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416- Your IT Team Should Work Without You w/Scott Kutz · You've Been Heard

• 0:00
  Speaker A: Foreign.
• 0:09
  Speaker B: Hey, everybody. Welcome to another episode of you've been heard or the podcast where we're talking to IT leaders and found out how they've been heard to get to the position they're in and what we can do to follow in their footsteps. Today we've got Scott Kuch, who let's likes to let us know that kindness costs nothing and running IT operations like you meet it. So, Scott, welcome to the show.
• 0:33
  Speaker A: Thanks, Mike. I appreciate it for having me here and thank you for everybody listening to hear my voice on a podcast for the first time. I appreciate you being here. Yeah.
• 0:44
  Speaker B: So talk to me about your career. Where are you? What are you doing? And how'd you get there?
• 0:49
  Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. So my career, right, started off as an IT intern, right. Circa 2011, 2012. Right? Yeah. Way, way back, Glenn, and worked my way up through the ranks in the help desk, service desk area and really kind of found a calling within the leadership perspective and loving to teach individuals and teaching people. And then really just having some really great opportunities that kind of led me today to being the IT manager and, and my current company, a Brooks Tractor, their construction equipment dealership. And I've been kind of in the construction space that entire time with my previous internship and role being in actual the construction industry. So just a lot of great opportunities presented themselves. Never saying no to anything is one of the things that I like to kind of say that whether it's a challenging customer or a challenging project or I don't understand it, but we'll work through it together or, hey, let me get my person that I know knows all about this and work together and learning during that entire time frame. Right. Always be.
• 1:57
  Speaker B: So, yeah, I'm hearing a couple of things that really resonate with me, and one of them is that you're not one of those guys that says, hey, just move, let me get out of the way here, let me sit at the keyboard. Because yeah, if. To use the worn out, tired expression, if I teach a man to finish, then if I teach a user how to fix their problem, then I don't have to solve it for them tomorrow.
• 2:22
  Speaker A: Yeah. And expanding upon that a little bit, Mike too as well, is it's always being willing and open to teaching them. Right. And understanding that everybody learns a little bit differently. Right. Everybody digests that information differently, you know, and some people, they really appreciate you taking the time to learn it and they just want you to fix it. I get that. Respected. Absolutely right. We all got. We all have a day job. We're all trying to get from A to B and making those deals and making sure our customers are happy. And from an it, my internal customers are everybody that I deal with on day to day in the business. So trying to make them more efficient and happier. So yeah, teaching a man to fish, but being patient enough to continually teaching him tricks and tips as you're teaching him how to fish.
• 3:05
  Speaker B: Yeah, definitely. And understanding. Here's one of the things that I found really helpful for me as I was doing exactly that. That same thing is, is finding out the way to ask why? Because there's so many times that they love to come to us and say I need this. And they've already crafted a solution and they verbalize it in the only way that they know how. Hey, I need Excel to do that. And Excel, the organization I'm at. I've had users talk to me about how some of the in the past, the answer or the question of why came across as well. Why would you want to do that versus hey, what's the goal you're trying to achieve so that I can help you achieve that? I may have a better solution for you than Excel. There may be something built in that does exactly what you need that I know about. But without me understanding what kind of fish are you going for, I don't know what to put on the hook.
• 4:06
  Speaker A: Well, exactly right. Coming back to that same analogy is we're the fishing guides, right? We're not necessarily the fishermen. We're the fishing guides. We're showing you where to go. We're understanding you're trying to catch that fish. Right? We're presenting solutions, not always fixing that immediate need or giving them exactly what they want right then and there's because there's a better way to do things, right? Like how can we be more efficient together?
• 4:32
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 4:32
  Speaker A: That's constantly a consistent question that I get brought up with all the time is, hey, how can we do things better?
• 4:44
  Speaker C: Most IT leaders don't have an Internet problem. They have a management problem. Multiple locations, multiple providers, multiple bills, different contracts. We help IT leaders make Internet boring again by consolidating visibility, billing support and monitoring without changing providers or forcing upgrades. If nothing needs fixing, we'll tell you that's vendor neutral advisory. Just go to you've been heard.com and answer the seven questions to simplify, streamline and save.
• 5:11
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 5:12
  Speaker B: Who taught you this thought of or where did you learn to teach versus to get out of my way.
• 5:23
  Speaker A: Yeah. Truth be told, it's going back a little bit of me as an individual and how I was brought up. So, so I was very, very thankful for a little bit of the introduction. And as you saw in the posting here, my dad being a 20 year Marine veteran, he was in communications, in telecommunications, in the service. So he was also a teacher, right. So he instilled in me it's okay to ask the questions why it's okay to, I wouldn't say challenge per se because that's not the right word, but work together with a team, right? And all about the teamwork. And it isn't always the first person, you know, slow, smooth, smoothest, fast, right. That's something that's always been kind of drained into my knowledge base per se. And it's really, it's important to understand the entire scope of things, right? Understand what you're trying to accomplish. But from a teaching perspective, he instilled in me and just I, I grew up learning things from him and he took the time and patience to do that with me. But then it came also full circle now for other things when hey, he calls me all the time now, said, hey, I'm running into this problem. What are your thoughts on it? I said, well, what are you trying to accomplish, right? What you're trying to solve here? So it comes full circle. It came from really my parents and just kind of both my mom and my father, right. But mostly my father really, he kind of instilled in me it's okay to not know, but it's not okay to stop learning and it's not okay to stop teaching. Right. Because knowledge kept to yourself isn't doing anybody, isn't being kind, it isn't sharing that knowledge. It's not being open to greater things and the greater sum of things.
• 7:00
  Speaker B: Have you run into those individuals? I see less of them today than I used to and maybe it's just because I'm not looking for them anymore, but I, I, I've met many IT individuals who thought that their knowledge and their experience was their value and they were always looking to be the hero and, and they had a hard time. They're the ones that say, here, just get out of my way, or here, just move, let me sit there. And then they would fix the problem and arc what they thought was a problem because they didn't ask why. They're, they're not looking for what's happening, what's the business, why have you run into those and how do you deal with them?
• 7:43
  Speaker A: Yeah, I mean I've ran into at my previous place of employment ship where they're a privately owned Huge company, huge construction company. And ran into people there that just wanted to hold all that information to themselves. They didn't want to share it. And they said, okay, let me, I'll handle it. You know, let me get out of the way, right? One of the things I worked with them on is just coming to a common ground first and foremost, right? Outside of the problem, outside of anything else, right? Coming to a place of understanding that both are on together, right? Because if you can get to a common ground and you have a common interest in something, then at that point in time, hey, I'm trying to figure out this, how do you kind of do it? And let them have them explain it to me in terms they would normally explain it and then ask them, right? Why? And hey, I don't understand. Can you explain it to me differently? Not that I'm trying to challenge them, but everybody learns a little bit differently, right? In a low, I want them to be on a common ground with me from a expectation to where we both kind of know how things work or they might have a little bit of mastery in it. I use the car analogy, right? So everybody knows car, right? Everybody's got four wheels, two or four doors. Sometimes you got a four cylinder engine, sometimes you got an eight cylinder engine, right? You could put the same acronym in analogy in construction equipment too, right? It's pretty universal. Ish. You gotta know construction a little bit more. But hey, I don't understand how this engine works. Can you explain it to me? Right? Well, sure, yeah. It has a intake cycle, combustion cycle, and that's. And the output of that is you going down the road or you going backwards, right? And asking them. But I can't use that if they don't understand cars, right? So, hey, what do you do for fun? Right? So, Mike, what do you do for fun? Let's do this. What's one thing you do for fun here?
• 9:40
  Speaker B: Oh, anymore. About the only thing I get to do or have time for for fun is I listen to audiobooks like crazy.
• 9:48
  Speaker A: What books?
• 9:49
  Speaker B: Are you reading them? Yeah, I'm doing all kinds of sci fi and fantasy and. And now this lit RPG stuff.
• 9:57
  Speaker A: Oh, very exciting. So what is that? What is that lit RPG stuff? See what I'm doing here now you're invested, right? You're part of this process and it's not. I'm not trying to learn to be better. I'm trying to learn. I'm trying to help you teach others, right? I'm trying to get that out of that shell. And a lot of People. And some people struggle with that. And sometimes it takes, hey, let's go grab lunch or hey, let's go go somewhere. And it takes a physical moving out of an environment, right? Hey, come into the office. Let's work together. Right? Like Covid changed that landscape dramatically. And everybody working from home, right? Like I will say, the luxury of being in office. Right. Even through Covid, because we were doing deemed essential at the time and still are. And what's kind of helped me in that regards is, hey, I'm not understanding over the phone, where are you? Can I come to you? Right? Like, that helps a ton too, because now I'm in their area. Hey, explain how you're trying to do this.
• 11:03
  Speaker B: All right, so I've been talking about the guy that just says, just move and let me sit there. And so our IT peer that does that. But now this thread of the conversation makes me want to ask about, well, what about those I've seen for me, younger generations who really don't want to get up and go talk to people that they only want to do the emails. My hands are clean. Well, I sent them an email. I'm waiting for them to respond and dealing with those people who have a hard time. And it goes right to the same part of the conversation of how do they learn, how do they communicate? So figuring out how to meet them, where they're at, part of that kindness piece to be able to have that exchange with them.
• 11:52
  Speaker A: Yeah. And part of what I do there, right? For the people that, hey, I sent the email and my hands are washed of it. I'm in it with you. I'm invested with you. Right? So I like to say I can most certainly be the type of manager and leader to say, I'm going to delegate this. You go ahead and do this. Right? But great example today. Great example, right? One of my employees that says, hey, I would like to do this on this machine. I just want to get your blessings. But before I hit the button, I said, the button's flashing now, isn't it? Because you see it, you want to push the button now? He said, yeah, it is. I said, okay, that's okay. What's the risk? Right? We're in it together, right? I kind of know what this risk is going to be. I've been down the road, right? I told him later on, I said, I figured that was going to end up happening, but I wanted you to explore it on your own, right? Because you're going to learn if it's a low risk environment, you're going to learn much, much quicker than me explaining something to you. Because that's your learning style. Right. I love his learning style. And he said, well, I mean it's a decommissioned system. It's not going to be deployed yet. I said, okay, go ahead and push the button. Watch what happens. And he pushed the button. Later on, a couple hours later, he was like, I shouldn't have pushed the button. I said, well, what did you learn? And he said, yeah, you're right. I said, yep, that was the point of that. It wasn't so you. I knew this was going to end up happening because if it hadn't changed recently with Microsoft, which Microsoft does great. Microsoft. Microsoft, you all know that being it. I'm not even going to say any further there. Microsoft's Microsoft. If it didn't change then, it probably didn't change now. Knew it was going to happen. Not a problem. He knew how to fix it right away. But he learned a lot from it and he learned a lot from where we need to be in the future too. So I'm invested with him.
• 13:37
  Speaker B: Yeah, you make me think of something. A coworker told me once we were having a team meeting and we were going through a couple of things and he's somebody from a military background and spent some time as in the service. And he said he had this one leader who was a sergeant who was just great, said I may let you fail, but I'm not going to let you be a failure because of exactly what you're just describing and talking about. It's also like how many of us have learned we don't do changes on Fridays. You don't make system changes on Fridays and, and especially not on a Friday before a three day weekend.
• 14:20
  Speaker A: Absolutely not. Yeah. That's why patch Tuesdays happen or Thursdays. I'm okay with Thursdays depending on the change.
• 14:26
  Speaker B: I don't know what it is.
• 14:27
  Speaker A: Yeah, right.
• 14:29
  Speaker B: Yeah. I'm thinking of some of the stuff that I promised somebody that I was going to get done. 24 hours, it's been 48. And that's turning over AI agents, or not agents, but development platforms to users. You having to deal with any of that yet in your world?
• 14:48
  Speaker A: Well, in my current world. Right. So I came from, like I said, my previous organization, much larger organization. They were dabbling in getting into a private LLM. Right. Private language model within their organization. Right now we have a couple people, but not a ton. Right. A lot of them are using it in. Hey, just having this quick thing. I need to just cross Reference something or. Hey, running into this quirk, we're starting to dabble into developing agents for within internally, specifically regarding into the service side is where the sales and service side, right. For the service side, who we deal with in. From a dealership perspective, they have a lot of great tools that are readily available from a dealership perspective, which is a little different compared to, I would like to say I came from more traditional it. Now I'm in a dealership it. It's not holistically different, but it's different enough that I'm having to learn a lot more of the ins and outs of these other platforms, the security requirements of these other vendors, because they're not vendors. They're partners, even though they're truly vendors, but they're partners in helping the business sell more, helping the business grow further. So having to learn that. Having to learn on that side, but meet the requirements of the frameworks of that they set forth. They have a lot of tools that are readily available to us as a dealer, but it's pertaining to that particular product and why we're holistically looking at it in terms of how can we be more efficient in either getting a deal. Deal set up, closing a deal, following up with them after the deal's completed, right? That's the CRM side of the house, right? Which they do a phenomenal job today. But just how can we be better, right? How can we look at things and not be okay with just being, well, this is what we've done for 10 years. This is what we've done for five years, right? That doesn't exist in it. I mean, what I was doing five years ago is I don't even think I've even touched it because now I'm doing such new things and it changes. So how can we do this and level up our entire business? And that's some of the questions that I have with the ownership and with the leadership at my current company that I'm privileged to sit at that table with and saying, hey, we can do things better by doing this. But it's gonna. It's gonna require some investment, right? It's gonna be a resource investment. It's gonna be, of course, monetary. But yeah, we have a couple. We have a particular individual who I have a great relationship with. Actually, prior to me joining that company. I knew this individual prior to and had a great relationship with prior to coming into this current organization. So we talk every day. I mean, kindness costs nothing, right? That's the name of the game. So cool.
• 17:42
  Speaker B: My Mind's been cycling on something that you said at the very beginning of our conversation that I don't know if you'd not run into it yet or how are you dealing with it. And you said never say no. And I agree with that to a point. But it may not be no. But there's also the concept of not right now. I've got this list of priorities and I've got to stay focused on these priorities. I hear you and I see the value and I want to help you with that. I just can't get to it right now. But in some ways that still comes across as no, because I can't take care of you right now because I'm still trying for the larger organization. Talk to me about that. Talk to me about your approach and dealing with those kinds of situations, because
• 18:32
  Speaker A: those are foam affectionately. So I'll talk about that. But I'm also going to include in here just another brand teaser that we'll. I'll loop back on is the most important customer right now is you. So I'm, I'll loop back on that one, right? Because it's going to play into how I'm going to explain this in the sense of never say no. But if you can't say yes right away, invest in them, with them and saying, hey, here's my project listing, right? Can I get your assistance? So great example of that. I'm looking at increasing Internet packages throughout all of our locations within the company. Right? It's long due, right? Something we've all been working together. I have. Explain it real quick.
• 19:13
  Speaker B: I'm not sure what you mean by Internet packages.
• 19:15
  Speaker A: So looking at increasing our total bandwidth at all of our locations, Right, Okay.
• 19:20
  Speaker B: All right. That kind of Internet package.
• 19:22
  Speaker A: Yeah, that kind of Internet package. So you can kind of imagine kind of the calls I'm having to deal with. Hey, okay, what's going on here? One of those customers, right? And I say customers, even coworker, customer, customer has said, hey, Internet's really terrible. Internet's really terrible. Internet's really terrible. And he said that. I said initially to him, I said, hey, I am working through this. It's on my list of things to do. I would like to prioritize this higher. Here is my list. Can I get your assistance getting them invested, Right?
• 19:58
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 19:59
  Speaker A: Okay, next response. How can I assist? I said, okay, when the time comes, I need you to say in agreeance with me, we should do this because of what was stated, right? Because of what's been happening. What's been going on Right. We can't be efficient. We can't do our work because we're having so much struggles with everything moving into the cloud from a dealership platform. Right. So I said, when the time comes, I need you invested with me. Me. And I'm working on it behind the scenes. If you want that done sooner, have an email sent to me and include some of the ownership with that. And I will respond that at that point in time, it can't be a guarantee because they also are aware of what my workload is. Right. Here are the projects that I have set forth. They've been invested with it. Right. Communication. It just, it really comes down to the communicational portion. It's never sometimes that it's a soft. No. Right. To your point. But it, hey, okay, I'm running into your resources. Either we need resources or time. Right? It's going to cost us resources or time. Can I get your assistance? Yeah, not a problem. Here's the resources or here's the time. Right? And oftentimes it ends up being, hey, just a time thing. Let's prioritize this. But coming back at that time, right? Coming back to the customer state point, there they are the most important. Whenever I talk with anybody, hey, you're the only person I'm focused on right now. You're the most important customer right now because you're calling me what's going on? And I don't. That's customer service 101 for me. That's. I mean, I had other lives outside of it, right? That's working in the retail, working in the fast food, right.
• 21:43
  Speaker B: It.
• 21:44
  Speaker A: I'm a big proponent and something I'm going to teach my children is I. I would love for you to get into it. I'd love for you to get into that kind of work if you would like to. But I will ask you to do something in retail and something in fast food because people want to have their stuff and people want to get their food. Right? When people don't get their food, they're angry. When people don't get their stuff. Right, they're angry. Right. And it's going to teach you how to handle customers. I wouldn't say at their worst, but at a not good state. And it's going to have you be adaptable enough to say, hey, okay, let's work on this together. Some of these things. Like, hey, all right, what was wrong with yours? Okay, not a problem. I will handle this. Let me go and get you a new sundae. Right? I worked at Dairy Queen just Full fledged. Let me go get you a new sundae. Here you go. Don't worry about it. I apologize. This happened and not my owners at that time said that's not a problem. Make the custom, make it right with the customer. Right. A lot, a lot of places will. And if that's not enough for them, hey, let's go ahead and get other people involved. But what else can I do to make this more efficient or more happier for you to you so you can go about your day or you can fulfill the customers you are trying to help. So within my current realm today, service, our service is huge, right. We have people that go out to locations, they are going out to locations, fixing these big excavators, big bulldozers, you name it, right? Anything from a construction standpoint, Skid steers, they're on site. Graders, they're on site fixing the stuff because it's vital that they get them go get them operational, right. When they're down, they're losing money. And the thing that grinds my gears the most is when people don't understand I'm trying. I just want the best for you no matter what. And if that means I need to just say, hey, let me get this, let me get hand on the keyboard here. We'll get you fixed. Let's get you going to the customer. Can I call you back and explain what happened? Because I want you to understand and know that for a knowledge standpoint, right, customer first. We'll work together and we'll get, we'll get you going.
• 23:49
  Speaker B: So, yeah, you know, I spent some time working in the food industry myself and bar bartending. And for the longest time, and I still really believe this, that the only differentiator today is customer service. Yes, we can do all of these other things, but so can X number of people right behind us or right beside us. So customer service is a key component to success today.
• 24:21
  Speaker A: Absolutely. Absolutely is.
• 24:24
  Speaker B: What are some of the challenges in front of you? Or actually, let me twist that question to something a little bit different. With the IT experience that you've had, what's something from the industry that you're in that you didn't expect as far as it goes, what's one of the things that you've learned that's it relevant in this construction dealership type role?
• 24:50
  Speaker A: So what I will say, and I noticed it a little bit in my previous role, my previous job too as well, and most certainly here, the days are gone of where nothing is connected to the Internet. The days are gone where the construction equipment doesn't connect to the Internet any. Those days have been long gone, right? They've been gone. But to the degree of which integrations are happening across those OEMs is astonishing. That I will say that's probably the one thing that probably surprised me the most is just how much integration within their platforms that they are doing from a cloud or Internet perspective. Very cross computing for lack of better words. Right, so the vendor to the dealership
• 25:35
  Speaker B: or the vendor within the vendor?
• 25:37
  Speaker A: I would say both. Both? Yeah. That's a great question, Mike. That's a great question. Both, right? I will say both because the currently who we one of the main people in one of our main product lines that we sell, there's a lot of inner within that vendor developing to make things better for a dealership perspective. Right? That's a benefit of selling that piece of equipment or that branding of equipment. Conversely, it's a lot for us as a dealership to say, okay, now you're expecting us to upgrade all of our hardware because you made a major change and we knew about this September of 25 and you're expecting it to be completed by the end of 26. Not a huge deal can do it, but they are just, they're moving at a much faster pace that sometimes I feel like the dealerships are having a little bit of a harder time keeping up unless there's a major investment from that perspective of hey, we gotta make sure we have the latest and the greatest of the Internet, we have Internet speeds, we need to make sure we have the latest and the greatest of hardware specifications. And if you don't have somebody overseeing all that, that it costs money. It's time and resources, right? That's the name of the game, right? And being kind about that one is saying here's what the hard battles are at. Here's where I see within my first couple months the writing was on the wall and I explained that. I said guys, I'm seeing the writing on the wall here is this vendor is going to be more agile when it comes to adoption of Internet facing products and connectivity. And it's great because it's a business move. A great example is one of the service managers at Nilocation. He's like, hey, come check this out. He showed me this because this is what he does right within this platform. He was able to actually remote into a customer's excavator and see them driving and working their, their excavator at real time and diagnose it in real time. And that's a Huge benefit. But that costs Internet speed. That costs making sure you have hardware that's compatible for it. That's costing. Making sure you have infrastructure that could be compatible for it too. Right. Not just Internet, but overall, if there's anything that goes with it, and unless you have somebody managing that or overseeing it on a somewhat frequent basis, then the vendors are just going to keep going. Right. They want to be the leading. They want to lead that. Their section, that construction or construction and forestry section. They want to lead it and they're going to keep going. And it's us to keep. Keep up with that.
• 28:20
  Speaker B: Yeah. And it's definitely one of the challenges of trying to keep up with the developments of those that we're using. One of the traps that I've run into over the years is like having a custom development team and they develop something, or we're one of the first ones to integrate with said vendor. And so we set up this custom integration with them, and we're on version one and we think it's the stuff because we're the first ones to do it, and we're doing that. And then time keeps going by and time marches on, and then next thing you know, they're on version. The vendors on version five. We're still on version one because we think we're the cat's meow. Yeah, thank you. Because I was coming up with all
• 29:07
  Speaker A: kinds of ones that are probably not.
• 29:09
  Speaker B: Yeah. Copacetic for the podcast. But yeah, so the. We think we're the cat meow and we're four versions behind because we've gotten in this trap of, hey, we were the first ones to do this, so our stuff's good. And yet now others have done that and learned and modified and advanced and so recognizing when the vendor starts to or continues to advance these things that we help them start and then leveraging those things. It's. Sometimes it's kind of tricky because I get busy doing the day to day.
• 29:43
  Speaker A: Sometimes you got to put the firefighter hat on, and that's what you're doing some days, and other days you're taking that off and you're able to do, oh, hey, we need to do this. Right. And one of the neat things that I, like I said how I just operate myself personally is I'm the first person to put firefighter hat on. I wouldn't do anything that I wouldn't ask somebody else to do. That's the biggest thing is it goes a lot further than just talking the talk, but by walking the walk and walking with that.
• 30:11
  Speaker B: So are there surprising things in your career since we asked about it at the current organization? What's something that as you started out as an intern that you never expected?
• 30:24
  Speaker A: Yeah, starting off as an intern right when I started professionally, right now, mind you, I was working with computers because my father. Right. So I'm a little bit, I will say I'm a little bit more formalized compared to some of even my current employees or past employees. Right. Within command prompt. Right. Like that can be a little bit of a skill. Now, not a lot of people know how to do it any further, but like actually rebuilding a computer from command prompt, like. Right. I could still. I would be able to help use that help document a little bit within command prompt, but I'd get through it.
• 31:00
  Speaker B: Which OS are you talking about?
• 31:03
  Speaker A: Well, I go all the way back to 95, so I did have a GUI. I didn't go further back to than that, but from 95. Right. So Windows 95, when I started professionally, Windows 7 was the predominant one and server. Yeah, right. So I started professionally. Right. How much has changed? If you would have told me if Scott 202012 would have said, hey, in 12 years from now you're going to be able to open up a browser, type in a few things and spit out a whole computer program for you, I would have said, that sure sounds like Skynet. That sounds scary.
• 31:40
  Speaker B: Yeah, Lots of people are scared of it.
• 31:42
  Speaker A: So the one citizen developer we kind of joke, right, that I gave keys to the theme park to. I always said make sure to always say thank you. Right. Like you don't know what could happen down the road. Right. Make sure you say thank you. I would have believed it, of course, but I would have been very, very skeptical. I would have said, okay, how. Right. That would have been the next question. Like, how are we going to get to that point? And we're. Right now we're in this AI age, right, where it's such a hot topic where I live regionally, there's major data centers going up for this stuff regionally in my area. And it's just astonishing how much that has really taken off not just from a professional standpoint, which is kind of the interesting thing. Personal. Right. You talk about the lit RPG stuff, right. Personally using some of that AI to build some artwork for my own art within my own RPG sessions. Right. It's really interesting to see how things are going and just keeping up the times with Claude and how that's going and every. Not to get into that topic, but it's that would say the biggest thing that surprised me was that actually coming to fruition and moving forward at the speed it's going a long time, I felt as a long time through the digital era, I will say we always had software limited by hardware. I think now we're at the reason why we saw bigger growth as we have is because we don't have that limiting factor anymore. The hardware manufacturing process has caught up.
• 33:20
  Speaker B: Yeah, well, and, but I think we're starting to see new constraints around that. I mean, come on, look, we're looking at the price of RAM today and how it's jumped 2 to 300% in the last six months.
• 33:35
  Speaker A: So yeah, I mean it may be mistakes, new constraints. Right. Like, and that's what I'll say is, I'll agree with you, Mike, on that one. The new constraints that came forth now I'll be interested to see if how that's going to be solved in the next little bit.
• 33:53
  Speaker B: Yeah. And I need to go back and see who it was. But I was watching an interview with somebody and he's like one of the founders of, I want to say it was of OpenAI and he was talking about how in some of their tests they started to see agents or agentic AI protect itself. It would have connectors into email. And they were setting up tests and scenarios. And so the developers are emailing each other back and forth saying, hey, okay, it's about time for us to go ahead and release this new version of this agent. And the old agent is watching those emails and going, wait a minute, that means I'm going away. And so it writes its code somewhere else, saves its code somewhere else and instantiates itself over on that computer instead of on the computer where it had been started. And they're starting to see some of that autonomy or that agency from some of the agents. And it was, to him, it was an eye opening moment. He was like, what have I done? Back to like the oh, Oppenheimer and destroyer world.
• 35:14
  Speaker A: Yeah. And it's funny you mentioned it because I was listening to a podcast recently actually about that. Right. And governance around AI and how some of the founders have actually put in openness when you get of X age to have a moral fiber to AI, Right and wrong. And actually what they did was they tested it and then they tried to push to a certain extreme for the AI agent to say, no, I'm not going to, or just completely shut down and not do that. Right. They it made a choice organically. Right. But it's really interesting to see If AI in that product. Right. Or that technology is going to impact. And I think it already is, and somewhat without me doing any of the research from manufacturing, is it going to help increase that manufacturing to where. All right, the RAM prices, they've gone up substantially because of AI, but can AI now be used to drive those prices back down or sustain them in a better fashion? Right. That's how I'll say that.
• 36:20
  Speaker B: Yeah. It'll be interesting how we solve some of these issues and when do we get around to them and when's the singularity happen?
• 36:30
  Speaker A: That's. I always say thank you. So life tip, always say thank you at the end of whatever you're doing with AI. Just say thank you back to.
• 36:37
  Speaker B: Back to the very beginning of this. Kindness costs nothing.
• 36:42
  Speaker A: Correct. It's came full circle. It's amazing.
• 36:45
  Speaker B: Funny how that happens sometimes. Anything else going on in your career? And actually talk to me a little bit more about how you went from being one of the IT guys to having been heard. How did you, besides being kind and being known as the nice IT guy, the one that has a personality, how did you get that seat at the table to talk to these guys and for them to listen to you? What would you do differently than your peers?
• 37:17
  Speaker A: I would say what I did differently is understanding the business. And I wouldn't say the who's, but understanding the business and how it works and understanding everybody in the business too. So that's something that I really, really strive for. And I'm still today, right. Because I've only been with my current company about five months now, so I'm still meeting people, I'm still learning people, understanding what they do, what they struggle with, people that I've already met, working through process improvements and everything of that sort, but really understanding the business and understanding where all of the eggs are, where are all the eggs found? How do we protect the eggs? How do we make sure chickens have lay more eggs? Right. Understanding that if you can take the time and don't be scared to reach out to those individuals and ask. People want to talk about their jobs, people want to talk and have people learn how they do their jobs. It's like your name. The sweetest word in the English language is your name. It's a scientifically proven fact. Right. So when you're fixing their computer, when you're working with them, hey, Mike, what do you do in the trucking industry? Explain to me how that business operates. Rates. Right. I came from an area that had multiple different companies underneath a holding company. So, hey, how do you measure how much sag is needed between electric poles? I will never use it in a million years, Mike. I have no intentions to climb up on electrical pole and string cable from one to another. 0 chance. But I can confidently tell you I could if needed to measure how much is in between those two poles manually. Because somebody said, hey, let me show you this real quick while you're fixing it and talk while you're fixing my computer and talk to you how I do this. And they took the time to do that. Now, in that same breath, I also then told them how I fixed the computer by changing the spark plug in their engine and now they're firing it in all cylinders.
• 39:26
  Speaker B: Again, back to the analogy.
• 39:27
  Speaker A: Ah, see? Talking in ways people can understand and digest. Right. It has a ton of lingo. Dealership has a ton of lingo that I'm learning again. So I'm learning a whole new language here. Right. And I love it. I love learning. Right? I love learning, but I love teaching too. But in order to teach, I need to learn. So it kind of goes hand in hand. And learning that and learning the business, that's one of the things that I had probably a light bulb go off in my head saying, hey, okay, I'm proficient, I'm excelling in it, but I'm not getting to where I want to be. How can I do things differently? And why keep it? Why by doing the same thing, am I not getting a different result? Right. Doing the same thing, expecting a different result is insanity. We all know that. So I changed things. I changed the medium. Right. So I changed and said, okay, how can I learn about the business? Show me the business, tell me how to do things. Once again, come back to how I was raised asking questions, being learning, teaching. I don't want to be the only person knowing everything. I don't.
• 40:32
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 40:32
  Speaker A: Because if I win the million dollar Powerball, if multi million dollar Powerball, I get run over by a bus. I want the business to continue without me. Right. Like that's just the thing. I want people to continue to learn and have that framework that it's okay to learn and it's okay to teach.
• 40:47
  Speaker B: Got another question for you.
• 40:49
  Speaker A: Yep.
• 40:49
  Speaker B: Make a prediction. What do you think it or everyone in it will be talking about in 18 months?
• 40:57
  Speaker A: So it's probably going to come as a shocker. We're going to talk about, continue to talk about AI here. That's not going to go away.
• 41:03
  Speaker B: Right.
• 41:05
  Speaker A: What I think is going to end up happening is I think people are going to realize in 18 months within it that it's an amplifier and it can help be making your already productive people more productive, your business processes more efficient and more effective and quicker to close the deal, quicker to get that customer a new excavator, quicker to get that customer a new dozer. Right. I think that, that what you're going to see is agents are going to be helpful. Agents are going to provide a clarity and a standard in businesses across all industries. I, I think what's going to end up happening is you're going to see that there's going to be a level set of. This is the singularity platform we have for all of our AI here. It's connected all of our systems. Now what would take three people to do something is going to be the outcome is those three people are still doing that, but they're doing, gaining more out of that. Right. So the jobs I sure we might, things might change from a job perspective from that entry level position. But I think what we're going to see is we're going to have some of those people that are those main operators that were normally it'd be like if one person is doing this, you can expect 10. One of my previous ways, previous careers was I worked in magazine printing, right? So one person can print off 10 magazines. I think with AI you're gonna see one person can now do 25 magazines, one person can do 30 magazines and I think it's gonna amplify that and you're gonna get a higher value out of those individuals while using AI compared to having to have that intrinsical master knowledge. In order to say I can print these 10 magazines proficient in making sure they're 100 accurate. Right. You're going to get 25 now because you're leveraging AI as that amplifier. You're still going to need to have the machine operators, you're still going to need to have the people that did the one to the one person, the 10 magazine because they're going to be overseeing now those operators that are going to be printing off that one to 25 magazines. That's the best way I can kind of describe it. You're going to see this amplification throughout out most organizations just because of the leveraging of the agentic AI, it's not going to go away. I don't foresee that happening, but I foresee happening the leveraging it as the only thing you're using, right. You're going to be using a multitude of different tools and that's just one tool to help you amplify it to be better. Right. That is singularity. Not in any stretch. So, yeah.
• 44:01
  Speaker B: A couple of interesting thoughts in all of that, however. Well, it's. I'm not going to lose my job to it, but I'm going to lose my job to somebody else like me, who's using it if I'm not using it.
• 44:18
  Speaker A: Correct, Correct. But then the entry level to that side for you, Mike, is those first people. That's where you come in now. Cause you've done it. But you need to know how to do it. Right. How can you teach people if you don't know yourself?
• 44:31
  Speaker B: Yeah. Oh, and that's one of the fun challenges right now, teaching people how to do it. Giving them the keys to that park.
• 44:38
  Speaker A: Giving them the keys to the park. Right. And saying, okay, don't go open up that hood because you shouldn't see what's underneath there because it's going to abuse you. It's running fine. Let it go. Let's make sure you get on the ride. Or we're improving whatever route. Right. Purposely kind of said if. Well, right, exactly. Exactly. And that's being more efficient at their jobs. That's what I'll say is. I don't foresee it's going to replace jobs, but I definitely think it's going to help increase profits, increase revenue, increase customer satisfaction. I will say, like, right, like that's going to be a thing. Sometimes I like still talking to the individual. I'm odd in that regard. But if I can get what I need off of a chat without in a busy time, then I'll go that route. But if I need to talk to somebody because it's a bigger issue, then it's nice to talk to people too. And that's where I think maybe positive. Right. We're going to see more efficiencies. I think the negatives of that 18 months is. I think we're going to lose a little bit of that. And that kind of concerns me of the human element. Right. The soft touch, the bedside matter. That's the best way I can say it.
• 45:50
  Speaker B: Okay. Yeah. And not necessarily the tribal knowledge, but more of the bedside manner of the interactions, the peers, the coworkers, the getting
• 46:00
  Speaker A: up and going to desks. It's going to be a, hey, did you consult the knowledge base article? Or hey, did you try doing this or did you try resetting it? It's going to be a. Did you consult AI? Did you reach out to art as a bot? Yeah. And it's a little concerning From a customer service standpoint, because it can be a little cold. Right. Like, I think that's a good place for your own timeframe. Like, right. If you're busy, like I said, if I personally, if I'm busy and I can ask that, and I don't gotta do anything, cool, I'll do that. But if I can't get what I'm needing out of there within 10 minutes, 15 minutes, I'll pick up the phone.
• 46:39
  Speaker B: Oh, you're patient.
• 46:41
  Speaker A: Oh, oh, yeah. To a fault sometimes, Mike. To a fault. But yes, at the end of the day, very patient. Right. Saying thank you to the AI bots. Right. Making sure they understand, being patient, being kind, being open and receptive to both teaching and learning. It's not about the tribal knowledge, it's about the knowledge period. Right. It's about everybody working together. Whether you're an AI agent or an in person agent. We're all working together.
• 47:09
  Speaker B: Yep. For sure. Thank you for your time today, Scott. You got anything out there that you want to promote? You got any side projects or anything that you're. You're doing?
• 47:20
  Speaker A: Yeah, so I am working a little bit within a couple agents personally, just dabbling with it. Right. As much as I layer to say, learning it, trying to integrate it more into my home lab. Right. Like that's putting some guide rails there. I, once again, just because I'm an IT manager doesn't mean that I'm not an IT nerd. And I love the IT aspect. Right. I love the project management aspect of that too. But from an overall perspective, learning a ton, continual learn, don't ever be afraid to ask a question because if you don't know, let's find out together. If I don't know, let's find out together. Right. And that's one of the biggest things I'll say for everybody kind of listening to here is don't ever be afraid to ask the questions. There is no stupid question, Right. Everybody says that. It's cliche a little bit. Right. But at the end of the day, I would rather come talk to your IT sport people, maybe bring them a cookie or something like that. They're pretty kind at the end of the day, everybody can get a little hangry sometimes, but we want everybody in it, I think overall and myself included, we just want you guys to be successful. We're all trying to be successful here. That's what I was saying, everybody. For the people that know me, feel free to reach out if you have any questions afterwards. Right. You should know how to get a hold of me if that's the case.
• 48:38
  Speaker B: Yep. Well, definitely reach out to people in the community and you've been heard community. Please reach out to Scott Coutts and talk to him. Let's help each other and be successful altogether. So thank you again for listening to another episode of you've been Hurt. Please make sure to drop a comment, give us a like wherever you're happening, grab the podcast and come find us on the you've been heard.com and check out our IT community that we're building here where we get to help each other and talk about today's solutions. So thanks again, Scott. Have a wonderful day. Thank you.
• 49:13
  Speaker A: You too. Mike Sa.