Listen Now

In this episode of the Rocket IT Business Podcast, show host, Matt Hyatt has the pleasure of speaking with friend and US Congressman, Rob Woodall. Over the last nine years, Congressman Woodall has served five consecutive terms as the U.S. Representative for Georgia’s 7th Congressional District. In addition to his efforts on the congressional floor, Congressman Woodall serves on the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, the House Committee on Rules, and the House Budget Committee. In This Episode, You’ll Hear More About: What it takes to lead at an early age Adapting and overcoming challenges that may arise in a leadership position How to innovate for future generations while preserving the rules of the past How to ensure the voices of small business owners are heard in Congress The special opportunities associated with the rapid growth of the 7th District The role Congress plays in STEM education Why community members should remain in contact with their Congressman How to look past personal agendas to ensure common betterment of those you serve How to persuade and inspire public opinion behind your efforts Best practices when working alongside people with opposing opinions How to take risks when under constant judgement Contact Information Congressman Rob Woodall | Email | (202) 225-4272 Resources Mentioned Ratification Congressman Rob Woodall’s Website Host: Matt Hyatt Guest: Congressman Rob Woodall Show Notes Matt Hyatt (00:00:00): Hello, and welcome to episode 19 of Rocket IT business podcast. I’m your host, Matt Hyatt, and today we have the pleasure of speaking with my friend and favorite Congressman, Rob Woodall Intro (00:00:25): [Music Plays] Matt Hyatt (00:00:26): Congressman Woodall has served five consecutive terms as the US representative for Georgia’s seventh congressional district. Additionally, Congressman Woodall serves on the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, the House committee on Rules, and the House Budget Committee. Congressman Woodall, it’s a pleasure to finally have you on the show, Rob Woodall (00:00:44): I’m glad to be here. You know, usually when I’m with you, Matt, you’re always working hard or accepting an award of some kind. I feel like this is just social hour today. And so you may be working, but just know I’m, I’m feeling the social connection and I’m grateful. Matt Hyatt (00:00:58): Well, thank you. I am so glad you’re on the show. And like I said, we’ve, we’ve been friends for a while now. We’ve known each other for a good long time. And it’s sort of bittersweet for me right now because you’re winding down in the last days of your role as as my Congressman. And so how are you feeling? Rob Woodall (00:01:20): It is I guess let’s say like owning a boat. The day you buy it is the second best day of your life and the day you sell it is the first best best day. You know, this is an amazing job. And we live in an amazing community with amazing leaders. And, and so to, to have had this honor is is, well, I can’t put it into, into words. I just, I could not be, I could not be luckier but I’ve been doing it for for 10 years now. And it’s absolutely true that, that that different times require different different people. I think the time when when I came in with president Obama and divided government was was a good time for the, for the passions that I brought to the table. And I think we’re going to have an opportunity to see a brand new list of the leaders from across the country who were gonna, who were going to take that mantle and run with it. You and I will. We’ll both be yelling at the television at the same time as, as thanks. Matt Hyatt (00:02:27): Well, hopefully hopefully there’s as much excitement or good things to come. There’s that frustration things that would be nice. Wouldn’t it? Well, Rob, I’d love to just dig in just a little bit for those that don’t know you, can you tell us a little bit about your background? Where’d you grow up and how in the world did you find your path towards Washington DC? Rob Woodall (00:02:51): It is a story I tell to young people regularly when they say, Rob, how do I become a, a United States Congressman? And the answer is I’d have no idea. I can’t tell you about the, about that. I lucked into it. I grew up over in Dekalb County grew up in Avondale and went over to Marist for, for high school. And so it’s always been home. And in fact, I started studying this congressional district at Furman University as part of a political science project. When John Linder was running for this seat and lost in the, in 1990, when I was in law school, I was working in Washington for a law firm during the summers. And the truth is when you’re a young person and you want to make a difference and you have a chance to make a difference. It’s hard to go back and sit in the classroom. Rob Woodall (00:03:49): To the great frustration of my parents, I think at the time who thought I was going to drop out of law school and never go back, I actually left law school after two years to go to work for John Linder answering the telephone. I was able to finish up law school at night and graduate from the university of Georgia later. But the opportunity to feel like you’re making a difference, I think is something that’s in every single one of us. I see it in the work that you do on behalf of your customers and on behalf of your employees. And, and when you, when you find an opportunity to do that, you just can’t let it slip through your fingers. You’ve got to maximize it, and then go on. So it’s been it’s been a long journey, but but I very emotionally and spiritual Matt Hyatt (00:04:32): Really productive one. Well, you know, that’s really interesting. You so you were doing essentially a class project that involves John Linder. And is that how you got to know him? Rob Woodall (00:04:44): To be fair. What I found in my class project is he was a crazy, crazy conservative who had absolutely no chance of winning whatsoever and was running at that time. As, as you may recall, against Ben Jones, who played on the Dukes of Hazard, that was the, that was the matchup, but at the, at the time, and, and he did lose that race, but what it taught me looking back on that is all I knew about my elected officials was what the Atlanta journal constitution told me about them. And so I thought John Linder was a nut. I thought Newt Gingrich was a nut. I thought that folks who just had different ideas from the editorial board were actually a good versus evil kind of dynamic. And, and we still see that persisting today, even with all the, the media choices that we have, it is a constant reminder to me that I may think that I know something, but I really may not know something. And I need to surround myself with folks who have that experience and get some different perspectives and try to figure out what’s true. Matt Hyatt (00:06:01): That’s so good. I totally agree with you. And, and, and I’ve had that experience once upon a time. I was a guy that listened to the radio on the way in and out to work and get home and tick on the TV and watch the news in the evening. And quite honestly, that’s not a way to lead a life free of anger because you hear all these things on the news. And then once I started spending more time in Washington DC, and we’ll, we’ll get to that in a few minutes and getting to know some of the people that were representing me and my community, I just found that the reality was pretty different than than the expectation based on what I had heard and seen on the news. So it’s interesting that you, you sort of encountered the same thing. See, I grew up with my parents watching Walter Cronkite. You remember Walter Cronkite and, you know, I was peripherally involved. It wasn’t that I, you know, I was a kid sitting there watching Walter Cronkite, but it was running on the TV. And I kind of grew up believing that the media in my house mostly represented by Walter Cronkite was fair and balanced and and was just reporting the facts and not inserting their own opinions and biases into the news. Matt Hyatt (00:07:29): That’s kind of the impression that I had. And then that, that became very different as I grew up. And so I don’t know if the world changed or I’ve, my eyes were opened, or what’s happened, but boy, you sure see a lot of difference between what’s reported in media and reality. Rob Woodall (00:07:44): I will never forget Matt, a news episode. You may remember there were conversations going on and in, in, in Florida around politics and on one student campus, taser had to be brought out, and a student was tased and there was a local Fox news reporter on the scene and national Fox news was interviewing him. And they said, this was, was this just a terrible abuse of power there by the officer who tased him. And the reporter said, well, I can’t speak to that, but let me tell you what happened. And they said, well, wasn’t it just an awful thing to have to be a part of, and went on and on. And finally the reporter said, listen, I’m not the editorial board writer, I’m the reporter. So I have no opinions that I’d like to share with you, but if you want to know anything about what happened, I’m happy to tell you. Here’s a young person who was on national television for the first time in their life. Rob Woodall (00:08:47): They could have taken that opportunity to make it all about them and, and, and what they believe. And instead, and true journalistic ethics said, let me, let me just tell you what the facts are, and you can draw your own conclusions from there. I don’t know what we do, Matt, when, when facts become relative, Alan bloom wrote about value relativism decades ago. And we’re challenged by truth relativism today. And I do worry about what that means for young people growing up, and what our news consumption patterns are going to be. Matt Hyatt (00:09:28): And, you know, what’s interesting is with social media these days, I think that’s added to that trouble, because you can sort of pick your team that you want to follow and you know, spend time with and interact with on social media. And you may be giving you a very narrow view of the world through that lens, right? Yeah. Rob Woodall (00:09:52): The confirmation bias is available to us all day long every day. I can find someone to tell me how smart I am and somebody would tell me what an idiot I am. Absolutely. At a moment’s notice. Matt Hyatt (00:10:04): Yes. So you were working for John Linder and when I met you for the first time you were chief of staff. So tell us about that gap. Was, was that something that happened over a short period of time, a long period of time? How did it occur? Rob Woodall (00:10:23): They, I was on staff helping to write letters and conduct mail in November of 1994. So Matt, I was listening to the radio as the results were coming in, and suddenly John Linder’s best friend, Newt Gingrich became the first Republican speaker of the house and in 40 years. And I knew even though I’d only been on the job about a month and a half, that I was going to walk into the office the next day, as a young law student with a month and a half of experience, and someone was going to ask me to be their chief of staff. And let me put all of my talents to use. I walk back into the office the next day, no one did invite me to be their chief of staff. And it wasn’t for another six years that John asked me to be his chief of staff, but I had an opportunity to work in every single notch on the ladder. Rob Woodall (00:11:16): And, I think that every new member of Congress who’s not served before experiences, that you don’t know what all the rungs of the ladder are until you’ve sat on them for a while. The challenges answering the telephone call after call after call with folks who have real pain and real anxiety in their lives takes an amazing emotional toll. My interns always say they didn’t realize how many people called their Congressman and what they called their Congressman about until they got a chance to do it. So I went from legislative correspondent writing mail, to legislative assistant, helping to craft policy, to legislative director, helping to form policy, to chief of staff in in 1999. And I believe it, if I had served as member of Congress, somewhere in there, I would have been an even better chief of staff. Because once again, having not stood on this rug before, I didn’t know what I didn’t know. And I wish I had a chance now to go back and serve John Linder again, because I’d be so much better at it now that I know precisely. Matt Hyatt (00:12:33): Well, I know how that works. We often have folks come through Rocket IT, and certainly there is an intentional effort to build people up. And part of that is putting them in different roles and letting them wear different hats for a season. And sometimes they’ll even switch departments and go from service to sales and vice versa. But that experience definitely builds a better, more equipped well-rounded professional. Right? Rob Woodall (00:13:04): Well, I’ve got folks on my staff Matt. I’ve been on a committee called the modernization of Congress. It’s a bipartisan committee trying to change the way Congress works. And we’ve spent a lot of time talking about staff retention and how it is. We help to build young people up and keep them in the system because you’re not going to get rich on Capitol Hill, not financially anyway. And so a lot of the conversation revolved around money, but as you know, from the folks that you hire money is falling on the list of priorities. It’s that work-life balance. It’s what am I getting out of this? What am I able to contribute? So I have, even though the average tenure on Capitol Hill is about 18 months. I have folks who’ve been with me for more than 20 years. Rob Woodall (00:13:49): In fact, I have many people who have been with me for more than 20 years, because we have a reputation of promoting from within. And because we live in a community where we really do get a chance to make a difference for people. And I just, I see the difference that you make, and I see the community recognize you for making that difference. I know that’s not why you do it. You do it for the joy of being a contributor. But I, I look at the young people who are struggling out there today, trying to find their sense of purpose. And I think, how much I wish for them, that they could fall into that opportunity where they could feel relevant, where they could feel like they matter. And once you find that the rest of it all falls into place. Matt Hyatt (00:14:37): That’s so true. Tell me, did you have any mentors or folks that you looked up to during that season? Rob Woodall (00:14:46): The staff members, one of them still is here in Washington, DC. I still consider a good friend of mine. His name is Henry Plaster, and he’d worked in the Bush administration and, and he’d worked all over Washington, DC. He was a young single guy when I met him. Now he’s a wonderful father and a husband, and on his way to being a grandfather because times change, but he embodied the joy of showing up to work every day. You know, there’s a negativity around the water cooler that you can find in some environments. Oh, it’s just so bad. Oh, work is so hard. Oh, we had to come in so early. Oh, we have to stay so, so late. Not that people mean anything by it, but it just becomes that conversation. Rob Woodall (00:15:38): What Henry brought into the office was how lucky are we that we get to come into this office every day of the week. That made a difference to me early on. And you combine that with John Linder, who I did not know before I went to work for him, here’s a guy who didn’t need the job. He was independently wealthy. He could have done anything he wanted to do. And so he did the job every day, not as someone fighting to hang on to their piece of the pie, but as someone who already had plenty of pie and could then help everybody else to grow their pie during that time. And if you didn’t like the way he did it, then you were welcome to vote him out of office, but he wasn’t going to put his finger up to the political winds. I didn’t really understand that there were politicians like that before I got here. And I would tell you that that shaped the style I have tried to emulate more than I ever knew. Matt Hyatt (00:16:37): I love that. I do think people have the impression that there are folks in Washington that are there purely because they’re hanging on to some piece of power trying to kind of grapple their way up the food chain, but you’re right. I’ve met a number of folks, and I certainly count you among them, folks that I think are truly trying to contribute and add value. And so I certainly appreciate you and your help there. I don’t think you told me. So at some point there is an opportunity to fill a congressional seat and you raised your hand and said that I’ll put my name in the hat. How, how did that happen? And was that when you were going through law school and learning about Washington DC and John Linder that had, had it entered your mind that early, or was that something that came in later? Rob Woodall (00:17:38): No, and I will tell you that being the Congressman is not the best job I’ve had. Being legislative director is the best job. None of the campaigning, none of the fundraising, all of the making a difference for people. It, it was not on my mind. The truth is Matt. When John announced he was going to retire in February, late February of an election year, I didn’t see it coming. In fact, we’d had conversations that led me to believe he was in it for the long for the long haul. And the filing deadline was early April. So there just wasn’t much time. There were eight people who were looking at getting into the race. And I was looking to see who I thought I could help to be successful. And the truth is much like the politics we’ve seen over the last six months, everybody was talking about how they were going to go to Washington and solve this big problem and solve that big problem and how easy it would be and why haven’t those other guys done it right before? Rob Woodall (00:18:41): And just send me there and everything will be fine. No one was talking about the casework aspect of the job. You know, I can’t get president Obama to agree with me on something every day of the week, but I can help somebody in their fight with the IRS can help somebody with their visa problems or their passport problems. I can make a difference for a mom or a dad with their veterans benefits every day I get to do something and success. It isn’t how do I tell 300 million people how to live their life with a new federal law success, it is how do I serve the people who sent me here? And my thought was, Matt, if I get in the race, it’s only going to be about 10 weeks long. I’ve got that kind of time on my life. I can, I can make this case about given my experience, how I know the job is supposed to be done and how you can do it better than you’re talking about it. Rob Woodall (00:19:40): And I didn’t need to win. I just needed to change the debate to talk about the values that I thought were important. That way whoever did win would, would lead differently because of, because I was there, it just turned out that I did win. We ended up in a runoff in that big primary and ended up winning that runoff. And then of course, I already had a team in place, men and women that I had hired folks I’d worked with for years, we were able to hit the ground running, not miss a single beat to trying to figure out how to get things done. And still, as I think back on those days, I think about the surprise that we pulled it off. Derek Corbett was running my campaign. He’s my chief of staff. Now he said, Rob, I always knew we were going to win it. Rob Woodall (00:20:30): It was just no question in my mind, but I was surprised that it was exactly right. And right now I’ve got to take the cases that I can’t close, The people I haven’t been able to succeed for yet. And I’ve got to turn them over to a brand new team, and it’s going to be a really hard emotional thing for me to do and hard for them. We’ve all invested all of this energy in getting to this level. And now we’re going to have to reset the bar. I didn’t have to give anybody that bad news in 2010 and 2011. And I still look back on that as being one of my, one of my happiest times that folks who were counting on the seventh district office to succeed for them, if they hadn’t succeeded by January 2nd, 2011. No worries. Because on January 3rd, the new office was going to come in and we were going to keep keep pushing at the same same pace together. Matt Hyatt (00:21:32): You know, what’s funny is I think you’re absolutely right. I think most folks are sitting back home and when they think of their Congressman or they think of Congress, they do think of a big group of people getting together and trying to hash it out on various issues and, and come to a decision. And I don’t think many people really recognize that a significant part of the job is what, what you call case work working with your constituents to help move the needle for them in their personal lives. That’s how, how big of a part of the job is that? I don’t think people know that. Rob Woodall (00:22:08): The truth is most members divide their office up into halves. It is in DC, working on public policy. The other half is working on casework. It depends on what your district looks like. If you live outside of Fort Hood department of defense, casework, VA case work may comprise much of your load. I will tell you, Naomi Pillsbury does leads that work for me. It’s the immigration work in our area. Folks who are getting married and their grandmother can’t get a visa to come to the wedding. Folks who have traveled overseas and they’ve had a problem with their paperwork, and now they can’t get back. Folks who need need passports because of the diversity in our community. Naomi and her team are the finest immigration case workers. I would tell you in the land folks, call from all around the country to get her advice on how to, to make things happen, because that’s where we’ve had to develop the expertise. Rob Woodall (00:23:07): So, because I’m a fair tax guy and believe that the IRS by its nature has so much power, that people run a foul of it very easily. We get a lot of IRS casework folks who said I did the best that I could. It turns out I did it wrong. And now I’m looking at bonds and I’m looking at penalties. How do I navigate this this effort? And we’re able to help with that. And again, it depends on the era. We were doing mortgage casework for folks, Matt, we don’t have any power over Wells Fargo or Bank of America. But when folks say, golly, I’m in the great recession, and I can’t get anybody to return my phone calls and I want to pay, I want to do it right, but I don’t know how to get in touch with folks. Even when it’s not a federal government agency, we’re able to help connect people to solve problems. Problems are bad, but to have worrying about problems is worse. And we’re able to partner with people and take away that worry. Maybe we can’t get them what they want, but they know they’re not in it alone. They know the person that was elected to represent them actually is their partner in trying to solve those. Matt Hyatt (00:24:22): Hmm. Tell me, once you’ve been elected and we have a brand new minted Congressman. What was the biggest surprise, Rob? Rob Woodall (00:24:38): You don’t know what you don’t know until you know it, man. And even as close to the political action as I was the men and women who worked on the floor of the Capitol, those members of Congress were still characatures for the most part from Fox news and MSNBC. I knew the GA members. I knew a couple of Alabama and South Carolina members, but Nancy Pelosi for example, was just this head that showed up on the, on the television. When I was watching the news. If you ask any freshman member of Congress, that’s getting elected this year, and they, so many folks got elected on the edges this year howling at the, at their respective political moons, ask any of those folks in six months, Matt, what their biggest surprise is. And what they’re going to tell you is they had no idea how good and decent and hardworking the other team was because all they knew was the political vitriol that the running joke on Capitol Hill. Rob Woodall (00:25:51): Folks will ask me back home, Rob, how do you work with some of those folks in that, they’re just such bad people. And my answer is no they’re not bad people. They’re absolutely wonderful people with really bad ideas. Now their ideas are just awful, terrible, terrible ideas, but wonderful people. That’s how that’s how partnership is created. And I would have guessed after a decade, as chief of staff, that I would have known more personalities that I wouldn’t have been duped by the media as much as as the rest of the country might have been. But I got behind those doors walking out onto the house floor. I realized that I still had misconceptions. And some of those folks I thought were the most awful to have to watch and listen to television, have turned out to be some of my closest friends, because they really are wonderful human beings, wonderful moms and dads and wonderful public servants, just representing a very different constituency than the constituency that I reference. Matt Hyatt (00:26:57): That’s so refreshing to hear from someone who’s worked in Washington DC, and, you know, in the halls of Congress to talk that way about focused on, you know, it doesn’t matter which side of the line you might fall on, but we can gain an appreciation and respect for the people on the other side of the aisle. That’s a really pretty wonderful thing. So I’m so glad you see it that way. Tell me, so you mentioned, I think you called it the congressional modernization committee. That’s not the only committee or a task force you participated on. I actually have a list here because I think I could remember them all the house committee on transportation and infrastructure, the house committee on rules and the house budget committee. Tell me about those and tell me , how does one get asked to participate on a committee like that? Rob Woodall (00:28:02): It’s a lot like choosing a dorm room in college. You got to look around, see what building you want to be in. Then you’ve got to get yourself on the list. And, and some things are a little bit harder. The waiting list is a little bit longer. I had the pleasure of working on the rules committee for Congressman Linder. So when I got here, I knew the rules committee was a place that I could contribute on day one. And at the time the rules committee was an exclusive committee you weren’t allowed to serve on, but one committee. So I bought picked rules right off the bat and, and have been there ever since. Rob Woodall (00:28:43): And they’ve allowed a rules committee members to expand and serve in other places. And, and the budget committee and the transportation committee were added a state delegations Matt to get together and work on these issues. Johnny Isaacson was our transportation committee member. When he was here in the house, when he left and went to the Senate, we didn’t have a transportation committee member. That’s obviously something that’s critically important, not just to the seventh district, but to the entire state of Georgia. So the entire state of Georgia, the delegation got together to support me to help me get a seat on the transportation committee in the same way that we all got together to help Buddy Carter get on the energy and commerce committee to help Tom Graves get on the appropriations committee as a delegation. We want to be the best we can be for the state of Georgia. Rob Woodall (00:29:38): And as I hear about more, as I’m sure you hear from your employees, it’s about that commute, getting in and out of downtown Atlanta, getting across from, from Gwinnett to Cobb, being able to focus on transportation because we’re experiencing those problems. And because we’re responding to them both at a County level and a state level in a very productive way has has gives me an out-sized voice on, on the committee. And, and I think that’s also something that folks don’t generally think about. It’s not that anybody thinks Rob Woodall is so brilliant though. I hope one or two people do, but it’s that they think, man, that district Rob Woodall represents is amazing. If it’s an immigration issue, Rob understands it and experiences it in ways nobody else does because his constituents educate him about it. As a state, we were increasing transportation taxes and taking ownership of those issues before. So many other States did that gives me more credibility to talk about funding of infrastructure when we’re not waiting on somebody else to solve our problems, we’re taking proactive steps are ourselves. So many of those committee assignments, you see our results, not just a member interest, but of expertise in the district and of what a state may need to fill out its portfolio. So that there’s somebody in every influential place on the Hill. Matt Hyatt (00:31:06): Do those committee roles change during your tenure? So, or is it typical that once you’re in you’re in and kind of stay there? Rob Woodall (00:31:16): Two answers to that, if you don’t like where you get started, or you want to get to a more exclusive place, then you may trade your committees out and move on up the, up the ladder. The rules committee, for example, didn’t historically take freshmen. It took more senior members. And I was lucky to be able to get in as a freshmen, but you can’t do it all, Matt. You have to develop some expertise. If you’re going to contribute here, they’re just too many hardworking people to think you can, you can do it all. And so I think the prudent members isolate their areas of interest as soon as they can. And that gives them the ability to develop the connections, the experience, the framework to make the most difference in the shortest amount of, and shortest amount of time. So you see a lot of folks on committees for years. Matt Hyatt (00:32:17): Well, I have definitely heard that the rules committee typically choose a more senior representative. So that’s a huge Testament to you. I think that that they will want to do on that committee and invited you to participate as a freshman Congressman. And you’ve been at it for a long time. I bet you’re really good at it by now. Rob Woodall (00:32:47): Well, I’m headed down to the floor, right? About two hours to do another another rule that, you know, you just get skin deep on the rules committee. You’re just not trying to write the legislation. You’re trying to perfect the legislation. And so we’re able to put our fingers in absolutely everything because every bill comes across the floor. Sometimes I think constituents get left out because they didn’t realize a bill was starting to move. And so they weren’t able to get their ideas into the base text, being on the rules committee, you can be the last one at the table, but if you have a good idea, I can still get that idea made into an order as an amendment and we can improve the bill as it as it moves to the floor. So it is the probably the least understood committee on Capitol Hill. But if you don’t mind being misunderstood, then it’s a wonderful place to affect public policy. And the laws of the land are better because seventh district constituents have had a chance to do that. Matt Hyatt (00:33:53): Well, speaking of the laws of land, I have seen you multiple times over the time that I’ve known you hold a copy of the U.S. constitution out of your pocket. Is that something you carry with you all the time or have I just been lucky to see you happen to refer to it? Rob Woodall (00:34:12): I spill too much food on my suits, Matt, to tell you that every time I get one back from the cleaners, I remember to put that constitution in there, but it is just so surprising. I think, to so many Americans that the rule book is really that short, right? And that you can really put it in a pamphlet in your breast pocket. And these are the rules that have led the greatest democracy the world has ever known. Our Republic is only as good as we are as citizens. And I have partnered with Democrats and Republicans on trying to press that civics education forward. If you feel powerless, you will become powerless. And those who feel powerful will become more powerful because your voice is being left out of the left out of the debate. Rob Woodall (00:35:10): It’s probably not as easy as I make it out to be as I was looking for some books to stack the computer on this morning, Matt, this is the copy of the constitution that I keep in the office. So it’s a little bit bigger than the breast pocket edition because it has all of the court cases and the machinations that have gone on over the years. But yes, to be able to remind people that they sit on the board directors of the most powerful country on earth. And that gives them amazing opportunities, but also substantial responsibilities is is something I take great pleasure in and pride in. So as often as I can can swap suits out of the cleaners, I will put out a copy of the constitution there so I can have it when the debate comes up, because it’s the Supreme law of the land, whatever issue we’re debating. If we can reference it in the constitution, that’s going to end the debate. Hey, Rob, why do people get to stand in the street and say all these awful things about each other? Well, let me turn here to amendment one. And I’ll help you to see why that is. We can change it if we want to, but this is often our most vexing problems have their roots in substantial freedoms that our framers believed were necessary for our Republic to survive. Matt Hyatt (00:36:35): You mentioned changing it. And you mentioned the first amendment. Tell me about that. So I think there are two schools of thought here. I think some folks look at the U.S. Constitution as something that was written by our founding fathers and it’s fairly static. And then there are others that think of it as more of a living document that should be changed and updated from time to time. What’s your thinking on that and what, from your perspective, is the right answer? Rob Woodall (00:37:07): Well, if you ever have any doubts you can look at our our neighbor, the largest democracy on the planet, our friends in India, and they rarely have a year that doesn’t have a change to their constitution. In fact, there are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of changes to their constitution. And it’s only been around for about 60 years. We’ve gone the other path in America. We’ve made very few changes. In fact more than a third of the changes that were made were made in the bill of rights, that was ratified, almost contemporaneously with the constitution. I had breakfast with justice Scalia shortly before he died. And he was talking about his role on the Supreme court. We were talking about the right to privacy. As you know, if you open up that constitution, you will not find the right to privacy anywhere in there. Rob Woodall (00:38:02): There was no right to privacy. The Supreme court interpreted the constitution. They interpreted the fourth amendment and freedom from search and seizure. They interpreted passage after passage to say, Oh, well, there must be a right to privacy. We will enshrine this right through the courts. Justice Scalia would not have supported interpreting the constitution. In that way. He would have said the constitution is fairly clear, but having had the courts do that almost a hundred years ago, he would say, but we are not advantaged by yanking that pendulum back and forth that having some certainty and predictability is what the framers really wanted out of that constitution. So if we make a mistake, if we find a right that doesn’t really exist and it survives time, perhaps we ought to just leave it alone and come back and change it with a constitutional amendment. Rob Woodall (00:39:04): If we want to, freedom of speech is a good one. Matt, you were welcome to say something awful about a man’s wife in 1787, you had the freedom of speech. He also had the freedom to challenge you to a duel, right? You can say whatever awful thing you want about a fellow member of Congress. But in in 1830s, we had members of Congress killing each other in duels over those things that were said legally in the state of Maryland. And so did our founding fathers ever imagine the kind of hate speech that would be protected by the constitution today? Absolutely not. They had no idea. They would have thought a swift punch in the nose would have solved those, those issues, right? Rob Woodall (00:39:56): We have developed those ideas today. And I think that’s only right that our framers couldn’t have imagined social media. They couldn’t have imagined computers. They didn’t imagine being able to travel around the world at a moment’s notice. And so do the words of the constitution mean what the words say? Of course they do. Did our framers give us opportunities to make changes? And did they expect us to make changes? Of course they did our challenges is to make those changes the right way through an article five convention or a constitutional amendment process originate again, Congress rather than having our courts make those decisions in ways that are difficult to recognize as they are happening and difficult to change going forward. Matt Hyatt (00:40:49): There you go. I’d love to switch gears a little bit. Something that I never would have imagined growing up is that I would personally visit one of my elected officials in Washington, DC yet that’s how I’ve met a number of our elected officials. And in my case, we happen to have a very active chamber of commerce here in Gwinnett County. And I belong to that chamber and then active in the chamber. And as a result, I’ve gone to DC almost every year, except for this one for the past 10 or 12. And so is that the typical Avenue that constituents get to meet their elected officials is through a chamber fly in, or there are other ways to come back that are valuable and easy for all of us to reach. Rob Woodall (00:41:50): Well, it would not be fair to say that everybody has a chamber like the Gwinnett chamber. The Gwinnett chamber is not typical. The Gwinnett chamber is exceptional and the involvement is reciprocal, right? I am the great beneficiary of the, of the active chamber in Gwinnett County because people with real world experience, real world problems, folks who have proffered real world solutions are sharing their expertise with me that I get to bring to the, to the floor. So I could not recommend that everybody across the country join their local chamber of commerce. If they wanted to be influential, I would recommend that everybody get to know their member of Congress on a first name basis. If they want to be influential, lawyer member works for them. It’s not that hard to get an appointment. You just don’t know. It’s not that hard to get an appointment. Rob Woodall (00:42:44): And the folks ought to come and build that relationship if they believe they have something to offer. But what the chamber in Gwinnett has done in terms of building partnerships year after year after year, has again, made a difference in the laws of the land that gets that get passed. But if I was gonna make one recommendation to somebody beyond get to know your member on a first name basis, because if you know somebody, if you actually have a real relationship, it changes everything. If you don’t have a real relationship, send them a handwritten letter, nobody sends handwritten letters really, and I’m going to get thousands of emails every day. Many of them generated by a machine folks, check the box, send letter to congressmen. And they feel like they have done their part to contribute, but you can’t tell the difference in a mass email campaign of who really cares or who was duped by the way, the question was asked or who just did it because their daughter asked them to, and they went ahead and checked. Rob Woodall (00:43:56): That handwritten note, Matt says that you care enough to do things that nobody else does. And that’s how to get through the static out there. I will look at every handwritten note that comes through with the understanding that it took a substantial amount of effort to do this. So whether this person is angry or sad or frustrated or encouraging, they are feeling that at a depth that I’m certain of in ways that I can’t be certain of the type a word. I don’t mean to say that to the computer guru here, that digital communication is differently powerful. But if you ever wanna make sure you get on the Congress person’s radar screen, put pen to paper, and I promise you it’ll show up on their desk. Matt Hyatt (00:44:50): That was great advice. We’ve heard it all our lives, sometimes tongue in cheek. If you’ve got a big problem, somebody says, write your congressmen, but I love the underscoring of no, actually right to your Congressman. I think that’s terrific. Speaking of Gwinnett, we are blessed I think, to be one of the fastest growing communities in the US. I think we’ve been on the top 100 list for a good long time. I remember that being cited. The number of times over the past 10 or 12 years, that I’ve been active in our community. What, what are the opportunities and challenges that come out of a fast growing rapidly changing community like this one? Rob Woodall (00:45:44): Well, when you’re the first to encounter an opportunity or challenge, you don’t have anybody to learn from in that in that way. And so when I met time and time, again, at least in the metropolitan Atlanta region has encountered challenges first. And I’m just so proud of the way we’ve taken those on. We haven’t pushed any of those to the side, the the community and Gwinnett insists on taking those, those problems head on, but whether it is having the largest school system in the Southeastern United States, educating that diverse population of children is not an easy job. And yet we’re recognized nationally year after year for doing it so well. It’s a testimony to Alvin Willbanks as our superintendent and to all of our principals and all of our teachers. And truthfully all of our parents as folks move into our area because of our spectacular fuel system. Rob Woodall (00:46:42): But it as I hear it when I traveled to smaller counties across the state Matt, they look at how Gwinnett did it, and if it turned out great, they want to emulate that. And if it turned out not so great, they’re going to take a different path. We are trailblazers. And I tell all of my colleagues that my district looks today, the way America is going to look in about 15 years, whether that’s educational attainment level, whether it’s diversity and in business mix or racial mix you go right down the list. We’re just ahead of the game. In our part of the world, it gives us a great opportunity to lead, but it also means we’re kind of out there on our own sometimes trying to figure out the best path forward. Matt Hyatt (00:47:26): So tell me. I think most of my kids have had an opportunity to see you come visit their school. I know my son, Zach got to meet you once. He was still a boy. Is that a big part of the job spending time, running around to different schools and meeting with the younger folks Rob Woodall (00:47:50): Is it a big part of the job? The answer would be no. Do I try to make it a bigger part of the job that ought to be? The answer is absolutely, yes. If you’ve got to spend your time during the day with angry people who have given up or optimistic people who believe that the best is yet to come, you’re going to choose that optimism. And if I can start my day with children, my day is going to be better because children love the president of the United States. Whoever the president of the United States is they love the white house. They love Capitol Hill. They love America, and we want it. They believe you ask how many kids want to grow up to be president United States. You ask parents that question, nobody raises their hand, but you asked children that question, you’ll get a dozen hands in every classroom. I wanted the level of trust in our elected representatives to be higher when I left than when I got here. And I decided early on that, one of the ways I could do that was to get involved with young people. The young people historically have been the least likely to vote the least likely to participate, but in terms of a population, they are large enough now to move absolutely every the 18 to 24 year olds to move every issue on the docket. My walls in DC are adorned with thank you notes from children and artwork that they have made and pictures that we have taken and storybooks that we’ve read. Jesus knew that it was not a waste of time to spend time with the children, that is where the magic happens. Rob Woodall (00:49:30): And I learn just as much about the children’s parents in the questions that they ask. They don’t hold back. They’re completely transparent that it is not just an emotional boost for me to spend, spend time with great young people. It’s also instructive to me to, if it’s a worry that the children have internalized, you know, it’s a worry that the parents have been talking about around the family dinner table. So it might be a little unexpected, but it’s a very transparent look into the fears and the excitement that the moms and dads are sharing all across the district. Matt Hyatt (00:50:13): I’ve read that some of the things that your office has been involved in are robotics challenges, application development challenges. Are those designed to get kids involved in what’s happening in DC? Or is it more a, this is sort of the future for a lot of folks. And so we’re trying to develop young people towards those things. Rob Woodall (00:50:40): It is the latter. Okay. If you want a career in DC, there are certainly lots of ones to pick, but the truth is if I can get you to be an engineer instead of a lawyer I think I think we’ve succeeded in that, you know, the top 1% of all the engineers that graduate in China outnumber all of the engineers that graduate in America. And, and so I just can’t, I can’t chart a pathway for American leadership on the globe that doesn’t include having every single young person maximize their abilities. However they can in the same way that folks don’t know they can contact their Congressman, that they don’t know. They can just be the Congressman if they want to be the Congressman folks, don’t always know that that high tech career is available to them. Rob Woodall (00:51:35): They don’t always know that mathematical expertise is within their reach. We have such an amazing school system that offers so many opportunities. The teachers care so much. I just want to do whatever I can in a small way to buttress those efforts. And if it means highlighting the robotics team that was in high school when I began this process and is now in most of the elementary schools across the district, then these are good problems to to have, but again, you and I don’t live in a typical community. We live in an exceptional community. And many of these programs at the federal level are designed perhaps to give a child the only look they’re going to get the only inspiration they’re going to get in our community. It’s not the case. There’s so much opportunity, but in many other communities, it may be the only opportunity they have to be recognized as an app developer, for example, and members across the country want to want to participate in and play a positive role. Matt Hyatt (00:52:48): That’s an interesting perspective. It’s so easy for us to get so caught up in our own little bubble and believe that that’s just the way it is everywhere. And that’s not always the case. Well, I’m so glad that those clubs exist. I think they’re critically important. And I love that there are opportunities may be created in areas that wouldn’t otherwise have them. Well, speaking of which our producer, Chris wanted me to ask you about, I don’t know if he’s pursuing a different career. He wants me to ask about students that are pursuing a degree at a Naval, Army or air force Academy. Chris, will get a kick out of that. You know, he sees that he was running our marketing campaign here. So maybe he’s considering a different career. I don’t know, is that typical of congressmen to help students and that sort of thing? Rob Woodall (00:53:39): Yeah, it absolutely is Matt. And I’m glad Chris asked, because I put that in the category of things that folks don’t understand. If you’d ask me when I was 16, 17 years old, if the Naval Academy was available to me, I could get a Congressman to nominate me to go to the air force Academy. I said, no, that’s for that’s for rich people who know their Congressman that’s for these partisan people who, who go to all the conventions that’s not available just to, to me, that’s for that’s for other people, special people nonsense. What I have learned Matt over the years, in fact, last weekend is when we did our interviews for this year, we had 50 young people from across the district, come in and say, pick me, pick me to lead. We have over the years sent hundreds of names forward to the academies and have a long list of graduates that our community can be proud of. Rob Woodall (00:54:39): If you want an all expense paid college degree from one of the finest engineering programs in the land, certainly one of the finest leadership programs in the land, along with a guaranteed job, along with an opportunity to make the world a safer place, along with the opportunity to stand up for those who can’t stand up for themselves. Our military academies offer that, and you know, the kids who are applying today, Matt, they haven’t known a day of peace in their entire life. They weren’t born on September 11th. We were already at war in Afghanistan when they entered this world. And even in all of that, not just uncertainty, but certainty about the risks that they are taking on our community puts more people in the military academies than any other district in the state because our young people are just that good. So I would encourage everyone, even though I’m on my way out, the new Congresswoman is going to do things exactly the same way. Rob Woodall (00:55:53): It’s not a partisan exercise. Nobody wants to stack the military with a bunch of incapable packs. You want the finest people you can find to lead the country. And so if you have a great leadership background in in your boards clubs or in your church or in your community, now, if you have a successful academic background, not that you got all A’s every semester, but that you were working hard, you understood the value of, of the opportunities that you have and you availed yourself of them athletics matter. But none of those things are definitive. They’re all pieces of the puzzle. And then we bring those young people in Matt, just like every other member of Congress does. And instead of having the political leader say, okay, I want you in the Naval Academy. And I want you in the, in the air force Academy, we have an Academy board of of Academy graduates. You know Mr. Mike Murphy, Mary Kay Murphy’s husband Mike was in the very first graduating class from the air force Academy. Mike’s on our board picking the next generation of air force Academy, cadets. We have enlisted folks. We have educational folks. We want the very best that we can put forward. The rule is that we’re allowed to put one person in each Academy, but because our young people are so amazing, we send forward a list of four people or five people or six people. And the academies know that our people are going to be the best and year after year after year, we get multiple people into every single Academy. Again, not because I’m a rockstar, but because our young people are rockstars. If that’s a career path that any of your listeners are thinking about for themselves or for their kids, it is the least political thing that I do. And as a result, one of the most rewarding, if you’re having a bad day, come sit in with me, interviewing the young people who want to lead our country into the next into the next decade. It will it will give you great hope that our very best days as a country are ahead. Matt Hyatt (00:58:16): That’s terrific. Thank you so much for sharing that. I don’t, I really don’t think a lot of people know about that. So that’s good to hear. So let’s move on to a different topic for a few minutes. And the idea here is I think you kind of, you probably know this, I hope you know this. I think you’ve inspired a lot of people, and I think you’ve done that because of your approach to what would be considered a hot topics for a lot of folks, I would imagine it can be frustrating sometimes to try to work things out with a few hundred of your your peers and sometimes, well, we can just say it, right. Seems like there’s a lot of gridlock there. How do you keep your head on straight and keep your cool through that and how what’s the secret to try to work through some of those really big problems where it just seems like you can’t quite get to a different point of view. Rob Woodall (00:59:28): It is amazing to me that there are so many folks who have that same question and have been married to their lovely husband or wife for 25 or 30 years. That’s right. It’s not unusual to disagree with people passionately, but still recognize that they are wonderful human beings and that you have to find a way to work this out going, going forward. We use those same skills. The challenge is, and if folks want to know which members to cultivate relationships with at noon today, we’ll go into session and folks can speak for one minute on any topic they want to speak on. Some people will use that one minute to recognize a 30 year teacher who’s retiring, or a first responder who made a difference for a family and a life saving way to recognize a pastor or a young person for their accomplishments. Rob Woodall (01:00:27): And other people will use that 60 seconds to just rip the hide off of their political opponents and tell you how bad everything is. I can’t work with the people who want to use their 60 seconds of attention to tear people down, but I can work with anybody who wants to use their 60 seconds of attention to build people up. And I don’t need to agree my friend, Jim McGovern, who was chairman of the rules committee, a very liberal Democrat from Massachusetts. He and I disagree on almost everything. He wants us out of Iraq and Afghanistan for one set of reasons. I want us to vote on getting out of Iraq and Afghanistan for a different set of reasons, but we both share the desire to bring a vote to the floor on the authorization for the use of military force for the first time, since 2003. Rob Woodall (01:01:28): That is the secret, Matt. You don’t have to believe that your partner is right about everything. You just have to believe your partner has something to offer on the one finite issue of the day. And you develop that reputation. If your constituents will allow you to, there are folks who come from 90% Republican districts or 90% Democrat democratic districts, those constituents don’t always want their representative to be a good partner. Sometimes they want their representative to go burn the place down. I’m just lucky enough that I come from a district where folks do want to move forward together. They don’t believe getting half of what you want is losing. They believe getting half of what you want is winning and that you can go and get more the next day and more than the next day. I believe one of the kindest phone calls I received was from a liberal democratic Congresswoman in California, who called and asked if I would work on an immigration issue with her. Rob Woodall (01:02:33): And I said, listen, we have not met. I don’t know who you are. The Congress had just been been starting. I’d be happy to work with you, but why are you calling me? And she said, well, because I asked around, and I know if we’re going to get anything done, it’s got to get done in a bipartisan way. And I’m told that you have impeccable conservative credentials from the work you’ve done as the leader of the Republican study committee, but that you’re also willing to work with anybody on anything that you think is going to move the ball in the right direction. And I think I’ve got an idea that might, might do that. That’s quite a compliment. It was an amazing compliment. Matt and I’ve worked hard to earn that reputation, but only because the constituency in the seventh district allows me to, I hope you will take pride in it. Rob Woodall (01:03:27): Every single bipartisan effort that has been created in the time I’ve been in Congress, even whether it was a large effort or a small effort. And the Republican leadership has named me to be a part of that effort, because when it comes to reaching across the aisle, I have a constituency that just wants to get it fixed. They don’t care who gets credit for it. They don’t care what it takes. They just want to solve problems. And the more districts we have that look like ours, that elect people not to get their point across, but to make progress the better off I think we’re going to be as a Republic. The answer is not more congressmen like me. The answer is more voters like you, and that is what’s going to get us going to solve our problems going forward. Matt Hyatt (01:04:20): Well, you are very kind and very humble. I want to tell you, I’m grateful for you, and I’m so glad to be represented by you over the past 10 years or so that I’ve known you. You’ve done just a terrific job. I confess selfishly. I was a little saddened to hear that you’re retiring your position and moving on, I’ve been, you know, working through it over a period of time and I’ve come to terms with the idea, Rob, what’s, what’s your plan. What’s next for you? The revelations, by the way, I’m both being sincere and that I’m going to very much miss having you in that role, but also I’m kidding a bit. You deserve to focus on whatever you like. And I hope you’ve got great plans, and I’d love to hear about them. Rob Woodall (01:05:18): There is a fire that is required to do this job, and I am surrounded by men and women on my staff who share that fire there. When I announced I was going to retire was an opportunity for bipartisanship, with a Republican in the white house and Democrats leading the US house. I thought we were going to partner on absolutely everything and have a wildly productive, two years solving problems. It didn’t work out quite that way. COVID was part of that problem. And, and personalities were a part of that problem on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, I too am going to have to take some time to work out the disappointment of leaving things in an uncertain state. As I envisioned it, we were going to be in a place of much greater certainty and much greater prosperity, but that said, sometimes the country needs people who are going to partner and do things slowly but surely. Rob Woodall (01:06:35): Sometimes the country needs folks who are going to get in there and, and, and, and burn things burn things down. I don’t ever want to be the burn things down a person. And I see in primary after primary around the country, good Democrats and good Republicans being defeated because they’re not angry enough act at their opponents. I think constituents deserve what they, what they want. They ought to be able to elect any kind of representative they, they want to. But my ability to make a contribution depends on a Congress that wants to work together and get things get things done that had been coming increasingly less. So over the, over the years, John Bayner leading the house and Barack Obama leading the white house, had great success on very difficult issues, even though we didn’t agree on a lot, I am gonna go through a 12 step program to detox from all that partisanship, so that I will, again, believe that there are more people who want to work together. Rob Woodall (01:07:46): There are more people looking for the good in one another than not. But if we had a if we had a tag team Congress where I could trade out for a couple of years and then come back in and stay fresh, you know, just like on the football team, you don’t play both ways. You bring somebody else in to try to sort it out. I would love to I would love to serve, but I am. I’m excited for our, for our state, that there are new people who are coming in full of fire, full of enthusiasm. And I am hopeful that we’ll continue to have the same hardworking cohesive delegation that has that has defined Georgia candidly for the last 30 years. Matt Hyatt (01:08:32): Well, I wish you the very best with that 12 step program when you’re done and feeling great, come visit. We’d love to have you over at Rocket IT, and certainly hope we’ll stay in touch Rob Woodall (01:08:43): The, instead of trying to help with any problems that you all might have, Matt, I’ll be bringing you all of my problems to solve. If there’s, if there’s anybody that’s in the problem-solving business, it’s you all and losing my technical support team on Capitol Hill, I will need to hire folks who can succeed for me. And I appreciate that. Matt Hyatt (01:09:02): Well, we’d love to help you. Of course. So one thing that we do with every podcast guest is just ask a few questions that are pretty similar to one another. And so, in other words, from one episode to another, they’re similar. Tell us, tell us, you told us about one person that impacted your journey while you were chief of staff, but thinking more globally, is there any particular person that has really stood out to you as a role model? Rob Woodall (01:09:32): It sounds it sounds cliche, Matt, but I’m lucky enough that my dad was, that was that model. I lost him two and a half years ago to cancer. And you don’t always realize how much help someone is to you in your life until they’re gone. And we’re all lucky to have been touched by so many amazing people, but family is one of those things that you don’t get to choose. It’s the hand that you’re dealt and the federal government spends a lot of time trying to figure out how to help families be stronger. And we have arguably lost more of those battles than we’ve than we’ve won. But I, I had the, I had the great benefit of having a dad who was the man that I wanted to grow up to be. And if we could have more children who believe that very same thing about their dads then I’m sure that many of the things we perceive as problems in our country would be would be very short, very short lived. Having someone who loves you unconditio

https://youtu.be/9ZoJRR9A-DI In episode 18 of the Rocket IT Business Podcast we speak with friends and fellow entrepreneurs, Chad and Robin Merrill. With decades of leadership and business experience between them, Chad and Robin are on a mission to inspire, impact, and influence the lives of others. With their current businesses venture, Impact 2:52, Chad and Robin are equipping entrepreneurs and other leaders with the tools and systems to build healthy, sustainable organizations. But, Impact 2:52 is just the tip of the iceberg. There’s a lot to unpack here, listen close as we dive in. In This Episode, You’ll Hear More About: How Impact 2:52 came to be The entrepreneurial drive How to establish a business with your significant other The benefits of a holding company The Fellowship of Companies for Christ International How to balance relationships, work, and stewardship Steps for managing entrepreneurial risk How to invest in resource deserts What it takes to make big life changes Contact Information Robin Merrill | robin@connextionworldwide.com Chad Merrill | chad@impact252.com Resources Mentioned Impact 2:52 Connextion Worldwide The American Spirit Dream Big Faith Driven Entrepreneur Podcast Like What Your Heard? Give Us Some Feedback! Rocket IT | podcasts@rocketit.com | 770-441-2520 Host: Matt Hyatt Guest: Robin Merrill Guest: Chad Merrill Show Notes Matt Hyatt (00:00:00): Hello, and welcome to episode 18 of the rocket it business podcast. I’m your host, Matt Hyatt. And today we’re talking with my friends and fellow entrepreneurs, Chad and Robin Merrill Intro (00:00:25): [Music Plays] Matt Hyatt (00:00:28): With decades of leadership and business experience between them, Chad and Robin are on a mission to inspire, impact, and influence the lives of others. With their current business, Impact 2:52, Chad and Robin are equipping entrepreneurs and other leaders with the tools and systems to build healthy, sustainable organizations. But Impact 2:52 is just the tip of the iceberg. There’s a lot to unpack here, so let’s dive in. Robin, Chad, welcome to the show. Robin Merrill (00:00:54): Thanks. We’re glad to be on it, Matt. Chad Merrill (00:00:56): Thank you. Matt Hyatt (00:00:57): Yeah, absolutely. So first things first, I want to learn a little bit about the two of you for the benefit of our listeners. We don’t often have the opportunity to talk with couples that also work together quite a bit. And I know you’ve been married for a long, long, long, long, long time. Have you always worked together? Robin Merrill (00:01:19): Yeah. Well, you know, Matt, I’m going to give you a little bit of the backstory first and then we’ll get into that work part of it. But this is my favorite part of our story because we started dating when Chad was 14 and I was 16. We actually got married when he was 19 and I was 21, one year after we were married as when we started our first business. And so we’ve now been married 33 years. That gives you a little nugget of our background. Matt Hyatt (00:01:59): That’s amazing. Now did you both come from entrepreneurial families? Chad Merrill (00:02:04): Yeah, we did actually, both my grandparents were small business owners and my dad was a lawyer that was involved with several businesses as well. And Robin’s dad was also a small business furniture store owner in the town where we grew up. So a lot of entrepreneurial blood in her background. Matt Hyatt (00:02:26): Yeah. Once you, once you once you sort of caught that bug, it’s, it’s hard to get rid of it, isn’t it. Chad Merrill (00:02:34): And when you’ve had it for a few years and find out that you’re probably not employable. Matt Hyatt (00:02:45): I love it. Yeah. I have joked many times and this is sort of true thing, right. It’s that I consider myself pretty much unemployable at this point. I knew I have a special fondness for other entrepreneurs, as you know, and you know, if something, I don’t know what it is, if it’s something in our blood or something about our backgrounds, but it is sort of an affliction, isn’t it? Once, once you’ve once you’ve sort of tasted the entrepreneurial life, it, it kind of sticks with you, huh? Robin Merrill (00:03:16): Well, in all honesty, Matt, I will say there are times though that I was like, what are we doing? And there are times I did want to back off of it. But all in all, yeah. Once you get it in your blood, it’s hard to get out. Matt Hyatt (00:03:31): Well, I think we’ve experienced that too. Or, you know, most, most of the time, if you’re watching an interview on TV, or you know, you’re reading about entrepreneurs, often the vision is, hey, I’m going to start here. And then this is going to be this amazing trajectory, you know, high and to the right. Right? But the reality is for most of us that road’s a lot bumpier than that. Huh? Chad Merrill (00:03:56): Absolutely. I know who’s lives are like the stock market, you know, way down, when you look at at a decade at a time time it’s kind of up into the right. Matt Hyatt (00:04:05): Right. Well, you know what, it’s funny you say that I read something the other day and it was in the context of real estate investing, but the the message was to think in terms of decades, rather than thinking in terms of, of years. And I think that’s really smart, whether it’s real estate or entrepreneurship and probably other things in life too; relationships and things like that is, what’s the game plan for the decade ahead, as opposed to, you know, what’s happening right now or next week, or year even. Chad Merrill (00:04:36): Well, I think years, like we’ve had in 2020 remind you of that. Also take nothing for granted, but certainly have to look a little bit longer. Matt Hyatt (00:04:46): It has been a wild ride, for sure. So I do want to start a little bit with Impact 2:52, which I have the impression that’s sort of the, the newest most centric part of your focus right now. Would that be accurate? Yeah, Chad Merrill (00:05:03): It’s you know, it does take a little bit of explaining because it like 2:52 became kind of a catchall. Holding company is a little bit too lofty of a word, but it became kind of the conduit where we decided a few years ago that we would kind of do our business and professional lives through. So it is our latest pursuit, but it kind of encompasses a lot of different things, depending on the year, the season, the project. Matt Hyatt (00:05:30): Right. Well, I’d love to hear how you got started with that, because as you alluded to that, probably wasn’t the idea going in with D-Bat and, and your other organizations. So can you tell us a little bit about the background and how it got started and how you ended up with Impact 2:52 being this sort of like you said, kind of a holding company, Chad Merrill (00:05:54): It goes back a little bit, or just, let’s just step back. I was involved in the company, OnePath Systems where partners started it, grew it and ultimately sold it to a private equity firm. And through that transition, they were, they were good guys. They did what they said. They were honest guys, but we had a, a value disconnect. You know, we had been started on a certain set of values and as the influence of the equity and when they ultimately brought in the president and things like that, it became stark that, you know, the values that we had formed the company on were just different and it, it just wasn’t comfortable. It wasn’t fine. Like any kind of relationship when your values don’t align, you see that there can be conflict coming. So when I ultimately left, OnePath and started Impact 2:52 and the real, the real goal and the Genesis behind it was less try to stay value aligned and all that. Chad Merrill (00:06:49): We do projects, we work with partners, we take on companies we may get involved with or start or buy. And so that was the beginning and it came about real quick. We had a deal on the table, we were working with a lawyer and he said, you know, I need to know the name by the end of the day, we’ve got to, we’ve got to incorporate, we got to get this paper going and, and things like that. And we started writing words on the board and they were influencing the next generation and inspiration and things like that. And as you said, the company we were buying had to do with baseball, youth baseball. And so we thought impact, that’s a great word. So he said to inspire, influence and impact. And then 2:52 actually comes from Luke 2:52. It’s where Jesus grew in wisdom stature and favor of God. Chad Merrill (00:07:37): And so he thought, Oh, that really encompasses a lot of things with youth. So we thought if you grow in wisdom and stature and favor of God, and man, we thought that kind of really encompasses a lot of the things that we wanted to do. So Impact 2:52 was born. Matt Hyatt (00:07:54): I love it. So tell us about, D-Bat. Chad Merrill (00:07:57): So D-Bat. When we formed the company we bought, I was looking for a company trying to find what to do was transitioning out of one path and, called a friend that was a business broker and said, looking for something to do with leadership or next generation or things that we can impact people and had no idea what that would look like. And two months later, he called back and said, I found a baseball training facility in Buckhead. And so scratched my head, and thought, hey, that could work. Chad Merrill (00:08:27): You know, I’ve been going to work sometimes wearing a coat and a tie and things like that. And I said, we’re in a t-shirt and you know, going to a gym probably sounds like a good idea. So that’s where it started. We bought this a little baseball facility in Buckhead, and then it became off to the races and the little bit, the type-A and the entrepreneurism kicked in and over the last four or five years, we built seven in the Atlanta area. And started going beyond that and added soccer and a few other things. And so that was the that was the beginning of impact. Matt Hyatt (00:09:04): I love it. And how long ago was that? Chad Merrill (00:09:07): That was I believe in 2015. At the end of 2015. And, and it took off and it, you know, what I found being an entrepreneur and like, you know, a lot of folks that are entrepreneurial and once we got into baseball and soccer found out, lots of folks are looking to do things like that. So very fortunate to have some great guys that came alongside, that were in that industry and a couple of professional ballplayers. And everybody loved the idea of having a positive influence on sports and kids and the Atlanta market. And so we’ve been really fortunate to grow it at a pretty good rate over the last few years. Matt Hyatt (00:09:50): And so is, is do you have a sports background? Chad Merrill (00:09:55): I’ll watch it on the weekends. We did in high school, we played a lot of sports in high school and actually Robin and I both had pretty good high school careers. I actually did coach a lot of baseball. I tell folks that’s one of my proudest moments is our 11 year old baseball team winning the Georgia state championship, some relevant experience there, for sure. A lot of fun. Matt Hyatt (00:10:26): So that kind of reminds me that I think there is a common theme that will probably unfold here in this conversation is a lot of what you and Robin have been involved in really does relate to kids and teens and young adults. And so what was out of the design goal for, for your search of this new business venture also? Or did that, was that a lucky coincidence? Chad Merrill (00:10:55): A little of both. I mean, it was, it was a design goal when we were looking, but we didn’t really know what we were looking for. I think we probably both thought that it would be extracurricular and maybe it would be related. And as you start getting into a little bit of Robin’s professional story, those themes will collide as well. So I would say it was certainly not accidental, but but it was, you know, a bit of a, a kind of a great scenario when it was able to come out the way it did in so many different parts of life. Matt Hyatt (00:11:29): Well, you know, one thing I really like about the business model also from the, from the very little bit that I know about it is you’re, you’re obviously having influence and impact in the lives of young children who are there to improve their sport, whether it’s soccer or baseball, but I’m going to guess that your team is comprised of probably teenagers, college students and other young adults. And so you have a real opportunity to impact them and their lives also, is that, is that right? Chad Merrill (00:12:04): It is. And when we really started focusing on that was a couple of years ago, I think we looked around and had about a hundred employees at the time. And I think we determined that all, but three or four were under the age of 30. So we’ve got a few more gray hairs. Now that’s 150, 275. We realized we were a full on kind of millennial company. Average age was about 25, 24. So it’s a, it’s a, it’s a great environment that creates a whole different set of challenges and, and, you know, business opportunities to work. Matt Hyatt (00:12:42): I didn’t plan to ask about the pandemic and how that’s affected that business, but I got to think that has affected that business. How, how have you navigated through the pandemic with w really as a group sports type of environment? Chad Merrill (00:13:00): We were real fortunate. I mean, it did hit hard. So we had to hard set down in March or April, whenever, particularly in Georgia and places like California and Seattle, we had to set down. And also a lot of time with our team, we’ve got a great president and he they really responded and started doing things video and, you know, created, you know, dozens over a hundred new drills and said, hey, let’s communicate. And we sent soccer balls and baseballs to customers saying, we’re thinking about you and come back. And so Georgia is, you know, nationally has been on the more aggressive side of opening back up. And so when we did open, we had a tremendous spike, you know, kids will understand that parents are like, we got to do something, you know, leagues were canceled, can’t go to the movies, not going to school. Chad Merrill (00:13:54): And, and we became a big outlet. And so we’ve come back very, very strong. We’ve had to work real hard at safety protocols. And I like to say, particularly in that business, we really have the parent trust business, their kids, or lots of different activities. And, and so we, we’re trying to go above and beyond to have safety protocols and things like that. So it was a dip very hard to go to zero for a month, but we are pretty close to 2020 plan. And some, some locations actually surpassed it. So we’ve been fortunate. Matt Hyatt (00:14:30): I love it. Well, I appreciate you sharing that story. That is a huge accomplishment to be able to navigate such a, just a giant unknown for 2020. Sounds like it’s worked really well. And in some cases it sounds like it’s been an outlet for those parents and kids that really need something to occupy their, not just to occupy their time, but to have their attention and focus. Right. That’s important. Right. So Robin, I’d love to spend a little bit of time with you as well. And one of the things that I love about really both your stories is that while you’ve had a number of different ventures that, that I know about over the years, a lot of them are sort of intertwined and connect together and work together really well. And so I know that you started a business not too long ago with some friends Connextion Worldwide. Right. Can you tell us about that effort and how it relates to Impact 2:52? Robin Merrill (00:15:36): Sure. I’d be glad to thanks. So I have to kind of give you a little bit of backstory of how Connextion came about and our good friend, Jeremie Kubicek, who we both love. Matt Hyatt (00:15:50): And he’s been on the show before. We did a podcast with him not too long ago. Robin Merrill (00:15:54): Very good. I haven’t seen it. I’ll go back and watch. But anyway, Jeremie has been just a huge influence on our lives in the leadership language and tools that he offered us as a couple and we kind of went and ran with that, joined the GiANT team and GiANT has now become an online platform. And so the senior consultant that I was at GiANT, that kind of that model has gone away. And so some of the other ladies that were trained in the GiANT, you know, language and tools, all said, we came together and said, well, why don’t we build our own company and our own platforms? So we are powered by the GiANT tools, but we really came together and formed Connextion Worldwide to connect. It really has started really started to connect women in leadership from all over. And we really wanted to do that with a boutique retreat type of platform. Robin Merrill (00:17:01): And that has morphed into year long programs. So we’re finishing up our first year long pro program with women. And we were at our first retreat together. And the pandemic was really amazing that we had ladies from five different States joining us. And so getting off of a a few days with them and just on a high and just seeing the liberation and the transformation that these ladies have been through this year has been significant. You know, we all talk about people being in leadership and how lonely that can be. And it’s in particularly lonely for women sometimes to feel like they have to be something maybe that they’re not. And so helping them to understand who they are and really lean into that. And that really comes out of the other, my other partners and my own transformation and in the leadership realm. So we are on par for next year, and that’s going to look a little bit different as we started off the, just women for Connextion. We were also working with corporate clients or working with young leaders speaking. And so now our platform is going to encompass all of that as we move into 2021. Matt Hyatt (00:18:23): Well, we all know 20, 21 is different in a lot of ways, right? Robin Merrill (00:18:29): Chad is like the genuine entrepreneur. He is that visionary. I am more of that more present minded person, and I need a lot more details and he does. So that’s really been a balance for us in, in our marriage and also working together, and so for me to actually start this company, I think this is the first time I’ve done that without Chad being a part of it. And I actually had to pull him in quite a bit, but, you know, it was very interesting for me to move into that role as a, as a true entrepreneur in this situation with Connextion Worldwide. So it’s been fun, but it’s been a growth opportunity for me in lots of ways. I’ve had to really stretch muscles I’ve never had to stretch before. So, but I wanted to go back because I wanted to share with you a little bit, just about how GiANT going back to the Impact 2:52 in all the people that we work with, you know, we chatted and just have a heart for the young professionals for young entrepreneurs, for young people coming out of college into the workplace. Robin Merrill (00:19:43): And so at Impact, what we did at D-Bat and for the TOCA leaders, we started what was about three and a half years ago, Chad? I think that we started a leadership program every Wednesday, our top tier one leaders would go through all day training, whether that was on a book or conversations that we’re having people come in. And so I would take one of those Wednesdays and I worked with tier one leaders and tier two leaders in what we would do is go through a year long program so that we’re infusing the GiANT tools, the GiANT language, the common language that, that produces say that we were building this healthy culture, right? Because the four we had started these leadership days, we had a pretty high turnover rate in the company and that morphed into what about a year, year and a half after we started these leadership days that, you know, we had so many people coming test is top quality, top notch, people wanting to work at our company. Matt Hyatt (00:20:51): That’s fantastic. So word got out about the program and they were coming for that. Robin Merrill (00:20:55): Yeah. One of the things Chad and our president did, is I just asked what, what is it that you want so that you would stay with us for three years? Like what, what would you want us to offer you so that we can help grow you and keep you for at least three years? Because you get this age group, there’s a lot of turnover, you know, of jobs in the age group. And they really said, we just want you to pour into us. We want to learn. We want to grow as a leader. We want to learn how to manage our money. You know, there’s just so many things I just wanted to know about them personally. So people have asked us, well, orange, she’s scared to just gonna leave and go somewhere else. Well, yeah, that’s kind of the goal, you know, is to help them. I mean, yes, of course we want to keep them, but we also want to build bleeders that wherever they get next are going to be absolutely the most amazing either entrepreneur or either person to work with at that next place that they land. Matt Hyatt (00:21:54): Yeah. I love that. Well, it certainly is a balance, right? You want to, you want to keep folks, but you also want to genuinely help folks so that whatever happens next is a good experience for everyone involved. Right? But it sounds like just pouring into folks and, and really making that a significant part of the culture has worked to help retain folks and also to recruit new people. Robin Merrill (00:22:28): It’s been, it’s been significant. And what I love about what we’re doing is it’s a multiplication effect. So these young people that we’re pouring into and developing liberating leaders is what we call them. People that support and challenge. And they know how to bring that in a way that other people can hear and grow. They now are our top leaders, take that to all of their locations and they’re working with every single person in their group. So it’s been really, really, truly amazing the stories we hear of significant impact it’s had on their lives personally, but also on their lives as they’re growing in now and their new business world as leaders. Matt Hyatt (00:23:10): I love it. So I would like to get into the mechanics just a little bit, because I do think well I know that many of our listeners are entrepreneurs and other leaders that would like to learn from people like you tell us a little bit more about the cadence of meetings. Did I hear correctly that for your new leaders, that they’re going through a one-year program, which is comprised of a weekly meeting, is that right? Robin Merrill (00:23:38): If they’re in our, in our top tier, if they’re managing or directing, that’s the level that they come in at, and then that, because those remember they’re multiplying. So they now go back to their locations. So everyone from top level managers down to the person that is training someone, you know, with TOCA soccer or baseball, everyone is getting this common language. They’re all understanding how to speak to each other objectively, so that we avoid a lot of the tension and frustrations that you’re going to have some, but this helps communication at a higher level. Matt Hyatt (00:24:17): That’s great. So tell me, you, you mentioned, and we’ve talked about a little bit that you and Chad both have a passion for young people and, and young adults, rising leaders work. Where does that come from? Is that something you’ve always had, or I know, I know you’ve got, so you’ve got two grown sons, right? Was that Your introduction to the kid thing? Robin Merrill (00:24:42): Was, was, ah, Barrett’s 27 and Christina will be 23 next week. Matt Hyatt (00:24:51): Okay, excellent. So but truly, I would like to kind of unpack that, have you always worked with young adults or is that a passion that’s just sort of discovered later? Robin Merrill (00:25:00): Well, I’ll go ahead and start. Chad, you jump in anytime. I would love to share this little story with you because I think it’s just significant part of, of who we are now. But back in the twenties, I guess we’re about 27, 28, Chad and I went on a little retreat. And we just ask ourselves this question, you know, what is it that we want to do before we die? Robin Merrill (00:25:32): People now probably call it a bucket list, but that’s not what we called it back then. So anyway, so what was significant about that came out of that weekend were two things. We would go away, we would dream on our own. Then we would come back at lunch and dinner and talk, but we had a lot of time that we just spent in our own thoughts and minds and prayer and all of that. And we would come back into the two things that came out is that Chad says, you really want to have a foreign exchange student come live with us. And the second thing that came out of that was we created, you know, it was so fun, just dreaming up. What would it look like if we created a place for kids to come and they would be safe and they could, you know, watch great movies , you know, have a place to learn about leadership, you know, have a place that they could play baseball, whatever that looked like. Robin Merrill (00:26:27): We were just kind of dreaming. And it’s kind of fun to see that those dreams have kind of happened over the years. So after we came off of that weekend, I guess we’re home about six weeks and we had an email come through and it said a lady in the neighborhood and said, I’ve got an exchange student that needs a place for six months. So we looked at each other and like, okay, let’s do it. That, that was the first time that we had an exchange student live with us. As teenager, we had had friends in different units. Chad’s brother lived with us, but we all of a sudden realized we really enjoyed it. So I guess now we’ve had over 20 something, young people that have lived with us through the years and anywhere from six weeks to three and a half years. So, and so that’s an addition to our two kids, but it’s been amazing. We’ve learned so much from them, you know, and we just felt like, they’ve taught us a lot that we have that, you know, we’ve instilled something in them as well, and that’s a part of their journey. So because of that, we have just really enjoyed the, the young people and being a part of their lives and pouring into them. So, yeah, I guess we’ve always had this infinity towards, working with, with young, with young people. Matt Hyatt (00:27:54): Oh, that’s awesome. I love hearing that. I had, I had no idea 20, 20 something people probably at different times, not all at the same time Chad Merrill (00:28:05): We recently moved so they wouldn’t know where we were. But then people were still there under shadow of night, so we moved across town. Matt Hyatt (00:28:22): Well, let’s talk about that for just a second because you know, Maureen and I, we, we live out in the suburbs of Atlanta and we’re also a relatively new empty-nesters. We haven’t been at it quite, quite as long as you have, but certainly we’ve gotten to a point where it’s like, wow, you know, we could move in town near all the restaurants and art galleries. We like to known how’s that going? You, you moved across town, you were already sort of near Atlanta. I would say, if not directly in the city limits, but right now you’re in the thick of it. Aren’t you? Chad Merrill (00:28:56): We are, it may only be eight or 10 miles by a distance, but it’s it’s a radical difference from where we were. So we had the house in the, in the suburbs. So lots of folks live there and we had cookouts in the backyard and all the types of things you do in the suburbs. And so we are now down in town at the Belt Line, Matt Hyatt (00:29:20): Nice the Belt Line is a multipurpose outdoor trail going through Atlanta for those of us that are not in Atlanta. Chad Merrill (00:29:30): Yes. Yes. And it’s both incredibly diverse in every kind of way. I think it’s the most diverse part of Atlanta, age, backgrounds, races, and things like that. And it’s completely different. It’s probably as close to living in, you know, a major city in New York or something is Atlanta has to offer everywhere. We’re contemplating letting the car go and being a family and things like that. So it was, but it was fine. It’s been great. It’s been great so far. I’m one of the, one of the reasons behind, it was a bit of a mindset and saying, Hey, if we change something significantly about, you know, place purpose, we were both kind of transitioning between careers and companies and things of that nature. And so we thought, boy, this will be a real different mindset and something, something new. Matt Hyatt (00:30:28): Well, I do want to touch on that and this and selfishly, this is all about Maureen and I are making this decision. Our listeners may not care at all, but I want to know. We, we have looked in town you know, fairly seriously. We’ve looked at a number of different areas and, and you know, mostly condos and townhouses and kind of thinking about if we’re going to be traveling for long periods of time is something that we like to do. Be nice if you didn’t have a yard to worry about, and you’ve got close neighbors and keep an eye on things. But I have to confess it’s a little bit scary for a guy that grew up really in the suburbs or even beyond it’s a big change, have any surprises that we should know about anything we should consider as we think through that, that idea. Chad Merrill (00:31:28): That’s great. So far, we’ve actually, I don’t know, maybe six weeks been been down here. It’s not been, Oh, not that long. And we were out of town, so it’s still new and shiny. We’ve only got 50% furniture in the house, so we’re still a little bit new, but we have done a lot of walking and found new restaurants and meeting different people down here. Matt Hyatt (00:31:53): Like, you know, I haven’t been to your place yet, but I know about where you are. And for, for our listeners, it is a very active, vibrant part of our city. And there’s always people outside, running up and down the Belt Line and tons of restaurants and galleries and bars and all kinds of fun stuff. So we’ll, I’ll check back in with you in a year or so, and see how that’s going before we make any big decisions. But I applaud you for making such a big change in your life. That’s, that’s pretty cool. Chad, one thing that strikes me as I’ve gotten to know you over the last several years is it seems like you’re, you’re doing a lot of things. It seems like, it seems like there’s not just one thing, there’s nine things. And one of the things that I have admired about you is somehow you still seem like a happy, easy going guy with all that. So you’ve got Impact 2:52, D-Bat, TOCA, which is a soccer organization. Uh, but you’ve also been involved in FCCI, which for, for our listeners, that’s fellowship of companies for Christ international. Can, can you tell us a little bit about that organization and what you’re doing there, and then I’d love to hear how you manage so much. I mean, that’s, that’s a lot to manage for one person. Chad Merrill (00:33:19): Yeah. So sometimes not so well the best, one of the downsides of being a connector and involved with a lot of different things is drawn focus. And so that’s kind of a big theme of 2021. Let’s reduce the number of things we’re involved with getting more actively engaged, but FCCI came about, Robin and I’d been going, we have a couple of significant mentors in both business and faith. And FCCI was really formed by groups about Atlanta businessman that are in the business, in the faith world, in Atlanta. Truett Cathy was part, Bobby Mitchell and Jim Moya quite a bit came together and they were struggling with, you know, can you express your faith and be an excellent business and integrate the two together? So it’s an organization that just seeks to encouraging site-based, you know, Christian business owners to, me able to integrate their site and have some, you know, in a secular term, they call it life balance or other types of things, but it’s essentially know how do you integrate sites and work together. Chad Merrill (00:34:35): And and so we started going to conferences and various settings that they had probably 12 or 14 years ago. I was asked to go on the board about five years ago. And then a few years ago there was a transition and it kind of corresponded with me leaving OnePath and, and there was a time they needed a president. And so I got, drafted in to lead the organization for a couple of years back, not only to be able to try to give back and, and help bridge to the next generation, that organization, which is 40 years old around the world, around the country. There’s been different times, but there’s, there’s folks in 30 States, probably in 25 or 30 countries around the world. Broad-based over the last 40 years. And it really introduced to a whole new set of people that is where we’re spending a lot of time now. And it’s really shaped what we think the next decade is going to look like in that state sort of investing fates are of an entrepreneurs. There’s a lot of, lot of, organizations like that, that wind I for business, but also our love for family and next generation and say that we try to integrate into our life and our businesses as well. Matt Hyatt (00:35:55): So tell us about some of the complications of trying to juggle leading FCCI that, I mean, I, I confess, I don’t know a lot about FCCI, but what I think, I know, like you said, global organization spread across multiple States. I actually didn’t know it was founded in Atlanta. I thought it was headquartered in California. Is that right Chad Merrill (00:36:21): In Atlanta? I Matt Hyatt (00:36:23): Don’t know why I thought that. But Chad Merrill (00:36:25): We’re looking at opportunity in California in and partners out there. We’re up there a lot. Matt Hyatt (00:36:31): Okay. Maybe that’s, maybe that’s why I thought. But between that and Impact 2:52, how, how do you manage your time so that you’re not just swallowed up by all of it? Chad Merrill (00:36:43): So it’s a challenge. It’s a constant challenge for me. There’s a lot of emails at midnight and weekend and things like that of you know, strong organizations, not my greatest skillset. There is a balance with Robin and, you know, you have to get this done by today and things of that nature. So there’s pros and cons. I mean, I think I do have a, a high capacity for a number of relationships and the multitask, all the I’ve been reading a little bit about that. And you say, multitasking is a myth you can only one thing, right? Chad Merrill (00:37:20): Multitasking can take five tasks twice as long as if you just have focused a little bit down, but there’s there’s a lot of them, the challenge is, is getting excited about something and wanting to spend more time, but then getting drawn to something else. You know, so, you know, FCCI had set things that I had to be at and, you know, business is fluid and opportunities happen at different times. I was incredibly fortunate to be involved with three things that were happening. And there were many times like California, our TOCA D-Bat is now headquartered in California. So I’d be incredibly fortunate to be able to go to California and fully work on, you know, two or three different things are in Dallas, Texas. We’ve got a big presence and work on two or three things and here in Atlanta, but it’s, it’s a constant challenge. And I feel like, you know, an example always use is when you see a juggler juggling, a lot of balls, usually you drops all of them. You know, it’s is not one ball that falls out or something. That’s how I feel sometimes, you know, am I doing anything really well or Matt Hyatt (00:38:38): Right. Well, that, that is a challenge for folks that are wired that way. And I, and, and, you know, certainly I fall in that category also of, it’s easy to over-commit because you get interested in a bunch of different things. And then what happens with me, and it sounds like may happen with you also is often a lot of those things require some sort of routine, which maybe doesn’t feel as comfortable to us. And then I love that you pointed out the the deadline part of it and kind of getting things done. I believe you and I are both very motivated by, by deadlines. And, you know, just this morning, you know, we’re minutes before the show, and I’m sending you over the notes of stuff that I worked on this morning, because that’s, that is a deadline. And that was very motivating to me to get up this morning and I’m excited about it and, and sit down and kind of put together what I thought would be a good program. Robin may have liked to have had that done two weeks ago. Robin Merrill (00:39:48): What did I say this morning, Chad? Matt Hyatt (00:39:59): I, I can totally relate though, that Maureen is a very much wired similarly, I think to you Robin, and probably more methodical about getting things done, going to start well in advance a little at a time. And the deadline is usually something that happens well after the task has been completed. Robin Merrill (00:40:21): Yes, yes. Matt Hyatt (00:40:26): A good balance when you put those two together in the same couple, I think that, I think that works really well. So I love that. All right. Well, let’s, let’s move on just a little bit. I wanna, you know, I want to talk a little bit about some of the things that you’re doing in Atlanta and Robin before the show, you and I talked a little bit about an organization that you’re involved with Peace Prep Academy. Can you tell us a little bit about that and, what’s its background and Genesis and how are you involved? Robin Merrill (00:40:59): Yeah, I’d love to, so Peace Preparatory Academy started in 2015 and there’s a young couple, Ben and Sarah Wills that moved into this neighborhood nine years ago and just said, the neighborhood it’s called the English Avenue neighborhood. It’s right behind Georgia Tech for anyone in Atlanta that, that knows that area. But what significant about, you know, what has happened through the years in this neighborhood is that it’s become very with the heroin community. And so it’s the third largest heroin area in the United States in the first, in the Southeastern. And so this couple, the Wills, they moved in and they just started living amongst the people. And just to, how do we create a whole, you know, child, a whole family and whole community. And they really just prayed about this and said, you know, what’s that gonna look like here? And after four years they started Peace Preparatory Academy, which is a Christian school and this neighborhood that hasn’t had a school and in the, in the neighborhood, a functioning school now for 20 years. Robin Merrill (00:42:14): And so, you know, it’s kind of called considered like a food desert or resource desert, if you’ve ever heard of that, where things are just a little bit farther away, you know, the food selections, aren’t the healthiest, you know, the resources, the bus schedules, all of that. They have a lot that they have to deal with. And, you know, you’re talking right in Atlanta, you’re talking about very low income families, 60% of the housing in that areas, you know, no one’s living in them, but yet you can’t buy a lot of them right now. So basically Peace Prep was formed and we started as one grade. So we started with fifth grade. So every year we add a grade level. And so we’ve been there five years. So one year we added a pre-K. So now we have pre-K and kindergarten through fifth grade. Robin Merrill (00:43:13): So we have about 60 children now that we serve. And what’s wonderful is they get lunch, they get breakfast, lunch, and dinner. We have someone that provides dinner every night for the kids. And we have a washing machine and dryer that the families can come and use, you know, on Tuesdays and Thursdays, we have discipleship in the afternoon for the kids. They can stay after school and their siblings can come if they need to. So it’s just a really safe place. And so we finally were able to buy the church building that we had been in for the last few years. And so now we are in the process of building plans for a new campus, which we’re very excited about because we want to go through 12th grade and we can just see, I just wish she could say these kids, how they’re thriving in such difficult circumstances. Robin Merrill (00:44:13): One of our kids, when we first started, you know, sometimes if the kids don’t show up, we’ll just go to their homes and in a knock on the doors of the school and check in on them. But one of our kids was sleeping on, you know, a table and, you know, it’s, it’s not great situations there. The families are making some shifts and we just see after five years of the presence of the school being there, how important that is for the community and what the impact that’s having, not only on the community, but the people that go, we have lot of people coming in and serving and, you know, reading to the kids and just being a part of growing something really special. Matt Hyatt (00:45:00): If, if you don’t mind me asking, how, how was that funded? How do you, how do you go into a community like that, where there aren’t very many resources and just create something, how does that work? Robin Merrill (00:45:14): Very generous people like you and me, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s really how we have our money. We have a sliding scale. So we ask every family to participate in tuition, but that isn’t a sliding scale. So we chatted have everyone give something in a said that they feel like they are, you know, working with our kids in their own education. So, but, you know, we have corporate gifts that come in, we have really generous people that just have caught the vision of pace prep. And I’ll working, you know, in, in lots of areas to try to find that money like Lecrae. I don’t know if you know, the Christian rapper Lecrae, he’s a big component of what we’re doing. So we have some great people that are kind of known that have gotten behind and in sharing that story everywhere they go as well. But we need the story shared a lot in order to build the schools. Thank you for asking about what we do there. Matt Hyatt (00:46:22): Yeah, I think that’s terrific. Just last week, I recorded a podcast with Eddie Staub, who is the founder of Eagle Ranch, if you’re familiar with that organization. And so this’ll be good. The podcast with Eddie, I think, will be published today. We’re recording on October 28th and your your episode will follow that. So good to hear this is you know, as, as you may know, if you’re familiar with Eagle Ranch, way out in the suburbs, really beyond even the suburbs, I think of Atlanta. And and then with the Peace Prep Academy, inner city, I think has a nice bookend to, to that story. Well, I love that. I would love to talk a little bit about managing risk. So we’re going to switch gears here just a little bit. I think that is something that a lot of entrepreneurs, especially right now are worried about. They’re thinking about it. They’re staying awake at night, worried about their small businesses in many cases. And one thing that strikes me when I hear the story from both of you, with what you’re doing through a connection worldwide Robin, and what you’re both doing through Impact 2:52, this is a common theme. Seems like both of you are very good at creating partnerships with other people. And I wonder how much of that is related to just risk management or is that just a benefit of, of working with other people? Chad Merrill (00:48:02): Well, I’ll say from the business standpoint that, you know, risk in the degree of risk, there’s certainly an element for any entrepreneur. And then I was I was an all in person and had a lot of companies that went all in, I think a little bit when they age and a little bit with experience constantly try to modify risks, but you, you certainly, if you’re going to be entrepreneurial need to have a certain degree of risk aversion in your life and consequently things go bad. I mean, we, we’ve essentially been bankrupt a couple of times and companies just don’t work out and you go all in with them. But I will say from a, from a teaming standpoint now is we were a little bit tongue in cheek talking about the personality profile of entrepreneurs is that early in my career, I didn’t want those start in the proverbial, you know, CFO that asks questions and, you know, it was, I was like, you just got to get rid of these people. Chad Merrill (00:49:04): This is where all good ideas go to die. And so I didn’t want them around me at all. Consequently, we had a lot of folks who were ready to charge the Hill and are, are fairly starkest story is having a company we’ll skip the details. It went to six or seven States in a couple of years. So we had a couple of employees. And a year later, we were out of business. We had an unbelievable ability to draw on the track and get the customers, but we had no systems. We had no natural controls. You had no inventory. And so now that’s usually my first call, you know, someone very risk averse. Who’s going to ask a lot of questions. Certainly if it’s a company, is top of the list for a partner is someone that’s a, that’s an offer. You go outside of the X, you get to an age at some point that we’re or at least me I’m moderating risk a little bit, but risk management is a big, big part. Yeah. Matt Hyatt (00:50:02): Well, I do want to talk about you, you mentioned that your age and I do want to get to that just a minute preview of what’s coming, but Robin, do you do you have an appetite for risk? Are you, are you an all in kind of person? Robin Merrill (00:50:18): Well, Chad really has to paint a picture for me. He has to build a bridge. Robin Merrill (00:50:28): You know, I’ve fallen off that bridge way too many times and, you know and had to survive. And so he’s gotten much better about painting, a better picture for me. And I’ve probably gotten much better about asking in a more detailed questions. So, you know, that’s kind of how we are getting a little bit better now, but you know, in the earlier days, you know, it was really hard because I didn’t know how to ask those questions. My voice is a nurture voice, so I’m very supportive and a relational role is important for me. So, you know, between us that just, you know, whether it’s a team or our family, I wanted everything to just run smoothly emotionally for all of us. And, and, you know, that could be hard living with a true entrepreneurial like Chad is. And one of the tools always tell this story because I think it’s important. Robin Merrill (00:51:21): And maybe some of your listeners might, you know, take, take something away from this, but, you know, Chad just speaks provisionally all the time. And so he has so many ideas going around in his mind. He just wanted to ask all good ones, but the way he would always, he still does the way he shares things. It’s like, yes, you know, this is going to happen and we’re going to make this happen. This is our next direction. And for so long, I would, he would just stay provisionally, speaking. Well, I would hear this is a plan and it’s the promise he’s going to make this happen. And so I would, and all of a sudden now, and we talked about this several times, but, you know, he would lose trust with me because he would have all these plans, but then he wouldn’t follow through on those plans. Robin Merrill (00:52:15): And so what I wound up doing because of my judging personality from the Myers-Briggs is I would run around and try to make all the things that he would share with me about doing that. Cause I didn’t want him to lose influence with our boys, with his partners or whoever he was working with. And so once we understood that language and that tool now, when he’s speaking provisionally, he’s to share with his teams or me or whoever he’s talking with, you know, I’m just, I’m dreaming a little bit here. I’m provisionally speaking. I’ll let you know if we need to move to point in promise and said, that was a big turn. And we didn’t really learn that until about five years ago, but it’s been huge for our marriage. I wish we, that I wish I would have known that, you know, earlier on. Matt Hyatt (00:53:06): Absolutely. Yeah. I agree that, that is useful. So for me, I first learned about that tool provisional, plan, promise from GiANT. And it was certainly an aha moment for me too, because typically, you know, I’m an introvert. So I’ll usually think about things internally before a spew them out to the world. Unless your name is Maureen Hyatt. And then I’ll just tell you all kinds of stuff. Matt Hyatt (00:53:37): Many times I’d be sort of thinking about, yeah, you know, we, we could move to Alaska, that’d be cool. And she was like, Oh my gosh, we’re moving to Alaska. It helped a lot to kind of figure out, Oh, you know what, I’m just talking here, just thinking about it, but what would happen if we did that? You know, that kind of thing. Yeah. Chad Merrill (00:53:59): I said London really, but we ended up in the Belt Line, Matt Hyatt (00:54:05): You compromised and moved six miles away. Matt Hyatt (00:54:14): Well, so, you know, I was joking a little bit about the age thing, but I, you know, I feel like we’re a similar station in life. I, you know, you both have a great head of hair. I, I do not. And you know, that’s an age related thing, but gosh, do you think about winding down? I, you know, I’m, I don’t confess the word retirement has crossed my mind a few times, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s out there. It’s not too far away. I would think, I don’t think you’re showing any signs of slowing down here. What, what is your plan? Chad Merrill (00:54:51): No, I don’t think so. We’ve got a lot of kind of projects, but I think the relationship to them changes, you know, I’m not looking to go start an operate, you know, business or something like that. Chad Merrill (00:55:06): We’re just getting started and trying to think what the next 10 years is going to look like. And now I have hard time saying advisory or consultancy, or things like that, but it’s a little bit more on the advisory level or participatory level than it is starting from scratch. Although we were with a 22 year old kid last night and he’s got a great idea and we’re like, Oh wow. Matt Hyatt (00:55:33): Yeah, I’ve been gunning for at large. Chad Merrill (00:55:38): That’s the position that I want. Yeah, that’s fantastic. Matt Hyatt (00:55:43): Okay. I want to move on to our lightning round. This is just a few questions that we try and ask each of our guests on the Rocket IT Business Podcast. And so let’s dive into that for just a moment. This will be fun because we get to double up or we get to ask three questions to get six answers. I think. So tell us, tell us about one person that’s had a profound impact on your, on your life. Robin Merrill (00:56:10): Okay. Well, I will say there has been, first of all, there’s been a lot of people that have had profound impacts on my life at different stages in my life. And so, so I’ll go back to stage in my thirties now. And there was a lady her name is Hicks and she came into my life and she’s probably about 25 years older than I am. And she wound up spending, you know, once a week, every week for about an hour or two with me and just pouring wisdom, and we would pray together. She just would, you know, listen. And We still get together not every week, but we still get together a few times a year just to visit and just to catch up. But she has significantly impacted my life in many ways. Matt Hyatt (00:57:03): So how’d you meet her? Robin Merrill (00:57:04): She was at the church that we were attending. And so it was a, it was a real full story of how we got together, but I’ll save that for another day Matt Hyatt (00:57:15): In our next podcast. How about you Chad? Chad Merrill (00:57:19): So about that same stage and it was at a low point in business and things were going wrong and, and an older gentleman reached out to me also, same kind of context. And he’s now 88. We’ve been spending time together for probably 30 years or somewhere around a neighborhood. And he was a businessman. He was in our church. He took a real interest in me. We’ve talked about life and marriage and faith and business and stages in time use better, you know, a mentor and a close confident in a friend. And so it was terrific. Yeah. Yeah. So his name was Jim Roy. And so I talked to him Friday night, so yeah. Matt Hyatt (00:58:06): I think mentors are so important in all of our lives. And we all have people that we look up to pretty cool though. At least my experience has been mentors sort of come and go out of our lives, that various periods of time. Pretty cool to hear you’re both, you know, 20, 30 years later staying in good touch with your mentors. That’s terrific. So tell us about, what’s the most important lesson you’ve learned in your professional life? Chad Merrill (00:58:40): So I can go professional without really having value aligned people around you. There’s a term equally yokes that not everybody resonates with that, but I think value aligned. I looked at the professional times that, you know, even in case the work has successful businesses for a while, but there was a value disconnect. Ultimately either the company failed the relationship failed. And so having people that share common values and, you know, you don’t need to be the same person, but at your core, if your value aligned, found the good things happen and when you’re not, not so good things can happen. Matt Hyatt (00:59:22): We’re also a very values based organization here at Rocket IT, and you know, I tell folks when they’re coming on board or interviewing, it’s not necessarily that we have to have exactly the same values, but our values need to be compatible and aligned. And I think that has been so important for our progress over the years. So I can certainly understand that. How about you Robin? Robin Merrill (00:59:49): I think, as a nurturer, one of the things I’ve learned a lot about is leadership, but I think , I think becoming secure and confident and humble, it’s a phrase we use a lot, it, you know, in the GiANT world, but that for me has been significant in becoming secure in who I am and the voice that I have around the table. And knowing that I have a seat around that table and being confident in what I have to offer. That and being humble around the people that I’m with is, is very important. So those three things I think have helped me grow the most in my, in my leadership. Matt Hyatt (01:00:30): Yeah. I love that. I think there are a lot of folks that particularly that, or to have that you mentioned the word nurturer, but that, that a great capacity for caring about other people. I think many times our nurturers tend to underestimate their own value and their own contribution. So I love that. You’ve recognized that in yourself. I think that’s pretty terrific. Robin Merrill (01:01:00): Well, and I’ll just say this, you know, 43% of the people are nurturers and I love liberation and I know what that liberation has felt like for me as a nurturer. And so to think that I might can share my story and how it’s impacted me to help them be the, you know, the best that they absolutely can be and becoming secure, confident they are as important. Matt Hyatt (01:01:27): Perfect. All right. Any particular book or podcast that you’re reading or listening to right now? Chad Merrill (01:01:34): Absolutely. I know what Robin’s reading and I’ll let her say that one because that’s one of my favorites also, but, I recently read a book called, American spirit by David McCullough. And this was really a compilation of speeches that were given some time. And even this hearing that we are not so much the election year, but you know, it was the most talked about thing around the country now is the divisiveness and where are we going naturally? And what’s our future going to be. So that was a, that was a great reminder of, you know, the things that made America great and a little bit of history in there in unity. So that was a good one. And although I love the work that I’m sure Robin is going to talk about it. Robin Merrill (01:02:17): He does love it because he listened to it on audiobok. And then he was like, I want you to listen to it with me. So we had a six hour drive last week and listened to it. It’s Bob Goff’s new book, it’s Dream Big. It’s fantastic. You know what I love about it, it gives me such insight, more insight into who Chad is because of the way this guy dreams. I mean, his dreams are out of this world, but the things he does and that he just feels the freedom to do, to do whatever it is he thinks he can do, or maybe can’t do. But he got us in each highs. And so I have gotten so much of this, but like I said, it’s really given me some fun insight into, to Chad’s mind as well. Matt Hyatt (01:03:05): Oh, I love it. I have not read that particular book, but I have read Bob Goff before and great author. I’ve actually met him too at a book signing. So I got my picture taken with him. He’s, he’s a lot of fun. So one of the things that’s fun about Bob is, I don’t know if he did it with,with his current book, but I had his past book. He had his personal phone numbers, Robin Merrill (01:03:26): Which is awesome. It takes a hundred calls a day. I hate and you’ll love this, but then, because he goes, there’s so many stories about the calls he’s gotten and what he’s done with them, I can’t get anything done. Isn’t that amazing? I’m like, no, Matt Hyatt (01:03:45): That is a great segue into my last question. If people want to learn more about you and your organizations? What’s the best way to to reach out Robin Merrill (01:03:54): For me personally, robin@connextionworldwide.com is good. Chad Merrill (01:03:58): I’m at chad@impact252.com. One thing that I wanted to plug in because it’s also a podcast. You know, I love the podcast Faith Drive Entrepreneurs. Amazing stories. And they’re there, they’re only about a year, a hundred countries and you know, a couple hundred thousand weekly listeners. Matt Hyatt (01:04:50): I haven’t heard of that one. So thanks for sharing that. I’ll have to check that one out for sure. We’ll look on that note. I believe it’s time to wrap things up, Chad and Robin, from myself and our audience, thank you for joining us today. To our listeners, thank you for tuning in to the Rocket IT Business Podcast. If you have suggestions on future topics that you’d like to hear more about, please email us podcasts@rocketit.com. Finally, a quick plug for Rocket IT. We work with businesses, nonprofits, and municipalities in the areas of IT support, information security, and strategic planning. To learn more about Rocket IT and its services, please be sure to visit rocketit.com. Thank you, Chad and Robin, it’s been a pleasure. Robin Merrill (01:05:32): Great. Thank you.

https://youtu.be/rhYKt1fwCxg In this episode, we’re joined by a man whose life work has resulted in one of the Southeast’s largest residential programs for children in crisis situations. At the ripe age of 27, with no land and little money to his name, Eddie Staub was driven by a courageous vision: to positively impact communities through the reunification of local families. 35 years and 315 acres later, that vision has since transpired into Eagle Ranch; a nonprofit facility that CNN rightfully nicknamed, “the miracle on Chestnut Mountain.” In This Episode, You’ll Hear More About: The importance of having a “Why” How to maintain a passionate team How Eagle Ranch came to be How to effectively raise non-profit funds The importance of connecting with the pillars of a community Helping children find a healthy balance with technology Building trust with parents Family reunification New initiatives at Eagle Ranch Finding a place to fulfill your vision Maintaining a debt-free organization Contact Information Rocket IT | podcasts@rocketit.com | 770-441-2520 Eddie Staub | estaub@eagleranch.org Resources Mentioned Tim Keller’s Podcast On Eagle’s Wings Built to Last Let Go Like What Your Heard? Give Us Some Feedback! Host: Matt Hyatt Guest: Eddie Staub Show Notes Eddie Staub (00:00:00): Greetings and welcome to the 17th installment of the Rocket IT business podcast. I’m your host, Matt Hyatt. And today I’m joined by a man whose life has resulted in one of the South-East largest residential programs for children in crisis. Intro (00:00:29): [Music Playing] Eddie Staub (00:00:29): At the ripe age of 27 with no land, a little money to his name. Eddie Staub was driven by a courageous vision to positively impact communities through the reunification of local families. 35 years and 315 acres later, that vision has since transpired into Eagle Ranch, a non-profit facility that CNN rightfully nicknamed the miracle on Chestnut Chestnut mountain. So now to share a glimpse into how Eagle Ranch has continued to impact multiple generations of children and their families, I’d like to welcome Eddie to the show. Eddie, thanks for joining us. Eddie Staub (00:01:08): It’s great to be with you, man. Eddie Staub (00:01:10): I told you before the show that I have been looking forward to this interview for quite some time as you know, we had originally planned to record way back in the early spring before our pandemic kind of took over all our lives. And so I’ve been delayed for a long time and now through the miracle of technology, we’re doing it over the web, but I’m so glad to spend some time with you as well. Eddie Staub (00:01:35): I really have looked forward to it. So it’s great to be with you. Eddie Staub (00:01:38): So Eddie, I’m just gonna start by asking a little bit about the why behind Eagle Ranch. I know a little bit of your story. Our listeners may not, they may not be familiar with Eagle Ranch. And so I’d love if you could just tell us a little bit about the premise and mission of Eagle Ranch. How did how’d you get started and where did that idea come from? Eddie Staub (00:02:01): Right. Yeah. And that’s a great place to start Matt, because everything emanates from our why, whether it’s individually, organizationally. So our why with Eagle Ranch is basically two fold. First the Eagle Ranch would be a tangible expression of God’s goodness and power in this world that when people look at Eagle Ranch, they look past a person or a group of people and to a God who is still at work in this world and making a difference in this world. Interestingly, we had a group out to Eagle Ranch. This was a little while back and and I noticed a guy in the back of the room that I had known since arriving in Georgia back in the early eighties. And this was probably 2010 he had never been out to the ranch. He had been a good friend of mine and and I saw him in the back of the room, went out. Eddie Staub (00:03:07): And as I was speaking on I made a mental note. I need to see him after this because I haven’t seen him in awhile and sure enough, the meeting ended and he just bolted out of the room and I was going, Oh gosh, I missed him. And and after the meeting, someone called me in my office and they said, did you see so-and-so with the meeting? I said, yeah. And I said, I’ve tried to get to him after my talk. And he just left real quickly. And he said, well, Eddie, what he did is he drove around the ranch because he had never been down there before. And he called me when he got back to to the office. And he said, I’ve never been out Eagle Ranch. And he said, I can tell you this. There is no way that place would happen apart from God. Eddie Staub (00:03:59): And I don’t know where this guy is in his spiritual journey, but he could see firsthand that God was at work and as a result Eagle Ranch. So that’s my heart’s desire is that when people look here, they see, they see God doing great things. The second thing of our why is that we would be the hands and feet of Jesus to hurting people. And Jesus was always moving toward people who were struggling, people that were on the margins and even people that thought they had it all together and just said, there’s more for you. You may have a great portfolio. You may have great influence, but there is more like Nicodemus, right? And he also went to those who are really struggling in life. And we had a young boy here. I guess he’d lived here about six months and he’d been the product of a really brutal kind of divorce. Eddie Staub (00:05:06): And, he was walking around the ranch. I pulled up my car and I said, I said, how you doing son? He goes not good, I’m not doing good. And I said, well get my car. And we would drive around. He was telling me about his family situation. And I looked at him. I said, son, there’s greatness in you. And he literally physically jumped in his seat in the car as if could that possibly be true. And I think that’s what Jesus was about: calling out greatness. It was in people that perhaps didn’t even think there was greatness in them. And, and that is one of our great messages to the children that there is greatness in you regardless of what you’ve been told, regardless of how you feel, that is the truth. The early parts of your story don’t have to be predictive of the way the rest of your story’s going to go. Eddie Staub (00:06:14): And that’s our greatest challenge, Matt, is because the first 13, 14 pages of their story had been tragic. They’ve been difficult and they go, I know how this is going to end. And we intersect that. We come in on page 14 or page 15 with insight. That’s not true, that that doesn’t have to be the way your story is going to go. And that verse from Jeremiah, I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord. Plans to prosper you, not to harm you. To give a future. And I hope it’s true and it’s operative in their lives. And to get them to believe; that is our greatest challenge. So that that’s our why. To be a tangible expression of God’s goodness and power, and to be the hands and feet of Jesus. Eddie Staub (00:07:03): Well, I love it. And I think from what I know of you and the Ranch, you’re living out that why on a regular basis. I want to come back to that and just a minute, but before I do, I think it’s important for our listeners that don’t have any idea of what Eagle Ranch is, to kind of give them maybe a mental picture of what the Ranch is. I’ve mentioned in our intro; 315 acres. So you’ve got a property that is Northeast of Atlanta. What if people come to the Gates of Eagle Ranch, what unfolds in front of them? What do they see? Eddie Staub (00:07:46): Well, our physical plan is as you mentioned, we have 315 acres. We have 10 children’s homes; six for girls and six for boys. We have seven boys per home. So 42 boys and six girls per home. So 24 girls, so we can take care of almost 70 children here, and they come and live here for a season of their lives. For many, that average is about two years. And our goal is family restoration and reunification. Now, when people think of children’s homes, historically, they have looked at it, very child centric, you know sort of boys towns that you have these little orphans. Eddie Staub (00:08:40): I would add before you go on, I personally would have sort of an institutional view when you say a home, but that’s not what’s at the Eagle Ranch. Eddie Staub (00:08:51): No, it’s very much like a neighborhood. The are about 7,000 square feet, you know, you’re right. Matt people come here and they go, I think these are going to be like boys scout huts. You know, they’re like residential homes and it looks very much like a neighborhood, that kind of thing. So we have a house parent couple that lives in each of those homes, and they model a Christian family to the children. And we have five master level counselors to do individual group and family counseling to help these children in their families work through their emotional pain. And, like I said, in regards to the end result being family restoration reunification, when I started the range back in the early eighties, children tended to stay here a little longer. They stayed three, four years, and it’s just not the case anymore. Eddie Staub (00:09:49): And in out of home placement, like Eagle Ranch, literally the average stays 18 months to two years in our state. In about two years, we have several kids, several children, they’re going to be graduating this coming may. They will have been here over three years. But the reality is, when a child leaves here, Matt, they are going to go somewhere and 95% of the time that somewhere is back home. And if we haven’t done something to make home healthier, they’ll go right back to that dysfunctional dance that got them here in the first place. So last year, I think in addition to taking care of the children who live at Eagle Ranch, we did family counseling with, I think, close to 300 parents and siblings of our children last year. So, we really invest in the family because we feel that’s the best determinant of long-term success for our kids. If we can get that family recalibrated so that they learn a healthy dance, that’s the best indicator of them doing well, Eddie Staub (00:11:14): 5% success rate on reunification with the family sounds amazing. Eddie Staub (00:11:24): Well, I probably misspoke there. 95% are going to go home. Not all those are successful in our mind. Right. I would, I would say it’s, it’s in the, Oh gosh, probably the 50 to 60%. But, I can honestly saw the families are better than when they came. It’s just not where we would want it. Eddie Staub (00:12:08): Yeah, I mean, they’re coming. I would imagine that a lot of these kids are coming out of tough, Multi-Generational systemic challenges. Eddie Staub (00:12:21): Turning that around in a year or two, even a 50 to 60% success rate is an amazing success. And it sounds like some percentage of them beyond that have at least have some chance. Eddie Staub (00:12:42): And you never know Matt, when those seeds you plant are going to take root. And that’s the same thing with us as parents, right? Your listeners, you go, gosh, there’s little Johnny or, or little Emily, are they ever going to get it? But, you know, I think what we’re called to do is continue to sow good seeds in our children’s lives and other lives. And you just pray for the harvest. We we recently had a young man, he’s 25 years old. He lived here from when he was nine to 11. And I haven’t seen him Matt since he was 11 years old. And he came here at 25 a good-looking young man. And he came with his older sister who’s 27 and as they were about to leave, his sister looked at him and said, I’ll call him Billy. Eddie Staub (00:13:37): She goes, Billy, where would we have been if Eagle Ranch had not been there? And he looked at his sister and he says, Susie, we don’t have to ask that question because Eagle Ranch was there for me in my life. But, there was sort of dead silence for those 14 years. You just didn’t hear. But those seeds took root in this child’s life, just like our own children, our grandchildren, or whatever. You just never know when that act of kindness, that act of challenge is going to resonate in a child’s heart and change the trajectory of their life. Eddie Staub (00:14:23): We don’t always know, do we when we made a difference in the life of another person, but I love that you’ve been very intentional about it for a long, long time. And I bet there are countless stories like that, whether you know them or not, you know, whether you ever hear about it about countless stories like that. So I want to go back to the the why the purpose for just a moment. Eddie Staub (00:14:52): Eagle Ranch was founded, what, 35 years ago, right? Eddie Staub (00:15:02): Roughly 35 years ago. Yes. I came here in 82 and the first child came in April of 85. Eddie Staub (00:15:06): Yeah, there you go. So just over 35 years, congratulations. That’s a long, long time for any organization. Great success there. But I am curious, I know when I started my business, I started my business a little over 25 years ago. And the original, why was; Matt Hyatt needs a job right now. I’m going to start this business. Cause I, I mean, I need to develop some income and it wasn’t until much later that we came up with something, a rallying cry that other people besides Matt Hyatt could get behind. So I’m just curious, how did that change for you over the last 35 years? Did you go into it with that why idea, or was it more of a calling? Eddie Staub (00:16:03): I’ll tell you two quick stories, how these two parts of the, why sort of had to came to be the first one is about that. This would be about God and not about me. When I first came here, I didn’t know anybody in Georgia and nobody knew what to do with me. I was asking for money about this dream, right? And people going, who is this guy? I went to Auburn. They even called the Dean of students at Auburn to make sure I went there. They called the athletic department to make sure I played baseball. There, there you go. They were just doing all this due diligence that I didn’t even know of. I didn’t know they were doing it, but finally one of the guys in our area knew a retiring CFO. Eddie Staub (00:16:55): And, he said, Eddie, I want you to meet with Sonny Ellis who is retiring. And apparently he was a gatekeeper of a lot of foundation and corporate giving in Atlanta. And so he had dealt with people like me, and they just said, Eddie, we want you to meet with him. So I talked to Mr. Ellis, got the appointment set up and he goes, Eddie, by the way, I want you to bring me your business plan. And I go, okay. And I hung up and called him. I said, what’s a business plan. I had no idea. And so I said, I think it has something to do with numbers and you know, how the things will grow. So I did a business plan on one sheet of paper and I took it to Atlanta and I met with him and he said, did you bring your business plan? Eddie Staub (00:17:45): This guy’s the CFO of a big time company. And I got this one sheet of paper. I said, here it is. And he’s the quintessential Southern gentleman. So he just didn’t laugh in my face. He just picked it up. And he just stared at it for five minutes, an uncomfortable five minutes. And he could’ve devoured that information in less than a minute, but I know he was trying to figure out how to let me down easily without hurting my feelings without discouraging me. Finally, he finished, he put down the sheet of paper and he moved it across the desk. And he said, Eddie. Eddie Staub (00:18:24): He said, first of all, thank you for this. And, and he said, I don’t want to hurt your feelings, but I will tell you something, what you want to do is impossible. But I’m not taking into account what God can do through you. And without a doubt, Matt, that’s the most encouraging statement anybody has mentioned to me in my 35 years of being here. Because my heart’s desire was for that without God; it was impossible. So that was the first part of my, why. The second part to be the hands and feet of Jesus is I grew up in an idyllic family, mom and dad who were committed to me. Roof over our head. But you never had to worry about any of that. When I went to Auburn, I got involved with the big brother program and I did some inner city work. Eddie Staub (00:19:24): I did some stuff with really poor people in the rural areas. And I just sort of had this epiphany because growing up in mountain Brook, Alabama, like everybody lives like this. And, and then I was exposed to people who were struggling in life and I’m going, Oh my God, not only is my life. Was it not the rule? But it’s the exception in the only reason I have what I have is because of the grace of God, that’s it. I haven’t deserved it. Didn’t earn it. It was just given to me out of the grace of God. And it was a gratitude for what God did for me, that I wanted to help children that didn’t have those opportunities that I wanted to be the hands and feet of Jesus to those who struggle. And so both of those happened very early on at the onset. And those things sort of came together for me. And it sort of became my fire, the fire of, of why I exist on this earth now. S. Eddie Staub (00:20:32): So, you mentioned you grew up in Alabama. How’d you end up in Georgia? Eddie Staub (00:20:43): Well, I didn’t want to come to Georgia. You know, I don’t want the chamber of commerce really to hear that comment. Eddie Staub (00:20:54): I’m from Birmingham. And when I felt this call I was working for a guy who was an All-American for Bear Bryant. I was working at another children’s home and I was a second string catcher at Auburn on a good day. So I was just gonna work with him, help him be successful. I’m just an average guy. But after about eight months, I knew I needed to leave and start my own deal. But, I knew I was supposed to, and I went down from Mobile to Huntsville, trying to find where Eagle Ranch needed to be. And there wasn’t a need there. And somehow I found out there wasn’t anything for hurting children, Northeast of Atlanta. And so I believed that vision and that’s where the need was. And that’s where my vision was going to end. So, July 9th of 1982, I packed up my car and came to Georgia. So that’s how it started. Matt Hyatt (00:21:57): You packed up your car, you had a suitcase with a million dollars in it to get started. Now that’s not what happened at all right. You came here with, with not a lot. How did, how in the world did you come here? I mean, that’s tough for anybody. And I’m thinking a lot of our listeners are folks that are in business or probably have some folks that are in nonprofit organizations and trying to launch a vision. I’ve experienced it, trying to launch a business, an organization from nothing is tough. Can you kind of walk us through arriving here in Georgia to having a place to call the ranch? Eddie Staub (00:22:48): Yes. There’s so many different facets to that. I’m a member. When I came here I was able to stay at a place called Ignatius House. It’s a retreat in North Atlanta. And the people that ran that knew my father and I didn’t have anywhere to go. And, someone said, well, you could stay the nation’s house. And so I stayed there for two months and then I didn’t have anywhere to go. And I ran into the only person I knew in Atlanta, in Sandy Springs. And he goes, Eddie, what are you doing here? This guy was friend of mine that went to work Chick-fil-A. I said, well, I’m trying to start a children’s home. He goes, well, where are you staying? And I said, well, I know where I’m staying for two more nights. Eddie Staub (00:23:56): And he goes, you know, here’s a guy at Chick-fil-A who needs somebody to house sit in his home in Powder Springs for six months. Now this was the only person I knew in Atlanta of you know, at that time, 4 million people or whatever. And so I lived in seven different places. Three of those times, I didn’t know where I was supposed to spend the night. And there there’s a verse in Isaiah. It says you took me by my hand as if I were blind in led me along unfamiliar paths, ways I did not know. And I feel like that is sort of, my story is I just wanted to be about God’s business and, and there was no plan B, it was just here I am. And you know that I did it at some level. Eddie Staub (00:24:56): I didn’t want to be 80 years old and look back on my life and said, you know, I just didn’t have the faith to go after God’s best for me. And if I failed, I failed, but I didn’t want it to be a lack of faith. And so I just said, God, here I am. I’m a work as hard as I can. But at the end of the day, if you’re not in, it’s not gonna work. And I there’s part of me that really wanted to say, if you are who you say you are, I want you to prove yourself strong in my life. And he did. And it’s just like one thing after another, when I was about to just give up, I remember I know I’m telling you a lot of stories here, but that’s, I remember I was sitting in Powder Springs at this home, and I’d gone up and met with a pastor of a church up in Cartersville. Eddie Staub (00:26:04): And then I was telling him what I wanted to do and I was about to leave. And he goes so Eddie, are you asking me for my advice on how you should proceed? And I said, yeah, in a way, I guess I am. And he goes, how much money do you have left? And I go about $25. And he said, you have $25. And how much longer you will be able to stay at this powder Springs home. So I think about another week, and then I don’t know where I’m going to go. And he goes, you know, he said, I’m just going to be honest with you. It is clear to me that it doesn’t seem like God’s in this. He said, Eddie, dreamers like you walk into my office every week. And my advice to you is just to go back home, just go back to Alabama. Eddie Staub (00:26:52): You know, you gave it a good try, but it’s obvious that God doesn’t seem to be in this. So I’m driving down to Powder Springs. And I walked in the home and I sat down. I said, God, you’ve made a fool out of me. I left everything for you. And people are laughing at me here. They’re laughing at me in Alabama. And I said, I quit. I’m done. I can’t go on anymore. And I said, if you want me to stay here, you’ve got to show me something. And I said, I got one week, the next morning, it was eight o’clock. And I was praying. And the phone rang, I don’t even know how this guy got my number. And he said, are you Eddie Staub? And I said, yeah, he goes, what are you doing, son? I said, well, I’m praying. Then he goes, well, get off your knees. I’ve got some money for you. And some other people do and you need to get started. And that’s the way God has been part of this. So I can’t separate my activity from his activity. It was just hand in glove. We got a job to do for hurting children. Matt Hyatt (00:28:33): I love it. I love the way that you told that story. And and I love the way that it has come together. Pretty great. I mentioned when we got started, this is our 17th installment of the Rocket IT podcast. Do you know that our first was one of your team members, Kelly Brewer? Eddie Staub (00:28:59): Oh yeah. Matt Hyatt (00:29:02): So that was a wonderful, pretty great start. She is an awesome person and I loved interviewing with her and it was pretty great that she was willing to sort of be the Guinea pig on our first episode. So we got to hear a little bit about Eagle Ranch, way back then, on that first podcast. One of the things that sort of struck me about her story was how she ended up at Eagle Ranch. And it was an invitation from you to consider what for Kelly at the time, I think was a pretty big change in her life, right? To leave what she was doing and to join you at Eagle Ranch. I just wonder, it’s sort of seems to me like that’s probably a common theme that many times you have extended invitations for folks on a very personal level that have turned out to be not only great for Eagle Ranch, but also really great for the individuals that have been invited. And so I just wonder if you could tell us a little bit about that because I think many of us, and I would certainly include myself in this category, might have a little bit of fear about inviting someone into what we consider something very big. Maybe other person doesn’t feel that way. And I just wonder if you could kind of walk us through that a little bit. How, how did, how do we go about finding those individuals that could potentially be life changers for our organizations, but also potentially be a great opportunity for them? How do you, how do you find those people and how do you make that ask? Eddie Staub (00:30:57): That is so important, especially when you live and work in community, that you have to have people that are of spirit with your mission, your values, that they, that the why resonates with them, that the fire of the rock of the why resonates with them. I personally, I’ve just never been shy about approaching anybody about this because I believe in why we exist. And we just interviewed some folks the other day. And I started my interview process with, I just want you to know, I don’t really call this an interview. I call it discernment both for you and for us. If this is not where you’re supposed to be, this is not part of your personal journey. Then I don’t care how competent you are in this field. It’s just not going to work for you and it’s not gonna work for us. So we really are very, very thorough in our whole process and it’s as much for them as for us. And, and this couple that I was interviewing, they go, we’ve never been through anything like this and they go, we appreciate so much your due diligence Eddie Staub (00:32:40): Not just for Eagle Ranch’s purpose, but you’re trying to, to look out for us too. So, I think at the end of the day, we look for people, you know, we weigh the criteria and all that stuff. But we just look for people that resonate with why we exist and resonate with our core values. There are people that are, like I said, competent and all that, they check all the boxes, Matt, but there’s a miss with our why; with our core values. And it’s just, it’s okay. It’s just not going to work here. There are a lot of places that it would be great because you probably align more with their lives. But, that’s why the Why is so key. Eddie Staub (00:33:48): And I think a lot of organizations don’t spend a lot of time on that. They go right to core values and, and some of these other things, but they forget why they even exist on this earth. So, it’s interesting. You know, a guy named Dallas Willard. People call him CS Lewis, and he did a he did an article. It’s called living the vision of God. And it was about succession. And it talks about, you know, this is what happens. The founder loves the fire. The founder loves the why. And subsequent generations of leadership increasingly loved the effects of the fire. They loved the financial benefits. I’d love the reputation. They love that at our dock, but the fire becomes a distant memory. And, what’s important to us as leaders is to keep our folks close to the fire. Eddie Staub (00:35:03): You know, I’m moving out of my role as executive director, you know, in the near term. And I will move to a different role at Eagle Ranch, but I was talking to our board. I said, you know, sometimes people go, what’s Eagle Ranch going to look like in 50 years? And my response is, that’s not my responsibility, my responsibility and your responsibility, Matt as a founder, is we just need to get this next generation right. This next generations leadership. And if we get that right, then hopefully they’ll get the next generation of leadership right. Because we can’t control the next deal. So as the CEO of a company, you know: very a strong culture. And I said, what are you going to do to keep this next generation close to the fire of your why? Eddie Staub (00:36:03): And he said something. He said, you know, every year I meet with every new employee and we go over our why and our vision values, we go through our history, we go back to where we started, basically our first shot. And then we celebrate our core values in real time. Like one of our core values is commitment to innovation. When we do innovative things, even in the midst of a COVID environment, we celebrate that real time. Otherwise it just becomes words on a page, right. If we say that we are good stewards of all things that are trusted us, when that happens real time, we celebrate that. So that it becomes part of embedded in our ethos, if that makes sense. So Matt Hyatt (00:37:06): I love it. We have some things in common in that area. Years ago, I was thinking about the future of Rocket IT and had this idea of developing, you know, you talked about the business plan, developing what I called a 100 year plan of. I sat down and thought about what I wanted to happen for Rocket IT over a hundred years. And you know, there’s not very many businesses that last that long. So this is very, you know some might call it pie in the sky, you know, dreamy vision kind of thing. But, just thinking about it, just going through the exercise of thinking, what if you were going to build a business that had the potential to see its 100th anniversary. What is the foundation that needs to be built today? And a big part of that was thinking about our purpose, our why, our values, and that solid foundation that will be necessary in order to have that even be a possibility, but you don’t get very far into that exercise when you realize that, you know, I started my business at 25 years. Matt Hyatt (00:38:36): It sounds like when you started at Eagle Ranch, we were similar in age, and I realized pretty quickly that I’m probably not going to be here to see that anniversary. And therefore it is necessary at some point for there to be a transition from me being the CEO to someone else being the CEO. And at some point from me being involved in the day-to-day organization to not being involved at all, because I’m literally not alive. Right. So I love that thought exercise around succession and the transition. And how do you make sure that the things that help the company start and the vision for the organization survive through that transition. I love that you’re thinking about that and living it out. Eddie Staub (00:39:35): So you non-profits, or for-profits. Well, there’s a book called built to last by Jim Collins. I like it better than good to great. It’s just my favorite business book and it talks about succession issues and, and it’s, it’s really quite sobering to think how these great companies just had missteps in succession, and with regard to who they brought in. I look at this work that I’m doing now and my board is doing now is very Holy work, that this is some of our most important work in the history of Eagle Ranch. And we started it five years ago, Matt, we started thinking about succession five years ago and started putting things in place so that when this thing happens, it’s going to be as smooth as possible and as little drama as possible. Matt Hyatt (00:40:48): But, it’s really something that I think to your point needs to be given real serious thought. Eddie Staub (00:40:57): Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Well, my experience has been that just preparing for that eventual transition has helped enormously and making the organization more efficient and resilient. You know, if something happens to the founder, cause we never know day to day how things are going to go. That’s a real risk to the organization. And so the practice of preparing for succession actually prepares the for the unknowns that that inevitably come up in our lives. So really important stuff. Eddie Staub (00:41:41): It’s interesting. I, there’s two organizations I mentor, they are founder led. And, I start off my talk with them when we made it at Eagle Ranch. I said, first of all, not every organization is meant to outlive its founder. So let’s start there. Should this organization continue to exist past you? And you would have thought I laid a bomb in like, you know. It may have had it seasoned with this founder and it’s time for it to go away. But once you sign that and they go, Oh, of course we want to keep, okay, okay. Now we’ve got to look at succession and you can start to work backwards, sort of what you’re saying. What needs to be in place organizationally, financially for this transition to happen successfully? Exactly what you’re saying. Matt Hyatt (00:42:47): Well, you mentioned Jim Collins and his his book. I’ve been reading a good book. I want to share with you. You recognize that. So on Eagle’s wings kind of the story of how Eagle Ranch got started and there’s a lot of great, there are a lot of great stories in here about you and about the ranch. But the thing about this book is very hard to find. You’ve got to know somebody to find this book just about, but it’s published in 1995. That’s I know that’s 25 years ago because that’s when I started my business. If there’s another, is there another book? Is there a sequel, let us know what happened? Eddie Staub (00:43:29): Well we are, we are looking at that. We do have a book that was more just stories of different kids. Who’ve grown up here, it’s called seasons. But I think that’s something that we’re going to be looking at is I’ve sort of transitioned to another role while I have some bandwidth to look at that. Matt Hyatt (00:43:53): Well, this one’s a great read. Nice job. Eddie Staub (00:43:57): Yeah, you can get those from the range. So there you go. Your listeners would like a copy. You know, we have, we have plenty of the ranch. Matt Hyatt (00:44:06): Great. So let’s, let’s change gears just a little bit. I’d like to talk about a little bit about just kids. You got a lot of experience in this area. My kids you know, we joke at home, my wife and I are newly empty nesters. Our kids have been launched out into the world and Maureen and I are at home, but I certainly remember this has not been very long since this has happened. And I certainly remember when my kids were at home and all the fun, and all the challenges that that go along with that. One thing that I thought was a big influence in our home, you know, remember I’m the CEO of an IT services company, is just technology. And I’d love to hear when kids come to the ranch, most kids I know are already carrying some sort of technology on their person at all times. How do you deal with technology and kids at home at the ranch? Eddie Staub (00:45:17): Okay, great question. Well, when a child comes here, they can’t have their cell phone. Eddie Staub (00:45:29): And we had a young girl that came here. Very, very attractive. And so she was getting all kinds of boy attention. She went to school and got all kinds of boy attention. And so she comes here and such, you know, part of the deal is you can’t have your phone here and you need to work on you. You don’t need to be working on you in the context of what everybody feels about you on social media. It just confuses. And you, you need this time for you. So she, she had a little bit of a hissy fit, but when she graduated in her graduation speech, she goes, I just remember when I came to the Ranch, I couldn’t have my phone and how mad I was. And she goes, but looking back, she said, I never realized how I was. Eddie Staub (00:46:31): I think she used the word vicariously, living in my life to what other people call and how much that framed my view of myself. And she said, it took Eagle Ranch to find out who she was, apart from that, interestingly she’s in college now. And I was eating at a restaurant in Gainesville and she came up to me and she goes, Mr. Eddie. And I said, Hey honey. I said, how are you doing? She goes, I’m doing great, helping to run the sale for the owner and I’m still going to school. And she goes, she goes, you know, I still don’t use my iPhone like I used to. Eddie Staub (00:47:19): That really helped me put that in, prioritize that. And so I, I think what we try to do Matt is to slow life down for kids here and to teach them how to work and teach them how to play. Cause that’s something you and I grew up with, right. That is sort of part of growing up in our generation, this generation, there’s so many wonderful things about technology, just wonderful, but there’s a shadow side to it, right? There’s a side that is harmful that, that takes kids to an easier place. It’s easier to do that, to do the, the work of self, you know, introspection or are to be outdoors and nature, explore, you know, we have 315 acres, as you mentioned, you know, exploring in the woods, playing basketball, riding a bike and then learning how to work, you know, and feeling good about a job well done. And so I sort of, in a way I sort of is the leader here. I sort of want to take this range and take it back in time in a way in a healthy way, 20 or 30 years, where life was a little simpler, a little slower instill you leverage that technology because that’s the world we live in, but to have it it’s a proper balance. Eddie Staub (00:48:58): I think it’s, I mean, it certainly was for us. It’s tough for parents to find that proper balance, the kids are going to gravitate a hundred percent. Matt Hyatt (00:49:10): You know, I remember learning that one of my kids and I won’t out them but one of my kids, you know, I learned was you know, sneaking up on, into the bedroom at night. And so, you know, you think, okay, we’ve got an hour of screen time or whatever, as our, as our budget and then come to find out, maybe there’s a more hours happening after everybody’s gone to bed it’s tough to manage that at home. I think probably any parents that are listening to this, especially the kids that are older than probably eight or 10 would probably be hard pressed to say, okay, we’re going to go a year, two years without technology. Eddie Staub (00:49:55): Yeah. You know, sometimes it’s those baby steps, you know? And and you remember when you and I were growing up, there are certain people my parents said won’t be hanging around with, right. So you’re not going to go over that guy’s house. And, the danger becomes when kids have 24 hour access, they’re hanging around with people, different format, but they’re still hanging around people that are having an unduly influence on your kids. That’s not good. And so you just got to figure out strategies to mitigate that because you wouldn’t let little Billy in your home and yet little Billy’s coming into your home via technology in a way that is affecting your child. So it’s, it’s tough. And you can’t go to the extremes. I mean, that’s, that’s one thing you gotta be careful. We can do that here because we gotta do it here, right? I mean, we’re a little further down the road with children, but technology has really exacerbated emotional issues with the kids we see come to us now. Matt Hyatt (00:51:18): I think that a lot of kids that are visiting the ranch or literally moving to the ranch, they’re probably are for lack of a better word, very suspicious coming in. You know, I would imagine they’ve got their guard up. A lot of them, maybe most of them when they come in, how do you try to establish a connection and, and trust with, with kids that probably, you know, especially reading this book and they’re there not to give anything away in the book, but there are stories in here about kids and maybe come up from that more, much more challenging place. How do you, how do you reach them? Easy question, right? You’ve got 10 minutes. Eddie Staub (00:52:07): It’s about building trust. And because I don’t really blame them for not trusting us, they don’t know us. And it’s a process that you’ve got to sort of earn your trust. You just can’t talk the talk. You’ve got to walk the talk and it’s cliche-ish, but it’s really true. They just, they just say, are you real? And you’re going to be there for me. Are you going to be consistent? Are you going to be fair? And over time they see we are. And that starts to open up these opportunities for them to let down their guard. Matt Hyatt (00:52:45): You mentioned earlier, and I, I’m probably gonna misquote you here, but I think you said something about bringing challenge. And I know I’m, I know you well enough and I know Eagle Ranch well enough that there’s a big balance there between challenge and support. A lot of these kids, I’m guessing coming in have already experienced a tremendous amount of challenge in their life and what they really need is support. And I know that you calibrate that very well. Can you kind of unpack that a little bit and how you decide when, you know, somebody makes a mistake or they do something that they shouldn’t do? How do you know when this kid needs more support or when this kid needs challenge? Eddie Staub (00:53:36): Well, we run the ranch off what we call choice consequence. You know, you make a bad choice there, bad consequences. You make a good choice or good consequence, and that is life. And that’s one reason we do that here. And it says, cause we’re trying you for life, that if you make good decisions, good things happen to you. If you make bad decisions, bad thing. And we want to bring that consistency in your life, that reality into your life, because that’s going to be a true framework of why the way the world works. And I think our challenge is a little boy, little girl, you have an issue with authority. You have a family, you keep this kind of attitude going with a four. You’re going to get fired. You’re not going to be able to take care of your family. Eddie Staub (00:54:34): So it’s like sorta having them think along with you. If you continue to have problems with authority, let’s talk about what your life will look like. When you keep doing jobs with excellence, like you’re doing, you’re going to have a great job. You’re going to be able to provide for your family. I just can’t wait to see what your future looks like. So it’s like a balance. But if you start throwing stuff from the ivory tower, they’re just going to shut you down, right? Because it’s not connected to their reality, but you try to take their current reality and sort of extrapolate it and just say, okay, this is where this is headed. And sometimes they start to think along it, gosh, I can’t live like that. That’s the way it was at home. And I don’t want that for my family maybe, or the family sees it in a family just goes, we don’t want, we want a healthy family. We want to recapture our family. We’ve got to change our family dance. Or if we don’t in our challenges, if you don’t, this is the way this was going to play out for you. So a lot of people embrace that Matt, and and get moving in that direction. Matt Hyatt (00:56:02): Got it. Can you talk to those a little bit about how education works? I got to thinking, you know, if a kid’s coming to a ranch for a year or two I’m guessing not all of them are close enough to continue to attend their regular school. How does that all work? Eddie Staub (00:56:18): Oh, that’s a great question. I made a decision early on is, and this goes to one of our core values about stewardship. We don’t have to do all the things we do for these kids here. We just don’t, we don’t have to have the number of counselors. We don’t have to have equine therapy. We don’t have to have an on campus school. We don’t have to do play therapy. We don’t have to do any of that stuff. And we can just have these kids here and basically just babysit them, get out of pretty newsletter if there’s, Oh, look at these cute little kids, but I would know that we weren’t good stewards of our lives of their lives. And so I look at a child’s life is is like this from my finger to here. And then we get them for two years of their life, of their precious life. Eddie Staub (00:57:18): We get them for two years and that is a sacred trust. And we go, how can we pour into those children’s lives during their time with us, where it’s going to build resilience and substance in their life. And to your point, one of those is education, great predictor of future performance and outcomes. And we have a great relationship with the public schools, but they just could not remediate our children at risk kids to be two to three grade levels behind yeah. And, and great public schools in our area, but they just couldn’t get our kids in. So we did a beta test. I took four of my kids who are struggling the hardest, brought them here. We did a homeschool curriculum, caught them up to grade levels of six months. Wow. And I said, if we’re going to be good stewards, we’ve got to do school here. Eddie Staub (00:58:16): And so we started a SACS accredited school for grades six through nine, which is our wheelhouse middle school plus ninth grade. And we’ve been able to catch those kids up. We have one teacher give or take his plus a pair. So one to five. So we’re individually meeting these kids where they are academically and in getting them. So hopefully when they go to public high school either here or back home that they’ll be at or above grade level when they leave. And so, yeah, so that’s, that’s what we do, but it all goes back to that. It’s an integrity issue for all of us in business. Are we going to steward this business in ways that would be pleasing to God, or are we going to be sort of like a Piper type that it looks good on the outside, but inside we just are cutting corners. We’re not all we could be for our clients are for our employees, you know, so we try to be real sensitive to those kinds of issues, particularly with our kids. So Matt Hyatt (00:59:29): I love the the importance and the place on the value of stewardship. That’s actually one of Rocket ITs core values to be passionate stewards. And it’s really interesting when you’re working through a challenge just a day-to-day challenge thinking through stewardship as being one of the core principles in which you make decisions. I’ve been entrusted with this, in our case physical device, you know, I’ve got somebody that’s laptop that I’m working on or someone’s data for their organization or something. That’s that’s on their computer. And I I’ve been entrusted with this this device for software or data and how am I going to behave with it, or even just in the context of our day to day just being a steward in the office, it makes a huge difference when you think of it with that filter. And I love that that’s a core in your principles as well. Tell us about what’s next. I mean, you’re making a transition, so you’ve got a succession plan in place and that’s underway. What’s next for Eagle Ranch? Eddie Staub (01:00:49): Well, we are under construction right now with our wing center and it is going to house outpatient counseling. So hopefully we’ll help children and families. So they won’t need an Eagle Ranch, or when they leave Eagle Ranch, they can sort of segway back home using our outpatient counseling. Because those folks are gonna know our family systems model. So it’s, it’s gonna be a screen in and a segway out. So it’ll identify some families that need Eagle Ranch and hopefully it’ll create a family situation where they don’t leave. So it’d be outpatient. Counseling would also be a area for marriage retreats, or parenting retreats. And we also have soul care for pastors ministry leaders. There’s a book fromJohn Ortberg did. He sort of took off Dallas Willard’s hoping about soul care. I had a a young man I’m a mentor for, and he goes, when you look back, what do you wish you had done? What was your mistake? And I said, I wish I would have attended to my soul more for 35 years and not just run pillar to post. And I think he’ll learn from that because I wish I had, I wish I had attended that, so soul care, we’re looking at an initiative there. And then finally there’s a thing called the wings initiative where I help other people start or retool children’s problems across the country and internationally. So that’s my heart. That’s sort of where I’m going to be moving to. So that’s what that’s going to house. It’s about 2000 square foot building should be through in April and we hope to have it open this summer. That’s next on the horizon. Matt Hyatt (01:03:08): And you said you were transitioning to a new role, but I don’t think you told us what that looked like. Eddie Staub (01:03:14): Well, I won’t be the executive director anymore. I love this work, man. I just love it. I see that we’re sending messages to a time that we’ll never see. And it just resonates so deeply in my heart that I want to stay connected, but there’s a new season for a new guy, new ideas for Eagle Ranch. But I think my time is to be putting a footprint, my my fingerprints on this wing center and get it up and going sustainably, programmatically, and financially. So that’s where I’m headed. Matt Hyatt (01:04:03): I love that you mentioned financially. And I would like to touch on that for just a moment. My understanding is that Eagle Ranch has managed to do all of this, and this is a huge undertaking, but to do all of the things that you built; the land acquisition, and now this new wing center. All without leveraging, do I understand that correctly? Eddie Staub (01:04:31): That’s right. Yeah. Well, it’s not a core value because core values are independent of the environment. And if things got crazy financially, we would go into debt to survive. So that’s real important. People think being debt-free is a core value. It’s not because it’s not independent of the environment, but the reason our thought behind being debt-free is when people give to us, we’re completely privately funded. When people give to us, they do not give to us to service a debt. Now we let’s say we went into debt and people gave us a hundred dollars. We would never tell them it’s going to service that. So we believe stewardship wise, that gifts to Eagle Ranch should never go to service a debt. Secondly people bar for capital expenditures, that’s usually when they borrow. Eddie Staub (01:05:40): And what’s ironic about that is raising capital funds are the easiest thing to do. And you’re having to pay back with the hardest money there is to get and that’s the day-to-day money. It makes no sense. So this isn’t that interesting. I know I’m going to borrow money to build a $2 million building, and I’m going to service a debt with operational money, which is my hardest to come by, you know? So, that’s the second reason we don’t do it is it makes no sense. The third thing, if you can’t raise money for capital expenditure, you’ve either got a vision problem or you have a need issue because people will give to a needed vision. If you have a need and you have a vision that people can get behind, they will give to it. And if you can’t raise the money for a capital expansion, you’ve got a vision problem or you’ve got a need problem. So that’s the reason we don’t, we we’ve been debt free our entire existence. Matt Hyatt (01:06:48): That’s amazing. That’s a huge accomplishment, too. Congratulations. I would love it said, you know, it’s funny. I want to tap into this and, and we’re we’re gonna wrap up here pretty soon, but I do want to tap into this idea for just a moment that you brought up that it’s easier to raise money for a capital expenditures. So that’s usually I’m building something or I’m buying something around, starting a new something versus operational expenditures. And that is maintaining what we already have. I’m running the day to day. Why do you suppose that is? Why is it, because I think I’d probably fall in that category too. It seems more exciting to have to start something new than it is to keep something running that’s been around for a long time. So I guess there’s two questions there. One question is, why do you think that is that it’s, that people generally want to, they’re more interested in funding capital projects. And then secondly, if you don’t mind sharing with us, how in the world do you pay for the day-to-day operations? The only thing that people want to give to is new stuff. Eddie Staub (01:08:01): Yeah. I think the reason people gravitate toward capital is that it’s exciting, and this other stuff is just beautiful, it’s just a grind. And so there’s, this, my wife told me, I love when bulldozers are turning dirt. I just love the smell of it. I was telling somebody this morning, you know, my wife said, I’m just going to give you a jar, freshly turned dirt for your birthday so I can just smell it, right? Like this wing center. I just love, I love being a developer at heart. I guess I just love that, but it’s a discipline that there needs to be. There’s a timing issue. Is your program ready? Is your business ready to absorb this new capitalization is your ongoing operational support position to be able to support that. So I had a dear friend of mine who started something similar to us. Eddie Staub (01:09:25): And, part of my, my encouragement to folks is it takes two to three years to be ready to start something like you gotta do a lot of policy manuals, you gotta figure out your program. You gotta get figured out your operational strain. You gotta figure out your referral strains. All this stuff has to be done. And this guy was given a million dollars to build homes; $500,000 each. And the people that gave them money, wanted him to build them right away. He called me and said, Eddie, these people want to give me a million dollars. And they said, I’ve got to spend it now. And he said, I remember you saying that about this foundation. You need to lay it out before we do that. And I said, I don’t have that yet, but if I don’t build, I’m gonna lose a million dollars. And I’ll say, well, my recommendation is you go back to them and explain to them why the timing is not perpetual. I mean, it’s just not, the timing is not there. You can’t do it. And he goes, what if they say the money’s gone. I said, I would let the money be gone. Matt Hyatt (01:10:36): And that is from the guy that wrote the one page business plan. Eddie Staub (01:10:41): Yeah. And so, if I was where he was, I don’t know what I would have done. I hope I wouldn’t have done it, but he did it. And it just about destroyed his ministry because he was trying to capitalize. But at that same time, he was trying to develop a program, trying to develop operational strain, trying to policy and all that stuff. So he did all of this stuff in one thing, and it took him five years to come out of that, to stabilize. And I met with him halfway through this mess and he just fell in my arms, just crying. He said, I, I just didn’t think it would be like this. Eddie Staub (01:11:35): But he said, and he mentors people now too. And he says, you’ve got to have a firm foundation or you grow things. But that front foundation was hard work. So, you know, but you got to do this groundwork, and it’s just hard. It’s difficult. So that, I think that’s the reason all of us gravitate toward the new, but it’s a discipline to say, you got to have your program. You got to have all these things lined up before you move there. You’re not going to be able to support it programmatically by finance. So operational funding, every bit of it’s private $4.6 million a year. Matt Hyatt (01:12:28): That’s a good size budget, but you’ve got a lot to manage, especially with all the different programs you have in place. So is that through private donations or are there a lot of your residents, what has happened? Eddie Staub (01:12:48): So the average payment of a child coming here is $275 a month. And I made a decision when I came here. There would never, ever be a child not be able to come here because of finance. And so we have some that pay $5 a month. You know, we have some that pay more than $275, but it just is not a, it’s not a determiner. Whether we take the child or not, it never, ever will be. So we have an endowment fund that throws off some income, but still we have to raise a lot of money every year. And, this sounds simplistic, but it’s just, God’s provision in a lot of times, it’s like the loaves and the fishes, and you don’t know where the money will come from, but it just ends up coming. Eddie Staub (01:13:53): And we’ve never sent out an appeal letter in 35 years. And I remember we had a board meeting and we got the money. We get our mail in the morning. And I told my assistant, I said, don’t open the mail and I bring it into the board meeting. And I have incredible board members, as you probably have seen who they are. And I put, there’s probably about eight pieces of mail. And I said, I want you, I’m going to open this mail and show you our donations today. Open the first one, $25. Next one, a hundred dollars. Next one is 50. And so after it was all over, I think it was $430. And I looked at my board and I said, you know, this is our daily bread. And we’re going to thank God for our daily bread. Eddie Staub (01:14:52): And we don’t know how it will come. We don’t know how it’s going to come. Only that it will come. And this is what we have today. And so now it’s enough. And so that’s, and I told Kelly this, when she first started working here this was back in the early, early days of Eagle Ranch. We usually get junk mail and, you know, probably all in all, we probably get probably 30 pieces of mail. This one time we got two, we got two pieces of mail. The first one I opened was a check for $2 from Dorothy M. Smith from Marietta. It was written. I knew she was elderly because it was written in arthritic Hand-Writing. $2, never had a check that small before then. The next thing I opened was a check for a hundred thousand dollars from someone in Marietta. Eddie Staub (01:16:01): And it was almost as if back in those very early days is a, God was saying, love the giver and not the gift. I know that that elderly lady she gave all she could in those people that gave him a hundred thousand, that was a largest gift they’d ever given. And it was sacrificial for them. And I told Kelly, I said, when people give, you know, we have a letter that goes out. I said, I want us to write personal letters to those people to get $25. Cause they never get personal letters. The people that give 100,000, they do, but it’s a part of who we are. It is, we love the giver and not the gift. And, that the way we do that and the way we thank people in the way we do sort of cast who we are transparently. We’ve had kids we’ve lost here and how painful that is because that’s reality. Eddie Staub (01:17:05): It’s just that transparency and honesty and thanking people the day we get their gift, it just has created some Goodwill and people feel that they own a part of this ranch. And they do. I mean, I work, I feel like I work for our donors. So anyway, I love it. Matt Hyatt (01:17:36): That’s a really impressive that you’re able to run that kind of budget off of purely the Goodwill of folks around the community, and beyond. That’s really great. I want to move on to the lightning round. And I know we have shared in advance with some of the lightning round questions are, but that would be too easy. So I’m going to throw in an extra one. That’s not on the list. I’d love to hear. How, how has the ranch surprised you from your original vision 35 years ago when you showed up in Georgia, when you showed up in Georgia, if you had thought about where you would be in 35 years, how are things different than that? Eddie Staub (01:18:24): A lot, a lot different, because I would’ve had 40 boys, one counselor, one counselor, not of handled what we do now. Yeah, that’s, that’s what I had envisioned and no girls. But I tell you what’s happened is there’s a verse says, plans fail for lack of counsel. But with many advisors, I succeed. These how Eagle Ranch has evolved is a direct result of people around me. Eddie Staub (01:19:06): Challenging that original vision and me listening to them. And because of those people, we went from boys to boys and girls. Because of those people, we went from boys and girls to working with families. Because those people, we have equine therapy. Because those people, we have a school. Because those people, we have a wings initiative. And it’s just listening to people who see life from a different perspective, right. We all got our, like those race horses. They have those blinders and they don’t know what’s going on here over here, but, but the richness of the people that have come here has enriched our mission. Matt Hyatt (01:19:59): So fantastic. I love it when it works out to be even better than I imagined. I’m at the real lightning questions. The ones you studied for for weeks. Tell us about a person that has made a profound impact in your life. Eddie Staub (01:20:19): Jim Webb. Jim was a retired, do you know Jim? He was retired Procter and gamble executive. We’re naming the wings center after him. But my father died when I was in college. And so Jim stood in as my best man. He passed away with pancreatic cancer last year, but he he was a man who had a unique gift to challenge and encourage me almost in the same sentence, but just quite a remarkable individual was on my board from the very beginning, never rotated off. He’s the only one that I’ve never rotated off why he had that organizational knowledge that he knew my heartbeat. I knew his. Matt Hyatt (01:21:11): So how did you met him? Eddie Staub (01:21:15): I met him when I first came to town. Just a mutual friend. They said, this guy might have an interest in what you’re doing. You know, you, you look at these P and G guys are very practical, very regimented. And, and I think the faith dimension of Eagle Ranch, he was a enamored by that. I think I didn’t have anything and there was something about me or my vision that I think touched him and he just, he didn’t let go, you know? So it’s good to have those people that walk with you regardless. Matt Hyatt (01:22:07): All right. Tell us the single most important lesson you’ve learned in your professional career. Eddie Staub (01:22:31): Don’t compromise your values for short-term gain. Always have the long view setting. No is as important as saying yes. And there have been so many things that have come across my path, that from a worldly perspective, people go, you gotta be kidding me. You’re not going to do, you’re not going to do that. That’s a gray area

In this segment of the Rocket IT Business Podcast, guest host Dan Frey sits down with the visionaries behind Rocket IT, Matt and Maureen Hyatt. Throughout their discussion, Matt and Maureen reflect on their journey to craft a successful business and how they continue to innovate 25 years later. In This Episode, You’ll Hear More About… The history of Rocket IT What it takes to retain staying power The notion of failing fast and pivoting The risks needed to jumpstart a business The importance of altering business models Finding a significant purpose to guide a business Lessons learned from living lean and working hard Common challenges faced during a business’ start-up phase Contact Information Rocket IT | podcasts@rocketit.com | 770-441-2520 Resources Mentioned When Do the Good Things Start Like What Your Heard? Give Us Some Feedback! podcasts@rocketit.com Show Notes Dan Frey (00:00:00): Hello and welcome to the Rocket IT Podcast. My name is Dan Frey, and I’m really, really excited to be a guest host today because I get to do something that I think is going to be a blast for me. I get to hang out with two very good friends of mine, Matt and Maureen Hyatt, and the visionaries that were behind building an amazing business in Rocket IT. Intro (00:00:20): [Music Plays], Dan Frey (00:00:32): We’re going to be able to talk about a lot of great things today that even I, as their friend am looking forward to hearing some of these things that I want to go over with them, I don’t even know. So this is going to be, I think, an excellent podcast. You know, when I thought about it I think all of us, whether we work for somebody else or we work for ourselves, always love to hear the stories of people that went out there, took a risk, built a great business and made it work. And Rocket IT has done that for 25 years. So I’m very much excited to hear these two visionaries talk about where they came from, where they are and where they want to go. So with that being said, I want to welcome my friends, Matt and Maureen Hyatt, to the podcast. Guys, how are you? Matt Hyatt (00:01:15): Good! Maureen Hyatt (00:01:15): Great. Matt Hyatt (00:01:15): Thank you. We really appreciate you volunteering. Dan Frey (00:01:19): Yeah! Matt Hyatt (00:01:23): On our show, right? Dan Frey (00:01:23): This was a heck yes, it wasn’t just a yes thing. I think there’s going to be a lot of fun and you know, you guys have helped me prep great. You know, we’re going to cover like four primary quadrants. We’re gonna talk about those early days when, you know, when you think about business owners early days are always the freakiest time. So I can’t wait to hear about that, but then some of the obstacles that you guys have overcome. How you’re going to continue to stay relevant in this day and age and where you want to go and then maybe some have some fun before we get off this podcast. So you know, let’s just, let’s just dive right in if that’s okay with you guys. You good? Matt Hyatt (00:01:56): Yeah, go for it. Dan Frey (00:01:58): Alright. Let’s look at those early days. So Matt, you know, when did you decide like, Hey, I think I’m just going to go out on, I want to work for myself. I’m going to be an entrepreneur. I don’t want to work for somebody else. When was that for you? Matt Hyatt (00:02:13): Well, yeah, it’s something that I’ve thought about a lot. And I remember thinking about it as early as just being a kid. Yeah. I tell people sometimes I just remember riding the school bus, looking out the window of the businesses we were passing, trying to figure out maybe what kind of business I’d like to own someday. And so I think the seeds of it were planted early, something that I considered quite a lot, even as a kid, but it didn’t really happen until later. In fact, I was 25 when I started this business. And so,uyou know, there’s a little bit of a gap there between the early days of dreaming about it and the time it comes to actually execute. It was years that I worked in a traditional job working for other people and kind of learning a little bit about business and leadership and what it takes to work in a professional environment. That foundation was important as I got started and ready to start Rocket IT. Dan Frey (00:03:08): Was there ever a time when you just kind of almost got used to that environment and the entrepreneurial itch almost went away or was that always kind of hovering in the background? Matt Hyatt (00:03:16): That’s a great question. I, I sometimes wonder what would have happened if I hadn’t been laid off from my last job. Dan Frey (00:03:25): Oh wow. Matt Hyatt (00:03:25): That’s what happened, right. So I was, I was working for a company in sales doing sort of a low level management. So a rising, rising leader in that organization, and I sometimes wonder, you know, because one day guy showed up and gave me the proverbial pink slip said, Hey, we’re letting you go. And it was that sort of kick out into the street that I needed to work up the courage to actually go and start the business. So I do wonder that sometimes what would have happened. If, you know, that, that had never occurred. If I had continued working in that environment and I’m making money or would I still be doing that today? I don’t know. Dan Frey (00:04:05): Yeah. You know exactly what you just said is maybe what somebody out there really needed to just hear, because, you know, we’re kind of doing this right now at the peak of the COVID crisis in our country and layoffs have been pretty darn consistent in the last three months, so maybe there’s somebody out there that just heard, Wow. You know, that was actually something Matt Hyatt was grateful for. Not looking back and regretting because that might’ve been the catalyst to make you go do what you’ve done. So. Matt Hyatt (00:04:29): Yeah. You know, it’s funny you say that something I’ve been thinking a lot about lately, you know, Maureen and I are big fans of art. And so we got to museums and galleries when we’re traveling around and something I’ve been thinking about is what kinds of amazing new art we’re going to see come out of this as artists have been holdup in their studios and had an opportunity really think, and there’s probably a lot of emotions tied to a lot of things that are going on as well. Not just COVID. So same kind of thing. You, you might see an explosion. In fact, I bet you do see an explosion of sort of the continued “gig” economy and folks building small businesses and starting up right now because of necessity. Hey, you know what, I’m not working right now. I’ve been thinking about this idea and I’ve got a ton of time on my hands when I get started right now. And so you may indeed see a bunch of new businesses come out of that. Dan Frey (00:05:27): You know, that is such an interesting perspective. I have not thought of it that way. Maybe it gives us all a little bit of anticipation. Right? Good that can come out of the challenges that we’re dealing with. So, so as far as computers, like when did you get the computer bug? What was, what was the thing to go on in that industry? Matt Hyatt (00:05:48): You know I had a couple of uncles when I was growing up that were they had worked, both of them had worked a sort of electronics field. One of them was working for the phone company and other one was doing appliance repair. And so they were both very technically minded and they were the people that I knew that were sort of the earliest adopters of home PCs and game systems and things like that. And so, you know, one of those uncles, so was close with my dad. And so it’s been a lot of time with that family. And I remember that was the first time I ever saw the Pong video game. You know, we’re bouncing a ball back and forth first time I ever saw that was at his house. And that was also, he was the first person I ever met that had a home PC little Texas Instruments computer that he had set up. Matt Hyatt (00:06:41): And I was just fascinated by that. I thought that was so cool to have effectively. Now we didn’t think of it this way, but you know, it’s different than a TV, which is not interactive. TV would just sit there and watch what happens on the screen. But with with a computer very interactive. You know, in order to have anything happen on the screen, you’ve got to type something in and you can get a response from what you typed. I just thought that was really cool. And so that was probably an early start. And then later we moved and ended up moving next door to another uncle and my cousin, Andy, next door had a computer. And that, I think that’s kind of sealed the deal for me cause I got to spend a lot of time over there and we would do stuff on the computer together and my uncle was very instructive. Matt Hyatt (00:07:30): So he was happy to lend us advice and you know, I’d go over there and ask him questions and he would show me stuff on the screen. And I don’t know, I just thought it was fascinating. So that was kind of the early interest in computers. It wasn’t until later that I kind of figured out that that might be what I wanted to do for a living. That was what sparked the early interest. Dan Frey (00:07:51): Did it drive your college experience? Was that what you studied in school? Matt Hyatt (00:07:56): Well, you know, it, it did. So funny enough, I’ll tell you a little bit about that. So I, I tell people, you know, I was a terrible student in high school. I really, I don’t think I could have been more disinterested in what was happening in high school, not a good student. I was just not particularly interested in what was happening there. And as a result, you know, my grades reflected that, right. I tell people sometime that I was, I was the 20% of the class that was responsible for the top 80%. Matt Hyatt (00:08:32): So, you know, I just, I didn’t like it all that much, but when I was approaching graduation and that it barely graduate from, from high school, you know, what do you do next? And back then, it kind of felt like there’s really only a couple of choices. You’re either gonna join the military or you’re going to go to college. It’s kind of feels like the two paths that are available. And I knew that I didn’t take instruction well, so I didn’t want to join the military. And and so I opted to go to college and because of the grades and finances and so forth, you know, a four year university was out of the question. But I could probably swing a stent at a community college. So I went to a little community college down in Tampa and enrolled in school and they asked me what I was interested in. Matt Hyatt (00:09:22): And I told them I was interested in computer science and they said, great, we’re going to put you in a, an English class and a psychology class and an American history class. Oh, you said computers. We have some computers I’ll put you in a Fortran. They literally had two, my recollection is they had two classes available in computers and one was a Fortran computer programming and other ones, COBOL computer programming. Both of which were already sort of ancient languages even back in the Eighties. And so I enrolled in a Fortran computer programming class, but I spent most of my time in college, really, you know, doing the basics, the one-on-one stuff with English and American history. I did learn from that experience that I not built to be a software developer. You just, you gotta have a tremendous amount of patience for that. Matt Hyatt (00:10:14): And a willingness to really kind of dive in and be super focused on, on a very specific thing for a good long time. And there are aspects of that ring true, but there are also aspects of that they’re just not me. So that was helpful. But to fund college I was working two part time jobs. I worked for JC Penney as a bill collector after, you know, in the evenings. And then I also worked part time for a little software store at the mall called Babbage’s Software. So that was what I was doing to fund my college. And Babbage’s approached me one day. And said, you know what we’re thinking about opening another store. If this is a retail store at the mall, right. We’re thinking about opening another store and we need an assistant manager. It’s a full time position. Matt Hyatt (00:11:02): And we wondered if you’d be interested in that job. And I thought to myself, you know, what’s the fastest way for me to learn about computers and management and have a chance at opening a business someday, is it to study American history and Fortran at college? Or is it to take a job in management in the software industry. And so I pretty quickly made the decision to drop out of college, quit my job at JC Penney and went to work full time for Babbage’s. And, that went well. I went to work as an assistant manager and within just, I don’t remember exactly how long three or six months or so. They gave me my own store at Tampa Bay Center and at the ripe old age of 19 I’m managing a little computer store, computer software store at the mall. And so I thought I had arrived. Dan Frey (00:11:51): I love it. You’re big time! Matt Hyatt (00:11:54): That, that, that was what kind of got me started in the IT field. A little side story. People used to come in the software store and they would buy a software, right. And one day, one of my customers was saying, Hey, do you know anybody that could come out to my house and install this software on my computer? I’d, I’d be willing to pay. I think it was 25 bucks an hour is what he offered. Which was more than I made as the manager. And that was my first consulting gig, as I said, well, I can do that. And he says, I hope you would say that. So I ended up going to his house several times over the next year or so, and just installing software for him and, you know, getting him set up. And that was probably my first income from computer consulting. Dan Frey (00:12:37): I love it. That’s one of the service phase started, right. Not just, not just the hardware software phase. Love it. So did that influence the business model? Like when you actually started to then go out and do your own thing? I mean, what was it? Matt Hyatt (00:12:51): Yeah, probably influenced a little bit. So my, my original business plan, I sat down, you know, after I was laid off sat down and wrote a business plan. Mmm. That primarily was we were going to build and sell high quality clone PCs, and, and we would deliver them onsite to our customers. And that would be sort of our competitive differentiator, you know, the place where I had worked before we built PCs there also, but it was a retail environment. So customers will come to us place the order, they go home for a week or two, we built the computer up for them and they come back and pick it up. And, you know, we give them a big giant box or three and pat them on the back and tell them good luck. Matt Hyatt (00:13:35): Yeah. And so, you know, our competitive differences was that we would take them onsite and set them up turnkey so that people could begin using the computers right away and have to be technologists in order to know how to get things going. And so that part of it was probably influenced by my previous experience. But there was one paragraph I remember, well, maybe even one sentence on that business plan that said, Oh, by the way, we will also provide a computer services. So if we’re out at somebody’s business and setting up a computer for them and they need help with, you know, a switch or router or whatever, that we would do that to on an hourly basis. And so there was a small part of the business that was sort of service forward, but it was originally going to be primarily, we’re going to build and sell expensive computers essentially. Dan Frey (00:14:23): Well, you know, it doesn’t seem that long ago. I mean your story I’m, so I’m remembering, and I’m still feeling those times. Like that seems like a couple of weeks ago, and this is what over 25 years ago. So it’s crazy. So when did the the, the, the beauty join the business and Mrs. Hyatt sitting there next to you, when did Maureen finally come into play and what was what was Maureen’s involvement in those early days? Matt Hyatt (00:14:51): You want to take that one? Maureen Hyatt (00:14:52): Uh I was there before. I was there when he was working for the little computer company here in Norcross. Matt Hyatt (00:15:01): You were there even before that. You were there for Babbages. Maureen Hyatt (00:15:04): Yeah. We started dating. We were in Tampa and a month into our dating relationship, he said, “Hey, I’m moving to Georgia.” Matt Hyatt (00:15:16): This is not part of this story. Maureen Hyatt (00:15:19): So you know, he’d had enough of Tampa and wanted to do something new. So he left. Anyways, So he came up here, started working for this little computer business. And I moved up the next year and yeah, I was there. I was there when he got laid off and I was there when, within a week he had a business plan and had gotten a business license. I couldn’t believe how fast I thought this guy’s nuts. This guy is nuts. Matt Hyatt (00:15:50): She still thinks that. Maureen Hyatt (00:15:51): I still think that he’s proven it. Ubut yeah, so it’s, it’s, it’s been a journey for sure. Dan Frey (00:16:00): So there’s, there’s always the risk taker and there’s usually the more methodical mind that says, Hey, have you really thought this through? Was that you Maureen? Maureen Hyatt (00:16:08): Probably, probably, but I didn’t express it because he was pretty excited about it. And I didn’t want to take the wind out of his sails and I thought, you know, who knows? Maybe. Matt Hyatt (00:16:21): That’s cool. That’s interesting because I’ll tell you what I felt through that. Yeah. Was entirely support. Oh, awesome. Yeah. Yeah. Entirely supportive. Maureen Hyatt (00:16:29): It was all on the surface. Inside. Matt Hyatt (00:16:30): Obviously we didn’t know each other well! Maureen Hyatt (00:16:34): You know, we hadn’t been dating very long, so it wasn’t as invested as I became over time. But I did, I did buy him his first computer when he moved here. Cause I was gainfully employed and he was winging it with his new business. Matt Hyatt (00:16:55): Yeah, that’s true. So, you know, between moving to Georgia and getting started in this new job and being in sales, which as you know, is feast or famine, you know, all those things together. And then I would say probably just not very mature in my, you know, financial endeavors. Maureen, for sure, more than a more mature out of the two of us, the more conservative fiscally responsible of the two of us. So yeah, when it came time to sit down and write that, that business plan, I remember there were a few things that I needed to get started and one was a computer and I remember one was a lamp, you know, from my desk because I just didn’t have much, right. You know, 25 years old and probably should have had more. But you know, in retrospect probably better shape than I was, but I was still living in the sort of the collegiate life, you know, a cardboard box, Maureen Hyatt (00:17:52): You had all your money in stereo equipment. Matt Hyatt (00:17:55): Probably true. So Maureen did again, entirely support. She helped helping kind of get things kicked off and you know, I’m still paying that debt today. No, I’m kidding. Dan Frey (00:18:12): The wind in the sails, right. The one that actually has to be supportive that gets you where you want to go. Matt Hyatt (00:18:18): People ask me sometimes where it would be without this lady. And I told him I’d be living under a bridge somewhere down by the river. Pretty much. Yeah, exactly. Dan Frey (00:18:30): I got to ask, was there ever a long hair phase for you? Matt Hyatt (00:18:32): For me? Yeah, no. Dan Frey (00:18:38): Never had a mullet back then? I see you with a mullet. Maureen Hyatt (00:18:38): I was going to say, I have photos. Matt Hyatt (00:18:41): I bet Maureen would enjoy telling you the story. Dan Frey (00:18:43): I know that’s not part of the game plan here, but you know. Matt Hyatt (00:18:46): I see you totally going off script. Maureen Hyatt (00:18:50): I didn’t know him at the time, but rumor has it. And I have seen photos and his mother has confirmed the, did go through a phase where he did have the little, little tail and the little rat tail in the back that that was dyed blonde. I didn’t see that. I believe it was probably early high school. Matt Hyatt (00:19:08): I, you know, just to be clear if it weren’t already abundantly clear, I’ve never been cool. Cool, cool. At the time felt dangerous. I don’t know. Dan Frey (00:19:29): There’s got to be some sort of blast email go out, going out Sunday morning with mullet Matt on it. I think, Matt Hyatt (00:19:35): Yeah. I don’t think I’ve ever rocked the mullet look. Maureen Hyatt (00:19:39): It’s fun to talk about, but I’m more loyal than that. I wouldn’t out him. Matt Hyatt (00:19:41): Some somebody sent a picture out recently. I can’t remember. Wait, wait, wait. So we’ve got a little audience here in our studio and they are cracking up. Maureen Hyatt (00:19:51): She was taking notes on her phone. Dan Frey (00:19:54): Note to self find Mullet Matt picture. Matt Hyatt (00:19:58): But I did find a picture recently of me when I was younger and I did have hair at one time. I was born this way and reverted quickly after I turned 20 or so. Dan Frey (00:20:12): To the challenging phase, this has been phase, but you know, no business. Everybody likes to think of business owners that have made it, got it easy. But a lot of times they don’t like to think about what you went through to get where you got. So when you think about it, especially in those early days, what kind of challenges were you guys really up against out of the gate? Matt Hyatt (00:20:30): Yeah, so many, so many yeah, I don’t even know where to start. There are, there are a lot of challenges that we’ve worked through over the years and you know, and there’s still, it’s not like we’re in a challenge for you environment right now. Know what I is better is we’re better equipped both from a maturity standpoint and financially, and with the team around us now than, than we were 20 years ago. But you know, I’ll try to think of a few challenges that we worked through over the years. I do remember you know, one time I was working at home and working out of our house. So this was probably around 2000 to 2002 or so. So you know, the business is six or seven years old at that point and gotten to the point where I was like, you know what, I’m ready to move out of the house and start hiring folks have done that once before. Matt Hyatt (00:21:22): And you know, that had its own challenges, but that season I was working out of the house essentially as an independent consultant, but decided to move out of the house and into an office and I’m to start hiring folks again. And that took a lot of planning and and a lot of faith really that we were going to be able to carry it off. I remember one thing about that was that, that move to move out of the spare bedroom of our house and into a little executive suites office. So just imagine that, you know, 10 by 10 or 12 by 12, a office with a couple of desks in it. I remember it came furnished had phones an internet connection. There was a copier, you know, down the hall, a break room and stuff like that. But that little room was essentially renting and the price to do that per month was more than my house payment. And so just the courage to kind of say, okay, I’m going to go out and do this. Yeah. You know, you’ve got to hire a person they’re going to want to be paid. And that’s just another expense that first is entirely a leap of faith and it’s entirely expense. There’s no income tied to that. Maureen Hyatt (00:22:35): And also at this point we had two very young kids. I had quit my career to be a stay at home mom because this guy said, I think we can do it. And I thought, I don’t see that, but okay. Matt Hyatt (00:22:52): Again, all support. Yeah. Maureen Hyatt (00:22:54): We lost, we lost my income, which was the steady income. And and also with that, my insurance benefits two kids under the age of two. So it was, it was, it was a lot of faith involved in that, a lot of faith. And at every turn I thought, I was just thinking, I don’t know how we’re going to make this work. We just took it little by little. And there was a lot of faith. There was a lot of conversations throughout those early years where I would start to lose my faith in it because things were just so strained financially. Maureen Hyatt (00:23:38): He would just sit me down when I get to that place and just say, I think, I really think I can do this. Please don’t give up on me. I really, I can do it. He never, at least to me. And it probably was just make me feel better, but he always came off as he felt very strongly that this was going to happen at some point. And he’s not given up, Matt Hyatt (00:24:00): And I still think that. Maureen Hyatt (00:24:00): Jury’s still out on that one! Still trying to make a success of himself. Dan Frey (00:24:07): I’ve experienced that in those early days when you’re taking on cost and taking that risk, which has always some of the scariest times, especially when you’re actually then, like Maureen letting go of the stability of insurance and her career. You know, Matt, I’ve heard you say fail fast. Was there ever times in the early days where it’s like, well, we better call an audible on that decision cause it didn’t work. And you had to pivot quick cause you realize that you did fail fast, any moments of those? Matt Hyatt (00:24:37): Well, sure. Probably, you know, I should probably clarify I have sort of a love, hate relationship with the phrase fail fast. If, if I were a complete believer in that philosophy, Rocket IT would not exist. You know, if, if in the first half of the organization’s life, if I had given up and thrown in the towel, this organization wouldn’t exist and there has been at least one time where it probably would have been easier to just close the office. And, do something different. Whether I take a job and you know, there’s something very seriously considered that one or two points in my career at Rocket IT or close the business and start up another business next the next day. Would have been easier. And so I see so many startups these days where that’s the mantra and that’s a goal. That’s a key goal is okay, get this thing running and figure out if it’s going to fly or not. Matt Hyatt (00:25:45): And to me, that conjures up this idea of what we’re just going to throw up stuff up against the wall and see if anything sticks. And I don’t love that. I, I think it’s more like, Hey, you know what you’ve made a commitment to make something happen here. And if you believe in that commitment and you believe in your vision for what can happen, then you’re going to get through thick and thin in order to see it through to cause it to come to fruition. And so on one hand, yes, I totally agree. Look, if something’s completely not working, then fine. Throw it out the window and try something different. But I believe that with ideas, I don’t necessarily believe that with businesses. I think that if you’ve got strategies and tactics, and I think you should believe in and stick with your strategy and your goal and your purpose, but I think if your tactics aren’t working, then toss it and try something different. Matt Hyatt (00:26:40): That’s certainly the case. But, you know, and to give an example of the pivoting idea and where that’s happened for those that maybe aren’t as familiar with Rocket IT we don’t build and sell home PCs anymore. You know, that was the original business idea right through, through that out of the window in the mid nineties, early, early on. And we really pivoted towards being more of a service oriented organization. And so that wasn’t to fail the business and start a new business that was adapt, right? Make changes to the existing business and keep the people that you work with and keep the commitment that you have to your customers and your community, and to see it through. But we’re going to take a little bit of a different of attack in order to add value and keep that business running. And so there’s that kind of pivot. Matt Hyatt (00:27:31): And then there was, there have been, you know, at least one major pivot in the way that we deliver those services over the years. Early on, we sold time by the hour. That’s kind of how a lot of consultants work and that’s how we worked early on. And so if you need a computer consultant, you would call us up and say, yeah, I need a computer tech out here to come help with X, Y, or Z, and we’d run out and we would take care of whatever it is that we were hired to do. And then we would give them a bill for the amount of time we were there at the end of the day, it’s a very long story. I could probably do an entire podcast on just that topic. So I’ll try and make it short, but I realized that that is not a win, win proposition selling time by the hour. Matt Hyatt (00:28:15): Yeah. And I know a lot of industries still work that way. You know, your plumber probably gonna charge you by the hour. Your lawyers are going to charge you by the hour. Yeah. But for us, we felt like if we’re charging by the hour in a weird sort of perverted way, you’re almost incented to have problems in a way. You’re incented for it to take a long time because literally get paid more. If it takes a long time to fix the problem. If there are a lot of problems and I want a business that’s incented for having a, a good experience. And so a major pivot that we did early on was a pivot towards what I call subscription services, where basically you pay a monthly fee, that’s roughly tied to the size and complexity of your organization. We make sure everything runs smoothly. And if it doesn’t, then we’re on the hook, where are the, where are the ones that come to the rescue and have to spend a lot of time and money to make it right. And I think that’s the correct way to do it. So that’s another example of a pivot that we’ve we made early on that I think has benefited both people that we serve, but also our team and the people that we work with here. Dan Frey (00:29:22): So this topic will come back up and we actually start talking about like the growth staying relevant, but I think it’s also relevant to your, your, your obstacles phase, your challenges phase you’ve, you’ve always been about relationship. And really, like you just said, the, the experience of the client. And I don’t want to bill a client by the hour. I want to bill that client toward an experience and achieve that experience. How did that, do you think that had impact in terms of minimizing the obstacles like, or getting you farther along faster, because that was your approach relative to other people in your industry? Matt Hyatt (00:29:58): Yeah, I think so. In some, in some ways I think, you know, there are probably a couple of things we could touch on there. One, one is I think that it’s really important to kind of figure out what gets you out of bed in the morning. What is it that sort of drives you? And so for us, you know, figuring out what our purpose is beyond just, Hey, you know, you’ve got a mission, which is what, and you’ve got a purpose, which is why, you know, your mission says, Hey, you know, we’re going to provide a great experience with computers, for businesses, that sort of thing, a purpose is that that calling that we all have to act. And so kind of figuring out our purpose early on, which is helping people thrive was, was and remains very critical to our operations. Understanding why we get out of bed and why we do what we do helps us do that well. And if there’s ever a question about you know, a particular situation, you know, whether we ought to move left or right how we might support somebody and and their business, or what we’re doing in the community, if we kind of go back to what that purpose is of helping people thrive, that helps clarify direction that we should go. And so I think that part of it is, is super important. There was a, there was a second part of that that I was going to touch on and I lost it. I got so excited about the purpose. Dan Frey (00:31:25): Well, the challenging phase back in that day were a lot of, I guess, your competitors. Were they more about the, what? I mean, were you more of the visionary that can do the why and the purpose and they were still doing the, what the hourly charging? Matt Hyatt (00:31:36): No, I, I wish I wish that, you know, the day that I started my business, I knew what the purpose was. It didn’t come until much later and, you know, bring up the challenges part of that. I do want to complete that second thought while it’s still on my mind. And then we kind of come back to that if you don’t mind. But the other part of that is if, if you are, this is, I think this is improved over the years, but certainly early on and in Rocket IT’s history, you could tell a computer tech or a geek just about by walking down the street, like he didn’t even have to open your mouth. He could tell you, and you got the proverbial pocket protector and, you know, whatever the garb costume that we would wear. Right? So there is a difference between people that are interested in the computer and what’s on this screen and people that are interested in other humans, there is a key differentiator there. Matt Hyatt (00:32:33): And so a lot of us and I’m in this boat. So I’m not trying to point my at anyone else, but a lot of us got into the technology business because we’re fascinated by technology. Not many of us get into the technology business because we love other people. You know, I’m an introverted person that, you know, I was fascinated by technology. I told you that earlier. I didn’t figure out that I liked people until later. That’s the truth, right? It wasn’t until years later when I had started hiring people. So this is, you know, post 2003, when I moved out of the house and started hiring folks and had some tough experiences through that. I mean, it was a big surprise to me, in retrospect, it shouldn’t have been, but it was a huge surprise to me at the time that we could go hire other people and bring them into the office. Matt Hyatt (00:33:22): And they weren’t as fired up about doing a great job in serving people as I was. And so we had some, some negative experiences in there and a lot of learning experiences through that hiring best practices, leadership best practices mentorship best practices, you know, lots of stuff. And almost all of those problems were, you know, if I wanted to know who was responsible, I could just go home and look in the mirror. Cause it was, you know, it was me, but you did learn through that experience. And what I finally realized is if I wanted to find other people that were really kind of as fired up as I was doing a great job in providing great customer service, then I needed to identify what is the trait that makes, makes me different than the next computer geek. And it was really a search through that process. Matt Hyatt (00:34:16): And it took awhile, you know, it took months of sitting down and really kind of thinking through what makes me tick, why do I get out of bed in the morning? What makes me feel successful? And over time I was able to figure out, you know, what, I, I think what, when I feel really best about myself is when I feel like I’ve made a significant impact in someone else’s life. You know, bonus if it’s a positive one. Right? Dan Frey (00:34:43): Absolutely. Matt Hyatt (00:34:45): Yeah, so that, that was, that’s a big thing that I think helped get us to the point where we could figure out what our driving purpose was. And I think that is a key differentiator from maybe the next guy or, you know, down the street, running, running their business. Dan Frey (00:35:03): So, it really kind of plays into growing this business now and what your future is because, you know, I know a lot about Rocket IT and I know you guys, I know your clients and everybody sees you in the way you just explained yourself. You were as much relationship company is you are a tech company, right? So perhaps, maybe that is part of the, what got you out of that obstacle, challenging phase and maybe into a brand of what Rocket IT is. So as you look toward the future, what are some of the things you have in your pocket? Like you’re very community involved, which, you know, You, and I’ve talked on the side and you and I are both more into the introverted category. That’s a, that’s a challenge for you, but you don’t let that challenge hold you back. You guys are both out there, you’re in the community. You’re involved. How are you playing that into actually maybe growing the business and staying relevant in the times that we’re in? Matt Hyatt (00:35:58): Well, I would say yes, absolutely. Over the years, we have grown our business and extended our reach into the community, through relationships. And, you know, at some point I think a lot of people and I’m in this camp realize that maybe the key to life here on earth is a relationship, right? Relationships with our fellow human, our neighbor, people that we work with. So our team, you know, the kids, all of those things, that’s, that’s at least that’s what gets me fired up. Matt Hyatt (00:36:33): And I think that’s true for a lot of people. So if you’re going to, if you realize at some point, you know what I feel like what I have to contribute is helping other people be successful. Well, then you kind of figure out, Oh gosh, I need to meet as many people as I can. And look for those opportunities. You know, they don’t come about every day. Not everyone is in a place where they want or need help or are open to receiving it. But if you are out in the community expressing interest in others, lots and lots of opportunities are uncovered in that. And so one of the things that I’ve tried to do as I’ve built the business is to get out into the community and get to know as many people well, as I can. I don’t, I’m not crazy about superficial relationships. Matt Hyatt (00:37:27): You know, I have a tough time in a crowded room, but in small groups and one-to-one I can go deep and really get to know people a little bit and allow them to get to know me better and all kinds of opportunities come out of that opportunities to help one another, opportunities to add value to one another and business opportunities certainly come out of that as well. So one thing that Maureen and I have worked hard at over the years is how do we create a a business and a lifestyle that it is very autonomous and a team that feels empowered and authorized to run the day to day business which frees us up in our personal lives to spend more time with others and to do things in the community and to spend time with one another and travel and that sort of thing. Matt Hyatt (00:38:22): Yeah. When I think about the future of the business, there are a few things that are very, very interesting to me. I am very, very interested in the people around me winning. You know, I want, I want them to experience many of the same benefits of entrepreneurship and working in a great business that I enjoy and Maureen enjoys. And so we try to create an environment here at Rocket IT where everyone is very clear on why we’re here and what we’re trying to do and how their role contributes to that to that goal and that vision. And so that’s an important part of it. And as I look forward, I want more of that. I want, I want folks to feel very empowered. I imagine the day that a Rocket IT will run without Maureen and me. And my job right now is to ensure that that’s a successful experience for everyone involved. Matt Hyatt (00:39:23): And that’s the team, that’s our customers and that’s community. And so we’re building a platform if you will, to enable that success and to set that foundation up so that it can happen. I sometimes tell folks years ago, and I don’t remember how many years ago, probably, I don’t know, seven, 10 years ago. I wrote an article for our blog, which is still out there somewhere. If you want to go look it up on our Rocket IT’s website about the hundred year business plan. What I was thinking about at that time was you hear about some of these businesses that have been around for a hundred years or more, and what did they do foundationally in order to set the business up for that kind of success. And you don’t get far into that thought process where you realize, well, one thing that has to happen is there has to be a transition from me as the CEO to somebody else as the CEO. Matt Hyatt (00:40:19): Yeah. The business has to be able to, if it’s going to reach its hundredth anniversary, you remember, I started the business when I was 25 years old. I’d be 125. Probably not going to be here to see that. And when necessarily at some point the business must transition from Matt Hyatt is here every day, to Matt Hyatt is never here, right. It just has to happen. And so part of my goal is to make sure that while I am a steward of this company, and that’s what I am, I’m a steward of this organization. I need to make sure that I’m laying the foundation and putting the people and processes and systems in place that enable the business to run without my help. And when that occurs, well, then Maureen and I are free to sail off into the sunset. And the team is free to to take over the reigns and become the next stewards of Rocket IT. It that’s a big part of what we’re trying to accomplish. And I see, no, I don’t know that that transition is eminent, but I bet that it’s not terribly long. I don’t think we’re going to have this conversation again in 25 more years, right. At some point that transition will happen. And and I see that in our future and I fully expect that that’s going to be a successful run because I, I know that this team is capable of running this business without my help. Dan Frey (00:41:42): So I got to go off script and, and and ask you this, cause this Matt Hyatt (00:41:47): There’s a script? I didn’t get a copy! Dan Frey (00:41:51): I’ve worked with a lot of leaders. I think in principle, succession planning and building the bench has a sound principle that everybody understands and gets. But understanding and getting versus actually doing are two different things. You just kind of told us how you’re doing it, which is very clear, but what I’ve also seen in you that I don’t see in a lot of leaders that I work with is that you’ve been able to maintain your own health. And I’m not literally talking about physical health. I’m talking about Hyatt’s it’s and this is Maureen too, your overall wellbeing as you let go, which we’ve already heard about all your obstacles and all that you live through. I can only imagine, like when you’re empowering other people, letting go, not micromanaging, not poking and prodding is not easy. And eventually you’re talking about moving on. So how have you two taking care of yourself? And I’m not, again, it’s not a physical thing. It’s just an overall well-being thing as you basically multiply and in to other people, how do you, how do you do that? I think a lot of people can’t, and that’s what holds them. Matt Hyatt (00:43:02): Maureen, you want to hop in here? Maureen Hyatt (00:43:05): It’s definitely a process. It’s taken little steps at a time and see how it feels and see how it works and making sure that it works for people on the other side of us. And, and for us. Dan Frey (00:43:20): Maybe a series of little pilots? Maureen Hyatt (00:43:23): Yeah. Yeah. I think that’s what it is. I think you just kind of dip your toe in the water a little bit, and then you go a little bit further and you just, you just constantly kind of check in on where we are. How does this feel? How does this feel to the other people? How do they feel about having more responsibility and their contribution? And then you just kind of go from there and see where it leads. Matt Hyatt (00:43:46): Absolutely. And you know, the three of us on this call are are parents. And so we all experienced this, right. You know, we raise our kids and set them off into the world and there’s a gradual letting go process. And there’s some faith in that and trust. And you know, certainly there are sometimes mistakes and setbacks and you kind of get through that and move on. But yeah, that is certainly one of the early things that I had to kind of figure out when I was hiring people, is that you’ve got to trust folks to figure things out and be okay with people making mistakes. If you’re not okay with people making mistakes, then you are relegated to always doing the work yourself. You’re going to be, you know, tied to your business forever. If you’re the only one that can do certain things. Matt Hyatt (00:44:37): And I know that I didn’t want that for myself. And I didn’t want that for my team. And certainly there was a little, you know, certainly there are lots of opportunities, right? Where you try things in small ways and see how it goes. But I think a bigger part of it, an important part of it that is, is you just got to allow people to make mistakes and believe that they’re just that. If you’re, if you’ve hired folks and you’re helping to mentor and develop folks that are similarly wired and after the same purpose, then you don’t have to worry too much about motive when it comes to mistakes. You’re just worried about training and making sure that we’re pointing in the right direction. And so the job becomes not so much a, Oh my gosh, you made this mistake. What were you thinking of? Matt Hyatt (00:45:33): Well, that didn’t work did it. I’ve made that mistake seven times myself. And here’s what I did differently. That kind of got me out of that rut and then just redirecting folks and giving them some tools to kind of get back on the right path. But there’s a, there’s a little bit of faith and trust there that says, you know what? I’m not going to automatically assume that this person made this mistake on purpose or this person was being malicious somehow. I’m going to automatically assume that this person is trying to do the right thing and made the best decision that they could at the time. And it happened to be the wrong one. Man. If I had a dollar for every time, I made a mistake, I’d be way richer than I am now because you know, you learn that way and I’ve made plenty of mistakes. I make mistakes everyday. Matt Hyatt (00:46:16): So I think part of that is just trust and competence that people are really trying to do the right thing. And then just helping them find their path towards that. That’s all they need. Here, I’ll tell you a little side story real quick that I think might shed some light on this. I’ve got a buddy of mine that worked for himself, a one person business out of his house for years. And eventually he sold that business. Then he went to work for an organization. And at that organization, he ended up with a management role, which you can imagine how that would happen. Hey, you ran your own business. You must be a manager. He ended up a management role and had not one but two assistants, which is amazing. And so he was in this role for awhile. I bet he’d been working there for a year with these two assistants and he and I were sitting down one day and he said, Hey, Matt, I want to tell you something. Matt Hyatt (00:47:10): I think I’m finally figured out the assistant thing. And I said, Oh yeah, what’d you what’d you figure out. And he said, yeah, if there’s something that I can do and they can do, they’re going to do it. I’m not going to do it. And that is one example of letting things go. If this person, if you’ve got two people, the organization can do things, then let’s delegate that to a, to the assistant and let them do it. Yeah. Be okay with, if they don’t do it exactly the way that you would have every time. And that is so smart, that is exactly the way to do it. And so I have been very, very focused for years now on making sure that there’s nothing in the business that only I can do. That everything in the business can be done by other people and then allowing them to do that. Matt Hyatt (00:48:02): Guess what, you know, Maureen said, it’s, it’s true. And this is true. This is a very slow process, right? This is something that for us took years, but it’s a rapidly changing process. And so I tell people, I always kind of thought, well, here’s what it’s going to look like. This is going to be like pushing a big Boulder over a small Hill. That is going to be really hard at first. And you’re going to push and push and push and push. And then gradually, as you got sort of the crest of the Hill, it would get a little bit easier. And then on the other side, it would begin to roll slowly and eventually it would use flying on the Hill. Well, it wasn’t like that at all. The way that it was is pushing a Boulder over a Seesaw. Yeah. It’s very difficult on the front end to kind of get it to the, to the mid point of the Seesaw. Matt Hyatt (00:48:49): But you get a few inches on that. Other end. It doesn’t just gradually start rolling as you know, all it wants everything just move over. And so it’s been years now, but several years ago we reached the other end of that Seesaw and the other end of the fulcrum, where it just went whamp. And then all of a sudden the team is carrying the day to day business. And there’s nothing left in the business. There are very few things left in the business that require me personally to be here, to do those things. And so I, all of a sudden ended up with a team that’s humming and running and feeling empowered and authorized and equipped to run virtually every aspect of the day to day business. And it’s no longer, not only is it no longer necessary for me to be here every moment of every day to do things, but I can, I can be in the way. I can be a pest. Matt Hyatt (00:49:45): And so we reached a point in the business now where, you know, I come in at certain times, and there are certain things that I still do. And most of that is around mentoring and working with with my leadership team. But the day to day actions of the business and the tasks of the business are carried by other people in the organization. And eventually I’ll give away that mentorship stuff too. And someone else will inherit, you know, other people inherit those, those responsibilities, and then I won’t be needed at all. And we will to go sail off into the ocean some day. Dan Frey (00:50:19): I’ll tell you what, to hear all that. And I don’t know what our listeners are hearing, but I’ll say I’m hearing two key things from this. And this isn’t me being agenda-fide and trying to do a Rocket IT commercial. I’m literally learning with all of our listeners out there. You seem to be a leader that is actually prioritizing relationship as much as objective. So you can have the objective of saying, I’m not going to be the only one that can only do this thing in my business. That’s a very objective answer. So I’m going to make sure that the people that work for me can, can run this place. So I’m not just the one, but the way you execute is, and I heard you say something to the extent of like values or your people trust you as much as you trust them. And I have to believe that that has sped up the delegation or the multiplication, because there isn’t fear. There’s a lot of psychological safety between your team and you, where if there is worry, it’s not held in, it’s addressed. And it’s you get past that. So that you’re raising that just the competence of your team, but the relational chemistry inside your team that is your culture. And that’s what I’m hearing. And, and, and so like, if I’m talking about Matt Hyatt to one of my clients, now I can say, I know a guy that does this. That’s really what he does really well. And that’s what Maureen backs him in doing. And I think a lot of leaders out there don’t do that. They’re one or the other. So that’s just the interviewer opinion. Matt Hyatt (00:51:44): I appreciate that. And, and you know, I I’d say I’ll say this, it it’s a learned behavior for me. You know, I, it wasn’t something that I figured out when I was 25 or 30 or even 35, I don’t think. It’s something that I’ve learned over time and I a hundred percent believe that other people can learn that too. And it’s just a matter of just really being thoughtful and intentional about designing your business and designing your life. And so I think it’s important for each of our team members to design their lives around what they want to accomplish. And and I hope that Rocket IT continues to be part of that story that moving forward. Maureen’s been awfully quiet back here, and she’s even literally seated behind me just a little bit, but I, I think it’s important to point out how critical she has been to this entire process. Matt Hyatt (00:52:52): This is not just Matt Hyatt, running a business. This is Matt supported by Maureen to make things happen. And there’s been an extraordinary amount of patience and support in that. Because it, you know, we shared with you a tiny, tiny glimpse into the effort required to get a business off the ground and get it running and all of that in the through the lens of the growth and maturity of it’s CEO. And so it would not have been possible at all for me to build this business without Maureen by my side. And and I think that was a really important people know that if you are lucky enough to have a partner in life and the two of you can combine your talents and capabilities and personalities to kind of push in the same direction and be for the same things, it’s amazing what can be accomplished. Matt Hyatt (00:53:55): Certainly that’s part of the story here. I also think it’s important to people know that you know, it’s, it will, I gave up on perfection a long time ago. Nah, I pursue excellence instead. And I’m okay with us from time to time falling short of that goal. If, if we had arrived at that goal. And I don’t think you can arrive at, ah, you know, getting better, right. If your goal is to get better, there’s always a little room. I don’t think you reach perfection, but I think you can pursue improvement. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I want people to know that we still have challenges in our business. We still have people issues in our business that we have to work through. I still make mistakes. My team still makes mistakes. I think we are a really great business and I think we do a good job, but I also don’t want people to think that it’s perfect. Matt Hyatt (00:54:47): It’s not, it’s excellent. And I think it will get excellent-er with time. Dan Frey (00:54:51): Well said. So let’s close it out with thoughts then, like what would be one person in your life that’s really had a profound impact on you? Maybe you just told us. Matt Hyatt (00:55:02): Well, that’s the easy answer, right? I hope we get to both answer this question because I want to go beyond Maureen because I’ve already talked about her and you know, she’s a key part of this story, but I do want to shed light on a, a friend of mine. His name is Gordon Fuller. Gordon was the guy that hired me at that little computer company when I moved to Georgia. He you know, at that time probably 22 or so.He had the confidence and faith in me, to kind of take a chance on a guy that had really very little experience and just shown up on his doorstep, looking for a job and,utook me under his wing. Matt Hyatt (00:55:45): And when he learned that that, you know, I was here in Atlanta and didn’t have any friends or family here yet. He really leaned into me. And he brought me into his family and introduced me to his wife and his kids. He got me into church, took me to the gym and he was a, just a terrific mentor. He was a guy that he was always, I could tell. It was just for me. He wanted to see me succeed and he invested his time and talent into me, and that made a huge difference in my life. Yeah. Gordon is still a friend today. We celebrated, as you mentioned earlier, celebrated 25 years this year. And so we had a big open house here at our offices in Suwanee and Gordon was there. With,uwith his adult daughter and, and her little kid come into our open house. And how cool is that? A part of our life, you know, all these years. But he made a huge difference in my life and I’ll forever be grateful to him for that. Dan Frey (00:56:50): I love it. That’s great. Matt Hyatt (00:56:50): So, Maureen, I want to hear who’s your person. Maureen Hyatt (00:56:54): Well, we’ve talked about this, not even too terribly long ago. Matt Hyatt (00:56:58): I’m a forgetful dude. Maureen Hyatt (00:57:02): Well, but it was kind of a fluid conversation. I think probably I would have to say going back to a boss I had back in Florida when I had my first career job in ophthalmology in Tampa. And one of the doctors I worked very closely with his name was Raymond Seaver. And it was just having somebody who was just so interested in how you were progressing with your career, with your personal life and just so supportive. And, you know, my parents were supportive. Like parents are always worried about something and they kind of try and push you in certain directions. And maybe you don’t want to go that way. But to have somebody who was just a hundred percent for me and being encouraging, and he was someone who was adventurous and he was all about new experiences and trying new things. Maureen Hyatt (00:58:01): And sometimes I just go sit in his office and we just have a little chit chat. And he’d be talking about all these different things he’s doing. He got me working out, just, just do it all kinds of things and encouraging my furthering my education in ophthalmology. Which ultimately led me to Emory here in Atlanta when I moved up here. So I think he was early on. He was huge, but I just want to sidestep, cause there was a book that I read and it’s, it’s kind of a funny book because it’s, it’s almost childlike, but it’s called “When Do the Good Things Start?” And that was a huge awakening for me because it was about, you’re not happy. You’re, you’re not satisfied in what you’re doing. What are you waiting for? It’s not going to come to you. It’s not going to happen to you. Maureen Hyatt (00:58:52): You have got to be proactive and go after with what you want, what your goals are. And that was huge for me because just reading that book and it’s a funny book because it’s, it, it bases everything on the Peanuts characters. There’s a lot of cartoons in this book, but I’ve given it to several friends because it’s, it’s very easy read, but it kind of pairs the personalities of the characters in that book and how they, their personality types respond to certain things. But that book made me realize that I was just kind of treading water and I needed to actually make something happen. And that changed everything to me for me because I moved out of my parents’ house, got me a place, got my big job, and eventually led me to my dream job at Emory here in Atlanta in 1992. So um, just things like that. Maureen Hyatt (00:59:49): And, and I love reading. One book that Matt and I read early on was “The Millionaire Next Door”. It’s huge for us. And that really helped us out a lot too, in the years of when finances were really tough in the early on and I’ll tell you what if, when you’re in that situation and as an entrepreneur and as a stay at home mom, and you just, you know, all the money you make is just funnels right back into the business. You just think goes into the business. It’s just, you can always squeeze a little bit tighter and we had to do that over and over again. When you think, look, we are bare bones here. There’s somewhere you can just squeeze a little bit tighter when you have to. It, it just, it’s just more about figuring out what you have to do to kind of sustain for awhile until you can start building things up again. So there’s a lot of, you know, I’m sure all of us can point to a lot of things that influenced how we changed our lives in some way. Dan Frey (01:00:53): You’ve kind of, you guys have kind of taken that to heart, I think, cause you guys are pretty much have always remained debt free. Matt Hyatt (01:00:58): Well, not always. Dan Frey (01:00:58): You’ve strive to get back to, if you’ve had to go into the hole, that’s always remained the priority. If I remember correctly with you guys in running the business, Maureen Hyatt (01:01:12): You know, it’s a lot less fun to be in that hole. And we were, we were, we were deep in the hole. Matt Hyatt (01:01:19): Yeah. I was. I think it’s, yeah. I want to make sure that we’re clear there. We spent a lot of years in debt and now it’s spent a lot of years, not in debt. And so I’ve tried them both and I like not in debt. Dan Frey (01:01:34): Would you say that’s one of your bigger lessons then? That you guys have learned? Maureen Hyatt (01:01:40): It’s an uphill battle when you’re, I mean, we were, it was, it was very rough. I mean, there were times, you know, when you have a payroll, when you have people working for you and you are, I mean, Matt doesn’t mind me saying it. We’re, we’re pretty transparent about it, but they would be the end of the week. And this is how much money came in and what do we absolutely have to put in our checking account so that we can pay the bills and feed the family for a week. And that is exactly how much we would put in our checking account because everything else went to the business. And there were times where I was running to the bank at 4:45 PM because we needed to make payroll and we had to drain all of our savings or take out a huge cash advance on my credit card just to pay our people. And we’re still like, okay, that leaves us a hundred bucks for the week. But it, it was rough, but this feels better. Matt Hyatt (01:02:38): So it is important. I don’t think all debt is bad. I think that debt can be good. I think it’s, you know, it’s very important to handle all debt or good or bad responsibly. And I have, you know, Maureen said earlier that there’s there’s good debt and bad debt, right? And so I think essentially a good, good debt is funds, things that are going to make you money or are going to allow you to carry out a vision for something that produces. Whether it produces income or cash flow or revenue or, or something good in the world. Right? Matt Hyatt (01:03:22): I think that there are things like that where it’s worth having debt and payi

Last year, around 1,500 major business data breaches and countless smaller ones occurred in the U.S. alone. Interested in learning what caused a majority of these attacks? In this episode of the Rocket IT Business Podcast, our in-house cybersecurity expert provides audiences with the inside scoop on a slew of new and unusual threats hacking groups are using to infiltrate business networks. Through this interactive discussion with Partnership Gwinnett, attendees are bestowed the knowledge needed to pinpoint flaws in faulty security plans and feel confident knowing how to prevent a hacker’s malicious intent. In This Episode, You’ll Hear More About… How to identify threats How to mitigate the success rate of cybersecurity attacks What to do if an attack makes it through your security How to prevent future cybersecurity attacks from occurring Contact Information Rocket IT | podcasts@rocketit.com | 770-441-2520 Partnership Gwinnett | partnershipgwinnett.com | 770-232-3000 Resources Mentioned DMARC Sophos Authy Like What Your Heard? Give Us Some Feedback! podcasts@rocketit.com Show Notes Adam Forrand (00:00): Good morning, everyone. My name is Adam Forrand. I’m the Vice President of Education and Talent Leadership Development here at Partnership Gwinnett. We’re so glad you joined us this morning for the anatomy of the hack Intro (00:20): [Music Plays] Adam Forrand (00:21): And today we are very thankful for the support and partnership of Rocket IT. And for those of you that may not be aware or have knowledge of partnership Gwinnett, we are the economic and community development initiative of the Gwinnett chamber of commerce. Our job is to recruit and retain and expand business in Gwinnett. One of our five target sectors is information technology. We’re very pleased today to focus on this particular issue, this particular challenge during a time of vulnerability, across our systems, and very pleased to have the expertise and knowledge of Eric Henderson, who is the vice president of technology at Rocket IT. So without further ado, I’d like to welcome Eric and have him introduce himself and we’ll carry on with the topic, Eric. Eric Henderson (01:08): Good morning, everyone. My name is Eric Henderson, as Adam mentioned, Vice President of Technology at Rocket IT. Rocket IT is an IT services firm Suwanee, Georgia. Our purpose is to help people thrive. And so we have worked very closely with the chamber of commerce and then partnership in particular over the last 10, 15, 20 years today, we’re going to be talking about the anatomy of a hack, what it takes to stop a threat. So many cyber security presentations are very theoretical. So they’re just talking about what does Eric think is best to stop a hat they’re not based in any sort of specific event and what I have learned. And I think what my colleagues at Rocket IT have learned is that because the environment cyber security is changing so so rapidly, we have to learn from things that have actually happened. We have to learn from people in our community. Eric Henderson (02:06): So key is a member of a number of peer groups. And the, the motto of almost all of these groups is, Hey, something, if you hear about something, tell us what happened, you know, distill it down to three things that you learn from this event and sharing that with your peers. And so that’s what we’re doing today. This isn’t, you know, an it company to another IP company, this is an IP company to members of the chamber, and then people that work closely with Partnership Gwinnett. So we’re gonna talk about four main things today. How do we identify a threat to mitigate the success that’s rate of a hack? What to do with an attack makes it through, and then how to prevent future attacks from occurring in many areas of my life. And certainly in the area of it, security, we take kind of a consistently evolving, evolving approach. Eric Henderson (02:57): So we say, okay, we’ve got a set of technology standards, they’re working fine. Oh, okay. Something happens. All right, well, what do we do about that? How do we adapt to that? What did we learn from that event? How can we improve to make it a little bit better? And so that’s, that’s the whole model for today. All the questions we’re going to ask you and everything we’re talking about is built on, on that particular idea. So quote here, those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. And the world is proving this true, you know, very heavily when it comes to it security right now, there was news earlier this week that the Honda corporation and then Honda, that makes automobiles Honda, that has a massive customer service division that has a massive financing team, was hit with a cyber breach. And they are very quiet on exactly what happens, but they had to stop production. Eric Henderson (03:52): And if the attack was bad enough that it stops production, it had to hit some very, very critical systems to Honda’s operation. And so they’re not the first thing actually to get hit. They’re not going to be the last, the best we can possibly hope to do is just learn from what happened to them. And then what happened from people even much smaller and closer than that. So we’re going to do a case study today. This is a event that actually happens. This is an event that I was personally involved in helping with the remediation on. We probably spent three or 400 hours of labor in about three weeks among a whole team of individuals handling this particular event for this, this organization. In fact about them there, I’m going to County 450 plus employees, a million dollars a year in annual revenue. When this event occurred, it was a single attack. Eric Henderson (04:48): And the total costs estimated was around $1 million in both lost time, stress costs related to the attack. So which of these three things caused the particular problem. Three options were on the table, right? Fraudulent email. So project email would be a phishing email. It would be some sort of attack, too many permissions. You might think, Oh, well, why would it be too many permissions? Well, some of the largest breaches that have happened, the one that hits experience the credit reporting agency was because they had a database of an entire country’s worth of people’s financial information. And that database was just sitting open on the web. So as silly as that sounds, it happens all the time. And then the third option, and this is one that doesn’t get as much attention, but we’re going to talk a little bit about today as an insider threat. Eric Henderson (05:44): So that means someone inside the organization, either because they’re disgruntled or they only got a job there to attack their employer or they’re paid off, not sure did something. So you guys voted find me on an email that is in fact the correct answer. Let’s talk about how that happened and what happened with that. So another word for a fraudulent email would be phishing, phishing with a ph. I’m going to guess based on the popular usage of this word over the last couple of years, that most of you know what this is, I don’t know exactly why it’s spelled with a ph. I think that’s just people on the internet, like weird phrasiology. So let’s talk about what happens from here specifically. So, you know, came in the spam filter did not catch it. The email was opened by a specific employee, worse than opening the email. Eric Henderson (06:37): There was a word document attached to the email and the employees have the word document was real. And because all the little prompts that windows throws up at users are generally ignored. The user clicked the button that said disabled protected view. So if you open an attachment from an email across the top of word, there’s little yellow bar that says this document is open and it protects the view. You won’t be able to edit it, save it, change it, print it in the inbox. And you have probably clicked on that bar, hundreds and hundreds of times, and probably only read it two, five, 10 of those times. And that bar is actually trying to protect you. And that bar was kind of the last line of defense and the user let’s get to click the disabled protective you, they, they want you to quit disabled, protecting you, which would allow the document to be open fully and to be trusted when the document was open, it launched a script. Eric Henderson (07:39): All a script is, is just a little snippet of code that does something. So if you think about your home automation system, and you say, Alexa, turn the lights on, or Alexa, turn the lights off. All that is doing is just running a script that says, this might run this command on it. That’s the same thing that happened. Somebody embedded a script inside of a word document, which is a feature that’s supposed to be used for. Good. It can do all sorts of cool things, but generally speaking, it is most often used for evil. And so that installed a virus on a single computer, which we’ll talk a lot more about what this virus did was three sentence thing. The first one was install a key logger. What is it? Key logger. Keylogger is a piece of software that remembers everything that you type. So if you type in a password to type in, I angry email, if you type in some sort of pen that you use with your bank, it just keeps a record of anything that you typed. Eric Henderson (08:45): And at the time it was very surprising because one of our engineers was troubleshooting on one of the computers and they tried to copy something so they can paste it like the copied some texts. And then they took it over to another place to paste it. Well, their copy didn’t work. So they just pasted, whatever was pasted last. And what was on the clipboard was a full log of everything the user had typed for several hours. So just one line, every time there was a gap. And so it would say like the user’s name, and it would say a password in the past. It wasn’t the little dots or asterisk. It was the actual password. And if they typed in email or the text, an email address, the second thing that the attack did is it spread across the network. So it looks for other computers on the network and attempted to install itself on each of those computers. Eric Henderson (09:39): And the third thing it did was crack the local password data. So you’ve probably heard, and we’ll talk about it here. Hey, you need longer or more complex passwords. And I think what most nontechnical users here, when they say that is you want your password to be hard to get, but that’s not really the problem. People aren’t really worried about someone just guessing what your password is. But just too many combinations of letters and numbers that it could possibly be very unlikely. Someone would get it exactly right. What they’re worried about is this type of attack, because the shorter your password in the state of computer technology is it’s not terribly difficult to break that password wide open if it’s short. So if your passwords six letters, no numbers, no symbols, no upper case letters. Then a computer can crack that password in less than a couple minutes. Eric Henderson (10:38): And so if the password was 25 characters, 16 characters, it could take years or tens of years or hundreds of years, at least with the current state of technology. Okay. So how long did it take for the virus to accomplish everything? I just said, get on the computer, crack the things in the local user spread across the network four hours is when, when we went back and tracked the times and dates that that’s how long it became clear that this took. So yeah, that’s, that’s not very long. That’s almost instantly right. It’s pretty close to just as fast as it possibly could happen. So what happened? One user inspected 180 devices. Two days later, three individuals had their personal finances breached. So what does that mean? That means if I have a computer that I use at work and just out of convenience sake, I occasionally go to Amazon and place personal orders, or I go to Wells Fargo or bank of America or any other bank. Eric Henderson (11:46): And I type in my credentials and there was a key log around my computer. Well, not only is the business I worked for breached, my personal accounts are also breached at this point. So there’s a lot more we could say about that. I think the, the world is not right ready to accept this yet, but setting policies that would say that employers should not access personal websites on their work computer isn’t unreasonable. It certainly would have prevented this particular attack in this case. It leads to all sorts of interesting problems and complaints when an employee’s personal accounts are breached because of the actions that make different employees and the, you know, the security did not, did not prevent that. So I’m not the focus of today. So they found individuals using business computers for personal tasks. They waited for a user to type on their credit card number or have the credit card number automatically fill in, which is a convenience. Eric Henderson (12:48): And then, and this is probably the worst part. And we’ve actually seen that several other times, it’s called an email bomb attack. You know how if you were to go on amazon.com and change your password, Amazon is going to send you an email that says, Hey, just letting you know your password changed. Probably no big deal. If you chose to change your password, if you didn’t mean to change your password, that’s a big problem because that means someone’s in your account. So Amazon’s intention in sending you this email is that if you see the email and you’re not sitting at a computer, I want to change is your Amazon account. You need to take action immediately because the number of services that are tied to Amazon at this part point and the number of things that you can purchase and all of that has huge implications into your financial security, your personal security. Eric Henderson (13:37): So what the attackers did is when they selected a person that they wanted to breach, they decided to send that person tens and tens and tens of thousands of emails as rapidly as possible. And the attention is not just to be annoying and attention is to divert that person’s attention from any one email. It’s very difficult to see the email that says your Amazon password change when you’re getting thousands of other emails an hour. And so when this type of attack happens, kind of the opportunity here is every couple of hours you have to search the word, password, transfer, financial, new card, credit card, any sort of thing that might appear in one of those emails. If you, if you think about those emails, like if you’re making, send you your credit card, they’re going to send you an email that says, Hey, just letting you know, new credit cards on the way. Eric Henderson (14:32): And the reason for that is that old school identity theft was you go on the bank, you change the person’s address, and then you would request an new card. And then the card comes in and you have full access to a card that is valid, that went to the wrong address. And so, you know, one of the things we learned in this event is that’s the purpose of that type of email spam, and your best case scenario is to go in and prevent that by doing searches for the words that might appear in that. Okay, next question. How long does it take to recover from attacks of this size four weeks was the time and arguably took much longer than that. And the reason for that is when something like this hits your network, you have a pendulum swings back and forth between convenience over here and very secure, but very inconvenient over here. Eric Henderson (15:31): And so to get the organization operational, let’s say, you know, the pendulum was very balanced between convenience and security. They swung the pendulum so far over this direction because they had to be sure that they’re sure that they’re showing that the backward network was operations, but I’m sure you’ve had the experience of working at an organization. And the it person comes around and says, we’re going to put this new software on the computer. We’re going to make you type on this new code. We’re going to make your password 25 characters. We’re going to make it so that you can only log in between 8:00 AM and 5:00 PM. We’re going to make it. So you can only log in from the office. We’re going to restrict access to this. We’re going to put a web filter in place, whatever it doesn’t matter, which of those things, it is many of those things, hamper employees productivity. Eric Henderson (16:18): And so the, the recovery time is actually substantially longer. So as noted for these four weeks, all bunch of stuff had to be done. We didn’t actually use fire extinguishers. There was no actual literal fire on the servers, but it certainly felt that way. So a large number of computers needed wiping and reloading. So the nature of this attack was, and the nature of a key logger is that it’s extraordinarily difficult to tell if that has been completely wiped off of the computer in the network. It’s very, very, very hard to tell if you’ve actually gotten everything. The only way you really know is if some amount of time goes by such that another attack does not happen. Secondly, and this is something this client did have in place. They had strong backups. So when I say strong backups, I don’t mean there’s a USB drive. Eric Henderson (17:17): That’s plugged into the servers. And every so often I make a copy of it. They have backups that we’re on a completely separate network that went off site that were completely away from the network. So what makes this, this type of attack series is if I put my mind in the place of someone who’s perpetrating, one of these attacks, I’m generally looking to do three or four things. I want to give them to network quietly. I want to figure out where all the data is and all the backups are. And then I want to launch the attack in such a way that it’s going to be very difficult for the business to recover from it, without paying me some sort of ransom. And so they are always focused on how do I get in, how do I stay in, how do I make sure I have all the rights that I need to do that where’s the data? Eric Henderson (18:09): And then how do I lock it down? In this particular attack, they didn’t do it. There was no encryption, it wasn’t any ransomware. This was just about trying to gain access to the network. I think it got cut off faster than they really expected. And then as I mentioned about, you know, security versus convenience, a variety of new company, wide security policies were put in place as a result of this particular event. Okay. So that is the summary about that particular event. I want to talk about kind of our collective wisdom that we’ve gained from this event and a huge number of other events a relatively common story. And the Rocket IT I’d see world is we get a frantic phone call from a business owner or a manager that says, Oh my gosh, my network had XYZ happened to it. And either I don’t have an it person. Eric Henderson (19:06): I don’t have an it company. I work with my it person. And I’m worried about their level of access or worse than that. I have one of those things and it’s been two weeks and we’re still suffering. We’re still completely locked down. We don’t have any sort of access. And so that’s kind of our, that’s, that’s our moment to be a hero that’s about as important of work as we ever can get, because it’s very time sensitive and there’s a lot of stress and a lot of pain that, that comes from that. And so from handling those types of events and from handling the events that I just described to that case study, here’s here’s kind of our key takeaways. I’m going to try and make these as accessible, as accessible as possible so that you can take these back to your organizations and really be able to use them for, for your own, for your own game. Eric Henderson (19:57): Okay. We could go a whole hour on this slide, but the point is the way back in the day, 10 years, 20 years ago, all you had to do to do security was these four things, firewall, backups failed, filtering antivirus, and everyone agreed in the IP industry. As long as you have a good firewall, good backup, good antivirus, good spam filter kind of got this magic square or these four things to protect you. You’re good. And what, what has happened since then is that attackers used to attack the blinking boxes in the server room. They went after servers and firewalls and websites, right? All these tacks were always, Oh, a deficiency was found in this one program. And this hacker figured out that if you do this, this, this exactly right, that it just lets you have administrative access. Well, since 2013, the style has shifted. Eric Henderson (20:53): And now people aren’t really trying to do that too much work. There’s armies of people that are focused on preventing people from getting into that. So what they decided to do instead is a people and it’s very smart, it’s evil, but it’s also very smart. People are naturally trusting a segment of the population. I, if I get an email, no matter what it says, they just assume it’s true. And I think that’s certainly because they’re good mates or good people. Like they, they can never themselves imagine trying to trick somebody into surrendering their financial information. So they have a hard time just being vigilant around, assuming that if I get an email, it must be safe. And so we’ve met with hundreds of companies and I’ve brought up this point hundreds of times and every single time the company says, well, you know, we sent an email out about three months ago about that saying, don’t click on emails and people don’t really bring them to me very often. Eric Henderson (21:54): So I don’t think people are clicking on phishing emails. And the problem with that is when you click an actual phishing email, most of the time what happens, isn’t what I just talked about the last 20 minutes. It’s not this disaster, you know, apocalyptic style problem for that organization. That’s not, that’s not the normal thing that happens most of the time, either the attack gets blocked by some device or it was successful. I mean, you just don’t even know it yet. So a lot of security companies would say, you need to act at all moments as if you’re already breached. I’m not sure I’m quite bad a despairing of life. But the point is, if I click a phishing email, there’s no instant feedback to tell me I did something wrong, right? So if I touch a hot stove, I know instantly through pain, that that was the wrong thing to do in a phishing email, your employees have no idea that they’ve done something wrong unless they can trace it back to this point. Eric Henderson (22:59): And so what we do is phishing testing. So we send out a fake email that has a link in it that looks like a real attack. And if the user clicks on it, nothing bad happens to them. But the system records that they clicked for email, and then they became a clicker and you don’t want to be a clicker. So that gives us the data to say, well, you know, actually 22% of the time your employees put these emails and you have one employee that just clicked every single one of the emails that we send them. And they don’t even know they’re doing anything wrong. So there’s no opportunity for change. If you don’t understand your action is bad, you’re not going to invest any time or effort in fixing it because you don’t see this problem. And so if all hear this whole conversation is this one slide implementing, this is the as close to silver bullet. Eric Henderson (23:53): As we get to reduce the risk of your organization getting breached. And there’s lots of ways to do it. There’s lots of firms that assist with us rather than T as you might expect, has a variety of means to roll this type of system out. If you’re not doing it strongly recommend that you do it. And if you only do it once a year, it’s really not enough. We are recommending at this 0.2 emails a month to every employee. So every employee gets sometimes if you’re going to eight to five on two week time-space, since it’s random for every employee to get a random email, it’s totally different from their peers. So it’s not all the emails sitting at the same time. And we do pretty close reporting back to management to say, you know, we’ve tried to train this person and they keep clicking the emails. Eric Henderson (24:38): I think it’s really time for you business owner or CEO or manager to have a direct conversation with them. Because one of these days they’re going to click a really now and then something bad is actually going to happen. And you have the data here to know. Who’s likely to do that based on the second item. And as I go into this, I understand that if you read the things on this slide and actually imagine doing them for yourself, it’s roughly like going to the dentist and the dental hygienists thing, you know, Eric, you really need to floss twice a day, like at least once a day. And you just say, yeah, I know, I know I need, I need a clock. And then most people don’t do it. I don’t know what the statistics are. I wish I did. I hope they’re higher than I think they are. Eric Henderson (25:24): But the point of this slide is if you imagine what key logger attack, where they got ahold of a user’s password, most single password was elephants. One, two, three. That’s not any of my passwords. Don’t, don’t bother trying not the password. And I use that password for my Amazon account, my bank, my utilities, my Gmail and Facebook, but I only use Amazon on my work computer. Let’s say I go to Amazon. I type in my email address. I type in elephant one, two, three, they get a copy of that password because they have software on my computer that logged it. The next thing they’re going to do is they’re going to go to google.com and their computer. They’re going to type in my email address. And they’re going to type in elephant one, two, three, and see if it works on that site. And then they’re going to try the top five most popular banks in the United States. Eric Henderson (26:20): And then I’m going to try the most popular shopping sites. They’re going to try all the email providers and by having the same password in multiple places, you are multiplying your risk because if that passes breaches in any one of those places, all of those accounts are breached simultaneously. The second thing I already spoke about this is password link. I think our industry has done a bad job in the past on this, we tried to convince users that a password that was hard for humans to remember like eight after lower tastes, you uppercase P one seven explanation, something like that. Password. It’s not, it’s a bad password for a variety of reasons. It’s a bad password because users write it down, which is just increasing the risk. It’s a bad password because it’s hard to remember. So it’s going to frustrate the user and it’s going to frustrate the it administrators that serve that particular user. Eric Henderson (27:19): And probably worst of all. It’s not that hard for a computer to guess if it’s only six or eight kids. So the guidance in the last five years is basically we need to move to passphrases. We need to move, basically passed this random short password system because it’s only hurting us. It’s only making life worse. It’s not actually solving anything. So we we advocate for past scrapers. We’re looking for 16 to 25 characters. If I thought we could get away with it, we would say 25 characters, but people are so used to passwords being six, eight, 10 characters long. We’re trying to gradually ease them into much longer passwords. So you might be thinking at this point, okay, Eric, do you want longer passwords? You want them to be phrases and you want them to be different on every single site that I have. Eric Henderson (28:11): How in the world am I possibly going to remember that it’s a good PR good point. And I’m not saying the world is completely in consensus on this, but our guidance is you use a password manager. Basically you use a system that keeps track of all those passwords, and then you only remember the key to the vault. And as long as you don’t use that key to the vault anywhere that’s insecure. And as long as you write it down and keep it somewhere safe, or you memorize it perfectly, then everything in the ball will be fine. And so this is how we manage passwords at Rocket IT. This is how I manage my passwords personally. There are trade offs in all of the different methods of doing this. It’s interesting having a written piece of paper that has passwords that are all different for all your sites, kept somewhere in your home. Eric Henderson (29:02): That’s very safe. Arguably is more secure than what I’m describing, but it’s entirely inconvenient. And so most users aren’t willing to put up with that. The final thing over here on the left, two factor authentication. So what is that? A factor of authentication is a fancy way of saying, how do you prove you are who you say you are? So if I go to the bank, I can’t just tell them my name is Eric Henderson, right? I have to produce some sort of proof through either my pen, my driver’s license, my debit card, something along those lines to prove I am who I say each of those things. So the pen, my banking password, my driver’s license, my debit card. Each of those is a factor of authentication. And security always goes up. As you add factors of authentication right now, most websites just require a username and a password, which is a set of credentials. Eric Henderson (30:00): That is one factor of authentication. And it’s also really easy to break into because as long as you know, the password and username and you’re in the most common, second form of authentication is usually something related to your phone. So either it sends you a text message that says type in your text message. You’ve got, you know, 20 seconds to fill it in, or you have a little app on your phone and every 30 seconds, it puts up a new code and you have to time that code in and make sure you type it in at the right time. The text message is, I think that’s going to fade away. Hackers have caught onto this and some of the most famous attacks, particularly around cryptocurrency lately have shown that the hackers will go to the Verizon store, pretend to be, you get a SIM card, which is the record of whose phone, which phone should the carrier send text messages to. Eric Henderson (30:56): And then the time of their choosing to get the user’s password, they put the SIM card on a phone, the type of password. It sends a text message to the phone, but the problem is they went to Verizon and switched which phone it is. So they get the text message that would meant for me, or they’re attacking. And they breached the account. And so several million dollars, there was, there was a complaint filed, I think in New York that a cryptocurrency investor lost seven digits and was suing a 18 year old that perpetrated this attack against him. So the text message thing. Isn’t great. I will tell you that some of the world’s largest companies are relying on the text message thing. I think because then in a rush to get this pushed out, they tried to make it as user friendly as possible. And it’s way more user friendly to receive a text than it is to have an app and the whole system for doing this. Eric Henderson (31:49): How long would say to you is even if you have the text message system, it is still super more secure than just having the password. It would be better if you had it’s called Pott. One time I went to call time-based one time password, I think. And basically that is the gold standard right now in terms of this type of stuff. But just having any second factor of authentication is wonderful. Just getting from one, which is a username password to something with your phone would be great. I won’t spend too long here, but antivirus in the past works the same as antibodies in your back in your body. So the way antibodies in your immune system work is if they’ve seen a virus or bacteria before they know what it is and they kill it. So that’s how antivirus was modeled, which is fascinating. Eric Henderson (32:44): That humans made software that works the same as our immune system. The problem with this is that many of these attacks have never been used before. So it’s kind of the same as a new packaging, much been much ink has been spilled about how this is basically why the coronavirus was labeled as novel it’s because our immune system never encountered some, most of us had never had our immune systems encounter anything like this before. So the end of virus companies picked up on the fact that it’s way easier to write viruses. Now this worked great 10 years ago, and now what they do is they monitor what your computer is actually doing and watch for bad behavior. So if we go back to our case, study, the person opened a word document and launched a script. Is this employee someone who normally would launch word documents that have scripts attached to it? Eric Henderson (33:35): The answer is almost no one does that. There’s almost no legitimate reason that a end user working in the some portion of a, of a business, whatever run a script. Most users don’t know what it is. Most users wouldn’t even know where to start and they wouldn’t even be able to come up with a valid reason. So at the end of hours, clients do now, and this is relatively new because they watch for scripts being run. And they say, Oh, I don’t know if the script’s legitimate or not, but we’re blocking it because this is not a normal user behavior. I don’t care if I’ve ever seen the virus. I don’t care if my antibodies by my computer have seen it before does not matter. And so this is sometimes called end point detection and response. You’ll see it acronyms to EDR. You can see the words at the top. Okay. Now that is the end of our presentation. I noticed that various points through the conversation, there’s been some questions. And so a Colleen has been gathering those questions. And so now we’ll have a conversation around them. Colleen Frangos (34:37): Awesome. Well, Eric, I’ve got a two questions that were over in the chat, so I’m going to start there and weave my way into our other questions. We got, we got a question from ACE and he is wondering company that we, that you pointed out in the presentation. Did they have an internal cyber security awareness training in house? Eric Henderson (34:58): Did they, or do they Colleen Frangos (35:01): I’m going to, I’m going to go with, do they based on how he phrased it, but I, I assume they didn’t have one Eric Henderson (35:09): That’s right. So this attack actually happened a couple of years ago. This is not something in the last one or two years or something. I don’t know exactly what year it was. All kind of runs together. But the answer was prior to this attack. No, they did not have a focused cyber security program. And the it’s kinda the same as you, you know, you don’t think you need a title of insurance until you have an event that would pay out a claim. That type of insurance. One of the purposes of this whole presentation is just to say, if you’ve ever gotten a phishing email, it has an attachment. This could have been you that’s, that’s not far fetched to say this happened to an organization within that County. I realized that every attending here isn’t going to the County, but they probably generally work for small businesses. And so this is something that totally happen. And I totally agree that a security awareness program. I mean, I know they have one now would have gone a long way to potentially prevent that. Colleen Frangos (36:12): Great. Thank you, Eric. All right. We’ve got another one here. So Layla is asking what if the employees or using incognito mode for personal use guessing it’s on a work machine? Eric Henderson (36:29): Yeah. So incognito mode is a function that was popularized by the Google Chrome browser. It, I don’t know if it promises us, they probably doesn’t promise this. But the idea is that most users believe that by using incognito mode, that your actions are in fact incognito. And as in no one knows about it, there’s no tracking done on it whatsoever. The reality is it almost does nothing. All that it really does is makes it so whatever website you went to Google search history, doesn’t keep a record of that. And your web browser doesn’t recommend that website as a site you’ve been to. So if you go to facebook.com on Chrome, and then you on another day, come back to Google and type F at the beginning of Facebook, it’ll say, Oh, you went to Facebook. That’s great. We know you like Facebook. You can go back to Facebook whenever you want. Eric Henderson (37:26): All it’s doing is preventing this being saved formerly in your Google record and auto filling in when you go to that website in the future. So as far as the tax go, attackers don’t care about that at all. That is a Google specific thing. And worse than that, your corporate network still has a record that you went to that website, your internet service providers still have the record that you went to. The website, that website still has a record that it came from you. And if you log in, I mean, you’re just as logged in as you are anywhere else. The purpose of incognito mode is really around. I mean, it serves two functions. Basically, if you have some reason, you don’t want your web traffic to be saved into your Google profile. That’s great. And then I see people use it when, if you know how you go to a website and it automatically logs you in, if you don’t want that to happen, like you have some reason you want to use a different account. That works very good for that because it assumes you’ve never been there. Colleen Frangos (38:27): Great. Thanks, sir. All right, go. Another question. What is the safest way to do online banking? Eric Henderson (38:35): Sure. Well, as noted earlier in the presentation, the foreign away safest thing to do is to not do online banking on a work computer, unless it’s obviously your work you know, the corporate bank account, you are assuming that your it provider at your work is doing a great job of protecting the network. And you’re assuming all of your coworkers don’t put phishing emails. And while those are hopeful, I would say assumptions. They are not definitely true. So basically you want to do online banking in a network that you have as much control over as possible. And that doesn’t mean you have to be an ITG. If you have a computer at your home. And one of the computers is logged into by children, teenagers, et cetera. People that may not know the exact rules apply to security and might try and download movies for free or video games for free or download something that they shouldn’t. Eric Henderson (39:43): And then you have another car that you only use, and you only use it to go to these four websites and you’ll use it to use Microsoft word and you don’t check your work email on it. That computer far and away is a better option, even better than that. And I know this is weird, but this is just the state of the world. If you have an iPhone, there have been no known situations that I’m aware of ever in which an app has been breached by another app. The way the iPhone is set up, it’s very different than on Android phones, iPhone apps, do you know, interact with each other. This app has no ability to interact with the Wells Fargo app. And so my traffic is protected. The other thing I would say is where you’re connecting from matters. So generally you want to connect from your home, not from say a coffee shop though. That example isn’t great. I generally believe that Starbucks and Google has properly secured the wifi network and it Starbucks, if it’s a kind of small mom and pop place. So maybe they did, maybe they didn’t, I wouldn’t put my information. Colleen Frangos (40:49): Nice. All right. All right. Well, Eric, we’re getting in a lot of good questions. Hope we have time to hit most of these. Alright. Is it typical to see an attack like 10 smaller businesses or more organizations? It’s a good one. Eric Henderson (41:07): The next thing get reported are the large organizations that there’s something like 1300 or 1700 cyber attacks last year, which is ridiculous because it’s actually been tens of thousands of them. The small ones just don’t have to be reported to anyone. So there’s no statistics. I don’t think the attackers are targeting. Most of them aren’t targeting anything. They’re just spraying attacks across the entire network. If they get a list of email addresses, it’s just as easy to spam, 50 fortune 500 companies as it is to span 10,000 small businesses. It costs no difference to attack small number versus large. So they’re just testing as wide of a net as they possibly can. I think I don’t have an opinion on whether it’s easier to breach a smaller or larger organization. It’s probably easier and harder in different ways for both of them. I would guess just because the number of small businesses is extreme compared to the number of small, but compared to the number of larger businesses that small businesses are getting hit tremendously more often. Colleen Frangos (42:05): Great. Thanks Eric. All right. Next question. If a member of my team starts getting spammed by individuals potentially trying to cover up a crime, what action should I take to stop the spam from occurring? Eric Henderson (42:18): Sure. so the first thing is there is a anti-spam technology called DMARC that D M A R C. It’s also called D K I M domain keys implementing this will block a decent portion of it. Additionally, if you’re on office three, six, five, there are features in office three 65 that can block all emails that have non English characters. So if you don’t do business in any country, that speaks a language that uses a different character set. So, you know, Russia, China, Japan, et cetera, you can block all of the, any email that has any letters in Cyrillic or Korean or Chinese third and a member of record. He actually helped us with this. Recently, often they use services like MailChimp to mass enroll in a email address in as many newsletters as they can find. And MailChimp doesn’t want that either. And that’s prevalent use of their system. So if you contact MailChimp and say, Hey, this email addresses, I just got enrolled 1500 newsletters in five minutes. Can you remove that? Can you mass remove them? And I’ll happily do that. Colleen Frangos (43:30): That’s great. Awesome. All right. Got another one for you. This is from John. Alright. Before calling Rocket IT, what steps does one need to take right away? Thanks, John. Eric Henderson (43:44): That’s great. You got some plants in audience, apparently. The darn away, the most important thing that you can do is start treating this topic like it’s already happened to you basically begin to believe that at this moment, right now today, Thursday, there’s someone on your network and they’re just biding their time until they get a chance to do something to you. And if your it provider, whether that’s an employee or a firm, isn’t taking a approach of vigilance and isn’t taking a proactive approach, then you need to help them understand that that’s really what you’re looking for. And honestly, most it, people will find that very refreshing because their, one of their chief complaints is that nontechnical leaders don’t take this seriously enough. And the reason we can tell that if they don’t give it the time of day, or they don’t invest in it as they should. Eric Henderson (44:45): And so if you just change the mindset there, that one step alone will lead to almost pretty much. Every it person I talked to today would love to sit down and have a conversation around how to better secure the network. I can’t give you a magic, just go do this. Maybe the closest thing I could give you is for your most sensitive accounts, retirement accounts, investment accounts, banks, email, make the possible different, and see if you can enable two factor authentication. That would take you a large percentage of the way down the road with 10 minutes of time. Colleen Frangos (45:22): Absolutely. Thanks, Eric. All right. I like this question down here at the bottom. Again, John, he’s asking for resources. So what websites or blogs should subscribe to in order to keep on top of cybersecurity threats? Eric Henderson (45:38): Sure. well, shameless plug anytime there’s a major event Rocket IT is publishing to a blog and newsletter Facebook, Twitter, and I think LinkedIn, but certainly Facebook and the newsletter, anytime there’s a major event. Secondly, depending on how deep you want to go down the rabbit hole, there are a variety of publications that basically every major antivirus company has like a threat center. And so the one that I see pop up pop up fairly often is called Sophos S O P H O S. They do a tremendous job at identifying threats and getting news out there as quickly as possible. Now, the issue here is what they’re often writing to a technical audience. So you have to be a little careful with just getting snowed under with you know, an incident number of security, things that you can’t tell if they’re important and you can know what to do about it. Calling, I can see the questions I’m going to grab a couple of them. Okay. Colleen Frangos (46:43): Oh, okay. Okay. Eric Henderson (46:46): John mentioned what two factor authentication authorization after you recommend? The one we recommend is called Authy, that’s A U T H Y, and Authy is based on the Google authentication platform and the key benefit that it has over the other ones that we’ve used is that if you get a new phone, you can transfer all of your two factor authentication systems over to the new phone, without having to re enroll all of them, which would be very frustrating. I’ve got a question here. What about work? Why sign on our mobile phone? How safe is it to use our bank apps on the work wifi? Assuming you’re doing it from a mobile phone, that actually is reasonably secure, the type of attack that it would take steal your password in transit from your work. Wifi is fairly difficult to pull off. It is substantially better than using a windows desktop at your workplace. Eric Henderson (47:39): If you have to do it at work, if you just, for whatever reason, that’s where, where you have to make those changes strongly recommended to do it on your phone versus a computer. Alright, we’re almost out of time. What did I miss? Are there downsides to white listing applications? Are those cons outweighed by the security of providers? Okay. Application white listing, basically right now, if you ask your computer to install something installed, it it’s a command and the computer respects the command. And it doesn’t the problem with this is that users sometimes accidentally install the wrong thing. So there’s a line of software called application white listing that says, well, we’re not going to say you’re going to solve whatever you want. We’re going to say, you can only install this list of 10 applications and you make that last list of 10 applications. What your business uses, the benefit of this is that if something isn’t on this list, it doesn’t install, but that’s also the drawback. Eric Henderson (48:34): A users have a variety of use cases for installing things and application white listing software can be very, very annoying because it means if you want to change anything and someone hasn’t explicitly allowed it before the change doesn’t happen. But that said, we we, we still do it. I’ve got a question here. Do you suggest authentication by call? No syndication by TA call is roughly the same as an authentication by text message. It’s in the same mode as text messaging. It is way better than nothing. It’s very likely not to get breached, but there is a way to do it. And depending on if you get attacked, you know that that’s an issue. Another question can a password manager be hat, okay, this is, this’ll be the last question. This is the hot button question. So if I put all my eggs in one basket basket, and that basket is my password manager vault, and somebody steals that well, now I’m way worse off than if I didn’t have a password manager. Eric Henderson (49:34): Right. I made it really easy. Here’s my website. Here’s my username. Here’s my past. Here’s my website, username password, the technology that the password managing companies used and there’s trust involved in this. Everything I’m about to say, but I trust them in this because I understand what the technology and the mindset is that vault can only be unlocked by your password. The password manager company themselves can’t open that vault. So if someone broke into the password manager company and sold the vault, that’s okay, because the password manager company couldn’t open the vault themselves anyway. And as long as your password is 25 characters, the rules of encryption are that they wouldn’t be able to ever break into that in any reasonable time. Now, on the flip side, if you get a key logger on your computer and they see you’re using a password manager and you type in your password manager password for your vault on the Kellogg’s computer, well, you just literally gave them the key for every password that you have. Eric Henderson (50:32): And now you have to pretend that the entire thing is completely breached and wide open. So you are focusing the risks down into one place. But I think the benefits that you’re getting from that outweigh the loss of a, the progress. It outweighs the potential pain that comes, that can come from that. Okay. if you have other questions you are free to email those over. I’m sure you can reach out to Adam. You can reach out to Laura and you can reach out to Andrew anyone on the partnership with that team, and they will make sure to get those over to us back to you, Adam. Adam Forrand (51:13): Awesome. Thank you so very much, Eric and Colleen for your expertise in particular your witty banter is always appreciated. But what I particularly appreciate about Rocket IT, is their human centered approach. And you saw a lot of that today is like despite the tools, despite the technology, this is a human challenge, our, our human behavior. And as Eric acknowledged earlier, a matter of trust that we, as people who interact with technology have to afford and with Rocket IT, that trust that human centered approach is deeply and sincerely appreciate it. So we’re thankful for you and your presence in our community and continue to lead and to inform and educate. So thank you so much, Eric. Thank you. Calling let’s say thanks to Lauren Como, my partner and colleague here at partnership quit and Ken Rutherford from the chamber as well. And know that partnership cornet is here again to sustain, to support and to encourage your growth as a business in our community. So whatever we can do for you on behalf of your organization, please do not hesitate to contact us at Partnership. Gwinnett thanks again. Thanks for Rocket IT. And thank you all.

In this episode of the Rocket IT Business Podcast, we’re joined by Jeff Spence; an adventurer, entrepreneur and private equity investor who has helped dozens of companies and teams grow and thrive. Growing up in rural northern California, Jeff’s early love for mountain climbing and decathlons was rooted in a passion for adventure and competition. And now, with over 20 years of private equity experience under his belt, it’s safe to say that his passions have translated to commercial success, as well.  So, what does it take to recognize and seize a big opportunity when it comes along? We’ll address this question and more as we welcome Jeff onto the show. In This Episode, You’ll Hear More About… How to embrace challenge The benefits of keeping a humble mindset When it’s time to ignore the advice of others The difference between habits and decisions Balancing international business with family How to make room for exceptional teammates How to properly implement the Pareto principle The importance of pursuing humanitarian efforts What to do when business deals don’t go as planned Managing multiple companies on an international scale How to compete for market share with larger organizations Resources Mentioned Investment Biker: Around the World with Jim Rogers Meditations An Old Man’s Toy Gravity at Work and Play in Einstein’s Universe Like What You Heard? Give Us Some Feedback! podcasts@rocketit.com Show Notes Matt (00:00:00): Greetings and welcome to the Rocket IT Business Podcast. I’m your host Matt Hyatt. And today we’re sitting down with Jeff Spence; an adventurer entrepreneur and private equity investor who’s helped dozens of companies and teams grow and thrive. Intro (00:00:25): [Music Plays] Matt (00:00:26): Growing up in rural Northern California, Jeff’s early love for mountain climbing and the decathlons was rooted in a passion for adventure and competition. And now with over 20 years of private equity experience under his belt, it’s safe to say his passions have translated to commercial success as well. So what does it take to recognize and seize a big opportunity when it comes along? We’ll address this question in more as we welcome Jeff onto the show. Jeff, welcome. Thank you very much. Good to be here, dude. I’m so glad you’re here. This is going to be a lot of fun. We had a conversation beforehand kind of talking about what we might discuss and I’m pumped. It’s going to be good. Good. And so I want to know idea restrictions. Yeah, it’s going to be exciting. We’ll, we’ll pop and we’ve just to make it interesting for you. I want to start at the beginning. Where, where’d you grow up? I grew up in a way Northern California. So most people think of Northern California being San Francisco. Jeff (00:01:19): I grew up five hours North of San Francisco, real up close to the Oregon border up in the mountains. Yeah, I’ve heard that part of the country is beautiful. I like many San Francisco’s as far North and I’m gonna you know, up higher and come down. But I’ve never quite made it to that part of it, Matt (00:01:34): The country. But yeah, most people go San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, all within 10 minutes of each other. Well, you know what, what I’ve heard is that part of the country is very beautiful and just, I spent Jeff (00:01:44): Some time and knew somebody, but it’s, it’s pretty rural, right? I mean, it’s very much so, yeah, there’s, there’s a, there are very few people, far more animals than there are humans. Is that right? Yeah. So my understanding is, is that you got into mountain climbing on your, yeah. And I got into sports and decathlon’s tell me a little bit about that. Well, I mean we’re, I grew up there were, you know, the things that you did that were adventure, some were not really based on any type of you know, specific sport. It was just go out and play. So mountain climbing wasn’t with, you know, karabiners and, and crampons and whatnot. It was just running up and down Hills and spending the time in rivers and whatnot. So it was a very different than what people do now. So I don’t think we’ve ever talked about that before. Jeff (00:02:28): But I spent part of my childhood in Western North Carolina, same kind of thing, very rural mountains. And yeah, you know, when we were, I think I was 10 when we moved up here and I remember thinking about what, what was that going to be like in a sort of picture of, you know, the, the Matterhorn and, you know, the flag walking, you know, conquering the mountain. It’s not like that at all. But we, man, we just had tons of fun going around and camping and hiking and having a good time. It was really cool. Part of my, my growing up, I had to get into the decathlons. I’m going to have a time now. It’s okay. It’s fine. Triathlons, but harder to say it is because there’s 10 of them. Exactly. it gets, it’s almost three and a half times as much. Jeff (00:03:09): So the decathlon was really purpose built for a guy like me that was average intense sports. Right. So we, you know, I was you know, I ran track and played basketball and football and baseball and everything through high school and then going into college. It was, it was something that I was good enough at, a lot of things to be successful in the decathlon. So that was the, you know, so you go to college, do that. And that’s where I met my wife and it was all that. Where’d you go to school? Chico state. Okay. And what did you study? I studied electrical engineering and physics. I wanted to work in a conversation. So one really tough degree wasn’t enough for you. Firstly to, yes. So I tried to do the, the trifecta of electrical engineering, physics and decathlon. Oh my gosh, you’re in college yet. Jeff (00:03:57): So technically count is 12. It does. It’s actually 12. Yeah. You’re such an achiever. So fast forward a little bit. You get out of school and you’ve got an option of, Hey, I can pursue physics, electrical engineering. I can stick with sports. Go pro. Where’d you go next? What happened? You know the interesting thing is in a kind of puppy, it’s a nice guy. The metronome to my life is that I never really had any desire to be an electrical engineer or a physicist. Not for a moment. So I did them because I heard they were hard and I thought it would be interesting to see if I could do it because it was difficult. Yeah. And I was totally fine with them completely kicking my butt the entire time, which they did. Right. So, you know, the, the sports were hard, the academics were hard, you know, you’d never slept. Jeff (00:04:45): It was just, it was like going through med school at 18 years old, just kind of pound your way through it. And so, but come my senior year, everyone else is, you know, all people are coming to the college to do these job fairs and whatnot. And I had zero interest. I didn’t go to a single interview. I didn’t really, I didn’t talk to anybody about being an engineer or physicist. I don’t even know what they do. I still don’t even know that they do. But I just, I thought, okay, great. I’ve graduated, I won, we’re not gonna talk or you can edit out any GPA discussions in here as well. That’s all you know. But I, I got out, I have the diplomas on my wall correctly and, and I knew that I didn’t want to do that and I knew that I really didn’t want a real job. Jeff (00:05:24): And so I just started just figuring out something else to do. I mean, it was, it was the next, the next adventure was up. Now those things were over. I’d climb that mountain and then it was what’s next, where do I go? So we’re just starting. So I started really my own software company with a friend of mine right. Yeah. So right out of the gate and he just graduated and started a company and, and just started doing odd jobs and you know, putting things together. And then I came out to Georgia to turn around a, a software company out here and, Oh, wait a second. Yeah. So you’re 22, 24, somewhere in that range and cited to start a software company and then you’re going to turn one around. I feel like we missed out on some details that you’ve missed out on. Nothing whatsoever. Jeff (00:06:12): Yeah. So how did the, what happened with a software company did, was it a start and end or start and sell or, we kept running that for, for good amount of time. My partner and I, and we ran that and then we moved out to Georgia and ran it here and then drive the other one. And we had a number of fits and starts like everybody does and right. Ended up, you know, transitioning that company into something else. And just the whole, you know, it was, it was the absolute perfect thing for a you know, a guy in his young or early twenties to go and do and it’s been fantastic. That’s pretty awesome. So, you know, I don’t, I don’t know your age, but I would guess we’re not that far apart. I was close. But that was probably in the late eighties. Jeff (00:07:01): It was early. It was that, it was like probably, early nineties, mid nineties. Yeah. Yeah. Very cool. That was a really cool time to be. I mean, you know, I remember those days. Yeah. In technology then going and blowing. That’s exactly, yeah. Cool. So you got to Georgia and yet continue to build on this business, transitioning this other one. No, it looks like he flipped into something else. How do you end up in private equity? How did that work? Again, like most, like I’m kind of the, the Forrest Gump of the, of the business world. And so you just kind of dumb into things. But you know,. Oh man, I’ve dumped in everything in my life, Matt. So, you know, going through a number of transactions with these companies, helping them build up their, helping build the organizations and sell them and you come to the realization that you, you got paid a little and they got paid a lot for doing it. Jeff (00:07:52): Right? And so the next one you come in, you’re going, well shoot, don’t pay me right. I’m going to build this thing up and sell it and, and, and make, make the money that you did. So it wasn’t some refined focus on private equity. I don’t even know what that meant for probably a decade afterwards. I had no clue. I mean, private equity, I no, is that assuming no one knows about your equity? Is that what private equity? Right. So but I knew that if I owned this, then I would make money. And so I just sort of doing that. And so I’ve, you know, I’ve, I’ve really just abhorred the whole concept of getting a paycheck and just went straight into trying to just own the business. I mean, not too dissimilar from you actually. Yeah. Well I guess so when you know, there, there is a difference in volume. Let’s count the number of businesses that that I’ve started and then, you know, and I have a feeling that’s quite a bit more than that for you and a few. Sure. So was there a particular, I know you said you sort of accidentally found your way into some of these things, Matt (00:08:56): But was, was there an early focus on it or technology? Was that a passion of yours or was that just that was the opportunity presented itself Jeff (00:09:04): First? You know, the, the passion for me has never come from the technology or from running a business. It was really the passions always come from was there some problem to solve where you trying to accomplish something that no one else had done before and that was so you can get into a business that’s got a lot more zeros on the end of it or they’ve got a far better sales channel or it’s more heavily funded and all of those things, young, young men didn’t have any interest in those. It was can this thing be something special? Can it solve some big problems at doing something that you can get passionate about you? Cause I know that, you know, I do not have a long attention span. I mean it’s really painfully short and so regardless of all of the other, you know, accoutrements to this thing, it was not going to keep me interested unless it was something that was meaningful and I can drive. And so when you take that as your filter now it’s no longer industry focused or anything else. It could be horticulture and finance and software and you know, whatever. Anything, anything applies. Huh? How, how do Matt (00:10:07): You find deals or how do people find you? I am, I’m sure that’s changed over the years. I’m sure early on you know, you’re looking for everything, but I gotta think now you’ve got some experience and wisdom under your belt. The deals find you. How does that work? Jeff (00:10:21): Yeah. So, so deals find me now. I mean the back then I remember just out there just looking for things to get into and, and looking for opportunities and just talking to everybody I possibly could. And you blink and you realize now I’m an old man and the deals are flowing my way. But you know, the, you, I don’t remember making a conscious decision at any time to shift that. It just, you know, pretty much just slowly but surely you start getting more and more deals coming, coming to you and you’re able to filter through them and, and ideally hand them off to people who can really help you. So you’re probably, you’re probably getting involved in less than 1% of the deals you see puppy really bumpy it, you know, maybe five and a thousand maybe you can find it probably would actually get involved in. But you know, the, the goal for many of those things or to take a look at the deal, I’m not a good, not a good partner for it, but handing it off to somebody who I think can actually be a good resource. Matt (00:11:16): Well, and even that’s adding value along the way. So I’m sure people respect that. Maybe come to you again. Yeah, sure. Definitely. A later because Oh yeah. Jeff helped me with this last time. Well that’s pretty cool. So one thing that you’ve told me before, I’ve heard you say, I can’t remember if you were talking directly to me or probably was just listening to a conversation. You’re always listening into my car. I think you said something about, you know, you were attracted to deal at the end trying to use your word Jeff (00:11:42): With a little hair on it. Yeah. And I’m thinking about what you’ve just shared with us about, you know, pursuing a field of study, not because it was super interesting you because it seemed difficult. Yeah. It seemed like a challenge. And so that’s starting to pick up on a little bit of a theme there. Is this, you know, you’re, you’re a contrarian thinker. You know, you’re a person that pursues something because of the challenge that seems to be the attraction. How, how do you, how do you manage that? How do you know what to stay away from if you’re, if you’re only maybe getting involved in five deals out of every thousand. Yeah. Well are, is that because those are the hardest of the thousand or what’s your filter? How do you, how do you do that? It’s interesting and I love, I’ve been, I’ve been called a contrarian thinker for a long time and it’s hilarious because it’s actually, it’s a really nice word to like cover over some mental illness that I’ve got the, exactly, I’m sorry that’s not, that’s not functional, but contrarian. Jeff (00:12:39): Right? That sounds, that sounds like a good thing. I meant it in the best positive you always do, man. You know, it’s, I think the bigger filters for me are one. Does it fire me up? And that’s typically gonna be the challenge aspect of I love, I love, if it’s going to be something that’s worth getting up in the morning and going after it, then great. And if I know I can sleep until noon, still get it done, then it’s not of interest to me. That’s that. So I don’t, I won’t do those two is, and it’s a bigger filter and it’s a harder filter because it’s an ego thing is am I the right guy? You know, a lot of people don’t do that. No. They’ll go and take a job when they’re not the best guy for the job. Or they’ll go and try to, you know, try to do something that there’s somebody else standing right next to them. Jeff (00:13:23): It’s better for that opportunity. And you know, so that’s the one that’s taken me the longest to really wrap my arms around and look at deals right now and go, Oh man, that’s fantastic. That completely fires me up. Talk to Matt. He’s, he’s the guy you need. He’s the one that could really make that thing go. And that’s, that is, I’d love to say that came easily. It did not, it still doesn’t come easy. I still find myself going, Oh man, I’m the wrong dude for this. Right? There’s, there’s better guys and I’ll, I’ll back out and make introductions or whatnot and make sure it makes sure it gets going. But those are probably prime realtors to do that, right? I mean, yeah, even in the job market you see all the time and nice to you know, not falsify or resume but to, you know, put it puts your very best foot forward. Jeff (00:14:07): And sometimes that comes across as maybe an insulated somebody who’s capable of, and so it takes a certain amount of humility to be able to say, you know, I love this. I might even be passionate about it, but you need to talk to the guy down the street, which you also see, and I’m sure you’ve seen in your, your line of business too, is that if I go back to somebody say a year later and I say, Hey listen, I want to pull back out of this and bring somebody else in this better than me. It’s the, it’s like breaking up, you know, and you’re telling me no, it’s not you, it’s me. And, and the first thing I’m thinking is, so what’s wrong with the business? Some business bad or what did we do wrong? Or you’ve had something else going on that’s more interesting to you. Jeff (00:14:47): And the reality is no, not as, there’s a, there’s a better person for your business, than me. Right. That’s, and so that’s probably been the theme more for last five years or so. Maybe 10 years is I continually look for people who can replace me in that, in that role or in that business, because I know, you know, the last count, I’m like, there was something accounted six and a half billion people in this world, right? Some, I’m sure there are better people at everything that I’m doing in me. And so if I can find that person and they’re a, an effective resource and they’re passionate about it, then they should be strapped to that business and not me. And so, and it’s okay. I know that I’m going to see tons of things and I’ll come back to those things and it’s all good. So how does it work when you’re involved in a, in a business say, Hey, here’s a business I’m going to get involved in and I’m going to invest in it. Jeff (00:15:40): Does that always mean that you’re actively a participant in the business or is it sometimes I’m going to invest, but you do you and get back to me and let me know if it worked out. Is it always active? No, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s not you know, I, I look at things in different investment buckets and costs of capital and so I look at it and think if there’s my, my low risk money, I’m going to hand to somebody else who’s got better skills and better capability sets than I do. Right? So you all invest into businesses and have those things run fantastic. Then I might, my higher risk money because I’m higher risk is will go behind me going in and trying to drive these businesses. You know what, I’ve, it’s actually comforting though to know that now because I’ve surrounded myself with so many great people that there is some guy or some girl or whoever it might be out there that I know is going to be better. Jeff (00:16:35): So as I’m going forward, fewer and fewer of these deals on my running, and it’s not because I’ve somehow become, you know, I’m know I’m above that and I’m no longer running that company right now. I know there’s just, there’s a smarter people to execute on than I am. So that’s, that’s a, it’s a comforting thing and allows me to, to participate in a smaller piece of a lot, lot, you know, a, a greater number of businesses and not screw things up. Right. One of the things I love about this, this thought process of building any business that’s going to have staying power is that by design it has to be able to support people coming and going right at all levels, including the very top. You know, I think Disney, I think it was in the news this morning, you know, change of a CEO and Disney will continue, you know, I have no doubt. Jeff (00:17:25): Right? Yeah. They’ve built that into their business model that they, they can withstand even the very top a a change in leadership. But when you’re intentional about building a business, you realize you have to bring other people in. It’s not, it’s not an option. It’s not an option. It’s critical. Exactly. And particularly if you’re going to be involved in multiple businesses, you gotta be able to take some off the table as you’re new ones on. So how does, how does that work? Are you involved in businesses for long periods of time, short periods of time, or it just depends on the, on the day. It just depends on the deal. And again, if it fires me up and you know, I, there’s, there’s a passion for it. I’ll be involved as long as I’m useful. And that’s, you know, so there’s a lot of times that usefulness is very short and that’s okay. Jeff (00:18:12): Again, a little you know, a little humbling sometimes like I’m no longer value here, but that’s okay. But you know, you bring up a good point that, you know, businesses are definitely made up of people but they’re not made up of this person. Or there’s, there’s a, there’s a big difference. You understand that as the human resources, they’re going to drive this thing. But you also understand that people are going to have different interests. They have different risk levels. The businesses are, are moving, living beasts. You know, when the first, when we first started out, there was a certain profile to that business and then it got going bigger and bigger and bigger. It’s a different profile. It’s going to take different people. And it’s a, it’s difficult for people to make that leap unless they, unless they visualized it early on to look around and say, okay, we’re a small company, we have 10 people and understands statistically seven, these people are not going to be here two years from now, three years from now. Jeff (00:19:03): Right? And it’s not because things went wrong in many cases because things went right. So I was able to develop skillsets in my, in my team. It allowed them to go get better jobs somewhere, ones where they could exercise their skills at a greater degree that were available here in this company. And so those things are just going to happen. And that’s fantastic. It’s a wonderful thing. But if it sneaks up on you, you’re thinking, Oh no, or I’m losing this person instead of thinking, listen, I’m excited that these people are here right now and there an enormous impact of this business, which is fantastic. And if I create a great culture, I’ll build, attract other people that are gonna come in that are right for the business. And then it’s not so much in a front to you anymore. It just, it’s a good, it’s a good common natural way of looking at your companies. Jeff (00:19:47): Yeah, I love it just underscores the importance of developing processes, developing a culture that can withstand a change in the lineup of the team. Is do you find that’s translatable if you’re working in one business or five and you’ve developed processes or certain values or culture, do those translate to other businesses too? Yeah, I think I wouldn’t use the word process as much unless you’re thinking the thought process. So I think you know, procedures inside of a business are going to be, are going to be governed by a lot of external and internal factors, customer types and, and you know, am I an engineering company in my consulting company and my a processing company. All those things are very different, but you know, I think it’s going to come down to most of the time it’s going to come down to, you know, what do I expect of this company? Jeff (00:20:38): Meaning culturally, those things I think are franchisable across a lot of different companies. I think the expectations of and can be how you communicate with is franchisable across a lot of a lot of companies. I also think that doing an improperly and and ineffectively is also a franchise, right? Which means you see, you know, and I, I can look back and say, man, I made that same exact mistake at five different companies. Right? So, so you’re, the more things you’re involved in, the better off. I think that better off the more acutely aware you are of those elements because you know, they’re impacting a lot of companies all at once. It’s not just impacting this thing that you can control right in front of you. You’re making decisions that are now going to be, you know, are going to now be, you know, taken and putting into process somewhere else that’s going to screw things up. Jeff (00:21:24): Which I’ve done a lot of them. Well, you know, that’s how it wisdom happens. And then I got lots of wisdom. So let’s talk a little bit about kind of a day in the life of a private equity investor while you and I had a conversation two or three years ago now about you’re building our organizations such that the leader of the business doesn’t have to be there and 100% on every minute of every day. Yeah. And I think you’ve taken that to an extreme because you are working in frequently in a leadership capacity, in multiple businesses at the same time. And not only that, but many times these businesses are not there. They’re geographically dispersed, right? There might be one here and one in another country, one on the West coast. How do you do that? Is there a code perhaps, you know, how, how do you get to the point where you can come in and be available for small amounts of times yet still have the impact that you need to have as a critical leader in organization? Yeah, I, there, there are three things that are critical that you have to do in order to be effective doing that. And those three are really hard. And nobody knows what they are. Jeff (00:22:45): Let me see. You know, everyone has their theory on how to do it. Mine has, I shouldn’t say it’s always been, but I’ve always kind of tended more towards this and I think I’ve been more aggressively focused on this over time, is I don’t like to delegate at all. Really? Yeah. And doesn’t surprise. Yeah. But here’s, here’s, here’s the reason why. If I’m delegating to you, that means that it’s, it’s mine to delegate, right? So it’s, it’s my task, it’s my role, it’s my job and I’m now delegating this out and I’ve realized that if I’m delegating it to you, you never really take it as yours. Right. So to me it’s a, it’s a complete session. I may, you just, you’re handing it to somebody and saying you own this. You can delegate it if you want to. I don’t advise it. I’ll give it to somebody else. Jeff (00:23:34): But it’s yours. And it is a, a buck naked feeling of, I don’t control what’s going on anymore. But it’s also one that people in people couch it with until potential risk. What if this guy screws us up? Or what if she steals my money? Or what if this person runs us? But it’s just risk. It doesn’t, it doesn’t really matter. But if you’re by not doing that, you’re risking so much more. You really are. I don’t think there’s so few people in, whether it’s in business or life or whatnot. So few people calculate the cost of being safe and the safer I try to be, the less I accomplish the safe ride. Try to be the less impact in the world. We’re going to have the, you know, the more I try to control what’s going on around me, I’m really dumbing everything down and everything’s kind of beige and it’s vanilla and the volumes on four. Jeff (00:24:24): And you know, we just, you kind of live in this life and it looks good because I think we’re trained to think that that’s what we should, how we should be living our lives. But the reality is, is I push things out to the edges and they’re owned. You own these things, run these things right. If it doesn’t go well and we’ll, we’ll, you know, we’ll sum this thing up and we’ll figure out next time we’ll make a decision maybe a little differently. And that decision is not going to be based on, on anger or based on, you know, retribution that’s going to be based on, you mentioned the word early wisdom, you go back and go, eh, work out so well. Right? But all of the greatest things that have happened in my life, all of the greatest successes business-wise or whatnot, were done through somebody else’s hands. Jeff (00:25:06): And it was, their creativity was their ownership. And almost always, and I know you’re a business owner yourself, how many times have you been just wildly surprised by people around you who have done things that you would have advised them? Probably, you know, very loudly. You would advise them not to do it that way, right? Because we’re all so smart and then they do certain one, you go, Holy cow, that’s the smartest thing I’ve ever seen in my life. You know, and we’d take credit for it. Now we don’t have to, you know? So for me, you know, managing allows me to manage many, many more things and be involved in a lot of things. I shouldn’t use the word manage. I would say participate. It allows me to participate in a lot of things. And it also gives me, and this is, this is the sneaky truth, it gives me the ability to watch really smart people who have yet to go do this on their own somewhere else. Jeff (00:25:59): Watch them do things that I learned from. So I get smarter and smarter as we go. They’re making their own decisions. Even if they make a decision that doesn’t work out well, oftentimes 70% of that decision was right, right? 30% was wrong. And I can go back and I say, ah, he was in the execution is because of X, Y, and Z, right? We didn’t secure this amount of capital, didn’t do whatever. But I learned from the 70% that the direction that they chose to cry down. And so I look back and I think of all the skins of wisdom you’re talking about. Much of that has been me just sitting here, just watching extraordinary people do cool things. And, and I just, I love that. I love that approach. Not so awesome. Now I’m going say something Jeff, and I’m going to say it in the nicest Matt (00:26:45): Possible way. You are a contrarian. What you just said there. I’ve never heard anybody else say it the way that you did not. I want to go back to it because I want to make sure that I heard it and that that are, that our listeners heard it too. You hear all the time about people managing risk. I mean there are, there’s, you know, billions of dollars in the risk management wax industry and what you said was really flipping that on its ear. It’s almost like, I’m not sure what the right word is. Complacency management. Okay. Here are all the things that, you know, let’s take a startup as an example. And I remember early on in the early days of of Rocket IT when, you know, I used to joke that it was a team of three, me and myself and I right. That there was a certain amount of fear about hiring that first person and giving them some real responsibility that used to be within my realm of control. Yeah. And whether it was a Hey, a sales and marketing or going out and doing the technical work or the bookkeeping there, there was, I mean that’s a saying, even if you want something done, right, do it yourself. Totally flipping that on its ear and said, okay, if I want something done extremely well, I’ve got to find the best person to do that and push that risk out out to them, which is you know, takes a lot of confidence and trust, but then to be okay with the outcome no matter how. Jeff (00:28:15): That’s really cool. Yeah. And I think if you were to rephrase, you know, the, the common, the common statement is again, right? If you want something done right, do it yourself. And I think that the, the actual, Oh, the really mean is if you, if you want something done exactly like you want it, do it yourself and you bet. It’s also assuming that I’ve got some great vision or some great view of the future that is perfect and I don’t, right? So if I do want it done exactly like I want it like my peanut butter and jelly sandwich with, you know, with my Cheetos on it right now all I can stack them perfectly with a whole bag of Cheetos on one sandwich. It’s fantastic. I’ll do it myself because no one can do it like I can. But in a, in another setting, to me it’s, I want to know what that person, you know, will say, listen, we’re going this direction. Jeff (00:29:02): I’m going from here to California. Fantastic. There’s a, there’s a million routes, right? Some I want it done. Like I want it, I’m going to drive, I’m going to take a turn here, turn there, turn there. But guess what, everybody else, if I long as I define California, they’re all getting there, right? And I guarantee you in a room of 10 people, nine of them are probably going to get there sooner and cost more cost effectively than I would have. And so it’s okay to get in the back seat and every once in a while you might ask, you still go on to California? Yup, we’re going to California. And that’s, and that’s okay. But it’s a, you know, I think the, the management of when you mentioned kind of, you know, managing complacency, nothing ever exceptional is happened in the middle of the bell curve. Jeff (00:29:44): It just hasn’t, it’s never, it’s not worth even being involved in, I mean, here’s, you know, you take a, and you could look up these, look at these numbers and you’d say, would you rather be the median salary earner because you’re such an extraordinary athlete. You were drafted into the NFL, the NBA, major league baseball and national in national hockey league and you were good. And all of those are so good in all of those. You’re right in the middle. Or would you rather be a starting quarterback or starting left, left tackle or start or the one of the best pitchers, you know, just that one role. And by far and away, the greatest salary owners will be one of the top pitchers in the major league baseball or starting quarterback or started cornerback or whatever it might be. And so we know that in the middle of that bell curve, no matter how broad you try to apply yourself, there’s nothing really extraordinary is going to happen there. Jeff (00:30:34): So why do we force ourselves and try to live our lives? So we never leave the middle of that bell curve. And it doesn’t make any sense to me. It never has. It never has never been, never been of interest to me. And so, you know, you, you look at almost everything that’s been been great. You know you know, Marie Curie, you know, she’s, she had to mess around with radioactive elements and ended up dying from it. But look what we have right now, right? We got cool x-rays and we get all these things come from it. So most things we’ve seen in our life, I would say all things that matter have come from things that were really just pushing the envelope. You know, you say that and it made me think of something, Matt (00:31:12): The bell curve and you think about just one aspect of the bell curve and its application is in personal finance and you look at you know, what’s the average family income or what’s the average level of wealth and the and the U S or something like that. And then you look at the news websites and the media and so forth. And who are they catering to? Jeff (00:31:37): Well, you know, I was talking about the Disney changing hands this morning of the CEO is turn over and see, you know, Matt (00:31:44): I read about that on a website. That website is designed to capture as many eyeballs as possible, which means that by definition that they are targeting exactly the center of the bell curve. Absolutely. And so if you’re looking for an outlier and performance financial performance, that’s probably the last place you want to go because you’re going to get the middle of the road result. Exactly. That’s exactly right. And that’s cool. Last place Jeff (00:32:10): You want to look at it. And if you take, I mean you’ve heard of the Pareto principle 80 20 rule and the concept of a bang, you know the 20% of your work is going to generate 80% of your, of your production. Right? And, and it’s, you know, you can apply this and it’s going to be 73 27 or whatever the number might be. It’s going to move all over the place. But the reality is is that you know, that works. And if we run with 80 20 you say, okay, I’m do these activities created 80% of my work. And what if you got rid of the 80% of the activities you were doing to create 20% of your work? And most people say, okay, I could probably do that. That’s great. So now take that 20% and blow it up. It’s all I’m doing now. Jeff (00:32:45): Well pray to pray to principle still applies. So 20% of my 24% is going to create 80% of my, my 80 64% of my productivity. Which means that I could really be focused on 4% 4% of what I’m doing right now and just focus on that 4% and now I’m pushed all the way out there of, you know, a full standard deviation away from the mean no amount. I’m out. I’m out of that, that you know, that center of that bell curve. You’re talking about everything. And I’ve done 4% of work now and that’s the kind of stuff that excites me. And now if you take an organization and you allow everybody to operate in their 4% as an example, you have an extraordinary group. You really do. Now, if I try to do everything and I’m bringing this back to talk about, I going to do it right, do it yourself. Jeff (00:33:30): If I tried to do everything either, I have to have defined this Pareto principle, the only guy on the planet that has, or I’m dooming myself to be miserably inefficient in 96% of the things that I’m, that I’m doing. And it’s just, it does, doesn’t make sense. And yet we’re most people to spend their life banging away. You know, they’re just, they’re just hitting the top of that and vote their hammer. Just, you know, just this is what I’m doing. Well and, and, and B probably because it feels safe. You does to your point. Absolutely. Absolutely. That’s fascinating. Well, actually one of the questions I wanted to ask you about was, so, you know, back to at any one time you’re involved in and helping to lead multiple organizations and because of the way that you operate, you’ve got a limited amount of time that you’re able to spend with each organization and you want that to be the highest impact time possible, right? Jeff (00:34:23): Yeah. So are there tips for how to do that or is there a thought process for how to do that? When you’re working with five CEOs and different parts of the world, what’s the mechanics of, how do you do that? Is it a phone call? Is that a visit? Is it, is there a weekly cadence or a monthly kit or does the board, that’s great. And it’s, and it’s evolved certainly right all the time, which I assume now if this is going to evolve from now forward, right? If I’m, if I feel so smart today compared to what I was 20 years ago, I am a look back to where I am now. Go Holy cow, he moves. He’s not even a halfway because I can keep to it. And it’s the most, most distributed management organizations or processees are involve around, you know, I’m looking for financial results, I’m doing this, doing that and all of this stuff. Jeff (00:35:12): And the reality is that those things are commodities, right? Those are those, those are things that can be sent to accountants. And those are things, whatever, that that’s all great. And what’s been good about the opportunities that I’ve had is they forced me to rethink these things because literally I might have, I might have something going on in, in Hong Kong and Dubai, Cape town, you know, Auckland, New York, nothing in Georgia. Exactly. I’m rarely in Atlanta and I have all this at the same time. And so, you know, really trying to micromanage or getting into those things as a complete waste of time. And like I’ve mentioned before, I am completely disinterested in micromanaging. And so what I’ve realized is that there are small handful of questions and those always evolve. But if I can just ask a handful of questions and not trying to pin them down, but trying to discover how I might be able to help them. Jeff (00:36:06): Sometimes the question is, how can I help you? It sound simple. Is that right? That’s, you know, it’s very simple. I mean, it’s, it’s, you know, it’s I realized that trying to drag information out of them, they’re going to answer the questions that I’ve asked them. But if I can ask much more broad and open ended questions about things, it allows me to think about, okay, here are some other challenges. So what are the challenges that you having, you know, what are the risks that you see in the future? Where do you think I could have to add the most value? You know, in a lot of times it’s, you can’t write, Jeff, please go away. Please go away. Yeah. But those are ones, if I really, really want to build a go away understanding what’s going on in a business, then it’s a small handful of questions, a period. Jeff (00:36:49): And I’m gone and last part about that, I could do it over the phone. I could do it over so I could over Skype or WhatsApp, whatever. Now I do like looking him in the eyes when I’m asking the questions cause I want to know if they’re rubbing their temples, you know, if they’ve lost 20 pounds, they’ll saw them last time. There’s a lot of the stress factors. You can’t get missed asking these questions, you know, via correspondence. But but that’s the, that’s the greatest thing I messed the easiest, you know, easiest way of going about this thing is just, is just asking questions and allowing them to kind of explain in general terms, you know, how they feel things are going, what resources they need and if and how I can be of value to them. I think that’s so good. And I think that’s something, unfortunately a lot of leaders and rising leaders miss is, wow, you just have the word manager that implies that I will be managing, yeah. Jeff (00:37:42): This person and this person’s activities and so forth. And that can come across very much as a whole can. It’s my job to challenge this person and to find out what they’re doing wrong. Right, exactly. The truth is we’ve done a good job of hiring or bringing people into our organizations and our life that we trust and we’ve brought them here for a reason because we think they can add value. Really. It should be a posture usually of support. Yeah. Right. All right. I trust you. I believe in you. I’m excited about what you’re doing and my job is to come in and help out remove barriers help to add value, maybe change the way of thinking, that kind of thing. I love that approach. Yeah. And sometimes it can be taken disingenuously because you know, just seems like it’s a, it’s a shtick. Like, I’m just using this as a way to get it, but I think most of the people that I work with understand that they’re smarter than I am. So they do take it very genuinely like, okay, all right. He really is just trying to figure out what’s going on and it might be exactly. It is going to go. All right. This just saw nothing you can help. All kidding aside. Matt (00:38:54): I want to point out something else that you said that I think is so important. Is that a communication that there is a heightened effectiveness of communication when it happens face to face? Yes, definitely. Because we can see each other’s expressions, body language. We can probably sense whether someone is under stress or happy or sad or whatever. That happens. So much easier and better when we’re seeing each other face to face. And so I often tell my team, particularly if they need to bring challenge to someone, we’re going out to a customer site and saying, Hey, you’re really going to need to make a, an upgrade on your security system here. That’s challenged, right? So it’s bringing challenge to one of our customers that’s going to go over a lot better if we can be on the same room together. Oh definitely. If that’s not possible, then the Skype, the WhatsApp, you know, that kind of thing would probably be the next choice that the last thing we want to do Jeff (00:39:50): Is text them and say, yeah, you’re going to have this. Exactly right. Right. And I think that one of the advantages, again that I’ve had over a lot of people is I’ve done a significant amount of my business internationally. And so what’s happened is when you’re doing this work, you realize that there’s such a cultural difference that you can’t assume like, like we do here and the U S we think everybody speaks English. Everybody basically has the same in air quotes culture. So I can communicate very homogenously across the, across the entire body of people. Right? And so the most part, it distilled right through me. It does not an effective way of doing cause people, people they, they think differently. They receive information differently. They’re, they’re emotionally very different. And when you’re in international markets, you can’t even get to the emotional level because the cultural pieces there and the language pieces there. Jeff (00:40:43): So you, you’re very, very, very disciplined about how I’m going to communicate where I am. Because I understand for obvious people are different. I have to, I have to communicate this in a certain way. You know, these words don’t mean the same things. The phrases don’t mean the same things. And so when you bring that back to the U S and you start having those business conversations here, you carry that same thing with you walk into a room and it’s how do they, how are they receiving this message? What do I need to do to my message to change it, to make sure they understand what I’m thinking, not so I can, you know, mind bend or get them to do what I want them to do. But how do I, I’m going to say something. I want them to understand exactly what I mean. Jeff (00:41:23): How do I need to change how I’m saying it so that, so they can understand it. And you know, so that’s, that’s a helpful piece and make it something that people, I think most Americans miss out on just because we don’t have to travel. It’s not because we’re myopic or we’re, you know, we’re somehow don’t love international travel. All the stuff people in the Brown of the world would say the truth is we don’t need to, we’re the world’s greatest, biggest economy, so we can, we can become billionaires selling thumbtacks. We don’t have to go to, you know, to Taiwan to go do. Exactly. Yeah. Very nice. So tell us a little bit about some of the kinds of projects that you’re involved in today. And I know you can’t give us very specifics, but are there favorite industries or favorite kinds of projects that you’re involved in? Jeff (00:42:05): Yeah, I mean, I, I love probably the course the last 10 years. I’ve really love much more of the corporate development and then product and business development. So I like, I’m enjoying the roll-ups, not because of the financial aspect of it, but because back to the challenge. It’s tough to get it right. But it’s super rewarding when you do so. I, I really like looking for businesses that are better together than they’re apart. You know, it’s just in, you know, what happens oftentimes is we think of businesses from a income statement or a balance sheet, cashflow in versus looking at them as puzzle pieces. They’re going to snap together. And you know, just like it’d be logical for us to go out and say, Hey, I want to build a great computer so I’m going to go buy a monitor and buy a keyboard and buy by CPU. Jeff (00:42:54): And those things all make sense coming together. It wouldn’t make sense to build a computer by buying two monitors. I just wouldn’t make sense. So I’m really an, I really enjoy that corporate development both internationally and domestically in many cases. The combination of those two, bringing things together that when they come in, you can almost hear them snap like, like they go together the right way, you think, Aw man. And to the point where a lot of people will say, I can’t believe we didn’t do something like this earlier. And that’s a huge win, you know? And so a lot of people are, they hate the integration and they just despise the pain. And, you know, the anguish of doing this stuff. But to me I just, I love that. I love the challenge of getting it done right. And you know, let the financial rewards come down a lot and wind years later doesn’t matter. Jeff (00:43:40): You got it together where the culture’s fart now fitting the product development’s working in the right way. Everything about it is just is humming. So to your question about the industries and the types, it’s cross industries because we’re building, we’re building solution sets for the market that are mix of many different, many different pieces. It would be, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s Tesla as an example, being a aggregation of, you know, electric motors and battery technology and new new plastics and this type of stuff that’s happening. And what you’d say is that, is that energy now that’s plastics, it’s manufacturing. Is that automotive is visit. There’s a lot of different things going on, but take that same thing into, you know, into software and you’re putting, you’re putting software with services, with, you know, with cyber, with whatever. Man. I like that, that aggregation, the kind of that, the concert of all those pieces coming together. Jeff (00:44:31): I love it. Again, I feel like that’s kind of a contrarian view. You hear people all the time. There’s another thing that we hear an Axiom all the time, stick with what you know. Right. And a lot of people would say, in fact, I just heard this recently, I was at a meeting and we had hello at the front of the room that has a lot of experience in the it services mace. And one of the things he said is that often entrepreneurs will sell their business and they’ll go off and try something else and then they’ll come back because of the familiarity with, well, I know the it services space. And so they kind of come back to it. And so he was actually costing the people in the room against the idea of trying, trying a different business is what you’re doing typical of private equity. Jeff (00:45:17): What would a typical private equity firm be involved in multiple industries or is that something that’s kind of unique to what you’re doing? Yes and no. So private equity groups will, will oftentimes be involved in different industries. They sometimes go in kicking and screaming because I’ve learned something new. But because they’re basing it on the economic value in the backend we’ll learn, you know, medical products because we think this is going to be a good return for us. And then oftentimes I’ll go and try to redo that. Medical products, medical products, medical products. The challenge though is that filter of medical products removes the things we talked about earlier. What’s the passion for the business? You guys, are you guys willing to roll your sleeves up and do something different every single time? Cause there’s not two companies and medical products that are the same but not manage the same way. Jeff (00:46:02): They don’t have the same challenges. They don’t have the same financial issues, customer sets, geography, cost to capital, everything’s different. So you might’ve again had dog food and medical products might be closer operationally to manage than to medical products companies. Right. And so there’s egg is more just how you view how you view these things and your, your point about, you know the gentleman talking about these entrepreneurs that go out and sell their companies and come back and try to do it again. Most often in my mind, they weren’t entrepreneurs to begin with. They were, they were technologist running a small business. Right? That’s just what they were. And they’re in. So if I’m a, if I’m a guy that runs shoe stores and I saw my shoe store, I can go back and around the shoe store and that’s, that’s what I was doing. Jeff (00:46:46): But it was not an entrepreneur. I know. And, and and I’ve got a, I’ve got a, maybe a higher bar or a harsher view on the term entrepreneur and I, and I fell in love with it. This gentleman by the name of Howard Stevenson from Harvard, looked the guy up super smart, lot smarter than me. Well Harvard. So I was at Chico state. The sure the fine is awesome. It’s fantastic. I would never take that back. It’s wonderful. But his definition of entrepreneurship was, you know, the pursuit of opportunity beyond resources controlled. Oh, and so you know, in, in far few people or if you know, the two to two few people ever go after that approach of I am to go after something because it’s the right thing to do because I want to get this thing done because I have to get it done because I’m passionate about it. Jeff (00:47:36): I don’t know how I’m going to do it yet. I don’t know how I’m going to find the money. I don’t know where I’m going to find the technology. I don’t know where my customer is going to come from. I don’t know those things, but I’m going to go do it. Most people. I’ve heard tons of people, I speak at universities all places and feel, come at me ice, man, I really, really want to be an entrepreneur. I just, I want to make sure that you know that financially I’m stable. Right? And then, and then I can be an entrepreneur. That’s, that’s the exact opposite. You just, it does those, those don’t go together. Right. So you know that security is what keeps you from being that entrepreneur. That’s also why it’s hard for, for guys to become, you know, we always hear things. You see a serial entrepreneur, was he really, he was an entrepreneur the first time. Jeff (00:48:17): He made a lot of money and then he kept investing in businesses. I wouldn’t necessarily say he’s an entrepreneur, he’s not out there. Again, there’s no issue with the resources. He’s got complete control over the resources to get it done right. They just said, I’m going to go and rinse, repeat. I’m just going to go keep and do the same thing over and over again. You know? And so, you know, to me again back, we talk about the greatest, you know, the greatest successes in this world have come from people being challenged and people having to really stretch themselves to get there. And that’s it. That’s where everything great comes from. And that can’t happen really over and over again inside your line of business because you know it now and you’re, you’re almost without being able to avoid it, dumbing yourself back down in the center of that bell curve, right? Jeff (00:49:01): So the first time you did it, you were making decisions because it was a necessity and I was able to risk things and go after and try things that are new. Why? Because I don’t have, I don’t have a choice and I got to make a decision today. I run out of money tomorrow. It might be the right decision. I got money until the end of the month. It was the wrong decision and didn’t work out so well. But as you go into your version two, three, four, and five, you know, and I, and I’m, I’m guilty of the same thing. You begin to move those things to the center of the bell curve, right? You’re saying now, Oh man, I know I can make it through the year if we only do this right. I know I can do this. And you know, and that’s, that’s OK. Yeah. That’s what 99% of 99.9% of the businesses out there operate that way. Jeff (00:49:43): And it’s fantastic. And there’s the lifestyle businesses, even if they’re small, even if they’re new, even if they’re venture backed or lifestyle businesses, people are using those things to pay the mortgage, which is fine, but those aren’t the meaningful ones. Those aren’t the ones that get you fired up. Right. Those, you know, that’s, that’s again, maybe what takes, takes me or drives me into things that I don’t know and don’t understand. You know, let’s go start a business in Bangladesh. You go, what business? I don’t know. I have no idea. I was just, let’s go to Bangladesh and let’s figure this thing out. And by the way, if you want to start a business in Bangladesh, I’m totally in. I’m already already, yeah. So I’ll, I’ll love a lot of what you’re saying, but at the same time that, you know, there’s people and I count myself, group predictability is comfortable, right? Jeff (00:50:32): I sometimes joke when we think all the, you, we had a fantastic year last year and in 2019 Rocket IT out of bag out here. Awesome. And I’ve told my team I’ve had bad years and I’ve had good years and I like it. Good ones way better. Right? And so once you kind of figure out, okay, well I’m good at this, or this is what worked, or this is an industry that has produced a certain result consistently over a long period of time, it’s really hard to walk away from that comfort and that predictability and try something different. But I would agree with you that when the occasional unpredicted event occurs you do learn a lot in that. And maybe that may be it’s fixed. Yes. Stories. So speaking, which I would love to, I would love to ask you, you kind of surprise you with this question a little bit. Jeff (00:51:24): What’s your favorite width? Like? I’m sure, I’m sure. I mean adventures that you’ve had and the things that you’ve gotten the businesses involved in there was probably at least one Oh two we’re excited about that. That didn’t turn out like you wanted, but you had fun anyway. Like it’s, it’s become the story. Can you think of a project like that? I can think of lots of them. Yeah, there’s been, there’s been lots of those. Some have not been so exciting and so fun. But yeah, I mean I think that the one that was probably most interesting was a, what’s the right phrase for this? It was a medical tourism company in Thailand and you know, we had really created a tremendous model to move, you know, to move people from all over the, it was really focused on a number of countries. And so Canada, UK, France, a lot of places who have, have a, have a state run or government run a medical system. Jeff (00:52:20): So I’m 50 years old, my knees complete crap right now. And they tell me, walk with a cane until you’re 60 then I’ll give you a replacement knee. So how do you get them to Thailand and how do you, how do you get some stuff done? Your cost effectively. Yeah, I’ve heard of people doing that for sure. Yeah. And it was, it was great running well, everything was fantastic. And I was going to Thailand and checking this stuff out and their hospitals are great and the people are fantastic and we’re, you know, we’re building it up the right way and then we just realize, you know, maybe about a year and a half into it that we didn’t have any actually licenses to be practicing medicine. Oh yeah. So, so apparently I think we were doing it in Thailand. Apparently it was, it was important to the people who told us. Jeff (00:53:04): Yes. They, they, they seem pretty adamant that we needed to have licensed to operate new. Oh man. Wow. Okay. Somebody should’ve checked on his chart. Was that, was it yours? Man? I can’t remember. You know, and but a really, really good business that I’m sure some, some Thai entrepreneur knows owning and running. That’s fantastic. The roadmap for businesses. Exactly. Okay. Just for licenses. We apparently need to license around this operation. So awesome. But again you look at and you go, man, I lost money in that, but I didn’t lose time and I didn’t lose enjoyment and I didn’t lose you. And I met tons of cool people and well, loss of money always essentially a a co it’s the cost of education. Yeah, it is. It’s cost education and you know, there’s a lot more people who over that same period of time made a lot of money, but it looked back and they say, I basically, I blinked, closed my eyes on January 1st. Jeff (00:54:02): I opened my eyes on December 31st and I don’t really don’t really know what happened. I could just, that year went away and if you want to suck the soul out of me, it would be to have that happen. Right. And that definitely didn’t happen, you know, over that period of time or building up that company. So, you know, I look at that and go, it’s like being Disneyland Disneyland’s also really expensive, but it’s fun. Yeah. You go there and have a good time or you go skiing in Jackson hole, it’s really expensive and it’s super fun. And a lot of this stuff operates that way. I mean, as long as your eyes wide open about, Hey listen, this is, this is risky capital, or we’re going to go do this and built this business up. If it’s success, fantastic. If it’s not, shame on us or good for us or whatever. Jeff (00:54:44): It just, you guys go out there and do it and I think of you’re better off for it. And the business model is replicable. The business model will work. No one thought it would work beforehand. So, you know, we made some mistakes, some huge ones, but we’re off and running and doing it, doing it again somewhere else. I love it. So one thing I want to make sure we touch on that folks that don’t know you listening to this podcast might make the assumption this guy’s totally single trial, real world like this and been involved in all these businesses, but you’re not. You’re raising dad and you’ve told me that you’re a great spouse, a wonderful spouse. Yes, yes. How

In this episode of the Rocket IT Business Podcast we have the pleasure of speaking with one man that has made it his life’s mission to encourage, equip and empower leaders across the globe. Having now founded over 20 businesses ranging from e-commerce to entertainment, Jeremie Kubicek is the embodiment of an entrepreneur. In addition to his current efforts at GiANT Worldwide and his real estate development business, Jeremie is an acclaimed author; with his most recent book making Amazon’s top-ten list of best business books in 2019. But regardless of the endeavors Jeremie pursues, his passion to fight for the highest possible good in those he leads is something to behold. In This Episode, You’ll Hear More About… The process of idea filtering Planning for major transitions How to innovate upon proven success Why to follow through with aspirations Understanding where you fit in the team Keeping an aligned vision with leadership The importance of learning from mistakes Creating a business with a lasting impression Learning to work with valued business partners Making a global impact through innovative business Removing the word “can’t” from your vocabulary Staying connected with others while growing a business Connecting with those who have contrasting personalities Understanding that it’s not what you do, it’s who you work for Jeremie Kubicek Contact Information jeremiekubicek.com | giantspeakers.com Resources Mentioned giant.tv/jk GiANT Liberator Podcast The 100X Leader Like What You Heard? Give Us Some Feedback! podcasts@rocketit.com Show Transcript Matt (00:00): Hello and welcome to the Rocket IT podcast. I’m your host Matt Hyatt. And today we have the pleasure of speaking with one man that has made it his life’s mission to encourage, equip, and empower leaders across the globe. Intro (00:27): [Music Plays] Matt (00:28): Having now founded over 20 businesses ranging from e-commerce entertainment. Jeremie Kubicek is the embodiment of an entrepreneur. In addition to his current efforts at GiANT Worldwide and his real estate development business, Jeremie is an acclaimed author with his most recent book making Amazon’s top 10 list of best business books in 2019. But regardless of the endeavors, Jeremie pursues his passion to fight for the highest possible, good for those he leads is something to behold, and we’re happy to have him on today’s segment. So without further ado, Jeremie, welcome to the show. Jeremie (00:59): I made it. I made it to the Rocket IT podcasts, man. Yes. Matt (01:07): It’ll be interesting to look back, Jeremie and see whether this episode resulted in a dramatic increase or decrease in a list. I know it’s going to be great Jeremie (01:17): Hair loss. Is that what you meant? Like that’s both of us. Yeah. Matt (01:23): Oh, that’s right. We both have that, that issue. So Jeremie, I’m so glad you’re here. I was going to be fun to have a have a conversation with you that you and I have known each other for quite a while now and spent a lot of time together, but I’m excited to have you on the podcast and to introduce you to the folks that we know that are listening to to your show. So let’s start, let’s start from the beginning a little bit. I want to kind of go a little bit back in the Wayback machine. When you and I met, you were running an organization called GiANT impact, right? And what were you trying to do with GiANT impact? Tell us a little bit about that organization and what was the goal? Jeremie (01:58): To go way back, I had started a company called GiANT 2002 and we had a number of different entities and so we bought John Maxwell’s assets because we had focused on strategy, capital and people to help grow businesses. And the people part was what we decided to acquire with John Maxwell’s assets. And that that brought me to Atlanta, that brought me into Gwinnett County cause that was where their headquarters was and we assume that and put it into merged it into GiANT at that point in time. So that was trying to impact them. That was for those who don’t know, that was the catalyst conferences. We built that into a national brand. I created a brand called leader tasks and started that out of Gwinnett County and then we sold, you know, John Maxwell’s assets back to him. And so it was a, it was a fun season. And so that’s how we met. And you all obviously took care of us like champs helping us as already kind of a outsource and the it it Matt (03:00): Services space. Absolutely. We have the pleasure of working with you and your team and that was really cool. So I know that you had transitioned with that organization and moved away from that. In fact, you moved, one of the things I remember, you and I sitting together in a restaurant not far from a Rocket IT headquarters kind of talking about your future plans. And you know, at the time that I had spent with you, I knew you have as a a big thinker, lots of ideas, lots of aspirations, and very much thinking, a way to impact the globe. Like, you know, I’m, I’m really into impacting my community and you’ve kind of expanded that geographically quite a bit. You know, I want to go out and impact the world. And so we sat down together and he told me about your plans that you were kind of moving onto the next thing and the next big thing in your life. And that started with, Hey, you know what, I’ve decided that we’re going to sell the house and we’re gonna pack up the family and we’re going to move to Europe. And I remember you telling me, Hey, you know, I think we’ll probably start another business. But I’m also gonna use some time to travel around Europe a little bit, spend time with the family, get to know that part of the world. And every once in a while I’ll fly back to the U.S> to manage affairs here. How, how’s that working out for you? Jeremie (04:17): Yeah, it was great. A couple of things. It worked. So what you may or may not remember, but we had had nine GiANT entities. We were really influenced by Richard Branson and you know, GiANT lions, Virgin music, Virgin money, Virgin blah, blah, blah, blah. So we had the same ideas like, Hey, you know, we can scale by creating these enterprises. So we started nine GiANT entities. I think that eventually we may have had up to 12, but somewhere like that. And what happened was it was an experiment and I would say, eh, it kind of worked. It kind of didn’t. In fact I’d probably wouldn’t do it again. Because nine different directions with nine cooks in the kitchen going with a different vision. And I also really realized that we weren’t Richard Branson at the time. We were building that. So what I did is I had kept GiANT impact and I moved, let’s started GiANT Worldwide, another GiANT enterprise. Jeremie (05:13): Eventually I ended up taking them all back in, either selling them, turning them off, or merging them all into one. So we have GiANT, we have one GiANT, and it was just a great experiment, but the experiment with my family was dramatic as well. So we went over and we lived in a, you know, you’ve got to come there and experience it. But we went, we lived in this Manor house, 10 bedroom Manor house. And we basically have this philosophy who says, we can’t, we can’t, you know, work with, pick a company who says we can’t influence the British government who says we can’t work with Google or big companies, the us air force. And we kind of went with that attitude and kind of started a process. And so it spread. And we were building a business and I was trying to pour into my kids because I had just become Uber intentional with my family more than ever with my wife, with my kids. And so I started treating them differently, training them differently. I was involved in apprenticeship with them and multiplying and giving them and growing a business at the same time. It was just, it was awesome. The only reason we’d come back is because our kids wanted to, Matt (06:28): Yeah, there you go. So I want to make sure didn’t hear you say it. I want to make sure that it gets said so that Manor house was ordered in the rural part of the UK, not far from London, right? Yeah. Just outside of London. And I did get to go there, came, came and visited you and spent some time and I know a lot of our friends did as well. And that was really cool because you were kind of the same time you were working. I know you’re very intentional with your family at that time and in fact the entire time that I’ve known you, I think that that has been true but certainly saw that underscored while you were in the UK. But then at the same time you’re building this, this business and this is the path that you’ve been down before. This is not, you know, you’re not your first rodeo, right? You’ve thought you’ve started many businesses. So before we kind of move forward and, and hear about what’s happening with GiANT, give us some background cause I think, I think some of the things you’ve done or you know, unusual would be a good word to say. A rare, rare is maybe even a better word. You’ve done a lot. And so tell us about some of the businesses that you’ve been involved in over the years and something that I liked. All right, so inspiration. Jeremie (07:37): Grandmother took me to Europe when I was 15 years old. Matt (07:41): Okay. Jeremie (07:41): Inspired me. Like, Oh my goodness. She said it was this, I’ll never forget it was summer and I was a big skier and she said, you know, you can ski the Matterhorn in the summer. It’s a glacier. You got to go ski. I go, I don’t have anything. Matt (07:57): I don’t have my gloves on. Jeremie (07:59): She goes, you don’t need anything here. Take this. I borrowed people and I put socks for gloves and socks and I skied the Matterhorn and I’ll never forget, like my grandmother is like, well, who says you can’t? So you got everything you need. We’ll take these. I’m on your hands. So that’s what started that. And then I got to college and got influenced by professor who basically said, why don’t you use business to change the world? And I mean you can. How do you do it? And he showed me Asia and then we started a business in Russia together. My professor and I got a few other classmates and we started a, an accounting training, marketing consulting. And we eventually started a economic school in Russia, in Moscow. It’s called the Moscow economic schools. Still. It’s the largest private school in Moscow Matt (08:51): Now. All right, hang on a second. Just stop. Just a second there Jeremie. Cause I, you know, this is old hat to you, Jeremie (08:56): But for those that don’t remember our history, this was when 1983, just 1993 a year after the union fell apart. Wow. Isn’t that crazy? Yeah. So they welcomed you with open arms and said, welcome comrade from America. Go ahead and start a business here. Is that how it went? Well. So you find, so we have this philosophy, find people a piece who are the a piece. So we found this guy named Yuri Shambala. Yuri was our person a piece. He had the credibility, he had run the education in Moscow for the communist party and he basically had a major transformation. His life wanted to do something different. So we were the partners. So he ushered this in. We were, we looked like we were 16. We looked like obese. And so no one thought we were doing anything and we really weren’t. Jeremie (09:59): But we did. And we built up the business and eventually sold it and then kept on the school continues to thrive. And you know, it’s one of those like you grew up on John James Bond and John Wayne and then during the cold war, you know, you’re like, Hey, we’re Americans. What can happen to us, you know, is that kind of fear? All right, very naive. But unbelievably fun at the same time. Very cool. All right, what else? So we get back, I’m there and I’m getting engaged to my college best friend. Kelly. And so then we were going to live in Russia and the Oklahoma city bombing happened. So my father in law was in the bottom. He’s lost most of his staff. So that shifted us from there. We decided to move back to Oklahoma. My dad had this philosophy shared with me and it’s really important for those listening. Jeremie (10:57): He said in your 20’s, it’s not what you do, it’s who you work for, that’s most important. Find the person that you want to work for and basically align with them and that’s way more important than what you did. So I ended up working as a pure, I mean just completely white guys you can see in, you know, working in the African American haircare business. Primarily the natural next step when coming home from Russia. Primarily because of the Humphreys family. Kent Humphreys, he was like a Matt Hyatt. He was just an unbelievable leader. People wanted to be around him, had great, great intent, built a really nice business. And I became eventually his vice president of marketing and then they sold the business and I went to work for the, the private equity group that bought the business. And we bought 17 companies in three years. And I was in, wow. It’s beyond the acquisition team. And we were, I was on the East coast one week West coast the next week, traveling back and forth from Oklahoma for a number of years. Did that and that’s where I lost my hair for any seriously. I did various then we started some dotcoms and started the dotcom business. I started three.com sold one last one, turned one off and come bust and try all the different experiences. Jeremie (12:25): And then you have just started a number of businesses. You know, I think as I’m a connector in the five voices language, I’m a connector creative pioneer. So my connector is always seeing opportunities and connecting people. And so I’m partnering with people and I used to have a philosophy of a portfolio of where I might be involved in 10 different things at one time. Right. And I have calmed down quite a bit since then. So in 2002, we eventually started GiANT and that was the beginning of the story I told you before we started a growth consulting business then bought John Maxwell and then we spin growing in lots of different places ever since. But yeah, that’s a little history. Therefore you, Matt (13:05): Yeah, that’s, that’s awesome. I actually glad you mentioned the partnering aspect of the businesses that you’ve been involved in. My observation of you is that most of the business entities that I’ve known about and the ones that you and I have discussed, you, you have partner with other people. That seems to be not only a kind of an emo, but something that I think has worked very well for you. A rocket. It is a business that the not started on my own. I did have a partners in a very early season and that didn’t work out. And so it’s been basically me running the shop ever since. And there are times when that can be kind of a lonely experience, right. You know, there’s, if something’s going wrong, there’s nobody to really talk to about it. You know, you can’t talk to your team, let’s scare them to death. Matt (13:54): You can’t go home and talk to your wife about it, scare her to death. I certainly can’t talk to your kids. The dog doesn’t care. So, you know, at the end of the day it’s you, you look in the mirror and say, okay, you know, I’m just going to have to deal with this and, and so it can be, can be kinda tough. Is that the driving force behind the partnerships you’ve created or why, how did you end up in that position? Has it been intentional or is it just come naturally to you of, Hey, here’s an idea. Here’s, here’s the person I want to do this idea with? Well, Jeremie (14:23): It depends. I, I hear a lot of people and they’ll say things like, Oh, partnerships never work and I don’t believe that. Then I also say partnerships are not for everyone. For me there was a term in the financial world called the treat of one plus one equals three. It’s the same with marriage. A good marriage should equal three, not just two. It should be exponential. So marriage is a partnership. My wife is a business partner, she is a a partner and, and you know my love of my life. So you think about that calm that thinking a good marriage should work well. The same is true with business. For me, I think I’ve just created such big vision that I’m needed to have partners because I don’t think I could do it. I meant to do what we were wanting to do to raise up a different type of leader in the world, to actually create a scalable people development business globally. Jeremie (15:22): I needed help and it’s not just I can do alone. So you find skillsets. So Steve Cochran has been a cofounder and a business partner with me. He’s been so helpful in his being in yang, if you will. Just that difference that we bring, I probably bring a little bit more of the business background. He brings a lot more of the personality background. And so we merge along those things together and it seems to work out really well. But the term of creative means it needs to, if it’s bringing value, great. If it’s diluting, then you need to make some changes. And dilution, you know, you can feel dilution. So the, the commitment to each other is how do you add value? How do you, how do you add value to the organization to such a degree that it just makes sense. Matt (16:14): You know, there’s a, you touched on the, the spouse thing. You, there’s something you and Kelly have and my wife, Maureen and I think have, is you start realizing probably fairly on early on that Hey we’re different, you know, or different backgrounds different personality types, different preferences. We communicate differently. I might be more quick to point out something that, you know, I perceive as just an interesting fact versus a, my wife might not say something about a negative aspect of whatever, you know, the, the way the house looks or what’s going on with the money situation or how things are going with the kids or whatever. Because she’s concerned about how somebody else might feel if she were to say something. So in many ways, you know, I think the old adage of opposites attract is true. That many times will help folks get married. Matt (17:05): And maybe even in partnerships, they’re attracted, somebody brings something different to the table and that can easily spiral into a perception of conflict. Oh, I had, this is the way I am. And that’s the way that she is. And we’re different and we’re always butting heads. But the way I like to think about that is that a, that can be very complimentary, right? Maureen is strong where I’m weak and and in many cases I’m strong where she’s not feeling as confident. And so when you take those differences and put them together, you do get something more than just the sum of two parts, right? Is one of the things about that though is you know, for us, and I think for a lot of people out there, the marriage is really meant to be a lifelong commitment. And so even when we’re not feeling like we’re perfectly in sync, there’s no part of us that says, well, it’s not, it’s just not gonna work. Matt (17:56): It’s always, well it has to work. It is going to work. It is, you know, it is this, this is what we’ve chosen to do. And so we’re going to work our way through that. My point in all that is that may not necessarily be true in a business partnership. I don’t think anyone enters a business partnership saying, okay, this is for life. I don’t think. And so there’s always this mind towards what one of the options as well. We can just part ways and, and move on with our lives. So do you think about that kind of commitment? Is that enter into the equation when you’re thinking about a new business partnership, a season or this is for a mission or a project or, or whatever. Jeremie (18:28): I don’t, I’m not seeking a lot of partnerships. Meaning I have them have one now. So I’m not, you know, we’ve been in it for about six, almost seven years. So with my marriage, it’ll be 25 years this the summer. So it’s, Matt (18:42): Wow, Julie’s been putting up with you for a long time. Jeremie (18:45): I know you’re not. So what’s interesting though is you think about the concept that we use at GiANT fight for the highest possible good of those you lead. So those you love. So how do you find for the highest possibility of your spouse? So if you think about that verse just for a second, it’ll translate to partnership. Your obligation is to fight for their highest possible good. And if the other person is to fight for the highest possible good, that usually moves up. It takes you both to another level. If one person is fighting for and another person is fighting against, that’s where you have friction. That’s where you have an earthquake. If it’s a one person, it might be fighting for another person’s fighting for themselves. So there’s these dynamics at play. This same is true with partnerships. There’s seasons where a vision doesn’t get aligned. Jeremie (19:42): That was hard for me. You know, where there’s no vision, people perish was no vision. Partners will find their own vision. And so for me, I had vision for the GiANT brand, but I didn’t have geographical or consistency with my, some of my past business partners. And they had a different vision than mine, which was, it was fine. It was, became natural, but I was the founder of that. So I’m like, okay, well take your vision, take your clients and go for it because this is the bin that we have, you know? So, yeah. And they were all amiable and very, very well done because that’s the way we do it in GiANT. There’s not a lot of drama in that regard. So I think what it does to your point, it comes down to the vision. What is the, and has the vision changed? Jeremie (20:35): The vision can change meaning you know what man, I’m about to be an empty nester. Okay. Two months. Well this is a five months before college and all that, but let’s just say the next two, my daughter graduates. So if that’s the case, I’m an end of an era and then there’s a transition season and then it’s a new season. I think it’s okay for partners to think about eras. And go, hey, is there a natural end of an era? And then you almost have to you and go, Hey, where are we in it for the next round? You know, I know in my case was Steve talk him. We’ve changed our business model to a SaaS model. So Steve fast software as a service. That’s right. Yeah. Subscription model. So we’ve moved now and so our business is heavy tech, heavy content building technology platform business. So Steve, who’s been on our, our team, it moved out of the day to day operations of the organization, but he’s still on partner. Jeremie (21:41): He’s my part partner in content creation is my partner in that. He’s a non executive director still has ownership. He’s playing a different role and helping build our value in our business in a different way. But the needs that we had for our team, we’re very, very tech driven. So the conversations we’re having, I mean they’re above my head and a lot of places. So what’s happening is then Steve recognized it. It was really a great, so when you have a secure, confident, humble, mature partner and they realize, you know, I’m probably don’t need to be on the the team, like on the day to day business team, I probably need to be in this team out here in a different playing a different role. And he brought that to the table and it was very mature. It was great. The dynamics were amazing because we basically spent a few days planning it out, mapping out, and now we’ve been living that out. Jeremie (22:42): And you know, that’s just because of who he is. He’s very right. So if you don’t have that kind of personality on the other side, it can be very difficult if you have it. And there’s probably going to be a point in time where I go, you know what, there’s probably someone better to run this business than me if we get to levels that were we’re talking about. So yeah, sure. No, just saying natural era seasons. I wrote an article years ago and my team’s heard me talk about this a few times about, you know, the a hundred year business plan, what does it look like if an entrepreneur sits down or a leadership team sits down and writes a plan to see a business through to its 100th anniversary. And one thing we know if we sit down and we write that business plan, you’re going to look around the room pretty quick and realize that it’s unlikely that anybody writing that plan is be around to see it come to fruition. And so if we’re going to build a business that has the potential to see its 100th anniversary, one thing that we know for sure is that they’re by definition Matt (23:46): Almost must be a transition from the current owners or leadership team to a different owner and leadership team. And so what are the building blocks and the what’s the foundation that we need to put in place today to not only deal with that, that eventual inevitable transition, but to embrace it as, Hey, this is a natural part. A, I was reading an article at Berkshire Hathaway just last week, published its annual letter from the CEO and chairman. And so it was reading about that and what, what he said in that letter was that Berkshire Hathaway is 100% ready for his, a departure, you know, whether that’s retirement or, or something. Yes. So I love that idea of dealing in eras and thinking about how do we, you know, how do we treat ourselves as really as stewards of the organizations that we lead and planning for transitioning that to someone else’s sometime down the road. Jeremie (24:44): You know, this is, you know, we create content, we write content. Mainly the content that we create is based on real world situations. And I’ve been talking about this for about two months and the way it usually works is if I’m talking about something six months, I know it’s relevant topic and we start building things like performance or GiANT-izing performance reviews right now because that is such a major part of businesses. We’re working on some succession pieces, expectations, but one of them is on transitions. And I’ve, I really realized I’m really good at that. Like I’m not good at financials. Like don’t put me in as the CFO and then I need people to do that. I’m just not very good at that. But I’m really good at transition. And what I mean transition, I don’t mean just the simple act of, okay Matt, you’re now the new CEO. Jeremie (25:34): I mean the season of transition that people are. So for instance, I do this, my kids, I meet with them between 16 and 18 and I have an apprenticeship process when my kids EQ, IQ personality, what the 10 meals you need to learn before you leave this house. All of the things I can think of to help with the transition. I get ahead of it. I’ve done it with, this is my third child I’ve done this with and I do it based on their personality. It’s, it works brilliantly. It’s really great and it’s really fun. But when I sit down with them, I review once a quarter, I review that, see the transition season there. So I met with my daughter Kate. We couldn’t meet until this weekend. I met with her this weekend on let’s look ahead at your transitions. Graduating high school, two months of moneymaking, basically before college. Jeremie (26:28): What are you going to do? Nannying and babysitting and blah blah blah. And then you’ve got in transition into college. So let’s work on those ahead of time. So I’m very proactive. Some people I might be too proactive for them. They’re not thinking that way. But I, I go, I’m also been working for a couple of years with my wife’s transition into empty nest. Cause I know empty nest emails are typically more difficult, especially if they’ve been with the kids, you know, men to anyone who’s staying home with them more or with them is more of the caregiver. Well, so should we’ve been working on that transition by doing a real estate projects and that would be, that was the strategy for Kelly. A big part of it was that. So my point is if you look ahead, most CEOs, I know it works so hard on making the donuts every day, but they’re not thinking they know what to do to make the donuts. Jeremie (27:24): But they haven’t thought about, Hey, is this machine about to go out? We need to re say there’s a hole in their plan. Ooh, that was really good. Really quick is that to go, Hey, what does thinking ahead look like? What season are we currently what season are we moving to? Or what season is my wife or child or teammate? What transition season are they moving into? And then how do I help them acclimate, grow into how do I help them transition? And I think there’s a lot there. So anyway, yeah, yeah, absolutely. That’s really cool. So tell me, Jeremie, tell me a little bit about GiANT today. What, what is your mission? What are you trying to accomplish? How’s that going? You said you were six or seven years into it. And one thing that strikes me is, you know, I, I was very fortunate and that I got to be very close to you when in those early days. Jeremie (28:24): And so I got to see what are the initial idea and how it started. And I see what’s happening today and it’s a little different. I think the goal is the same, but your tactic or your approach I think has changed quite a bit. So I’d like to hear about that a little bit. By the way. That’s, that’s not a dig at all. My business is very different today than it was 10 years ago also. But I just thought to hear about kind of what are you, what are you trying to accomplish and what’s, what’s new in the way that you’re approaching it? I’m going to reverse it and ask you to tell an explain. Matt, what is GiANT? Give me the one sentence. Yeah. So I’ll tell Mike, I think you’ll probably correct me because here’s the deal. You know, when I’m telling people about GiANT, I’m usually telling them, Hey, this is a leadership development company with people that work in an apprenticeship model with other leaders and rising leaders to help them take that information back to their businesses and organizations and to be able to utilize it within their team and carry it on their own. Jeremie (29:28): That’s, that’s usually how I explain it. So very good. No, I appreciate it. I think I was ready for you to say that I was completely wrong. No. What we’ve done is we’ve figured it out. We use the term people. Development leaders are a part of people development, but here’s what we figured out is that most organization do not, they don’t know how to scale their people. They the clothes, they have to do the donuts every day because they’re so fixated on just the everyday problems and issues. They’re accidental with people development. So you can think about all of the people of the organization. What would happen if we got them from a 68% to an 82 what would that lift do to an organization? And so what we figured out is that most leader development, most leader development doesn’t transfer very well. It’s not scalable. Jeremie (30:19): It doesn’t necessarily work. And most of it’s been built on 20th century approaches, butts in seats, come listen to the seminar, sell them a book. And the reality is in the 21st century, these little devices called smart phones have taken over our world and content from Netflix and Apple and Disney and whomever, all of the content and streaming, they basically have changed the way that we learn. So the 21st century approach is really, really simple. So what’s, it’s simple, it’s scalable and it needs to be sustainable. So we say it needs to be for an educated 13 year old. So what we’ve done is we’ve figured out how to help the cynical know-it-alls you don’t read anymore, which is all of us. And we’ve created visual tools to create a common language that’s objective language. And in that sense it’s like a mirror and it’s like, Hey Matt, this is what it looks like to be on the other side of me. Jeremie (31:20): Let me show you where I’m at. Where do you think, what do you think it’s like to be on the other side of you? By you looking at a mirror, you can change. So in essence, GiANT has figured out how to create a self awareness system for people to change themselves. And then they become better performers inside organization. So the long is short. We do scalable people development to increase human potential and increased performance of workers, employees, people, leaders, all of it. But the way we did it is we just mimicked Netflix Peloton in creating edutainment. And we started creating these categories. We call them everyone or $4 and 99 cents a month. People can take scalable people development and start using it for $49 a month. A Sherpa, which we call a leader. Anyone who leads people as a Sherpa on Mount Everest, a leader has to climb and help climbers. They have to perform and help performers. So that is a leader. We call him the Sherpas. So we have these different levels and layers and so we basically created it for a subscription so we can play and partner with consultants, trainers, we can play and partner with Matt (32:39): Companies directly like Rocket IT, like the Gwinnett chamber. Matt (32:43): Anyone can use and partner with us. And we become like a wholesaler or reseller to people who wants to do scalable people development. So as far as we know, we’ve been told this by so many companies that we work with. We are the very first people development SaaS business because they have figured out how to scale it and we think we have, we know we, we know our content works, we just found a platform to partner in maps with our content and that’s what we’ve built ourselves. So that’s what we’re doing. We’re basically trying to change the style and the standard of leadership around the world. Oh is that all? That’s a right, that’s a, that’s a lofty goal. So in the time that I’ve known you, you’ve produced these amazing events through a catalyst and leader cast where literally thousands of people would congregate on a particular location and see speakers live, talk about various aspects of human relationships and, and a drive and leadership and all kinds of cool stuff. Matt (33:48): You’ve written books and sold a bunch of books. And so that’s something that I think you’re pretty good at. I’ve seen you lead smaller groups through longer programs. And so you’ve had a program in the past called an executive core and then XCOR a year long program bring, bringing people together and going through an apprenticeship journey. And now and I remember actually when you started using videos so that people could take that certain lessons more than just soundbites but really a certain lesson back and be able to listen to it over and over again because the recall works better if we’ve heard something multiple times. And so using the video to supplement that I think was a a great idea. And you’re right, I know, you know, I remember growing up, if something was wrong with my car, I’d drive down to the auto repair shop and I’d spend the big bucks on the thick Chilton book. Matt (34:43): You remember those? I had like all the schematics and then everything you want to know about a particular model of car. And that’s, that’s how you learn. These days I’m jumping on YouTube, you know, that’s probably the first place I’m going to go Reddit or YouTube or something like that. And I’m trying to learn that way. And so it sounds like all, all of the, you know, the events and the you call them Sherpas, but the idea of working with a consultant or a leader to kind of walk us through a program, I still do the the programs for small groups of peers working together, right? All of that is centered around this platform that you’ve built to share the video content. So as the idea that somebody like rocket, it could just skip to the end and okay, I’m going to go sign up for this video. Either way, it depends on the company and that’s the beautiful thing is the flexibility of either or. Some people want high touch, Jeremie (35:36): Some want high tech, some people want high tech and high touch. It’s Nan is what makes the most sense for the organization. And that’s what we’ve been able to build. What we realize is that progress is a process. Jeremie (35:48): So we’re in the past, come watch my big event. We’ve aggregated all these speakers after a catalyst or leader tasks about one week out, we were a memory. Then they’re on to the next thing. It wasn’t good enough. It wasn’t bad. It just wasn’t good enough for me. I wanted to see transformation and I realize that transformed habits, behavior, that’s transformation over time. And it doesn’t happen when someone points a finger and says, Matt, you’d need to change. It happens when Matt looks in the mirror and it goes, Oh my gosh, I need to change. So how do I get you to look in a mirror? So what we’ve done is we’ve created these tools and we got, Hey, look, 10 minutes a week. What if you jump on Sherpa training 10 minutes a week? Here’s the video we want you to watch. Here’s a tool we want you to think about a support challenge matrix to myself, my dominating myself. Jeremie (36:40): Am I liberating myself? Am I abdicating right now? We want you to analyze that and then we want you to get healthy. We call it 100x so we want you to get 100% healthy and then we want you to learn how to multiply. We’ve just found that most people are 75 plus generally healthy and they’re positively reactive. Hey Matt, if my door is always open, do you ever need me to come see me? Positively? Reactive leader is completely different than a positively productive leader and we just got some intentional with our families, with ourselves. Now we’ve packaged this and we’ve figured it out. We can scale, we can scale people develop inside a company for $250 a month or $50 a month. It’s just depending on what you want or if you want help, it can be, you know, bring in a consultant or a guide. Jeremie (37:37): So the beauty of it is that we’ve given a system now that enables you, depending on where you’re at, to use what you need, not to try to force you onto something that you don’t really need. And sometimes people have overpower if too much people and sometimes they don’t have enough. And that’s the adaptability that you can use with technology. So we’ve just taken our content and we’ve made it, it already worked. You’ve experienced it. We work with the U S air force, Google, Leidos, Biogen, Pfizer, big companies and small companies. It works anywhere. It works wherever there’s people. And what we figured out those now leveraging technology in the same way that all of us are pretty comfortable with Netflix. We’re pretty comfortable with Hulu or whatever, aggregate, whatever platform you use. So in the same way people are becoming comfortable with GiANT and other organizations. So you mentioned these visual tools a couple of times then you mentioned Matt (38:35): One of my favorites with called the support challenge matrix. Can you tell us a little bit more about what you mean by a, a visual tool for those that have not worked with GiANT before and don’t know maybe what you’re talking about? Tell us a little bit about that. Jeremie (38:49): Yeah, so we basically created these big concepts and put them into a visual form so that people can write them on a cocktail napkin. We have about 50 of these tools. When you learn a tool and can teach it to someone else, that’s when you learn and that’s where most of the development breaks down because it’s all about you learning, but you don’t no how to transfer. So we simply provide a way for people to transfer. Matt (39:15): Nice. So this platform that you’re talking about, Jeremie (39:21): Giant TV. So what we’re calling is GiANT is the platform is GiANT.tv. And if you want, do you want to go try it out? It’s GiANT.tv/JK and that, that’s a 30 day trial. Just GiANT.tv/JK and or do a demo and a have one of our teams do a demo and show you how it works for your team. Matt (39:45): Awesome. Hey, I know we need to wrap up pretty quick, so I want to get to our lightning round. I’ve got just three or four questions for you. Super quick. Can you tell me one person in your life that’s had a profound impact on your journey? Jeremie (39:58): Again, in John Kreegan, he was my professor. He just, Oh, he was the guy who went and started the business in Russia. Gave me the Virginia who says you can. Matt (40:07): Awesome. What’s the single most important lesson you’ve learned in your professional career? One thing, Jeremie (40:12): It’s a completely, okay, just grew up and if you screw up, it’s okay. You learn from it. And I’m very comfortable with being a screw up. Matt (40:25): We do make a mistakes is unavoidable, right? Right. Learning from them is a key part of that. I’ll make the same mistake over again. Any books or favorite podcasts you’re listening to these days? Jeremie (40:37): You know, I read biographies, I’m on Eisenhower biography right now and I’m working, I’m talking about a new book in my head on infrastructure. That’s pretty cool. So I’m kind of consumed with Dwight Eisenhower. Matt (40:50): Nice. And then I do want to make sure we touch on podcasts because you’ve done a lot of podcasting. Tell us about your favorite podcasts. Jeremie (40:58): We do. It would be the Rocket IT Podcast. What’s another, what’s your second favorite? You know, it’s so funny, I listened to history podcasts, so I listened to interest in a lot of different variations. And then we have our own pockets. The Steve, I do the Liberator Podcast. So that’s, that’s what we do, you know, and so it’s like well not while we do this, one of the things we do, but I, I just, I enjoy documentaries probably even more than podcasts, honestly and mostly. Matt (41:32): Very cool. All right. So I want to make sure that folks know how to reach GiANT, how to reach you. You gave us one URL to visit GiANT.tv/JK correct. Okay. Any, any other way that we shut down to get in touch with GiANT? I think that’s the best way. You know, I was interested in checkout Jeremiekubicek.com for speaking and those things but or GiANT speakers.com but mostly it’s TV. Cool. Okay. On that note, I believe it’s time to wrap things up, Jeremie, from myself and our audience. Thank you for joining us today. So our listeners, thank you for tuning into the rocket ID business podcast. Should you have any suggestions on future topics you’d like to hear about, please email us at podcasts@rocketit.com finally, a quick plug for Rocket IT. We work with businesses, nonprofits in municipalities in the area of it, support, information security and strategic planning. To learn more about Rocket IT and its services, simply visit Rocket IT.com thank you.

As you read this, organizations around the world have already begun to adapt to a new normal of conducting business. But through this sudden and disruptive change, how can leaders ensure their organization are making wise technology decisions? In this episode of the Rocket IT Podcast, the Gwinnett Chamber of Commerce hosts Eric Henderson, Rocket IT’s VP of Technology, to help audience members ensure that technology remains a healthy part their operations. From this insight, Eric provides audiences with a better understanding of where their next steps should lie, giving them confidence in their business’ productivity and security through this rapid transition to remote working. After a review of what should have been considered in the short-term, Eric highlights areas of concern that should be addressed for long-term success in a remote working environment. In This Episode, You’ll Hear More About… How to classify a business’ model for telecommuting The best physical devices for the job How to establish reliable networks What to do about incoming calls How to keep collaboration and communication strong The importance of engagement How to boost cybersecurity The steps to address long-term impacts of working from home Contact Information Rocket IT | marketing@rocketit.com | 770-441-2520 Gwinnett Chamber of Commerce | info@gwinnettchamber.org | 770-232-3000 Resources Mentioned gwinnettchamber.org Stay-at-Home Ordinance Like What Your Heard? Give Us Some Feedback! podcasts@rocketit.com Show Transcript Nick (00:16): Good morning everybody. This is Nick Masino. I’m the president CEO of the Gwinnett Chamber, we’re very excited for you to join us. We are hosting this call with our, our actual it vendor, which is Rocket IT. And before I introduce our speaker, I want to just real quickly let you know a couple of things. First of all, we’re here and we’re still operating the majority of our staff probably like you are operating remotely. We do have a crew between six and 10 people here at the chamber. Obviously we have been for weeks following all the CDC and who guidelines and I know that you all are as well and we want to thank a Rocket IT for their ongoing support. So without further ado, it is my great pleasure to introduce not only a trusted vendor, but also a friend of ours, Eric Henderson, VP of Technology at Rocket IT, who’s been supporting us for probably over a decade. And so Eric, thank you for presenting this today. Eric (01:16): Thank you for having me. Thank you. Hello everyone. I’m not coming to you live from the Gwinnett chamber. I’m coming to you live from my guest bedroom in lovely Buford, Georgia rock and I T’s been working from home for about two weeks now and we have been working very diligently long before that two week time period on the topic of business continuity. And so when we originally put this content together, our original focus was, okay, what is the technology people need to get up and running very quickly? Because there are many businesses that are essential that could be done from home, but they just don’t have the stuff ready. And as the planning and evolution of this entire situation around the pandemic develop, we realized, okay, there’s going to be more of a long-term thing. And so we’re going to start out by talking a little bit about the context and framework for all this and then we’ll go into some specific technology considerations and then we will talk about some more long-term things. Eric (02:14): So, okay, so what is the goal? The goal is what is the right balance of being able to work and not putting my employees at any sort of risk. And so we’re going to talk a lot about information work and physical work. I think this is a fairly easily understood concept. Basically information work is anything that does not require you to physically operate a piece of machinery, interact with a customer, interact with a vendor, put something together that you’ve shipped, any sort of logistics work like that. So as an example, I can give you how this looks at rock and it. So Rocket IT is an IT services firm. That means the vast majority of work, we involves a person sitting in a computer manipulating that computer in some way. So they might be remotely working with a client, they might be working with a computer that is their own personal computer. Eric (03:10): They might be connecting to some sort of cloud technology and, and modifying it there. So you might say, Oh, no big deal, Rocket IT can just work from home. No big problem. But the issue is that we do actually have physical work to our to what we do. As an example, we deploy desktops, laptops, printers, servers, ups is networking equipment. And so it’s a pretty big issue. If our office isn’t open and our client’s offices aren’t open because our clients have critical needs for that. And so the way I want you to think about this is in my organization, how much work is information? How much work is physical? Is there any physical work that I’ve been that I can do without, or is there any physical work that I could do once a week or once a month or every other week? Eric (03:59): That sort of thing. So in practice, there are three types of businesses. Every business has to fit into one of these categories. There are some businesses that are 100% informational. The businesses that fit in this category and generally would be something like an engineering firm. The best way I’ve ever heard it described is that there is a large class of people that all they do is sell PDFs. So lawyers sell PDFs, engineers sell PDFs other types of professional services firms. Often all they’re really doing is taking their expertise and their knowledge and their systems and their best practices, putting it into written language. And then sending a PDF. And that PDF could be worth many thousands of dollars depending on what’s included. And then you have businesses that are physical only. So restaurants are physical, warehouses are physical, most manufacturing facilities are entirely physical. And then I think the most businesses fall somewhere in between, as I’ve already explained with Rocket IT, Rocket IT is hybrid, we’re probably 90% informational, 10% physical. Eric (05:02): Some of our manufacturing clients are probably 90% physical and 10% informational. They do have some employees that do drafting work, estimating, engineering, sales planning, that sort of work. And that work can all be done from home. And so they’ve made accommodations to, to to handle that. That’s the introductory statement. Let’s talk about the short term considerations for working from home. So as Nick mentioned, Gwinnett County and the 16 cities are gonna issued a shelter at home order and it made specific provisions for classifying what a business is to be declared essential or not essential. Even within that order, even if you are essential, I’m sure if you work for a business that’s essential or you own a business that’s essential, you still are having a lot of pressure for those employees to work from home just because socially and based on what Governor Kemp has said, that’s really where you need to be. Eric (06:01): And so you may have to be thinking about what kind of technology do you need. So recognize he believes very strongly in a model of operational maturity. And so operational maturity is a measure how sophisticated and given technology or processes it’s rated on a one to five scale. It was originally developed by the department of defense to evaluate the disaster preparedness of various government agencies. And so everything I’m about to describe here is being measured on a scale of one to five and operational maturity. So if somebody wants to work from home and they’ve never worked from home, there’s rough four ways that they can do that. In terms of what physical device they use. One, they can use a work laptop. And if you have laptops and your employees already have laptops and they’re ready to take them home. This is a non issue for you. Eric (06:51): Many of our clients, it didn’t mean anything that they had to work from home because they already were already very worked from home friendly. And the reason this is the best case scenario is a control and consistency. So there’s an incredible amount of disruption in the world right now. There’s an incredible amount of chaos. And so if your employees don’t have to think, Oh, what’s my password to log into this computer? Or how do I power this computer on, or how do I connect to wireless on this computer? They don’t have to think about any of those things. It’s going to be easier for them to work. Also, from a security perspective, they have all the same suite of security systems installed on their work laptop that they would in the office. And so as we’ll see on some of these other options down the line, that can be an issue down the line from there. Eric (07:39): And I was actually very surprised at the number of our clients that wanted to do this because work laptops is what every it guy across the entire earth was saying was the best option. The world’s supply of business quality, laptops, laptops, they’re in the 18 to $1,500 range, went to completely zero stock. So once there were no laptops available, employers were full of ingenuity and said, you know what, employees take your desktop call at home. And so we had an incredible number of employees that went to the office, got their desktop, their monitor, their speaker, their mouth, the computer, all the cables. They dragged into their house and they drag it to whichever room, had their wifi router in it and they plugged it all in and they got us to help them configure it so that it was on the network. Now this isn’t good as a laptop? Eric (08:30): No, this, this was fairly disruptive. You probably looking at a three to five hour loss of productivity for each employee that’s doing this. But if you couldn’t get a laptop then, I mean, what else are you going to do? I guess that’s the next best option. Okay. Third option would be a tablet. So when I say tablet here, I’m talking about a a Amazon fire tablet or a iPad. I’m not talking like a surface type device. Surface device would be more like a laptop, but for some employees, particularly employees that particularly spend most of their time in meetings or in phone calls, it is entirely possible to do their full workflow from an iPad or a Samsung tablet. The capabilities of the devices has merged very closely to what a laptop can do. And so really the core problem is just ergonomics and access to a keyboard. Eric (09:22): The first option, and this is the lowest operational maturity, would be to use a home computer. Now why am I being a buzzkill on home computers? The problem with home computers is that from a from the view of control and security, there is no way that you can ensure that a home computer is secure. There’s no way you can ensure that the other members of your employee’s household aren’t downloading things. They shouldn’t be on to that computer and causing a potential security breach. So best practice is you make every effort available to offer laptops, desktops, and tablets purchased by the employer instead of Home PCs. When you start using home PCs, you’re basically introducing risk to the situation and you really don’t want a global pandemic to be occurring and you’d have a major security breach at the same time. And by allowing home computers onto your network and by allowing employees to use those home computers to connect to your corporate data and download that data and sync up to that data and type in your passwords on that computer, you’re exposing the organization to risk. Eric (10:34): Same idea with them. Operational maturity. Now that we have a piece of hardware at the employee’s home, we need to make a provision for them to be able to connect remotely. So generally speaking, there’s three different ways to do that. See these more as three different categories and not exactly specific solution named here. The first one, you’ve worked in a larger organization or an organization that has a traditional network, which means premise servers located in an office or a data center. It’s almost always going to involve a VPN and then potentially a terminal server. So if you’ve ever used the program, remote desktop connection on your computer or reviews the Cisco VPN, a watch guard VPN and Affordanet VPN, Sonic wall VPN, this is the traditional way of doing it and for many, many, many users trying to connect it once it works great. The largest companies in the world still using some form of technology similar to this next option would be under a VPN situation. Eric (11:37): Your computer is at your house, you connect to the office, and then you connect up to that office and you do all the work from a terminal server. Now let’s say, well, March 31st I don’t have a terminal server, Eric, what am I going to do about that? Well, that really depends on what type of files you are accessing. So if you are a graphic designer, let’s say, and your files are very large, so you’re looking at large video files, large images, large audio files, it’s not going to work real well for you to try and pull that file back and forth between your house and the office. One of the issues with using a VPN is that the download speed is often very slow and the reason it’s slow is because your home internet connection and the office center connection are bottlenecks and all these security software involved in keeping that connection secure slows it all down. Eric (12:30): So if you’ve ever worked from home and thought, man, I wish this VPN was faster, it might be because of the types of files that you’re accessing don’t work very well over VPN. I’m probably the most classic example of this is QuickBooks. Do you try and use QuickBooks over VPN? You’re guaranteed to have a terrible experience. It can take as long as 30 to 60 seconds per transaction to try and do that over a VPN. So that brings us to our second option here using either log me in or go to my PC. Under this model you would leave a computer in the office and then from a work computer at your house you would look at the desktop of that computer. And by doing that you’re still doing all your work in the office. You’re just viewing that from, from your home. And this is best as mentioned for graphic designers, engineers, anyone accessing large files. Eric (13:20): And then the third option, and this is honestly if you started a business in the last five years, it’s very likely that your organization is entirely focused on this anyway, is using some sort of cloud applications. So what I’m talking about here is Dropbox, one drive, Google drive, box.net. Any sort of system like this where it sinks your files, iCloud would be an example as well. These solutions aren’t using a server at your office. These solutions sync the file between your computer and then up to the cloud. And by doing that, it doesn’t matter where you are, it doesn’t matter if future office and at your house or anywhere else. I think everything I’ve shared so far, if you’ve been working from home for a week or two, you’ve probably already had to figure out and if you’re starting to work from home now that you’re in the process of figuring out. Eric (14:09): The next thing that usually comes up is how, what am I going to do about phone calls and depending on the type of organization you are, this could be a complete non issue or this could be absolutely critical to what you do. It really depends on how your organization processes phone calls. We have some clients that their phone system could go down and they wouldn’t even notice because they only get one or two calls a day and we have other clients where their phone is literally what keeps them in business and if that stopped working then in the blind, so same concepts around operational maturity apply here. There are roughly three different ways to handle this. One. If you have a phone system where you don’t really know how to get support for it, you don’t know how to log into it, you know, anything like that, you can call your phone company and say, will you forward all calls that come to my business as main number to a specific cell phone? Eric (15:02): This would usually work well if you have very low call volume and that the nature of those calls all are going to one or two different people. You’re going to run into some challenges when if that person is expected to act as an operator and routing calls from this person, this person, conferences person and none of that’s really gonna work very well. You would just be forwarding this number and to make sure that you don’t drop calls. I actually called a restaurant last week to see if they were open and imported to someone’s cell phone and it went to like their personal cell phone message. Is this the most professional thing in the world? No, not exactly, but it will cover you in a pinch and if that’s the only option you have, it will work. Second would be if you have a premise phone system, so similar to having premise servers, you could have a premise phone system and depending on the age and function of that system, it is possible to route specific extension to specific cell phones. Eric (15:57): And so you would keep your business on system operational and then if it needed to route when you dial and say my extension, it would ring directly to my cell phone. From the outside colors perspective, this is just as good as what you had before. And then a cloud phone system, very similar to the cloud file system. The cloud phone system doesn’t care where you are in the world as long as you have internet. So all places are the same. So if you use three CX, RingCentral, grand central, grasshopper, Microsoft teams, all of these have builtin phone systems and they’re not particularly worried about where you are to get calls. The next consideration. And I would say this, I reckon it were, we really felt this about one weekend. So before the pandemic, various team members at, Rocket IT would work from home for a day, a couple of days, like maybe work would be deep being done to their house or they’d have to stay home with a child or they might just be a little under the weather and they would say home for a day or two and it wouldn’t be any big issue. Eric (16:57): But the issue is once you start working at home from home permanently it can be kind of a lonely experience. I’ve certainly experienced this myself, honestly, not being able to really go out anywhere because of the pandemic has made that worse. And so you want to make sure that your team members’ morale stays up. And one way to do that, it’s giving them the tools they need to be able to easily connect with each other. So when I say connect, I don’t mean, Oh, let’s have a scheduled meeting at 10:30 AM on Tuesday every week. I mean, Hey, can I just hop over and do a quick video chat with you and just check in and see how your kids are doing, see how your spouse is doing, see how you’re holding up on the pandemics. If you need anything. Our CEO, Matt and many of you know him has done an excellent job with this. Eric (17:43): He’ll sometimes just call over to me and check in, see how I’m doing. There’s no, there’s no meeting agenda, no action item or anything he really wants to chat about. So you got a couple options. These aren’t necessarily listed in operational maturity other than using only email and phone is probably the lowest operational, operationally mature issue here. So if you have a team that is that likely to use video chat or just as already working in a fairly disjointed way, then you probably could get away with that. The rest of the world has standardized on these other three platforms and Microsoft teams. So this is part of the office three 65 now Microsoft 365 platform. Rocket IT uses this pretty substantially. I’ve already been on three teams call or three teams calls and video calls this morning. We do a huddle at 8:00 AM and then I’ve got a couple other meetings. Eric (18:38): The, we’ll call it open source, more Google friendly alternative. It’s called Slack. You may have heard of Slack. Slack is a collaboration platform started out just as chat, so you could do one to many chat. You could do one on one chat and you can have small teams in there, but they have expanded to include audio, video integrations with pretty much every major software platform. And then generally best serve for more formal meetings. I would say it has a little more overhead than using teams or Slack the teams or Slack, I can one click on a on a button and it will initiate a video call either with a whole team or an individual and it’ll be off and running. Zoom has, it’s like more like two to four clicks to get that done. But also, interestingly, the platform we’re on right now and so it’s well-served for something like a webinar where we want to do one dominion communication. Eric (19:36): We’ve talked through technology, we talked through hardware, remote access file systems, phone systems and collaboration tools. Now we want to kind of shift gears into long-term considerations and what are, what do I mean when I say long-term? So COVID-19 you know, began in late December and then gradually made its way into Italy and South Korea and Germany and the United Kingdom. And then early March became a very quickly rising concern in the United States. And a core question that people have been asking pretty much thanks to the minute stuff started shutting down is when is this going to be over? Like why can’t somebody just tell me what day I get to go back to the office, what day do I get to go back to having concerts or going to Disney world or going to festivals or anything like that. And the answer is no one really knows. Eric (20:33): But I will say that I spent a lot of time considering this and have asked a lot of very well-informed people and I think most of the world is kind of settled in for all of April and all of may. So us onto a June 1st kind of get back into it. This was, this was kind of a hard fact for me. It, it occurred to me that I’ve been working from home two weeks and that there were 10 weeks to go, or I should say two weeks and then a total of eight more weeks, so a total of 10 weeks, which means arguably we’re 20% into this. Am I qualified to say that it’s exactly going to be June 1st? Not really. I don’t think anyone has a great model that says exactly when it will be. I will say that the decisions of the businesses that I interact with seem to be leaning in this direction. Eric (21:24): Some of our clients, some of the organizations sending me promotions seem to lean towards June 1st is really when it’s going to be, and so while what I’ve shared so far in this webinar will help you get the technology up and running to work from home. There are some other considerations that come up that the longer this goes on, the more important these things become. So let’s talk about some of those. Let’s talk about Phishing, Phishing with a P H. So a phishing with a P H in a it context. Basically means sending you a form of communication that relies on and prayers on your trust and tries to trick you into doing something that will harm you. Almost always. Some sort of financial transaction, some sort of download that will harm your computer and your corporate network or giving up your password to something so they can use it for further attacks. Eric (22:18): Phishing has been very popular in the last five to seven years. Many of the clients Rocket IT works with engage in testing. So what we do in these tests is we send a fake email that looks like a phishing email. It’s actually harmless and we keep track of which employees click it and which employees don’t. And if you click it, then you are reckoned as a clicker and you really, really don’t want to be a clicker. Someone who clicks phishing emails is roughly the same type of security hazard as a security guard that leaves the door unlocked or leaves the alarm off in the building that you’re asking them to secure the digital equivalent of that. Why am I bringing a phishing now? Well, I don’t know. The organization we work with to do phishing testing, I had a call with them late last week and they said they made a fake phishing email that imitated the IRS sending out these stimulus checks associated with the stimulus bill that was passed last week and they, they just did a test and send it out to their clients and said, let’s see how many of them click this. Eric (23:22): They had 80% of people clicking it. So essentially that means if an attacker is capable of getting a phishing email that looks like the IRS is government checks, noting that the IRS is not going to email you a check, then you have an incredibly high risk if your employees are not made aware of that. And so these people are criminals and they are very enterprising. They’re very smart and they are not above whatsoever taking taking any barriers with people’s fear and taking advantage of the chaos to get their attacks onto your computer. So if you hear nothing else looking into phishing testing, looking into these tests around either COVID-19 or the stimulus or something related to that is probably the biggest thing you could do to boost your security during this time. Secondly, regular patching, we want to make sure the computer stay up to date. Eric (24:20): One of the many thorns in the side of many it systems administrators is when computers are at home, it’s very difficult for those it administrators to pass them because they don’t have control into them. So you got to make sure that just because we’re working from home doesn’t mean we can let patching slide. And then third, this was me just harping on something I’ve already brought up. But home computers, we really got to keep them off of corporate networks. You have no controls in place whatsoever about either patching or phishing testing. So as the world’s laptop supply improves a little bit strongly recommended to migrate users with home PCs to corporately on PCs. If you’re in any sort of business where you sell and you do that via a meeting or a a written proposal, you probably have already had to figure out ways to do this. Eric (25:13): Right now, many organizations would have preferred or only done business via a face to face meeting. Our organization is, is one such that we wouldn’t present a major proposal over email and we’d try not to do it over meeting. If we can help it, we would want to do that in person. But that’s not how the world is right now. Even if you still prefer that right now, many of your clients are not going to be willing to meet with you. They’re not going to even understand why you’re asking, especially if their office is closed. So you really need to establish a framework for how to digitally generate proposals. We use a system called proposal fi fantastic. It’s an expensive, I think we pay something like $100 per month for the entirety of Rocket IT to be able to generate proposals. Those proposals go out to clients, they look very professional and has these signature capabilities built into it, lets you know when the clients viewed the proposal works great. Eric (26:07): And then you need to establish a platform for your, all of your employees that are client facing to be able to do meetings and you want to keep it to one platform just to reduce confusion. I will say, and you should look at Zoom stock price for evidence of this, but the world seems to have pretty well standardized on to zoom. Certainly there are sections of employees that use WebEx, go to meeting Amazon, Chime, Google Hangouts, even in some cases Skype for business. But if you send somebody a zoom link, the vast majority of business employees already have it on their computer and they don’t even really have to think about it. There’s just something, it’s not even a roadblocks or doing business. It’s something that’s very easily going to be understood and accepted and you’re not going to have a lot of issues with audio because it might be the 50th zoom call they’ve had that week. Eric (26:59): Okay. Maintenance of networks. So if you have servers at your office and your office is closed, you sadly still have to maintain those servers, which means I see people probably still need to get access to those servers and they still need a way to access them. And so many of the problems we’re describing and trying to mitigate here are things that could have happened anyway but are just a little more annoying or a little more troublesome if they happened during this pandemic Rocket IT, as an example, has severely limited how many engineers we’re sending on site. For one, many of our client offices are closed and for two, our employees have a valid concern to say, Hey, if I don’t need to go onsite, I don’t see the need for me to go onsite at all. So we’re only sending engineers on site generally after hours. Eric (27:55): And generally during times when our client’s employees are not in high quantities and congregating in those offices. Second item here is if I am correct and this goes another eight weeks, I mean we already know that the president has extended the social distancing guidelines through April 30th so that’s at least another four weeks, 30 days. It’s probably worth checking in with your team members to see if they’re getting their work done efficiently and it may be worth a reimbursing them to temporarily boost their internet speeds at their homes. So as you probably know, spectrum, xfinity, and AT&T offer a wide range of packages and it could be worth bouncing and employees that are not from say the $29 a month plan up to the $49 a month plan so that they can work efficiently, that extra $20 a month probably totally worth any extra work that they could accomplish. Eric (28:55): So home peripherals, so we’ve talked about employees taking their work, laptop home. The issue with a work laptop is that it’s not really built for sitting in front of all day, usually a little too low. You have to bend your neck down like this to look down at the screen. And so most corporate monitors put the monitors up on the wall so that you can have your head in an even position and look directly at the monitor. So if your employees have multiple monitors, you should strongly consider whether they can add a time when it’s just them go to the office, grab a monitor, grab a keyboard, grab a speaker, the way we’re structuring this is we just ask them to email their supervisor, the model members of the equipment that they took, not because we think they’re going to steal it, just to make sure that we keep track of all of our assets. Eric (29:48): And we also want to make sure that once this is all over that they bring, bring all that stuff back. And then secondly, and I mentioned this earlier about Matt, but you know, check in on, on, on your teammates. One of the core benefits of having an office is that you cannot, you can read the body language and facial expressions of the people around you. So if they’re stressed or if they’re angry or if they’re having a hard time or they’re despairing of whatever problem they’re working on, and you can easily tell that that is not at all clear when you were working entirely remotely. You have to read tone into text messages. And sometimes getting on video with them might be the only way to to connect. Now that is all multiplied by the nature of where the news is right now as the number of cases worldwide in the United States continues to grow, it is generating a huge amount of anxiety and people both economically their health, they’re just not knowing exactly what’s going to happen. Eric (30:45): So strongly recommended. Just I think the way our CEO Matt high desert is, he’s trying to connect with every employee feels like about twice a week. He either chats them, texts them or just does a quick video call. Just ask how they’re doing, make sure that they, they need anything. He would’ve done this if we were in the office, he would have just walked around and said hello to everyone, see if there’s anything on anyone’s mind. But you have to be far more intentional about it when you are digitally connected because there’s no, there’s no easy way to do that inside of a chat program. You have to be very specific to go in there and do that. Finally engaging with people. So the case of rocket, it has been that in the last two weeks I’ve probably worked 60 or 70 hours. Each of the last two weeks. Eric (31:34): I’m among the most popular people on our client’s contact list because there’s a huge number consideration. Basically everything I just said for the last 20 or 30 minutes that every single one of our clients wanted to work out all at once. And so for us, at least at this point businesses booming so to speak. We’re not doing a lot of capital projects, but we have an incredibly high demand on the services that we provide. I am fully aware of the fact that for some of you and for some of your clients and your vendors, that is not the case. So if you do business, obviously with restaurants or any sort of company that is primarily driven by events or conferences, they do not have that same demand on their services right now. And so I’ve seen it tremendously on social media already, but just consider how you might promote or help those sort of businesses. Eric (32:28): Like if you know that you’re going to do business with vendor X after this is all over, consider trying to work out a contract with them that says, Hey, once this event is all over, one dependent mic has cooled off and everything’s good. I want to do business with you. I want to go ahead and get a contract drafted. I want to have a proposal for those services. You know, take a look at doing that and then figure out if you can use social media to promote what they do as well. I’ve been incredibly impressed with how businesses wanting to connect community. As I mentioned, I live in Buford. Businesses in the Gwinneyy community have started adapting to deal with this. I mean the, the emails that I get from restaurants in terms of contact with are touchless delivery and curbside service and all this different sort of thing has been incredible. Eric (33:19): And if you care about these businesses, then you need to do something about it so that when this was all over, they’re still there for you to enjoy them. Secondly community groups. So I think when a community, particularly the community foundation for Northeast Georgia has put together a website called Gwinnett cares, bought forward. It is a fantastic resource page Haven put that together and then promoting it on social media widely. Secondly, I personally created a Facebook group called Gwinnett/CoronavirusvirusCommunityAssistance. It’s just a resource for people to connect. I’ve already seen some wonderful things that the people in that group have done for each other in terms of, Hey, my kid doesn’t have a laptop and can’t do digital learning through even that kind County public schools. Because you know, you need a laptop to be able to log into that. And then the group was able to source laptops for that person. And on third food finder.us. Okay. All right, let’s see questions. So if you’d like to ask the question, I see several of you have already done that. You can email marketing@rocketit.com. Colleen (34:27): Hey Eric, it’s Colleen. Eric (34:30): Hi Colleen. Colleen (34:32): So I did get a question in the Q&A box and he was asking do you have a preference between log me in and go to my PC. Eric (34:42): Sure. Preferences around, log me in and go to my PC? No, not really. I think functionality wise they are extraordinarily similar. This product is become commoditized over the last 10 years. So really it just comes down to the question of how many computers that you want to access from a link. Cause they have very strange pricing plans where it’s like one to two computers is $20 but two to 10 computers is 60 and you know, 50 computers is like $600 or something like that. And some of them have monthly or annual commitments. So I would focus entirely on, on the economics and duration in which you intend to use this product, noting that even if the pandemic does only last an additional month, you may still want to use that product into the next couple of years. It could be something that you keep in your in your tool kit to make sure that you have remote even beyond the pandemic. Okay. if you do have any other further questions, you can submit them to marketing@rocketit.com. Nick (35:46): So that’s all that I have. Nick, do you want to hop on to any parting words? Let me just say that this was incredibly helpful. Appreciate your sound advice. Thank you for being there for the Gwinnett community and I hope you and your family and coworkers stay healthy and safe. Thanks Eric.

In this episode of the Rocket IT Business Podcast, we sit down with Holly Moore; an entrepreneur whose passion for leadership development and business strategy has led her on a 20-plus year journey through both corporate and nonprofit landscapes. From sailing international waters, to landing in the executive boardroom of a Fortune 500 company, Holly’s management insights have helped organizations expand their brands while increasing revenue growth. And now, with the recent launch of her new business, Hollis Strategies, Holly is looking to share these experiences; equipping like-minded leaders with the tools to grow the influence of their organizations. In This Episode, You’ll Hear More About… Steps to overcome team kryptonites How to analyze your inner Peace Index What it takes to become a healthy leader How to jump start an entrepreneurial journey  The importance of being adaptable in leadership positions What it takes to balance support and challenge within a team Why no experience should ever be considered a waste of time Successful businesses practices in both the for-profit and not-for-profit sectors Holly Moore Contact Information hollisstrategies.com Resources Mentioned Start. Social Media Success Stories for Every Brand Building a StoryBrand Dave Ramsey Podcast Like What You Heard? Give Us Some Feedback? podcasts@rocketit.com Show Transcript Matt (00:00:00): Hello and welcome to the Rocket IT business podcast. This is episode number 11 and I’m your host Matt Hyatt. Today I’m sitting across from Holly Moore, a longtime friend whose passion for leadership development and business strategy has led her on a 20 plus year journey through both corporate and nonprofit landscapes, Intro (00:00:33): [Music Plays] Matt (00:00:34): From sailing, international waters to landing, and the executive boardroom of a fortune 500 company. Holly’s management and sites have helped organizations expand their brands while increasing revenue growth. And now with the recent launch of our new business Hollis Strategies, Holly is looking to share these experiences, equipping like-minded leaders with the tools to grow the influence of their organizations. So without further ado, I’d like to welcome Holly to the show. Holly, it’s a pleasure to have you here. I’m so glad to be here. Thanks for having me. Absolutely. So, so set the stage a little bit. Yes, you and I are friends. We have known each other for gosh, going on 10 I think 10 years. Wow. A whole decade. A good long time. We went through a program or leaders in our local community called Leadership Gwinnett and got to know each other there. And we’ve stayed in touch. Yes. All good. So why don’t we start with this? What are you doing right now? What are you doing today? Holly (00:01:31): Well today I am the president of Hollis Strategies, which is a company I founded back in the summer of 2019 Matt, I just felt like I’d had a lot of experiences you alluded to in the introduction of a corporate career working in nonprofits, both a very large nonprofit as well as one that was smaller and really going through a decade of growth. And I felt that this season of my life I would like to be able to take the lessons that I have learned and really be able to use them to serve a variety of organizations. And so I am currently in my company working with for profit companies, a variety of nonprofits. And it really is all about how do you grow. So some are starting small and they’re trying to expand others. Maybe they’ve been at their business for 10 or 20 years, but they’re thinking we need to do something different for the next season. So I love to help companies grow. And as you and I have talked about so much, it’s so much depends on how are you developing and equipping the team and are you creating the right atmosphere for people to grow. So really coming along and helping organizations develop strategies around doing that. Matt (00:02:46): Awesome. So I got to ask; Hollis strategy, where did that come from? Holly (00:02:51): It’s my name, Hollis. So my whole entire life I’ve been known as Holly, but my name is actually Hollis and so Matt (00:02:58): We’ve known each other 10 years and Holly (00:03:00): You never told me your real name. So it was a way of actually honoring my parents and the name that they gave me. Matt (00:03:09): No, it was awesome. I did not know that all this time I’ve been calling you about the wrong name. I was so sorry. I’ve been Holly, my whole life. Just get to use that name. Awesome. So something we talked about recently that I think it’d be fun to kind of cover today in our show a little bit is you were talking about as various organizations are trying to grow and adapt, many times there’s a tendency to look for a system for a process. Somebody who’s walked those shoes before and and maybe take some shortcuts. You know, I’ve, you said you’ve been in business for 20 plus years. I’ve been in business for 20 plus years and certainly there’s a lot of pathfinding in that and we all make mistakes and we tried things that all not always pan out the way we thought. So if we can find somebody who’s done it before, then it would make sense that we would do that, maybe take a shortcut rather than reinventing the wheel. But what I found interesting about what you were saying is many of these systems get down to maybe the mechanics and the nuts and bolts. But what they don’t tell you is you’ve introduced people and everything goes crazy. Right? And so tell me a little bit about how you plan to work with organizations. And how the people, part of it really is central to what you’re trying to do. Holly (00:04:34): And I think you do that so well. And I just, with what you’ve done in 25 years of running Rocket IT, and you and I have talked about this a good bit and I’m all for learning different systems. I’m, I would say I’m still a student, Matt. I mean there’s so many systems out there for how people develop strategic plans. How do they create their goals or their big rocks and then what are their metrics or their key performance indicators and they have a strategic plan or an adaptive plan. And, and I’m for all that, we need it. Absolutely. But one of the things that I think is so important, and you and I have really talked about what, what’s the kind of culture and atmosphere that you create in a company where the plan can actually thrive and grow. And I think you have to back up. Holly (00:05:23): And it starts with what communication patterns exist and how were those relationships. Because sometimes, especially if we’re kind of hard charging business people and we want to meet these different goals, then you can almost want to go straight to are we executing on our strategy? Did we hit our goal? Did we hit our metric for that month? And, and I’ve just found, and some of these lessons I’ve learned the hard way through trial and error is that I’ve got to back up and say, do we actually communicate well? Does every voice around the, is it heard? Is it valued? Do I appreciate the different contributions from different team members when we’re making decisions? Are the people in the room that need to be in the room? Am I willing to actively seek dissenting voices that might challenge me a bit? And so is the communication skills there? Holly (00:06:18): And then have you developed strong relationships of trust? And I think when that foundation is laid then, the sky’s the limit of what that team can execute. But to go in and think we’re going to implement, you know, fill in the blank system, I think would be misguided. If you haven’t addressed the communication, the relationships first, right? Or people need to normally feel valued, but they need to feel heard. They need to be comfortable with expressing their opinions. Bringing challenge effectively is tough for a lot of people, including myself. And so yeah, those are, those are important skills, right? I mean, think about it, Matt, our opinion makes perfect sense to us, right? My opinion, I think it makes a lot of sense. My decisions make perfect sense to me. My logic makes perfect sense to me. And what I can try to do if I’m not careful is I can try to create an atmosphere where I just have a lot of people around me that are like me, that think like me. Holly (00:07:26): But then I’ve really shot myself in the foot and I’ve had to learn this the hard way. Matt, I, I tend to be very future oriented. I want to think about where we’re going and I’ve got a personality that the word can’t is not in my vocabulary, but that was, is not always helpful. And so you can wear people out around you. It can be become really intense. And so it’s how do I make sure am I listening to questions that people have? But have you thought about this is the timing right for this? And so just creating that kind of atmosphere where really what we’re talking about Matt, is how do you create an atmosphere where people feel completely safe to be who they are. We talk about, there’s a lot of writing right now in corporate America and in nonprofit as well, talking about psychological safety. Have you created an atmosphere that people feel safe to bring their true selves to speak what they, what they feel? And so I think that’s something that I’m continuing to learn about and wanting to help people put that in place. Great. Something you said reminded me of something that I was reading it or heard it on a podcast or something like that a couple of days ago. It was kind of interesting. You were talking about how Hey, things make perfect sense in your head, right? Your ideas are well thought Matt (00:08:56): Out through your brain, you know, that kind of thing. And what I was reading about was how all of us have our own reality. You know, I grew up in a certain environment with a certain kind of parents in a certain neighborhood, a certain kind of school. And with my own God-given brain and thoughts created a reality that makes perfect sense in my head, and as much as you and I, for example, have a lot in common, you grew up somewhere else with a different set of parents in a different scenario, different school, all those things, just different. And so your reality is in fact different. So our perspectives are different. So if we get in a room together, we might, it’s never happened before, but we might disagree about something, right? And both of us have a perfectly logical position in our argument. Matt (00:09:53): So navigating that, which becomes exponentially harder when you add more people to the mix, right? You know, going from a one person organization, okay, we all agree right now it’s a two person organization for personal organization and so on. It gets tougher and tougher for everyone to agree. And I would agree with you also about our tendency, especially when we’re trying to grow an organization, is going to be, well, I like me, I like the guy that I see in the mirror, so I’m just going to hire more people like me and then we’ll just roll up our sleeves and there’s no limit to what we can accomplish. But you know, I’m a flawed person. I don’t always have perfect visibility into everything. I don’t always make the best decisions. I think you and I have in common a shared interest in the future and a a unique ability to see clearly what might happen 10 years from now. Matt (00:10:52): I have a tough time seeing clearly what’s going to happen this afternoon or tomorrow in order to get where I want to go. But it’s very clear to me where we can go. And so I need people around me that are much more aware of all the little things that have to happen between right now and this evening and tomorrow morning and so on, in order to get to that place that I’ve clearly envisioned in my head. So that’s just an example of something that I think is so important that for many, including me, for years, it was just a blind spot. And so you can come in and help navigate that. It sounds like Holly (00:11:31): I do Matt and I would say, Matt (00:11:33): Mmm. Holly (00:11:34): A good friend of ours, Steve Cockrum always says, I can’t prevent you from making every mistake, but I can at least tell you all of my mistakes and maybe you can avoid them. So a lot of this has just been working for a couple of decades and so sometimes when I’m working with a client, I can just, it let me tell you, when I was at this juncture I did this and it didn’t turn out well or I didn’t get the outcome that I wanted. Here’s a lesson that I learned from that. And so I like to be able to be able to share that. Matt (00:12:08): Yeah. Well, one of the cool things about you is you have a pretty varied background. I mean you’ve got all kinds of fun stuff over the years. And I’d love to kind of spend some time on that because our, our listeners don’t know you yet. So let’s, let’s kind of walk through it. Holly (00:12:23): I always tell people I haven’t had a career. I’ve had a series, but you know, Matt, you and I know I love spending time, especially with younger leaders and mentoring them. And one thing that I’ve often shared is sometimes a young person will go to school and they will have a cause that they feel like, I’m going to devote my life to this cause or this is this particular field. And I could see myself being in this field and growing in developing, but I’m going to be in this field for the rest of my life. And when we’re eighteen, we always have perfect clarity, but what I have found in my own life though, Matt and now as I kind of looked back and reflected. I think that I feel almost a calling to fill a certain role. And I have been able to do that role in a variety of settings. Holly (00:13:13): And so I think it’s a good perspective to have on that, especially when people think, well, is there something wrong with me? Because I did this for three years and I did that for two. I would say, you want there to be purpose about what we’re doing. We’re not just bopping around, but having said that, I have been able to fulfill the role that I feel like I’m uniquely qualified to fill, but do it in a variety of settings. And I think that’s just as satisfying and just as career worthy in someone that may have had just one long stretch in a place for two decades. So yes. So you can, when you think about what I’ve done, I’ve done a variety of things for me. There’s a common theme in all of it. Matt (00:13:57): Well, what I’d be curious about is. And now that you’ve people brought up the young folks, if you can remember back, you know, I know, I think back when I was a teenager, some of the things I was thinking about and what I thought I might do someday were you thinking about those things too. Holly (00:14:11): I really wasn’t sure what I wanted to do, but when I left to go to college, Matt, I knew I wanted to do something. Helping people. Yeah. I just, I wanted to do something that was connected with people, helping people. So when I went out for my freshman year, I was leaning toward potentially doing social work, but through between my freshman and sophomore years, I had a chance to do a job in a hospital and just got exposed to the field of nursing. And so I actually got my bachelor’s of science in nursing. Wow. And was that an internship program or I’m just curious? No, I just went to work at a hospital they had, there was a pharmacy in a hospital and I was the person that would run the, the prescriptions up to all the floors in the hospital. And so I just got a great perspective of things and just really thought, I think nursing is what I want to do and that here’s the cool thing is I just believe that no experience we have in life is wasted everything. Holly (00:15:12): It’s layer upon, layer upon layer. And so even now at this stage in my career, there are things that I did in a job in my twenties that is still serving me well. So for example, I’m not doing hands on clinical nursing anymore, but the nursing process is you do a thorough assessment, you diagnose the problem, you develop an action plan and you evaluate its effectiveness. And I tell people, I do that every single day. And I think that that taught me how to be a really good problem solver. And so now when I’m working with my clients, it’s what’s really going on. Can we pinpoint what’s the problem that we’re trying to solve? What could we do that would really address that? And then are we constantly saying, is it working? What modifications do we need to make? And so again, I just think no, officially it has application. Holly (00:16:08): It does. You know it’s funny, my wife Maureen, who worked in the medical field, I think you knew that, she was an ophthalmic tech and she picked up something working as an ophthalmic tech that we still use a Rocket IT. And that is a process of learning a new skill. Maybe this is common in other medical fields. I think it might be, but it was watch it once and then teach someone else. Do those three things. You probably have got it kind of down Pat. Isn’t that great? So I love it. It’s, you can take some of those things that you learned way back when and just carry it forward and still has application and you just keep applying. But it’s not always positive. Right? So there are, and what I mean by that is we can often build even on negative experiences. Absolutely. Some of it is in the form of, okay, well I’m not going to make that mistake again. Holly (00:17:05): Right. But then I know I’ve had some experiences in the past that still counting guide my decisions today. Probably make better decisions. I think so. I mean as you go through life, I mean I look back at, you know, people that I worked with, you know, even 20 years ago, then I might say, wow, that was a really challenging, especially in my corporate career, just had some challenging situations. But one of the people that I worked with, he had a mantra mat that he would always say we manage by fact. And so even though there were things about his leadership style that I personally don’t want to emulate, I still think about that statement managed by fat all the time because it makes me think when I’m getting ready to make a decision, have I asked the right questions? Have I sought counsel, have I really, really done my homework so that I’m not making decisions in a vacuum? So I think I’ve wanted to challenge myself and other people. We, again, we can glean and learn something from every single experience and I think we want to be on the lookout to find what is that nugget I can take with me instead of kind of feeling jaded and say, well, that wasn’t a super positive experience, so I’m just, I’m going to completely put it on the shelf. I would argue, no, there’s things that you can carry with you that are going to help. Matt (00:18:30): Right? I think a little bit about how we make decisions. One of the things that I have learned about myself is I tend to be very fact-based. What I’m very interested in discovering is what is, what is the truth. Sounds almost too, I don’t know, elevated for the, what I’m trying to get across, but what is, what is the fact or what is the current condition? And there’s not a lot of emotion tied to that. It just is. And so let’s attack what is, and so I’ll spend a lot of time trying to dig into what is just earlier today I met with a prospective vendor that I am acquainted with, but I don’t really know. And so our time together was you listening to him talking and trying to determine for myself, okay, what is, what’s present? But I think other folks and my wife I would include in this club would be more about seeking almost a I want to call it an emotional, maybe it is, it’s a connection. Matt (00:19:44): She’s seeking a connection. What do we, you know, what do I have in common with the person across the desk from me and where can we find common ground, which is something I’m not as good I want, I’m looking to break it, right. I’m looking for what are the cracks and the flaws, the flies in the ointment versus I think she is more looking for what are the common veins and the more connections and it’s just a difference now put together. That’s a pretty powerful force, right? That works really well. It can, it can sometimes be just a difference of opinion, but together working in harmony, we’re able to make some pretty big decisions together. So all that to say, I’d love to hear what, what did, how do you think you make decisions? Where, where, where does that come from in you? How do you evaluate things? Holly (00:20:36): I love it. I’m going to circle back because I’ve got a comment about you and Maureen. But I would say Matt, probably just my just my wiring, just kind of who I am. For anybody that’s listening, a fan of Myers-Briggs, I would lean more towards intuition as opposed to sensing. Sometimes I’m looking and I’m seeing what’s the pattern, what’s the trend? I will sometimes just think my gut is just telling me this is the right thing. But then also I do really filter things through people. And so I am thinking about how is that decision, how’s that going to impact people? But I always tell people that that doesn’t mean you can’t make a hard decision. When I was in my corporate career, we did a lot of merger and acquisition and a lot of times it was my job to go in and maybe we had acquired a new location and we had to decide are we going to keep the leadership team or let them all go and bring in our own people? Holly (00:21:35): Are we going to just completely close the site? Are we, is the the leadership that’s there? Will it work? And so, you know, throughout the course of that year, Matt, I mean, it was a lot of releasing people into what might be next for them. So I would say I can make a hard decision, but I still would filter that through the people. So even that connection that that Maureen has. So I would circle back to what we were talking about at the beginning about do you have all the voices around the table represented on your team in your company? Because I would argue that you and Marine are such a dynamic duo because you all respect each other. You value what the other person brings and you know that if you don’t have both perspectives then you would have incomplete information to make a wise decision. Holly (00:22:28): So I would say if we’re in a company setting, the teams that we’re leading, I’ve got to make sure that there’s these different perspectives. There’s a proverb that says plans will fail for lack of counsel, but with many advisers they succeed. And I think part of that is we’ve got to be willing to seek and receive different points of view. So for example, Matt, if you and I were making a decision, you might be looking a lot at, here’s the statistics, all of that. And I might be going, but my gut is just telling me, I’ve just got a good feeling about this vendor. We want to respect each other, but to say, but we’re going to stay engaged with each other. We’re going to keep asking questions, we’re going to keep being curious until we can come into alignment. Right? Yeah. And you know what, that part, a big part of that too is just respecting the contribution that the other person might be. Exactly what you were talking about. Relationships more even I would go back to Myers Briggs. We are almost polar opposites. We’re both introverted. Yes. That means that we both are able to recharge or find rest and being alone in our thoughts or in a quiet place. But other than that, every other metric it’s opposite. Matt (00:23:46): You know, I’m, I’m more of the intuitive and she’s more of a sensing type of person. I tend to be the Dean versus her feeling and on. So it’s, so, I don’t know if that’s a real proverb, maybe an ancient Chinese proverb. Maybe you’ve heard it opposites attract. Matt (00:24:06): But you see, you hear that all the time. Right. And it’s so true. For whatever reason, you see a lot of people tend to gravitate towards their polar opposite in relationships. Then fast forward two years, five years, 10 years, all of a sudden that seems like maybe they’re not getting along or they’re butting heads and that emphasis is being placed on those differences. When I think really a better way to think about things is, Hey, you know what, Maureen is strong in a lot of areas where I’m weak or she has visibility in an area where I’m more blind and vice versa. And that way we compliment one another and we’re able to be, you know, one plus one equals three, we’re able to get more accomplished maybe because of those differences. And I don’t think that everyone that comes naturally to us, right? I think a lot of people would tend to focus on the differences. First of all, this can’t work and it doesn’t have to be a romantic relationship. It can be with a coworker or business partner, a customer vendor, you know, it could be a number of things, a friend. So I like what you’re saying and I think it’s so important to dig into that. Holly (00:25:16): Yup. So it makes me think of Matt before is you’ve have heard this, we’ve talked about this before, even with our friends at at GiANT that just like Superman, you know, he had unbelievable powers except the nemesis was kryptonite if he got around kryptonite, it just completely crippled him. When we have a missing voice, when we fix our teams where we just have like people around us, we’re hearing what we want to hear, then we would say when there’s a missing voice, it’s like kryptonite to your team. Your team will never be as strong as it could be. It’ll never make as good decisions as it could. So we have to really intentionally make sure that we’re valuing all the voices around the table because if we don’t, in the short term, you think you’re going to be able to do what you want to do, but in the long run you’ve actually weakened yourself. Right? Matt (00:26:10): Yeah, absolutely. That’s, that’s true. I know you know, we’ve, we are, I’ll use the word proud. I think we are proud of the fact that we have a fairly diverse team, male and female, different ethnicities, different socioeconomic status and from backgrounds grew up in different places and so rocket, it has a number of folks. But you also talked about Myers Briggs and you’ve mentioned GiANT and voices, which we may get into a little bit here. I think there’s a great diversity of those voices at the table too. You’re right. I think that makes us better as long as there’s space for everyone to be heard because that’s super easy to fall into a trap of. Well, the loudest voices or the strongest personalities are the ones that are going to get hurt all the time and acquire the voices which might have some real value to bring to the table, might not get heard. And so creating an environment where it’s safe for everyone to do that, to your point is not only valuable, but it is really a requirement for success. Wouldn’t you agree? I completely agree. Well said. Well look, I wanna I want to make sure that we don’t pass over your background because it’s really pretty interesting all the things that you’ve done. Okay. So where we left off there was you were in college and they got interested in nursing. Mostly because you are attracted to wearing scrubs and some sensible shoes. Holly (00:27:35): No, you love people, right? Matt (00:27:37): So, what happened after that? Holly (00:27:40): Yes. So I graduated, graduated and became a nurse and did intensive care unit nursing. I really loved the challenge of that and worked in the erosion and worked in the emergency room. And again, Matt, it’s so funny. I feel like it helps me be able to go in and kind of triage and diagnose what’s going on in a company in the midst when there’s chaotic things. Because I feel like that skill began to get honed in a literal sense. When I worked in the emergency room, I also had the opportunity to be with a couple of organizations to do volunteer medical work and underserved countries. So I was with an amazing organization called mercy ships, which runs the largest non-governmental hospital ship in the world. And so I lived on a ship for two years. We would be anchored off different countries in West Africa and we did specialty surgery and trained in country physicians how to do different types of medical color. Holly (00:28:41): When are we talking about here? I was in my twenties it was amazing. Came back. Oh, it was incredible. And I always, did you grow up traveling or is it not at all? Wow. No, I grew up in Gainesville, Georgia, which is about an hour North of here and a huge bustling metropolis. I don’t love my own town. It’s amazing. But my grandparents had been there. My parents, I grew up there and, and but man, there was just something inside of me after I went to college. I just, I just wanted to have a wider world view and I always encourage every young person I get to talk with. If you’d have the opportunity to travel, it’s, it’ll just change your life. So broadening. So had that amazing experience. Then came back to Atlanta, got into education with using my nursing degree in a hospital here in town and then parlayed that into working with a corporate pharmacy where I started out as a nurse educator. Holly (00:29:43): And Matt, this is when I intersected with some mentors that ended up giving me some jobs that on paper it did not look like I was qualified for it, but they felt like they saw something in me. And I found that I had a knack for business and then had a decade long corporate career where I just increasing levels of responsibility. So continuing to use my medical background but in a corporate environment. And then probably about 15 years ago, just really wanted to take that business experience and apply it in a nonprofit setting. I had really so appreciate a different nonprofit causes, but I felt like sometimes a nonprofit was not, they did not use just best in class business practices processes to really exponentially do more. And so I really wanted to take my business background and apply it in a nonprofit setting and then had the opportunity to do that with some amazing organizations. Holly (00:30:43): So I’ve enjoyed being in both worlds and there’s just been a lot of variety but have learned so much at every season. You know a funny, you’re talking about the, so the nonprofits I was in a meeting not long ago was in a room full of folks to support a not for profit organization and the one was may between nonprofit and not for profit. Nonprofit would sort of imply that we’re not going to make any money, we’re not going to keep any money versus not for profit. Leaves open the door just a little bit to where a profit can be earned. And the truth is as if you are growing any organization, capital is an absolute requirement. Completely agree. If you’re going to grow by definition, you have to increase capital. In other words, you have to earn a profit and that profit in some cases might be donor contributed potentially. Holly (00:31:48): But there are other ways to, to earn a profit and a not for profit organization that all that to say that the business skillset that we would use to grow a business is largely the same. There are a lot of the same tools, the same strategies that must be used in a not for profit organization or nonprofit organization. The charity, if the goal, the goal is, Hey, we want to extend our reach, reach more people, serve more folk, you know, that kind of thing. It’s just critical. Completely agree. I think that there’s almost a stigma not only among the general public, but maybe even for the folks that are working inside the, not for profit organizations where they might feel guilty about growing and building base of capital Matt (00:32:40): And things like that. So how do you work through all that? Have you, have you seen that? Holly (00:32:44): I have completely seen it and I’ve kind of just been in this, on this mission in my life of saying you can apply best business practices in a nonprofit setting and to somehow say, no, our causes so important. Kind of like those rules don’t apply. Or if there’s almost this this mindset of if I tried to apply a business process, am I somehow lessening something about that nonprofit? Right. You know that. And I just completely fundamentally disagree with that. In fact, I would say if I’m a nonprofit that in, in at least some of my support is coming from a donor, then I would say then it’s such a stewardship issue. I should respond exactly. I should be wanting to work even harder to make sure am I implementing best business practices? Do I have strategic plans? Am I watching and managing money? Holly (00:33:45): Well, and at the end of the day, I always say we shouldn’t be ashamed in a nonprofit environment that we’re keeping our eye on it to say, did we end up with a profit at the end? Because the great thing is, is that profit just gets to turn around and even invest and help more people and grow that organization even more. And so you can have an organization, a nonprofit that can be all about mission, but you’ve equally got to be about the margin, right? You gotta be thinking mission and margin and it would be incomplete if you had a balance more on one side or the other. Matt (00:34:24): Well, I’m to just matching. If I’m a donor and I want to contribute a $1,000 or $1 million, what I rather have that contribution be eroded or grown. If I can multiply the impact of my contribution, then that’s what I want. Right? And so I better hope that the organizations that I choose to support at least have an eye towards basic business principles. Absolutely. One. So one of the things I love about doing this podcast series, and as I mentioned earlier where I’m episode 11 now, is that, you know, we get the chance to sit down often with friends and folks that we’ve known for a long time, but it’s also been fun to see how some of these relationships intersect. And so I want to point out a couple of those that I think are kind of fun. I mentioned earlier that we met through leadership one app, so we’ve had Lisa sake and executive director of the, of the leadership program. I’ll make sure I get that right. She’s been on our podcast before and so we both benefited from spending time with her. Nick Masino, CEO of our local chamber of commerce. He was actually an, our leadership went together. So that was a lot of fun. Holly (00:35:45): Yeah, and in our study group study group ever, I will say it does seem that way. Yes, Matt (00:35:53): Leadership Gwinnett was broken into smaller study groups where we really got to spend a lot of quality time with a small number of individuals. It was six or eight or so over the better part of a year and kind of roll up our sleeves work side of things about not only programs like Leadership Gwinnett, but also in our chambers of commerce when there are committees or when you’re on a board for a nonprofit or even a for profit organization, when two or more people roll up their sleeves together and work side by side to accomplish something, the relationships that are built out of that tend to be just long lasting and high quality. Holly (00:36:38): That’s one thing I really have respected about you, Matt. I mean you are running a large company. You could let the running, well, you could let the running, you didn’t let the running of Rocket IT just completely consume you. But I have really seen you set the example to say no, it’s important to me to make sure am I involved in something like Leadership Gwinnett? Am I involved in something with the chamber? And I think for all of us as leaders, we have to say, I’ve got to schedule it. I’ve got to make it important. I’ve got to choose that. I’ve value that. So I know for me, I serve on several nonprofit boards and listen, we’re all busy and I’m wanting to grow my own company. But again, this theme that you and I are talking about of what are the relationships that we’re cultivating in our lives? What are the different voices that we’re listening to? Who am I listening to? How can I lend my voice on behalf of someone else? It just makes life richer and more fulfilling and more purpose. And so I think you do that so well. Matt (00:37:44): Thank you. I as something that is interesting to me. You’d mentioned early, earlier that even as a little girl, you sort of recognized that helping people was important to you and that whatever you were doing professionally that you wanted to be geared towards, that I’m not nearly as smart or as advanced as you are. So it took me years to kind of figure that out for myself. But that’s, that’s very much what motivates me. And what makes me feel successful is when I feel like I’ve had an impact on someone else’s life that actually helps someone. And so Rocket IT is it’s stated purpose is to help people thrive. And what we mean by that is that we want to alter people’s lives in a positive way. And we want to do that. And all of our circles of influence water that’s with our team members and their families or the people that we serve or our community. Matt (00:38:43): And so once you realize that, you say, okay, well how can I apply that? And it doesn’t take very long to realize, Oh, well I need to be involved in the organizations that are in my community. Whether that’s the chamber of commerce or our leadership program or the nonprofit down the street. Those are all places where we can add value and contribute. That’s, that’s important to me. And I certainly think that’s part of what I admire about you is you are similarly, well, I want to mention one other common relationship. So you mentioned Steve Cockrum earlier. For those that don’t know, Steve Cochran is the co founder and a business partner for Jeremy Kubichek, a running GiANT organization called GiANT. We’ve had Dan Fry, one of the, one of the GiANT consultants and a common mutual friend for you and I on the show before and soon. Matt (00:39:39): I think it’s episode 12 or 13. We’ll have Jeremy Kubichek on the show as well. And so let’s talk about that just a little bit because that’s another shared experience that you and I have. We both were friends with Jeremy and Steve when they founded GiANT. We were lucky enough to be there and be involved in that. And so we both have an appreciation and admiration for those guys and what they’ve done with GiANT and the tools that they’ve developed. Tell me what are you, are you are you staying in touch with those guys? Holly (00:40:13): Very much so and love being part of the GiANT family. So through what I’m doing with Hollis Strategies so much of the content that I’m using is observing my client. It’s coming straight from GiANTs. So whether it be five voices or just different things that they have for communication relationships, it’s really all about scalable people development. And I’ve recently just been doing so much investment in the GiANT platform, which allows there to be ongoing learning. And so it’s just an honor to really be collaborating with them. I think one of the reasons why Steve and Jeremy have just had an impact on my life personally and now that I’ve enjoyed collaborating with them professionally is this whole idea mat of how do you become a liberating leader? How do you become a leader that actually empowers other people, gives them opportunity to liberate them to feel like they can be their very best self. Holly (00:41:12): And so just all around that idea of being a liberating leader just so resonated with me. And so again, Matt use so many the times it’s important for us to experience something personally. And because I’ve been through it personally, hopefully I can lead someone else. And so six years ago, Steve Cockram was my coach for a year and it was such a great learning experience for me and this whole idea of how do I know myself to lead myself? And that’s a journey that will you and I will continue to be on for the rest of our lives. But how do I know myself to lead myself and how do I continue to grow and develop as a leader that I’m not only liberating myself, I can liberate others around me and everything that GiANT is doing is a related around that. And so I just have so much respect for them. Matt (00:42:07): That’s really great. So I think a lot of our listeners are probably at least peripherally familiar with what the folks at GiANT are doing. But to recap a little bit, GiANT has put together a number of visual tools and kind of a new vocabulary to help with communications and relationships between people, right? And so out of that, when we call a lot of those those visual tools, we’ll just shorten it to just tools. I certainly have some of my favorites. I’m curious, do you have any favorites out of the GiANT tool? Holly (00:42:42): I do. It’s one that’s called the support challenge matrix. So if you think about it, it was for me as well. So if you think about it, some of us are just wired. It’s easy for us to support other people, encourage those that we’re leading our people. They feel very, very left, right? And that’s a great thing. Others of us are wired that it’s easy for us to bring challenge. It’s easy for us to say, here’s the goal, here’s the standard. Are we hitting it? Are we not hitting, you know, let’s push, push, push, let’s take the Hill. Well, their definition of a liberating leader is someone that has learned how to calibrate high support and high challenge for those that they lead. Right? But I think we all have to realize there are certain situations, Matt, that to be on the other side of Holly, it felt like a lot of challenge and maybe not as much support. Holly (00:43:36): So there could be times when I was at a balance and then there can be other situations or people that were around that were all support. But in that particular situation, we find it very hard to confront. Very hard to have challenge. I, I’ve worked with people that have said, Holly, I think I’m a liberate or to my team. I think I’m a dominator to my children and I think I’m an advocator in my marriage. And I’m this in the community. It’s almost like we can bounce all around trying to figure out how do we calibrate that high support and high challenge. So that is something that I really think about a lot to be able to self reflect and just say, trying to train myself, Matt, that in every situation, every conversation that I’m going into to be able to say, what did this, does the person on the other side of main need right now? Do they need more challenge? Do they need more support? And how do I calibrate for that individual person to try to call them up to their highest and best? So that tool is so helpful. Matt (00:44:44): I, like I said, that’s one of my favorites. Also, I think what you just touched on was, was pretty eye opening for me. Also realizing that one of the big aha’s for me when I started learning about that particular tool and this concept of support and challenge number one, I think maybe it didn’t come as a huge surprise to me, but I was telling you earlier, my default might be, you know, I wanna, I wanna figure out where the cracks are, which can come across as challenge. Hey, did you think about this? Well, what about that all about this other thing, you know, that you’re popping in with a new idea and I’m trying to poke holes in it so that I can understand it. That can come across as well. He doesn’t trust me. He doesn’t believe me. He doesn’t like my idea. Matt (00:45:27): You know those things. And so you’re right, I have to sort of calibrate that a bit and say, Hey, that’s a great idea and maybe provide some support before I go into my, you know analysis of trying to figure things out for myself. And like you said, another thing is certainly we do present differently depending on where we are, who we are, our comfort level and so forth. One of the other things I realized, and and I’m kind of ashamed to admit it, but I realized that at work and that season that I was really providing a lot of support and not as much challenge. And there are reasons for that. You know, we’d had some turnover and there was some maybe fear of, Oh my goodness, you know, we can’t, you can’t lose anyone. So I’d better be super nice and super sweet, which can be a lot of support. Matt (00:46:20): But if you’re not challenging, folks are missing part of the equation. And then I would go home where I’ve got small kids running around more comfortable to be who you are. And I think I would lean more towards the challenge on that side, which could probably be very difficult, especially for my small kids to understand. And so when I realized that it changed me, it changed me. So you know, for all those folks at Rocket IT who have you know, experienced challenge from me, you can send a letter to Steve Cochran or Jeremy Kubicek and thank them for that. But no, seriously. Oh yeah, absolutely. And it’s your one earlier, it’s a continuous process. It’s not going to stop. You don’t reach the end and say, okay, now it’s, now I’m educated. I think Holly (00:47:09): It’s in fact, I just had breakfast with someone last week and, and just to get in this mode of thinking and being willing to ask myself a hard question, okay, what was I thinking? Why did I respond that way? What was the root issue at hand to try to understand ourselves, right? Because I know when I am feeling stressed, when I’m feeling tons of pressure, when I’m tired, when I kind of feel like I’ve been kind of bruised on all sides, then I know that I can default to the challenge, right? Because in my mind it’s, I’m going to figure out a way to solve this problem and I go there, but we just have to get more and more and more thinking about that self awareness and we’re going to continue to grow. I learned, but we have to be curious, Matt, I think about this. We need to be curious about other people and then we need to be curious about ourselves, right? To try to help understand ourselves that we can lead ourselves better. Matt (00:48:10): You know, one of the things that you mentioned is, you know this is a pretty big change for you as a starting this business over the past year or so and kind of launching that and exploring what am I look like and I know you’ve got a variety of clients and go, I remember those days, you know a lot of, lot of startup types of companies. In the early days it was a lot of experimentation. Right? Okay, well I’m going to say yes a lot even if it maybe isn’t exactly precisely the idea that I came up with when I decided to start this company, but I’m going to have to learn how we’re going to put food on the table where I can contribute value, where what I have to contribute is needed and so we’ll say yes to a variety of things inside. It’s just a, it’s kind of a roller coaster of an experience can be very, very busy at times. Matt (00:49:02): I wonder about something we were talking about before the show started a little bit was the application of another GiANT tool called the peace index that come into play for you when you’re kind of going through this, this process of Hey, you know what I’m in transition in my career and so I have this opportunity. I’m in a stage of my life where I could start a business and I would imagine that about the same time you’re probably also thinking, Oh really the world is my oyster. I can, you know, go back to mercy ships or I can stay here or I can go back to Gainesville or you know, there are a lot of different choices that you make when you’re sort of doing a, a big step in a different direction. I’m just curious Holly (00:49:46): Piece Index part of part of the thought process as you brought that up Matt. And so again, a GiANT tool called the peace index and it, it’s something that we can use, people can use on a regular basis just to kind of see how it piece. Am I with where I am in my life right now and am I heading in the right direction? And really the five indicators of peace are the people you know, am I, am I doing work with the people that are life-giving to me? Matt (00:50:15): Well, you know, I’m sorry, I’m going to interrupt you because we can be big on that. Just dig in on that just for a moment. You and I as a full blown have heard before this idea of surround yourself with people that are positive influence, right? Another way of saying that is choose your friends wisely and have that kind of thing and that’s what they’re talking about, right? If you’re finding that I love what you said or the people around you life giving and that can be our friends, it can be our family, it could be the team we’re working with at the office. So I love that you mention that first because I think that is a critical part of just how any of us are feeling is our relationships are healthy and in check. Holly (00:51:00): Absolutely. What are those relationships like and what are the people around me? The next is just purpose. Think I mentioned at the beginning of this show, I really sat and thought, what do I want the next 10 years of my life to be like? And I felt that my purpose was I wanted to take this experience that I have had and do to be able to turn around and invest in steward that and help other organizations place, you know, every one of us we have to decide what’s the place that we want to, what place do we want to serve? For me in this season, I think it’s both that this season in my life, it was the place I want to serve as starting my own company as opposed to going back inside an organization. But then there have been other times where the place question for me has literally been geographically and years ago I moved to Texas for two and a half years for a job, which was an incredible experience. Holly (00:51:56): But for that season of life, that was the place for now, for other reasons. You know, Atlanta is home. That’s the place that I want to be provision. We always have to look and see, you know, what, what’s that financial piece? What do I need right now? And I always counsel people just, you know, you’ve got to think through what, what are those standards that I have? How am I going to be able to meet that, that we’re, when we’re making changes, we’re planning for them. And then finally just looking at our physical health. I mean, Matt, years and years ago when I was transitioning and out, transitioning out of my corporate environment, I had had just was on the road, constantly, was struggling with a little bit of health issues and I just knew at that season I, I need to come off the road for awhile. That’s what I needed for my physical health. So again, on a weekly, monthly, annual basis, all of us can say, okay, where am I at peace with where I am in my life right now, looking at people purpose, place for vision, physical health, and I can kind of grade myself on those and it helps me to know what are some changes that I need to make, what adjustments do I need to make so that I’m living my life at peace? Matt (00:53:17): I love it. I think we actually make sure we turn that into something that our folks could use just a little bit. Now, I’m pretty rusty at this stuff at my recollection is is that there’s a way we can sort of self assess this. If I’m in an uncomfortable place in my life or I realize I’m feeling a lot of stress or I’m unhappy for some reason that I can stop and I can do a quick self assessment on this, right? Holly (00:53:43): If you give it a percentage, I could say, do you know what? As far as the place where I am right now, I think I’m only 30% do I think of I’m feeling at peace or that this and then someone you might say, but you know what my purpose, it’s so aligned with my purpose. I feel like the tasks that I’m doing are aligned with my strengths. And you might say, well, you know what, I’m at 90% are on my purpose so you can actually give yourself a score for each one of them and then look at that composite score and just gives us an idea of where do we need to get some, where do I need to put some focus? Where might I need to make some changes? Where do I need to pursue a mentor and get some counsel in an area to be proactive to increase that percentage of Matt (00:54:32): Fantastic. Yeah. I don’t know that there’s a formal score there in terms of you know, you need to be at least an 88 in order to pass the test or something like that. But, but I think it probably is helpful, especially when you start breaking it down and say, okay, well you know, I did this little self assessment and feel like, Oh, you’ve mentioned place as one possibility. This is the area where I need to work a little bit and get some attention. I have been reassess a few months down the road or a year on the road and see, see how it’s going. Probably you know, where you place your attention is probably going to improve. I would absolutely love it. Okay. Tell me a little bit about, I want, I want to hear a little bit more about this team building part of it. Matt (00:55:16): Something you said to me the other day, and again, understanding for our audience, this is a newer business for you and so you’re sort of finding your way and you’re able to add value in a lot of different areas. So it’s really about picking and choosing, right? It’s not, it’s almost like over time you got to probably take some things off the table early in any business. We’ll probably do a wide variety of things, but over time we say, okay, I want to really focus that attention and energy around these two or three things, but today I think you told me recently that you’re helping somebody with maybe a new book again promoting a business and sort of growing, growing that awareness for a particular brand. I know you’re working with some teams and for profit and nonprofit organizations, you and I bumped into each other sort of accidentally in Texas a couple of weeks ago in the airports. I know you’re traveling around some. Yeah. Where do you feel like you’re getting some traction on what’s most interesting to you right now? Where do you, where do you think this is going? Holly (00:56:15): Well I have, I really gave myself a, maybe this’ll help someone else that’s maybe in a season that’s getting ready to start something. Matt, I gave myself for the first 12 to 24 months of my business that I was going to experiment. And, and here’s the thing is I think sometimes people will experiment but they don’t put any boundaries on that. And then all of a sudden five years have gone by and they’re still all over the place. Right? So I was talking with one of my mentors that said, Holly, why don’t you experiment for a period of time but set a time limit on it. And so right now I’m still I love the variety. Maybe Matt, it all goes back to the type of nursing that I chose was emergency room cause I wanted to be able to have a variety. It’s important to know what’s coming through the door. Holly (00:57:04): So I enjoy on one day helping an author really craft a message of a book the next day, being able to really dive deep into some team dynamics and then maybe the next day helping the us CEO or executive director really think through a strategic plan. Again, the common theme is what are the action steps that need to take place. So that this person can maximize their influence to really be able to influence someone else. And so I, I am doing a variety of different things, but I’ve set a time limit on that. And then it’s always great as you go through, you think, I think that I did that well. I that felt natural. I felt like I had some natural intuition there. I got a really great result that I wanted and then there might be something else that might, I might say, you know, I have the skills to do that, but I’m, I only want to do that, you know, 10% of my time. Right? So I think when someone, I would coach someone that’s in my situation, give yourself room to experiment, journal along the way, ask for feedback from other people and then just set a time limit on, on that process and then be willing to come back and revisit it. And I think when I’ve done that, it’s allowed me to have a lot of peace that I still have this consistent purpose of wanting people to really maximize the influence that they have. But it’s giving me some freedom to kind of try it. Matt (00:58:39): Yeah, no, I love that. I think so many times, especially in startup mode and probably especially with younger folks that are starting their first business or even just a project doesn’t have to be a business cause it’s just a project. They don’t put some of those boundaries in place. And so you’re very smart to to do that, but a timeline on it and give yourself permission to try different things to experiment as you, but maybe go down a path that wasn’t initially on your mind or just a, a door opens and lets walk through it and try it out. And it’s totally okay because you’ve set a limit to how long you’re going to do that. That’s great. That’s fantastic. Well, Holly, this has been a lot of fun. I want to, I want to wrap up with this. I’d like to kind of go through and ask some questions that were, so it’s a list that we’re developing that we’ll ask every person that comes on the rock and it business podcast. And so it is is still evolving and so they’re going to be some for folks. I’ve listened to a more than a few episodes. You’ll recognize some of the questions here, but we’ve added a couple new ones also. So speaking of experimentation, experiment with you. Tell me about one person in your life that has a had a profound impact. Holly (00:59:57): At Bob Beatty, he was in the first person in my corporate career that saw me in a position and thought, Holly, I think you have the potential to do more. And he gave me a job that on a resume, I did not naturally have the qualifications and I will always be grateful to him and I’ve wanted to turn around and do that for other people as well, that you’re willing to give somebody a chance to try something. And so much of the success that I had in my corporate career is really attributed to his belief in me. Matt (01:00:32): Isn’t that cool? Now, what do you think, what do you think he saw in you? What do you think it was that made him decide to do that? Because that, you know, I’ve, I’ve run an organization for awhile and sometimes you know, there’s just a need, Oh my gosh, there’s a, there’s a hole in my team here and I need to fill it. And so there’s some pressure to kind of figure that out with the resources that you have. We’ve just got to be imaginative and figure that out. But then there have been other times where you do see something in someone and say, wow, you know what? I got this person in particular role or working on a particular project. But there’s a certain thing about that person that I feel like we can tap for a higher calling somewhere else. And so going and doing that, what do you, what do you think Bob saw in you that made him feel that it was a good decision to say, Hey, I want you to try this, this other thing? Holly (01:01:22): That’s a good question. And I think maybe part of it, well I would attribute the majority of it was he was a phenomenal leader and so I give the credit to him. But I think in my part it was interesting, the corporate headquarters for that company were in Tampa, Florida. And it just so happened that they were having a leadership meeting in Atlanta at a conference room close to the airport. And because I worked locally in Atlanta, they asked me to come and do a presentation. So one thing was I thought I have this opportunity and that I prepared. I practiced. I mean I thought, I have a moment in time that I have been asked to give this presentation and I am going to seize that moment. So I think the preparation to say I’m not going to wing it, I’m going to really be prepared to do that. Holly (01:02:13): So that was a piece. And then Matt, the second was when it was finishing, Bob and a couple of other executives were running really, really tight on time, trying to get back to the airport. I needed to be somewhere else, but I could tell they were stressed and I said, Hey guys, just jump in the car with me and I will drive you to the airport and drop you off right at the door. And so number one, it just met a need that they had. They also just gave me some time in the car to talk with these three people. But I think that Bob maybe saw someone that was willing to jump in and kind of had a, I’ll do whatever it takes, kind of an attitude. And so I think that that helped it, it helped him remember who I was. So I will just say Matt having that that attitude throughout a career that no matter what position that you have, if you see a need, can you serve someone else? I know it sounds so cliche, but when we choose to serve someone else, I just think it’s a very powerful thing that comes back in return. Turn Matt (01:03:21): To that. Oh, I think so too. What I love about that story. Yes, you did something that on the surface sounds simple but really is incredibly rare and it was really two things. One is your boss came to you and said, they have this task that I’d like you to do. I want you to do this presentation. And you went a long way to ensure that you did that. Well. You did that for the very best of your ability. Like you said, you prepared for it. You practiced, you went in planning to deliver a fantastic experience for the people of that in that room. Right. And so that’s something that not everyone does. A lot of people, I would say most people would wing it. They would just show up and kind of muddle their way through it. And that would probably show, but because you prepared, I think that sets you apart from the average person that might’ve come in and done that presentation. Matt (01:04:19): And then you did what I like to call a plus one. As you drove him to the airport, you didn’t have to do that. That was not part of the job description. You detected that they were feeling some stress and you made a small personal sacrifice to get them there. You did a plus wine that was above and beyond the call of duty. And that is also very rare. And boy, you put those two things together. I think Bob made a great decision. It was an obvious choice for him. That’s why just I wished more people, I wish I was, I wish I did them more. And I certainly wish that more people in the world kind of approach things that way of, okay, I’ve been asked to do something or I have an opportunity to do something, let’s do it really well. You know what grandpa used to say was, anything worth doing is worth doing well, so do it well. And then let’s leave them with a plus one. If everybody did that world would be a better place. Right? I love that saying Holly (01:05:18): And remember that. So what’s the single most important lesson you’ve learned in your professional car

In this episode of the Rocket IT Business Podcast, we have the honor of interviewing Suzanne Masino, occupational therapist turned tech entrepreneur. During her 25-year tenure in the healthcare field, Suzanne has served as a therapist, recruiter, leader, and business owner. With her recent launch of healthcare tech startup, Matchwell, Suzanne is breaking new ground not just in her own life, but possibly in an entire industry. In This Episode, You’ll Hear More About… How to raise capital for a new project How to attract, engage and retain talent The importance of diversity in the workforce Making the move from employee to business owner The steps to launch a wide-scale cloud-based platform Steps to succeed as an entrepreneur with no safety net Successfully balancing parental and business management duties How to make the transition into a technical position with a non-technical background Suzanne Masino Contact Information smasino@wematchwell.com wematchwell.com Resources Mentioned Moment of Lift Traction Five Dysfunctions of a Team Good to Great Blitzscaling Crucial Conversations How I Built This Masters of Scale Like What You Heard? Give Us Some Feedback! podcasts@rocketit.com Show Transcript Matt (00:00:00): Hello and welcome to the 10th installment of the Rocket IT podcast. I’m your host Matt Hyatt. And today we have the honor of interviewing Suzanne Masino, occupational therapist, turned tech entrepreneur Intro (00:00:12): [Music Plays]. Matt (00:00:27): During her 25 year tenure in the healthcare field, Suzanne has served as a therapist, a recruiter, a leader and business owner with a recent launch of healthcare tech startup. Matchwell. Suzanne is breaking new ground, not just in her own life, but possibly in an entire industry. Now, without further ado, I’d like to welcome Suzanne to the show. Suzanne, it’s a pleasure to have you here. Thanks for having me. Thank you. And you know what? You and I would start right off the bat here. We know each other, right? We’re friends, we’ve known each other for a number of years now. And so it’s been a pleasure spending time with you and your husband, Nick. Our families have spent time together and so it’s been a lot of fun. And one of the things I think is really cool is that early on and I fact that it gives, the very first time that you and I met was at a an event that was here in town. Your husband, Nick said to, Hey, you should talk to Suzanne. She’s really interested in entrepreneurship and you and I sat down right there at the party and we hung out, bro. Do you remember that? We were talking about your aspirations or owning a business someday and spending more time in sort of the entrepreneurial field. And at the time you were working for somebody else, right? It was something completely different. And now look at you. Matt (00:01:44): That is so awesome. So I went through and preparation for our podcast conversation. I was looking through your LinkedIn background and kind of trying to catch up with what you’ve done and what you’ve accomplished over the years. And you’ve had a long career in the healthcare space. And most of that’s really been in the recruiting space, specifically healthcare. Right? But I would like to kind of go back to the beginning because you were formal training occupational therapist, right? Yeah. So tell me about that. You thought you were interested in healthcare and actually practicing medicine, right. What do we call that? Right. And it seemed like early on within the first year or two, you found yourself in a leadership role. Suzanne (00:02:28): That’s right. Yeah. well, yeah, tobacco it up. Yeah. I wanted to be an occupational therapist. I was one of those rare kids that knew what I wanted to do by the age of 12 personal experience. A good friend of mine it’s kind of a fairy tale story, but was in a motorcycle accident and head injury ended up in a coma and I would go to visit her and worked with a therapist on getting her healed. She ended up full recovery. She’s a mom of three children now. So yeah, it worked out really well, but I was 12 and three kids. Right. That would be crazy. Who would ever do that? But yeah, I just enjoyed it as a kid watching the scene, the house. I was just excited about the whole hospital. It didn’t scare me. I was just intrigued by all of it, especially the therapists working to kind of get her back on her feet and recovered and so they would teach me ways to work with her and she responded well to me because we were friends and I remember clearly overhearing a therapist tell my mom while I was working with her. Suzanne (00:03:28): Like some days she’d make a really great occupational therapist, impressionable age 12 I’m like, I’m not sure what that is, but I’m all over it. So yes, I was attracted to healthcare from a very early age. So one of the things that I love about you is you’re very much a people person. It’s very obvious from the first time that you meet you that you are really sort of driven by helping others. So sounds like the perfect career. Yeah, absolutely. How did you make the transition though from, okay, I’m the one practicing, right? The therapy to now I’m leading others. That’s right. Yeah. It just happened quickly I think at a young age. Yes, early twenties. I was working, started off at a big hospital in Columbus, and then as we moved here to Georgia, worked for a nursing home out in Monroe and found that there was some need for leadership. Suzanne (00:04:20): So, and it was a disconnect between, you know, the leader, the higher level leadership down to the communication at the facility level. And so, yeah. I guess early on because I identified a problem, they were like, Hey, yeah, why don’t you take that lead role in the rest was history. So yeah, it was just by chance. It wasn’t intentional to get into management side of it, but ended up loving it and felt like I could make a better impact on the whole rehab department as opposed to just occupational therapy. So ended up quickly getting into a leadership roles where I managed, I don’t know, 15, 20 nursing homes throughout the state of Georgia and the departments correct. At the ripe old age of 20 something. Yeah, it was. Right. Yeah. So I’m going to guess you correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m willing to guess that a lot of the people reported to you at that time were older than Tony, correct? Suzanne (00:05:07): Yes. Yeah. That was tricky. Yeah. Talk about the people side of me. It was intimidating. And so yeah, early on, not by reading much or having much knowledge of leadership, but realized I was getting further faster by connecting and listening to their ideas and trying to implement, you know, their thoughts into strategies that they thought were important. Wow. Yeah. I learned a lot from them as well. And so I, I guess just early on took a sort of a humble leadership type approach because it worked. That’s a very mature approach. I’ll tell you what I, you know, I wish, I wish that I had, you know, had come naturally to me at that age. Suzanne (00:05:51): You have to figure it out along the way. And as anyone on my team will tell you another 20 years, I’m going to have figured out good job. I know I don’t have it figured out for sure. But yeah, it was amazing. Yeah. So how did, how did the transition from managing to recruiting happen as it just how, you know what, I’m a leader role and I need people, so I need to go recruit some folks. Is that how it happened or what’s different? No, that’s a really interesting story as well. So I was enjoying sort of the leadership side of things and had been promoted a couple of times and truthfully got pregnant with our first child and had all intentions of going back to work. I was going to take a nice long maternity leave and get right back at it because I enjoyed my job and I was in a good position and, but until they handed her to me, every changed. Suzanne (00:06:42): Yes. So this is a funny story. So I took my three months maternity leave and was supposed to figure out a plan daycare or a nanny or something and didn’t, so in a bit of denial. And as I went back, I just brought her with me, literally popped her in the car seat. I take her to nursing homes and you know, I’m like, who does it like a new baby? And Nick was like, how, what’s your plan? I’m like, I didn’t have one other than I’m not leaving her ever, so she’s just going to be my sidekick as long as I could drag her along. All these remote areas of Georgia to these nursing homes. And then my boss eventually, you know, I bring her to meetings. I literally, it was kind of a crazy plan, but I had zero plan other than, I don’t know. Suzanne (00:07:27): I’d love to hear how that conversation went. So Suzanne, you brought her to eight meetings. What’s the plan? But isn’t she adorable? Wow. Yeah. So they can, I had a heart to heart. I think he sat me down and was like, yeah, this is not a sustainable plan you got going here. So what, what are we going to do? And we had decided that, you know, I only felt like I had two options to leave her in daycare at the time. I was like, I was like ripping my heart out. There’s no way I could do that. I’m sorry, I will sell my car and ride my bike to the grocery store if we have to, but I am not leaving her. And so he totally supported that and that was the plan. I was just, I thought I had two options, continue work and put her in daycare, which that instinctively felt right to me or leave the career. Suzanne (00:08:08): And so that was the decision I made until miraculously I get this call about a week before I was going to tell my boss and they said, Oh my gosh, we’re exploding. We need recruiters. And you’ve pretty much recruited for yourself, for all your positions. That was your boss? This is, yeah, this was, yeah, I think I heard about it through, through my boss that they were adding to the recruiting team and she said, just, just so you know, those positions are remote. And I’m like, you could’ve told me I’m like stuffing envelopes the rest of my life, but it’s remote. I’m like, I don’t care. I mean, I will shovel out a horse barn if I need to to be home with her. And so I call corporate and said, Hey, I hear there’s a recruiting position and it moved so quickly. Within 48 hours, they offered me a position and I’m like, I’m a recruiter now and I can talk, my goodness. Suzanne (00:08:53): So it was a complete miracle because I didn’t understand really, I didn’t even think at the time, you know, this is just when home computers were getting, you know, it was 20 years ago. So, you know, they still car phones, but they were in the big diaper bag and you know, people just didn’t really work remote very often and legit roles sold Avon and you know, stuff like that, but not legitimate careers from home. So there’s this third option just landed in my lap and it was a small miracle and I thought, honestly took it thinking I’ll do it until whatever I need to do so I don’t have to leave her until she gets older and then I’ll get back into the clinical track. But I ended up loving recruiting. Wow. And not that they’re very good at it from what I understand. I think so. Suzanne (00:09:34): I think, well, truthfully I, I, not to toot my own horn, but I do think I really did knock it out of the park, you know, more so than the other recruiters and I think it was, I understood what those open positions translated to what that would feel like if you, you know, there was a patient that has a need and there’s nobody to treat that patient, so the patient either suffers or is rushed through their treatment. And so I felt it like I could see the scenarios more so than people that are recruiters that aren’t clinicians. So I had a, I guess an instinct of motivating factor that they didn’t because I understood what those open positions on paper translated to in real life. That sounds like it worked out great. It was great for awhile. I did, I did. What, what sparked that entrepreneurial bug? Suzanne (00:10:19): I honestly felt like I could do more because I feel like when we have that conversation, you were a principal, sort of the tail end of it. That’s it. That’s exactly it. That was the exact time I’m beginning to think about, I was something different. Yeah. I just felt like there was more I had to offer, I’d kind of climbed the ladder in the recruiting side as well. Ended up, I was over the entire South for a large company, a division of large company called kindred healthcare. They’re huge and was in a management role in, and that was still remote. It was still remote, traveled to their corporate headquarters and things like that, but based on a home. Sure. but yeah I believe that I just felt like there was more I could offer. I had more in my brain and just more that I felt like I could accomplish. Suzanne (00:11:05): So probably when I met you, I was kind of mapping out a business plan, you know didn’t really know that this, what it was called, but thought, how do I hang up my own shingle and try to do this on my own? Right. And so, yeah, I had a really supportive boss. This is just a funny little side note story I went to tell him, I had think I’d been there eight years and it was nervous, you know, I had been thinking about it, talking to people I trusted in the community for probably a year and had it really well laid out and had made the decision I was going to venture this off on my own. So I went and talked to my boss and I’ll, I’ll never forget he left. I’m glad to like talking to mile a minute cause I was super nervous just to give the news that I’m leaving and I’m going to try this on my own. Suzanne (00:11:47): And he sat and listened so patiently and I stopped talking and he said no, I got two questions for you. It was like October. He goes, number one, will you stay until the end of the year? Number two, can we be your first client? Oh really? And I thought, yes and yes. Check, check. Yeah. So that was a nice session. Went really well. Totally did. So what a nice segue into entrepreneurship. It was a pretty safe bet. A gigantic clients. And he sort of took my ID and expanded. He’s, he’s kind of the one, I didn’t really think about it at the time of consulting. I thought it would be more retained search type model, but he took the consulting side, like we needed another vantage point, somebody sort of raised out of the day to day and help advise us on some strategic initiatives. So yeah, that was a great, nice segue into the entrepreneurship. Matt (00:12:37): So that company was called, it was called Suzanne (00:12:39): Hindrance staffing innovations. Oh, the company I had, yes. Staffing innovations. Yep. Fantastic. And so that led to, Hey, I’ve got one customer, a sort of a base. Yes. Yeah. How does that work? Yes. So I, I think a lot of it has to do with luck. Truthfully. It was, I would love to say that I was just thinking all these things through. But after that first client, which was easy because I knew the players and knew the dynamics I did have to sort of switch into sales mode. So it was my first dip and entrepreneurship in a bit of a wide awakening. There’s nobody to go to but yourself to like every aspect of the business. I’m like, okay, I need new clients. I got to sell if I need this, I got to deliver. So yeah, I started to get I believe a friend of mine called and I got a referral to another company who was backed by a VC venture capitalist, private equity type conglomeration. Suzanne (00:13:33): And what was wonderful, and again, I, this would’ve been a really strategic Mo move, but that’s not how it happened. But I got tucked done or these private equity companies that had big portfolios of companies in similar aspects, a lot of them healthcare. And so for years I just got to kind of bounce around into companies under their portfolio as a consultant. I do a three month stint for a healthcare staffing company that they owned that they were having trouble recruiting and retaining therapists or clinicians finish that and they’d say, Hey, you know what? We have this other client over here. Can you help us? Same thing with that one. So yeah, I didn’t really have to sell truthfully. I had, I had a little tiny website, but nobody ever went to it. And it was just by word of mouth that I got my next client. Matt (00:14:17): Well, you know, I think you’re being very humble to say that, you know, it was lucky. You know, we’ve, we make our own luck many times. And as I said earlier, it’s clear that you care about people and when you care about people, opportunities coming your way because people want to do business with people they like and their trust. And so kudos to you, frankly, that, that’s pretty amazing. I can certainly relate, you know the terms of the, sort of that solo entrepreneur you know, for those that don’t know my background, I ran Rocket IT as a solo entrepreneur for years out of my house. Same thing, you know, little kids at and you want to be home when the kids are home and be around them and you don’t want to miss their first steps in a lot of those things. Matt (00:14:57): So being able to run a business out of my house and be close to the kids when they were small was a big benefit, you know, to, to run that solo entrepreneur. But I used to joke with people, people would call me, you know, you get a cold call or something like that and they’re trying to sell something and they think you’re a business. And so they say, well, how many employees you have? I would tell him, I have three. There’s me, myself and I. Right, exactly. And you ended up doing everything. It’s nice salesperson, you’re the, you know, the technician, you’re the person taking out the trash and everything in between and it’s, it can be tough, right. And stretches us to, to call our new things and find new skillsets. It’s really cool. So I know that beyond child number one, there was a number two and a number of three if all that happen. And during staffing innovations. Wow. Suzanne (00:15:46): Yeah. So, well actually that happened with Kendra, the first where I got to work from home. So all three of those self. It was after the third child that I then went into my own business. Yeah, it is really nice. Matt (00:15:59): Absolutely. To be able to be home. Kids are growing up, especially when they’re small and can’t talk back too much. Suzanne (00:16:05): Right, right. It was great. It was, I, I really, it was important for me to be there for them and we ended up having, you know, help of course with the three kids. But I had some quirky rules. Remember the nanny, I was trying to explain to her like, okay, so when the baby wakes up, even if I’m on a conference call, I can mute and I want to be the first face, the ABC. Matt (00:16:28): It’s interesting how when you wake up from a nap, it’s a level heavier, you know, go like, and then I’ll pass them on. Okay. How about that? I just think I did for many, many years. I was just trying to trick the kids and I’m like, no, no, no. I’m a complete stay at home mom. That’s pretty funny. I can imagine you, you’re on a conference call, you’re on mute and you come back, you’re like, okay, what was the question again? Exactly where you left off. That’s fantastic. Yeah. Well, did you find did you find that there were any particular challenges around trying to balance that? Running a business and be a mom and, you know, you, I know Nick is a big help around the house because he’s told me so. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And so I asked him about it too when he was in here interviewed for a podcast a while back is how do you balance that? It’s tough. And the other thing about both of you is you’re both, you are not sit around and watch TV kind of parents totally involved in your kids’ lives, going to sporting events, they’re all active kids. And how does, how do you balance on that? Suzanne (00:17:31): I’m still feel like I’m in the middle of it figuring it out too. But yeah, it is. It is 1000% a balancing act and you know, it’s through the years. Especially when I first started working from home, that just wasn’t really common place then. Now it’s definitely more, you know, the remote workforce is definitely more popular and, but the time, there were several struggles. One was, you know, having people understand that I literally, it was a legit career from home. I wasn’t just dabbling in something that, you know, it was a legit job for home. So just I guess, you know, other moms, you know, I didn’t quite fit in either category. I wasn’t in the group of moms that were home and I wasn’t the executive mom leaving at 6:00 AM either. So it was kind of uncharted territory and difficult finding people that were in similar situations. Suzanne (00:18:18): But I remember through the years, you know, it was so important to me to physically be present for the children. You know, I wanted to have this, this gift work really, really well. I wanted to be able to be there for them. But there were many hard times where I remember thinking, I kinda, I’m not succeeding. And either I felt like if I had to grade myself, I was like a C in the mom category and a C in the business that I wasn’t really able to, you know, exceed the way I wanted to in either. So that was difficult for me to sort of just be okay with being just okay. That’s just not my style. And the times where I was like killing it at work, I would have rated myself a D at home and the times that I was not so killing it at work, I was mother of the year, like a tricky balance to get just right. Matt (00:19:11): That is, I can totally see that you and I, you know, we share that we want to win, right. Win. And I imagine it’s really tough to be the all-star mom and the all star entrepreneur at the same time. Some of the same issues with, you know, you want to be there for all your kids stuff you want to go to every game you want to go to every play or whatever you want to be home when they get home from school and present, not distracted or stressed out or exhausted. It is a balancing act in the South. It sounds like you managed it well. Nice. Nice job. Let’s talk a little bit about, kind of touch on something you mentioned earlier about suddenly you’re running this business and you have to sell. Was it scary to go from a, Hey, you know what, I have a job. There’s security in that seems like, you know, there’s probably benefits and healthcare and all that stuff too. Hey, that’s me, this kind of work. It’s on my shoulders. I gotta look in the mirror and kind of figure that out. Was that, was that a scary process? Lately Suzanne (00:20:15): I don’t have entrepreneurs in my family. I think a lot of entrepreneurs have seen that in their family and so they’ve seen that be successful. That really, that wasn’t part of my immediate circle of influence. So yeah, it was terrifying. I mean, some things that made it a little bit easier truthfully was that I have still to this day have my license as an occupational therapist. I haven’t practiced in 20 some years, but in the back of my head I’m like, you know what your plan B plan F or G, but it’s that helped, you know, through the years. So like I, I don’t, I don’t have a horrible backup plan that would be amazing. And there’s a huge need and a huge shortage of therapists. So I knew I already had that. And then of course the supportive Nick has been having a nice secure job. I don’t, I think it’d be harder if he wasn’t supportive of that and knew it was a risk and knew I was walking away from really, you know, great, solid, consistent opportunity and I had his support, which is great. Matt (00:21:13): That’s awesome. Okay, so let’s, let’s kind of move on from there. One of the things that I think is really fascinating is how you built this business around recruiting and working with people that are looking for jobs or working with prospective employers that are looking for team members. And that’s all going really well. But then somebody, you’ve got a phone call one day and somebody wants to sell their business. Is that how it works? Is Suzanne (00:21:41): Sorta you got involved in mergers and acquisitions? I did. I didn’t know about that world. And yes, I did. And so again, the fascinating turn of events, it was really, was that, how did that all work? Again, it was a relationship I had built with a company and had helped them as a consultant many times over, which was awesome. A lot of my clients I had were repeat, they use me and then, you know, call me back in a year and it was almost like a checkup or another issue they wanted my thoughts on. So it was really a unique privilege because I could get up to speed quicker and, and yeah, it actually happened twice where there was some smaller businesses that I kind of knew and had some relationships with. And on the other side had some, you know, private equity firms that were looking to acquire companies in that space. Suzanne (00:22:29): And so, you know, made some introductions as another way around it. I get that wrong. And it’s actually the VC firm as, that says hey, do you know anybody it was, yes, they led the way that I knew what type of companies they were trying to add to their portfolio. And they knew of the relationships I had and sort of asked for. And I had helped them as a consultant before in many areas, so they knew and trusted me and just basically threw it out there. This is what we’re after and this is the type of companies we’re looking for. Wow. Do you know, the areas they were looking to diversify sort of across the U S and so there were some pockets that they wanted companies and it just so happened that I had some relationships with some companies in those areas. And the rest was history. That was a unique experience almost. Sounds like it. Matt (00:23:14): I mean, an amazing opportunity. So what was that like when you, when you’re trying to bridge the gap between, okay, I have a central buyer and I have a potential seller. I know both of them have relationships with both of them. How do you bring them together and make that work? Suzanne (00:23:31): Yeah, so my loyalty definitely felt on the side of the company, not a company that was wanting to acquire them because there was a protection, I think, you know, a concern that would they be able to keep their culture and keep the, that were important to them. And so, especially the first one especially, I felt a big connection and sort of a loyalty there to them. And I didn’t want to advise them in the wrong direction were or convinced them to do something they weren’t comfortable with. So it was a tricky balance. And really for myself it was more of a, you know, let’s feel this out together and let’s look at the pros and cons together even though it will tell us it really is that you do with my decision. But, but yeah, it was a really unique experience to be a part of. Suzanne (00:24:18): Sure. How did you go about learning the skills necessary to even know what to ask? You know, because this, this is, you know, people that build their whole career, right? M and a, I know entire organizations around venture capital. How does a person like me or you kind of sit down and say, okay, I need to learn how to broker a deal between two companies. Great question. I am really good at using my resources around me. And so there were some people in our world that Nick and I knew that had, that was their career and I had them literally on speed dial. I remember. And one scenario, no joke, calling them from the woman’s restroom. And I’m like, okay, there’s using words. I don’t understand the, you know, tell me what they mean. What questions should I be asking? You know, make me look smart essentially. Suzanne (00:25:06): How did it help me get through this? And so I had some really great supporters from behind the scenes. Sort of guiding me along the way is fantastic. Yeah. That deal ended up being the first of the two of them. Wow. So did that kind of make you feel like, Hey, you know what, I’m going to start another business around him and a few, I was like, I can’t believe people do this full time. This is a blast, this is a real job. This is a real thing. And so learned a lot it, you know, just like you, it’s, I think once you get the bog of learning and trying to solve problems, it’s, you just can’t, it’s, you know, a hunger you can’t satisfy. It’s, and so yes, just learning, I didn’t, I didn’t really understand that that world existed and that there were people that that is truly their careers. Suzanne (00:25:52): And it was very, very exciting. And the person that was helping me was really funny. He was so excited in such a great, you know, support to me. And he was like, you know, listen, this is so exciting. I just, I I, you know, Oh, I need you to know that there’s like a 1% chance this’ll go through. Oh really? Like one person. Like I was so excited and then when it did, so we took him out to dinner and we tiered to the 1% so I know when it happened again. I’m like, so like lightning striking twice. Yeah. That was amazing. So at this point you’ve been running and staffing innovations for a number of years, a good long time. You worked in a lot of different companies work with venture capital side, you broker to M and a deals, which was just amazing. A lot of people could have just said, you know what? Life’s good. I’m just going to keep on doing this Matt (00:26:44): For the rest of my life. Yeah, something changed because I know there’s another venture that you’re involved in now. It’s really your main thing. So what, what happened that made you shift your attention and kind of want to continue and try and get another new thing? Suzanne (00:27:00): That’s right. Yeah. So yeah, that’s a, it’s an interesting story. So as I mentioned, I use my resources and stay connected to the people that are important to me. Whether they kind of like it or not. So yeah. But yes, there was a, a a gentleman that I had met he was actually a vendor for Kendrick when I worked there. His company was a staffing company and we met and then through the years he lives in Durham and has, he would come through Atlanta, we’d grab coffee just to stay connected. It was mostly me I think driving that, you know, connection keeping that because I, it was very bright guy and smart, had really great ideas and solutions. And so this was several years before, you know anything to do on paper with Matchwell. But you know, he started to talk about things that were bothering him and the industry that, you know, almost hinting that he felt like he was on the wrong team. Suzanne (00:27:54): That the staffing industry and the staffing the way the model has been for 27 years, you know, they, their merchants were continuing to skyrocket. Meanwhile, it wasn’t really going back to the pockets of the clinicians and it was killing facilities. They helped some, you know, sort of the America safety net hospitals and you know, sort of a light bulb moment for him was sitting in sort of a audacious gala that his company had sponsored and hearing talk after talk of people. You know, we’ve saved 0.01 cent on a, you know, injector needle cap or something. You know, every way they could save money. And meanwhile his company, you know, it’s just the nature of, you know, right or wrong. They were filling needs in the staffing and helping them are, you know, no doubt about it, but started to think that, you know, maybe there’s a better way to directly connect facilities with their needs to help save costs. Right. Are those expensive? Matt (00:28:52): Recruiters I think in any field certainly is in the it field to the extent that we can figure out our own recruiting, we want to do that because anytime we bring in a third party to help with recruiting, there’s a massive expense on the front end. And there’s still a lot of risk tied to that too because often the recruiter doesn’t know the culture of your organization and where that comes from. So I can see how that could play out in the healthcare field also. So he was, he was in the recruitment field and seeing where, Hey, you know what, we’re making good money, but maybe there’s a better way to do things. Suzanne (00:29:25): That’s right. He had an idea basically. And so probably for a good year as he would come through town or you know, he’d bounce the idea off me and sort of, you know, literally back a napkin map, map out what he was thinking of, how to directly connect these two parties, you know, without having to go through a middleman, the staffing agency and, you know, I was there just to, as a friend essentially to listen and with my knowledge, poke holes in it, you know, the best I could and you know, help him think through his idea until I remember it was over a weekend and I couldn’t stop thinking about it. It’s like it had become more clear to him where he was going and what idea and it was becoming more real that he was ready to sort of take this leap himself that he was missing a part of the puzzle, which was the recruiting side. Suzanne (00:30:12): And he had mentioned it to me like, you know, I need your help looking for somebody. He kind of understood the facility, the hospital, that side, but needed somebody on the clinician recruiting side. And I thought about it all weekend. And truthfully, I remember the moment I’m like, this is not just grabbed my attention, it’s grabbed my heart. Oh wow. And so I called him back and said, listen, I’m interested myself in this. Not sure whether he would be interested in me. And yeah. Then went and met with the chairman of the board that we had already he had already aligned himself with and that helped us sort of raise the funds and the rest is history. So yeah, he asked me to be the cofounder and off to the races we went. How long ago was that? That was the end of 2017. Suzanne (00:30:58): Yeah, we took, we raised the money much quicker than we thought, just based on an idea. And I think it’s because it’s healthcare and everybody knows there’s a huge critical, massive shortage of clinicians. So that’s always a nice topic for investors if you have an idea around healthcare and a disruptor in the staffing. And so, yeah, we thought it would take months and months to raise the money we were after. And we raised it really quickly, which allowed us to kind of get off to the races a little bit quicker. So we took 2008 18 partnered with a technology company out of San Francisco and started mapping out the technology. So it took that year to build it essentially and build some ideas and processes around it. Hired the team in January of 2019 and flip the switch to on with the technology in April. Matt (00:31:45): Wow, that’s amazing. Okay. So tell us what is Matchwell? What’s, what’s your value proposition? You know, not put you on the spot here for a little bit of a pitch, but I just want to know a little bit about what the company does and what’s unique about it. Suzanne (00:31:58): Yes, the unique part of our company is that our technology directly connects healthcare facilities with clinicians and what they’re looking for. And the reason we’re called Matchwell. So we use technology and algorithms in the background to help based on what their skill sets are and what they’re looking for directly expose them to opportunities that match what they’re looking for. Okay. Hence Matchwell. Exactly. Matt (00:32:26): My understanding is is that there’s a little bit of a tweak here because there are, there are recruiting platforms out there that are more general in a sense. And I know in my field there was one that was very popular for a long time and may still be dice.com as sort of a recruiting platform for it folks. Is the differentiator for Matchwell that it’s specific to healthcare or are there other aspects that are unique and different? Suzanne (00:32:50): Awesome. Yeah, that’s a, that’s a great question. We are specific to healthcare. So we’ve leveraged the years of healthcare staffing that he has and, and, and I have and really honed in on just healthcare. The technology would work for other sectors, but that is where we’re focusing is healthcare. Matt (00:33:08): So you mentioned when you got started working from home years ago that that was still a pretty unique idea. You know, that a lot of people doing that technology obviously has advanced a lot. And now, not only do we have lots of people that are able to work from home, even our team, if there’s a snow day or something like that, we work from home on a temporary basis and in many fields, people work from home all the time. But there’s also this whole gig economy. It’s people, you know, whether it’s Hooper or some of these other platforms where they’re working BRBO, Airbnb and so on. Is there an aspect of that too? Is it, or is it more of a traditional employment arrangement? Once we connect a clinician with a potential employer? Suzanne (00:33:52): Oh, that’s a great question. So we’re really focused. Our passion is flex work and that is for several reasons. Due to the clinician shortage, a lot of clinicians, you know, when they get into a facility, they’re mandated to work many, many hours and over time. And what we have found is that there’s clinicians that keep their license and nurse that are stay at home moms or retired, and there are options for them to work sort of here and there as they choose today. But it’s very transactional. They would go to hospital a and tell them where they want to work. They manage the schedules themselves and then would reapply to another facility to find those types of flex work. So our platform allows a clinician to broadly see all their flexible opportunities in one spot. They can house their credentials, almost like a credentialing portfolio or wallets where they can house all their things there and not have to continually. Suzanne (00:34:47): And there’s a lot for clinicians, a lot of credentials and competencies that they have to Oh yes. Many, many. So they can house all those. They basically snap a picture and upload it into the platform and it houses it there. So it’s very easy for them to see many opportunities and apply too many options at once. Wow. And really, yeah. Are our big focuses, flex work, where we can tap into those moms that may want to work a little bit of a flexible schedule or the retirees that want to scale back don’t want to work the rigorous 12 hour shifts and you know, all of that. But they want to keep their foot but they want the empowerment and the control of, of their schedule. That’s really cool. Yeah. And then also the millennials, like you said, the gig economy, you know, we wanted work life balance but they’re demanding it. So it’s really, you know, reentry to them whether they’re picking up a little bit of extra work on top of their full time job or they just want to work really, really hard for, you know, 12, 13 weeks and then take a month off and travel. And this platform allows them to sort of control when and how they want to work. Matt (00:35:47): That is really awesome. I’m curious, is that part of your contribution to this conversation or was that a, in terms of what, what Nashville does and this focus of doing, cause that’s kind of unique. I think it’s really cool. Or is that something that was kind of part of the plan from the beginning? Suzanne (00:36:01): It was part of the plan from the beginning. Yeah. Yep. Matt (00:36:04): Yeah. I love it. You’re right there. That is something that all of us want for sure. Flexibility, the control in our destiny and so forth. So that is awesome. When you go look online, you look at some of these organizations like the Ubers and the Airbnbs, do you find that that’s an inspiration for some of what you’re doing? Is there a model that’s out there that you kind of said, okay, here’s what we’ve done here. Where do you feel like it’s a whole brave new world and I kind of gotta figure it out myself? Suzanne (00:36:35): Yeah, it’s a little of both. I mean, I think some of those types of technologies are very, very high tech but not very high touch. And so far I think with healthcare, that’s where the differences lie. We consider ourselves both. And of course, you know, driving somebody from point a to point B, although there are competencies and you know, things that that go along with, it’s, it’s very complex in healthcare. You have to have the right skillset, you have to keep competencies. So if you’re working a flexible schedule you know, one week can you wait two months before you go back and work there again or will there have been some changes? So aligning the competencies with what the requirements are for patient care at this hospital and, and even more so just under the umbrella of a hospital, there’s differences per department. So the mother and baby unit may have different competencies, competency requirements, then, you know, the emergency room or things like that. So it’s very complex more so than some of the others. But we do certainly watch, you know other marketplace technologies like Uber and Airbnb for, you know, guidance and how do you make something so complex, simple. And that’s been a challenge. Yeah. Matt (00:37:48): Well, I don’t think that’s, that’s always a big part of the challenge, right? We make complicated things simple. It’s hard to do. It’s very hard to do. Well. Speaking of complicated things made simple, how in the world did you become such a technical person? I mean you, let’s listen to this. So you’ve got this idea along with your cofounder about, Hey, I want to build this platform. You know, you and I, we know each other. I don’t remember there being a huge background in software development and hiring remote teams to work on a building a platform. How in the world did you it got adapt? Suzanne (00:38:20): Yeah. Well that they, my team would probably argue that I’m not, there’s the founder does, I think you might say the same is that no, we are, neither one of us are technical people. But I think what we have both learned and done a very good job of is hiring the best and the brightest. We have a team of incredibly smart people. So it is certainly, you know, very much and our thumbprints are all over the concept and the idea and how we want it to work based on our knowledge from our previous careers. But the actual components of the technology are largely done by, you know, the professionals. Matt (00:39:01): Do I understand correctly that most of that development team, if not the entire development team is based outside of Georgia? Suzanne (00:39:08): Correct? Yes. We have a couple of, we are growing more internally to handle those things. We have we hired somebody right away in technology to, to help guide us and be that liaison and that voice. Someone that understood the language far more than Rob and I did as they were talking. So helping to manage that partnership and drive those changes that we want to see in a way that they the developers could understand. It’s almost going to translate. That’s right. Exactly. And she’s phenomenal. So she’s a great listener and can hear what we’re saying and what we would try to want to accomplish and she’s great immediately. She’s like, yeah, that sounds really simple, but that is months to do. And then things that seem like too complex to even ask for, she’s like, Oh no, no, no. That’s a quick, easy change. So she’s really helpful in that way and she listens intently on what we’re trying to accomplish and then she helps to organize it and make it happen. Matt (00:39:59): So as you might imagine at Rocket IT, we sometimes get pulled into various scenarios where people are looking to either build a line of business application or in some cases they’re looking to expand its capacity or capability. And so we get drawn into those conversations. We don’t do software development here inside our organization, but we often work with other software developers and there’s sort of a recurring theme that I think I’ve identified as very sophisticated. Stuff’s really expensive and usually it’s costs a lot more than the business owners and the people driving the projects. Imagine, have you found that? Suzanne (00:40:35): Yeah. Early on some of our board members who have had experience with technology warned us and of course we were just shiny eyed and I’m a little naive in a, in a way that they said, you know, it’s going to take you longer and it’s going to cost you more. And we’re like, no, no, no, no. We’ve got a good plan. And yeah, it took us longer and it costs us a little more Matt (00:40:53): And it’s probably not, it always has to be developed, Suzanne (00:40:58): Iterate on, right. Yeah. But that’s the exciting part. It really is. Yes. You know, I’m learning from our early users. We had some early adopters, both on the hospital side of the facility side and on the clinician side, and you know, to be in listening mode and, you know, try to make it more intuitive, try to make it easier, less clicks. How do they get from point a to point B? What made sense to us may not make sense to the actual users in real life. So it we’re, you know, enlisting mode and I don’t think that’ll ever end. Matt (00:41:25): Yeah. Well that’s good. That’s good. It could be right. Yeah. Good way to build your business. So you launched your product officially, I think you said in April of this year. How many clients would you study? I don’t know how that works on April 10th. I’m going to turn this on and then just, we’re gonna stand back and watch all the people. How did that happen? Suzanne (00:41:43): Yeah, that was we had the luxury of having a wait list. So before April we had a talk to many clinicians. And so we had a bit of a nice groundswell, all one, albeit of the on the clinician side of folks on the waitlist that were just interested in, you know, getting into the technology when it was ready. So that helped. And then on the facility side, we had two facilities agreed to be what we called alpha facilities test phase. So yeah, they they helped us really more than tests as along as a proof of concept. Proof of concept. Exactly. Yeah. And we also, we are early, early on we had a handful maybe, I don’t know, less than a hundred alpha clinicians to using not the real platform you know, staging type information. But, but yeah, it’s when we flipped the switch on, we had a couple of clients that were willing to be patient with us and, and let us try it. Yes, it was. It was great. Matt (00:42:40): So what’s it been like, I mean, I imagine it’s been amazing, right? Tell me how, how has that all unfolded? Suzanne (00:42:48): Yeah, so it has been incredible. I think for us, we knew all along just from the staffing industry side that this concept would ring true to the facilities. It’s cost savings, it’s direct access to clinicians that they need. It’s a whole new model of, of helping, you know, with the deficit of clinicians, aligning them. And so we knew that we, we pretty much knew that’s gonna that is gonna sell well, the wildcard for us, I think, or for me more importantly, was on the clinician side because there’s, they’re heavily sought after. There’s a huge demand there. You know, they’re emailed, they’re sent messages, they’re cold called constantly for recruiting because there’s, I think 500,000 clinicians short across America. So they are used to being sought after, always have been. Matt (00:43:33): Well, I hadn’t even thought about that. So yeah, you’ve got all these amazing facilities that have signed up and if there are no clinicians, they’re ready to do that. Suzanne (00:43:40): That’s right. Yeah. We talk a lot, a lot about chicken and eggs with us because you get too many clinicians in the platform with not much for them to do. That’s not good. Or you get facilities in there with not enough clinicians. That’s not good either. So you know, it’s, it’s definitely a balance trying to get that flywheel spinning of clinic, the right amount of clinicians and facilities. Yeah. So it’s been a challenge. So what do you do to keep them coming back? That’s a great question. We our mission is to exceed expectations every way we can. So we allow, which is super unique as well, access to the clinicians on the facility side. However they want. If they find a clinician and they want that clinician full time and that the clinician wants to work there full time, we don’t hold them back for that. They’re allowed, you know, to use the clinicians however they they choose. And just a lot of flexibility, a lot of flexibility. And so they love that. Yeah, I’ve seen, are you Matt (00:44:32): Finding that the clinicians are able to kind of keep their credentials up to date in the system? Suzanne (00:44:37): Yeah. Yeah. And so one of our earliest hires of ahead of the whole team was a nurse practitioner who had done a lot of credentialing and monitoring of credentials for a large hospital. And so she was very aware of, of that component of it. And so, you know, making sure that the clinicians not only have uploaded the appropriate credentials, but that they’re valid and they’re UpToDate. But our system will ping a clinician if something’s about to expire or something along those lines. Yeah. but, but yeah, the clinicians have given us great feedback on, on the value they’re seeing in that. And yeah. The more clients we get, the more exciting it is to partner with facilities to tell the clinicians, you know, pop back in there, there’s more opportunities for you. Matt (00:45:22): That’s really exciting. I’m super impressed with what you’ve accomplished. You and your team. It’s been incredible. So tell me now. You really are, I mean, 25 plus years at this point. You’re a seasoned that in the healthcare space and the staffing space, you’re an awesome mom, you’re super involved in your kids. And I know, you know, our kids are roughly the same age. He’s still got a one going through school at home and she’d got a couple of going to college now. That’s awesome. And now you’re doing all this work with a venture capitalist firms and you’re in this tech space. You’re a cofounder of this amazing new tech startup. It’s all really cool. Any surprises as you’ve kind of gone through that path and, and the people that you’ve worked with how has that worked out? Suzanne (00:46:09): Yeah, it’s interesting. I recently, from the encouragement of the chairman of my board, he’s a great guy and encouraged me to read Melinda Gates book, the moment of lift, which was a great book. And it’s interesting reading through it. I could relate to a lot of the concepts that she was referring to in Indiana through the years. It would never have labeled myself a feminist or anything even along those lines. But I will say several years ago, basically with staffing innovations and as I got connected to VC firms or as a consultant, I immediately had a seat at the c-level. I mean, they were like, here’s all our dirty laundry and here’s our, you know, like help us basically. But I got an immediate seat there and, and many times invited to board meetings as a guest, you know, and it really was sort of this epiphany like where all the females, this is, it was, it sort of, I remember it just sort of slowly like hitting me that I am, I don’t see that gender diversity. You know, like I thought and in a lot of the clients were healthcare, which was even more I guess of a perplexing thought that 90 some percent of clinicians are female. And is that right? Yes. Wow. Yeah, that’s a very heavily, Matt (00:47:19): I think Chris and I should go be clinicians and then we’ll start a whole thing about getting more men in the workforce. Suzanne (00:47:25): Thank you. Yeah, I’ll help you with that. Find a little bit, but Matt (00:47:30): The truth is, is I, you know, and I’m not an expert in this, but I’ll go to the doctor. I go to the dentist and to me it just seems like there’s no unusual imbalance that seems like Suzanne (00:47:42): It’s more so on nurses. I think you’ve seen that. Certainly, Matt (00:47:47): You know, it was, it was kind of unusual to find a male nurse. Now these days it’s less, it’s not as unusual. You still see that. Suzanne (00:47:55): Yeah. Yeah. There’s, they’re making a difference, but yeah. But, but that I think was a surprise to me. Matt (00:48:00): Well that is fascinating. So yeah, you’ve made it so you’re kind of left of the, you know, the proverbial floor of the tactile hospital. Right. I moved into the board room and all of a sudden, right. The second is all guys around here. Any thoughts on why, why that is or what’s, what’s the challenge or why aren’t there more women in that? That Suzanne (00:48:18): I don’t know. And it’s funny, I’m just kind of early in this sort of epiphany and I think it’s, you know, it’s been around and there’s resources out there and tons of literature about it. But I guess for myself personally, it hasn’t been until the last, you know, five, 10 years that I’m noticing it more and more. And what was really interesting about this recent book, and I, I’m really impressed the way the chairman of my board handled it because it, you know, somewhere tucked in the book and the book is, you know, it’s just a fascinating story, but she mentions that, you know, it’s not only females that need to, you know, I guess make it known that this is something they’re interested in and, and sort of empower mid for women but also for men too. You know, intentionally tried to layer in diversity, gender diversity, or any diversity as they can. Suzanne (00:49:04): And he, he was moved by that and just recently it was a sponsored a dinner where he, that was really the main goal of the dinner was to get both male and female entrepreneurs and executives in a room together for a nice dinner to do nothing other than meet each other and collaborate. And so it impressive that, you know, he was not only moved by it but took action and started to think how in his position in his tenure and career, how can I help bridge this gap that he has seen as well. I think it’s, you know, it is an intentionality that needs to be layered in. Matt (00:49:42): Well, you know, I I do think it’s interesting and I think it’s really cool that both you and your co founder or robber are interested in that and doing something about it. That’s, that’s admirable. I will say for my personal experience early in the days of hiring employees, so are first starting to build Rocket IT. You know, from, you know, being the three of us, me and myself and I, and we’re going to hire a first actual bonafide other person. And then another and another. It was really tough, at least in my field, and maybe it’s my personality, maybe it’s our field, other not as many female techs for example, there are not as many women that are fascinating by fascinated by computers as men for some reason. But I found it very difficult early on, you know, when we’re five, 10 employees, somebody had to be the first woman to join the team. Right? And and that can be probably uncomfortable for a lot of reasons. When you come in and there’s eight guys and you’re the first female Hey, you know what? There might be some unknowns about that. You don’t know how you’re going to be treated. How are you going to be perceived? And so it was scary for that person. I imagine. Suzanne (00:50:53): It’s definitely, yeah. I have learned a lot about myself and how I’m wired and I think early, Oh, this is different for men or women. But early in the career you almost, you’re trying to adopt a different style that isn’t really true to yourself because you feel like that’s the way to be. And so I found myself migrating to things like that. But as I’ve gotten more and more involved and comfortable with, you know, being on the executive team and I, I don’t make progress that way. I have to be true to myself. I’ve got to, you know, leverage my strengths and, and you know, not an outsource and get help on my weaknesses. And it’s always continued to sort of evolve and try to sharpen my saw. But being true to what I’m good at and my true self has really helped lend I think a better, you know, we make more progress that way. Suzanne (00:51:41): I have, this is just a funny side note. I I have literally, I say I’ve started a book, I have like one page of an outline of a funny, funny, just epiphany story that I’m like, this is someday in my retirement I’m going to write a book about this because there’s so much to unpack about this. Funny story, a difference in, in a pithany I think at the perfect time of, of why you need men and women in leadership, whether that’s on a board or executive team. But, so this was years ago and it’s still stuck in my head, literally 15, 20 years ago. And it’s this crazy hot day August. And in our cul-de-sac you’ve seen where we live there was a dog loose, a crazy dog, like a big dog wreaking havoc, like ripping up people’s, you know, flower beds and scaring children. Suzanne (00:52:30): And so my husband and about four other men set out to take care of the situation, like put the women and children inside. We’re going to take care of this and they’re running around and all I hear is like, Whoa, wild West. Yeah. And they were like, we’ve got the dog trapped over here and you know, course they get to the dog and the dog would take off running and you know, they were trying to surround the dog and like sliding all over the grass and like, just like, ah, we’re gonna get the sock and you might see my name or just, you know, kind of look around, see what the situation was. She goes inside and I thought, okay. And a couple of minutes later she comes back out, she’d open the garage door and walk to the top of the driveway and just stand at the top of the driveway and whistles like with that dark and you see the dog and the ears prick up and the dogs tail starts whining and she starts the dog just like right to her and she just backs up the dogs following her, gets the dog into the garage, hits close to God, problem solved. Suzanne (00:53:33): And I remember thinking, this is why you need both men and women because we just, we look at things so differently. We solve problems differently. And you know, not to like say men or, you know, but I’m like, this is why, I mean it’s just, and I see this in leadership and I see this all the time. It’s the, you know, even Rob and I, you know, building a company from nothing other than an idea and we think about things so, so drastically differently. But I think there’s such value there. And, and, and that sort of diversity in the way people think and go about trying to solve problems. Big ones. Matt (00:54:09): Boy, you just said there’s just so great hearing that story. You just encapsulated what I think many of us believe and think about what’s true. And so many of these things are true for both men and women. You know, being the best version of yourself, being true to yourself and who you are and really setting aside any preconceived notions of who we’re supposed to be and really allow you to take some courage, right? To say, okay Suzanne (00:54:36): And confidence, right? Cause they, like, this is me and I’m thought, and I’m not perfect, but this is me really what Matt (00:54:42): We want. When, when, you know, when you’re building your team, when I’m building my team at Rocket IT, we don’t, we’re not hiring folks that are built to be robots and think just like we do, we’re looking for folks that do bring some of their own personality and their beliefs and their background and so forth to the team. And I can tell you, speaking from my own experience once we started adding women to the team, you know, we up won and eventually we find another one brave soul, come join the team. And then eventually, you know, we’re still not completely balanced. I don’t know exactly what the number is, but it’s probably something like 30% women and something like that, 25%. Maybe there’s benefit to having that different perspective. You know, you want that different perspective and we seek it out and we look for it. Matt (00:55:28): And so even as I’m growing my leadership team, we just announced this morning, we’re expanding our leadership team, excited about bringing a couple of members of our team that that were hired and, and more junior roles that arising into a leadership role. And for me, a very important one, man, one woman. And so we’re adding to that team because we want that different perspective. We’re just batter when we have multiple perspectives and backgrounds and the way we think. And I think that’s true of any kind of diversity, really not limited to the male, female age, socioeconomic background could be a color of skin. All of those things are where we’re from a, there’s benefit when you get those different perspectives in a room and we’re working collaboratively together to get something done. So angry. How awesome is that? So I would love to hear, you know, I was teasing you a little bit earlier before we started recording about your LinkedIn says a chief people officer, which I love that title, but you may, maybe I’ll have to get what a copy of your job description at some point. Matt (00:56:31): I like, I love anytime you add the word chief to something, it sounds really boring, but I am curious a year you’ve built this platform and you’ve got a great way of connecting your facilities with clinicians, but you still got a job to do recruiting inside your own organization. Right? I’m going to guess with your background everybody on the team wants you to lead that up because you’re probably really good at it. How do you do that? How do you go about attracting people to this? Hey, Hey, you know what, come join our team. We started in April. It’s going to be amazing. Kind of how do you do? Suzanne (00:57:04): Right. Yeah, it’s really tricky. I think clearly understanding what we need and like you said, intentionally layering in that diversity is important to us, especially in the early, cause you can get stuck in a rut before you know it and you look around and you’re like, Ugh, you know, I didn’t get that right. So listening exactly what we need. And I think too, it’s exciting to be part of something new. And so I, I’m really, I don’t want to call it stalking, but I will find what I’m looking for. And just, I think the energy and the excitement that goes along with it and it makes it a little bit easier to attract the attention of people that it is a risk. I mean, we don’t hide that fact. This is a startup, you know, this is, this is, you know,

In this episode of the Rocket IT Podcast, we sit down with the man that Google recently named one of "The Most Interesting Trainers in the World". Through his work in both the nonprofit and for-profit sectors, Demming Bass has helped thousands of organizations develop winning marketing strategies for their brands. Demming is an entrepreneur with a passion for teaching, leading him to serve as an educational speaker for Google’s “Grow with Google” initiative. He’s also an accomplished artist, songwriter, father, and an innovative mixologist.

Understanding where you and your business fit within the larger scope of society is important for making positive impacts. But when it comes to educating, equipping, and engaging diverse community leaders, how does one inspire civic involvement?  In this episode of the Rocket IT Podcast, Executive Director of Leadership Gwinnett, Lisa Zaken, provides an in-depth look at the importance of leadership development courses, while highlighting the impact community outreach can have on a business’s success.

For a business to thrive in today’s marketplace, a sense of transparency must be achieved. But how exactly does an organization cultivate this heightened level of trust while remaining competitive in their industry?  In this episode of the Rocket IT Podcast, commercial real estate principal, Jeff Richardson explains the impact strong core values and passionate client advocacy can have on a business. From these efforts, Jeff and his team at CTR Partners believe they’ve found the secret formula that keeps clients coming back, long after the transaction has ended.

Years after enthusiastically launching your small business, you've hit a wall. Feeling like every day is the same as you frustratingly face the same challenges, you hopelessly drift away from a growing and sustainable business. The more you give, the more your company takes. Is there a future running your small business? In this episode of the Rocket IT Podcast, freelancer, entrepreneur, and marketing guru, Jason Scott Montoya clears the air around this dilemma; giving you some insight into what it takes to ensure your organization thrives.

Day in and day out, Rocket IT team members are determined to find better ways to support clients and have a blast while doing so. In this episode of the Rocket IT Podcast, we’re making ourselves accountable for those two core values, and quite literally placing them where our mouths are. Breaking tradition from previous installments, this segment features three engineers willing to place both their knowledge and taste buds on the line. While answering some of our listeners’ most burning technical questions, participants are tasked with simultaneously eating increasingly spicy wings. As the intensity of each question increases, so too does the heat of the sauce.

Facilitating community growth requires leaders who are mindful of the present, focused on the future, and eager to surround themselves with a team of high achievers. But when searching for individuals to encircle oneself, how can today’s decision makers ensure the next generation of aspiring leaders are not overlooked? In episode four of the Rocket IT Podcast, the Gwinnett Chamber of Commerce’s newly elected President and CEO, Nick Masino, sits down with Rocket IT Founder and CEO, Matt Hyatt, to discuss the benefit peer learning can have on a team’s growth.

On this episode of the Rocket IT Podcast, Matt and Eric of Rocket IT sit down with Robin Bienfait, Founder and Accelerator of Atlanta Tech Park, and CEO of Emnovate, an executive advisory firm based inside the Park’s facilities. As an executive from AT&T, Blackberry and Samsung, Robin has both led innovation from within corporations, as well as invested herself in innovative technologies outside of these corporate hubs. Now, in an effort to share her expertise, Robin has created an ecosystem that curates innovation, engages entrepreneurs and accelerates business growth.

In this episode of the Rocket IT podcast, we sit down with Dan Frey, Founding Partner of a global company dedicated to liberating the leaders of today, whilst simultaneously raising the standard of leadership for tomorrow. Having spent over 15 years working in Corporate America, Frey quickly learned that leadership teachings are useless without meaningful applications. Using this framework as a platform for innovation, Frey and his colleagues worked together to establish GiANT Worldwide, an organization committed to improving the productivity of companies through the intentional apprenticeship of its leaders.

Does your organization have clearly defined core values? Are they something that you attempt to live and breathe every day? Do these values positively impact the lives of your team and the community you service? In the inaugural episode of the Rocket IT Podcast, we interview a guest from a special non-profit that truly takes their core values to heart.