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Welcome to the Opkalla IT Matters Podcast, where we discuss the important matters within IT as well as the importance of IT across different industries and responsibilities.
About Opkalla:
Opkalla helps their clients navigate the confusion in the technology marketplace and choose the technology solutions that are right for their business. They work alongside IT teams to design, procure, implement and support the most complex IT solutions without an agenda or technology bias. Opkalla was founded around the belief that IT professionals deserve better, and is guided by their core values: trust, transparency and speed. For more information, visit https://opkalla.com/ or follow them on LinkedIn.
Aaron Bock: Op Welcome to the IT
Matters podcast hosted by
Opkalla. We're an IT advisory
firm that makes technology easy
for your business. Our vendor
neutral technology advisors work
directly with your team to
assess technology needs and
procure the best IT solutions
for your organization. On this
podcast, expect high level
expertise from our hosts, plus
experience driven perspective
from the leading experts on
topics like AI, cyber security
industry focused IT solutions,
strategy and more. Now let's get
into today's discussion on what
matters in it,
Keith Hawkey: and welcome to the
IT Matters podcast hosted by
Opkalla. At Opkalla, we help IT
teams understand the busy
marketplace of technology
strategy and services with a
data driven approach. On this
podcast, we invite technology
leaders to discuss the
challenges facing the modern IT
department. My name is Keith
Hawkey, Technology Advisor with
Opkalla. With Opkalla, we also
have Michael Coloma, who is a
Technology Advisor with Opkalla.
And we are, in addition, joined
by Stephen Self, the director of
IT infrastructure and security
for Jim and Nick's community
barbecue. Stephen is responsible
for everything that has to stay
up, stay fast and stay secure,
from networks to cloud platforms
to disaster recovery, SaaS
applications, you name it,
across the growing restaurant
footprint. What makes Stephen's
journey especially interesting
is he's lived the full of arc of
it. He's built and run
infrastructure at scale, led
security and compliance efforts,
even co founded a technology
services company. Even co
founded and operated a barbecue
business himself. So he
understands technology, not just
as an operator, but as a
business owner, who knows what
downtime really cost. So today
we're going to talk about
running enterprise, enterprise
grade it in the hospitality
environment, building security
with usability in mind and how
Stephen considers himself taking
the generalist path. So with
that, welcome to the podcast,
Stephen. How you doing today?
I'm doing great.
Stephen Self: Thank you guys for
having me on. It's kind of I
sound kind of impressive,
though, the way that you spun
all that makes me but no, I'm
happy to be here today and
excited to talk to you guys
absolutely.
Keith Hawkey: So as per usual,
to start us off, we are going to
play a little game called two
truths and a lie. Stephen, you
actually have an interesting
career background. You've worked
with some interesting companies.
One of the ones that stuck, that
stuck out was you actually ran
it at the Hooters restaurant
chain. Is that correct?
Stephen Self: Partially, I
didn't run all of it, but yes, I
was over infrastructure and
cyber security for them for
several years.
Keith Hawkey: So I actually have
themed this two truths and a lie
around Hooters history. So I'm
interested to see how how
knowledgeable everyone is. So I
guess first, are there any
questions? We all know how to
play two truths and a lie. All
right, so I'll make three
statements. One of them is lie
to our truths, and we'll see if
we can guess which one is a lie.
Are we ready? Ready? Okay, so
first one, Hooters once had an
airline called Hooters air,
complete with flight attendants
branded uniforms and routes
across the US. The second
statement, Hooters briefly
tested a breakfast only
restaurant called Morning hoots.
And third, Hooters briefly
explored launching a cruise ship
called Hooters at sea, featuring
unlimited wings and competitive
eating tournaments. So I guess
I'd like to start with, with
Michael, you probably are a
little less less familiar with
the Hooters history.
Michael Coloma: My guess is the
second one is the lie that I'm
pretty sure I've seen, like
pictures of the the Hooters
plane. So I have a pretty good
idea that I think that that's
true, and the breakfast idea
just doesn't align with kind of
what their stance, or I guess,
goals were as a restaurant
chain. So my guess is number two
is the lie. Yeah.
Stephen Self: All right,
Stephen, so the airline was 100%
that they dabbled in fast casual
world, I know, with with hoots
wings, kind of a fast casual
type deal. So the breakfast
thing is not too far off to me,
but I could also with everything
else. Tutors got into but
there's line may have been
discussed. That's a tough one. I
want to say the three is the
lie, okay? Steven vicious, even
for them,
Keith Hawkey: Stephen with the
background, you are correct.
Hooters at sea never was a
thing. So congratulations. They
did briefly test out fast
casual, casual breakfast only
restaurant called Morning hoots.
So with with that, to start us
off, I guess first, Stephen, can
you share a little bit about how
you got into it? I know you.
You've described yourself as
taking the generalist path when
it comes to your your technology
journey. How did you find this
passion? How did you find this
this career?
Stephen Self: I've always been
very tech savvy. You know, child
of the late 80s, early 90s. So
all the tech was happening as I
was timing to get into it. I've
always liked technology. I was
always the kind of family that
could program the VCR and do all
those fun things. And then when
the internet happened, I was
also the guy that was burning
mix tape CDs for lunch money and
fun stuff like that, you know,
and just kind of, I don't know
it's com natural to me. I
actually went to school for
engineering and was going to
design buildings and systems,
and wound up switching over to
it there, because it was just a
little easier, and in my
opinion, funner to do with
playing with both the hardware
side of it and the software, and
making them do things together.
So I've kind of accidentally got
into it, and that's the career
path that I've gone down. I
didn't choose the generalist
life. It chose me by necessity,
to date myself. I was always a
fan of the show MacGyver, and
that's kind of how my it.
Journey has gone with some duct
tape, some twine, a couple of
zip ties, and a lot of ambition.
I make things work, and I enjoy
the challenge, and sometimes,
you know, most of the time, I
get a good outcome. Sometimes I
learn an important lesson, and
just kind of roll with punches.
I guess.
Keith Hawkey: Do you have any
mix tape in particular that
you're the most proud of that
you burned back in the day? I'm
curious. What were you burning
in the What years were this? Was
this
Stephen Self: late 90s, early
2000s I was still download music
from that strong dial up.
Keith Hawkey: Oh yeah. Oh yeah.
Lobster Napster. Did you ever
get into I think lime wire was a
thing. Yep, when
Stephen Self: we finally got
DSL, high speed internet the
house, I graduated Limewire.
Could really cook out some CDs
thing. God, I hope I don't go to
jail for this. Talk about much,
something that you
Michael Coloma: know, everybody
did go incriminate yourself.
Keith Hawkey: That's right. So,
so, yeah, go ahead. Michael, no,
I was gonna say So Stephen,
obviously current in your in
your current role with Jim and
Nicks. Tell us a little bit of
background there. How long have
you been there? What are some of
your daily roles and
responsibilities there, just so
everyone has an idea of what you
do for them.
Stephen Self: Yeah, so
infrastructure and cyber
security and physical security
are my day to day
responsibilities here at Jim and
nicks, we're growing rapidly.
I've been here two and a half
years, and I think we've opened
20 to 25 restaurants in the two
and a half years I've been here,
and we've got seven more to open
this year already. I used to,
like was mentioned earlier. I
used to, I started a catering
business that became a food
truck, that became a brick and
mortar restaurant about eight
years ago, and that was loosely
modeled and based off of Jim and
Nicks. I've been a Big Jim and
Nick's fan for about 15 years
when I ate at my first
restaurant in Birmingham, and
just everything about Jim and
Nick's is quality. It's
homemade, and it's just a great
brand. It's gone through a lot
of changes over its 40 year
history, and I've always been a
fan, so I loosely based my
concept off that with my own
recipes and things, but trying
to mimic the hospitality and the
customer service that Jim and
Nicks is known for, but my day
to day, I'm over all of our
networking in our restaurants
and our corporate offices, all
of our cloud architecture. So.
As applications. To a degree, we
kind of have two IT teams. One's
over the in restaurant, point of
sale, and the systems that run
the restaurant, and then I'm
more of the back end, backbone
of those systems with the
networking and cybersecurity,
and then also the physical
security, with the alarm systems
and the security cameras and all
that fun stuff that ties it
together to make a restaurant.
Restaurants run and operate
safely.
Michael Coloma: Got it so
obviously, love the brand,
right? Jim and Nicks. I know
with there's, there's a couple,
there's a location Charlotte,
obviously me being here in
Atlanta, I'm familiar with the
the different locations that are
here in the Atlanta area, and
then obviously in Alabama, when
I spent some time there, there's
the original in Birmingham. So
one of the things that you just
mentioned here kind of sparked
my curiosity, because we get
this a lot of people. We get a
lot of feedback similar to this
from our customers, is, hey, our
business is growing, our like
we've been expanding right,
whether that's through
acquisition or mergers, but
ultimately, a lot of the times
the IT team remains the same
size, right? And so I'm curious
how you, personally in your
career have handled and maybe
this aligns nicely into how you
become this generalist, right?
You've had to wear a multitude
of different hats to represent
all the different IT solutions
that are working within an
environment. How do you manage
that, just in your in your
history, like, what advice would
you have for another IT leader
in a similar space that's being
asked to do more with less
resources?
Stephen Self: I mean, you got to
be quick and you got to be
nimble. And that's one thing.
The faster you can learn
something new, you can put that
in your back pocket and use it
later. I mean, it's
advantageous. The quicker you
can learn something and pick it
up. You can take that and apply
it to the current task at hand,
or the current challenge. And
then when it comes up in three
years at another position at
another company? Well, you've
got that already, so you can not
only reuse it again, but you can
also mentor and teach other
people on the team and and
invest some in them. That's what
I've tried to do. Just kind of
keep filling up my notebook with
all these little tips and tricks
that I've learned over the years
and pass it on to make somebody
else's, it journey a little
easier.
Keith Hawkey: I bet you have a
good a good story around you
know, a lot of the time in this
industry, you learn a lot from
from failure, right? And
unfortunately, these failures
can be quite nerve wracking.
They can be quite impactful to
organizations. Is there a
particular lesson that this
sticks out to you, that you
learned through your career,
that you've come across
situations like that after the
fact and realized, Oh, I know
how to do this now. I'm glad I'm
not making that initial mistake
that I did maybe when I was a
little greener behind the years.
Stephen Self: Yeah, I've had
quite a few of those incidents
over the years, and it's not
really, you know, failure. You
only fail when you stop and
don't try again. So I kind of
like how Bob Ross, how Bob Ross
used to term it happy accident,
you know, you can look at it. So
that didn't work. How can we try
a different way and make it
work. So that's kind of how I
run and run and go in this
industry.
Unknown: I mean, I've got
several examples I could use
that are more in depth,
especially around disaster
recovery. I had actually just
started working at one of the
aforementioned brands we talked
about earlier in the podcast,
and we got a shiny new disaster
recovery solution implemented
and set up. And it was great. It
was very early on in this
particular kind of technology.
We've moved off the old, ancient
tape backups and stuff, and we
had some issues. I can't go into
much detail, obviously, but we
had some ransomware, and it
didn't affect anything customer
facing, anything like that. It
was just some internal files and
things like that. But it wasn't
an actual breach. It was just
ransomware where all the data
was encrypted. Luckily, we had
this shiny new backup system
with both cloud based and
internal backups, and instead of
being down for days, weeks, or
who knows how long, we were able
to restore the encrypted files
and have everything back to
normal, 145, minutes. And it's
one of those leaps of faith
where, again, this was a pretty
fresh technology that had just
hit the mark, and a lot of
people were slow to adopt. And I
took a chance. It was a great
not only was it cheaper and more
reliable than what we're doing
with the tapes and everything,
but again, it saved the day and
had almost instant ROI. So it
worked out really well for me.
You, obviously, but sometimes
you got to take a little bit of
risk to get a bigger reward. And
that was one of those
Keith Hawkey: times 45 minutes
is is impressive for such a
traumatic event as ransomware.
What were those 45 minutes like?
Like, what was your thought
process of, what you needed to
check first, second and third.
Did you guys have, like, a
response plan in place where you
kind of having to think on your
feet, what was going through
your mind as what was priority
number one, two and three?
Stephen Self: It's been a little
while to recount exactly, but
this wasn't good because, again,
this is one of my first major
titles in cyber security, so I
was still relatively new to some
of it, and it's psycho My God,
what am I going to do? And then
I went down the procedures that
we had set up with the incident
response plan, and we isolated
the effective machine that
caused it, and then we went
about repairing the damage real
quick. And after we made sure
everybody else could do their
job, of course, we took the
Isolate machine and kind of
reverse engineered it figured
out where it came in. Of course,
it was email. It's always email,
and had some conversations with
the individual at large about,
let's be a little more careful.
And you know, it wasn't bad. It
was. It was really good stress
test, though, to make sure that,
you know, the investment had
worked and paid off in the new
system. And, you know, I got a
little accolade for for, you
know, recommending something
that saved the company a good
bit of money and time.
Keith Hawkey: So that is one of
those expenses that I mean,
Michael and I advise a plethora
of IT leaders in this space, and
a lot of them would like
disaster recovery plans, and
think it's a good idea.
Obviously, it's a nice comfort
for someone that's managing an
IT environment. But it is. It
can be a difficult sell for
leadership, especially if it's
just it's one of those things
that it's difficult to
demonstrate value, because you
never know until it happens and
serendipity with with with your
situation. Recently, after the
purchase of that solution, it
demonstrated value very quickly,
but for a lot of companies, it
might take, could be years, or,
you know, cannot happen at all.
Stephen Self: Yeah, and that's,
that's a big hope these days,
with the threat landscape like
it is now, it's, it's really not
a matter of if, but when. And
we've gotten to that point since
everyone's life is so ingrained
in the digital landscape now,
you know, the more you can
protect yourself. And a friend
of mine 20 years ago, when I
first got in it, his motto was,
Chance favors the prepared. And
I've always kind of that sits in
the back of my mind. It's like,
well, what can what little
things can we do proactively to
be prepared? So when it hits the
fan, you know, it's got the
least impact. And that's how
I've always kind of run my IT
systems, as you know, from a
higher level, it doesn't matter
what firewall you use or what
solution, you know, you use.
What? What is the over
encompassing effects? What if we
get a breach here? Who is this
going to affect? Is it going to
affect certain departments? Is
it going to affect to affect
customers? Can affect everybody,
and you know, kind of like an
onion, it's layers. You've got
the center, and then it goes out
as you peel the onion, you know,
what's going to be affected, and
what can we do to make sure that
when it happens, we get the
quickest resolution and get
everything back to normal as
quickly as possible with the
least damage.
Michael Coloma: I love, I love
the Shrek reference, by the way.
So thank you for working that
into the podcast. I do. I do
want to this week. It's been a
recurring thing. It's a it's a
good one to reference. I wanted
to follow up on one of the
questions you talked about,
right like this, or one of the
comments you made the the IT
landscape is changing rapidly,
right from when it from when you
started 20 years ago to where
you are today. What are some of
the things that you do to
familiarize yourself with new
solutions out there, new
products, new offerings, new
technologies. How do you kind of
stay on top of that? Because,
again, you have a multitude of
different vendors across all
different aspects of the IT
landscape. What do you
personally do to familiarize
yourself with what else is out
there?
Stephen Self: Really a mix of
things, you know, between
different Facebook groups. I'm
in LinkedIn groups. There's
always somebody popping up with
some new thing. I like to look
at it and tinker with things and
do demos and that. And then, you
know, shameless plug for you
guys. Opkalla has been a great
resource. For me for the last
six, seven years that I've been
working with you guys on.
Sometimes you guys come to me
with things like, Hey, we got
this great new vendor, great
solution you want to take a look
at. We think it might get help,
and that's been a big help, too.
And then just like I said, if I
find a problem, I like to go
look for a possible solution for
it's my own research, and, of
course, everything with AI right
now, if you have a problem, you
can have a conversation with the
robot, and it'll throw up some
pretty neat solutions you may
not thought of as well. You just
got to make sure it's not
hallucinating what it tells you
about this great thing may or
may not exist, but so I guess
overall, just be open to any and
all information that's out there
and see if you can put two and
two together and make four out
of it and come up with something
that solves a problem.
Michael Coloma: I love that
approach there. I do have one
other question here that I think
is relevant, because similar to
what Keith and I experience a
lot of the times is a lot of our
clients will come to us and say,
Hey, we've been tasked with
adopting AI into our company,
right? We got to get AI. It's
on, it's it's growing, we mean,
obviously evidenced by the Super
Bowl and then the the numerous
commercials that we're
referencing AI as recently as
last week, where do you see AI
helping in the IT world? You
know, whether the is it? Is it a
process improvement? Is it more
efficient? Is it a security
piece like, where do you view AI
in your opinion, as it relates
to the IT world.
Stephen Self: I mean, I love it
most days. I've done a little
bit of everything with it. I've
got, you know, either chat, GPT
or Gemini or cloud. I'm using
trying to compare and contrast
most of the major players right
now, just to see what works best
in particular scenario. And it
has been interesting on how each
of these different llms reacts.
But, uh, you know, some things.
Again, being a generalist, I'm
not an expert in a particular
piece of it. I know a decent
amount about a lot of different
it subjects, and I use AI to
close that gap, if I'm, you
know, playing with a Meraki
firewall. And need some quick
reference on this. Instead of
going looking through a manual
or watching YouTube videos or
stuff like we used to, now, I
can go into AI and say, Hey, I'm
playing with an MX 68 firewall,
and I need to perform these
couple of functions with it real
quick to make this VLAN top of
this VLAN, a couple of other
things. And boom, I get a five
step process. I'll do this, this
and this, and learn something in
the process without having to
spend, you know, however long
researching and looking up data,
because AI, you know, can pull
that data up in milliseconds and
get me what I need quick. It
also works with creativity, like
I was playing with Nano banana
the other day on Gemini and made
some kind of fun for work. I
came up with barbecue Santa to
help with a kind of a little
commercial plug for holiday
Cyber Security Awareness. And I
used Gemini and made a video of
a bearded, buff barbecue Santa
in front of a smoker telling Jim
and Nick's employees to be
careful about scams over the
holidays. So it's like that, by
your imagination and what you
can do with this technology,
it's both amazing and scary. You
know, it's like anything can be
used for good or evil. It's you
got to be ready to fight the
evil that it can cause and but
also embrace it and use it to
make life easier.
Keith Hawkey: Have you noticed
any of the widely available llms
Be more or less helpful to an IT
professional? You said you've
experimented with a few. Are
there any that stand out as
being the most helpful and
resourceful for for this career,
Stephen Self: I will say. So
I've played with copilot,
Gemini, Claude, grock, chat,
GPT, and then over on the
creative side, I've used lovable
dot Dev and built several apps
with it already. That's that's
been a lot of fun because I I
played with basic and a couple
of things way back when I
decided that I was not a code
monkey, nor would I probably
ever be. But it's cool to be
able to take some ideas I've had
over the years, have a
conversation with AI, and spit
out functional apps that will do
what I need in a pinch, for
personal use or whatever. But
surprisingly enough, I've
actually had the best luck and
success with Gemini, doing
things with like Microsoft Graph
and doing PowerShell scripting
and whatnot. It seems to be a
lot more functional with playing
with PowerShell scripts, which
takes up a good bit of my day,
working with with intra ID and
Azure and all that fun stuff.
So. Even more so than the built
in copilot. So that was kind of
a surprising result so far. I
hate to you know, slam
Microsoft, but I think Jim and
I've got them at their own game
with that, at least with
PowerShell scripting and graph
and some stuff like that. GPT,
it's like it's just GPS chat.
GPT is more like the AI
generalist. It can do a little
bit of everything in AI, pretty
okay. It can kind of do some
video stuff. It can generate
some images. But it's not the
best at it. But just for, like,
if you're going to pay for one
single platform to do most of
what you need to do, it can
review a contract for something
you're going to buy, and you can
ask it to, you know, find any
concerning legal language or
whatever, without having to
consult your attorney. You know,
obviously proceed with caution
if you do that, but just as a
it's a high level overview for
looking for errors or concerns.
You can generate some images
with it. I've got some notes on
various things I've done for
side hustles and Jim and nicks
and all sorts of things I do
like how you can keep your
projects organized by folders
and whatnot, and chat GPT that
some of the other things don't
have. But again, they all have
their uses, and they're all seem
particularly better at some
things than others, like cloud,
it's a lot more, you know, based
around coding and development.
So if you wanted to check some
code and on a project you were
working on, like I have it kind
of double check stuff I do in
lovable where I've built apps
and websites and whatnot. It's
helped with a few things there
too.
Keith Hawkey: What about groq?
Definitely, any have you used
grok in any meaningful sense?
Stephen Self: I've used Grox
been more of a recent one that
I've picked up. A friend of mine
was telling me about some stuff
he did with grok the other day.
So I signed up for the free plan
of it just to start playing with
it. So I don't have much of
review on Groc yet, so I'll get
back with you on how that turns
out. But so far, Gemini, chat,
GPT and cloud have definitely
been useful in what they've
done?
Keith Hawkey: Yeah, I've heard
that. I've heard some of the
things about about copilot as
well, if that has some way to go
in the space. But you know, as
we've learned it is, it is an
absolute arms race with these
organizations, these
organizations that have their
own llms. And you know, whoever
has the best model seems to
change by the month,
Stephen Self: by the week, by
the week. Anthropic put out a
huge update to Claude. Lovabo is
now built on the cloud engine
for doing their dev and all
their stuff. You know, open AI
is investing billions and
billions in their new engine
that's about to drop, and it's
just every other day, somebody
has taken the lead, and then
three days later, they're
dethroned at somebody else. Like
you said, it's little arms race
of large language models.
Michael Coloma: Where do you
where do you see? You know,
being this arms race, right in
this and this and the
introduction and expansion of of
AI in the in the IT environment,
where do you see the future of
the IT team, right, or the IT
group within an internal
organization? Where do you see
that going to? Do you think that
it is going to have more of a
presence in the future within an
organization or a company, or do
you feel like AI is going to
streamline a lot of that? So if
you have an IT team of, say, 20
people, do you think that it
could be, you know, reduced and
still have the same level of
efficiency and productivity that
the team of of 20 might have?
Where do you see that kind of
playing out in the future?
Stephen Self: Right now, we're
in a place where you still got
to feed data to the AI so that
it can give you an output, you
know, with the eugenic AI that's
coming out, where it can think
for itself, like Cloud bot and
all that that could get
interesting. I'm interested to
see where that comes from. But
right now, you know, AI, in my
opinion, is more of a helping
hand, and it can streamline
task. You can do a lot of
automation with it, with AI
agents and whatnot. That's kind
of where I'm at with it. But as
we get more into a genic AI that
can think for itself, you know,
they're talking about, they've
come up with their own language
that come up with all these
other things on their own,
without human intervention.
That's the part that's going to
be interesting. And then at some
point, with robotics, catches up
with it, so you can have a
autonomous machine. They can
think for itself. That's, you
know, that's going to get into
some of the stuff from sci fi
movies, we can get to that
point.
Michael Coloma: Yeah, I thought
I would ask about this. Because,
you know, in the past, I've
seen, you know, for example,
take McDonald's franchise,
right? Like they used to have a
bunch of counters open with
people trying to take your
order. Now they've replaced
those people with you've ever
walked into McDonald's recently
everywhere kiosk, right? You
don't even talk to a human being
anymore. Then they take your
order. So I was curious to see
how that would translate to the
future of AI in the restaurant
industry as well, not specific
to Jim and nicks, but just
overall, right? Because you guys
are a family oriented rest,
almost full serve, fast casual
type environment. But it is
interesting to see how something
like that could change the
business model for a lot of
other restaurant chains.
Keith Hawkey: If, if Bojangles
asked me for another. If
Bojangles asked me to add a bo
berry biscuit to every order I
make, I I'm gonna have a heart
attack. I don't know what you
guys are doing, but that that
particular this AI where it's
like, Would you like to add a
bow berry biscuit to your order?
I would recommend not going down
that exact path with Jim and
Nicks. I ran
Stephen Self: to one of those at
Bojangles the other day and got
asked if I wanted my heart
shaped to add two heart shaped
bow berry biscuits to my order.
The whole process there. Like,
is it cool? Yeah, but like, it
took me five minutes to order
two meals for breakfast and
orange juice. And for some
reason, I don't know if it's my
southern dialect or what, but
the AI was not understanding
orange juice. So that creates
some problems. Now, I didn't
want my heart shaped bow berry
biscuits, but yeah, we've got
one of those locally too, and
it's, it's an experience.
Keith Hawkey: So we're we're
coming up on on time here, one
thing we we really like to do on
the IT Matters podcast is ask
Stephen advice from yourself 10
years ago. What for we have
young it practitioners that are
getting into the space that
listen to the podcast. What is
something you would have told
your younger self that would
help save you some heartache,
save you some time, bring you
some mental clarity? What type
of advice would you give your
younger self just getting into
the field
Stephen Self: 10 years ago or
and earlier, it was more about
the tech and less about the
business that the tech is based
on. Because, you know, now, if
you're in business, Tech is a
part of your business. Whether
you think it is or not, doesn't
matter if you're a plumber or
software company or a restaurant
brand or whatever, technology is
the backbone of your business,
and if it's not, then you're
already losing but from an IT
standpoint, from technology
standpoint, the guys that do the
it, I think sometimes,
especially in the early days, it
was more about what can the tech
do, versus how can it support
The business? And they need to,
for anyone getting in in
technology, I think having some
business acumen will go a long
way, because you need to
understand how technology
affects the business and how it
supports the business, versus,
back in the day, some of the IT
overlords are like, where it's
going to be this way, because
we're technology, and we say
it's going to be this way,
versus where everything needs to
coexist and work together for
the overall business goals. And
that's just one thing from,
from, you know, early, late 90s,
early 2000s it now or back then
everybody was if we're going to
do this, because it says so,
versus we need to all work for
the common out, common goal of
growing and prospering the
business. But a little bit of
business acumen can go a long
way in your IT career, both to
help you be a better IT person,
and to help support other
aspects of the business and
Michael Coloma: and in that
thing that was well said,
Steven,
good Yeah, I was just gonna say
in that, in that same vein,
right? Talking about advice to
your your younger self, what,
what continues to motivate you
to to continue in this IT role
that you're in, like, what's
going to be your, your big
motivation for the next 10
years? Right? Looking back, you
would give yourself some advice.
But how do you continue to stay
motivated for the next 10 years
in this business?
Stephen Self: I mean, right now,
there's so much change going on.
There's always been change, but
now that we're on this, this AI
renaissance right now, like,
what's going to happen tomorrow?
What's going to happen next
week? It's just fun trying to
ride the top of the wave,
instead of go over and fall
behind it and see what's going
to happen the next weeks,
months, years, and how it people
and business insurance going to
adapt to it?
Keith Hawkey: Awesome. Yeah.
Well said, Steven. How can our
listeners find you? What's the
best way to get hold of you? If.
If a listener has a question,
Stephen Self: I'm pretty easy to
find on LinkedIn, so yeah, just
shoot me a DM, and I'll be happy
to answer any questions.
Perfect.
Keith Hawkey: Well, we'll
include that in notes. Stephen,
thank you for your time today.
Really appreciate your insights,
and with that, we will see you
in the next one.
Aaron Bock: Thank you for
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