The.
• 27:06
  Speaker A: So, okay, so business. So we're talking about this idea of, you know, the business is the driver, it is a support role, but it can't really just be a support role because it is a business force multiplier where you've got to get out of this cost center mentality. Thing. So it should really be kind of understanding if you're touching every aspect of the business, if you're sitting with every department and you know, the workflow and the systems of every department, should we have some sort of creative aspect that's actually showing how to make money or what can we do to change that cultural idea and break out of this cost center mentality?
• 27:39
  Speaker B: Yeah. So it goes all the way back to your earlier statement of a seat at the table. Right. I think a lot of the decisions that are made, no one truly understands the interplay of technology in you making those decisions, whether it's sales, whether it's product, whether it's services, to have technology in the room to brainstorm alongside of you on what your decisions mean. We should be the Gartner of the organization. Let's put it that way. We should be the Gartner of the organization. Decisions should roam through us, whether it's people decisions, whether it's, it's system decisions, workflow decisions. Why? Because we're the ones who have to go back, process that and to figure out how do we enable it. Right. What does it mean for the infrastructure, what does it mean for the data, what does it mean for security? There's all these layers that we have to manage behind your decisions. And, and it's, it's, it's technology should be along with the CEO of an organization because the CEO's drive is financial, it's the organization's well being, the future of the organization. We're doing the same thing. We're doing the exact same thing from every other level besides the people. We're doing it for the technology. We're doing it to enable every portion of the organization. So when we're looking at that, there needs to be a shift, especially when you're not a tech organization. Right. It's easy when you're the Googles, the Microsoft's. Right. Because you were built on tech IT at every layer. Most of the organization is tech related. But when you're again a club, when you're healthcare, manufacturing, manufacturing, these are all businesses that existed in and of themselves by themselves, without technology in some level. And that level continues to increase in order to stay competitive. Now you have to start bringing in technology and it almost needs to at Tandem, executives and technology need to be running the organization side by side together.
• 30:07
  Speaker A: So basically we need to do is pre. We need to come up with everything that you hear ahead of time and come up with the answer to it ahead of time and then they kind of pre. Do that it's almost like in sales. It's like the sales guy that knows the objection before the objection is going to come and he's like, now I know what you're going to say. You're going to say, you know what I mean? And he already is prepared for it. So that's like the. Should we go. So you know, should we go check with a third party? Should we check with an msp? Should we check with that? Like, so that's like one. I guess we could say objection or problem. How do we prevent that from ever coming up? But first let's come up with a list of all the problems that every IT guy runs into to double checking something. What else did, what else does he run into? Budget issues, like, I don't know, it's over.
• 30:52
  Speaker B: Staffing issues, right?
• 30:55
  Speaker A: What particularly? What particularly? He's not allowed to staff more or he needs more headcount or what is.
• 31:00
  Speaker B: It, not being able to staff those resources? Right? Because I think a lot of organ organizations also see technology as a monolith, right? If I hire a software developer, I guarantee you they're asking, well, why can't he manage the server or manage the network? That's not a skill set there within technology. This is. There is, there are specific skill sets within technology that people hone down. And if you hire a bunch of generalists, you're going to have challenges with a bunch of generalists because nobody's an expert in anything. And the understanding that the growth of technology within an organization requires more resources to manage to optimize that most of these systems that you put in are not just put them in and leave it alone. That there is a life management and a life cycle to systems, IPs, security and everything that goes on is that everyone wants to expand, right? If you tell an organization and they say, oh, we want AI, I heard that our competitors are starting to get into AI and you want to jump in. We need to be the voice of reason to step into a room and say, okay, so for the last 10 years, what have we been doing with data? Is it good data? Because we can layer in an AI large learning language model and we're still going to fall behind competition because we didn't do what we should have done, which was manage our data. We have garbage, we're going to get garbage out, right? That's being the voice of reason. Of course that's a great strategy. I'm sure you want to stay competitive, but somebody needs to be the voice of reason, right? Are you willing to pay for an AI expert. I myself, you could, you know, as the lead. I'm not going to be the one day to day doing it right. So are we willing to not only buy the system but. But make sure we have resources in house who are the experts behind it? So it's these types of things that people aren't thinking about when they have their, their big picture ideas that we need to bring it home on what the reality is of these implementation, these ideas within the business and to see what the reality really is.
• 33:20
  Speaker A: We should be the gardener. Staffing, resources, budget constraints, what are the other big ones? There's got to be. There's at least seven. There's at least seven.
• 33:29
  Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. In. Well, still budget constraints, but understanding security, I think that's a really big one. People are.
• 33:41
  Speaker A: Happened yet? Nothing's happened yet. We haven't gotten hacked yet. Something like that. Okay. Security things. Why should we spend all this money? We're fine. Who cares if we do get hacked? I don't care if the information gets out. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Okay, so security I. Okay, next one.
• 33:57
  Speaker B: The other one probably has to be.
• 34:00
  Speaker A: And, and if you're listening out there, anyone listening out there, David, if you've got any ideas for objections that you run into, type it in the. Type it in the thing. Like, what have you heard? You know, what are these objections that IT guys are going to run into and we're going to come up with the best answers to all these. Are you crazy? When you need no security, you don't care if you date to get stolen? Are you stupid? That's going to be the answer. Are you stupid? No.
• 34:22
  Speaker B: You'd be surprised at how often that stuff gets brought up.
• 34:26
  Speaker A: We joke around that you got to use. We joke around that you've got to use football metaphors. We've got to use football metaphors to explain it. But you're like literally the football metaphor, like temp Bay Buccaneers. Let me explain it to you this way. You've Drew Bledsoe. He's. He's done, he's done his. You've got this other quarterback. He's sitting in the back in the background. We don't know. We think he could probably be good. His name's Tom Brady. Throw him in. Throw them in for the, the last, you know, the last quarter of the Super Bowl. You know what I mean? Let's see our value be. This is what David says in the chat. Our value would be in. We need organizational data down the road. I can't. There's like some typing there. I don't know what hata. And highlighting. Highlighting the need to organize our data. Yes, yes. Data first. So data first. Okay. So data in general. Hey, we've got all this data, we've got to organize it and we've got this old, I don't know, weird partition SQL. I don't know what. What would be like the data piece. I guess data is like. Is. Is data something that we have to talk about that we get objections with? And, and we know data is important. I'm just going to put it down there for something. A change is hard for users. Oh, change. If it's not broke, don't fix it. If it's not broke, don't fix it. Okay. Change. Perfect.
• 35:39
  Speaker B: That's a great one, David. That is a. That is a great one.
• 35:42
  Speaker A: Yeah, just change a verse. Change a verse. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. That. That was the one that we used to.
• 35:48
  Speaker B: Oh, man.
• 35:51
  Speaker A: Okay, I think. How about this? I think we need to get a second opinion. Isn't that what the one we ran into before too? Like, I need to get a second opinion. But. But yours was like, we need to be the Gartner. But really what is. We need to be the Gartner first. That's the answer to it. But really, what's the. What's the problem you're running into? Is we need a second opinion.
• 36:09
  Speaker B: Yes.
• 36:09
  Speaker A: Or I need it. Okay, second opinion. Okay.
• 36:13
  Speaker B: And part of it is, even with those second opinions, I don't think I know what they're. They often don't know what they're looking for in their second opinion. Right. It's. Are you looking for.
• 36:23
  Speaker A: It's the trust. It's. You haven't built trust.
• 36:26
  Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. You just want somebody just literally, if they probably just sent a thumbs up and said yes, this is good with no.
• 36:33
  Speaker A: What do you think? Yeah, what do you think it means when they say we're thinking of going another direction? What do you think that means? Does it mean. Does it mean the IT guy hasn't made the company enough money or hasn't done enough fast enough or hasn't he's not a big enough grunt. He's not. He. We need someone that we can abuse more. What does it mean? Or you just didn't do a good enough job? I don't know. Sometimes you get this, like, we're going another direction. What does it mean?
• 37:01
  Speaker B: Oftentimes I believe that is there is something political or something other than the reality of what you have making the decision. Right. Whether it's choosing a vendor that, that they have a connection to regardless of the better solution or changing something that maybe for some interactive reason, oftentimes when I hear that it has nothing to do with the, with the details. Right. You could have the best price, the best solution and everything that would go into that. This, this decision has something totally different involved in it. So that difficult.
• 37:40
  Speaker A: So yeah, so we have to unfish that. So we have to help IT guys unfish some of these things. When you're on your sea level, say, you know, we're thinking of going a different direction with this because of this. I know it's not what you really play. The presentation is great, but kind of neat. We need to have some ways of talking these things out. I don't know John. I'm, we're just going to use John as the CEO. Okay. Interesting. We need, we need an answer for this, John. I know, I, I know I've been with you guys for a long time. We presented all this is what I've really seen, really done a lot of research in this. And I know you need a second, you need to have, you need to have a second, I don't know, opinion or you want to look at this MSP or something. Is there something I missed or is there something that I'm not, that I'm not missing? We have to fish these things out. We have to be able to have these deeper conversations, I guess with kind of executive management so we can continue to grow this culture of it. Here's what it comes down to. I, I've, I've, I've asked a lot of people over the years. What are the major single biggest frustrations problem concerns when it comes to being an IT leader. One is disparate silos, old silos, just technology silos, period. That, and that's the if it ain't broke, don't fix. That's literally it came up. Change is problem change. Thank you again, David. Thank you. And then there was, then there was decision direction. Just, just in general taking decision direction can be difficult when there's like all kinds of crap going on and you've just, it's just in decision direction in general. Like how do I know? Onslaught of AI and the security. Like sometimes by the time we make a decision, it's already too late. At the time, at that time we made a decision, it's already like, it's already gone. So, so some comments in the thing here. Again also, if it is a second opinion, there's a. There's a trust issue. Yes. Cool. And I've seen that before. And exec is the connection somewhere which overrides an IT suggestion. Okay, great. John Son just graduated and he got a job over at CrowdStrike. And I've got to go with CrowdStrike.
• 39:45
  Speaker B: Yes.
• 39:46
  Speaker A: It's just. Okay, just tell me that. Just tell me that. Can I. Can you connect me with them so I can continue the culture of it? Okay, so then. Oh, so, so, so decision direction can just be difficult. I mean, for I, I am. My AI guy and the guy that produces in our podcast, Greg, just crazy close friend of mine. When, when I brought him on, we were talking about just using AI for like, articles and, and, and, and gathering information and coming up with ideas for new, like, podcasts and stuff. And by the time, by the time we were done with whatever project we had put something into place, it was so. It was so far gone. It had like a high had come so so much that it was just like, oh, like, no. Like, it just wasn't even a thing anymore. Like, it wasn't even. It was just ridiculous. Dar. Excellent. We got more people on. Not too. I agree. This is awesome. This is working. It's coming alive. We're building the culture of it. Live as we do this. Okay, so. Okay, so decision direction, we've got. I'm going to get to the main point here. I'm saving the one that I actually want to bring up for last. We've got disparate IT silos. The other one is that people are saying that is their biggest frustration, problem, or concern is vendors that do not jive with your team. Meaning support sucks. You have a vendor, the support sucks. You've been held, your feet are held to the fire under a contract, and they just don't jive with your. Like, it's like calling like, you know, they're like, is it turned on? Do you. Do you have a static IP address? And you're like, oh, my gosh, please stop. I don't know. Do you agree with that one? Do you have any vendors where, like, the support has something to be desired or. I'm just curious. I don't know. There's always a few.
• 41:37
  Speaker B: Absolutely. I, at least I'm still testing the theory on this correlation. But the larger the organization, to me, the worse the service is. I have found that, like, smaller organizations tend to be able to navigate pretty decently when it comes to interaction support. And, and a lot of that probably has with, you know, their level of support needs to Be higher because you're trying to take market shares of whatever you're doing. So that intimate capability is a little better. But when you deal with a larger organization, I will not name them, but they have all these, they have all these different layers that you have to go through. Right. Is wait, let me get my engineer rate, let me get my specialist. You know, all you're dealing with is a rep, a rep who knows nothing. And then you. They need to be the gateway to connect all these different, different areas of their support. And they don't move very fast. Whereas you have a bit of a smaller. Where they hire these engineers that also know how to sell, also know how to support the system. And so you got this one frame of contact which to me is often better. So, you know, I know everybody's like, you know, the gardener, you know, like we're talking about the gardener quadrants and all these great organizations and they may have great tools, but when it comes to service, I just noticed the larger they get, the harder it is get things done quickly.
• 43:12
  Speaker A: The. Well, here's the other thing and I. One of the things that I learned a long time ago is got very good at building special teams that can even navigate those large organizations. So sometimes it's a smaller organization that actually navigates a larger organization.
• 43:25
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 43:25
  Speaker A: So for example, like, I know like the number. Like I have some guys that are just really, really good at navigating AT&T. They don't work for AT&T. They work for another company and they used to be the VP of Operations for AT&T. But you don't have to call 1-800-Gold Pound Sand Press. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. To get to Jan, who's only, who's only like there from 12 to 5 in the morning. She's the only one that knows the old frame relay that somehow your old silo is attached to that you need to get hold of. So there's like, there's things like that as well. How are they impacting the business? Yes. Review the vendors. Every year I have to do that myself. I have a list of applications that I need to go through. And I keep telling myself every week I'm still paying for this. Why? And I've got to go through and see it's doing one thing. And I think we talked about that in the roundtable last time is a lot of times we have applications and we put it in the, the article. I put the summary in the article on LinkedIn. There was a summary of the different things. And it was like, I think, optimizing beyond minimal viable product. Right. So a lot of times, like we get a thing, we put it in and we don't continue to develop it to the point we have. Okay, so I'm going to get to the fourth point. The fourth thing. The fourth thing that IT directors struggle with, their biggest struggle, problem, frustration, concern. Which I think has been the entire theme of this entire podcast. Training, training end users. It's the entire. It's literally, I think it's touched on every single thing of this podcast. It's. And that's kind of like the culture of it. And it's the thing that IT directors might. Well, they've expressed it. They've expressed that it's the fourth. Not in any particular order, but when I asked everyone, they said that one of the themes that came up the most is like, training end users is the hardest thing. Why we gotta train executive management to understand everything that you just said. Right. That you know, why it's actually, if it's not broke, we should fix it. Right. And you've got to train end users how to use a new product. And they don't like change because I don't know, maybe the. It's just how we always did it. And this is the easy way. And they're not embracing this new thing which we have to take on because security issues and we can't have the AS400 sitting in a clock in the back anymore. We had to migrate that to the cloud and now there's a different interface, whatever it is. So what do you have to say about training? I guess.
• 45:50
  Speaker B: Yeah, it's, it's a very big part of.
• 45:54
  Speaker A: I think you could build some tools. I think we should as a. Like, we could have a whole conference just on what could we do to train people around the culture of it.
• 46:03
  Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. But unless you're doing the face to face, like forced interaction, we, we all see the same problems with our annual security training sessions. Right. Is you have those, know, before training, training things that people have to watch. They barely, you know, they barely do it. Yeah.
• 46:30
  Speaker A: Someone just told me the other day, I don't give a crap about this. I literally do not give a crap about this. Someone tell me that.
• 46:36
  Speaker B: Yeah. And that's, that's a part of the attitude. Right. Is that, you know, convincing the organization of things that are not necessarily a part of their day to day. Right. Because, you know, and I get it, you know, we, we're all layered with the stress of doing your job. Right. And then here I, you know, here we, here we come in and we tell you there are these things that you need to know and do and be reminded of on a regular basis. But until something happens, you feel like it's unnecessary, irrelevant, you know, whether it's security training or data privacy training, you know, now AI training, you know, until you feel like it's, it's involving you personally, then it's irrelevant. And, but on the other side, the training opportunities you have with the business and with end users, I think kind of helps broaden the relationship between IT and your expertise behind these systems. Right. And what's coming new, it becomes the gateway of oh, that they know what they're talking about. Let's treat them as experts, not as just help desk people. And I think that often happens within an organization at every layer is just, just sit in the corner and wait until I need something and then you should be Johnny on the spot when, when, when I call you because I can't log in or my password needs to be reset or something crazy like that.
• 48:21
  Speaker A: I think we could come up with some suggestions of things that we've never done before. I think we should do more surveying, but not surveying in a lame way. Not surveying in a lame way. I think, I think IT guys should work more on kind of like their, I don't know, giving perfection, maybe taking just a little bit of time each day to work on their executive presence and brand. Whether it be giving something that has absolutely nothing to do with it whatsoever. It could be like life skills or it could be some leadership quote or something. And I think when we do the surveys, they should be surveys that are really open ended questions where they're really. Someone's very compelled to answer that. Exactly. When it comes to the IT department here at Tampa Bay Buccaneers, what's your single biggest frustration, problem or concern? We need to know this, we need to know what those four themes are, then spreadsheet them all and put them into, I don't know, AI. And you know, we can. Sometimes it's a phone call to ask that question and just take notes. Sometimes it's the email to ask that question. Sometimes it's use fill out form. I use fill out form. There's a reason, because my name's Phil, but it actually happens to be very, very, very good form fill out with an F I L l fill out form. Very, very good. It is amazing. I really love it.
• 49:38
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 49:40
  Speaker A: So I don't know what we've accomplished today if we had, but maybe we should Come up with some action steps, everything. What are some action steps that you would have to give to people that just make their life better? And I think you said, you know, I see that you guys are hiring right now. Are you guys hiring for any positions?
• 49:53
  Speaker B: Yeah, we are right now hiring for a network engineer. We're trying to layer with a second network engineer. We have one on site on, you know, one that we have here. And then we're trying to bulk up that area of our, our, our team right now.
• 50:11
  Speaker A: Okay, so what do you do to hire people or is that easy or difficult? By the way, we're doing a hiring event. We are going to be doing a hiring event coming up. I. It's. The date is not yet, but we have a, a very, a technology recruiter coming to talk about how to hire better and how to get hired. We're going to do both sides of it. We're going to do both sides and then I'm going to do my piece as well, which is how to grow your executive Presence more on LinkedIn and share all my secret stories and automations and everything like that through AI Maybe last. Yeah but go.
• 50:45
  Speaker B: So for, for us it's not bad. It's pretty, it's pretty average, right? It's, it's a club. So you know, we're, we're not short of getting resumes that, that I can, I can definitely say that finding a skill set I think is always important. Finding a fit. My, my focus is always fit. Like I, by the time candidate gets to me, I've had, you know, my technical staff and some of my directors review what they see as a fit. I am looking for a much deeper fit. Right. We, for, for the club we have. Honestly, it's a small team. It's not a huge team. We don't, we have like seven, seven, eight people on, on the team. So we, we have a lot with the, with the, with the small team and we do pretty good at what we do. I am looking oftentimes for one team fit. I often look for people who are looking to, to grow with the team. Not somebody trying to hold a position, but somebody who's almost entrepreneurial in what they do. Right. If you're, if you're going to be even at the level of help deck, what is your focus has helped us? Right? Are you trying to make it better? Are you focused on workflow? Are you focusing on enhancing the process? Those are the types of attitudes that I'm always looking for because you know, with the type of team that we have and the size of the team. You gotta, you gotta learn to take ownership of the work you do and not just do it as in turning the crank, but be invested into making it the best it can possibly be.
• 52:22
  Speaker A: So is there any way, I don't know if you can teach entrepreneurial spirit? Can you? Like, how do you teach someone? Like, hey, I know you're doing the job, but I, I don't want to have to tell you exactly every single way and the things that you need to do it. Like, I'm okay with you being like creative and I'm also okay with you making some suggestions and saying, hey, I noticed this, this might be like a great thing to do or doing something that's actually, how do you say, like preemptive almost, you know, but they're saying sometimes like, hey, I know this is going to come across your desk and I know this is probably going to be a problem for you. And I saw it ahead of time and I already took care of it for. So you don't have to worry about it. Like, how awesome would that be?
• 53:00
  Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And that's basically that person. You know what I've been trying to figure out how to make it a science. Right. And just, or how I create that.
• 53:10
  Speaker A: Person would be better.
• 53:12
  Speaker B: See, I, I find it, it's, at least from my experience, that's the area that's hard to, to, to create and coach. Right. And, and just like David said on here, coaching fit is a hard thing to do. There's a whole ecosystem that most of us have to our groups that you, you know, who the, who the challenging one is, you know, who the go getter is, you know, you know, and, and there's this delicate balance in the ecosystem. Right, Right. And understanding people who are ready to jump in and help, understanding people who are, instead of asking every single question, they know how to do their research, they know how to go find an answer, they know how to dig into the work that they need to do. Those are the people that you're looking for. You almost have to kind of, you can't find it necessarily in a resume. When you talk, it's more, I like to try to dialogue, to kind of ask some questions about their previous jobs and how they handled certain situations. But you can only get so much from it. And it's almost a gamble when you kind of bring people in to see, you know, okay, you interview well. Are you true to what you've, you've, you've talked about? Right. Are, are you the real go Getter. Let, like, let's see if you're a real go getter. Let's let. This is what you have to do.
• 54:31
  Speaker A: I think we should do POCs. I think we should just do pocs with people. Or we should have, like, a test. Like, here's a problem. What do you. What will you do? Because I've made so many mistakes. All right? And it's usually the interviews that go really, really well. Like, you're so shocked at how good that interview is. Like, there is. This person is a rock star, like I am. And then somehow that person ended up being the person who had to fire in like, two weeks.
• 54:56
  Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 54:58
  Speaker A: And I. And I was using behavioral interviewing. Like, tell me about a time that you ran into a difficult customer, and how did you overcome that? I want. I want names. I want real specific answers. Oh, yeah. It was like, John. And he came in and was this. And like. And you're like, wow, that was perfect. I was like, how'd you do? You know? And then you're like, what happened? And then the person ended up being like, you know, someone that robbed you or was like, stealing or something crazy. Just something absolutely out of. Like, out of. And it's like, wow.
• 55:23
  Speaker B: Yeah. They're like, I know. I've. I've been in some discussions with some universities and some panels and everything else, and I've been asked a couple of times, what is it that, you know, should they be training in. In. In a part of their degree? That would be highly important. And, you know, the first thing I gravitate towards is, is soft skills, like people skills. Like, no longer is it that sit in the corner, stay in the dark, and do the work that you need to do. It's. It's kind of evolved into this very interactive. I mean, even for. Think about it, even for software developers, it used to be. And I. I used to manage software developers in different languages, but software developers used to just be behind the curtain. They churn out whatever they churn out and then toss it over the wall. Well, now you have Agile, right? Which Scrum groups. And now you sit with business analysts and QA folks, and you're designing and discussing and working through these things. So no longer is there really any position in it that doesn't have an interactive aspect. And to teach these soft skills, help them understand business acumen, help them understand interpersonal relationships when they're doing it is. Is valuable. Right? Because I've had the teams where, like you said, you have the rock star, but they can just Be jerks. Right. And just there are some. Some teams to just put up with it because, like, they're really good. They. They're good at what they do. But I just don't feel like there's value in that. Right. Is you.
• 57:04
  Speaker A: Or they're the rock star and you end up using them and then, like, that's the other way. Or you end up being the jerk and the rock star does everything.
• 57:11
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 57:12
  Speaker A: Or. Or you ignore the rock star because you're trying to spend all your time with your bad players. Which is the other mistake. You know, it's wow.
• 57:22
  Speaker B: And at every layer, you know, and I impress it on my team is at every layer, you guys represent us. Right. We are all a representation of us, and we're only as good as the weakest link. Right. If. If they like, oh, I never want to talk to them about anything, then you can. You become a complete representation of us. So we're ever going to get better than. At each layer, each of us has to get better. We each have to figure out how we can interact with the rest of the organization to be a real partner. Not just me, not just my directors, but at every layer, they have to trust that. That we have their best interest in mind as a real partner and not as just, you know, this. This entity that exists over here in order to, you know, do a couple of things for you. But after that, we just pushed him back behind the curtain. And that goes to every single, you know, employee or every single staff member that you have in that IT department.
• 58:26
  Speaker A: Real deep. What have you learned not to do? We'll end with this, but we need some sort of action steps like, don't do this. This I learned a long time ago. Do not do this. I can share first if you want. If it's like really, really a hard thing. I don't even know.
• 58:44
  Speaker B: Go ahead. I'd love to hear.
• 58:46
  Speaker A: I'm going to think, let's see. The biggest fail I ever had. Oh, I know one. Here's one. If someone tells you not to say something and you really, really trust the person, that is the person that you. You're going to talk to next that you shouldn't say it to, but you really, really trust them. Don't ever do that. Even if it's your wife. I could tell my wife. Like, I can't tell you. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, can't do that. What do you mean? I'm your wife. Nah, I can't tell you.
• 59:17
  Speaker B: Sorry.
• 59:18
  Speaker A: Can't tell you. Some of Those things can backfire on you. Like one time I had a real light thing. I didn't think it was a big deal. It was just kind of like make sure you don't like, you know, hey, by the way, so and so doesn't know about this yet. So just like, you know, kind of keep it on the down low, you know what I mean? I was like, yeah, yeah, okay. Didn't really think much about it. And then there was someone that I really, really trusted and like, hey, whatever happened with that? I was like, oh yeah, it was this. And then I was like, oh, cool. Crap was the same thing. That was a really bad thing that really backfired really badly for me. People really need to be able to trust you to keep your mouth shut. And I'm being very vulnerable by saying that because I don't want people to think that I'm a blabber mouth. But sometimes you really have to kind of like when you get to a certain level. And it was my very, very first leadership role a long time ago. A long, long time ago. Like 22 years ago. And you kind of learn some things. Like the really, really hard way when you first start as a leader, you kind of like try different methodologies and you don't really realize that. And what you find out at the end is that connecting, discovering is responding with people and being really bold and having tough conversations. The conversation that you don't want to have, you want to confront someone because they did something that was really back ass words and they shouldn't have done it. You know what I mean? But you have the conversation anyways. It's really tough and kind of like, hey, I heard this the other day, why'd that happen? And can you explain that to me? Well, just so you know, like I can't have you doing that because it's undermining the entire organization, organization. And I needed to go fix that. And then that ended up being one of the strongest people I ever had on my team out of like, you know, respect and stuff like that. So anyways, I don't know if I just shared something of what not to do, but yeah, don't say things that you shouldn't say. I guess be very, very like no matter what it is. So that, that was one thing for me. Now you go.
• 1:01:00
  Speaker B: Wow, so so many.
• 1:01:03
  Speaker A: By the way, for myself, just so it's easy. Don't allow non dual factor authentication. Don't allow one person, don't even allow the one guy to have it. Don't even allow the one guy to just not have that.
• 1:01:18
  Speaker B: Yes. I probably from a leadership perspective, I guess mine is somewhat. Don't just make unilateral decisions on your own. Right. Early in my career, I caught myself doing that. It's just, I know what's best. I'm going to move forward, not necessarily in a placement of I need somebody's approval to do it, but the better I am at communicating why and the thought process behind it, the more that there's less pushback on the back end. There's less. And that. That goes to many layers, not just for the business, even for staff. Right. Is my goal, has always been for my team, is that whenever I come to a new team, I always ask everybody, what is it you want to accomplish? Where do you see yourself? Three to five years. Right. And I always tell them, I ask that question because as we as a group figure out, as we, a group, accomplish what we set out to accomplish, I want to make sure I position you to accomplish what you want to accomplish. Right. Because you're. You're engaged. You, you know, if there's new technology and there's an opportunity to get into that, you're going to be front and center. If you want to get into leadership, then I'm going to put you in positions to lead projects to, you know, spur on leadership opportunities, to put you front and center before the organization if that needs to be. So it goes to that aspect of opening the doors to communication and not being kind of like, I know what's best. Let's go this way. No, here's the reasons why and here's how we can accomplish what we need to accomplish. And it's often helped me out more than not. And it's something I learned early on in running to some. Some issues.
• 1:03:24
  Speaker A: Doing that that's actually very, very, very profound. Very.
• 1:03:29
  Speaker B: It's.
• 1:03:29
  Speaker A: It's just a great. It's a great, great quote. And I think that's what we're going to start out with as the quote on this episode, which is basically, don't make unil. Don't make unilateral decisions. If you want to build a great team, don't make unilateral decisions unless you want everyone to hate you and quit and be like, why am I here?
• 1:03:48
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:03:48
  Speaker A: Right. Don't make unilateral decisions. If you want people to have entrepreneurial spirit and care and feel like they're part of the organization and taking part in everything. It's awesome.
• 1:03:58
  Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. It works very well with the business. Right. Is like Even you know, even though I have a dictate behind it, I'm not just going to do it. I'm going to say this is why we're, we're choosing this over this. Right? Is now it helps you understand, oh there's a much bigger, bigger picture here than just oh, I like that system because it's easy for me to use. Yeah, it might be easier for you, for you to use but there are security problems or long term if you branch out to something bigger. This won't fit the need because they have these limitations. So things that you're not thinking about that I'm going to help you understand that ease is not always the, the only piece of the puzzle and therefore hopefully you begin to start to trust the, the advice because oh, most of the things that he comes back with are well thought through and he's doing the research. So that helps me understand he must have some reasons for choosing what he does. But I, you know, being that transparent, it offers the opportunity to do what we started all the way at the beginning. Talking about is building trust is, is, is build that trust between, between us. Super cool.
• 1:05:12
  Speaker A: Really awesome episode. We've talked for a ridiculously long time. Outstanding. Having a great, just great conversation today.
• 1:05:19
  Speaker B: Okay. Okay. Well, thank you for inviting me. I, I really appreciate. This was great.