Manuel: Welcome everyone. So my name is Manuel Martinez
and this is another episode of Career Downloads
where each episode I basically hit the refresh
button, bring on a different guest to really
learn more about their career and how they've
managed it over time to really be able
to uncover
any actionable advice that you can use as
you're managing your own career. So for today's
episode I have with me Adam Lopez and I
had met him at a networking event. So
this was for SIM,
so the Society of Information Managers. We had
connected on LinkedIn. I had seen his kind of
his career path and found a lot of
interest in kind of the trajectory that he
had. So I asked him to
come on and he more than graciously accepted.
So with that I'll introduce Adam. Adam: Hey thanks
for having me, Manuel. Manuel: I appreciate you coming
on and kind of sharing your career trajectory.
Adam: Absolutely. Manuel: So what I've been doing with my
guests is if you just kind of give
us a brief summary,
just kind of tell us what your current
position is and kind of some of the
roles and responsibilities.
Adam: Yeah, sure. So currently I am the president
of CMIT Solutions. We are a MSP cybersecurity company.
So we predominantly do it in the cybersecurity space,
but we also do MSP, which is your
help desk for small
to medium-sized businesses. Typically our market is
small to medium-sized businesses, but we also do
government as well, as well as enterprise, you
know, just depending on the level. We are
a franchise
that's been around since the 80s. Kind of
funny story about the franchise. CMIT used to
stand for
Computer Moms in Informational Technology. So it was
a mom that started the business and she used to go
around and fix people's computers. And so when
I heard about the story, I love the
story. I love the
everything about that. And I was like, how
do I get involved? So now, you know,
now I am the president
here in Las Vegas and it's been great.
You know, I work with a lot of
the same people you guys work
with as well, as well as I work,
you know, with the casinos in town, a
lot of the small to medium-sized
businesses that just don't have that understanding of
what cybersecurity is. Like, you know, most small
to medium-sized businesses don't understand they need
it until they're breached, right? Kind of scenario.
So those are the kind of things that
we do. And then I have a team
here of system administrators,
network engineers, technicians, help desks that are locally
here that help support me in my business.
So most of the time, you know, it's
a lot of going around to understand what
businesses are needing,
keeping a pulse on what's going on in
cyber because it's changing daily, if not hourly.
And then also,
you know, managing a team. You know, I
have a huge team here that I need
to make sure that, hey,
they have things under control that they're running
on. I fully trust my team. I'm very
happy that I have a good team. But
again, to get to that point did take
some time.
Manuel: And now, just to kind of work our
way up to that. So if you just
kind of give me
a brief summary of kind of where you
grew up and eventually what kind of got
you interested in technology.
Like everybody has a different point in
time that kind of where that bug or
that desire
to kind of learn more started. So what
was your introduction?
Adam: Yeah. So, you know, didn't come from a
tech background. My father was a welder. Mom
was a
home caretaker for elderly people. So didn't have
a lot of tech. So my first tech
thing was a Super
Nintendo that I bought myself. I had to
work for it and pay for myself. And
then I just kind of got
involved with it. I saw, you know, started
some cool stuff around the house, like building some
these little circuit boards that you used to
make. And you used to make lights go
bright and dim and stuff like that. You
remember those? And then my famous story is
that back in
the old days, when I was a kid,
they had cordless phones. Remember the ones they
pull out? So I had
this, I got one from the thrift store
because back then they were expensive. So we
got one from the
thrift store, you know, being thrifty as we
were. And I'm going to make this thing
work. So, you know,
I started taking it apart. And it's always
taking it apart. It's the easy part, right?
Putting it
together. So I'm taking this thing apart and
not knowing nothing about electricity. I'm like,
oh, I need to splice this wire. And
so instead of using my finger, which I
didn't, I used my teeth
with 120 volts plugged into the wall. And,
and, you know, I learned that way about electricity,
but also I learned, it was kind of
funny. That's how I got my, you know,
kind of, it excited me. I was
like, technology is this cool kind of scenario.
So it's kind of drove me. So I've
always had that on my
mind kind of scenario, what I wanted to
do. I went to school for something totally different.
I went to school for hospitality management at
Las at UNLV, which is the feeder part.
So I grew up in
San Diego, you know, went to a feeder
school out there called Mesa, Mesa Junior College.
So, you know,
got my two year associates there in hotel
management. And I'm like, what do I do?
You know,
UNLV has one of the best hotel programs
in the nation applied. I got in, I'm
like, wow,
that's cool. So started that journey through UNLV.
You know, not to say I put tech
aside. It was just
like, you know, in my day, tech wasn't
big. This was very early, you know, of
the 2000s before Y2K,
all that stuff. So tech wasn't a huge
thing back then. So the emphasis was more like,
hey, you got to know about tech because, you
know, if you're gonna be a hotel manager,
you need to know
that we have terminals that people need to
check in on. We have credit card machines,
stuff like that.
But it wasn't the emphasis. It wasn't the
bread and butter of the career. So, you know,
I kept that in mind and said, okay, how do
I leverage this? So funny enough, I graduated.
What do I do?
I got a part-time job at a
casino working as a technician. So I kind
of said, I want to work
on the slot machines to make sure they
work correctly. So what we do, go through there,
clean them out. You know, if they were
broken, if they didn't accept bills, we'd come
in there, clean them out, make sure they work kind
of scenario. So I worked for a small
casino here in town,
eventually led me to Caesars Palace here in
Las Vegas, which was a fun job that
I got to work at.
But in this technology realm, but I noticed
that I said, hey, I thought to myself
like, okay,
these slot machines are great. They're built on
really old Linux technology. Like this career
doesn't seem like it's going to go anywhere.
Like, you know, I don't know. I don't
see the future.
So I started understanding, okay, all these slot
machines feed into a centralized database.
Now this database is huge, right? It collects
all the data for all the slot machine.
Every time you put a dollar in, every
time you put your card in, all that
data and analytics
then kind of compresses. And then they create
the marketing programs off it. Like I need to get
in there. So I started reverse engineering and
said, okay, well now I know this job will probably
not be here forever because technology will take
that over. So where's that next leap? And I started
tracing that back and says, the database is
where I need to be. So I started
learning about databases.
So on my own, just trying to say,
hey, what does all this stuff does? So
it's a very simple SQL
database, right? That collects all the data. And
then they use report generators to report the stuff
out. Nothing super complex. So, and again, you
know, my background, not super technical, right? I grew up
through more of the project management, project delivery
role and the product delivery role rather than
the technical hands-on keyboard. What I knew
I was good at was like, was managing,
making sure deadlines are
good. You know, making sure that, hey, if
they says, hey, we need to deliver this
project or this
technology. I know that through just how I
am, you know, I can drill in and
say, okay, looking backwards,
we need to deliver to the customer on
this day. What do we need to do
to get there? Or we need to
deliver to the customer on this day. What
do we, and I'm very, I have this
kind of innate ability to
see that out. And I didn't figure this
out until later on in life, but it
was one of those innate
abilities to say, okay, well, not only do
I understand how much time do I need
to build this,
but I also need to understand how much
resources are needed, how much time, how much
money, how much allocations are for all this stuff is
kind of combined into one. So doing that,
I did a couple of projects. I'm like, this is amazing. I
was built for this. This is project management,
you know, product management is kind of where I love.
And so I kind of developed that role and I kind of
developed myself as a project. Then this was
before like project management was even kind of
a job.
It was, you know, we, they knew about
it, like project managers were there, but it
wasn't as, as bountiful as it is today. So it
was really cool to kind of learn in
that. And then, you know,
eventually I kind of got in a place
where I'm like, cool, right. I got to
understand the,
not so much the data. I mean, I
can sit down there with a coder and
say, Hey, SQL database
administrator, you know, run this query. And then,
you know, in the, and if you, in
the tech world,
not to get too technical, it's going to
come back with a query of rows of
data, right? But you can kind
of look back at that and say, Hey,
every row has a call, has a name,
has a header, has a row count.
So you can go through this and say,
okay, this data makes sense. Or it doesn't,
it's just garbage.
Right. So being that, you know, I'm not,
you know, I am technical, but I'm like
super like,
you know, in the weeds technical, but I
know how to drive teams and, and processes
to get us to where
we need to go. So that all wrapped
up was kind of fun and exciting with
Caesars Palace. They said
they owned a cruise ship at that time.
And I got to go out there and
work on a cruise ship. So.
Manuel: So interesting point there, where you mentioned that,
you know, you kind of on your own kind of
develop that, that curiosity of like, Hey, how
does this work and understanding? So does a lot of
that project management, you know, kind of understanding
the deliverables and, and Hey,
how does this work and being able, again,
you have to be technical to at least
understand what's going
on. Was a lot of that from your
innate curiosity of just being able to say,
okay, this is how long
it takes me to develop, you know, or
clean out a slot machine. This is, you
know, are you kind of
piecing that those smaller pieces together of your
own understanding of how long something takes
or how are you kind of, how did
you build that skill of I can deliver
on time because I know how
long this will take or that will take
or database administrator. I need you to make
these types of
changes or pull this information for me. Like,
how did you determine that that's like,
how do you determine timelines? Adam: It, and great
question. You know, I got a tribute to my mom,
honestly, because my mom, you know, we didn't
have a lot of stuff growing up, you
know, early on in
life, but my mom was scrappy. She would
figure stuff out. She would always deliver birthday,
always deliver Christmas. And she was just one
of those people that can just honestly go out and
says, okay, my son wants this. And again,
it wasn't nothing, you know, outlandish, but
my son needs
this or my daughter needs this. What am
I going to do to figure this out
kind of scenario? She's kind of
like my, you know, what I give all
my credit to because that was that I've
always had that in my
mind of like, okay, understand that. Cause again,
like, you know, not everybody is going to be super
technical, right? Kind of scenario, but not everyone's
going to have a project management
mindset. And they're two totally different parts of
the mind, right? You know, and that's why they
need each other. What I, what I was
really good at is, is understanding the programmers,
understanding developers and stuff like that. And just having
a, like a realistic talk like you are and say,
okay, here's our realistic timeline. What we, is
this achievable, right? Like, you know, getting
the feedback from them instead of, you know,
I think the problem with a lot of
projects, why they
fail nowadays is the project manager kind of
takes that stuff back and just says, oh
yeah, we're going
to make it work, you know, and they're
trying to figure it out. You can't do
that. You need to go to
the people you rely on every day and
say, okay, I need this piece. Tell me
what's going to take.
And, you know, maybe buffer in a little
bit. I need this piece from you. How
long is that going to take?
And again, 90% of the time
it's going to slip, but as long as
you're realistic with them
and say, hey, what happened? Are you going
to make it up? And most times good
people are going to be
like, yeah, we'll make it up. Give me
another day. It's all I need. You know,
we've all been in that
situation, right? And just having that understanding. And
I think that's what Billy built me to be
successful in that job was just being adapt to
people to understand what their needs are and
what their timelines are and backing that into an
actual project, right? And then, then you kind
of put it all
together and say, this is what I can do.
Manuel: And then over time, I'm sure you're
kind of developing that
expertise, right? Adam: Yeah. Manuel: To where you can go
through and like, okay, I know I have
a better understanding.
So if a developer tells you, hey, I'm
going to get this done in a week,
you know that maybe it might
be a week and a half or, hey,
he's putting in buffer time. I think we
could probably get it done in four
days, right? But initially, yeah, it sounds like
having to really have those conversations and say,
hey, how long is this going to take?
Okay, realistically and being transparent, right?
And say, okay, we didn't hit the deadline
or you finished early. Why did you finish
early right? You know, and just kind of get
a better understanding.
Adam: It's a hierarchy, right? Because the CEO is
going to say, I can deliver it tomorrow.
The sales guy is going to say, I
can deliver next week. The project manager is
going to say, I'm going to leave it in two weeks.
And the developer is going to say, I'm
going to deliver it in a month, right? So how do
you massage that to say, what's realistic, right?
What is, what can we deliver it on? What can't
we deliver it on and pushing all that together.
Manuel: So then as you're kind of learning all
this database stuff, and it sounds like that's
kind of, I'm assuming when you kind of saw
that, hey, being a slot technician is not
going to be the
career path for you, you start to pick
up databases. So now are you just kind of searching
job boards to figure out how you can
kind of move out into other roles? Because
again, there's not a
defined project manager role like it is today,
technologies early. So what kind of may
you decide or kind of what was your
thought process to say, I need to go
out and kind of
what, what did that look like?
Adam: Yeah. So I think I just took a
second and said, okay, now I have to
figure out like,
where do I go with it? Right. You
know, cause I think you have two options,
right? Operations or,
or, or, or, yeah, operations or vendor. Right.
And that's, I think a lot of people make that
decision in their career. Right. So I'd say
that, that path in the road, where does that go?
So I was working in operations. It was great.
But then I'd see these vendor guys come
on site and
they were like, kind of flashy. I'm like,
they got a credit card. Well, they got
this and that.
And you're like, that's kind of a cool
job being on the vendor side. I didn't
realize they're like,
yeah, you know, we, we, we get to
travel around the world. We get to do
this and stuff. And when
you're young, it's very influential to you. Cause
you're like, I'm stuck between these four walls
and I kind of come see the same
thing. And for me, it was kind of
like, I like that because it's a
little bit more, you know, versatile. So I
can go out there and figure more stuff
out. And then
you're kind of understanding other technologies as well.
So I started, so from there I started,
I got a job with Bally. It used
to be called Bally Technologies. Now it's called
Light and Wonder,
but that manufacturer there, you know, they were
the main person that I did the database
work for,
or the project management database for. So I
was like, well, I extrapolated that and just
did a jump, right? So, okay, well, if there are
vendor for the casino I'm working for, they'd
love to have
you, right? So there's a little bit of
a non-compete going on there, but you
have to wait
that out. But once you get over that
side, you're like, great. Now you're learning that.
So you,
all the information you took from your, your
operations, now you're working for a vendor and
now you're just, your plate just wide open because
now you're not just talking about, okay,
what happens at this one company A in
the four walls. Now I'm working with company
B, C, and D
who have the same proprietary software, but I'm
learning what they do and how they, how they're
driving and, and what they're doing different from
other companies. So now you're taking that
wealth of information from all of these companies
instead of just one. And now you're become this
invaluable asset where you have relationships with the
customers, which are the casinos. You have
relationships, you understand the product. And so now
you're a golden child for, um, you know,
for either a job or for, you know,
whatever that next leap that you want to
go into to, to be successful.
Manuel: You're kind of gathering all this information
and, and I'm sure, you know, some
people might be okay and just like, Hey,
I like what I do. And you're there,
but it sounded like you had
bigger aspirations and more curiosity because you're right.
Like I did, I did operations for a long
time. Eventually I moved into, um, so I've
worked for a VAR, which is a value
added reseller, right?
So you, you're kind of going through and
it's on the vendor side. And I knew
that how this vendor,
this VAR did a lot of work for
casinos. I had experience there. So they're like,
Hey, you'd be
a great fit. You, you know, you understand
infrastructure, but it is completely different.
I knew what I did at this casino.
I had experience from, you know, I worked
at two different casinos. So it was like Boyd gaming. I
worked for Coast Casinos, a lot of similarities, but a
lot of differences. And then now you're getting exposed
to multiple at the same time. And you're just like,
Oh my God, like, why are you doing
it this way? And my first inclination was
like, well, that's,
that's dumb. Why would you do it that
way? But then you have to understand that
there's a business
reason behind it, right? It's not just like,
well, we're doing this, this way because
we just felt like it, right? Like there's something in their
operations. So my guess is that as you're kind of
doing all this, you're gaining all this information,
apart from resources and building
a network, your experience and your expertise is
starting to grow. So at what point do you kind
of determine? I remember looking at your LinkedIn,
I kind of followed it. So there's a couple where
you kind of stayed for a while and
there was like upward growth. And then eventually,
you know, there's times where you've kind of decide to
move to another role. You don't have to
talk about it
specifically in this one, but kind of what's
your thought process on how do you develop
in the same business versus deciding to go
out somewhere else?
Adam: Yeah, it's a difficult, it's a difficult question,
you know, and I reflect on that a lot. I'm,
I'm really, cause I'm, I'm, you know, a
project manager for a heart lesson learns is
what I live and
die by. So I reflect on that a
lot of like, okay, if I would have
did a different path,
or I could have did something else differently
in my life, what would I have done?
And kind
of interesting enough, like, you know, it's tough
because, you know, you want to make that
trajectory growth and develop and go along the
way. Now, some companies are great of internal
growth, as you know, you know, they're like,
okay, great. But some company, but it's tough because
once you, once you, you're know the product
and you, you've kind of found your niche
and you kind
of do it in your sleep, they don't
want to promote you because they have this
great person. It's a
perfect fit and that's what they do. And,
and, and for, for me personally, it was
like, that's
handicapping my growth because now I can't move
up because now they have me kind of
cornholded in this
position, which I'm good at. I could, I
know what I'm doing. I'm, I'm great at it. And I've
been complimented by everybody, but now like, okay,
you have to kind of figure out what do I
do with that? Right? So it was a
hard decision to say, okay, let me step
back and let me go on to
another role. And that other role was the
director position, going from a manager to a director
position, right? So project manager to a director
position. And that was a big, a big jump because
now, you know, project man and project directors
in most medium or small companies, you're wearing
both hats. You either have your own kind
of projects and you're also mentoring and managing
project managers in that kind of realm to
keep everything afloat, deliverable times and stuff
like that. So I needed to make that
jump to, to get where I needed to
go for that project,
for that director position. And then eventually the
VP position, which was even harder to get to,
but every, every step of the, that, those
two steps were, were very difficult. I mean,
I'm not going to say they were easy
because it's one of those things, like I said,
once you're good at something, they don't want to
let you go. So how do you do
that? And sometimes
you have to make that jump from a
one company to another, just to get that
experience that
they're going to try you out to get
this opportunity.
Manuel: And you mentioned, right, you become that, that
invaluable resource at any point. Did you
kind of decide like, Hey, you know what
I am? I am this person. I don't
want to be this
person. And outside of making a leap, maybe
how do I kind of bring somebody else in to
kind of do that role? And the only
reason I say this, cause I, I kind
of fell into something
similar, right? Where I was like, well, you
become this person that is like the go-to,
right? Like you eventually become that person. So
one of the things, and I, I wish I kind of
would have learned this earlier. But I got
brought into a role. I brought, I got,
I took on a project
that eventually I became that person. And it
was basically managing. So I worked for an
airline and I was supposed to be a storage
administrator. There was a project because it was,
I had VMware
experience. VMware had a product where they would
be able to manage devices, right? So device
management, managing iPads for flight attendants. Okay. Yeah.
I have experience. I know the
technologies. I thought it was just going to
be the backend setting that up. But once
you do now,
that's your job. And I was like, I
don't want to do this. This is terrible.
Like, I don't,
I don't want to come to work today
and manage iPads all day. Like, this sounds
horrible.
Eventually when I went to the manager and
I was like, Hey, I don't want to
do this.
Here's the amount of time I'm spending. He
basically said, why don't you go through and
document all this or train somebody else up so
that you're not the sole purpose person. And
there's other times, like after he said that, I was
like, well, can I do that? He's like,
yeah, well, can we can
hand this off to somebody else, but you've
got to train them or you've got to
have documentation.
I used to hate it. And to this
day, I still, I'm not a big fan
of doing it, but I see the value.
Like I document it, train people up. And
I think that's where I started to get
that passion for
helping and bringing other people. Like I was
always the receiving end of,
hey, you mentor me, you help me. And
it was kind of that position where I'm like
well, now I can do the same for
other people. So I'm just curious if at
any point, did something
like that happen for you as you're moving
or you're just kind of like, the only
way for me to get out of this is to make
that jump? Adam: Yeah. I mean, if you're fortunate
enough, if you have that opportunity, then take it,
you know, because again, unfortunately, you know,
in corporate America, not everybody wants you to
succeed, right? So you kind of run into some of
the roadblocks. And again, like, you know, you
know, and again, when you're a project manager,
yeah, you have to make those tough decisions
sometimes where you can't be the nice guy
all the time because you're just going to get
ran over all the time. So, you know,
it just becomes a,
it's, yeah. How do I explain it? So
I think more importantly, yes, if you have
that mentorship
that's available to you, grab onto it, run
with it, you know, grab that rope. If someone
is offering it to you, it just doesn't
happen very often, right? Because a lot of
people have their
own agendas in mind. And, you know, you
know, unfortunately I didn't have a lot of,
I've had a
few good bosses and are leaders in my
life, but, you know, I'd say more often
than not, it was that,
okay, we found a hole, a round hole
for you. You fit perfectly in there. Just
stay there. Just,
just make it work kind of scenario. I
did, you know, but not say all the
time, there was a couple
of times that did have good leaders that
did say, Hey, you need to develop out
and get your next
place. But, you know, it's not as often
as I would like it to be. Manuel: Got it
So then now you're moving up
into the, this director position, right? And that's,
that's a big jump from manager to director.
So what are some of the challenges you came across
in making that, that transition? Adam: Yeah. So, so
typically when
most people make that jump, like you have
two options, right? One, either you work a long time
at the same company and someone either wins the
lottery, I like to say, and you get
to move up or,
you know, um, you might be a good
time where you start someone, the other person
leaves and you get
that opportunity. Uh, for me, I had to
look at my situation and say, okay, I'm
with a great company.
Where do I, how do I become that
direct position? And so for me, it was
to go with a startup company.
So it was a new startup company here
in town that said, Hey, we're looking for
a director of project
management, you know, and we're willing to give
someone that has your expertise because they were
their main 90% of the business was
casino. So, and the, and all their business
was databases.
It was more of a, it was back
in the big, uh, the big data days.
Well, you know, so it was a big data
company, right? When that was the old AI
back then. So it was a big data
company. And, and so I took a
step, uh, took a stab at them and
said, okay, let me, they're going to offer
me this position.
I mean, I know it's not, you know,
uh, the fortune 500 company, but they're going
to give me the title.
So I said, okay, I'm going to try
for it. I got the job and the,
it was great to get that. But the
bad side of that, you're with the company,
right? There's no really loose policies. There's really
loose, uh, documentation structure, stuff like that. It's
a fun organization because everybody
wants the company to succeed. But, uh, the
other side of that is that you have
to build all that
framework, right? You have to come in there.
There was no PMO documentation. There was no
PMO.
There was no, you know, so you have
to build all that. So it was a
great opportunity for me to build
a PMO within this organization, hire all the
PMs and get them going and developed and trained.
And then also make sure we have standards
in place that we're actually being able to
hit deadlines.
Manuel: And it's not often that I have a
lot of people that have been in a
management or director role.
So, and especially where you're building this from
scratch. So as you're kind of going through
and, you know, you're interviewing, you're trying to
hire, right? What are, what are things that you
look for? I'm not going to stay on
their resume, but like more like in the
interview process,
right? What are some things that you've, even
as yourself going through and interviewing,
like skills that you have identified, like, Hey,
this is helpful to me. This helped me
get into this
role, especially like a director role, you know,
Hey, I have this experience, but you've got to be
able to communicate that. And then how are
you also identifying those qualities or traits that
you're looking for in interviewees? Adam: Yeah. Great question.
Um, you know, honestly, it's, it's no
one's what they are on paper, right? Paper
is just, you know, it, it gets your
foot in the door,
right. Your experience, whatever it is. Um, you
know, I, I really, I'm a, you know,
cause here's the thing, like you can have
the technical mindset, the technical adaptation, but
if you can't, uh, be nice and work
with your coworkers or, you know, anything like that
it's disastrous. Right. And sometimes you have to make
those tough decisions. The manager is like, Hey,
this guy's a great technician. This guy's a
great person. But on the other side of that,
he doesn't want to work with anybody. So
you have to balance that out to understand
like, okay,
well, you know, invite them in, talk to
them, you know, get them to loosen up
a little bit and say,
Hey, you know, what is it you want
out of this job? And again, and maybe
my, my mindset's a little
bit different. Cause I'm like, okay, you know,
I want you to stay here as long
as you want.
But a lot of them, a lot of
these people are like, Hey, I want to
work for the Amazons. I want to work
for the bigger companies. So I say, you
know, what is your ambition? Like, what do
you want to get out
of it? Well, you know, I want a
longevity and, you know, I eventually want to
work for a fortune 500
company. Great. Like, how do you get there?
Right. What are those steps? And I'm like,
okay, well,
we can be that stepping stone and I'm
okay with that. I'm okay developing people out
to be that
next person, to be what they want to
go on their journey, as long as they
commit to that a hundred
percent. Um, so for me, it's not so
much about the, the, the technical skills. It's
more about the
adaptation to being able to say, to pivot,
right? Like say, okay, well, especially for us,
you know, we're still a small business. We have, you
know, we have a few people, but we're not like,
you know, a fortune 500 company, but you
know, we got to be able to say,
sometimes we have to wear
many hats, right? Sometimes our system engineer is
doing network jobs because we just, we just don't
have everybody at enough people at that certain
time. So it's more about just being able to say
the willingness. And, and I think employers now
are starting to understand that, like that attitude
goes a long way. And just being able
to say, yes, I, I, yeah. Okay. I'll
show up, you know,
just showing up on time, being there, being
the person that says, yes, I'll do it.
Instead of trying
to pull it out of them to get
what you need from them. Manuel: At the director
level in, in those types of
scenarios, like how involved are you in the
firing or the letting go of people? Right. Cause you
mentioned like, Hey, if you have those conversations
and it's, you know, as much as we would like
to think that we can turn everybody around
and they're going to be great. There are
scenarios
where it just, it doesn't, it's not going
to work out, right? Like we're at odds
either. They
aren't getting what they want out of this
role or you're not getting it from them,
like what you're
expecting. So what are some of the challenges
with having to kind of let people go?
Right.
Adam: Yeah. It's tough because you don't never want,
you never want to let anybody go. Right.
I mean, that's like the last resort. You try to
bring them in, you mentor them to see what that is,
because again, my, and it's tough because through
my career, you know, you have two options.
Like you have one where you're coming into a
startup where you're kind of, you get to
develop your own
team, which is great because then you're not
going to have that big of turnover, right?
Cause you can, you're going to develop those people
there. You're going to screen them ahead of time
to know they're going to be good, bad,
or indifferent. The tougher situation is when you
become a director and you, you know, you, you have
to make the decision where people that they've
been there,
they've been there for years. You know, they
know more than you. They, and they're not
scared to
tell you that. Right. And you're just like,
okay, now we got to have this discussion.
Right. Kind of scenario. So, you know, in a walk
into a situation where you become a director
and guess
what? The person next to you applied for
that job too. And now you got to
be his manager. That's
an awkward situation to be in. So how
do you kind of, you know, how do
you confront that? Right.
So I usually just sit down with them
and say, Hey, you know, you know, basically
how can we make
this work? Right. You know, from a, from
a letting go perspective, how, you know, if,
if I, if I've
kind of went through the process, which is,
you know, the written warning, the suspensions and
stuff like that, and it's just, just not working
out, you know, you have to sit down
with them and says,
what is that career path? I try to,
what I try to do a lot of
times I try to say, okay, this isn't
working out for either. I'll pull you conversation.
This isn't working. What can we do? I mean, if,
if you're not going to change, I'm not
going to change. How can we make this?
How can, what can
we do? And, you know, sometimes I was
able to a few times say, why don't
we do this? Why don't
you go out and look for another job?
I'll be your biggest cheerleader and you can
find that other
job. And that's worked out a few times.
Like, it's just, Hey, you know what? Like,
great. I got this
other guy, he was working for us. And
then he went to JT3 and he was,
he was like,
this is my dream job. I've been one.
And he was a level one technician and
he went to go work for
a government agent, which was huge for him.
Right. So, um, it's just opening up those
opportunities that they just don't see. They just
don't have the blind, they have blinders on.
So they just don't see that. Manuel: So a lot
of it's just really communicating with them. Right.
I mean,
that's at the end of it. Adam: As you
grow. So as your career goes, less time
is spent on the technical
stuff. Like you're like, I like the technical
stuff. Forget it. It's all dealing with two
aspects.
So you've got stakeholders, which are going to
be your, your peers and managers. And you're,
then you're going to have your employees, right.
They're going to, that are going to make
or break you at the end of the day. Uh,
but yeah, you're, it's a people job. You,
you know, when you, you know,
so be prepared when you want to move
up and understand that, like your job's changing,
right. You're not going to be called. I
mean, on occasion you might be called for
them, but you're going to be, but you want
it to be more of a guidance role.
Cause you know,
as I was a director, you know, the
project was going off the rails. Now I
come in and I, you know,
I don't want to go in there and
take it over from the person. Cause what,
what's that going to do?
It's going to diminish their, you know, their,
their self-esteem, everything about them. So bring
them over and just be like, Hey, what
can we do together? Let's, let's figure this out.
Let's work together. Okay. Let me do this. You do
that. And then we get the project back
on track kind of
scenario. But 90% of your time is
now spent on people.
Manuel: And what did you do to kind of
develop those skills? Right. So like we go
back to the database
part, right? Like you look up at, especially
nowadays, right? You can look up YouTube videos.
You probably were reading books, maybe just messing
around, tinkering with yourself.
But as you're, as you're kind of developing
and understanding it's less tech, like you still
have to understand it, right? You still got
to be aware of how things work, but
now you're having to
develop communication skills and management skills. So what
are some of the ways that you kind of
develop that? And is there anything, any like
gotchas along the way where you're like, Oh,
I wish I would have known this would
have either helped accelerate that learning or maybe
not had as many missteps along the way.
Adam: Right. I think you're always learning, right? Cause
I don't think you're ever going to master it.
Um, you know, for me, uh, Stephen Covey
is a, I'm a huge fan of, right.
You know "How To Win Friends
And Influence Others". Right. You know, just understanding
like, Hey, his, my greatest quote
from him is like, "if you want an
employee or a person that's going to love
you every day and walk
into your job and love you, then get
a dog", you know, that's it. You know,
because that's
unconditional love. Every time you come home, your
dogs, I'm like, I love you. I love
you, master.
But you go to work every day. That
employee is not going to be that same way.
Right. So it's just understanding how people, and
you're just kind of peeling that back. Like
what motivates people? What gets people up in
the morning? You know, you know, you know,
it goes back to saying, you don't want
to be ever become a micromanager, but you
don't want to be,
uh, laissez-faire, you know, you know, where's
that medium at? So you have to,
you have to balance them out. And I
still struggle with that today. Right. Kind of
scenario, like with my team, like, okay, I have
to entrust the leaders I put in place
to develop that.
Now they might not do it the same
way I do, but I have to appreciate
it, uh, because they'll get
the job done, but it's not always going
to be the way you want it to
be done. So I think a lot of
that is just, you know, one is learning
your first director position or even manager position.
You're going to learn a lot because you're dealing
with the human element, which is no one
can predict it.
Like you could, people come in and have
bad days. People come in and have great
days. People get sick
in the middle of a go live. You
know, you have all these factors, um, that
go on in that you have
to balance them out and say, okay, well
now I'm manager, uh, how, how do I
put all these pieces
together? Okay. If my main guy that I
rely on for everything, if he's out sick
today, what do I do?
You know? So you have to put in
redundant, then you start figuring out, okay, well
I, I need a
redundancy. If this main guy that this person
that I love and he's great, but he
wins the lottery
next day, where's my failover? Where's my backup
kind of scenario? So you have to look at that
in those angles as well. So it's, it's,
it's really about the people.
Manuel: And that's just something that obviously there's going
to be no one job or there's not
a, I mean,
the books are helpful, but there's no really
one way that you could just be like,
oh man,
do this thing and figure it out similar.
Like it's not as prescriptive as kind of learning
databases, right? Like I can read a book,
I can watch, I understand it. Now there's
troubleshooting
involved, excuse me, there's going to be troubleshooting
involved that will come up that
you kind of have to figure out. But
for the most part, if you understand databases
and you can read
and learn, but from the management side, that's
not going to be the same case.
Adam: Yeah. I mean, there's a lot, you know,
there's a lot of information out there for
team works,
for coaching, developing and stuff like that. And
they're great, right? Just understanding,
you know, how are you pushing your team
to, to achieve next level results, right? How
are you
developing, you know, Atomic Habits? You know, there's
a lot of good stuff out there to understand
how, how these are driving. But I always
say like one thing you can't ever read
or know about is the
human element because everyone's different, right? There's no
two people the same, you know,
and especially in technology is like, you know,
and I'm sure you deal with this in
tech. I love tech,
right. I've been in many years, but tech
is, you know, there's a lot of egos,
you know,
and I think that's the biggest thing in
tech is it. And then I always say,
and when I used to hire
project managers, like, you know, a project manager
has to have an ego and I want him to
have an ego because he needs to be
the captain of that ship. Right. And when
the storm hits,
he needs to be at that helm and
going through the storm. But, you know, at
the same time,
he needs to be personable and relatable and
stuff like that. Because if you don't have
that ego
and you're a project manager, you're going to
get ran over all day. And, and it's just kind
of the things. So it's, it's in tech,
in tech, especially you have a lot of
egos. So to manage
those, it's not easy, right? Kind of scenario.
Cause you got people, Hey, I've been here
since day one.
You don't know more than me. And you're
walking into this new job and you're the
manager and you're
like, well, I'm not trying to tell you
what to do. I just kind of want
you just to come to work
every day on time, you know, like, or
stuff like that, you know, and it's just the,
the trivial stuff that, you know, but you
can't say that. So how do you do
it? Right. I mean,
you can say it, don't get me wrong,
but you don't want to say it. You
want them to adapt to learn.
So what do you do? Okay. Hey, you
know, he sees kid coming in every day.
Hey, let's have coffee,
you know, every other day to get them
in that routine at eight o'clock. I'll
put a standup
meeting every other day. Let's have coffee. I
want to get caught up because I want
to know more about
what you do or what he does or
she does or kind of scenario.
Manuel: So it's just finding ways more to
not necessarily tell people what to do, but
kind of similar, like in that book, right?
You're trying to find ways to influence them to change
that behavior and say, okay, I don't want to say
incentivize, but really kind of understand and say,
okay, hey, come here and show up on
time. And if it
means I've got to do coffee with you,
like you're starting to kind of alter their
behavior over time.
Adam: Yeah. And it's, it's twofold, right? It's also
like, okay, so say you have this guy that,
you know, does come in late every day
or girl, I should say, it does come
in late every day,
but this person, she, when five o'clock
hits, she won't, she'll keep working until the
job's done
eight o'clock. So now what do you
do in that aspect? Right? So now you're
in a weird situation
where like, gosh, like, you know, I have
this other guy who comes in every day
at eight o'clock,
but then clocks out at five, no matter
what. Then I have this other person that
comes in
eight 15, but she's here till the job's
done. You know, it's, it's a, it's a
stark contrast,
but how do you manage those kinds of
things? And for me personally, it's like, okay,
well, you know, because now the guy that you're
telling to come in every day on time
saying, well, what about
Sally Jo? Because she's like, but she, you
know, so it's dealing with those kinds of
things. And how do
you, how do you manage them? Right. Kind
of scenario. So you have to be,
a little bit creative, you know, kind of
scenario and say, Hey, you know, if you're
not gonna be on time, just give me a text to
your whatever. And, and most of the time,
you know, it kind of all
flattens out, but it's those dynamics that no
book's going to train you for no, you know,
no YouTube video is going to train you
for, you're going to have to adapt that
to understand.
Cause again, that person work until five, six,
seven, that's invaluable because again, like she's
taking time out of her life afterwards and
she's making sure the job is done, which is huge.
Manuel: You've kind of become this director level and
you've kind of moved around. Um, so what
at that
level, at some point you get to, you
know, you know, either a CIO, CEO at
that level, what is kind
of the career path that you decide to
change or work towards at that point? Are
you kind of moving
around? Is it, you're looking for different challenges?
So like the startup was probably great
because it gave you one, it gave you
the title, right? So, Hey, now I'm a
director. You're building
stuff from scratch. You're learning a lot. What
is kind of the career path moving forward?
Like, how do you determine where you want
to go, what you want to do?
Adam: Yeah. I mean, some, some people, you know,
I, and, and I'm a little bit different than most,
some people are like, Hey, hit that director.
I'm good. Director's a good title, right? Don't
get me wrong it's a good mid man, mid manager title.
You get some good perks, but you also
get, you know, the,
the, the prestige of being a director, right?
Um, for me, I've always wanted to be, you know
at the top and it's just self-driven
where I wanted to go. So I was
like, okay. So for me,
it was, it, uh, it happened over COVID
weird enough, right? COVID hit. We're like, what
happened bro? Like casino shut down. Uh, you know,
I was the director of the PMO over
at Golden Entertainment
and we just got done doing the $700
million renovation for the Stratosphere Hotel. And
they're like, all right, guys, we're shutting down
the casino. And we're like, and you know,
PMO unfortunately is usually one of the first
to go because there's no projects, right? I mean,
so, you know, they just kept the bare
minimum crew, which was like their VP of
ops. And I think
they kept their cyber guy and a few
others, but that was it. So I was
like, dang, what do I do?
So I kind of stepped back and kind
of said, okay, well, let me figure some
stuff out. And, uh, you
know, I started applying online and there was
a job for vice president of IT at
Goodwill. And I was
like, that's kind of cool. I get to
give back. It's a, it's a good government
organization or a good,
a good organization, but I also get to
give back to what, you know, to my
roots. Cause you know,
not coming from much. So I applied and
they were like, yeah, I'd love to have
you. You know,
I mean, pay wasn't great. I didn't do
it for the pay. Absolutely. But I did
it more for giving back
and also for the opportunity. So I said,
great. I enrolled in it and got signed
up. They were like,
great. Have you on board? And then that
was a whole different kind of demographics because now
you're dealing with all different kinds of skillsets,
all different. I mean, anything from,
you know, uh, you know, and, and, and
issues, right? Because again, they don't pay a
lot of money. Right. So now, you know, you as
a, as a, as a VP of IT
is, is not making a lot. Imagine
what's your first level, you know, it trickles
down. Right. So how do you kind of
understand them
and, and, and develop them and kind of
scenario in that, but yeah, it's, you know,
that jump was
kind of weird because again, it happened over
COVID. And also I was like, you know,
I wanted to give
the opportunity back, but also in a, not
to be greedy, but it was also for
me as well. Right. Kind of scenario.
So I got to take that next jump
and that was exciting. Was there for a,
you know, about two
years and got to change some stuff around.
I brought in cybersecurity. It's where I got
a lot of my passion for cyber at was during
those times, done a few cyber installs for
the casinos, but this was where I got to get
hands on to understand the technology and stuff
like that.
So it was a great experience for me
to learn all that stuff. So from a
career perspective,
yeah, I kind of had a step,
take a step back, you know, to, to
go forward kind of
scenario. Cause again, like, you know, like, great,
I could have been another director. I could
have been a project manager and, you know,
you know, at another company and made more money,
but that's not my end all goal. And
it's never, I've never been, I'm personally for me,
I've never been driven by money. It's always,
you know, that I did chase the title.
I'll be honest
with you. Now there was some good and
bads about it. Some of the stuff I
would have did totally
different. You know, but then you kind of
get to the point where you're like, okay,
well, I've been
a, you know, vice president of IT for
a few years. And now you got, you
know, there's project managers
probably at like Tesla making twice as much
as me. And you're like, where did I
go wrong in my,
my life? Right. Kind of scenario. But like
I said, I was never driven by the money.
I like to challenge myself and I always
like to drive for that next best thing.
Manuel: And you bring up an important point, right?
A lot of times people think that
even if you're chasing title, right? And I
get it, COVID, it's a different scenario where
like, hey, I need to find something. But a
lot of times people aren't willing to kind
of take that step
back and say, okay, hey, I'm going to
take less money. I'm going to, it's going
to be a different
challenge. It's a different set of challenges and
different set of ideas. So what did you kind of
learn? And I don't know if maybe this
is the first time where you've kind of
had to step back to
eventually move forward, right? A lot of times,
and I'm sure at the time it happens, you're like,
well, it's this or nothing else, but kind
of what did you learn from that? And what did you,
you know, kind of gain as part of that experience?
Adam: It's humbling, right? Kind of scenario, because again,
you get a certain lifestyle of,
you know, how much you make and you
kind of count on that. And then from
a financial perspective,
you're like, okay, I had to really, really
evaluate my finances, right? Just say, hey,
I'm not going to be able to get
that fancy car I wanted next year or
whatever it was.
But for me, it was, you know, the
opportunity, right? So say if you, if you're
like, say a level
one or a technician or whatever it is,
and you're like, okay, I want to become
that manager position,
but I know I can't be a manager
here or I will never get that opportunity
or I tried and it's
just not working out. You just might not
be the right fit for that company, right?
So you go to
another company and they, they see the value
and then you are more valuable to that
company as you
grow up through that, through that change. But
I think more importantly is that, that,
that position that you get, that you might
not be making the same amount of money,
you might be learning a lot more, or
you might be learning a different skillset that
may be a better fit for you, right? So it's always
that learning evolution that you kind of go
throught and kind of figure stuff out as you go
through. Like, and again, I don't think mine
was intentional per se.
It was just like, cause of COVID,
right? It was the big thing, but also,
you know, Hey, it was
part of, um, the overall where I wanted
to go, right? Where I, where I thought
I wanted to go at
that time in my life. Right. Um, I
did make some twists and tweaks to that
after that. Cause I think
that, um, I realized at that time in
my life, I was like, okay, well, VP of IT
was great, but I just don't
think that's what I want to do for
the rest of my life. Um, so I
did pivot after that, but it,
but it gave me the opportunity to taste
it. Right. And that's what you got to
do as, as,
you know, some people are like, Hey, I
know people that's been like a data DBA
or, or system
engineer, you know, all their life. And they're
like, I am good here. You know, I
know what I
need to do. I can do it in
my sleep. This is where I'm at. So
it's just kind of one of those
things that you have to understand, like, are
you okay going to that next room? Cause again,
it is a title. It's, it's, it's good.
It looks great in the resume, but sometimes
it's just, it's not worth it for everybody. Now, some
people it is, but I would say like,
just evaluate that.
Right. And it's okay. Sometimes you try it
and you're like, this is for the birds.
And then you
kind of go back and kind of scenario.
And I've done that too, where I kind
of like, Hey, I tested,
I, you know, my goal was to be
VP of IT. I made the goal. And
then I'm like, this isn't my cup of tea.
And then I kind of went back to
consulting for a few years. And then I,
you know, it was like,
okay, well, consulting is great, but now I'm
ready to do my own thing. But, you know,
but you kind of learn, you live, you
learn, you kind of, as you go through that process.
Manuel: And as you're going through, so even people
who maybe want to move around, right?
How did you develop the confidence to say,
I can move out and move around, right?
Because it's,
it's very easy for some people and for
other people, it's not right. So I am
one of those people
that like, when I've feel like I've reached
the plateau in this area, I'm not so
worried about,
oh my gosh, it's going to be so
difficult. Or, you know, I don't get the
anxiousness of that new role
because I'm so, my mindset is I'm, I'm
not growing here. I've, again, if it gets
to the point where it's
on autopilot for me, like, I know I've
got to leave. And the anxiety for me
of staying in this role
is more than the unknown. And for you,
kind of what, what was that? I mean, everybody's
motivated different, right? You're chasing titles and doing
that. So was it the ultimate goal of
achieving that title is less anxious than go
stepping into a new role?
Adam: You know, it's, it's hard to say, like,
I've always been a driven person. Like if
I set my mind
to something, I most of the time get it.
But it's just more just understanding from
my perspective,
you know, it's a great question because like,
to think about it now is like, if
I were to do it all
over again, I probably wouldn't have, right? If
I were to say, hey, you know, I
would, you know,
and I tell my kids this today, I
was like, go to, you know, if I
do it all over again, I would,
I would join the military just to get
structure in my life. You know, just to
get, I've wasted too many
years at the bar, you know, just to
get that structure. Like, okay, what, what, you
know, get that structure and then kind of go
to college to learn everything. And then kind
of, you know,
and then, you know, get an internship, right?
Utilize internships. You know, I, you know,
even though they don't pay anything, I mean,
it's, they're so invaluable to the connections you make
and the people you meet. Cause some of
those same people that I've met early on
in my career,
I'm still friends with today. And, and, and
gaming, as you know, is such a small world,
right? We all know everybody. And, you know,
you go to the big convention, you're like
a high school
reunion, you know, yeah, yeah, yeah. Kind of
scenario. I love going to the conventions,
but you know, it's one of the things
that you just kind of get back and
say, okay, well,
you know for me personally, yeah, it was,
you know, and maybe it's a little bit
egotistical with me,
but I remember like when I was younger,
I was like, okay, I got this director
title. I'm just going to
apply for this job to see if I
get it. And nine times out of 10,
I probably wouldn't follow up
on it, but I would just be like,
it's what I'm trying to feed my ego.
Right. Kind of scenario.
And, you know, and, and every once in
a while they'd call you back and be
like, oh, well,
maybe I do have the habit for that.
And, you know, for me personally, I always
tried to challenge
myself to see, and that's how I would
test the waters. Let me just throw my
resume out there.
Let me just, let me just apply for
this job. And, you know, great. If, if,
if something,
if it leads into something wonderful, if it
didn't, then, you know,
I would just not meant to be, but
I'm not hung up on it kind of
scenario. But yeah, I mean,
again, I think it's double-edged. And I
think nowadays, you know, you hear both ends of the
spectrum, right? People say, you know, stay with
the company, stay devoted, and you'll kind of
move up the path. And other people said, no,
you have to jump, you have to jump,
you know, kind of scenario.
I don't know what the right, wrong, or
indifferent, you know, what, what's the right thing.
But for me personally, you know, I, you know, there's a
couple of jobs that I probably wish I
would have stayed at a
a little longer, honestly, in retrospect, you know,
and not jump as fast. But, you know, you know,
I, you know, I have a self-diagnosed
ADHD. So I kind of got to keep moving.
Manuel: No, I completely get it. And I realized
being diagnosed later on, that that was the
thing that
kind of drove me to kind of move
around where I've talked to other people, and
they're like, oh my gosh, like, again, I'm not looking
for you to tell me like, this is
what you should do,
or that's what this person should do. It's
just your experience and trying to understand,
you know, kind of what that process is.
So now it sounds like we're getting to
the point where
you decide to kind of move and venture
on into your own and kind of franchise.
So how did that
come about? And what really made you decide
that it's time for me to do it
on my own, you know,
because not that it's not your company, but
when you're moving up into VP, director levels,
you do get a little bit more influence
into how you want things to run, you
know, especially on the,
with a startup, you got to build it
and say, hey, you know, within parameters of,
hey, this is the build,
this is the company, and I have to
build around this or within this. What made
you say, it's time
for me to do it on my own?
And what was the difference between now I'm
going to franchise and,
you know, I'm going to do it my
way versus, well, I'll do it my way,
but within these guidelines?
Adam: Right. So, I mean, you know, after leaving
Goodwill, I was like, okay, what do I do?
Went back into, I went to consulting and,
you know, as we all know, consulting pays good.
But it's the same kind of scenario where
you're like, okay, well, great, I'm consulting. But
like, when you consult, you're never treated as an
employee. You're just that kind of guy that's
there that, okay, he's here to make sure
we do what we're supposed to do kind of scenario.
So, I'm on this huge Salesforce deployment. And
it's just like, I got to the point where I'm like,
okay, got done with the project. I feel
good. Okay, we want you for the next
one. I just like,
you know what, I'm okay. I mean, I
think for me, you know, I've always been
one of the people
I can't stay still. So, I'm always working
on something on the side. So, I've always had like
either like a side business or something I
developed on the side. So, early in my career,
I developed an app for rental properties. So,
basically, this was before they had all the
fancy apps out there. But it was just
more of an integration app where it says,
instead of, you know, you have a VRBO or you
have an AirBNB, you know, it kind of
connects your cleaning lady
with all your bills and kind of puts
it all in one place, right, kind of
scenario. It was fun.
You know, I get to develop it. It
didn't make any money, but it was a
fun kind of process.
And then I got into, I went and
gave that, sold it, gave it away pretty
much. And then I ended up
going to, I started like a consulting company
where it was like wizzo.com. It was
a really interesting
thing where I was like, okay, well, how
do I leverage this? And it was kind of a part-time
thing where I was still consulting for myself,
but I started this kind of business of
this kind of
staff augmentation, right, where a staffing company or
something like that, some in that area.
And that was okay, but I was like,
man, this kind of sucks. I'm not making
any money.
And I'm spending all my time just kind
of babysitting. And I was like, okay, this isn't
going to work. I won't do this anymore.
And then I'm like, okay, I needed to get
it. So I was actually looking at different
businesses. I was like, okay, maybe I'm just
talking to do tech. I started looking at
plumbing, upholstery, just like random stuff. Like I'm
like, I just, I just want to start
my own business. So it's always been a
dream for me to do my own
business. No, I've had little business, but never
like something I've a hundred percent my time
and to jump with both feet in. So this
was the first time I said, okay, I'm
leaving everything. I'm
leaving the nest egg. I'm investing everything I
have into this business. And it's scary because
you're putting all your chips in the table.
But, you know, for me, it was like,
I was like, okay, what do I want to, I said,
I do like tech, you know, but I,
you know, I want, I don't want
to be the guy that drives around with,
I fix your computers in the back of
my car, right? That's
just not me, right? I want to be
on the more of the enterprise level. I
want to be more proactive.
I want to be in cybersecurity, stuff like
that. So I got connected with CMIT and
they were like,
hey, we have kind of a franchise model
where you run the whole state of Nevada.
This is your
territory. So anything that happens in Nevada, you
are the main guy that we go to. I was like,
that sounds like a great opportunity, right? So
got connected with them and it's been a great
ride with them learning the processes. You know,
again, it's your own business. You know, you're,
you, you have the payroll, you have employees,
you have all this stuff, but it's, it's,
it's fun
because it's, it's, it's that next step, right?
Kind of where, you know, when you're on operations
side, you see vendors, they're like, oh man,
they're doing really good. Now the vendors,
what's that next step is, you know, kind
of business ownership, right? And then something
to leave back to my kids kind of
scenario, something that, that's going to supersede me.
And that's kind of that goal to where
I want to be at in the future.
Manuel: What are some of the differences that you've
noticed as opposed to being a director versus now,
again, you're kind of managing that self business,
right? Like there's obviously challenges,
like you said, you're doing payroll, you're doing
the whole soup to nuts, right? So it's not just
like, Hey, I'm the CEO, or I'm kind
of, you know, directing what's going like you're
the CEO,
you're the CIO, you're the CFO, right? Like
you're doing everything. So what were,
what was the challenge there? And I'm sure
that it was helpful that, you know, it's a franchisee
so you're not having to either figure it all out or
established a lot of that on your own, but there's
still, you know, again, that challenge of, I've got
to figure all this out. So how did
you go about that?
Adam: You know, so I took after, was it
no, before COVID, I started going for my
MBA. So I went for my MBA
in IT management and, you know, anyone's been
through an MBA is, it's really interesting because
it, you know, I think one of the
things that MBAs teach you, it's like going
to Harvard. Harvard
doesn't teach you how to get a job.
It teaches you how to run a business,
how to be a business
owner, how to kind of fend for yourself.
So going through the MBA process was huge
for me anyways,
because I was able to earn, like, it
started to open my eyes a little bit.
Like, you know what,
I'm more than just a project manager, more
than just a director of IT. I'm more
than vice president of IT
I'm, you know, I, I'm learning
about all this stuff. I'm developing my skillset
to run an
actual business, run a P&L. And again,
am I doing it perfectly? Probably not, but
I'm learning around as I go along the way, kind
of scenario. So for me, it's just been
a really, you know,
I've always had in my, in my life,
in my career wise is, and you'll get
to this, when you get to
that director and VP level, people get very
territorial. It's like, hey, you know what,
you wear lots of hats, but when you're
in the corporate America, they don't want you
to wear lots of hats. You are one hat. That's
your only hat you wear. Don't go outside
of the lines or
you're going to get in trouble, right? And
I was really bad at that. I would,
I would cross the
line. I'd be like, hey, COO, you know,
what if we bring in like, you know,
for a Goodwill is like,
I went to the COO one day and
I was like, hey, you know, he's, and
he's a great guy. And I was like,
hey, what about we bring in Google Lens?
So imagine this, we're able to use Google Lens
on all the articles coming in and we
can understand their value before we place on the floor.
Because you could be placing a $500 shirt
on the floor for $5 where we can
actually mark it up for
a 50 and then get a little bit
more. I'm not saying we market at 500,
but we make a little bit more
money on that. And they get territorial because
they're like, you're telling me how to run my
operations. You're the CIO guy. You're supposed to
just tell me, fix my computers and that's it.
And it's really hard when you're going to
get a big role because they don't want you to,
to impede on their, on their territory. So
I had a really tough time with that
personally.
Cause I was like, I, you know, cause
I want to do good for the business,
right? So I've always had
that business mind, not just, hey, how is
my department doing? How's the overarching business doing?
So for me, it was a real easy
development to go into my own business because
it is that
overarching, Hey, I'm taking care of everything now.
I understand though, you know, I am the
marketing guy. I'm the, this, but you know,
again, as you, as we grow, we're going to have
a marketing department, we're going to have sales,
you know, but that's just all part of
the process
as we go. Right. We have to get
the tech start, the tech stack, right. And
stuff like that.
And like you said, like, you know, going
with a franchise was, was interesting. I, I,
you know, a lot of times we're like, you know,
I go to Tech Alley. It's a great
event. If no one's been there,
I highly recommend it, but you know, they
have these entrepreneur startups and these guys come
in there and like, I'm a startup and
I have $50,000 and I'm going to
develop the next level
app. The poor kid or guy or girl,
whoever was the 50,000 to an offshore
team, develop the app.
And guess what? He has no marketing skills,
no sales skills. And it just dies, you know,
not saying it was a bad app, but
you know, you've vested everything in there that
you had,
right. Imagine developing, buying a franchise into that
or something like that. So I think
the franchise model is good for that. They're
saying, Hey, don't just spend all your money on
here. We'll help you out with marketing. We'll
sprinkle this market. We'll also help you out
with understanding what is that right thing that
you're building. Now I'm not saying in technology,
it could be anything, but you know, predominantly
for me, it was technology. Cause they're like,
Hey, you know what? Cause going from enterprise
to small business is a different world,
you know, and you know that, right? You
know, it's a different, cause I'm like enterprise.
Like I'm used to going to a data
center, data rooms, and we're seeing all this stuff
where you're like, this guy has this old
rusty server on the server. And he's like,
I think that's our server back there. And
you're like, that is not your server. But you know,
you're going into those environments and you're training
and teaching. So that's kind of exciting,
right? You know, you're, you know, cause I'm
learning a little bit too, because again,
the tools for SMBs are different, right? Cause
they don't need that, the heavy lifting,
but they still need security, right? So that's
kind of fun of it to teaching them
that security
aspect of how are we keeping yourself safe?
How are we developing these kinds of scenarios?
So that's kind of fun in that aspect. But
yeah, the franchise model was, was never my
first
intention to go after. It just kind of
fell into my lap and I said, let's
give it a try.
Manuel: Yeah. And it's probably helpful too, that you
do have that enterprise experience for these
customers, right? Like in a small, medium business,
in my experience, the little that I've had is
sometimes you're getting people that have kind of,
they're moving up to that role, whereas they
don't have that. Whereas you coming, I don't
want to say coming down, right? But you're coming from
enterprise down to like a small, medium business.
You think differently. And the couple of times that
I've done a little bit of consulting on
the side and helped some of these businesses
out and just
the mindset of like, Hey, we can do
this, right? It's kind of like, you know,
you're, you're low
end, you're mid tier and you're high end,
right? Is they're looking at, because they're smaller,
they can't spend a lot. And they're looking
at this budget friendly, like, Hey, I can just go to
Best Buy and buy this thing. You can,
but that doesn't mean you should. And here's
why, like, you don't need to do the enterprise. We
don't need to buy, you know, a big
rack with all this
stuff, but Hey, let's find something in the
middle. That's going to address your problem,
but also kind of help you scale at
the same time. So would you say that
a lot of the enterprise
experience that you've had has been very influential
or beneficial in kind of what
you're doing? Adam: Oh yeah. Usually, because again, you're
coming in with that mindset, like,
you know, probably 6% of them will
never get that big, but you're coming with
that mindset of like,
Hey, you know, you're, you're future proofing this,
right? You're saying, Hey, as you grow,
this is going to grow and develop with
you. I think a lot of those is
just trying to understand
the SMB is like, you know, for them,
IT, you know, we've always been,
IT has always been a
loss leader, right? Any company you go to.
Right. But like, it's even worse for them
because they're
like, Oh, my brother, Bob, or my cousin,
Sally, she comes and fixes my computer. And I'm like
that's great. Right. But what are you doing
for backup? Who's patching? Who's, you know,
and you're like, they're like, and they look
at you with these deer in the headlights
and they just
don't know. So you kind of, you're trying
to explain that to them. So yeah, because
you're just used to it. Cause I mean, we're
just used to having teams of people. That's
their job,
right? You know, you have a team of
people that, Hey, you know what? Patch Tuesday
came out,
guess what you're doing on Wednesday. Right. So
we, so bringing that back to them and saying,
explaining how these processes work, how do we
keep you more secure? How do we develop
you into that
next level is what we do.
Manuel: This has been a great conversation. I found it in
both enjoyable and
I've got to learn a lot before we
kind of wrap this up. Is there anything
that I didn't ask or
anything that you've thought of that you've kind
of last minute and said, Hey, you know what,
Manny, you didn't ask me this, but I
think this is something beneficial that, you know,
would be helpful to others. Adam: Yeah. I think
one of the things that, and it was
a small piece that I
kind of put in there at the end
there. So I did have a small piece
of my career. So when I was
working for Caesars Entertainment, I was there and
this was kind of a pivotal point in my career
where I was the slot machine guy out
there. At that time, Caesars Entertainment had a
management contract with the cruise ship company. And they
came to me and says, Hey, um, you know, we really
like your work. Will you mind going working
on a cruise ship? I was 28 at
the time. I'm like,
uh, yeah, you know, no kids, no wife
at that time. And I went out there
with no premonition,
you know, like, you know, this was before
bill pay. I'm writing hand checks out six
months in advance to pay all my bills. And, um,
I got to travel the world. I went
to all seven continents,
including Antarctica. I've been, I took a world
cruise that started in LA and ends in New York,
circumnavigated the world. Uh, and I was able
to see all that place because I just
took a whim and
said yes, uh, for my career. And again,
and my pay to use of perspective was
$500 a week.
So I was getting paid peanuts, but you
gotta think about it. They paid for your
food because you were
on a cruise ship. Uh, you had to
sign a six month contract. So it's kind
of scary. You're out there
for six months. Uh, but you know, you
know, opening your eyes up to not only
looking at what's pay,
the paycheck out there, also looking at what
is out there. And, and inevitably what I
didn't learn
when I was out there, that's where I
got my knowledge for the database stuff. You
know, I did, I did four dry docks. What
dry dock is, is when they take the
whole ship and they gut it and
they clean it and they replace everything in
the ship. And every ship goes through this every
three years. And I've done like four of those.
That's where I learned my project management skills
just by being on there because they were like,
Hey, we have, we're in dry dock for
two weeks. You guys got
to build a whole new casino and you
got to do this. And that's what you
got to do with it. And I had,
I had to manage that quarterback that out
and figure that out. So those skill sets,
which I wasn't even planning on doing, I
learned on the cruise ship. Um, so I,
I highly suggest
anyone like, you know, like, don't be afraid
to take those risks that may not pay a lot,
but could have an upside that you just
don't know about until you actually go out
there and do it.
So it was a great opportunity for me
to, to learn about it. And it's a,
and I met my wife out there.
I, you know, that I'm still too married
to today, which was, you know, I stopped
cruising in 2009.
So it's been a little bit, but you
know, shows you my age, right?
Manuel: No, that's awesome. I mean, and I think
that's sometimes that we don't think about or
a lot of people may not realize it's just sometimes
like, it's okay to take a gamble, right?
Especially early on in your career, like later on,
like if you've got a family and kids, like it's
it's tougher. And that's something that I probably,
I didn't do enough of early on is
take more risk
and be open to more, you know, more
opportunities. But I was just like, no, I'm
good. I'm going to
kind of do this, this, you know, this
role, or I'm going to stay within, you
know, the realm of
what I know. And kind of looking back
now, like you said, retrospectively, like it worked
out, but I think I could have either had
either different experiences like you, like traveling
the world or just developed other skills that,
you know, I don't have now.
Adam: So, yeah. And I think the biggest one,
like I was reading about, what's her name?
The new Trump's new press secretary. You know, they
were talking about her background. It's kind
of interesting. She just, she did an internship
at Fox five news and was a reporter
and took
a gamble on just becoming the press secretary
reporter. And next thing you know, she's the
secretary of state, you know, like, you know,
it's just, you know, these things don't happen
for a reason. You know, you, you have
to set yourself up to kind of align
your life with
them, but they will fall in place and
you have to trust, trust the process. I know when
you're young, you want it all, you want
it now, you want it yesterday, but just trust
the process that it'll actually happen and just
kind of develop as you go through.
Manuel: Yeah. Well, again, thank you for coming on
and kind of sharing your trajectory and your
experiences. It's, it's been, it's been a blast.
Adam: Absolutely. Thanks, man.
Manuel: Thanks.