Jason Gintert

Machines made this, mistakes and all:

[00:00:00] Chris: Hello, and welcome to the Impostor Syndrome Network podcast, where everyone belongs. Especially if you think you don't. My name is Chris Grundeman, and of course, the International Woman of Cybersecurity, Zoe Rose, is here with me. Hiya! This is the Jason Gintert episode, and we're all gonna have a good time.

[00:00:29] Chris: Jason learned how to program BASIC on a Commodore VIC 20 at 7 years old, and has been enthralled with making technology do cool things ever since. He entered the technology field during the late 90s ISP boom and has survived, evidently, to tell the tale. He's a results driven professional who does not stop until the job is done.

[00:00:51] Chris: Howdy, Jason. Would you like to introduce yourself a bit further to the Impostor Syndrome Network? 

[00:00:55] Jason: Yeah. Thanks for having me, Chris and Zoe. So yeah, I'm Jason Ginnert. I am a CTO and co founder of a company called WAN Dynamics. We're a managed and professional network services firm based in Cleveland, Ohio.

[00:01:09] Jason: And in addition to that, I'm a volunteer at the Ohio internet exchange and do some work with, uh, the U S networking user association as well. So, uh, I keep my, keep myself busy over here in Cleveland, Ohio. 

[00:01:22] Chris: Awesome. We are going to dig into. Most or all of that, depending on the time we have today and how fast we go through it.

[00:01:28] Chris: But first I want to start kind of right at that beginning point there, it sounds like we had a fairly similar experience with computers early on, although I was weaned on a Texas instruments, TI 99 4A. Which I think this was a computer that they tried to sell for a hundred dollars and then went out of business essentially like two years later, we had cartridges and we had the peripheral expansion box, the PEB with floppy drives.

[00:01:51] Chris: Uh, so you didn't have to just use the cartridges and there was a tape recorder for backups and it actually hooked to a standard television. There was like a. Like the two little wires put on the screws and it hooked up to a, like, basically you hooked it to an antenna and the antenna hooked to the TV and can create a picture on the TV.

[00:02:06] Chris: We're pretty wild anyway, playing math blaster. And I also learned to program basic, uh, at a very early age. 

[00:02:11] Jason: It sounds a lot like the Vic 20. The Vic 20 was also, you know, connected up to the TV. I saved everything to tape actually have a funny story about that. Because, you know, they have the tape player attached to it to load data in and out of, I tried to put a Huey Lewis, the news tape in that and, uh, and it should load and then press play on tape.

[00:02:29] Jason: And I actually fried it. So my dad was so angry with me, so we had to go out and get another Vic 20. But, uh, well, one of my first tech lessons learned there, maybe don't put, uh, things where they don't belong. 

[00:02:42] Chris: Nice. Yeah, that's funny. Where the standard interface doesn't mean totally standard, right? So my question, though, is with that Commodore and basic being kind of your introduction to technology.

[00:02:53] Chris: Why aren't you just a programmer? Why don't you just keep writing basic and going to the next language? And how'd you get in more infrastructure instead of development? 

[00:03:00] Jason: That's a great question. So I had a lot of space in between, you know, learning how to work on that system. And then. You know, my dad got a 386 laptop from work and that he handed down to me after he got a new one.

[00:03:12] Jason: So, you know, I spent a lot of time on computers, but it really wasn't like an area of focus for my career. Actually, I didn't even really know what I was going to do. I'm getting out of high school. I got a job at a movie theater. And that's actually funny enough where my connection and my, and my entrance into tech.

[00:03:31] Jason: That was kind of the, you know, the connection that made it all happen. So I worked at the movie theater and one of the people I'd worked with got a job at an ISP. And he said, Hey, I think I could get you a job here. And it was like, you know. Two or three bucks more an hour. So I was like, okay, cool. I'd love to work there.

[00:03:46] Jason: I, you know, I've always loved computers. I've, you know, always worked on them, but it was more of like a, as a hobby versus, you know, me turning it into a career. So I got that job at that ISP and discovered networking because that was what I was surrounded by. Right. I was at a regional dial up internet service provider.

[00:04:06] Jason: We had networking gear all over the place and everybody, uh, you know, most of the people I interface with or we're networking professionals. I started to learn more about it, and that's really where where it started. And funny enough, you know, after I got hired, we were merged with another dial up ISP. And they took the roles of my group away.

[00:04:25] Jason: They didn't know what they were going to do with us. If this were like 1999, they said, just hang tight. We're going to find something else for you guys to do. And it started off with, Oh, this is kind of cool. Like we can just surf the internet and hang out. But, you know, as funny as that sounds, it gets really boring after a while just sitting around doing nothing.

[00:04:43] Jason: So we started grabbing, you know, switches and routers and things from the back room and started putting them together. And I really spent a lot of time teaching myself how things work, getting on the Cisco command line, hitting the question mark for anything I didn't, didn't understand and know about, and really taught myself the Cisco CLI because we had all this extra time just sitting around.

[00:05:04] Jason: Waiting for a new role. Actually, that went on for about seven or eight months. Before finally they found us a new role. But during that time I met, you know, the group of guys that I worked with, we helped each other, learn, taught ourselves and learned a lot about, about networking. 

[00:05:20] Chris: That's interesting. It mirrors an experience I had a little bit later on when I was working at, well, originally it was Time Warner Telecom.

[00:05:26] Chris: Now it's changed names and hands a lot since then, but I joined a group of kind of the ops end group, we were the top tier in the NOC and had enable on the network. So we were the ones who made any changes to the network. And a lot of it was like these kind of higher level provisioning jobs that, you know, the provisioners couldn't be turning up BGP or MPLS.

[00:05:41] Chris: So they got handed off to us. And me and a buddy wrote a bunch of scripts to automate all that kind of simple provisioning type stuff, which freed up a ton of time. And it took a while for, you know, the team and the company to, to realize that like this eight person team that had been doing these tasks no longer needed to do those specific tasks.

[00:05:59] Chris: So we got into a similar kind of cycle of boredom. We ended up, again, we were a little bit further along in our careers. A group of us ended up getting our JNCIEs at that point. Uh, we just built a lab and studied and did stuff. It's fun what idle hands will find to do if you're creative and enthusiastic about what you're doing.

[00:06:14] Jason: Absolutely true. Yeah, that's where I discovered my love of networking was there and that's when I decided this is what I want to do. I love working with this technology. I was so passionate about everything I'd learned and that's, you know, I decided that was the path for me. 

[00:06:27] Zoe: Well, the one thing that you both share is though the self motivation.

[00:06:31] Zoe: Because that's actually really hard. I've been in positions where, not quite the extreme that you both have had, but I have been in positions where I'm like, oh, I'm bored. And it's actually quite difficult to say, okay, I'm bored, but how do I fix that? You know, how do I grow from here? And, uh, I'm interested in how, I mean, for yours, it was what you said, six to eight months or something.

[00:06:52] Zoe: How did you keep that motivation throughout that as well? 

[00:06:56] Jason: For me, I think it was, that was what was around, was, was network equipment. And it was kind of the, the folks that I was working around, they all had a, you know, understanding of networking and had done networking so could, could, you know, get me up to speed on the technologies and some of the concepts.

[00:07:12] Jason: Um, so for me, it was just, just happened to be there. And I just, you know, the more I learned, the more I loved about it. And it actually became for me more than, you know, anything job based, it became like a pursuit, something that I actually was interested in to the point where I was, Taking some of that kit home and building out a network at my house, you know, like it became like in addition to the, the career became a bit of a hobby as well.

[00:07:37] Zoe: Interesting, that does sound really fun to be fair. I mean, I've done very similar. I have a picture where I've got a stack of switches and routers and I've got ferrets crawling on them and I'm very, yeah, I'm a little bit of a nerd, but, um, but no, that does sound like a lot of fun. I think that also ties into the bit about which we've heard from other people is the community around it.

[00:08:01] Zoe: So both of you were in teams where you were able to then expand from there. I'm curious how important a community has been or maybe like a mentor mentee kind of relationship has been in your career. 

[00:08:13] Jason: Very important. So, you know, as I got more interested in networking and after that stint of not doing anything was over and they did reassign us to a role, which is in this nascent DSL, just when DSL was emerging in the early 2000s, put us in this DSL team, the guy who was leading that group, he was really my first technical mentor, you know, took me aside and taught me, you know, the the Linux command line and how do you, you know, manage a Linux host taught me scripting, actually taught me Pearl and expect, so I could use it to do some automation, which, you know, sad to say my first automation project was a Was a terrible failure.

[00:08:52] Jason: It was actually, um, automating changing the passwords on the DSLAMs, DSL Access Multiplexers in all of our central offices. So we had about, I think it was around 52 DSLAMs between three markets throughout Ohio and Illinois. So the script I wrote actually deleted all the administrative users off the boxes.

[00:09:12] Jason: So we were very promptly locked out of our own devices. And, uh, had to execute something called a NINDI procedure to go actually put a jumper on the, on the controller to reset the, uh, the control and reprogram it. So I cost the company about, I think it was $50,000 in professional services, both that mistake, but a, uh, a hard learned mistake.

[00:09:36] Jason: And, you know, the, the nice thing is that mentor to me at that time. He could have freaked out. He could have fired me. He could have demoted me and let me go, but he, you know, had a conversation with me about, you know, what did we learn here? And, you know, maybe we should have had that conversation about testing that script before I actually executed it.

[00:09:54] Jason: But he was very understanding and kind of walked through the mistakes I made. And everybody, you know, he and the rest of the team were very, very understanding about the whole situation. So Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, he taught me so much about, about technology and kind of took my skills to the next level because I taught myself up till then, for the most part, with the, you know, the things that I'd had in the background in that back room.

[00:10:16] Jason: So he kind of took that, that the things I taught myself and really applied it, you know, it really told me like the way that those things work with one another. And maybe I got a little, a little ahead of myself when I tried my own, uh, my, my first automation journey there. But, uh, I, uh, guy by the name of Nathan, but he was, he was my, uh, he was my first Mentor and, uh, really look up to that guy still today.

[00:10:38] Chris: That's awesome. That's great to hear. And, you know, the personal experience side of it as well. Right? I mean, the mentoring is great and it's good that you found that. And I think, you know, the only thing we can do is try and be those mentors for, for kind of the, the next generation of folks as much as possible.

[00:10:51] Chris: But, but even that, that personal experience, right? I mean, almost every kid, I don't know, I'm making this up maybe, but you know, gets burned by the stove once, you know, you got like, or fire, whether it's a campfire or a stove or something, right? The kettle on. Um, In one time, you're like, okay, you know what? I need to be a pay attention to when things are hot.

[00:11:07] Chris: And then, uh, and then from then on, you know, you know the risk and maybe you test a little bit more, use the back of your hand to get close to something, that kind of thing. And the same thing with, with automation and scripting and anything else. Right. I think for sure. Yeah. And then, so from that, right.

[00:11:18] Chris: Early experience where you do some automation, you blow away all these admin, I mean, at least you didn't take the network down, right. You just locked yourself out, which is, you know, just couldn't make any changes to the rough, but not terrible. So, and now, you know, I think on your Twitter profile, it says net DevOps minded.

[00:11:33] Chris: With a sorted Net Ops past. So I'm guessing that's a little bit of the sorted sortedness of the Net Ops past. What's that journey look like to net DevOps now, though? 

[00:11:41] Jason: So I mean, a lot of what I do today is actually not as hands on as it used to be, you know, like being in the role that I'm at in my company, it's mostly hiring the right people to do a lot of that work.

[00:11:53] Jason: But I mean, man, things have come a long way since expect and Pearl, you know, now with all of the the Ansible tooling and DevOps. All of the the great platforms and frameworks that we have as network engineers, man, it just blows my mind the things that that you're able to do with programmability and automation today, leveraging APIs and tying all that stuff together.

[00:12:17] Jason: So, you know, for me, it's more about the big picture and helping customers helping walk customers through that sort of thing and then having my team execute it. But. I think, you know, some of the things that I learned back then about how I could take this, this, you know, task that would have taken me, you know, five, maybe five minutes per box on the command line.

[00:12:39] Jason: And I could do it in like 10, you know, do all of the devices by having a script that, that, uh, ran out and did that really planted that seed for me about how important that was going to be. And now I just feel like it's, it's that to the, the, the nth degree. It's, you know, there's, there's so many platforms and tools to use.

[00:12:58] Jason: And for us, it's educating our clients about the possibilities there and taking some of those mundane tasks and, and repetitive tasks. And automating them away just to make their workflows easier like you talked about, Chris, with your team, you guys did that and you freed yourselves up to, you know, further yourselves, you know, you got, you got your JNCIe. And and learned a lot more about juniper platforms. I feel like we're doing that for our clients. And that's really where that, you know, the whole automation journey comes in is is freeing them up from from all the mundane to do better things. 

[00:13:34] Zoe: Yeah, that's true. And also The one thing that I never considered in my career was giving yourself the space to be creative as well.

[00:13:43] Zoe: So you automate the simple tasks, you automate the stuff that's repeatable, but then that gives you the time and the capacity to actually innovate and build new solutions and build more effective. I know that sounds super boring, but it's actually really fun. And I've never really realized that I really enjoy that.

[00:14:03] Zoe: So I think, I think that's cool that you have like the background in the development, your background in networking, you're able to combine them and be more effective. 

[00:14:12] Jason: Yeah, it's really, really paid off for, for me, for sure. I mean, and you're right. That is so invaluable, giving people the time and space to sit back and think more about the business to not just be caught up in the quagmire of all the technical things, but learn more about how the business operates and ways to improve the business on the whole.

[00:14:31] Chris: Yeah, well, what engineers are scrambling to just get their job done. Customers become distractions, right? And if you can free up some of that stuff, then all of a sudden they have all this time and energy to focus on customers and all those challenging problems and fun stuff and figuring out new ways to do things.

[00:14:44] Chris: And yeah, yeah, yeah. Just plus one to everything you guys said. 

[00:14:47] Zoe: Well, removing that panic in that sense of, you know, you're, I don't know, you feel more relaxed and able to experiment, maybe not lock yourself out and cost 50, 000. Dollars, I was going to say euros, but no, for you it would be dollars, but I mean, it's a learning experience, that's for sure.

[00:15:04] Jason: Learned a lot. 

[00:15:06] Zoe: One thing I also want to touch on, I know we already mentioned community, but I want to talk again about community when you took, you're a board chairman and co founder of, I'm going to say this wrong, no, I'm saying it right, I'm going to read it, U. S. Networking User Association. And from my understanding, that would be basically a community of networking persons.

[00:15:28] Jason: You got it. Yeah. So, um, it actually started out as the Ohio networking user group. Back in 2017, we started that group. The way we structured it was getting network engineers together to come talk about the, you know, the problems we face. Maybe someone would have a presentation on a, you know, not a vendor specific technology, but you know, open technologies in the networking space.

[00:15:51] Jason: And then we have panel discussions, so we, we did these throughout Cleveland, Ohio, Columbus, Ohio, Cincinnati, and kind of bounced around the state and had one periodically, you know, usually every quarter. And then during COVID, of course, we had to stop doing those. So during that time, we, we sat and thought about it and we, we built kind of, uh, we built a pretty good format, a pretty good template for putting on these sorts of events.

[00:16:16] Jason: And the community was growing. I think, you know, when COVID hit, we had about 2, 500 members and our largest events. We were getting about 120, 130 people to like the Cleveland events. So we decided, Hey, why don't we open this up? Um, because we had other adjacent, you know, friends in other states asking, Hey, how can I do this where I'm at?

[00:16:35] Jason: So we took that template and we, we kind of bottled it. And now we have an organization called the USNUA where, where there's multiple chapters now. Uh, and actually I, um, I'm remiss, but I couldn't even list them all off at this point. We've got, we've got about, you know, I want to say between 15 and 20 that we're working on either that are what they've been launched and they've had an event or two.

[00:16:56] Jason: And there's a bunch on the way that are gearing up for their first events. But what these events look like is you get together at usually a brewery or someplace that has beer. You know, have a panel discussion, maybe have a presenter, but really the key is getting all of these network engineering professionals together to talk about the problems they face, the technologies they're working with, you know, network interpersonally to figure out, you know, if there's an there's open roles out there in their region.

[00:17:24] Jason: And get to see each other. I mean, I think that's the one of the most fun byproducts of these events that I really didn't anticipate when we started, which is seeing people I hadn't seen in a long time and seeing them face to face and, and just networking with them and finding out what's new and, and, uh, and learning from your peers.

[00:17:43] Jason: I mean, that, that's what we wanted to take and, and expand upon and spread, uh, spread around. So I'm a volunteer for that group. I try to do a lot of the community development and help find new chapters, but I actually was just up in Vermont a couple weeks ago, helping them get their first event launched in Burlington.

[00:18:02] Jason: So it's kind of fun. I get to see the country as well to go out up to these new places and meet all the network engineers in these regions and. And help them get their their chapters started. But yeah, it's been a lot of fun. Uh, and you know, the really the goal is to get these people talking to one another because we looked at the industry.

[00:18:20] Jason: There's the mug for the VMware user group guys. There's the Linux user group. There's all these different user groups. But we as network engineers, we didn't have anything that was try And that's that's a key thing I should say is this is not any one vendors agenda that we're pushing here. This is this is vendor neutral.

[00:18:38] Jason: It is really a safe space that we'd like to put that we're putting together here for engineers to talk to one another without sales agendas, without being pushed any products or proprietary technologies. It's, it's really the goal is to get these people together and talk about open technologies. I think it's 

[00:18:56] Zoe: so funny because I am not a social person.

[00:18:59] Zoe: I know people probably don't believe me because at conferences I give off the perception I'm a very social person. I am not at all. I like, you know, being at home in my jammies. You know, but um. Those kind of meetup groups have been so critical to my career, like my, I wouldn't be where I am today if I hadn't started, uh, building the community, or my own personal community.

[00:19:25] Zoe: So I think it's, it's weird to think, because typically people are like, oh, networking people are, oh, scared to be bored, oh, techs, they're anti social, they don't want to do these things, but actually, from what I've seen, From my experience, I may not be the most social person, but put me in a room with a bunch of nerds, and I am so excited.

[00:19:46] Zoe: I do not need alcohol or, or any, anything to assist me, because it's, it's wonderful just to talk tech with other. 

[00:19:55] Chris: I think the beers still help, though. Well, I 

[00:19:58] Zoe: don't drink. I mean, I know at the moment I am pregnant, so I also don't drink in that case. I definitely don't recommend it right now. Yes, yes. But I don't really drink in general.

[00:20:08] Zoe: I mean, maybe for very socially awkward, maybe it would help. I'm just socially awkward and I probably would become more socially awkward if I got 

drunk. 

[00:20:16] Chris: That's I don't want to go too far into this, but we have an obsession with alcohol, I think, in our culture too. So it's, you know, there's a balance there, um, so, but one thing I wanted to dive into a little bit, Jason is obviously, you know, we just talked about, you know, you, you co founded and you're the chairman of the board for the network user, the U.

[00:20:34] Chris: S. Network User Association. You're the CTO and the director at Ohio. I X, you're the CTO and co founder at WAN Dynamics. And as we just talked about, right, you've moved kind of more into this. Inspirational and more leadership role in a lot of ways and building that team around you and having them be the really technical skilled folks who execute on this.

[00:20:52] Chris: It is kind of the model you're working in or the paradigm you work in right now. And so I'm curious in that is, you know, could you talk to us a little bit about how you find good people, right? What's your interview process like and what's your hiring process? What do you look for? How do you know somebody is going to going to fit the bill or no, they're not.

[00:21:10] Jason: I think first and foremost, it's having a good network of people. If there was anything I would recommend, and I know this is a question you guys sometimes ask, but you know, I could recommend to my younger self, just getting started in the industry is build that network of people, you know, and be open to meeting new folks and networking people in the real world.

[00:21:31] Jason: It's really getting to know them. And for me, it was, you know, when I worked at that service provider, keeping tabs on who the good engineers that I worked with on support tickets and things like that, you know what I mean? Like, I just remembered who those people were. And I kind of put a bookmark on those people and and reach back out to them after after the fact, you know, wherever they were, um, the other thing is the U.

[00:21:51] Jason: S. N. U. A. Events help to that's a great place to meet, you know, network engineers, especially, you know, in our region in Ohio met a lot of really talented engineers that come out to those because usually they're. Passionate enough about what they do that they're willing to spend their free time to come out to those events.

[00:22:07] Jason: So, you know, that's, that usually plays well into someone who's, who is going to be a passionate team member. But yeah, I mean, really the, the, the building that and developing and maintaining that network of people that you speak with, I mean, that is first and foremost. 

[00:22:24] Zoe: Well, also, if you look even at like organizations, there's so many organizations offer bonuses to employees that recommend somebody if they end up getting hired.

[00:22:33] Zoe: So like, at the end of the day, even if I don't work with you, but I've met you through some community, maybe down the line, you'll have an opportunity to meet. And you'd recommend me because one, you'll get a bonus, but two, you know that I'm not rubbish, well, theoretically. 

[00:22:50] Jason: Yeah, that's absolutely a great method.

[00:22:54] Jason: It's that people network. That's the most important place to find those folks. 

[00:22:58] Zoe: So you did mention earlier that you're not as hands on as you previously were. That's kind of a topic we talk a bit about a few times, but I'm curious. Why you took that direction and if it was something that was kind of just naturally you had to due to the roles.

[00:23:15] Zoe: Uh, cause I see a lot of like, quite senior roles going on or was that something you consciously decided? 

[00:23:21] Jason: I think for me it was actually my engineers, you know, I'd gotten rusty enough that they said, You know what Jason, we got this, step back, just keep your hands out of it. If you're not gonna do it the way we do it, then that's just step away please.

[00:23:35] Jason: That's part of it. And then, yeah, really a lot of what I'm doing, you know, administratively in the business these days is, you know, planning around taxes and raising money and, you know, well it's, it's all of that stuff that's really taken me away. And it's funny that to get my hands dirty again, that's why I volunteer for the Ohio ix.

[00:23:54] Jason: 'cause I really could get to get in there and, and go back to. Programming interfaces and working with, uh, some APIs there with a platform called IXP manager that automates a lot of what we do in the IX world, because I could do that without, without my employees giving me grief, honestly. 

[00:24:13] Chris: Totally fair.

[00:24:14] Chris: That makes sense. And it's, it's really, really tough to be able to zoom out to the 30, 000 foot, a hundred thousand foot, whatever, you know, distance from earth we're talking about to kind of look at the big picture and run an organization, run a business. Even architect a technical system and still be able to zoom back in and, you know, find that missing comma.

[00:24:32] Chris: In the API call, you're trying to, you know, get through. I really, really respect folks who have been able to kind of do both like yourself. Right. I mean, I think doing the Ohio IX stuff and volunteering to keep yourself technical, I do the same thing. I try to find different projects where I actually work at different levels in different projects these days.

[00:24:48] Chris: Because doing it all in one place, it seems harder somehow than being at a high level over here and being like down in the nitty gritty over here. For some reason, it works that way. But if I horizontally spread it out as well, I don't know if that makes any sense. 

[00:24:59] Jason: I think you might, you might have some of the ADHD that I do.

[00:25:04] Jason: I just can't stay focused on that one thing for too long. 

[00:25:08] Chris: Very, very possible. Well, speaking of, you know, being a little hyperactive, we've done it again. I think we've run out of time here. Jason, we've talked about a bunch of stuff you're working on. Are there any specific projects or causes you want to kind of highlight or underline for the imposter syndrome network?

[00:25:22] Jason: Yeah. First and foremost, I'd say check out the USNUA so that's USNUA. com. Find out if there's a chapter near you and get involved. If you, if you're interested, those in the Ohio region, Ohio internet exchange, so ohioix. net, um, so that's a place where I'm a volunteer doing what, you know, what we can for connectivity and, and users to get them closer to content in Ohio.

[00:25:43] Jason: And then WAN Dynamics, which is my day gig, if anybody needs help with their network to make it better, that's what we do. 

[00:25:51] Chris: Awesome. There will be links to all of that as well as your Twitter and your LinkedIn. If folks want to kind of reach out and learn more, maybe we try to chat with you in the show notes so you can look there if you want to find those folks.

[00:26:00] Chris: Yeah. Jason, thank you for sharing your story with the imposter syndrome network. And thank you to all of our listeners, everybody out there for your time, your attention, and your support. If you found this episode insightful or interesting, or even just entertaining, please consider paying it forward by letting others know about this show and the great guests we have on. 

[00:26:19] Chris: Before we shut everything down, Jason, I'm curious. You know, we didn't actually touch on, you know, imposter syndrome directly, which often we don't. But I wonder if, if, you know, maybe there's a two part question, if you ever feel less than, or like you're in the wrong place, or like you don't belong, or like, you're not smart enough. And if the answer is yes, I wonder what you do with those feelings and how you deal with that imposter syndrome.

[00:26:42] Jason: I definitely do. And the funny thing is, it's not so much on the technical side, it's on the business side. So, you know, I have a, as I pivoted from a technical guy into more of a business guy and had to focus on running and operating a business. I realized I had a lot of shortcomings there. I didn't really know a lot about it.

[00:26:59] Jason: And what I would say to anyone, again, making recommendations to my younger self, you know, pay attention to other aspects of the business wherever you work. So don't just keep your heads down and focus on just the engineering aspects. Learn about what sales does, learn about what provisioning does. You know, learn about the other facets of your business and how those all work together.

[00:27:21] Jason: Because I wish I had definitely spent a lot more time with that. And as far as what I'm doing now is just trying to get up to speed on that wherever I can. So, you know, learning from my, my group of mentors, you know, that network of people that I know. Reaching out to them, the ones that I know have grown and built, you know, very successful businesses in the past and learning from them and, you know, forgiving myself for not, not knowing everything I need to know about it sometimes, but going out and finding out what I need to know from that network of people.

[00:27:49] Jason: So it's been very helpful for me. 

[00:27:51] Chris: Absolutely. That's great advice. Amazing. Thank you. We will be back next week.