 This is Christian Buckley doing another MVP Buzz Chat. I'm here talking today with Mary. Hey, how's it going? Great, how about yourself? I'm doing well. Why don't you introduce yourself? Who you are, where you are? Yep, so my name is Mary Thompson. And I am in, I always say Columbia, South Carolina. It's really Lexington, a little suburb outside of it. So that's who I am and where I'm at. So what do you do for a living? Yeah, sorry about that. So I am a, so my official title is the Dynamics Angel Guru for Cooper Perry. And what I do is I help kind of in a partner-to-partner channel and help other partners trying to get into the business central, you know, resale area. I help them get started. Basically, they can have like no skills or not kind of silly no skills, but you know, new to that space and not have to know the software and product. And we help them kind of get started and get them going. So that's a lot of what I do. Well, it's, and you're also one of our newest MVPs. So congratulations again on that. Thank you, thank you for that. Very excited. So what kind of things do you help people with or what are people most interested in? These, the partners, what are they looking to get started up in working with? Well, you know, it's funny. I would say that my MVP, you know, award and like my day job are quite different. I always say that like, you know, I'm a functional consultant or, you know, when this P2P channel by day and then like, I mean like with the power platform. So, you know, so I guess in the partner to partner channel, a lot of them are just trying to maybe get started. I mean, you know, business central is a pretty quick and easy process to, you know, get started and going with, especially for SMBs. And with COVID it's been particularly important to help these companies, you know, maybe go from some silent systems where they really didn't have that accessibility. And, you know, they were just having people at home and they couldn't do anything. So trying to help them, you know, kind of get started and help these partners. Literally just had another nice resale to their, to different products. But like I said, in my free time, I am super passionate about the power platform and kind of helping upscale, you know, whether it be the Twitter community or a lot here in my local community and trying to help spread that, you know, concept and knowledge. Cause I would say that the tech forefront is not particularly ramped here in South Carolina. So I'm super passionate about trying to help other people see that there's a, there's a lot more out there and jobs that pay a lot more. So. Well, yeah, that is interesting. So I was thinking about this before we were talking to which like, when was the last time I was in South Carolina? I think it's been, I've been to North Carolina, of course, you know, RTP plenty with work. I was in Atlanta a lot, did a lot of travel out there for years and, you know, but just kind of, you know, skip over the state. I've driven through parts a couple of times. But I mean, that's a great point is more and more, I think especially because of, you know, COVID where businesses that never thought that they would be able to do the support, work from home model are now rethinking like, why do we need all this expensive office space? But a lot of these roles that can be 100% remote. And I mean, it's yet to be seen how this is going to impact economies. Right, right. Well, I think, I can't even remember some of the numbers I saw, but like you said, it's like the overhead to hold an office space is astronomical and it's taking that digital transformation process. I can't remember it was like maybe 42% of jobs would be, they call it eradicated or you know what I mean? Can be digitally, can go away with digital transformation but I'd like to really think of it in empowering the courage people. But it's not that your job is going to go away but that you're going to be able to use that skill set on what your brain really wants it to use. You know what I mean? Like when you're not having to deal like the mundane, you know, aspects then it can take somebody that works and lives with that data. So maybe purchasing for example, when you can use like AI and automatically have your invoices be sucked out of your email and essentially OCR functionality then uploaded into the system. I mean, anyone can go in there and key those in. Right, but now you're taking people that have done this for a really long time and they know these vendors and kind of this really intimate relationship with them. And so now they can actually spend their time maybe building pricing relationships. There's a lot of good that can go into that and getting like the best pricing for your company maybe get some special favors done and could you have this time to like network, right? Within that channel opposed to just entering invoices or you know the best way to get something done and you can focus on that and maybe help other people as well instead. Well, we've seen that shift that's happened within the technology platforms when most of the experts in the space are so focused on keeping servers up and running and are people getting access to it? You're not able to spend the time and think about once you have access to what are you actually doing with the platform? So yeah, it is a shift in the way of thinking. You still need to have people that understand the technology and make sure stuff is running and make sure the services are running. But it also, they have to have more of that business understanding. So it's been, I think it's been a shift for a lot of IT pros, certainly in developers to think more about the actual business application of the things that they're building. I like to think that they were thinking of some of those things beforehand, but the reality is that when, I mean it's just like moving from that waterfall development method to a more iterative process. You don't just go and think, hey, we're gonna go and build this and then the next three to six months, you build it and then come back and deliver it. You have to iterate in real time and get the feedback and refine. And it's usually much different looking at the end of the three months than it was where you thought at the beginning of the process. Right. And I kind of come from a unique perspective because I've really only been in the tech world for like two years, right? And before that, I was an end user in the system. Or well, I was an end user in dating with AS. So I sat in those roles and I helped start several like SMBs or was the office manager and took care of the more many different hats in any small businesses and some larger organizations. So that's my stronger suit, right? It's not necessarily the configuration. I mean, that's the tricky part for me, but I realized that there was a really great space for me in consulting because it's very easy with you're saying some projects and those types of individuals to come in and say, this is how the system is supposed to work. You need to follow these directions. Well, in real life, people aren't gonna read that handbook, right? Like it's like, oh, I broke it. What do I do now? The answer isn't, this is what the rulebook said. No, you gotta be, you know what I mean? You have to understand that. Like you gotta get creative and understand how to process, like how to work with that change management and have that empathy to their like day to day life. So that's what I really like about consulting and where some of my experiences come from. And then it's like, I've realized that if I can do that, right? Like I'm not the only end user that can make this transition. And even if you didn't use AX, it's being able to transfer that industry, outside industry, whatever terminology you wanna use that and put that into consulting. And I think that's where things like the power platform and these citizen developers, right? Really come into shine right now. It's because you don't have to have those tech skills. You have to have like the business knowledge or your business process concepts. And the passion to go and do it. It's interesting, I've done a couple interviews just recently with some very large enterprise customers. And one of the common patterns in some of these businesses, and I've talked to many others as well, but this just in the last two months with these interviews, where they started to develop a champion program. So they were intentionally trying to monitor and track those people that kind of rose up from within the ranks. And then to support them and say, what else can we do? And they asked them, like what else can we do to help you do more to do better? And but you find these people that naturally wanna go and solve these business problems and then help others. And I always think of it like the, like a manufacturing process. It's all about the efficiency. You know, the quality, what you're improving quality and you're constantly fine tuning the process to get the product through more of the product at a higher quality through. And we need to think of our organizations in the same way. Again, it's not just about keeping those servers or services up and running, but now how do we better use this? That's what digital transformation is about. How do we get more out of this so we can double our output being 200% efficiency, increased productivity, however that's defined. You start to look at these, that the manufacturing process within your own organization is a where can we make improvements here and then start to iterate? Yeah, and I think that there's a human concept and that as well, right? So like, not only are you making, your business processes more efficient but the personal satisfaction. And so like people's happiness, right? When you're truly invested and know that somebody's invested in you, like your overall whole being at work is completely different. And when you have super satisfied employees that they're happy, then again, it's just like this win-win type of situation and being able to empower your employees not only empowers your business concepts, but also just in general makes for happier people. And I don't know. I guess I'm really corny and I'm all about like being positive and I think that there's so much to that. We spend so much time at work that if you can have a happier workplace then you're also probably gonna stick around longer. So I think it's pretty awesome concept. Well, having, I don't know about you. I mean, having worked in some organizations that were more on the toxic side of things. Oh my gosh. Yeah, it's, no, I know what you mean. It's when you have, I don't know how to describe it, when you're on a team, where everybody's performing well, where you understand each other's roles, you work well together, people are happy doing that. I wish sometimes it lasted longer, something happens when your favorite people leaves, they move up, they move on kind of things and you have to reshuffle. But I mean, I often say that organizations that are good at managing and handling the change, finding people who are passionate that can do their jobs well that are willing to learn, but that are also good at change when it inevitably happens are the ones that are gonna be successful long-term. That's one of the things that I really love about Cooper Perry and that I've noticed has been significantly different. Like, I've worked a bunch of different places. And it's one of the first times I've ever felt like truly valued and appreciated. And I'm like, what do you mean? That like, I feel good when I go to work, you know? And even at that it was like, they were so amazing when I first started and then I had some, I'll call it PTSD from some other jobs. And so, really suffering from imposter syndrome to the point where I was like really just getting in my own way. And so I was just kind of honest about that with them and like, I don't know, I don't wanna lose my job but just don't know what to do. And they've just been so supportive in like, no, you are great, we'll get you to remember that like, let's not worry about what's happened in the past. This is who you are now. And I'd say in the last couple of months, I don't know, I just, I feel great. That's all I can say is I feel really great and really like comfortable and satisfied for the first time in a really long time where it's not about the money, it's about the culture and being happy where you're at. Well, so now that you've earned the Microsoft MVP and your head is swelling and do people like get out of the way in the hall now and they see, well, I guess we're all working from home. It's, yeah. Yeah, no, no, my dog still like goes crazy. But no, you know, so even at that, they're like so sweet, they're like, let's do an interview and then we're gonna put you on the thing. And I'm like, okay, like, I'm like, well really, I think the coolest thing about me being as MVP is like now we can build more MVPs like internally. Y'all are way smarter than me. You just have to do some blogs and some videos like let's get out in the user groups and let's make a whole tribe of MVPs here. That's the right approach. Well, I always say that, you know, the MVPs, it's not 100% of us, but I would say that the vast majority, 99.9% of us, we'd be doing this whether or not we had the MVP status. We are passionate about community and helping people and learning and sharing our work, being transparent in the stuff that we do. So, yeah, that's consistent. Now it's interesting, like you're over on the dynamics side of the house. It's interesting to see the rapid growth in that community. Like I came up, I was initially a SharePoint MVP and had this rabid, passionate group of SharePoint MVPs, but now the Office Apps and Services side, which include all of offices and everything. So we're seeing more and more of data platform and business solutions MVPs on the dynamics side of the house, which is it's about time. It's exciting to see growth on that side of things. And of course, a lot of, you know, partnering across the, once you're an MVP, you're in the system, there are people that float across multiple areas. Yeah. So there's a lot more that you can tap into as well within that network, so. Pretty cool. Yeah, no. It's pretty cool stuff. I mean, I'm already like flooded with the emails. I can't even necessarily like keep up yet. You know, so I'm like, oh, I need to get some rules in here. So, yeah, I've showed up to like a few, I don't know if this is nice or not, but I showed up to like a few meetings and I'm like, man, I'm sure I'll marry many women in here. So I think it ain't gonna need to be passionate or I guess one of my passions is gonna be to like really, really like increase that. And I'm like, oh, okay, well, I'm not gonna say anything, but. You know, I think there's an open dialogue around that. I think everybody recognizes that and we need to do a better job of reaching out and changing that up. And I've got four kids, one daughter, three sons and my two of my kids, my daughter, my oldest went into the STEM side of things and much smarter human being than I am. I'm just very excited to see two of my kids go into technology. She's hard sciences. She was a microbiology major and then got her masters and, you know, again, much smarter than I am, but it's exciting to see, you know, that to see her go out and take advantage of all the opportunities that are out there and things are really just opening up for her. But yeah, we definitely need to see more of that within the Microsoft community. Well, I think it's coming and I'm thinking that I'm gonna like reach out to some people and like maybe we can have like a, like an MVP girls night out like meetup or something and kind of rally around each other and see what we can do to help spread that. Well, there's also, I don't know, are you a member of IAMCP? Do you know what that is? No, too many acronyms. I have no clue. It's the International Association of Microsoft Channel Partners, so IAMCP and it's IAMCP.org and they sponsored the Women in Technology organization as well, which is all over the world. And yeah, so I helped, I was the president of the Seattle chapter for three and a half years and we helped pilot and launch WIT and inside of IAMCP out when I was in Redmond. So just outside of Microsoft campus. And so that's something you should definitely go take a look at. Yeah, I will, thanks for that. Yep. Well, I really appreciate your time and talking today, connecting and getting to know you. Yeah, thanks for having me, it's been a pleasure. And so people wanna find out more about you, get in touch with you, what are the best ways to reach you out on the social networks or however? Yeah, so find me on Twitter, I'm pretty active on there. It's a very original name, M-M-Zero, I don't even remember, 090511. That's what it is. Oh yeah, that's very personalized, yes. Yeah, it was like my maiden name and my birthday is really what it comes down to and then my favorite number says M-M-090511 on Twitter or you can find me at Mary Thompson on LinkedIn. I've got a big, pink background that says World Map. So that's how you can find me. Excellent. Well, thanks a lot, Mary, for your time and we'll talk to you soon. Thanks, have a good one. Bye. Wow.