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376- Grant Walsh: The Golf Course Leadership Philosophy · You've Been Heard

• 0:09
  Speaker A: Welcome everyone back to dissecting popular IT Nerds with Grant Walsh on the show. Kind of a big deal. You know, I really like your, your quote. You know, a good leader takes a little more than his share of the blame and a little less than his share of the credit. You know, maybe we should start there. Just give me, you know, who you are, what you do, and how we're going to get out of the executive round seat rather than into the executive round seat.
• 0:31
  Speaker B: Ooh, that's a deep place to start, but yeah. Grant Walsh. I'm director of IT for a company here in Charlotte, North Carolina. I oversee everything on the infrastructure, operations and security side. I've been in the IT space for 20 some odd years now, primarily in the leadership. I've been blessed to be in the leadership side. But to your point, once you're in it, you're in it especially you've been out as long as I have. So yeah, it's. It. I kind of like it. I don't have a. It's one of my, my joys. I like, I really like working with people and in the technology space, as you know, either like working with people or you don't. And there's two different areas for you to be in it. So no, I've been blessed in a good spot to be over the last 20 some odd years.
• 1:11
  Speaker A: You're in North Carolina. I've been there many a times because my old partnership companies that I was a partner in before we sold was called Converged Network Services Group. We were in North Carolina. And so with North Carolina comes one thing, and that would be what's your handicap?
• 1:28
  Speaker B: Ooh, see, See, my typical background's a golf background. So it doesn't show up on this one. But I, My handicap right now is.
• 1:35
  Speaker A: Like a 12 something right now, I would say above. I don't even know what the national handicap average is. That's got to be way above average. I mean, 12's 12 is reasonable. I mean, that's. Yeah, that's reasonable. I mean, that's. I was, I was a 12 in high school. I'm probably like a 24 right now or whatever the max is. What's the max? 36. I don't even know. I don't remember.
• 1:53
  Speaker B: No, there is no max. I mean, I think the average golfer, I think I've seen it pop up stats lately. The average golfer, United States won't break a hundred. So if you're breaking 100, you're good. If you break 90, you're better. And if you're breaking 80. You're pretty good. Now, we don't compare ourselves to the tour players because those are the 1% of the 1%, so. But for all of us average hacks. Yeah. I feel like I got some friends that are better. So I go out there, I'm like, I think I'm good. And I play with them. Like, wow, I'm not that good there.
• 2:20
  Speaker A: We have some, like, perfect. We have like a couple professional golfers, like in the. In our field, of course, you know, they're usually vendors. Like, they're usually vendors.
• 2:29
  Speaker B: Yep.
• 2:30
  Speaker A: Because that's all they're doing all day.
• 2:31
  Speaker B: It's playing golf. Yeah.
• 2:33
  Speaker A: My problem is I took up jiu jitsu, so that was. The golf kind of dissipated years ago. Although I should pull the old. I should pull the Mizunos out. Pull the Mizunas out. What's your favorite club?
• 2:44
  Speaker B: I have a hodgepodgener. I'm a Callaway irons guy, but I'm a tailor made when it comes to the hybrids and the driver stuff. But I love my bookie wedges, so I got a little mixed neck.
• 2:53
  Speaker A: You'd get along great with my father, the doctor. So see, this is. This is how. This is how you become an IT leader. This is. There's a lot more to this than you'd think. You know what I mean? If we could probably do a whole show on the metaphor of golf, to IT leadership and how you communicate with people and the rules, the unwritten rules and the politeness and not walking over someone's lie, and there's probably a lot of things that. Let's just do it. We haven't done this. Let's do a golf metaphor. Like, so let's take your number one IT rule or way of being. What is one of the most important ways of being. And we're going to do this as the golf metaphor part of the show. And you must take. You must take your number one way of being as an IT leader and compare that to a rule in golf, unwritten or written, whether it be a gentlemanly rule, whether it be a Caddyshack reference, whether it be. I don't care.
• 3:47
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 3:49
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 3:49
  Speaker B: But I think there is. It's more of an unwritten rule in golf. But there's kind of some of the things I'd lean to is more the servant attitude here. Leader. Right. Serving your team, trying to help your team in golf. Like, let's say you're teeing off. A lot of times, some folks you play with, you hit yours or they hit theirs, it's fine. And they walk back to the car. I hit mine. I'm up there by myself. There's nobody there trying to help me make sure I see where the ball goes. Because sometimes some of those shots do go off course and you can't see it having an extra set of eyes. We're playing together. I watched yours. Why don't you stay there, watch mine?
• 4:23
  Speaker A: And I never slice. So now we can add in the Caddyshack reference as well for all you young, all you youngsters out there.
• 4:34
  Speaker B: Exactly.
• 4:34
  Speaker A: Okay.
• 4:35
  Speaker B: There's, there's, there is a lot. Like, I truly look at golf to learn a lot about people in general. I talk to a lot of vendors, a lot of partners, even colleagues. I can learn a lot about you, personality wise on the golf course that I can't learn in the office. You're a different person on the course that. Can I trust you? Are you personable enough? I want to deal with you on a regular basis. I feel like as if I had a relationship with a, as a partner. Is this someone I could call and talk to or someone that's going to annoy the heck out of me? Or do you have anger management issues? What's the situation like? Can you hold your own when it comes to drinking beer and playing? Like, I learn a lot about people on the golf course.
• 5:09
  Speaker A: Anger management.
• 5:11
  Speaker B: If you don't play golf, you're not going to enjoy this episode.
• 5:16
  Speaker A: You got. It's. Everything you just said is so true. We've never done this before. Why have we not done this? Yes, Anger management issues. If a golf club flies into the pond somewhere. Yes, yes. So true. And you'll learn a lot about someone's family too, as well. If they come from a family of golfers. We gotta do another one. Well, let's. First of all, let's. We first have to solidify this first point, which is do you care enough about the other team members, whether they are above you, below you, parallels, who you, whatever. Do you care enough about them to stick around for a few extra minutes to make sure that everything goes right for them? Or are you like, hey, I used you for what I need you for and like, let's get in the car and move on to the next thing. Now there is something to be said about the people that are behind you on the golf course as well. Because it could be a very busy day. Could be a very busy day. And you can't be the guys that play the five hour round of golf.
• 6:18
  Speaker B: No.
• 6:18
  Speaker A: And not Let people play through. So there is a certain amount of, hey, we need to, we need to pick up and get going here. We don't, we, we can't take all day to play a round of golf. So there's another metaphor there that we could speak to that's probably, could be aligned with the business and are we behind? Are we ahead? Yes.
• 6:37
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 6:37
  Speaker A: But if you stick around and helped watch that person that you know is going to slice most of the time, then you would help pick up the speed of the round by sticking around. So sometimes rushing ahead.
• 6:46
  Speaker B: Right.
• 6:46
  Speaker A: Is not necessarily faster. Sometimes slower is faster.
• 6:51
  Speaker B: It's very selfish to rush your head. But also, if you do have an errant shot, if I have a good relationship with you, you get the courtesy of, hey, drop up here by me. I'm in the middle of the fairway. Drop with me. Let's keep going. Let's do this together. Let's have a, let's go out there and have a good time. I'm not a tour player. I'm not a tournament guy. We're here to have a good time. Don't go looking. I mean, if the Pro V1, then you want to go find us, go find it. I'll give you five minutes. Let's get that out of the woods. Let's keep going. Yeah.
• 7:16
  Speaker A: You may have just saved anger management guy.
• 7:19
  Speaker B: Right? 100.
• 7:21
  Speaker A: You don't even know if he's in it. You don't even know if he has anger management problems yet. Because you're, because you're so fun to play with.
• 7:26
  Speaker B: If you go out there and you yelling and screaming and you're mad and you're playing with me, I'm like, we're doing something wrong. We're out there to have a good time. We're not there to make it that serious. It's about again, relationship wise. And you help me. I help you. I would help you read your putts. We'll work together. Together. We're a team on this. Even if we're competing, we're still a team.
• 7:44
  Speaker A: Further, farther together.
• 7:51
  Speaker C: 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, wait. Join a growing network of over 160 senior IT leaders, where real voices shape real conversations.
• 8:21
  Speaker A: Where else can we go with this? So what does that have to say? What's your why?
• 8:25
  Speaker B: My why? I would, for me, when I in leadership wise why is to see people develop. That's always been why I like leadership so much. Because to the point of the quote you mentioned earlier, you're going to take a lot of the blame and the flack as a leader, you just are as. And if you, if you pass it onto your team, you're not gonna, they're not gonna follow you or wanna go in the direction you wanna go with. But for me, that's something as a leadership. Over the, over the time I've been able to be a leader, it's really helped mentor and help people grow and even follow up and later, hey, how's it going? We know we're connected on LinkedIn. Or just see them get promoted and watch their leadership path grow on their own or even just their technical skill sets grow and see them become things. That is the why. Like it's so often look back and say, oh, I helped that person. I got to be one part of their journey. That's cool to see them grow and just see people become more than they, they probably thought they could because somebody actually invested in them and tried to make them better, help them grow along the way. Because it is really even, even for me. I look back and then think about the people I worked with that helped me get to where I needed to get to today and that I took little pieces on. So it's, that's the why for me as far as leadership wise. I mean, yes, sometimes the money's good, yes, sometimes the perks are good, but the people are like, why is my why?
• 9:35
  Speaker A: Yeah, otherwise it would be just about the money and we'd all be miserable. We are talking about how you get out of the seat of the executive roundtable. But in reality, how do we get into the seat of the executive roundtable and keep that seat? Because I have been looking up a lot of statistics lately and 93% of CTOs still think their team is the IT help desk. They don't think of their team as the executives or the C level executives sitting around them at the roundtable. That's pretty mind blowing. That means that they have not made the transition in they, they don't see their team as the C levels. And one of the. I don't know if I'm called complaints. I'm just using that because it's the word that comes to my Mind right now is that it is kind of invisible or we don't get the respect that we need or. Well, we get the respect when things are going wrong or there's been a cyber attack or something. All of a sudden we're like everyone's most important person. But when everything's running, we're a cost center. And it might have something to do with that. 93% of the people thinking of their team still is the IT help desk. What I'm saying is, is you get the seat at the executive roundtable. Are you really sitting in that seat? And maybe you got there because you had a few couple wins, but what are you doing every single day to re earn that seat? And I think a lot of us get into this position like, oh, I'm cto, I've got tenure. And that is not true.
• 10:58
  Speaker B: Right? Yeah. There's different parts of it that drive value. Right. I like people hang up on the service desk and on the infrastructure side, cybersecurity, there's to your point and a lot of what people mentioned, there isn't a lot of glory on that side of the house because I've always told the team that I've had things along the way. We're the roads and bridges folks. We take care of the roads and bridges. We work at night, but nobody cares until there's a giant pothole or bridge goes out. That's just what it is. You know, it's our job as leaders to drive the kind of, you know, the congratulations and the fame to internally to that team. But at the leadership level, your job is to work with your colleague, whether it be at the director level, the C level, whatever the case may be, to understand their challenges and how it as a resource or commodity can solve those challenges to drive value to our customers. Outside of infrastructure ops, obviously, applications, team, CRM teams, all those teams have that front facing. Hey, they have direct impact to what they're doing to support their customers. There's those pieces and that's sometimes those easier for them to tie what they do day to day to that value they're driving to the business. But other areas, it's a little tougher. But I agree. I think at the leadership level, your team that supports you to help support that business is different. But my colleagues are my fellow directors, VPs, you know, the executives as we work together to, you know, increase, you know, increase EBITDA or drive revenue, drive down cost. It is a cost center. How do I lower the cost? And my infrastructure team in general, like, hey guys, what can we do to lower the cost of data centers or cloud consumption, whatever the case may be, those, while they're not, you know, beautiful things that we can do, the company just loves it. It's a line on the, on the P and L. Hey, we've lowered costs this year. We brought this down. We've helped impact EBITDA directly. So that's my job, to make sure we correlate what the business is trying to do to what my team is doing. So it's definitely a challenge, but there is a lot of value. I think it has changed. I think it was always just there for the tech stuff. But the good leaders and I think the folks who really succeed are the ones who take the time to understand what, to your point, their executive team is trying to do at the business level. How can we impact that? What value can we add there? What's new technology that I hate? Say AI, but we'll say the AI buzzword, but how can we leverage that more? How can we get that into the tools they're using? Because their customers are asking for it. So there's a lot of things we can do that we're expected to do. And we have to be kind of proactive. Listen, come up with the solutions or come up with opportunities and some of that stuff will come for the business. Like to your point earlier, with the Gen Z, Gen Y, Gen Alpha, Beta, the new generations that are out there, they're bringing a lot of technology to us because they're just pushing the envelope a lot more than they used to. So there's a lot more opportunities there for us to adapt to it and not be the old stingy it of nope. We want to be the no it. We want to be the idea that's a good idea. How can we do that in a manner that's secure but also adds value? So that's where I, again, if you're doing it right at the executive level, you do a couple of those. You do build trust with your colleagues at the executive level and now they start coming to you. You're not just the, you're not just there to slam the hammer down and say, no, that's not secure or no, we're not going to do that. It's how are we going to get. Make this work drive value?
• 14:01
  Speaker A: There's so much there. First of all, you said EBITDA, and out of 360 shows, you might have been one out of three person that brought up EBITDA before I did. So that's great. What are the most important KPIs that IT directors could use make up. I'm a fan of an IT director making up, completely making up his own, termed KPI. The Walsh KPI. The Walsh effect, number two, the Grant effect or the gw, the GW effect or the Walsh KPI. And finally, how do we not become the department of no?
• 14:41
  Speaker B: I think it's. Well, it starts with leadership. Has to have that cultural shift change because I feel like the NO is antiquated. It's kind of the old school way of doing things. And if your leadership is kind of entrenched in the old way of doing things, then that knows it's going to happen. So it starts with leadership. Like if I have, if I run around saying no to everything and everything gets escalated to me, it's no, we're not going to do that. No, we're not going to put this in. No, we're not going to allow that. And the team starts doing that as well. And it starts with you to drive that cultural shift. So what we've always done on my teams isn't no, it's. I want this. Okay, well, I can't allow that. What we can do is we can work with this or, you know, this is a. That what you're asking puts us in a weird security position and exposes us in ways we don't want that. But we can't do X, Y and Z. We can work together. It's not a no, it's a different way of doing things. So it's in ways that it's, you know, something that doesn't put us in a security risk position isn't going to blow the bankroll. We budgeted for it. We plan for it. Yeah, let's do it. Let's play it on.
• 15:41
  Speaker A: We do. Can you give me an example? We need real life example here. Let's. If you can think of one.
• 15:46
  Speaker B: I think the, the easy one up front. Okay. I want to use ChatGPT as an organization. I want to, I want to use that. Okay, well what are you using it for? Well, I, I want to throw these documents or I want to ask the questions around our, you know, our workload or whatever the case may be that a brand is using. Okay, well we don't want to throw that out into a public tool like that and just start uploading the data. What we do have on the back end, we have Copilot. It's in our own little area. It's secure, it's controlled. We can do that. How about we do that. Well, what if I would do X, Y and Z? Okay, well, how's Copilot? Yeah, exactly. Well, yeah, here's how we do that, here's how we secure that, and here's how we.
• 16:23
  Speaker A: This is some of them.
• 16:24
  Speaker B: Yeah, but even though.
• 16:25
  Speaker A: Why did you tell us we had this?
• 16:26
  Speaker B: Yeah. And here's where we're going with it. You know, we're going to lock down some of our data in the back end so that you, you know, you can search whatever you want to search. If you want to find your SharePoint files, you want to find your emails easier. That's all coming. Here's the roadmap for us to get there. But don't use ChatGPT because it does take the stuff you're trying to do and expose it to everybody. And do you want that to happen? We're all on the same page. So it's more explaining the why to them why we're not doing this, but also giving them another option to get where they want to get to. Anyway.
• 16:55
  Speaker A: What I see you doing is using ChatGPT. What I cannot have you doing is using ChatGPT. And the reason why is you're exposing our data to the public. What I need you to do is use Copilot. And the reason why is it's freaking awesome.
• 17:12
  Speaker B: You know, I'll let me add this though too, because there. So this came. I worked in retail a long time ago and there was just like the overcoming the no from a customer, the feel felt found method. I know how you feel. Other customers have felt the sound same way until they found out. We do that all the time. That's a great way. And I know how you feel about chat, cvt. Other brands employees felt the same way until they found out about Copilot. Oh, I like Copilot.
• 17:36
  Speaker A: I remember the feel felt found. I couldn't feel it. I don't know, I never felt it. I love. I love overcoming objections, though. I love it. I love no.
• 17:47
  Speaker B: No.
• 17:47
  Speaker A: You have to embrace the no. So we went from the department of no to you are the department of embracing the no. And when I went through. When I quit Starbucks years ago, I went to a Cisco startup and it was total churn and burn and I had to survive and make it, which I did. They taught us aciac, agree, confirm, isolate, answer, close, ac, which is how you overcome any objection. So which is like, okay, agree. Oh, you want to use ChatGPT. I get it. It's awesome. See, how can we even do it with this one?
• 18:25
  Speaker B: I agree.
• 18:25
  Speaker A: What Did I just say acic? Oh, confirm. So what I'm understanding here, let me just make sure I understand you correctly, is that you need want to use some sort of kind of open AI tool to be able to correlate data with whatever. Agree, confirm, isolate. Am I understanding you correctly? Yes, that's it. Now we need to isolate it. Is that it? Is that, is that the only thing you're coming to me with today? Well actually we need to replace the CRM as well. Okay so let me make sure I understand. So you want to come. You want to use OpenAI and you also want to replace the CRM. We're not going to use that though. We're going to just keep it with ChatGPT. So we've isolated answer. Well, I'm sorry, we can't do that. However, we do have a great option which is Microsoft. We already pay for it and it's included. I don't know if you've ever seen this. Have you ever seen this before? Take a look. Are we answering this? Yes. Next look. Will that take care of what you want to do? Wow, this is awesome. I'm using it. Great. Then that settles that. You must now tie this down. That settles that. And you agree that we're not using OpenAI, we're going to use Microsoft instead. Yeah, this is great. Awesome. We have now aciaced that and when I was in a position I felt the same way as you before.
• 19:40
  Speaker B: Think about that.
• 19:41
  Speaker A: If that Microsoft works just as well if not better.
• 19:44
  Speaker B: Yeah but if you take if that's one thing to change too from the IT front end like these are your customers like you like that's something we teach all the time to our teams. Like these are our customers. Like treat them as customers. And if they're customers, you've got to have empathy. You gotta take the time to understand what they're trying to do. What what are they going for even not we we make it. I don't say a curse word like the dollar jar thing but we don't like to call them users. Users has a derogatory hey, I'm up on this tower of it looking down at my users. No, they're all customers. How do we support our customers so that that feel felt found the other.
• 20:15
  Speaker A: Method the engineers call them end losers not and that comes first.
• 20:20
  Speaker B: That comes through your emails, that comes through your chat messages. They don't come through.
• 20:25
  Speaker A: So so we went through that really quickly. But the the truth is is really digging in more might you when you when you're Agreeing and getting to confirming what the actual issue is that they want. You really kind of have to dig in there. You really have to say, well, why, like you were saying, like, why do you want to use Chance?
• 20:39
  Speaker B: Right.
• 20:40
  Speaker A: Might there be any other thing that you would want to use it for? Well, I kind of like it better than Google. Okay.
• 20:45
  Speaker B: What else?
• 20:46
  Speaker A: What else? Like, can you give me five other reasons? Keep going. Let's go. Let's keep going. Are you sure there's not any other reason why you might want to use this tool and you're not tempted. Are you. Are you tempted at all to use this tool on the side as kind of this other shadow IT thing? Do you know what shadow it means?
• 21:03
  Speaker B: Yeah, it lurks in the shadows.
• 21:06
  Speaker A: This is. Okay, so we've overcome objections. You must overcome. You must embrace the. No, Embrace the.
• 21:11
  Speaker B: No.
• 21:11
  Speaker A: Overcome objections. What's the. What's the Walsh KPI? Let's just. And if you don't have it, let's just make one up right now. What are the top five most important things that an IT department should be tracking to impact ebitda?
• 21:26
  Speaker B: I think it's. It's a small but unwritten thing. Is the. Is the employee retention. What's my turnover look like in the IT group? Because every time I have to go to hire somebody, there's a retrain factor, there's a reset of the salary. There's all kinds of stuff. I can just keep people in, keep them happy, train them up, keep them going. That impacts even a continuous. It's. We. If I have to go out and hire, it's gonna cost me more to rehire somebody. Let's keep the people we have happy. They'll actually generate more in terms of customer service because they're happy. That's. That's a trackable impact to ebitda because I don't have to keep hiring people every six months.
• 21:59
  Speaker A: You know, there's definitely some numbers and statistics there. We should use ChatGPT for that. I mean, no, we just maybe.
• 22:06
  Speaker B: Grok.
• 22:06
  Speaker A: Everyone's telling me grok. It's a different flavor every day, honestly. One's better the next day. One's better the other day. I was a big fan of Claude for a while. Okay, Employee retention number one on the Walsh KPI.
• 22:18
  Speaker B: Yes.
• 22:18
  Speaker A: There's no R in your name, but we're going to figure out retention. There's not a single letter in retention. Oh, but Happy's in there. Happy is in there. So that's the last letter. Happy. Okay, what's the next KPI.
• 22:34
  Speaker B: Oh, now I gotta think about. Because I was thinking about the. I was thinking one KPI. Now you have four or five. We got happiness, which is retention. I think s could be shadow it or the reduction of shadow it because there's all that extra spin which is not being brought in as the, you know, we can't leverage enterprise of scale. We have shadow it. We can bring that in and actually lower cost there.
• 22:58
  Speaker A: Explain that again a little bit more deeply. Why is shadow it an important. How do we. First of all, how do we measure it?
• 23:05
  Speaker B: Right. Yeah. For us, for the organization I'm at. We do a lot of acquisitions. We have a lot of small companies. We buy. And there's a lot of different contracts and solutions that have been bought over the years. So we're trying to get our arm around there and just do a discovery. So. But if you have a company of 25, 30 employees buying the software, they're not paying what a company is paying with 2,000 employees or 4,000 employees. So getting our arms around that spin, and some of it's not malicious, it's just stuff they went and did on their own cause they thought they were helping. But we can leverage enterprises of scale to get those lower prices and ensure that the stuff you're putting in these tools are secure and they're with best practices.
• 23:42
  Speaker A: It's a significant problem. A lot of people don't like to talk about that often because it might unleash the Kraken of vendors to come call you and show up in your inbox with an Amazon gift card. How often do you audit all of this stuff? What's your best. I know how I do it. But what's your best way of auditing the hundred. And how many end users do you guys have? But I mean, how many customers do you have? How many customers do you have?
• 24:08
  Speaker B: About 2500.
• 24:10
  Speaker A: Okay, so I'm guessing you're anywhere between 80 to 120 applications at least.
• 24:17
  Speaker B: Yeah. Isn't that wild?
• 24:19
  Speaker A: Isn't that wild?
• 24:21
  Speaker B: It's wild.
• 24:22
  Speaker A: And most of you out there just like the 93% that are not sitting in their executive seat. It's the truth. It's the frank truth. I love you all.
• 24:30
  Speaker B: It's the truth.
• 24:31
  Speaker A: Probably have a metaphorical Excel spreadsheet of a bunch of applications sitting on it with various different contract end dates and costs. And I know that they just auto renew. I know they do, because I know there's. It's an impossibility to stay on top of all that, plus juggle Everything plus certain employee retention and all that. So shadow it is a great thing. How do you do it?
• 24:54
  Speaker B: Yeah. So when we find them, we try to pull them into. We have a trusted advisor partner that we've purchased a lot of our solutions through. We continue to add and add more to it that way I have somebody else to monitor the actual contracts and renewal. So I'm not getting caught last minute with some of those things that we sit down with on a quarterly basis. Say hey here's we got coming up next quarter or the next six months that are coming up for renewal. What are the options there for that type of thing. But internally, you know, we now we've got a better process than we acquire brands to go through. Understand what do they bring in? What do they have? Where are the alignments to what we already have? Can we bring some of that stuff under our contracts and then getting a list to your point onto a spreadsheet somewhere of what's out there that's being paid for somewhere else so we can track it and then when it does, you know, cancel we can move it into our contract. So it's a lot of work we don't have. You don't have. Currently we don't have an IT like procurement team. So it all falls on us individually for myself and some of the other directors on our team to manage all that. But the stuff that we do purchase in house does go through our partner. So we are partner manages a lot of that force.
• 25:54
  Speaker A: Beautiful. That's kind of the answer I was hoping for the because we like to say that our backend department is so vendor neutral that if we were any more vendor neutral we'd be beige.
• 26:06
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 26:07
  Speaker A: So Walsh KPI retention. Shadow it. We got. We have to have another one.
• 26:13
  Speaker B: Oh man. There's nothing with W. That's got to be. That's got wealth. Ooh, yeah, that's true. That's true.
• 26:22
  Speaker A: How do you measure it's impact on EBITDA or the business?
• 26:30
  Speaker B: Yeah, I think that that can be driven to. How are we lowering.
• 26:32
  Speaker A: How are we.
• 26:33
  Speaker B: How are we reviewing lowering our costs per user year over year? Because you know again when you're big on M and A, you continue to add user count. So it's hard to keep keep overall costs down because you keep adding more.
• 26:43
  Speaker A: But easy cost per user could talk all day long about probably wealth is cost per user. On how you lower a cost per user, do you not have any data? I'm just curious on what the average cost per user is. I'm not saying at your company, but just in general. Across.
• 27:00
  Speaker B: I'm manufacturing, I'm hiring sales rep versus the employee on the factory floor. There's different tools that go along with it, whether it be hardware or software testing.
• 27:11
  Speaker A: What is the average cost per user, you think? Across? I don't know, manufacturing or logistics or something.
• 27:16
  Speaker B: I mean, I wouldn't even know because I don't even know what's coming. It's. There's.
• 27:20
  Speaker A: It's pretty solid.
• 27:22
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 27:23
  Speaker A: Anyways, find out what your cost per user is and then see how to lower it while also making them more productive.
• 27:30
  Speaker B: Right? Yeah. 100%. 100%.
• 27:32
  Speaker A: Everyone's on E5 Makers Live.
• 27:36
  Speaker B: Yeah, why?
• 27:37
  Speaker A: Okay, so we've got wealth, we have retention, we've got shadow it, we have A&L. Left the Walsh KPI.
• 27:45
  Speaker B: Golly. A& we have A and which one?
• 27:48
  Speaker A: L. Yeah.
• 27:49
  Speaker B: It doesn't have to match. We'll.
• 27:50
  Speaker A: We'll figure it out somewhere.
• 27:52
  Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah.
• 27:52
  Speaker A: We just need another important number from you. What's the next number? Important number and I'll make it fit. What's really important to you? Like another measurement.
• 27:59
  Speaker B: I think a part of it is our customer is happy. So there's an appreciation piece here then.
• 28:03
  Speaker A: What internal customers is this? External customers or end users?
• 28:07
  Speaker B: Yeah, well, our internal customers, are they happy with the support they're getting? Are they satisfied with the support, the timing of support? Are they getting the answers they need? Are they getting. Is it an actually value add to them day to day? A lot of that's some surveys. A lot of that's from back down to the basic ticketing. But you know, is there value add from it day to day? Like day to day, keep the lights on stuff? Are we still adding value?
• 28:30
  Speaker A: What do we call that? Why can I not remember that? Actual measurement in the industry. What do we normally call that or use that? Like we sent out a survey and what do we call that?
• 28:39
  Speaker B: I can't remember that. Not the NPS score, is it?
• 28:42
  Speaker A: Well, we had retention and happiness, so I don't know if we can really use that again. We've had retention, happiness, we got shadow it, we've got wealth, we've got. I mean, I guess it could be how. What about external customers?
• 28:56
  Speaker B: Yeah. Good, because how does it affect. Yeah, I think a lot of external customers nowadays, like depending if you're a service organization, how are you leveraging technology to make their experience better with the organization? Right. So even that we have to be involved in, whether that be how is. Or if we're sending Somebody out to somebody's house, are they getting a text with a pop up of that technician's face and who they're, who they are, when they'll be there and they can track them and all that fun stuff. That's an experience for the, the external customer. So we have a direct impact on something like that. That's technology. We have to be. Can't be sitting on waiting and say oh, company XYZ over there is doing it, we should do it too. No, we gotta be out in the forefront to improving that customer experience.
• 29:37
  Speaker A: Do you guys use any tools right now to measure any of that or, or help or do people, does marketing come to you or anyone come to you and say hey, how do we figure this out?
• 29:47
  Speaker B: Right? We are, we are growing so fast that we're still in that maturity process. Our whole IT Org as a whole is pretty new the last two years.
• 29:55
  Speaker A: What's most exciting about your current roadmap or how do you guys. How do you future. I hate the word future proof. If I hear it again, I'm going to lose my mind. But how do you. How do you future proof?
• 30:07
  Speaker B: Yeah, I mean for us it's kind of a technology transformation. Not that we use buzzwords, but really we are ticking. We're a company that's been around 20 some odd years. So a lot of the technology, even at the, you know, the ERP level, it's really kind of still on prem, still old. You know, how do we transform that and make that more not as rigid and not as clunky, you know, do we invest heavily on prem? Do we look at a fast solution? And again we have. At the organization I'm at Now, we have 105 different companies that we are a part of organization and trying to. Everybody's got their own way of doing things and trying to bring that into one erp. So it's a challenge. But that's exciting too from an IT standpoint because you get to change the way you can move from we've always done it that way to what should we do going forward. We've got a, we're putting a plan together here over the next, you know, 12 to 18 months that really will start changing things dramatically, which again will drive cost savings for EBITDA long term because it does put us in a little more scalable solution. Not having to invest so heavily in capex, not having to invest so heavily on. On prem resources. I don't need people, it's cheaper for Dr. All kinds of fun stuff there. Then you Start tying in. We're the same path where we're trying to transform our erp. We're also trying to mature and grow the whole data warehousing data lake and just leveraging AI there to better reports, better information to allow our business executives to be able to make informed decisions more readily. They can play with Copilot and ask it questions and let the tools generate the information so they can make those decisions on where to go. So a lot of exciting stuff over the next 12, 18, 24 months and where we're going.
• 31:41
  Speaker A: One of the biggest problems that comes up a lot, it comes up in the community, it comes up on the show, and that is the full adoption of new technology. So a lot of times we implement a new technology, we get the basic part of the ERP implemented and then, and it might be because expectations are not set appropriately with executive management or there's a lot of pressure from executive management to bang in a new erp. For example, come on, slam this. And we need it done in three months. It's unrealistic, but we get it done. And then it's really at probably a 30% actually implemented ERP system. And then there's all these bolt ons and other custom things that need to be done and then they never, never get done. So we take it, let's take it full circle back to the golf analogy again. We're gonna take it all the way back to golf. It's like you got your lesson in golf, but like, let's go, get out there and go. And everyone knows that to get good in golf you need many, many, many, many moons. You've got to play twice a week at minimum. That's at least eight hours of your life right there. You got to go to the driving range in between. So what's the balance there? How, how do you, have you, have you noticed that though? Do you, do you agree that that is a problem of fully implementing it or, or completely using one technology? You alluded to it at the beginning with the we're not going to use ChatGPT. You know, we've got copilot. We've got copilot, aka a section of Microsoft. Well, we're not fully utilizing Microsoft to its extent that we could be using it and taking full advantage of all of our licensing or however that is. And Microsoft's a whole nother. We do a whole show on Microsoft and Microsoft Skus and making the right buy there. But anything to say there?
• 33:40
  Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I think we've seen it again when you go through and why we're. We're at the point we're at with our ERP transformation, too, is we've seen it where we've grown so fast and thrown so much at our current ERP that it's starting to kind of bog down and get kind of clunky because we've tried to go so fast. It's just acquire, throw them in there. Acquire, throw them in there. And not taking the time to make sure it's scalable. It was never built to handle what it was where we're at today. So now we're taking the opportunity. Well, we can go different options. You can always do that trifecta. We can do it. You know it's right. We can do it fast. We can do it cheap. Which one. Which two do you want? You know, it can. It could be right and it won't bright and fast. It won't be cheap, you know, if we got it. But most executives understand that, like, we can do. We can make as fast as you want to go. It's just not going to be cheaper. It may not be right. One of the two. So it's biggest.
• 34:25
  Speaker A: One of the biggest learnings I've learned over the past, I used to just do, like, technology consulting. It was easy. Not easy, but, I mean, it was easy from the standpoint. It's like, it was easy because I knew it. I knew it very, very well. And I've gotten tons and years and years of experience, right? What I did not have experience doing was growing a podcast, growing my own marketing department, understanding production, just growing a podcast. I never. The podcast was just like a little hobby on the side. It's not a hobby now. Now it's like we've got all these people and we've got all kinds of applications and we move from one. It's just, It's. I was talking about it the other day with somebody about the number of steps that are involved in, like, certain things. Some people think, like, Phil, you just, whatever, dude. It's easy. You jump on zoom, you hit record and like, you know, throw it up to the web. Now it's. Now it's really not like that anymore. What I noticed my biggest learning was do not pay the middle price. Never go. Never go. Like, if there's like, if there's like bronze, silver, gold, packaging or platinum. Bronze, silver, gold. Piper, never go silver, gold. Either go bronze or go platinum. This is what I've noticed. Either go like, down and dirty, cheap. Get the job done. Like, that's it. Like, we're going. We're ripping like lean and mean, down and dirty. Get the job done quick, done. Save money, whatever. Never go silver.
• 35:57
  Speaker B: Right.
• 35:57
  Speaker A: Because it never gets done what you need it to do fully. And it doesn't really make the impact that you need it to make and you will find yourself. Here's my example, though. I'm just going to just fed my soul to the world here. Web design, there is no. It's either we go on fiverr, find a web designer, your website gets done, it's up and running, it gets the job done. Or 60 to $100,000 for expert.
• 36:34
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 36:35
  Speaker A: I was like, nah, I can't. I can't pay $60,000 for a website. I cannot do that.
• 36:41
  Speaker B: That.
• 36:41
  Speaker A: But what I've been doing for the last two years is paying the silver price and getting crap.
• 36:49
  Speaker B: Yep.
• 36:50
  Speaker A: No uniformity. No. Just go to my website right now. Everyone can make fun of it. Clown.
• 36:54
  Speaker B: It.
• 36:54
  Speaker A: It's terrible. It doesn't flow right. It's like, I don't really understand. What do you do? What don't you do? And so I made the jump and I hired. And this is a secret, I can't reveal it yet, but I hired probably the best branding expert that's on the face of this earth right now. And it is a very, very, very, very expensive price tag. And he did literally research for weeks on end. And what he came back to me was like, everyone on my team was just like, I think they fell out of their seat. I think they're just like, this is so clear, it's so simple. It all makes sense. He absolutely nailed it. And every it. If you're not. When you see this, what we come up with, if you're not, like, if you don't cry, if you don't, like, if this does not hit you emotionally, if this does not hit you emotionally as an IT leader, I, I'm quitting. And when I told my branding expert, this guy who I'm very drawn a very close relationship with, these. Phil, if you quit, I will hunt you down and I will cut off your kneecaps. That's how I'm. That's how impactful he thought. What we're doing for you IT leaders is out there that play golf in North Carolina. You have it. You have it in a. You have a pretty, pretty, pretty muggy down there. How do you deal with all the heat? It's nice though.
• 38:18
  Speaker B: I'm 40.
• 38:19
  Speaker A: It usually, of course, someone found a way to call me even though I shut my cell phone Off. I had some weird message. It's like, you can call me ever if you want to on this soft phone. They figured it out. I need to be impossible to get a hold of. I need to figure that out. You should be. I heard this other. This is small piece of advice. Make it easy for everyone to, like, see you and see your communications, everything, but make it almost impossible for them to actually get a hold of you.
• 38:44
  Speaker B: 100%.
• 38:45
  Speaker A: Yes, IT guys.
• 38:46
  Speaker B: Yes.
• 38:48
  Speaker A: The Commodore 64 was your first computer. Yeah, I know this. I could have guessed it because almost everyone says It's a Commodore 64, but what impact did it have on your life? We're ending with the beginning.
• 39:00
  Speaker B: Yeah. Taking it back. The Commodore 64, man, I remember getting that. There's a wee lad, my older brother and I, sitting there with that. We had no. We had no storage. So when it was on, it was on. So it was like. And I remember we had a book full of games and you had to type them all out. Go to the bed. I want to play Russian roulette. Type all the lines of code, run, and you play it. And if you shut it down, they gotta do it all again tomorrow. But I thought it was so cool. I was so. I was young. I've been six, seven maybe, but it was the coolest thing ever. Sit there and type all this out and it just worked. And that's kind of just. It lit the flame for technology. And I've been that way ever since. And that led me down the path of, you know, getting our first computer, actual second computer, I guess, in 96 when the Internet hit, and then playing games and then working at Radio Shack for a long time and doing all that fun stuff. And just here I am today, you.
• 39:49
  Speaker A: Know, Radio Shack, Radio Shack. That was one of my most viral LinkedIn posts is I was. I went to. Out to breakfast at All Day Breakfast in Biddeford, Maine with my daughter when I was visiting my. My father. And there's a abandoned Radio Shack next door. And it had been abandoned forever. Like no one had moved in that space. And I just remember my daughter being like, dad, what's that? They took a picture of it, put it on LinkedIn. I said, hey. My daughter just asked me, what's this?
• 40:16
  Speaker B: Yeah, I just got everybody.
• 40:17
  Speaker A: Oh, my gosh, the youth these days.
• 40:20
  Speaker B: What they missed so good.
• 40:23
  Speaker A: They did. They missed the dawn of technology. We're old now because now we're like. I remember when the Model T came out. This is like my father, you know, like, I remember we're like, I remember when the first hard drive we had no memory.
• 40:41
  Speaker B: I remember PCs, 3G. I remember 3G hit the first time, then 4G hit. I remember satellite dishes hitting. I remember. I remember the.
• 40:48
  Speaker A: Oh, man, they don't even know the iPhone. They don't even know the story of the iPhone. I remember BlackBerry. BlackBerry. No way. I will never get rid of my BlackBerry. No. And I just remember, like, one of my team members, employees, customers, whatever I want to call them at the time was like, no, Phil, man, you don't understand, dude. This thing, like, on my run, it just syncs with this. It does that. It's my phone. I'm like, no way. I'm, like, getting rid of my BlackBerry. What do you mean? No keyboard?
• 41:15
  Speaker B: Yep.
• 41:16
  Speaker A: I was wrong.
• 41:17
  Speaker B: Yeah. Come a long way.
• 41:20
  Speaker A: So, been a pleasure having you on the show. Any final words of wisdom for the. For the. For the people out there? Words of encouragement during the time of the. I don't know, soon to be dark and gloomy, economy and. And layoffs and hard to get it. Jobs. Give me. Give us some. Give us something positive.
• 41:36
  Speaker B: It'll always get better. Don't watch the news.
• 41:39
  Speaker A: Time heals all wounds. Don't worry. And we look forward to hearing you from the future. There's going to be all kinds of infographics and carousels and all kinds of things that we're going to stamp your name on as a co author that comes out of this show. So everyone look forward to that.
• 41:53
  Speaker B: Should be good. This was fun.
• 41:55
  Speaker A: All right, man. Have a great day.
• 41:56
  Speaker B: You too, man. Thanks.