Alex  00:00

Hello, and welcome to another cloud podcast, a podcast designed to bring you stories from the smartest minds in IT operations and business and learn how they're using cloud technology to improve business and customer experience. All right, well, welcome to another cloud podcast. We are excited today because we've got Larry. Now let me help help pronounce his last name. Schachter.

 

Larry  00:26

 Schachter 

 

Alex  00:26

Schachter, I knew at first time out, I think I got a pretty good from TGM. associates. And, Larry, welcome to the show. great having you on. 

 

Larry  00:36

Great to be here. Thanks for your time. 

 

Alex  00:39

Absolutely. And, of course, we have Jeff young as well from the confer group here to help as a co host today. And Jeff, how you doing today? 

 

Jeff  00:48

I'm doing great. Very nice to be here with you guys today. And looking forward to the conversation. 

 

Alex  00:54

Absolutely. Well, we're all rested. It's It's Tuesday after a long weekend. So when people are listening to this, it'll be a few weeks after, but we are we are happy to be back. It's short week had a good long weekend. But Larry, what I'd like to do is just for the audience to understand a little bit more about you and your background, where you came from? Why don't you give us you know, two to three minute just backdrop of how you got to TGM and just your career path to where you're at now as a director of technology. 

 

Larry  01:23

Yeah, well, thank you, Alex. Jeff, good to see you again. And well, you know, I got my career started. several decades ago, maybe not several, but certainly a few decades ago. And I started out in accounting, Spent really the first half of my career in accounting, but you know, there we were in the mid 80s. And somebody plopped this IBM PC on my desk, and I was actually pretty taken with it and, you know, opened it up, took it apart, learn how to use those days, Lotus 123. And, you know, realized fairly early on that I had a natural affinity for technology, Through the 80s, into the 90s, you know, held a number of senior level financially positions, all within the real estate industry. I had been there since I left public accounting in the mid 80s. And, you know, from that, and about the year 2000, I was able to transition out of finance and accounting and into technology. And you know, I looked at it and in technology, there was always something new, there was always a new way of doing something a new product. And even today, the way you would do something today is very different than how you would do it five or seven years ago. Meanwhile, accounting is pretty much still the same from what it was 400 years ago. So I like the fact that, you know, what I'm doing is, is new, I'm always learning. And, you know, between that, and I basically for the last 1520 years, I've held technology positions in real estate companies, our real estate, operating companies, office retail, multifamily, which brings me to my current role at TGM, where I'm the director of technology for a multifamily owner, operator, registered investment advisor, etc, etc, etc. So

 

Alex  03:23

I love the story of going from being a CPA and you know, being in the accounting side and going into technology, because I think the the mindsets, very similar, right, and just having that, that, that that mindset of you fixing things and getting things right and doing things right the first time, can't have you don't want much error when you're an accountant. And you don't want much error in technology, either. 

 

Larry  03:47

You know, it's interesting, you know, it part of it is you know, in your account and you want things to balance and tie out. When you're an auditor, which is where I started, you know, you there's always you want to get a close and you don't need to necessarily be exact. But there's always there was this kind of idea when I was an accounting of taking this pile of clay and hopefully turning it into the Venus de Milo financial statements. And I think a lot of that can be there a lot of parallels between you know, working in accounting and finance and working in technology where it's again, a lot of problem solving. It's how do we get to the right answer and it makes it interesting.

 

Jeff  04:34

Sure does. You know, I think one of the things that's intriguing by your storyin those days which Larry I lived those days alongside of you but I didn't come from the academy side I was in the IT side since since school. But there was a huge amount of intimidation from from these IBM PCs that Larry talks about and and the Lotus product and the concern about losing control of the big machines. data, To download the data, and then what happens to it. So, I really like that you saw that as an opportunity. And others saw it as a risk, you know, not only for their jobs, but for the accuracy of their jobs, I guess, and you embraced it. And I think that's to be applauded. 

 

Larry  05:19

And again, I embraced it, because I didn't come from that, you know, what we used to call mainframe technology background, you know, I was really school. You know, starting with PCs, started with personal computers, and kind of worked up that way, and eventually expanded into, you know, the larger eirp systems, the larger technology platforms, we can go back to, you know, the system 34 system, 3636 is obviously, you know, the much larger IBM 360s and 370s. We're giving it a little bit of history lesson there. But, you know, there was, there was a lot of that, and there was I saw, you know, I'm the accounting and finance side, a lot of resistance from, you know, technology leadership, but, you know, some of these large companies that I worked at, in terms of, you know, what is this thing that we've popped on people's desks that was basically, you know, nothing more than a seven, you know, 17 column 11 by 1713, column, you know, piece of paper.

 

Jeff  06:23

 Right? Right. And you mentioned on it, you know, the thing was, I even I knew of companies that even mandated that, okay, you can use a tool like this, and you can use Lotus, but no one is allowed to download information from the mainframe to the PC. And that sounds now that sounds unbelievable that anybody would even make a stand. But they did. And you know, as a former auditor, you understand why? Yeah, because of the risks they saw coming. So it very interesting times that moved very quickly into where we are today.

 

Alex  06:59

Yeah, it's all come full circle, right, with the security risks. Like you mentioned a little bit just about, like, you know, technology leadership, how have you seen that develop over the years, or even, let's say, like, the past 10 years, as far as how it is looked at, through the organization that you're at now, or even ones prior on how they view it as a in that leadership role?  Well, you know, it's interesting, because the role of a CIO is pretty new. You know, it really, it's really something that didn't exist, except in the largest of companies, you know, 15 or 20 years ago. So, the, in many companies, unless you were a large, you know, multinational or national company,

 

Larry  07:48

There was, you know, a network director, head of the network, and kind of the accounting people or the financial people, the business people really were responsible for the business applications, the network guy, if you will, excuse me, was in charge of maintaining the network. And that's really how it went. And what's happened, what I've seen over the last 10 years is just kind of this understanding that to be a successful CIO to lead technology successfully in or in an organization, it's about understanding business problems, understanding business risk, working with, as we all call it, the business side, to hear, you know, to hear their pain to hear what hurts, and really work with them to develop solutions, and really finding out what's the problem and not going to them with, here's a product, when you start with here's a product, generally a recipe for disaster, when you go into them, and really include them. And sometimes you have to bring them along kicking and screaming, because either they don't want to be a part of it, they don't have time to be a part of it, they don't understand what they need to do. But if you can really be inclusive, and really, then it later being the one who asked the probing questions about business process and about business issues, that's when you have the successful projects. that's those are the ones that, you know, we all kind of hoped for, not the ones where, you know, you're calling for a weekly status meeting on an IT project with, you know, three or four business people and maybe one shows up and, you know, the project is drags on. And again, you know, when it comes to technology leadership, it's really kind of, you know, assigning deadlines, assigning reachable milestones really kind of being that translation between the business product, the business issues and the business problems, and what the technology can deliver, whether that's, you know, dealing with a vendor dealing with hardware, you know, the whole gamut of What what's entailed with a solution to allow it to successfully address business issues?

 

Alex  10:08

Yeah, you know, it's interesting. And, you know, one of the things that we've seen and we talked about a little bit about this before is just the, you know, when the pandemic hit, how important it if it weren't, if it wasn't important before the pandemic became extremely important, you know, gearing and call it after the pandemic, how have you seen, you know, just companies succeed and fail? And where have you seen it, like, play a role, and in this new in this new world that we're in?

 

Larry  10:37

Well, I, you know, I think it leadership, and it's rarely mentioned, rarely discussed, but I think it leadership is, you know, are truly, among the unsung heroes of this pandemic, you think back 1510 1520 years ago, what this pandemic would have looked like, without all of these remote solutions, and the companies, you know, I've worked, you know, the most most of my career in the small to medium sized businesses. And for companies like that, that weren't prepared with, you know, hosted off Microsoft Office solutions that weren't prepared with SAS based or remote access applications. You know, they were the ones that suffered, there were many companies I know, within my industry that just, you know, weren't ready. And, you know, their business, you know, they had significant operational issues. By the same token, the companies that were ready, that did have, you know, people enabled with laptops, with cameras with audio visual devices that have implemented teams made use teams, you know, in many cases, bring people into a conference room and, you know, would have a remote meeting as opposed to someone having to physically come into the office, those, those were the companies that were able to pivot, and it was business almost as usual. But again, it wasn't that much of a heavy lift is to companies that were out there trying to provision 100 laptops and ship them home to users, for them to be able to do their day to day work.

 

Jeff  12:20

Yeah, you know, Larry, there was even companies sending desktops home, you know, aside from the laptop, so those desktops aren't equipped with the VPN and remote software they need to be so very difficult times.

 

Larry  12:34

From a business process perspective, you know, if you're still they still dealing with paper checks are coming into your office, and you have to have them physically endorsed, and then sent to a bank, or your whole payment process, if you're not using an electronic solution, and you're passing paper through an office. And then you have to go and get checks printed, and cheque signed, and run them through a facsimile machine. You know, these people early on in the pandemic, if they had to physically come into the office, you know, we're taking significant personal health risk, by doing so, you know, early on in the pandemic, before we really knew what we were looking at. So again, you don't hear it very much. But, you know, I'm a firm believer that, you know, technology leadership, again, as I said, was, you know, really one of the unsung unsung heroes of this pandemic really kept the, you know, the economy humming along. 

 

Jeff  13:27

Yeah. You know, Larry, I don't know if this happened with you. But I know what some did it the other thing that happened during this pandemic is there, there are companies that let's say, four years ago, decided to implement a collaboration solution. And, frankly, some of them didn't get good traction, because people were like, I don't need this, you know, I I'd rather do things this way. There are some companies that six months before that bought brought teams in and talk about getting buy in, and benefits right out of the gate, which is, you know, it's sometimes it can be difficult when you're implementing new technologies to get buy in. But it really helped people do that. I don't know if that happened with you in any product,  You know, and, you know, we've all shared the stories, you know, I and, you know, one of my personal favorites is, you know, a person that I enjoyed working with very much, but he felt that he could manage his CRM with his index cards that he's had for 30 years.

 

Larry  14:26

What does he need a CRM system for? What does he need, you know, a Salesforce for he's got he's got all of these index cards. And you're right, I think that you know, and again, it goes back to what I said earlier, if you can get the business buy in, if you can, you know, walk them through the value proposition, you know, those people, those business leaders who said, you know, we're going to go ahead with this, and we're going to become, You know, compliant in such a way and put in these collaboration tools. You know, they were the one who can you know, They were there, they were six months into the pandemic. And they were saying, boy was I smart, when obviously was probably just technology, people who were kind of, you know, pushing it up their noses, if you will. But again, those companies that implemented this technology, they were able to pivot relatively easily, in the pandemic, are comparatively easy, as opposed to other companies that really weren't ready for it. 

 

Jeff  15:27

Yeah, that's true. And now, a lot of people have caught up with the technology. And the thing that will be exciting in my mind, is, you know, the quote, unquote, new normal, because people will go back to some semblance of the past, with all of these new tools with them right and enter into some hybrid mode that will make them so much more effective, in my opinion, than anybody was ever effective in the past. 

 

Larry  15:51

And when you look at people who work in certain areas, as I do, were getting to and from an office, it's a high barrier to entry activity. So I live a 22 mile drive from my office. And during, you know, pre COVID times, my commute, whether I drove, whether I took public transportation was generally anywhere from an hour and 30 an hour, 30 minutes to two hours, each way per day. So that's three to four hours a day, of what I will call at best semi productive time. And seven productive means that, you know, you can pretty much respond to some emails On your phone while you're sitting in. And while you're on public transportation, assuming you have reception, assuming, you know, a whole host of other things. Obviously, if you're driving and you're not doing any, hopefully not doing any of that, you know, it's it's those kinds of people that now have picked up three to four hours a day in places like New York, San Francisco, Boston, Chicago, you know, in, you know, just to name a few additional productivity time, that a allows, you know, their employers to get that much more productivity allows them to get better balances that relates to things that they need to do around the house and with their families and things like that. And that's why I truly believe especially in these high barrier to entry markets, that a five day a week in the office requirement is clearly a thing of the past. Oh, absolutely. Assuming assuming you know, your leadership is results oriented and results driven, they'll be very, you know, they're going to be comfortable knowing that you can work from home, and you can get done what needs to get done. Hit your deadlines, hit your marks, hit your quotas, you know, whatever it is, without having to be in an office five days a week. And yes, you can choose that selectively for that necessarily collaboration. Okay, I think we're missing during this these times. A lot of those casual collisions, those casual conversations, I know being new to TGM. And having been hired during the pandemic. I've certainly missed a lot of it. I've had to onboard with this company during a pandemic, yes. And we have regular teams calls and I go into my office, you know, approximately one day a week, and I do meet a handful of the people are the 50 people in our office, the 4050 people in our office, I've met face to face, maybe seven. So, you know, I look forward to getting back to the office, I look forward to meeting these people again, you know, being able to do what I do is just a lot of casual conversation, what hurts, what isn't working? What do you think could be done better? Because that's where, you know, I can step in and say, Well, you know, let's think about this. Let's kind of develop a little bit and there may be a potential solution that can save you literally hours of time.

 

Alex  18:55

Yeah, you know, with the pandemic, we look talked a little bit about, you know, security and risk and whatnot. And, essentially, the companies that were behind the eight ball, when it all hit, they didn't really, you know, may not have taken into consideration all the risk involved of not having a deep disaster recovery plan, or business continuity. And it became so much more than Oh, you know, people think our buildings not going to go away, it's not going to catch on fire, and then everything's lost. But in a way, it got severed because no one could actually get into any office just because endemic so now it's how do you look at risk now? Moving forward to make sure that these things don't happen, because now it's like, you don't have to consider anything now. 

 

Larry  19:37

Well, you do have to consider anything, you know, go back 15 years or so. And, you know, we were looking at that I was working for a publicly traded company at the time we were looking at disaster recovery and business continuity. And I remember sitting down with a consultant from a national accounting firm and we were talking about all of the potential things that could go wrong. And we were thinking, of course of hurricanes, power outages, you know, storms and things like that. What if they yellow tape your building? What if for whatever reason, there is some kind of a chemical outbreak or something, and you physically can't, and you literally physically cannot get into your building for 60 days, 90 days, imagine those companies during a pandemic, that weren't ready, couldn't get into their building. So they literally could not get it physical data unless they had some kind of a cloud backup option, or some something along those lines. But you know, again, we, you know, as I mentioned earlier, these companies that weren't prepared, face significant operating difficulties, you know, as we're going into the pandemic, and really had to devote significant business resources and business dollars, and I'm sure trying to find consultants at that point in time. Fortunately, I didn't have to, I tried to find consultants in that point in time and knowledge of assistance, you know, must have been very difficult and very expensive.

 

Jeff  21:11

At a time that your income level is probably at a low point that's been in 10 years, and you're needing to do technically been impaired. doesn't help doesn't help. Yeah. 

 

Alex  21:23

Yeah. How about  talking a little bit about disaster recovery, business continuity, let's kind of shift into that the next phase, which is now security and cyber threats, obviously, the East Coast just got hammered by, you know, colonial pipeline getting the ransomware attack. And the more people we talked to the more CIOs or anyone in it that has a pulse on the on the industry, you know, they're what keeps them up at night is always cybersecurity, what's your take on you know, how to be prepared? Is there a framework you use to make sure that your organization is not vulnerable? Without giving away? Obviously, things you're doing? Because that's a security risk in itself? But, you know,

 

Larry  22:06

 It's, you know, my concern is, I am literally one click away from disaster. And, you know, I have, you know, again, I'm still fairly new with my organization, and I kind of just, you know, tried to educate them. And, you know, we realize that, we can have all of the most wonderful, most expensive, most pervasive security solutions in place, and I am still one click away from it from disaster. So I place great emphasis on user training, user testing. And I used, quite frankly, I use this colonial pipeline situation, as, again, a way to further educate, you know, our senior leadership, about the potential issues, you know, I work in the real estate industry. And I will tell you that I've had numerous senior executives over the years when it comes to these kinds of issues, you know, say, who wants to who wants our data? Who wants to go after us? I have a senior executive at a very large firm, tell me, who needs passwords? Why do we need passwords? You know, we're a family business, your family business operating, you know, throughout the US in Europe and South America. You need to have passwords, and wouldn't you know, there was a, you know, within months of security related leak. So, you know, again, you don't want to be in the position of I told you so. But it's a matter of educating it, you know, and look, news is the new cycle is so pervasive across all fronts today. Anytime that there is an issue, you know, we this solar winds that happen hack that happened, right around the first of the year. You know, again, another example that, you know, a quick note to a senior executive, this doesn't affect us, but this is how it could affect us, just to get them to understand the importance. Look, you know, I work for a real estate company, I don't work for a technology company, but right, wrong or indifferent. Technology has become so incredibly pervasive throughout all of our business processes and everything that we do, and it's the one area that can really, you know, shut our business down, probably more so than anything else. And, you know, that's why it's important to educate leadership. While not taking, of course not taking them away from their core business, but making sure they understand the risks. You know, you make mentioned earlier, my background, you know, going from accounting and auditing to, you know, technology leadership. And you know, what one of the things that I am most focused on is risk exposure and risk aversion and managing risk, it's one of the most important things that I do holistically for my organization is managing risk through technology.

 

Alex  25:24

Yeah, it makes complete sense, you know, and, and hopefully, you know, through the pandemic, and just as things are changing, and more and more companies are relying on technology, I think it's forcing a lot of executives, and CEOs are really level up their game when it comes to investing in technology for on the security front, and just technology in general to get them into a cloud environment to where they you know, before working remotely and things like that. Where else do you see, you know, the the executive called the executive Roundtable, right? where their mindsets changing? Do you see that shifting? Being in New York City? Like, do you see a lot of these companies going, Okay, we need to step step our game up, and, you know, rethink things, because you're saying the occupancy in Manhattan is at 20%? Obviously, no one's going back to work very quickly in the city. So how do you see that, you know, changing with the CEOs and in the executive? You know, it's interesting, because I think,

 

Larry  26:23

You know, there's, there's been a significant change in the last what I would call 30, to 45 days. And I think, as much as much as that's changed, in terms of New York City opening up, it's going to change that much more again, in the next 35 to 45 days. You know, I think I think I mentioned earlier that we are looking to come back to our office, after Labor Day, many companies are talking now about after Fourth of July, which is literally a month away. And by the same token, there are real estate companies that I am aware of, you know, in New York, that own primarily office buildings that have been back in the office full time since last June. And they you know, as soon as you know, Governor Cuomo lifted, lifted the office ban, you know, they had their people back in the office now. And, you know, they did it for business reasons, they wanted to show their tenant base that yes, you could physically be in the office. And if you practice, you know, the proper protocols that, you know, everyone can be safe at, they've done that. And, again, what I think is going to happen is I think there is going to be some component or a much greater component of remote work. And, you know, it's it, you're right, it will be interesting to see how the city responds, I will tell you that, you know, within Manhattan, retail is taking us a taken a significant hit. You know, there are a lot of empty storefronts, but I think we'll see that come back, because at the same time companies that were able to retain most of their business during the pandemic. And the same holds true with individuals, really kind of this has created kind of a bit of a cash cow. You take a you know, someone who's been working through the pandemic that's been working remotely. You know, financially, the last year has been, you know, probably good to them. You know, from the perspective of the fact that they had little to do with disposable  income, there was no tracking, it was really no travel going on. You really couldn't get to the stores. And you know, I think as I mentioned in one of our previous discussions, when I started with this job, as I mentioned, I onboard it during the pandemic, it was, you know, a trip to Old Navy for a couple pair of sweatpants. And, you know, that's, that's really what it took. So I think that there is this, I heard the term revenge travel, that people are looking at I heard this term this morning, where people have had so many trips and vacations and gatherings and events canceled in the last 15 or so months, everyone's looking to do it with reckless abandon. And I think a travel agency specifically in the travel business, specifically airlines, we're seeing with rental cars, it's very hard to get rental cars these days. You know, planes are full because it takes time for them to gear up for this, you know, very quick increases in capacity. They haven't added flights yet.

 

Jeff  29:35

 Correct?

 

Alex  29:37

 Yeah. And that's why you see all those flights, keep hearing from friends that are traveling recently that ticket prices just keep going up. You know, 

 

Larry  29:44

The price is going to fly to full. Yeah, you hear about people who are traveling last spring, late last spring, late last summer. You know, the planes were 20% full and now the planes are full. And again, you know, because I think we We all heard the stories early on with the planes, you know, going out to the car, Max and Arizona to kind of sit there while their fate was determined. And now all of a sudden everyone's starting to travel again. And we're looking at Well, can we go this summer? That, you know, I've heard stories at Las Vegas is wild these days. And, you know, people looking to try and I can't wait, I just more or more wild than it normally is.

 

Jeff  30:27

It's funny. 

 

Alex  30:28

Yeah, go ahead, Jeff. 

 

Jeff  30:30

I was just wanting to ask Larry being involved in real estate, you know, I've read, I've heard a shift from dedicated workspace to shared workspace, where companies will be wanting to gain some physical real estate for a week, a month for meetings, or maybe a day a week or two days a week as opposed to investing in a another new office building of their own. With your involvement, real estate, are you seeing that shift to shared workspace?

 

Larry  31:03

You're hearing about reconfiguration, and, you know, look, I think the last 20 years, in many cases, you know, the shrinking, almost a discussion of the demise of the private offices and collaborative workspaces. And, you know, you could go into tech companies, and basically what you saw were, you know, big picnic tables with Mac books, and, and a bunch of monitors, you know, attached to them. And that's how everyone was, well, you know, that's not necessarily going to work in this environment, I think what you're going to be looking at is, you know, some form of social distancing, obviously, the barriers going up, you know, and even kind of a hotelling situation, you know, who gets the offices, you know, maybe those that are older, those that are at risk that have a bit of at risk conditions, they may be the ones to get the offices, you know, through this whole open work plan. Situation that, you know, we've seen kind of evolve over the last, you know, 15 or 20 years, you know, I've seen many cases where what wasn't done, right. We had these big bullpens, and people were, you know, working. And yes, it was great for collaboration. But, you know, I sat in a workspace where the COO and the CEO, it costs a football from one end of the room to the other. And just the visual distraction of trying to keep my eye on an email that I'm typing up while the football was going from one side of the room to the other. It made it very difficult to concentrate. So you know, a lot of these things were never, you know, out of these offices, were never built that with, you know, proper huddle rooms or proper rooms to take a phone call with, you know, certain amount of quiet. And I think that we're kind of rethinking it. There was a great article several years ago in a world in the Wall Street Journal about how these kinds of, you know, poor implementations of open work plans have really failed business.

 

Jeff  33:15

Interesting, yeah. 

 

Alex  33:16

Yeah, definitely, definitely a distraction. Right. And I think the idea was good behind it. But you know, people still, I think, need that privacy at times, you want to have a private phone call. If you don't have a good spot for that, then you jump you're, you're on your cell phone walking outside the office and... 

 

Larry  33:32

Yeah, you know, a great idea poor implementation. 

 

Alex  33:35

Yeah, he talked about just productivity in general, right, just the fact that you don't, you know, you're talking about commuting back and forth and saving all that productivity time, then there's a lot a lot of loss of productivity on the open work plane as well. You know, probably happening in people that work from home, if they're, you know, if you can measure the productivity and track their performance, you don't need a manager to micro, you know, you don't need micromanagement going on, they're getting the work done, and they can probably get it done. In between picking the kids up from school or going to the dentist, or whatever it might be, it makes it makes it a lot easier. But one, one last thing before we, before we finish up, and I wanted to talk about this because I know Jeff's a big part of you know, as an IT CIO group, but you have a local group as well that you rely on how has that been in your just your career development, and just in also just technology implementation at your current job and how you've thought about different technologies that bring in and having a group of people to rely on? 

 

Larry  34:34

You know, it's interesting to say that that because I truly believe that my peer group has played probably the most significant role in my development and advancement as a technology, you know, in technology leadership, you know, again, I came in this kind of halfway through MIT, came into this kind of halfway through my career. without, you know, virtually any formal schooling or formal knowledge or formal training and engineering or anything like that. So I've really had to learn on my own. And, you know, as we, discussed in our earlier conversations, yes, I have a little quick group. But, you know, the real estate industry in general, the technology leadership that exists within real estate is a very open group. You know, we share our successes, we warn of potential failures, we get together, we can pick up the phone and call one another and ask about a certain solution, if there is, you know, if it's good, or if it's bad, if it's something I should consider. And I am constantly in touch with my industry peers. And again, it's clearly, as I said, played a major role in me being able to develop, expand my knowledge horizon, learn how to do things better, learn from other people's successes, learn from their mistakes, along with my own successes and mistakes, because we all have them. But again, I probably learn more from my involvement outside of the office than I do from just my day to day work of getting things done in the office.

 

Jeff  36:20

Yeah, that's excellent. I'm glad to hear Yeah, that strong a peer group. That's great. Because, as you know, from our discussion last week, I'm a firm believer in that as well. And that's, that's great to hear.

 

Alex  36:32

Yeah, I think every, every career person, every professional needs to have that that group to rely on ultimately, right, because doing going going rogue and trying to do things on your own and not seeking advice and, you know, knowledge, others that have been there done that you're just missing out missing out on on stuff.

 

Larry  36:51

Especially in industry, especially within technology, which is changing, you know, on an ever increasing basis.

 

Jeff  36:59

And the people you're around every day, your your peers, per se inside the company, have different focus area, then you 

 

Larry  37:07

Absolutely, 

 

Jeff  37:08

So yeah, that's, that's why it's important to have that in many, many, many, like, like you said, Larry, a very large company, they probably know, you can always go to another division and get all the support you need. But that's the fortune 50. And we we don't all work with those. No, absolutely not. And sometimes we don't want to work with those.

 

Alex  37:27

It's a whole different beast. Well, Larry, I tell you, this is this has been great. And you've shared a lot of insights, I think you bring a very unique perspective, I think just being like pretty much almost like Ground Zero with the pandemic being right there in New York City. Right, just be having a lot of insight into, you know, how you guys are the unsung heroes of the pandemic, right? It's another group that not many people have thought about, that really made a choice. 

 

Larry  37:55

All of us who you know, lead technology within organizations.  Yeah, completely agree. Completely agree. And Jeff, thanks co hosting and co piloting this with me. And it's been it's been good. And Larry, we'll have to do this again, for sure.  I look forward.

 

Jeff  38:10

 Larry. Thanks for your insights. 

 

Larry  38:12

My pleasure. Thank you.

 

Alex  38:14

 Thank you.  Well, that wraps up the show for today. Thanks for joining. And don't forget to join us next week as we bring another guest in to talk about the trends around cloud contact center and customer experience. Also, you can find us at Adler, advisors.com, LinkedIn, or your favorite podcast platform. We'll see you next week on another cloud podcast.