Solving Business Issues with Technology: A Conversation with Mark Bowman

Solving Business Issues with Technology: A Conversation with Mark Bowman

In this episode of The Wireless Way, host Chris Whitaker interviews Mark Bowman, an experienced entrepreneur and technologist. Mark is the owner of Total Communications Management Services and IT Solutions Advice. com. The discussion dives into Mark's impressive career in telecommunications since the 1980s, highlighting his problem-solving skills with technological solutions and how he enjoys defying limitations. Mark discusses his journey from working at a Fortune 500 steel company to owning his businesses and providing consultancy for major institutions like the University of Pittsburgh. He shares insights into large telecommunication deployments, the evolution and future of desk phones, and the transition from traditional POTS lines. Mark emphasizes the importance of mentoring younger generations, explaining technology, and being a trusted advisor. The episode also addresses career advice for both young professionals and technologists nearing retirement, promoting lifelong learning, and improving business solutions through collaboration.

00:00 Introduction and Guest Welcome
00:56 Mark Bowman's Background and Career Journey
04:07 Insights on Technology and Problem-Solving
05:32 Mentorship and Generational Perspectives
10:10 Challenges in Large-Scale Technology Deployments
14:21 Unified Communications and Desk Phones
18:41 POTS Lines and Industry Changes
19:39 Fire Panels and Security Services
20:09 Transition to Cellular and Data Connections
20:42 Cost-Saving Tips for Businesses
22:09 Managed Mobility and Wireless Expense Management
22:59 Copper Lines and PBX Systems
24:11 Importance of Communication and Billing Audits
25:36 Challenges in IT Deployment
26:06 Advice for Trusted Advisors and Technologists
33:13 Channel Managers and Solution Bundles
36:01 Future Plans and Final Thoughts

Transcript

Chris: 0:00

Hey, welcome to another episode of the wireless way. I'm your host, Chris Whitaker, and I'm grateful you're here today. And of course, I'm grateful for my guest. Mark Bowman is with us. Yeah, I got that b O W M a N Bowman. So I'm so glad he's with me today. I met him recently and was just, we really hit it off with the idea of solving business problems with technology and, Giving back to the community, paying it forward. So we're going to hit a lot of those things today, but before I bring him on just a tidbit about him. He's currently the owner of total communications management services, as well as it solutions advice. com. We'll talk about that. He's a very motivated forward thinker. And this is what I love about him. Enjoying proving people wrong when they say something can't be done. We need more people like that. I he enjoys helping others to be successful. He has a different sense of humor that's always turned on. His favorite saying, if you can't take a joke, please don't look in the mirror. My kind of guy. So Mark thanks so much for being here. How's it going today?

Mark: 0:59

I'm doing great. Thanks for having me. Appreciate it.

Chris: 1:02

Oh, man. No, this is great. I love sharing stories. I told you that's why the wireless way exists. It did start out as a wireless technology show four years ago, and then it had this epiphany one day, that the wireless way of the double entendre wireless, meaning no strings attached and no judgment in the ways, the path, the journey, and the venture. And so yeah we're going to take that adventure with you today. And we've got that kind of high level bio of who Mark is. What else is there to you, Mark? What's not in the bio? How did this whole thing begin with you?

Mark: 1:31

I've been around since 1984 is when in 1981, I graduated college with a degree in electrical engineering and ended up at a fortune 500 steel company doing process control work. And what was really neat with process control work, they were like the leaders in the technology with doing things with fiber and other things that, the telecommunication industry wasn't even doing yet. And it was neat because I got to be around when the vestiture happened. So now all of a sudden we had these phone systems provided by the telephone companies and many of our plants, and they were getting out of the business basically. And we had to put it in our own phone systems. Nobody had any experience in that. So it's Hey who wants to volunteer and helping be on this project for doing telephones and our data circuits and all that kind of stuff. And it's I said, Hey, why not? It looks like something new to learn. I volunteered and that was the beginning of the journey. And during that, I've done that for 15 years. We had 15 plants, 5000 phones, D. I. D. Numbers were just coming into play. So we had to work out of things. I got to put in a four, probably the first four digit dialing plan that Nortel ever had back in the days of some of those people who are familiar with the Nortel phone systems. And got to put in some of the first fiber optics with some of the the cable companies out into our locations. Actually, I put in some of the first Cisco routers when Cisco was white and orange. So that's how far back that I go in this area. But it's always, it was been a learning adventure picked up a master's degree in telecommunications along the way in some time, did some consulting after I left there, worked for MCI, which was one of the major carriers as a data sales engineer. Then I worked for quest national accounts as a network sales engineer again. Always a solution driven for people and being on the forefront of those technologies. And then lastly, for the last 20 years, I've been working part time 3 days a week at a major university here in Pittsburgh and actually has Pittsburgh in the name. So I might as well just say it's a University of Pittsburgh. But it's great because I've been able to work with very small. Companies helping people out as a consultant, and then with a major university that has 25, 000 phones at one time. There's a broad range of things I've been able to do over the years, and I just love building solutions for people, and then helping them to, overcome challenges, and even actually getting companies together to work together. Because a lot of times they don't know if they would just work together, that there's a better solution out there that they can bring to their customers.

Chris: 4:06

That's fantastic. Would you say, are you a big do it yourselfer guy with that engineering background? Are you, do you do other projects around the house or do you do things beyond telecom normally or just all technology?

Mark: 4:17

Yeah I have a big problem of trying not to make things better. Every time I see something, somebody doing something, I do remodeling. I've remodeled four houses from top to bottom. I have a business that I've bought an older building and just retro the whole thing. And it's one of those things I'd rather spend two weeks doing it myself than paying somebody to have it done in two days. Because

Chris: 4:40

yeah you have a hard time walking past a problem, right? If you see a problem, you need to go fix it. Is that you, even if

Mark: 4:45

it's not mine, if it's somebody else's, I got to go help them out. And, my, my wife always would tell me, she goes, sometimes people don't appreciate unsolicited advice says, this is at least wait till they ask you that before you try to tell them how to fix it.

Chris: 4:59

Yeah. It's funny you bring up your wife. Cause I was thinking about my wife as you were talking to you, cause sometimes, she'll come to me with a problem or an issue and probably not at the level you are, but I do like to Hey, let me tell you where his, we should do this when, here's a solution. And then she's Chris, Just commiserate with me. I don't need an answer. I just need you to tell me, yeah, honey, that's a bad situation. Good luck with that. Or if you need me, let me know, so it's a, but it ties into your wife's advice. So people want to complain, right? And I don't like, I'm like, Hey, if we're going to talk about it, let's come up with a solution. Okay.

Mark: 5:30

Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. The other thing I find very interesting out there now is, a lot of times our younger folk get a bad rap. Okay. But there are some 25 year old, 20 year old kids that are, basically they're 45 years old at heart. And, if you can seek those people out and find them and then help guide them along the way. I've had some wonderful experiences with three or four younger people and passing stuff along and their knowledge and they, Now they're starting to do good things and they have that give back attitude, which really helps. I think it's going to help the next generation being able to just pass along what we learn,

Chris: 6:10

isn't that so funny too. You think about Mark, there was a day that you and I were those young guys, right? There was a day we were the. The young whippersnappers coming up and now here we are with our gray hair and our years of wisdom. And, and it is very satisfying when you do run into that that the next generation coming up and you're like, wow, there is hope. There, there are some really talented, smart, they're eager, they're, especially, Anyone, regardless of your age, if you're willing to learn from someone else, if you're just having an open mind approach, going, Hey, what can I learn from this situation regardless of your age? That's such an important thing to do for sure.

Mark: 6:44

And a lot of times they come equipped with the mechanism to help you get your information out to people just like what you're doing here today. I never would have thought doing that. On my own, but it's really great that you're doing this to be able to get this information and share with other folks. And it's never, you can learn something every day. And you're never too old to stop learning. A little later I might even share on how what people can do if they're getting towards retirement age. Yeah. That would be, that's for sure. Cause that's what I'm going through right now, trying to figure out what I'm going to do,

Chris: 7:13

so yeah, you try to like reinvent yourself.

Mark: 7:16

Yeah, exactly. We'll get

Chris: 7:17

to that. We'll get to that because before we get to that, yeah, by the way, guys, if you're listening, yes, we do actually have some talking notes and we do try to start a script, but it's a outline. So sometimes we get ahead of ourselves but we're going to get to that. So I want to hold, put a pin in that for a moment. Cause we, we talked about we're both technologists. You're more of an engineer for technology. It seems a problem solver. So when it comes to technology, What is, what's your go to technology? What's your favorite technology you'd like to work on and talk about?

Mark: 7:48

I'd probably say voice technologies because one of the things that happens when you're in voice today they used to have a whole group that was focused, nothing but voice. So they understand that they understood the customer needs that when they we have a separate speak that we do like it's call forward, call answer. Forwarding, there's just, it was a whole, there's a whole library that we had, and then all of a sudden it transitioned over to the data side and nothing against the data guys, because I'm one of those two, but the data guys for the most part thought that, Hey, this voice thing can't be that hard, so anybody can do it. So a lot of the voice guys, they retired because they were older and none of that, they speak, none of the terminology came across. So a lot of the early. UCAS and VoIP type solutions were put in and people hated it because they just didn't, they weren't able to take what the people actually wanted because they couldn't say what they wanted. They didn't know how to speak the data language. And then the, and the interpretation wasn't there. So they, everything was built wrong. So the customer never really got a good experience because it wasn't working like it did before. So the key was to make sure that you put something in that did what they did before, but also improved it. And that's where I think sometimes when you have a partner or somebody that works with you like that's the, that's what they bring to the table is the interpretation of where, what these guys are asking for and bringing it to you so you can write the orders to make sure it's implemented correctly.

Chris: 9:23

Actually I was with a large fortune 50 company. People know my background. I was at Comcast and we just launched business voice edge. And so it was even crazier there. Cause you had a cable company that grew up as a consumer based, video provider getting into business services. And this was probably around 2007, around that timeframe. And Yeah. And they were just desperately trying to recruit, former Bell employees. So they needed phone people, the new dial tone. And of course, that was the beginning to voiceover IP and while you're not kidding it, it sounded really good on the marketing slick, but just deploying it and getting it to work properly those, that first year or two was tough. It's probably the same with any new technology, any new offering. There's always some bugs and you got to work out. But speaking of, large deployments, show us a bit more about, what have you learned? What was some real, your real takeaways around large deployments that probably most people don't even think about.

Mark: 10:20

Okay. Here's the thing. If you, let's just say large deployments, okay. Let's say 10, 000 phones or more, 5, 000 phones or more. It takes a long time. And those systems have probably been implemented for, years. Like at the university, some of those phones have been in place for 25 years. And the problem is they're not identified well. So what I found in large deployments of 5 to 10, 000 20, 000 is that 20% Of the phones that are in place aren't even needed anymore, and they may not even know where they're at. Okay, so you have that 20 percent that you really need to clean up before you go, or you're going to overbuy subscripted license, and then you can't get rid of them. So it's better to like, when you're putting in an order on your on a large deployment like that is to put an order in for less and then add more at the same price. So you don't overbuy. The 2nd thing is. You have phones that an application, especially if you're in Mac manufacturing, or you have college campuses, you're going to get into areas where analog still has to stay. And when you're trying to go to UCAS in the cloud and VoIP, there's a lot of places that don't do analog. Okay, and another thing you'll find out is when you go to take an emergency phone, guess what? A Microsoft teams or a zoom or those people, they don't want to take over the ownership and the responsibility of having a public safety type phone connected to their network. They don't want the liability. So now all of a sudden you're left with another, let's just say 1500 out of that 10, 10, 000 that may have to stay analog for whatever reason and can't be converted right away. So you may not be able to get rid of that in the cloud. Totally. You may have to keep some type of phone system that's there. And so what that led me to be, and to look at was the fact that how do you do these ports then when you're trying to port numbers over? Okay, so I sought out a couple carriers that were able to provide SIP trunks into my existing phone system and also SIP trunks into a Zoom or into a cloud partner or into a Microsoft and or into even a fax like we use a Retarus is one of our companies that we use for fax, e fax. So we put dedicated SIP trunks into them. Now, some of these carriers, if you seek out, they will give you access to a dashboard. There's very few of them, but once you port all the numbers, they're all on your phone system. They're in there. They're a dashboard. And now you can do things with them when you want. So if I want to move 10 phones to teams on Tuesday, I can either put in an order if it's not one of the people that haven't access to a dashboard, put in an order and say Tuesday, Hey, move these from this trunk group to that trunk group. Me with a dashboard, I can have, I can go in and say, someone calls and says, Hey, we're having trouble with this phone over here. Okay. Great. You know what? We're not going to replace that phone. We're just going to move you to teams today. And I could just go in there, provision up a a new phone for them and teams, same number and just redirect the phone number. Those. Are things that will save you. If you have, if you're trying to do 100 telephone numbers and guess what, if they're not consecutive phone numbers, try to move those because Verizon or whoever you're going from will consider that a complex port and it'll take you 30 days to do that. And then guess what? You can't have multiple orders into Verizon for ports. So now you've got to wait till that order is complete before you submit the second order. OK, and it you'll just never get done. So you need to move all your numbers and then have a way that you can deploy those numbers yourselves. And basically you're porting yourself. But I've done ports up to 30, 000 numbers. It takes a while, but it's, but it's worth getting it to where it needs to be and then have a vendor to work with and then disperse them where you need them when you need them.

Chris: 14:19

That was a lot of knowledge and a lot of gotchas, in there. Hey, what are your thoughts on this? It's a kind of same topic. Desk phones. Are you, is it, are we seeing the death of the desk phone? Like people are using soft clients more. What are you seeing in the market from your perspective of will people continue to have a desk phone versus, an app on their phone or their computer?

Mark: 14:38

I would say in small companies that have, are used to the key phone systems. Okay. Where you had to put a phone on hold and get someone like that. And you have let's just say it was a car dealership. They're so used to functioning with, Hey, here's your shop guy. Here's your parts person. Here's your there and your sales reps there. Those phones on those desks are probably going to stay there. They're not going to move to a soft client because they've integrated that. in there. Now, portable IP phones on wifi. That's a great step for them. That's a great next step. Now, if you're going into the office, I would say you'll, you don't need desk phones anymore. So if you're an office employee, like a university, I would just say on ours, we would probably maybe 10 percent of the people are still keeping their phones. Because there's so much more that you can do with an application on the phone, even some of the UCAS, the dashboards that they have. And I think it's the being able, what I do most of the time when I'm using just on teams is I'll be talking to somebody and next thing that is inevitable that I want to share my screen. It's so much easier to do that when you have, the application on your PC. And the other thing, if you're on the road, I have the team's app on my cell phone and I use it. I haven't touched a phone, a desk phone in probably four years. So to answer your question, I would say probably 80 percent of the time, it's a great fit. You probably won't need it. Good headset, wireless, head set, corded headset. It doesn't matter. I don't see the big difference between the personally between a 30 headset and a 200 headset.

Chris: 16:21

I agree. I agree. So is it fair to say that you consider you're very comfortable with the whole conversation around unified communications, whether it be zoom teams, go to meeting. I is that an area you feel pretty comfortable with? Cause I got, I have a very technical question that I know everyone listening is going to hope you have an answer for sure. You're ready? Toss it up. Okay. Virtual calls are just part of life. Now, even right now we're doing this podcast over zoom. Why is it when you go from a zoom call to a team's call to a go to meet call it, it inevitably does it. Attached to the right microphone or your camera doesn't work. And there seems to be no rhyme or reason. It just seems going from platform to platform. They're just not compatible. Is that by design or is it just user error?

Mark: 17:08

No, I actually think it's your PC and things. So if you're going to, you don't want to have your Google. Meet open when and then try to go to teams there because it's you have one device and it's trying to connect to different places. So if you're saying it's it's almost like your headsets. If you have 2 different headsets tied to your iPhone, and then you get in your car and it's hopping around because it doesn't know which 1 it needs to be connected to. It's the same thing. So your PC is 1 device and it says, hey, I like to be. I'm use me for this. And now all of a sudden you've got two applications. So it says that's already being used there. I'll let you use the speaker. I'll let you use the speaker from the PC and the microphone that's, that's built into the PC because it's not taken right now. So if you close out those apps, if you're not using it, close out those apps and then check it, and then also to always do a little test to make sure before you join.

Chris: 18:00

That's right. Okay. So that's brilliant. And that makes sense. So your advice is. If you're using multiple platforms on your laptop or your PC close the ones you're not using. If you're going into a zoom call, just make sure teams isn't still trying to connect that. So that actually makes sense to me. Okay. That's good.

Mark: 18:16

Here's another little tidbit that a lot of people don't know. If you open up Microsoft teams, okay. And you look, and usually in the bottom left, there's a little thing that says apps. Okay. You can go to apps. There's actually. Zoom a zoom app for teams that you can put inside and connect it in there so you can actually run zoom inside of teams when you're working.

Chris: 18:37

That's interesting. I'll have to investigate that. That sounds really cool. So back on dial tone, back on, on voice services we talked a little, you mentioned POTS lines, um, this has been a topic for at least I can, I feel like the last five years, this whole POTS transformation. And it was at what last August last year, maybe a year before. FCC said, Hey, decommissioning pots lines and you're seeing pots lines go from 30 now to 300 up. I've seen a thousand dollars depending in, some areas where they're really just trying to get people off the, off those analog copper lines. Um, what's your opinion on that? And where do you see the industry there? There's a lot of that behind us now, or there's still a lot of analog pots lines out there that need to be converted over to some other alternative pots type solution.

Mark: 19:23

There is still a lot of that out there, and one of the reasons why I think there's still a lot of that out there is it falls into that category of what are these numbers used for?

Chris: 19:34

Yeah.

Mark: 19:34

Okay. And people don't want to shut them off because they don't know what they're used for. They typically were used for fire panels. and they were used for security services. They were used for safe freezers and things that you had to monitor and stuff like that. But most people did that off of their P. B. X. And it wasn't a pot slot. Some of them were used for emergency phones that where you couldn't, they were too far away to be used from their P. B. X. So when someone pushes the button, it dials their public safety or it dials 911 just so you know that the environment was safer in the community there. Okay. But now there's been rules that have been changed for the fire panels where you can have a cellular device and you can have a data connection and those are now, those weren't options before. They always had to be hardwired. So a lot of that is being transitioned, but here's the one thing people need to know too, is when you have your vendor come in and change that over to a data port and your cellular, you might want to go and tell the billing people that, Hey, we're not using these two telephone numbers anymore because I have no clue. I can tell you probably. Every person I go to or every bill I look at for a customer, I just looked at one yesterday for an automotive dealership. They changed out. They had a line, a POTS line in there for their credit card machine. They had a POTS line in there for their emissions diagnostics machine. Somebody came in two or three years ago and swapped that out, gave them a new thing, tied it to their network. And they'd been paying for those two lines, 80 a month for those two lines for probably the past two years. So that's one thing I think that people need to do is fix that. There's some devices out there that lets you go into cellular and have a cellular device that puts in, and then you can have up to six, eight dial tones off of that. That's a good solution. That's probably one of the easier ones to do because it can be deployed. Rather easily, but you really need to see if you need them. I would, when we come at the university, every time we go to an investigation, they come in and they'll say, Hey, we're going to be moving you to fiber, which ones of these phone numbers need to go. And by the way, most of the time they don't charge you for that. But when that happens, I would always tell them say yes, because now all of a sudden fibers built into your building and then disconnect them afterwards, if you're not really sure, but. Do the research find out, but I would say probably two thirds of those numbers aren't needed. But the ones that are needed, you really need to make sure you have a good solid solution for them.

Chris: 22:06

Wow. That's all great advice. And it definitely made me think about my day job. Working here at Spectrotel and having that managed mobility that we, we talked about the wireless expense management. I'm always surprised. The large organizations, how many people are paying for even cell phones, the same story that no one's using. There's been no usage on it for months. Sometimes it's, maybe it's only 35 a month. Maybe it's an unlimited plan for a hundred dollars a month or 130 a month. They're paying for months, no usage. It goes back to companies are focused on running their business. They're focused on doing what they know well. And most IT departments are generally, skeleton crews or understaffed. Or maybe there's a lot of churn on the team. My friends in IT every six months to a year, they're changing jobs for, cause they're getting a pay raise or, a better role. So yeah, I think it's just, yeah, that's the role we play as trusted advisors, whether you're a supplier or the selling partner. We need to educate the end users, right? A lot of people just don't know there's another alternative. Do they?

Mark: 22:58

Exactly. And the thing too, like back on the copper, you mentioned when people think copper, they think pots, right? But guess what? There were things PBXs too. And there's things called P. R. I. S. And guess what? Those things are leaving, and they're not telling you, or they're forcing you to move them and move that technology. So there's you have to, really look at and say, Hey, I might not have to change out my phone system right now. I may just have to have the T ones delivered over I. P. A box put in and connecting it to your phone system there. And again, that's where you look at those providers that can do optional those multiple things. Because when they're coming and telling you they're turning your T 1 off and shutting your, that's going to go away, that's you really have to do something that, it's not just the POTS line, it's the

Chris: 23:46

one, yeah. What kind of heads up are you seeing? Are they required by law to give you a 30 day notice? Oh, it's more, it's

Mark: 23:51

probably, it's usually six months notice, here's what happens to people.

Chris: 23:55

They forget the notices and they lose the notices.

Mark: 23:57

The notices go to the billing people. Okay. The billing people, it's inside your build and then the person who actually needs to see it doesn't see it, until all of a sudden it's being shut off and it's we gave you notice. I'm like we never saw the notices. So make sure that you're talking and you're engaging in their bills. And also, like, when you're going in and say you are a trusted advisor and you're going out there and you're trying to talk to someone, have them give you their bills. Not just, have'em give you the whole thing, know, copy the whole thing. And oh, by the way, save me some of those little flyers that are in there that you're normally just throwing out with the, with the envelope that it came in. And let me see some of that, because that's, it's really there. And just do a really good audit for people to just help them understand, and I and I do that early on in the sales cycle for people, help collect their data, help them find out about their phones, help them gather this information that's going to be needed because one of the first things out of a customer's mouth is how long is this going to take? Oh, we can do it in 30 days. That's everybody's, everybody's 30 days. You know what? It's 30 days from the time you have all the information. Okay. It's not, and it's sometimes it's going to take you 30 to 60 days to gather that information before you can even put the orders in. So what I always do with my customers, when I'm there, I bring them a couple of spreadsheets and say, look, I don't care who you go with or what you do. Take a look at these spreadsheets and try to fill them in. Try to get me your, the person's name, the person's email address, the phone number they're using. And then we'll talk about some other things, the building they're in, the floor they're in, Fill those out as much as you can, because you're going to need those for those orders. If you want to hit the 30 days that everybody talks about.

Chris: 25:35

That's that is some great news. I remember having those paper drills back in the days of VoIP and business voice edge. That was the hardest part. Selling it wasn't hard. It was getting the information to deploy it. That was the hard part. And the

Mark: 25:50

benefit to us as a trusted advisor, bringing that, guess what? If you see that somebody is actively filling that out during the process, they're serious.

Chris: 25:59

That's

Mark: 25:59

If they haven't touched it, then they're not serious. They're just checking to see what it would cost if we do this.

Chris: 26:06

So you have a, this website, it solutions advice. com be curious to know. Not only from that initiative, but just in your career, is there a trend of what people come to you for advice in, is there like a, and obviously it sounds like a lot of voice stuff, but is there any other it solutions you feel like there's a very common areas of seeking advice?

Mark: 26:27

Here's what I see is and the industry in itself has done this. When I first started, if you build a thousand dollars a month, you had a dedicated sales rep, and then it went to$2,500 a month, and then it went to$5,000 a month. And even some large organizations there are outsourcing. The companies themselves are outsourcing to agents because they don't want to deal with it. They don't have the manpower. So it could be$10,000 a month. The problem with that is nobody's out there learning your business. Okay? And even if you spent time talking to a sales rep, chances of you touching or doing anything with that sales rep after the paperwork signed and probably 30 days at max, that person's off and often doing something else and they aren't being trained well on all the products they have to sell. They're being, it's, I like to call it like the ice cream shop. It's the flavor of the day. At one point in time, the flavor of the day was centrix. Now the flavor of the day is VoIP. Now the flavor of the day is security. And I'm not saying that they shouldn't be fell in that place, but that's what it is. So they're learning a little bit about what they have to do in security, but they're not touching on the other things. So I think that when you're doing it, I built it solutions advice was to just have a landing pad where people could put in their question. But the thing is to open up a dialogue to find out what they're really trying to do and where they want to be in four years and just help them as a whole, help them look at where they want to be in five years. Almost like a person does. Where do you want to be in five years in your career? If you don't look at that and plan, guess what? You're going to be the same place doing the same thing that you are doing, and you've got to prepare yourself based on what type of business you are to do those things. Some people need a website, some people don't need a website, but you just have to find out what makes sense.

Chris: 28:17

Yeah, that reminds me, I was, I went to a CompTIA event a few years ago and they had a breakout session called changing of the guard and I knew exactly what that was about and and so I went and sat in on it and I found it very interesting, the fact that one, one analyst had some data to suggest that, we don't have enough young people coming in. We're talking about young people early. There's enough young people coming into the industry to replace all the folks that are leaving the industry. Not enough young people. It's funny there, there grew up in technology, but they don't wanna work in technology necessarily. So that, so whether that's true or not, still, I'm not sure, but, what advice do you have for those trust advisors or technologists that find themselves And and, the back nine or, the last chapters of their career. What are your thoughts there?

Mark: 29:00

I'm trying to recruit some of those folks that have specialties and everybody knows how you try to surround yourself through your career with those experts. I have experts that are like yourself and with cellular and things like that, that you can help people in savings. The idea is to try to connect yourselves. I would always so say it's time to give back people. When there was people that invested in me a lot when I was going up, and going through this stuff, as far as Nortel, I had a Nortel friend that I could go to anything. I have an AVAYA guy that I can, he's one of the top AVAYA guys in the country, and he upgraded the state of Texas. So if he can upgrade the state of Texas. on their via platform or UPMC Medical Center and those, those big names, then he can surely help you know what we're doing and, and be able to take those and find those people. And if there's young people that are coming up that showing an interest, please take the time to help them out. Because they truly do need to know and teach them how to interpret, because those voice solutions, they're, even though they're done a little bit differently, the applications are still pretty neat. The same. You need to be able to have an auto attendant in the front end. You need to be able to have call centers. You need to. Are you getting a lot more information out of it? Yes, but the needs are still answer the phones, find out what the clients are looking for. Do you know, get to get the calls where they need to be? If there's some AI stuff, that's really, that's what's coming along now. Some of the A. I. The pre questions. I think that's great because, paying people to sit there and answer those same questions over and over. That's it's needed. But if you can get that to them automatically, and it pops up on their screen for them, I think that's a win and because it provides better customer service. So if you can, take the time, find some younger people in your organization, or I have the problem right now. I have three daughters. None of them want to do what I do in this, so I'm trying I found a couple other younger guys that were interested in this and being able to help people and, and it's working out. So that's why I'm trying to do it. Solutions advice. So when it comes there, those things, I basically pull them in and they can learn about how we're answering the client that called and they're picking up on those different types of technologies, where they wouldn't have done that on themselves.

Chris: 31:24

Are you archiving the people asking for advice and once you're full of experts answers, is it going to become like a database of solutions and advice?

Mark: 31:34

That's what we're going to try to do. And probably just say, here's the question, here's the answer. Frequently asked questions, that type of thing try. Some of my friends are really good router people and stuff. And we are, we're when they asked the questions, I'm looking for a pool of people. I can just there and say, Hey guys, what do you think about this? Here's the guy's problem. And then that's

Chris: 31:54

better than AI because they, I might get it wrong. Oh, exactly. Make it right. But it could get it wrong too.

Mark: 31:59

Yeah. And I really think that, there's it. I like to try to blame it on the companies, right? Because they're not training their people and the customers, especially smaller customers, if they have a hundred phones or less, nobody's coming out there to tell them what it is. Somebody from Comcast might show up or somebody from this company might show up. They're not sitting down there asking them and they're sitting there. If this new stuff was there, why didn't my, why didn't my company come tell me? First of all, a company is not going to come tell you how to reduce the revenue to them. Okay.

Speaker 3: 32:30

That's right. And

Mark: 32:31

then I always ask him, I says how much do you have set aside in your training budget this year for the customer? And he goes we don't have much of a training budget. I says, guess what? They don't either. I says, they're not training their people. I said, they may teach on a new technology that pops up and say, here's a few things but they typically aren't out there training someone well enough that they could come talk to you, understand what you're trying to do and do something that they, if you happen to match up and get and call somebody in and they're actually selling exactly what you're looking for. Great. You'll probably have a good experience, but if they come in and they have, they're trying to sell this and you're trying to find a solution for that. Chances are you're not, it's going to fail.

Chris: 33:11

Yeah that's, I agree with you. How about, what advice do you have for channel managers? So we've talked a lot about suppliers and trusted advisors. You've probably worked, you've mentioned, channel managers. Sometimes they come and go. Some of them are really good. Some of them, as you mentioned, are just really, spewing the features and benefits and the prices, but they only understand the underlying technology. If for someone starting out as a channel manager, what advice would you give them?

Mark: 33:34

I think they need to first understand what your client base is. And who you're dealing with and what you're doing and what you're doing and what size of customers and then work with try to develop solutions from multiples of your products. Okay. And not just be pushing a product right now, everybody is either pushing security or they're pushing that, but, so they go in and do that. They may not be ready for security or they may not be doing it. So you need to be able to equip the trusted partners with I like to call them solution bundles. Yeah. Say Spectrotel, okay. Spectrotel has the POTS line, which is great. Spectrotel has the Wi Fi and cellular type stuff that's there. They have the managed services that's there. They have the ability to take and combine bills. One of the biggest things that you can have right now, if you have a multi location company is reduce the number of bills and who they have to call. I don't care if you go out and put 10 new Comcast circuits into a Spectre and then have it on one bill, you have a customer that's having a problem in one location. Try to find out how to open up a ticket with Comcast and get any results. You don't, and then he has to sit there and he doesn't know anything about it. But if he calls Spectrotel, they have 10 of them. Spectrotel has a a good relationship with Comcast and has a ton of customers. So what's the chances of them having a dedicated person in there to help with support? It's a lot better than that person calling in by themselves. So those are the things that when you bundle those solutions and let those trusted advisors know that those things exist and here's the benefits to their customers, that's the thing I think that channel managers need to focus on. How to retain customers, how to sell additional things into them, and that way when you go with that buffet, so to speak, for, as an offering, now all of a sudden the customer, if they're, they might be looking for one of those things off the buffet and you were selling them. The wrong thing at first, but if you take the buffet and you say, which one of these things, which one do you want to focus on first?

Chris: 35:34

What's most important. Yeah,

Mark: 35:35

exactly. Cause I could save them. Let's just say their cell bill was 2, 000 a month. They can come in and probably knock their cell bill down to 500. So guess what? That extra fee that they were needed to pay for the security, which was going to have to be added on there. And it was 300 a month. They didn't know where they were coming up with it. And now all of a sudden you gave them a way to pay the 300 a month security bill.

Chris: 35:58

That's right. That's right. It's about efficiency and effectiveness. And in our last few minutes here time to land the plane to my, my last question is two questions. What's next for you and, your last words, anything you wanted to share with us? We didn't hit on

Mark: 36:14

the next thing is just trying to find, continue. Wrapping things up. We're doing a big giant project at the university, and I want to make sure that's done before I leave. I got about a year and a half left. And I want to just make sure everything's cleaned up. So when you're passing the torch, you're passing, it's all good to go.

Chris: 36:31

Good faith. Yeah.

Mark: 36:32

And I want to be able to start finding some other people to work with because I still want to take the IT solutions advice. I would like to expand that and make it more so that people can learn and give customers better solutions. People who know where they turn. The IT solutions advice is free. You send, you're going to be able to drop something off there. We'll put it out to our people, find out what's out there, what they think, if they want to engage one of us or one of the team with some consulting dollars afterwards, that's great. I find out that, it's not about the money. It's always people say that, it's never about the money, but really it's not. If you can help people, the money comes afterwards, and and also spend some time talking with the vendors and trying to help put those solution bundles together. And sometimes you have to put two vendors together. Partner them up and say, Hey guys, you do this. You do that. You need to work together because there's some gaps that you can fill and that gives the end user a better overall solution. Yeah.

Chris: 37:36

I think that to summarize that makes me think if there's anything in a business that's not going well from a technology or process standpoint, there's probably a solution for it. And yeah, if you're a business owner and you don't know what that solution is, there's You know, yeah, go check it. It solutions advice. com or, use your network, talk to Mark check the show notes. I'll have links to all that in the show notes, but man, Mark a lot of great advice, a lot of great content here. Thanks for your time today. Any anything, did we recover your last words? We're good.

Mark: 38:06

My last words is my wife says I'm full of it. I'm full of good information. Just if you can, if you need anything, just reach out and and share with your friends and just learn. You're never too old to learn something new. And and when you want to get out of the remodeling business, make sure you get rid of your truck and most of your tools,

Chris: 38:26

more good advice. I love it. But Mark, thanks so much. I really appreciate your time today and yeah, definitely check the show notes and I love that you never, never stop learning, always be learning and we can learn from each other and iron sharpens, irons something I love to use as a guiding light there. Thanks so much again. I really appreciate your time today.

Mark: 38:45

Take

Chris: 38:45

care. Thank

Mark: 38:46

you very much for having me.

Chris: 38:47

Yeah. And there you go, folks. Another episode of the Wireless Way. If you, again as Mark said, if you like what you heard, if you thought about somebody while you were listening to this episode, please share it, we're in 55 countries and growing and really grateful for your, you sharing and following and subscribing. Yeah, keep it up, thanks so much. And we'll see you next time on the Wireless Way.