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Transcript

Wearing TenHats with Brian Strong · We Built This Brand

• 0:00
  Yeah, I think it's just one of those where.
• 0:02
  Our society hasn't seen where the power demands are going to be coming from.
• 0:06
  So it's just kind of, it's coming.
• 0:08
  It's, it's going to be interesting over the next few years.
• 0:12
  Welcome to We Built This Brand.
• 0:14
  The podcast where we talk to the creators and collaborators
• 0:16
  behind brands and provide you with practical insights
• 0:19
  that you can use in growing your own business.
• 0:22
  Today, we're talking with Brian Strong, CEO at TenHats.
• 0:26
  TenHats is an enterprise grade IT services
• 0:28
  company based in Knoxville, Tennessee.
• 0:31
  Brian has been with the company since 2020, starting as the Chief of
• 0:34
  Sales and Marketing, and taking on the mantle of CEO starting in 2022.
• 0:39
  Now, back in the day, I worked in telecom, and I got to work with
• 0:43
  TenHats as one of my customers under their former business name.
• 0:46
  In this conversation, we got to talk about what led to the rebranding
• 0:50
  of the business and how Bryan and TenHats serve their customers today.
• 0:54
  There were some great insights in this conversation,
• 0:56
  and I'm really excited to share this with you.
• 0:58
  So, without further ado, here's my conversation with Bryan Strong at TenHats.
• 1:08
  Alrighty, well, Bryan, welcome to We Built This Brand.
• 1:11
  Well, thank you.
• 1:12
  I'm glad to be here.
• 1:13
  Yeah.
• 1:13
  It's great to have you with us today.
• 1:15
  And it's great to be here at the TenHats headquarters.
• 1:18
  Well, we're glad that you guys came over and you know, we could show you around.
• 1:21
  Yeah.
• 1:22
  Yeah.
• 1:22
  Excited to get more of a tour of the place after we're done with this.
• 1:25
  That'd be good.
• 1:25
  I'm a bit of a data center nerd.
• 1:27
  Oh, are you really?
• 1:28
  Yeah.
• 1:28
  So,
• 1:29
  Yeah.
• 1:29
  Yeah.
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  The AT&T background.
• 1:31
  AT&T.
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  Yeah.
• 1:32
  That's right.
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  We'll be glad to show you that.
• 1:34
  Yeah.
• 1:34
  Yeah.
• 1:34
  Love seeing, love seeing how they build these things and like the redundancy
• 1:38
  you all build into these and all that stuff is just really cool to me.
• 1:41
  So...
• 1:42
  Yeah, it's been really neat from owning the data center from
• 1:44
  the standpoint of like just the infrastructure side of it, all
• 1:47
  the power coming in, the redundancy, like you said, generators.
• 1:51
  I mean, stuff that I never thought I'd know about.
• 1:53
  I know more than I ever cared to.
• 1:58
  Yeah, good learning experience.
• 1:59
  Oh, absolutely.
• 2:00
  Yes.
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  It's been a lot of fun.
• 2:01
  Yeah.
• 2:01
  Awesome.
• 2:02
  Well, today we're here to talk about TenHats, the brand that it is.
• 2:06
  And I think a little bit about the brand,
• 2:08
  where it came from and how it became TenHats.
• 2:10
  Okay.
• 2:10
  Yeah, that'd be great.
• 2:11
  So want to dive into that and just, I
• 2:13
  guess, first of all, Tell me about yourself.
• 2:17
  So where, where did you get your start and what led you here to TenHats?
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  I went to high school here, moved in to Knoxville right before, four
• 2:24
  days before I started Farragut High School, went to UT, got into sales.
• 2:28
  And then I guess about five or six years into my sales career, I get
• 2:32
  recruited to work for a company here locally called Arm Technologies.
• 2:36
  So that was my first venue into the technology world.
• 2:40
  And so that, Company became Claris Networks.
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  Mm-Hmm.
• 2:43
  . And so I worked there for like six and a
• 2:45
  half years doing basically what TenHats does.
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  This is, you know, evolution of that.
• 2:50
  I left Claris right around 2012 and started a
• 2:54
  software as a service company called Vendor Registry.
• 2:56
  Hmm.
• 2:57
  I'm, I remember that.
• 2:58
  Yeah.
• 2:59
  I think I'm okay.
• 3:00
  Sorry.
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  Continue.
• 3:01
  Yeah, no problem.
• 3:02
  Yeah.
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  So a Vendor Registry was a bidding platform, public
• 3:06
  procurement run their purchasing departments.
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  Um, and it was kind of really neat.
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  It was like a centralized database for vendors to register with
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  multiple different governments all at one time, um, solving a
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  problem for the governments of not being having enough bidders to
• 3:19
  their solicitations and for vendors having one platform to actually
• 3:25
  keep all their data up to date with a multitude of governments.
• 3:28
  That's cool.
• 3:28
  Yeah.
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  So that company sold in 2020.
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  Uh, there's several of the folks that I used to work with at
• 3:35
  Claris that are here at TenHats, so it was SH Data at the time.
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  And they started recruiting me back and I actually told them no.
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  And the first time, or first several times, you know, it was just,
• 3:46
  Claris was like, I felt like the, it was lightning in a bottle.
• 3:49
  It was kind of hard to recapture.
• 3:51
  It is over some.
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  Multiple conversations.
• 3:53
  It would just seem like the right fit.
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  There was a, an aptitude of a bunch of the former employees
• 4:00
  to get back together and try to build something special again.
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  And so that's how I kind of ended up at SH Data Tech.
• 4:06
  Um, but we've been, I've been here for, I guess, three and a half years now.
• 4:10
  That's really neat.
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  So you came in when it was still SH Data.
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  That's correct.
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  Yeah.
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  And then about a year into when I was here, the,
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  the former CEO, he was decided to retire and then.
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  Later that year, we decided that, Hey, uh, you know,
• 4:24
  there's quite a few things changing, um, at the company.
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  So it was time to rebrand, rename, kind of relaunch.
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  And, uh, that happened in January of 2022.
• 4:35
  That's really cool.
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  So January '22 you rebranded as TenHats.
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  What led to the name TenHats?
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  So it's a, Uh, that's a fun story as well as, you know, when we're
• 4:46
  going through the name change, we try to do a little bit internally.
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  Funny names are easy to come up with, you know,
• 4:51
  really serious names are much more difficult.
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  I like symbolism.
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  I think that, you know, if there's some depth to a name
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  that you can use, uh, that there's some meaning behind it.
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  Finding domain names is very difficult these days.
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  So we hired a firm that's, uh, out of
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  Nashville that kind of helped us with this.
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  Kind of like the vision of what we were,
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  what we were looking for, TenHats came up.
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  One of the things that we, that I really liked about
• 5:16
  TenHats, it was we can use it in multiple different facets.
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  So as an IT firm, we work with small businesses that IT
• 5:24
  usually reports to the CFO or a controller internally.
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  So they wear multiple hats inside of that.
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  So can we take the IT hat?
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  And then also we have a portion of our business that
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  we work with larger companies that have high T staff,
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  so they may be proficient at Three or four hats.
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  And then we can, they can outsource to us those five
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  or six that they're not good at, or two or three.
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  So we can kind of morph into whatever relationship that that can be.
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  Um, also the number 10 is ones and zeros, which is data.
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  10 is also Tennessee.
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  So you can see like...
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  Lots of things, lots of symbolism there.
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  Lots of symbolism that we can use for multiple different things, which.
• 6:06
  I really, you know, I really thought that
• 6:09
  was just a home run when they did that.
• 6:11
  So, so yeah, so we, we launched with that, um,
• 6:15
  January, uh, 2022, and it's been a good ride.
• 6:19
  I will say, you know, there was a few, few people thought
• 6:21
  it was T-I-N, you know, so they thought, you know, like,
• 6:24
  Like tinfoil hats?
• 6:25
  Yeah, that's exactly right.
• 6:27
  Which also could work in IT, but at the same
• 6:29
  time, that's, uh, um, Uh, yeah, that's not us.
• 6:32
  I wouldn't be surprised if there, knowing Knoxville, is some conspiracy
• 6:36
  theory about this building and what it is, too, for people who don't know.
• 6:39
  Oh, that's true.
• 6:40
  So it probably is that.
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  Yeah.
• 6:42
  That's it.
• 6:42
  Yeah.
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  There, it could be that.
• 6:43
  Yeah.
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  Especially with the gray and black.
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  It, this is, the Fort Hill building's been here since like '71.
• 6:48
  Oh yeah.
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  I always say, you know, back in the day when it was
• 6:52
  being purchased and all that stuff, I mean, it was the.
• 6:54
  It was so plain.
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  It's a five story building that you could
• 6:57
  walk, you could drive by and not even see it.
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  I mean, it was just, so they've done a really good job with the property and
• 7:03
  reestablishing it and building a data center next door and stuff like that.
• 7:07
  So it's been fun.
• 7:08
  It's, it's really neat as, as we were talking before we were recording.
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  I mean, I've spent some time at AT&T, worked with S&H Data back,
• 7:16
  back in the day, uh, when they were planning on this space and
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  to your point, like, I was like, Oh, there's a building there.
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  Oh yeah, there is.
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  That's exactly right.
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  Yeah.
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  Yeah.
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  But I can, I can definitely relate because I also worked in the ugliest
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  building in town, that AT&T office down just not too far from you all.
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  Yeah, that's exactly right.
• 7:34
  Yeah.
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  No windows and yeah.
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  Yeah.
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  No windows, lots of mold, dust, you know, I have so many
• 7:41
  stories from there and in that one is one people have
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  theories about because they just don't know what's in there.
• 7:45
  Oh, that's true.
• 7:46
  Yeah.
• 7:47
  That's pretty neat.
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  Yeah.
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  I didn't know anybody actually worked in that building.
• 7:51
  Yeah.
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  They, they moved our entire sales team there at one point.
• 7:53
  Oh wow.
• 7:54
  Yeah.
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  No walls, no ceiling.
• 7:55
  Yeah.
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  That's a...
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  Great place to bring customers.
• 8:00
  Too funny.
• 8:01
  Yeah.
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  You could, you could trick them into not realizing what
• 8:03
  time of day it was and just talk to them forever, and
• 8:05
  oh, that's right.
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  Finally buy.
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  Cause they just want to leave.
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  Like hotel California.
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  Right.
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  It felt like that.
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  Some days I'd come in, especially in the winter to come in before dark.
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  I'd be making calls all day and not be able to get out.
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  Oh man.
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  And um, yeah, there's some days where I'd
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  leave and it was just dark the whole time.
• 8:24
  Oh wow.
• 8:24
  It's crazy.
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  That would be tough.
• 8:26
  Yeah.
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  And it was not fun.
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  But anyways, I'm not here to talk about that.
• 8:29
  Oh no, no, you're good.
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  Although it is, although it is connected to this building because
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  it's the data center and the pipes and everything that you have.
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  Connected over here.
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  Yeah, we definitely have some circuits from AT&T and all that stuff.
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  So as we look at TenHats, as you look at the
• 8:44
  business, tell me more about what you all do.
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  Because, obviously, like, in rebranding, it wasn't just, it wasn't
• 8:50
  just because did you not just not want "data" in the name anymore?
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  Like, tell me about that journey for, like, repositioning the brand to TenHats.
• 8:58
  Yeah.
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  Like we were kind of talking before, like data is not a word that it's kind
• 9:02
  of really ambiguous and people use it for, and technology too, the word tech.
• 9:06
  I mean, there's so many companies going up and down
• 9:09
  the street that have tech-"technology" in their name
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  and it really has no meaning because it's so overused.
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  So we, we just kind of wanted to give ourselves like a, a,
• 9:18
  a different name that was frankly, TenHats is unique, right?
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  So it's memorable.
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  And one of the things too, we're trying to relaunch
• 9:27
  from, uh, from a marketing and branding standpoint.
• 9:30
  And to recapture is to reestablish ourselves as
• 9:33
  we're an MSP, we're a maintenance service provider.
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  So we do outsourced IT and IT services.
• 9:39
  to the local community.
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  And so, uh, we really wanted to have a personal feel to the local
• 9:44
  community because with running an IT firm like this, it's all about
• 9:48
  relationships and getting to know the customer, getting to know their
• 9:51
  customer's business, uh, really getting involved with our, with our
• 9:55
  clients on helping them use technology to compete, thrive, and grow.
• 10:00
  And so we wanted, uh, we wanted to put a new brand on that.
• 10:03
  So, and then we also have the data center too.
• 10:06
  Well, the data center.
• 10:07
  It's really a much different business model.
• 10:09
  It's, uh, it's, it's a lot more transactional.
• 10:12
  People know if they're looking for a data
• 10:14
  center and they know what the requirements are.
• 10:16
  They are typically in IT that they're, they have strict
• 10:20
  requirements, what they're, what they're looking for.
• 10:21
  And so they're usually coming to us with, Hey, can you
• 10:24
  provide these types of services versus an IT services?
• 10:28
  For the most part, it's kind of, "Hey, we don't know what to do with all this.
• 10:32
  Can you run this for us?"
• 10:33
  So it's two different business models, and so we will kind of wanted
• 10:36
  to, to, to rebrand from the standpoint of, you know, our local focus of
• 10:40
  TenHats, the MSP, and then outside the community, TenHats, the data center.
• 10:45
  So outside of the local communities where you
• 10:46
  find more of the data center business then?
• 10:49
  Traditionally, we do have a lot of customers here locally, but there's
• 10:54
  a, a need for data centers and people that need redundant data centers.
• 10:59
  So they're looking for geographic diversity.
• 11:03
  Um, and so we can actually supply that to those clients.
• 11:06
  You know, one thing that's really fortunate
• 11:07
  about us here in East Tennessee is that.
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  You know, with our climate and natural disaster, we just
• 11:13
  don't have that many natural disasters and, uh, right.
• 11:16
  Yeah.
• 11:17
  And so we're not in the tornado ality or, you know, flooding, especially, you
• 11:21
  know, as high up as we are here, you know, flooding is not typically a problem.
• 11:25
  You know, if we have snow, it just lasts a couple
• 11:27
  of days, even though this, this year it's kind of
• 11:30
  Fingers crossed.
• 11:30
  Yeah, that's right.
• 11:32
  And so, uh, it's advantageous for people that are storing
• 11:35
  their, um, data to be in a climate kind of like ours.
• 11:39
  Right.
• 11:39
  And what is your positioning against like say a cloud
• 11:43
  service provider that might be, you know, multi location,
• 11:47
  all that, like what benefits do they get coming to you all?
• 11:50
  Yeah.
• 11:50
  And that's, uh, that's a really good question.
• 11:52
  So we're actually agnostic when it comes to technology.
• 11:55
  So depending on what kind of workload that the client needs
• 12:00
  will dictate what kind of, you know, footprint that they need.
• 12:03
  Right?
• 12:03
  So some applications work really well in the cloud.
• 12:06
  They're, you know, they're cloud native
• 12:08
  apps that that's where they should reside.
• 12:10
  And then there are ERPs or core infrastructure, or some, there's
• 12:14
  some people believe that, uh, Amazon steals ideas, you know,
• 12:18
  from being on their cloud, or they have some proprietary.
• 12:21
  System that they, that they use, that they want to protect themselves.
• 12:24
  You know, each, each kind of person is a little bit different.
• 12:27
  So we actually do have direct connects to Azure and AWS
• 12:30
  for people that have workloads in the cloud or they need
• 12:33
  on prem or we actually have our private cloud ourselves.
• 12:36
  So, I mean, it's, it's really dependent on the workload.
• 12:40
  So everybody has like kind of this niche, if you look at the
• 12:43
  industry trends, hybrid is, uh, where everything's going,
• 12:48
  where there's a little bit in the cloud, a little bit on
• 12:51
  prem, you know, a little bit maybe in the data center too.
• 12:54
  AI is another big thing too, is they're
• 12:56
  not going to the cloud because of the cost.
• 13:00
  And so, and the power requirements too.
• 13:04
  So that's, that's an interesting shift in the market.
• 13:07
  We're actually seeing the shift in the market right now
• 13:09
  where power is becoming a commod- or not a commodity.
• 13:13
  It's a limited resource.
• 13:15
  So like power to the actual facility itself then becomes the resource
• 13:20
  that you have to allocate amongst different servers and things like that.
• 13:23
  That's right.
• 13:23
  So, In the data center world, it's not floor space that we sell.
• 13:27
  We sell power.
• 13:28
  And the more that if you look at public, right, EVs are coming online.
• 13:34
  AI are a high consumers of power.
• 13:37
  They're saying over the next two to three years that
• 13:39
  data center power consumption will be two to three times.
• 13:42
  What it is today.
• 13:43
  Then the utilities are having a hard time keeping up with creating the power.
• 13:47
  It's an interesting time over the next several years.
• 13:49
  We're going to see.
• 13:50
  It's going to become more of a topic.
• 13:53
  Yeah.
• 13:53
  Well, I heard they're making good advancements in fusion, so.
• 13:57
  Let's hope!
• 13:57
  They need to speed it up.
• 13:59
  Let's put it that way.
• 13:59
  Seriously.
• 14:00
  Yes.
• 14:00
  Yeah.
• 14:01
  That's cool.
• 14:02
  That's cool.
• 14:02
  I mean, one of the that's interesting, you say power, cause the sort
• 14:04
  of stuff that we You probably know this, but East Tennessee was one
• 14:08
  of the places that, you know, they came to create the atomic bomb.
• 14:11
  That's right.
• 14:11
  In part because of the power resources that we had available to us through TVA.
• 14:16
  That's correct.
• 14:17
  I've had some conversations with TVA too, because there
• 14:20
  are data centers now that want to do one gigawatt of power.
• 14:24
  So, in January, when we were in the snowstorm, right, TVA hit
• 14:30
  on the power grid itself 30, just a little over 34 gigawatts.
• 14:36
  So, if you think about that, that's the whole TVA footprint.
• 14:40
  And so you're talking about one data center taking one gigawatt itself.
• 14:44
  That's almost a power plant in itself for power.
• 14:47
  So it's a, it's interesting from what the demand is going to be.
• 14:51
  Hopefully fusion does come along.
• 14:53
  That would be
• 14:55
  Genuinely would be a good advancement.
• 14:56
  It would genuinely be a good advancement because the power requirements of
• 15:00
  our of our society are just going to be exponential in the next several years.
• 15:06
  Yeah, for sure.
• 15:07
  And it's, it's wild.
• 15:08
  I mean, as of the recording, this recording,
• 15:11
  ChatGPT has just released their new Omni product.
• 15:14
  They've made it more available to people, cheaper,
• 15:16
  freer, more access to that and more powerful.
• 15:20
  And yeah, I can just see how that's going to have effects as well.
• 15:23
  I assume when you say AI in your own data center, you're
• 15:26
  talking about other organizations that develop their own AI.
• 15:28
  That's correct.
• 15:29
  Yeah.
• 15:30
  Yeah.
• 15:30
  So they'll, you know, they'll have clusters of servers that are doing
• 15:33
  all the calculations and they're, it's high performance computing.
• 15:36
  So from a standpoint of a typical server, they run three
• 15:40
  or four kilowatts where a AI server will be 11 to 14.
• 15:45
  So it's, It's interesting.
• 15:48
  Sorry to digress so much on power.
• 15:49
  No!
• 15:49
  It's like, it's fascinating to me.
• 15:52
  Like I was saying, like I've, I've had the good fortune to go to
• 15:54
  like AT&T's data center in Vienna and see some places like that.
• 15:58
  I was actually on the cloud side.
• 16:00
  I was at Amazon reInvent this last, this last November.
• 16:03
  So like.
• 16:05
  Yeah, I'm in that space a little bit myself,
• 16:07
  Yes, it's...
• 16:07
  So it's really cool to me.
• 16:08
  Yeah, I think it's just one of those where our society doesn't,
• 16:12
  hasn't seen where the power demands are going to be coming from.
• 16:16
  So it's just kind of, it's coming.
• 16:18
  It's going to be interesting over the next few years.
• 16:20
  Yeah, I'll be intrigued to see how it goes.
• 16:23
  So hopefully it won't hurt us too much.
• 16:26
  It's going to be interesting.
• 16:27
  Yeah.
• 16:28
  So as we talk about TenHats, we've created the brand, you've launched this
• 16:32
  new brand, you were part of that transition, and then TenHats became TenHats.
• 16:37
  What has been your journey since then?
• 16:40
  Where do you envision TenHats going in the next year, maybe the next 10 years?
• 16:45
  Okay.
• 16:45
  Yeah, that's great.
• 16:46
  So in the last couple of years, like with, with, since
• 16:49
  the relaunch of rebrand and just our growth, we've.
• 16:53
  We've grown over like 500 percent in the last three years.
• 16:56
  It is, our plans are to probably double in size in the next five years.
• 17:02
  One of the things that we really want to
• 17:03
  do is to grow that much as for resiliency.
• 17:07
  IT firms typically are, um, on the smaller
• 17:10
  side, you know, 20, 20 employees or less.
• 17:12
  We're trying to, we're 32 right now.
• 17:16
  What happens is it's like a, there's a few good techs out there.
• 17:19
  In different specialties.
• 17:21
  So TenHats, too, it also represents kind of like how our company is set up.
• 17:26
  We have.
• 17:26
  Specialist in kind of in multiple different areas, let's say 10 functions of IT.
• 17:32
  And so when you have specialists in all those different functions,
• 17:35
  if there's only one of them, they're on call 24/7/365, right?
• 17:39
  So to build resiliency, we want to have multiple people in each,
• 17:43
  each of those fields so that they can have quality of life.
• 17:47
  Um, also our customers will have the ability
• 17:51
  to have multiple people in that stuff.
• 17:53
  So it builds resiliency for our customer base and for our internal employees.
• 17:57
  Yeah.
• 17:58
  So that human operational aspect of making sure
• 18:01
  that people work together and things flow well.
• 18:04
  Correct.
• 18:04
  Yeah.
• 18:05
  I, I feel that pain.
• 18:06
  Yeah.
• 18:07
  That's exactly right.
• 18:08
  Yes.
• 18:09
  I feel that.
• 18:09
  And you know, IT is a 24/7 operation.
• 18:13
  I mean, there's, we have somebody on call all the time.
• 18:15
  Christmas day, 4th of July.
• 18:17
  I mean, just never know when something's going to happen in IT that you need to.
• 18:23
  We want to have that resiliency that, you know, our employees
• 18:26
  can, they don't have to be on call all the time to, so they can go
• 18:30
  on vacation and not get called and get some rest and relaxation.
• 18:34
  That makes it just a better quality of life and better culture for our staff,
• 18:38
  which I think that carries straight over into our clients experience as well.
• 18:42
  Well, if they're dealing with happy people that enjoy their jobs,
• 18:44
  That's right.
• 18:45
  That attitude is going to come across on the phone.
• 18:47
  It's going to come across when there's a stressful service issue,
• 18:50
  because we know in IT, like There's never anything like that.
• 18:54
  Like they're always, you know, laid back and chill.
• 18:56
  Customers are never mad.
• 18:59
  That's exactly right.
• 18:59
  You know, it's a, you know, when they call, they're not calling
• 19:02
  to tell us a funny story, you know, they're calling with an issue.
• 19:04
  So it's, um, the fewer of those we can have and
• 19:07
  the better that better and happier clients are.
• 19:10
  Which makes internally the staff much, much happier too.
• 19:13
  Yeah, absolutely.
• 19:14
  It's a big,
• 19:15
  It's very symbiotic.
• 19:16
  Yeah.
• 19:16
  Yeah.
• 19:17
  Yeah.
• 19:17
  It makes a difference in the business for sure.
• 19:19
  Yes.
• 19:20
  So that's your strategy now.
• 19:22
  That's your strategy going forward.
• 19:23
  It sounds like I typically ask like, what was
• 19:26
  your moment of validation in the business?
• 19:28
  Like you come in as CEO, you start leading this business.
• 19:31
  Like at what point were you like, uh, the strategy
• 19:34
  that I'm building for this business is moving forward.
• 19:37
  I know that, you know, this is going to continue into the
• 19:40
  future, especially as you rebrand, there's always that
• 19:42
  uncertainty behind how are people going to accept this?
• 19:45
  Are they going to recognize who we are?
• 19:47
  Yeah, that's a, um, I hadn't thought about that, but there
• 19:50
  has been a few moments of my past experience at Claris.
• 19:55
  We had a forte of serving larger, larger clients, and there was
• 19:59
  a perception internally, you know, of can we actually do that?
• 20:04
  And so we, we went to some great efforts to like, you know,
• 20:07
  start a sales effort towards some of those larger, uh, accounts.
• 20:11
  And when we started winning some of those, and frankly, it
• 20:13
  was, you know, and Claris got sold to TechLinks, uh, there
• 20:17
  was, and then sold to another company here in town, C Spire.
• 20:22
  One thing about IT, it's kind of, it's similar to other specialties that people
• 20:27
  have, like accountants or, you know, their attorney or something like that.
• 20:31
  They, they want a personal relationship with those folks.
• 20:33
  They're spending a lot of money.
• 20:35
  There's a lot of trust that goes on to it, uh, goes into it.
• 20:38
  And so having a local presence on a local field, well, I think,
• 20:42
  you know, some of the clients, the old Claris clients felt that.
• 20:45
  You know, with a company that's out of town
• 20:48
  that they had lost touch with the community.
• 20:50
  And so when we started winning some of our old customers,
• 20:52
  back that we, You know, enjoyed working with in the past.
• 20:55
  It was validation for us that, Hey, we had, we
• 20:58
  had a, we had a right, or we're on the right path.
• 21:01
  I wouldn't say we're arrived.
• 21:02
  Um, I don't know if we'll ever arrive, but
• 21:05
  we're right on the right path to the plan.
• 21:07
  It was starting to come together.
• 21:08
  They were seeing, seeing the difference.
• 21:11
  Yeah.
• 21:11
  Uh, it's, it's nice to have those relationships back.
• 21:14
  We really.
• 21:14
  about those folks back in the day.
• 21:16
  And we serve them for multiple years, um, and to see being in
• 21:20
  part of their company and you know, we get our validation and I
• 21:24
  don't know, whatever our win or whatnot is, is being able to see
• 21:27
  a company really compete and thrive and move forward and grow.
• 21:32
  And, um, we like being a part of that.
• 21:35
  That's a cool thing too about it is you get
• 21:37
  to be part of that business growth and, and.
• 21:39
  Development over time and learning about their story and their business and
• 21:43
  why they do things like those things come out just by being in that industry.
• 21:46
  And something I've always really found fascinating about being, especially on
• 21:51
  the sales side, on the business development side of those organizations myself.
• 21:54
  So
• 21:54
  yeah,
• 21:55
  it's fun.
• 21:56
  Yeah.
• 21:56
  They, you know, they become friends and
• 21:58
  yeah,
• 21:58
  it's kind of a true partner and they talk to us, you know, lots of them
• 22:02
  talk to us about daily, you know, so it's, uh, it's, it's, it's fun.
• 22:05
  I like that.
• 22:06
  I like being a part of the community too.
• 22:07
  Vendor Registry, we were.
• 22:09
  At the end, I think we had over 600 governments all
• 22:12
  across the country, and I was on the road all the time.
• 22:16
  And when I was there and getting back into the community, trying to make
• 22:19
  a difference here and knowing all the customers, and it's just, uh, uh,
• 22:24
  you know, I really, really enjoyed vendor registry, but it is nice to be
• 22:30
  back in the community and be involved with the community and helping the
• 22:32
  community and, you know, where we live and, Work and play and all that stuff.
• 22:37
  So, yeah.
• 22:38
  Go into the grocery store and you might see a customer.
• 22:40
  Absolutely.
• 22:41
  Yeah.
• 22:41
  That's fun.
• 22:41
  We were at Southern Skies and I, you know,
• 22:43
  I saw a couple of customers and friends.
• 22:45
  I mean, that's just, that's what we, we like that.
• 22:47
  Yeah.
• 22:48
  Yeah.
• 22:49
  I mean, you know, my dad, so
• 22:50
  Yeah!
• 22:51
  Yes for many years.
• 22:52
  So, so, you know, like that, I mean, that's one of the cool
• 22:55
  things about, like, I've observed is like his relationship with
• 22:58
  folks and things like that for being community centric telecom,
• 23:03
  oh yeah,
• 23:04
  in tech and stuff.
• 23:05
  So that's, that's cool.
• 23:07
  How does, um, how does TenHats brand itself beyond just the name?
• 23:12
  Like what, what strategies do you have with marketing, advertising,
• 23:16
  all those, all those fun, you know, Factors of your business.
• 23:20
  Yeah.
• 23:21
  Elements of your business.
• 23:22
  Elements.
• 23:22
  Yeah.
• 23:23
  One thing that we did this last year is we've done, we did a tech survey.
• 23:27
  And so we had like 11-1,100 participants in this tech survey.
• 23:31
  And really what we're trying to do is bridge the gap between
• 23:34
  technology leaders, like in their organizations and the actual
• 23:39
  executives, leaders of those, the business leaders of those
• 23:42
  organizations, and we're trying to, you know, sometimes there's a
• 23:46
  feeling that there's a, uh, there's a communication gap between those.
• 23:49
  Even sometimes the words we use have different meanings depending
• 23:52
  on, you know, the seat that we're in, the position that we're in.
• 23:55
  And that was one of the things that we're really trying
• 23:56
  to continue to grow and do that annually to figure out
• 24:00
  what's to bridge that gap between business and technology.
• 24:05
  Because if you think about it today, every business is a technology company.
• 24:09
  If you took away their tech, they can't really operate.
• 24:11
  Or very few businesses could operate without that.
• 24:13
  I mean, you talk about, you know, the medical and paper charts.
• 24:18
  Well, there's not a kid that's got out of school in the last 10
• 24:20
  years that's ever worked on a paper chart in the medical industry.
• 24:24
  So, I mean, it really, you run in a technology business.
• 24:27
  And so, we want to make sure that, you know, if technology
• 24:32
  is so important to the business, Communicating with your IT
• 24:35
  and IT effectively and bridging that gap and making sure that
• 24:39
  the technology initiatives align with the business goals.
• 24:43
  That's a, that's a initiative that we have.
• 24:45
  And we're very heavily involved with, you know, the chamber in small,
• 24:50
  um, business and entrepreneurial, um, board of, at the chamber,
• 24:55
  participating in as many kind of those events and panels as we can.
• 24:59
  Um, just trying to, you know, Get out, get out the word of how we can help.
• 25:03
  Sounds like a lot of feet on the street and the people
• 25:06
  are really making the difference with your branding.
• 25:08
  Absolutely, yes.
• 25:09
  Um, we do, you know, a lot of, uh, we have some white
• 25:12
  papers and we do blogs and we try to communicate out,
• 25:15
  you know, some of it educational, some of it marketing.
• 25:18
  You know, we think the, the, the more that we
• 25:20
  can help educate or just get people to think,
• 25:24
  it could help.
• 25:25
  All right.
• 25:25
  Well, Brian, typically I always ask this question at the end of an interview.
• 25:29
  So I'm going to ask you now, what brand do you admire the most?
• 25:33
  So, yeah,
• 25:34
  at least at the moment,
• 25:35
  at the moment.
• 25:35
  Yeah, that's right now at the moment I've Toyota has like really come to mind.
• 25:40
  I just think with.
• 25:42
  Toyota is a, is a brand that always strives for excellence.
• 25:46
  You know, they're always process improving, you
• 25:48
  know, that's what they're known is for their process.
• 25:50
  Sometimes they're a little bit slow, but like when they
• 25:53
  come out with something, it's, it's excellently done.
• 25:56
  I think with the EV push.
• 25:59
  Right now, and that they are taking just a slight different bend
• 26:03
  on making hybrids versus, I think they do have maybe a full EV, but
• 26:07
  that's predominantly where their fleet is going to these more hybrid.
• 26:12
  Approach, whether it's a battery and a gas.
• 26:14
  And I think that's one of those where they're, they're just kind of living
• 26:18
  to their own beat and their own drummer and their own core principles,
• 26:21
  and they're not letting their quality suffer or anything like that.
• 26:25
  So I think that's just a brand that where everybody else
• 26:27
  is going one direction, they're going slightly different.
• 26:30
  And I always admire when somebody does that.
• 26:33
  Yeah.
• 26:33
  I think Toyota is a really cool brand just historically too.
• 26:37
  Oh yeah.
• 26:37
  You've got, I think they were the ones who created the Hoshin method.
• 26:40
  Is that correct?
• 26:41
  Or they were, they were a big proponent.
• 26:42
  Yeah, I think so, too.
• 26:43
  Yes.
• 26:44
  So all of that, you know, what does you build a new org as
• 26:46
  you continue to build like resiliency in your organization?
• 26:49
  That's right.
• 26:50
  Strategies and thoughts are going to play
• 26:51
  into how you do continuous improvement.
• 26:54
  That's exactly right.
• 26:54
  I mean, even to their design, right?
• 26:56
  If you look at an old Toyota vehicle, you're like, that still looks really good.
• 27:00
  Yeah.
• 27:01
  I'm a big fan of Top Gear.
• 27:02
  I don't know if you've ever seen it.
• 27:03
  Oh yeah, absolutely.
• 27:04
  And they, they had this one episode where they decided to try and
• 27:08
  kill a Toyota Hilux, which in the States would be like a, What is it?
• 27:12
  The Tundra, I think, is the equivalent.
• 27:14
  It's whatever the smaller truck that they make is.
• 27:15
  Oh, uh, yeah.
• 27:16
  The Tacoma.
• 27:17
  Tacoma, yeah.
• 27:18
  It's a Tacoma in the States, but in Europe it's the Hilux.
• 27:22
  And they decided they were going to try and do all these crazy things to it.
• 27:25
  Their test was, will the engine start after we do this thing to it?
• 27:29
  They threw it in the ocean, let the tide come
• 27:31
  in and roll over it, started it, still started.
• 27:34
  They put it in the middle of a demolition.
• 27:36
  Demolition happened.
• 27:37
  They dug it out, still started.
• 27:40
  And everywhere they went, it started almost
• 27:42
  every single time, if not every single time.
• 27:44
  And in fact, they memorialized it in the show.
• 27:47
  You've ever seen that
• 27:47
  Yes.
• 27:48
  crushed red truck thing
• 27:49
  That's right.
• 27:49
  in the background.
• 27:50
  Yes.
• 27:50
  That's what that whole thing is about.
• 27:51
  And I think it's a testament to Toyota's ingenuity,
• 27:54
  but also their ability to make a durable vehicle.
• 27:56
  Absolutely.
• 27:57
  Yeah.
• 27:58
  That's good.
• 27:59
  Yeah.
• 27:59
  That's why exactly why I admire them.
• 28:02
  Yeah.
• 28:02
  Well, Brian, thank you so much for coming on.
• 28:04
  Before we go.
• 28:05
  Is there anything you want people to know?
• 28:08
  How can they connect with you or connect with TenHats?
• 28:10
  Oh yeah.
• 28:11
  I mean, go to our website, tenhats.com.
• 28:14
  My email address is brian.strong@tenhats.com.
• 28:18
  Anytime you just want to have a discussion or, you know, ask about technology.
• 28:23
  I mean, it's, you know, we're, we're open door.
• 28:25
  You know, we, we just want to be a participant in the community, help
• 28:28
  the community grow and, um, help businesses achieve what they want.
• 28:32
  Great.
• 28:33
  Brian, thank you for your time today.
• 28:35
  Hey, thank you, Chris.
• 28:36
  Alright.
• 28:38
  Thanks for checking out this episode of We Built This Brand.
• 28:41
  Don't forget to like, follow, and subscribe on your player of choice.
• 28:44
  You can also keep up with the podcast on our website at WeBuiltThisBrand.
• 28:49
  com.
• 28:50
  If you liked this episode, Please give the podcast a five star review and make
• 28:54
  sure to tell all your friends about it so we can continue to build this brand.