 So welcome to another episode of vlog Thursday where we make fun of Marvin's disability Look, it's an illness. All right. I have I have a bit of the OCD and if you take a look at how we're framed against the background I'm kind of half orange and half in the black and Tom is Framed perfectly by the this is just gonna drive me crazy the whole time He's yes, we have a monitor on the other side where we can see how the framing is and it bothers Marv Marv says it's frame wrong. I say great. I'm gonna record So here you can join me in this we got our rave bracelets. Oh sweet. So there we got a Microsoft rave bracelet That was part of my swag grab while I was at Microsoft which there wasn't a lot of swag to grab which is fine I wasn't there for the swag so last week. We didn't have a normal vlog Thursday I did a video and posted on Facebook. He didn't post it to YouTube Which I was going to that I forgot until this moment and then Marv posted some stuff on Facebook and I'll never mind I didn't get on YouTube either. Yeah Yeah, so we didn't really have it but I was in Seattle for the Microsoft build conference, which it was so much fun Now what's the Linux guy doing at the build conference? That is an excellent question Yeah, a lot is a guy. What is a Linux guy doing at the Microsoft conference Tom? We will be releasing a series of Interviews that we did with my other thing I do which is SMLR U.S. The podcast that I co-host with Tony be miss not to be confused with not to be confused with s and MLR Oh, it's a very different different different show. Very different show. This is SMLR at US. There it is. Yeah Yes, that's the other thing I do now It's funny because some people ask like you don't promote it much on Facebook I'm like this because most of my Linux friends aren't on Facebook So there's occasional mentions of SMLR. I don't run around asking all my business friends You should listen to me on SMLR. You should subscribe because I don't do that The reason I don't is because that's very specific content for people who like Linux You have to like Linux a lot and apparently someone like Linux enough that they thought we should interview people at Microsoft about Linux So we did and the interviews went really well. They were well received and because I don't know if we're gonna be invited back again I wasn't afraid to ask questions like do you remember when Steve Ballmer said it was a cancer you happen to work there What how does that make you feel when he called Linux a cancer? So we dug though on the edge of every NDA How many times did you hear like I can't answer that or only Only one of the interviews I heard that I got it on the floor a lot more Yeah, okay, I went out and talked all the developers on the floor and had some fun there not all of them want to be a camera I only got one that did Some were just camera shy others were like I'm not sure I'm supposed to say So I'm not gonna say it in like some official manner that you can put on YouTube channel Which you were super awesome about the like I completely understand They're there to answer your developers questions out of a camera stuck in her face So I didn't interview a lot of people but I spoke with a lot of people and seen a lot of the cool Awesome things and changes that are coming from the company. I was really impressed So I can't say that Microsoft changed me like my Linux friends were joking but the other way around I really see a big change in Microsoft and This apparently has been going on for a while Before the management change of Satya and Dale taking over the people wanted to do things But the current management said no well those people existed in the company some of these people we interviewed with for a long time Microsoft employees were pushing for these changes and kind of met a wall of no So now with the new leadership saying you know build awesome things Microsoft went to build awesome things release it Give it away and we'll figure it out. So I'll be doing a whole video just on all my build subs I don't want to occupy the entire vlog about this But it did make me think of one some terrible business advice I've been given multiple times over the years do tell do tell the the business advice that I've had a lot of people Tom You should focus like don't embrace the 80 you know don't embrace the fact that you jump I don't like the term 80 but I said it because it's the best way to describe it in a shorter term But it's don't jump around all over the place and do things But I think what an awful existence it would be for me to focus on a singular thing And if I had focused on it so he ate not doing a podcast not doing that and just focused on my business and just focused And we're just gonna make lots of money doing Tech work. I think I would be bored out of my mind And I wouldn't have not found myself at the Microsoft build conference So to me like that's just terrible advice and I hear other business owners You know what I've asked them like hey, how'd you you know, they're more successful They're at some measurement of success like I look size their company and I go well You know you seem to be doing really well blah blah blah and they're like, oh, yeah focus time You just do too many things. It's you're not gonna get there less. I'm like, oh, oh that sounds like an awful thing If I have to trade Making a millions of dollars and driving a Bentley for being able to do lots of things at the same time I'm gonna go for the lots of things at the same time I think it's good advice and well not even just for business owners, but just in general for people A lot of people hate their job because probably because I'm stuck doing one thing Yeah, right and their leadership doesn't encourage them to do other things whether it be extracurricular or whatever So I think you're absolutely right. I think you need to have Some you need to have a good level of diversity and it was really interesting So some of the people we interviewed their diversity in their backgrounds at Microsoft I mean these people on top of their a game. These are high-level managed people designing the Azure data center Before that the guy worked. I had he designed the PowerShell language for Microsoft in its entirety That was his task. He was the project lead on that now. He's designing his Azure Edge. So yeah Look at the PowerShell logo. He's like PowerShell gang sign represent the guy was also he was funny He was articulate. He we didn't want the interview to stop It wasn't for the fact that he had to go somewhere We would just kept interviewing him like all daily Let's just hang out with this guy and the guy had a big diverse career And I think when I meet some of these people it made me think wow These guys that I met that gave me the advice aren't near the level that these guys are like they went off camera there Like they are near they're off camera successful Wow that level like these guys are some of the highest levels are doing innovative things that are pretty amazing, which is why we're interviewing them and Focus is not their thing. I mean sure they focus on a task. I do you focus on okay I got really good at doing this or really good at doing that That's something I do if I decided to put my passion on something, you know I do so it's really fun meeting these other people who are almost as unfocused as me And going this gives me hope I can I can be unfocused But it's also that a weird like motivation I have and I had my Marvin laugh because I come back to this and maybe I should get it printed and put it Put it above my wall or something so before I read Alexis Ohanian's book without their permission I was like didn't know a lot of people that have the same Motivation as me and in the book he talks about you know founding. He's a founder of reddit amazing book If you're into entrepreneurship startup or you just want a really good story Do Alexis Ohanian spoke without their permission just I can't say enough good stuff about it He's an awesome person doing a lot of awesome things But he's a founder of reddit and when they were talking about selling red one things he did was go through and he had a meeting at Yahoo and somehow there was some miscommunication thinking that reddit was bigger than it was at the time when they were talking about selling it and The guy yahoo looked him goes. I don't know why you're here. Your numbers are so small. They're just a rounding error So yeah Wow the company you put your heart into your total is so small you're you're like a rounding error at yahoo Where's reddit and where's yahoo now though? Mmm Reddits from page the internet Old people like yahoo because you know it was with their SBC accounts Yeah games I would I would say the old people are making the switch to Google now So back to the unteachable delinquent in what motivates me great So, you know one things like so Haney as he has some of the criticism from people like you're around a year on the wall You know in his office and it's kind of those things like people tell you that if someone tells me I can't do something that I want to do I'm like no I can't so I had a teacher and I was not a Simple or easy student. I was referred to as an unteachable delinquent and it really I laughed really hard when because well The the way she said it wasn't you're not teachable delinquent You're not teachable delinquent like get out of my classroom. That was so it's a lot of enthusiasm that she had in enthusiasm yeah, that's the word She was really enthusiastic about calling me an unteachable delinquent I would have gone with anger resentment and frustration, but I'll go with enthusiasm. Maybe I remember it differently Either way, you know telling me that I can't do something is You know, that's like giving permission. It's like it'd be permission. Yeah challenge me you you know So that you know in this unteachable delinquent is going to be speaking again at University of Michigan to an MBA class, too So there's still Who's having a last laugh or yeah, I don't know if it's the last laugh. I'm gonna laugh more I don't remember the teacher's name now She was a substitute teacher that part of the reason I was giving her probably more hell than usual It's not that I gave teachers how I question everything and it drove them nuts And I'm like no, you know, there's a respectful way to question authority And I try to teach my kids that but occasionally you step behind it a little bit You have to be careful because karma will come back to bite you There was a substitute teacher when I was in high school that I gave all kinds of problems to she was like a like a I don't know if they call them a permanent sub but like she was there all the time Right like she was kind of in the rotation of like when teachers were out and I gave her hell all the time couple years after graduation, I'm working at Greenfield Village and I hear this voice behind me Marvin Marvin Anderson and I'm like, oh that that voice is usually yelling that name And I turn around and there she is and guess who had to train her that day Yes, that's right. It was me Like she was a classy lady though and didn't didn't decide to give any of it back that I used to give her but Yeah, karma will come back to bite you on occasion. I'm wondering does your wife watch these? Sometimes yeah, yeah, this is gonna be interesting because of my life's a teacher. Yeah. Oh, yeah Yeah, oh no, she knows because she'll come tell me things. She's like, oh my gosh and the kids did this and I'm just like They did that did they did they wow can't imagine anybody doing something like that Yep, so yeah, my my my wife would not have enjoyed me as a student. I can tell you that yeah At all the question is what you've called us unteachable delinquents. Um, I don't know probably see here's the thing though Like I I at least gave the appearance of being teachable like I got good grades and whatnot Which I think actually helped in my delinquency because I Nobody ever believed it like no, there's no way Marvin would have done something like that You know, but like, oh, no, I did it But they're like, oh, he's such a good kid. There's no way he did anything like that This is being smart enough not to get caught smart enough to get caught But as the studio with a store and everything's becoming much much closer to be done We're still waiting on signs so we can have a grand opening That's a whole nother drama with the city and waiting on permits and that's I can rant about it But I won't because I'm sure I'll anger some of the city and they can only delay things further Wait till the signs get up once the signs are up though his own Yep Those coming off we're going toe-to-toe about what it's like to open a building and dealing with the city Which I would have ranted in when I you know put my previous business years ago with about the city and it was yeah It's it's not a pleasant experience if you're opening a business It's that part they don't tell you about a dealing with all the city planners for meeting and everything else But we are getting a lot more stuff done now that I'm back and I've been producing a lot of content And I've been publishing it so I'm hoping to get back to publishing all the content I mean the last video for this I think is the office video of me building my office Well, no I did one more video on pfSense because there's a bunch of hoopla about that which I think is silly But you know I see people want to switch from the whole software platform because of a future 2019 change they want to make in a system of only supporting processors with That supported crypto and I'm like oh man, it's funny the discussion that does and you know It's like us geek stuff. Well, there's rant about things like that and yeah, you need something to rant about we do Geeky people will invent something to rant about yeah The other kind of announcement and I'm not sure how to do this But one of the things I've realized is I'm not working hard enough towards building community like I want and what I mean My building community is not just building an audience on YouTube But we want to build a physical local community and part of the build of this we've talked about it a little bit Me and a couple of my friends we attend some of the Linux users your meetings And I'm like I don't want to narrow it just to Linux So I want to have a technology enthusiast group that meets here And you know get some enthusiasm behind some of the technologies and we get developers to meet other developers and Create that ecosystem. So I'll be at the Detroit startup week Next week. I have a few days that I'll be there which I think I'm gonna try and really get my camera there and Do some content creation to kind of show people it's going on here in Detroit and bring some of that local stuff here and I'm speaking on a panel about podcasting and it's gonna be a lot of fun I'll be interacting with a lot of people there last year I ended up on Chase Banks Twitter account because they said I was enthusiastic and they interviewed me So I talked about you know small business in Detroit and some other exciting things that were going on right there at The Detroit startup week conference But if you're local and are aware of Detroit startup week, it's free to attend go Google it You'll find it there's all kinds of cool things going on there and you should attend that podcast one because I'll be there along with the Guys from podcast Detroit. Yes, great guys. Yep. Bob's actually coming in to heck with me of course Apparently Bob ended up not on the panel So Dave is Dave's on the panel and I'm on the panel. So Bob's like well, I will be in the audience front row heckling so We're like we wouldn't have it any of the way Bob Because Bob and Ava are the guys from podcast Detroit check out podcast Detroit calm We use their studio for some of the podcasting and they've built a pretty cool little podcast world around them For all the different things they got. I think they got like 70 shows that they're it's a shared podcasting studio And when I was out in Seattle, there's another group of podcaster They never heard of the shared podcast studio like they thought it was a cool concept. They know if it work I'm like, you know what contact Bob and Dave like they'll tell you one. It is a lot of work Because that's why some people have tried and failed. It's a lot of work It's a lot of effort that goes into it But you created a cool community and they have their own podcaster meetups, which I love the community They have it's all around podcast everybody to meet some of their podcasters when they hold these little events and they always bring lots of beer Which is key which is key to the events one even at the podcast studio there. There's always there's a kegerator Oh, there's a kegerator ready to go. That's the secret. Yes. If you want to know the secret sauce. It's it's the beer sauce Absolutely. There's also a pretty good Bar like oh, yeah, yeah, that's always comment like oh Like is that for everybody? So as we come closer to finishing this Yeah, we'll hopefully have that we have so many projects It's like we hit the ground running when we we really got the building I got one of our clients bought another building and is outfitting it and providing all the equipment for their moving another Company they bought into the building So like just all of that and then all these other clients go Hey, we want our servers up there great and we want this done great And then we have wiring beds and then a wiring bit another one bit No, it's so we actually because we're trying to build the place in between jobs the job stacked up Which we're really happy about sure we're hoping they stay steady up that will even hire another person So this is you know kind of the goals is that next level hire one more technician So we can you know keep these projects moving and keep the studio moving and build this community I have this idea for so I'm hoping once we have the announcement We have the signs will be pushing for the community because the building is a little bit hard to find as I've learned from people So it I will say this it's fun to watch the people circle the parking lot though on the phone Going I'm looking for you when I can't find you and you hear Kyle going are you in the red car? Stop right now Look to your right. Yeah. Do you see me waving? Yeah Come in the store the city won't even let us put vinyl on the windows until that's approved as well So we just have signs taped on the windows and yeah, and the windows are tinted and the windows are tinted so it doesn't Yeah, this is This is not a situation Tom's probably gonna go to the city today and just say hi who needs doughnuts There's a good idea So with that We're also going to change it up a little bit I think next week I'm gonna try to get we have other people that work here that never get on camera that much and because they don't really work in The store as much so we're gonna go and do Maybe we'll bring Melissa have her come in. She you know she works from home most of the time She doesn't live far from here She comes in hangs out occasionally, but mostly she works from home She does all of our web development and we've been rocking out some awesome websites. Oh, yeah, really excited about it I think yeah, I had the food photos that I had dropped in last time She dropped him into the website. So I got the blend of photography. I got some video to edit So sorry Frankie if you're listening the video will be done soon I think actually I think she's coming to meet with me tomorrow morning. So good. I should have it done by then My plan is get it done today Other priorities are there's a little bit of sweat beating right here. Yeah AC seems to have broken in our new building So we're waiting my phone is like on the edge of the screen here I'm waiting for it to ring because the phone ringing means the guy will be here. He should be here sometime this morning. Hopefully To fix our not so functionally AC which is horrible for servers by the way. Oh, it sure is. Yeah Yeah, the server room AC's it's blowing air the server rooms at 84 degrees. I'm hoping it doesn't get hotter So But oh, yeah, we really spritz those either like you can't get cold water and it's not a good idea to spritz your server Right another project I have and now that the weather is nicer and I'm you know, hopefully I can get this done I noticed there seems to be more people asking me about like some of the details of when we do the wiring because you know We do the timelapse of showing how we do punch-down panels and things like that So I may do some more detail of like the How follow Corey and the team for my wiring and infrastructure guys of like building the ladder rack building it How we determine some of the routing in the ceiling how we hang the J hooks I may give we give like an overview with some of our projects and we've done that to kind of showcase our work Which is great. It's been led to a lot more work for us. It's been a great for both showcasing marketing and having We've oddly we've picked up a lot of other IT companies that don't do cabling that are contracting us and hey That's great. We love those we love those jobs It's actually really easy for us because other IT companies are really easy to work with they know exactly what they look We need this many drops each station eats this this and this so we can do all the physical building and they take it over And we keep we have a really good Relationship with a lot of these companies that use us because we're not trying to steal their clients Look, there's so many clients. There's plenty of clients for all of us. There's actually a shortage in the IT World right now. That's why this is such a fast-growing business. It's not a well saturated market Like, you know, maybe car repair where there's one on every corner. There's not an IT company corner There's a lot of them open up a lot of them don't have a lot of strong competency in some what they're doing So they're I'm watching kind of open and close, you know, it's it's still a Wild West market right now But not everybody does everything and we're really good at the cabling side of it So them contracting us to do some of the cabling we're good at the other sides, too So that has a little bit of fear that they have going well you do what we do I'm like look seriously give us your cards We will hand them out. There's any questions that we can you know, we have a really strong agree We're not here to try to get contract work in order to steal a business doesn't work that way We that would make me a dishonest company and that's not at all what I want to be known for the hope is for all of us To be so busy that we're going we can't take it on right now, but here's somebody who can exactly, you know So working with you know, either external IT companies or occasionally internal IT companies. We have a project. We're bidding tomorrow Sounds like we got it. They really like everything they've seen so far We do a final walk through the building to submit the proposal and it's kind of you know In turn they have an internal IT staff, but they're not big, but they're moving to a new building So the move itself has a lot of build out in terms of infrastructure and he guys like you know I know how to run cables But I kind of got to move the servers and I kind of be gotta be the IT guy for everything else for the company While this new build out is going on So you know they he was nervous about it because he's never contracted out this for but they've been in the same building for like ten years In the entire to his work for the company so we don't mind it's those things like you guys like we work directly We just pick and choose we'll delegate out the projects what he wants to do what he wants to do Like we're gonna be installing the Wi-Fi units, but where he's like will you want to configure them too? I said we can or You can do all the configuration for them We'll just get them prepped and ready and give you the default password so you can then take it from there So, you know, we don't mind working hand-in-hand with IT companies to make that happen That's just contract us can't call us and you know, we can piece mail out the project on that What we have a harder time with on piece mailing projects We have a Interesting guy, I don't know if he watches this and I just watched some of my YouTube videos So he found us another IT guy who really is breaking it down to I only want you to do this tiny little piece of the job But not all the job. So problem with doing half of a wiring job where someone pulls the wire Someone else punches it down to the wall But then they want us to punch it down the back because they want the part that presents Which is the rack in the back to look nice and the other guys only seem to know how to do some of the physical part that Bakes it very complicated. So it's become complicated to bid we have bidding processes that are really simple But now it's like well what level are we doing because you're delegating out to multiple companies because he thinks It's gonna save money. I will just let you know right now if you take a you know a project Like look you buy the two-by-fours you get the nails you push this nail But then every other nails done by the other guy because somehow that'll save money You are just creating a headache because you didn't have to have two companies that don't know each other Try to coordinate the entirety of a job without ever meeting each other before matter of fact They won't even be there They want to do the one company to do part of it one time and then have us come in another day And I'm like this is not simple So it makes the bidding process because usually we do everything because they want us to test and certify the wires No problem. We do that but they want the other guys to install part of the wiring and then have us test it without any labels I'm like well, they have to label the wires I mean when we pull them we test them and punch them and we need them done all that you know They're doing it. That's a whole nother mess. Yeah Yeah, we'll just we'll just leave that one at that for right now Yeah So that's the My final thought is something and I had a visitor John from Chris Field computers was here yesterday He's doing something really cool. He's traveling on visiting some other computer stores And I had a great time interviewing with him. I love what he's doing He's gonna go around and interview a lot of us computer business owners And he we did a walkthrough of our story even though it's not complete But it's definitely more complete than it was and we're not that embarrassed We're less embarrassed now than we were like maybe a month ago. Yeah It's because of the level of perfectionism of I want everything right so, you know outside of my office My office I got right, but I control my little world there There's a little pile of stuff over here that I currently just ignore that. Well, yeah I'm trying to get control over it over here. There's so much stuff here, but we're emptying it all out so thank you for probably an extended vlog Thursday and Look for more content. I'm planning to just keep you know get back into cadence of things I built myself that new fancy computer so I can edit faster. Mm-hmm. Yes press export Go so fast. I love it. Awesome So thank you very much and I look forward to hearing you know thoughts and comments and Maybe other things you want to know about the business I've been thinking about what would John really me brought up is like what else do I want to share about the business I want to share a lot, but I got to figure out, you know customer privacy In which John was awesome about because he made sure before he did it He's like okay Go ahead minimize anything I screens and then he did his walk through so and we keep a lot of consciousness of that But in the same term I also like how much do I reveal about my business see, you know Do I talk about the finances? Do I talk about the numbers? I will tell you and I did the P and L It was a big L because it costs a lot to build this building I mean Marvin we're looking at the numbers going wow. Yeah, please. That's a lot of money we spent Now I am gonna talk about the build costs of this because I'm not afraid to hide that But do we talk about the bigger revenue picture and things like that? I don't know we're being a private company Yeah, that was the thing we we made money that month last month if you take out the expense of the building Yeah, we have a whole special category just for the building costs. We're like wow Like that we made we just didn't make as much as we spent on the building that's all exactly so that you know We certainly did not make as much as we spent on a building. It's a long-term investment though, Tom It is so but I mean I'm very open to talk about that. I've helped other you know other business owners We're we talk openly about numbers and we've had like private meetings and things like that So I thought do I talk about more publicly? I don't know just thoughts I have but if you have any thoughts comments of things you want to hear us talk About on vlog Thursday or just in general to make your videos about I am going to do As this gets done because I do this video to get requested by a couple people on reddit who messaged me They want a complete I'm going to do like a top-to-bottom of all the things we use all the hardware software and tools we use that run this company And how they're all put together and how we use them to do our support that is a video I'm going to make pretty soon It's going to kind of show the blending of inside the store how the server equipment works and how we use it That's gonna be a fun video. I'm excited. I mean I've done some of it in piece But it's also some of it I did a while ago and the tools have changed and we're using You know the wiki differently. We're using the Not really differently, but we've you know added more templates. It's always evolving. I don't statically say we use it It's there. It's always like hey It's a little more efficient if we do this and a little bit more efficient if we do that so I want to make sure you cover all of those things and Details because people want to know and I'm not afraid to share it You know some below you not want to share this. I'm like no actually I'm the opposite I'm a very open-source guy and I think by sharing all the ways I run my business and if other people share the way they run their business We will come together and come up with better ideas together how we run our businesses, you know, that's why I share it I don't I had so many people like oh, you know you should create a secret group of Success people where you don't share that outside there. They pay a fee to do it I've had people actually suggest that like you built a cool thing Tom Don't give it away like charge people to any of this knowledge I'm like, you know if I don't I can get other people to do it We make money off doing the work not going here's my secret sauce and my even speaking of the tools I use I'm sharing because a lot of IT companies if you ask them what they use in the back end Something a thing a tool what tools do you use? What's like your stack? I can't say like as if by as if they were the first ones to come up with Using this tool and that tool and that would make them that's what their secret sauce of success is sounds like a lot of the engineers You tried to talk to at the Microsoft build conference. Most of them were able to reveal a lot They just couldn't reveal the customer stuff PR didn't have to I love the guy interviews So I asked him about how we're talking about the Azure Edge Announcements and that you know that always sounds cool and on the keynote you have these big picture We're gonna take the cloud and we're gonna put the cloud in your back room And it's called serverless computing and blah blah blah and all this other stuff that he started You know buzzword bingo here and so right away I asked the guy I'm like I want to know the nuts and bolts what physical pieces of hardware are going in the Backroom to make this Azure Edge system work and he goes well PR doesn't really want me to talk about it But we are cuz we're an interview and so you know we got the details of it with the cluster service How it's gonna be how the updates are gonna work like the stuff that I feel other IT people before you deploy something you care About the physical layer you're going. I need to know what are you okay? Cool You're gonna bring cloud to my back room for complete synchronicity. But what does that physically look like what's going in the back? Okay, we'll kind of serve a record kind of equipment investment Do we have and those are real questions that we knew on the answer to and we got those answers that was wonderful So before I roll rambling on about that, I'm gonna make a separate build Little bit of rambling We'll make a separate build video just so I can talk about build I have some Footage video from that and people I talked to and people that did want to go on camera and talk about life at Microsoft a little bit And plus there'll be all the other interviews on SMLR So thank you for watching and you guys make sure you leave comments about how much it bothered you Have us framed oddly against because it bothered Marvin a lot It's like once once Marvin's like it's out of frame. I'm like record Yeah, so we've lots of comments about how that bothered you so it never happens again See you next until next week. Oh Feel like this stuff here like and subscribe subscribe click on the clickity clickity click stuff