Name: How a Solo IT Leader Delivers Enterprise-Level Results Through Automation
Uploaded: 2025-12-17T21:20:05.892Z
Duration: 1 h 20 min
Description: How a Solo IT Leader Delivers Enterprise-Level Results Through Automation

Transcript for "How a Solo IT Leader Delivers Enterprise-Level Results Through Automation": Alrighty. Hello, everyone. Thank you so so much for being here. My name is Michael. If you have not been to one of our sessions before, I run content for Rippling IT. So really great to have you here. I'm gonna give everybody just another moment or two to find their way into our lovely studio here. But, while we're waiting, as a way to kind of, get everybody warmed up, I'd like to get things started with a just a quick little poll to get everybody, to get everybody engaged in here within Goldcast. So since we're gonna be talking about about onboarding a good bit today, a common topic for us here at Heavenly IT, I'm gonna get us started with a question that speaks specifically to that. So you should be seeing that come through on the little poll tab. There's a little red dot above it on the right of your screen there to the right of chat and to the left of docs. And the question, which I will read aloud, although you can all see it, but what's the most annoying part of onboarding for you right now? Maybe that is manual account setup across multiple tools. One vote for that. Just coming in. Coordination between IT and HR, also quite a common problem with this workflow in particular. Typos and errors when provisioning access, that is one we we talk about a little today's session, configuring and deploying laptops or something else entirely. There are a great many things that go into that. So I, far be it from me prescribe what your issues are, feel free to tell us in the chat. Would also just love, like, the classic radio thing. Let us know where you're calling in from today. Sometimes it's fun to see people kinda connecting in the chat here and realizing that they are closer than they knew. So we are big on kinda building out the IT community here. And if we can help you do that today, we will consider this a success. So as I said, please feel free to to share there. Get involved with the q and a session as well. You should see that to the right of the GoldCast window there. Any questions you have, primarily for Jake. I suppose you could ask me questions too if you insist, but I I think Jake will probably be more interesting to hear from, frankly. So, speaking of Jake, today, we will be talking to one of our favorite customers here at Bling IT. That is Jake Fries from Solve, Solve Health. We're gonna be talking about how he uses the platform, the Rippling IT platform, to serve a growing startup as and not just as a lean IT team, though that is an audience that we care about a lot around here. More than lean, a solo IT team. It is truly just him, and he is making a lot of things happen. So we're gonna talk about his career to date, a little bit about how he is making all this happen and supporting this this growing start up, you know, more or less by himself using, of course, our tooling here at Rippling IT to help him do that. So, before we get into all that, let me go ahead and close that poll because I believe we're good there. Back to my slides. I forgot to share this fun one title slide, but there it is. I'll leave it up for a few seconds so you can fully, absorb the weight of today's topic. Yes, Randy. This recording will be available after the meeting. Just very kind of you to ask because that is the first item on my housekeeping slide. You will be getting this full recording on demand. Everyone here will. So you can watch it later and refer back to anything that you heard. Keep an eye on your inbox for that same email you used to register. You will find it there. Please feel free to use the chat and q and a fields while we're on today. I've already mentioned this, but just a reminder, these are a lot more fun and productive for everyone when when we're talking to each other. So we will try and get to all the questions that we can during the session, but we will save a little bit of time at the end to catch anything that we missed or follow-up later by email on anything that we don't cover with that time. So point being, if you have a question, please ask it. I will get you an answer one way or another. Finally, there's a ton of related content that we've attached to the session. You'll find a bunch of links there to read some of the free guides we've published. You can register for the next two webinars we have coming up in January after the holidays. Lots of good stuff there. Our hot keys playlist for, basically, a collection of sixty second or thereabout use case demos, show you how how the tool works. So please take a look at any of that stuff. Check out whatever catches your eye. But I'm not quite done rambling yet, but I promise I will keep this brief. Not on this housekeeping slide, but something I would be remiss not to mention is that in the very top right, you will see a button that says book a demo. That will let you book a demo with Rippling IT and see this for yourself in your environment. That is going to stay there throughout the session. Feel free to use it whenever the spirit takes you. You will make my day. But beyond that, of course, we hope sincerely that it will make your day because we do genuinely believe that we are rethinking IT operations in a way that can be really liberating for IT teams, especially those that are buried in a slog of manual busywork or siloed point solutions. Part of the way that we do that, and it's really pretty foundational to our, philosophical approach to IT here, is all of our components are built on your employee's data, whether that's their role, their office location, who their manager is, what have you. And that gives us a unified data architecture to draw from in automating all kinds of daily IT work, whether that is, you know, team specific app access or location based security policies or what have you. It's highly customizable because we're drawing from a dataset that allows you to customize basically whatever you can imagine. And like I said, that's part of our overall approach to product and underlying philosophy of really end to end native automation. We are very intentional here about the fact that we are not a platform in name only. We're not, you know, a bunch of a bunch of acquired software stacked up in a trench coat. That is not us. Everything we have is natively built, natively integrated, all centering on the core of rippling as a company, what you're seeing here on this slide, what we call the employee graph. Those are your people, and and that's what we believe is the most powerful, thing to draw from when we're automating all these workflows. So that is precisely what allows us to connect all of what you see here across the three core pillars of our product offerings, and that's identity and access, device management, and inventory management. I like to toss in warehousing just to draw a clearer line under that last one. But the point is we have quite a wide range of tooling to help solve many of the problems that land on an IT team's desk on a daily basis. So we're gonna talk about some of those with Jake right now. I promise I am now done. So, with that, I'm gonna go ahead and bring in Jake, get us started. And just to be clear, I believe I mentioned this already, but we will be coming back on after the talk to take some q and a live. So stick around for that, and hope you enjoy the conversation. Alright. Very, very glad to be here with Jake Friess, director of IT at Solve. Thank you so much for being here. I know you're busy. I appreciate you taking the time. So, let's let's get into it. But before we do that, just to introduce yourself, would you mind saying hey to the class real quick? Yes. Absolutely. Thanks for the opportunity. My name is Jake Friess, director of IT for Solve Health. I, am pleased to, join you, on this endeavor, and I hope it's I hope it's entertaining. Yeah. Right on. Cool. So I think it would be helpful first to kinda start with your background. We know you're at Solve Health now, but you've been in the field for some time. Can you tell me a little bit about your, you know, past work at, you know, what I understand to be larger companies, like Zillow, obviously, a very, very big organization. It's massively I mean, it's a publicly traded company. This this is a big enterprise, and I would imagine that is quite different from the way you're now used to working, at the start up you're at now. It's not really to compare the two in any meaningful way, but I remember you explaining to me when we met that you, you know, essentially, it's it's a real step change from having a lot of resources and a lot of, you know, probably bureaucracy in one spot. So you're now becoming, like, this one man show and, like, having to, you know, you you different sorts of challenges, I suppose, would be the shortest way to put it. It's like, when you look back to your time working in, like, a really large enterprise company, like, you were at Zillow for for some time, time, and I imagine you had a large team there, and you had, like, you had many people to manage and, like, a very, very large employee base to manage, like, tons of users and devices and all of that. Yep. Tell me a a little bit about that journey specifically, like, from Zillow to solve. Absolutely. When you are on your own and you had to support fifty, sixty people, like, you really have to stay on top of things. You really have to, be proactive, and you have to think 20 steps ahead instead of a couple, you know? The time with Zillow was amazing because, you know, when you go from a smaller team, a smaller company to a larger company with more, much more people, much more resources, much more money, you have the availability to you to branch out and really crowdsource things and, utilize, teams and their knowledge and, what they've learned in different ways. Right? You've got an army that you can that you can utilize, for either the work or the knowledge, the processes. And so, you know, taking all of what I've learned with Zillow and being used to saying, hey. Well, you know, we need this from the legal team. Send it over to the legal team. There's 20 people there. They're gonna figure it out. They're gonna make sure everything from a to z, the boxes are checked and send it back. When you then step into a smaller environment like Solve, you don't exactly have a legal team of 20 people. You know, you have to also, you have to put in a little bit more work to help your smaller legal team get to that point. And I think it's it's a unique it's a unique experience because you can take all that you've learned with Zillow or a larger enterprise, step into a smaller one and try to implement some of that. Right? The difference being is that when you don't have access to thousands of people, you gotta be a little bit more tenacious. You know, you gotta get out the old grit playbook and realize that, you know, when you need this big project done, you're not gonna have an army of people to do it. Like, you've gotta step up, and you've gotta fill in those spots because the business has needs, and they need you to, complete to complete some of those tasks. And you know, that's, it's a lot of responsibility, but if you do it right and you utilize the resources available to you, you can, you can get it done. It just takes more hands on just more tenacity to attack it and, and get there. Yeah. Totally. I I love your your use of the word tenacity there. I'm sure that's something that a lot of, like, the the y the y Combinator crowd would very much sign sign on to it. Like, that is what it Yeah. It takes, you know? And I think that's Yeah. That's definitely relatable for for a lot of people in space. But, I think and, you know, I think with with tech and being in a tech role, a lot of it is shiny. You know, you're working on a shiny laptop and, you know, the UIs are pretty and, you know, you just gotta click a couple things. You could sit down all day and never sweat. Right? For me, I I I like to maintain a little bit of that, like that grittiness, you know, like if I if there's something that needs to be done, I'm gonna do it. And I don't care what it's gonna take. Like, whether or not I'm just sitting behind a screen or I'm in person, you know, I'm gonna break out. Like I said, the grit playbook, the tenacity. Let's attack it. Let's get it done and move on to the next thing. So Yeah. Great. And I I definitely wanna return to, because I in my in our interview guide here, I definitely have, like, a couple sections where I wanna keep talking sort of about the career trajectory and and do a little bit of an advice column, talk with you. But, just to drill down on the on the the team of one aspect again, because you you had just, you you had just mentioned that there are simply a lot more things that need to get done for the business that falls specifically to you, not you and, like, a group of other people. It's like, it is Right. It's on you to get this done. Yeah. Like, we are here to talk about automation today, so I would be remiss if I didn't ask you, like, how are you using automation to kind of, you know you can't remove every little thing that you're ever gonna have to do, obviously. You're just saying, like, maintaining, like, that kinda can do it spirit is is important. Like, agreed. But are there any, like, good examples of things that you have been able to sort of take off your plate from a manual standpoint that allow you to devote time to those things that do the grit that you are that you are just kind of, alluding to there? There. Yes. Absolutely. So I think about it. I I have two approaches. Right? For me, my my my philosophy with IT, no matter what role I'm in, I'm here for the end user. Right? Like, my mission is to make sure that my job is done to help with them with efficiency and get them what they need and when they need it. Right? A lot of that now wasn't like this ten years ago, but there are a lot of ways you can automate that. And I'm just gonna it may be a a shame shameful plug, but I'm gonna plug rippling here. One of my passions, about IT is making sure that the, first day experience for end users is as a 100% as possible. And I think I've mentioned this before in some discussions with you or or coworkers. I know I've had in my past a couple roles where you show up on the first day, people don't know who you are, your access isn't ready. And at the time when everyone wasn't remote, your key card wasn't ready. I know there was one role I took on where I was stuck in the lobby for, like, two hours on my first day because no one really knew I was coming. And I I really never want that experience for anyone else. And so with the advancement of technology, that that's allowed an IT department to automate some of the stuff that users need on their first day from, you know, whether it's their email account, the permissions to what they need in a file system, the permissions to the apps that they need to access. A lot of that a lot of the manual work and remembering of setting that up can now be automated, especially by a resource like Rippling. So I can build the automation side in effort to, optimize the first day experience. And that's kinda what I'm going for. Right? With Rippling, when our new users start with Solve Health, they get an email to sign in, you know, in the, on their first day in Rippling. They can look at all their HR information. We now can allow them to take their, required training courses from, you know, anything from harassment to, HIPAA to, cybersecurity awareness. They can now go in and, acknowledge, like, an employee handbook. It's a one stop shop. We've set it up, and Rippling's, actually does this very well to where I don't even have to to worry about it. Before Rippling, we had, I think, three different resources trying to complete this task, and I would forget to configure them from time to time. You know? But, you know, with the advancement of technology, like, some of that stuff is so easy to do so that way, you know, folks on their first day, it is ready to go, and they feel like, okay. They knew I was coming in for a first expect you know, my job. My first day was great. I've had access to all my things. I've been able to log in to my laptop. I can sign in to Slack. No problem. And I hear this time and time again as as one of the questions I ask during new hire orientation for IT is were there any problems getting signed in. Right? And 98% of the time, it's it's as smooth as a a fresh jar of peanut butter. So, that's that's to me is a huge win. Yeah. You know, I you're you're well aware of this, but, like, we talk about onboarding a lot around here, not just because it's, you know, something that we believe and hope that we do well and can help customers with, but because like, we also share your belief that it's it's really important. Like, I have also had that experience of showing up on day one and waiting in the lobby. Like, I think most of us have experienced that at at one point or another, and, like, it can be it can be, like, genuinely dispiriting. And, like, this was this is a problem that we're we're out here trying to solve, with help from with help from guys like you. So, we definitely appreciate your your input. Yeah. I did mention I wanna return a little to some kind of more career advice oriented stuff because you've had such an interesting trajectory. And I just I wrote down something that you mentioned when we first spoke that I would that I wanna pick up on now, and it's how you've gone it it's something we hear a lot in this field, and it's it's this kind of, you know, don't bother me reputation that the IT department can often be stuck with. Yeah. I think as a department of one, I would imagine it is especially important that you you put a you you go out there and, like, kind of make sure that you're connecting with the rest of the business. And I would have I would think you have to be really intentional about that in your position. But, and, like, I I I've met you now a couple times. You're obviously a very friendly guy yourself. So, like, beyond your own personal disposition, though, like, what is your advice to people out there who may be trying to shake that reputation? You know, this is a long held stereotype, and I I think people struggle with this. So I'm curious what your perspective is on that. No. I I love this question, and this is something I actually, spoke a little bit about, to all of Solvin and one of our all hands. And, you know, I will also say it's something that, I have honed in a personal way just due to my life experience in getting a little older. Right? But I think it's a it's a very powerful thing to remember that we are all just humans. We're all humans living in the world that we have created and contribute to. Right? And just because I'm in IT and I completely understand how access to a site or how a computer works doesn't mean that everyone else is going to, nor do they need to. You know? I do not expect someone on a legal team to understand why, you know, their printer won't connect. Like, I I just don't expect that of them, nor do I think they really need to know. But what they do need is for it to work, And they do need to know that, you know, if it's not, they need to know where to go. And so I like to focus and I like to remind myself of the humanity part of work, of we are all just human. You know, when someone reaches out for me, reaches out to me for help, I often will start with, how was your weekend? How's it going? How are the kids? Oh, I saw the picture of your dog you posted. It's such a cute dog. You know? And I like to try to connect at a human level to show people and to let them know that, like, hey. There's no there's no animosity here. There's no there's no arguing that's gonna happen. I'm here for you. How's it going? How can I help? And it really kinda opens the door and sets the tone, for, just providing great customer service to our end users. I do that with vendors. Anybody that comes along, like, I try to remain human to everybody because every we are all just humans. You know? And I'll admit that doesn't always work. But most of the time, it does. Some and, you know, as you go along, you start to learn, or I should say, one of the benefits of a smaller organization is you can take the time to learn the personalities of the people you work with, the people you support, and you learn how to support them according to their personalities. And it just it's that extra step of customer service that I that I just like to provide. Great. No, I I can totally appreciate that. So thank you for that answer. I've got like one more kind of broader general IT career trajectory advice before we we move on. But, I'm gonna quote your I'm gonna quote you back to yourself one more time here, but because I thought this was another interesting thing you had to say when we first met. But, as someone who's worked in workplaces of varying sizes, like, widely varying sizes, you told me that this is something that you you would run into in in past stops where direct quote is three people can hear one sentence three different ways. I think any of us who have been in the workforce for any amount of time can relate to that to some extent. But I am curious from your lens in IT specifically, how has that shown up in your day to day in the past or even or even today in the present? And how have you gone about dealing with those ambiguities? Because again, like, you are you have to be as you're as you've just been explaining, like, you need to be out there connecting with the rest of the organization or else, like, you as IT are not doing as good of a job at your job as you could be. So, like, how do you approach that? Yeah. Yeah. I did say that, didn't I? So so that was that was actually something that I'll attribute to Zillow. I had a management position at Zillow where, you know, I had a team of five. And over the years, I eventually turned into a manager of managers, which was a a phenomenal experience. But one of the courses the training courses that Zillow put us through for managers was, I freak I think it was like situational management or situational awareness, something along those lines. And it basically outlined that, you know, you could have a team of four people give one direction, but you cannot expect all four people to absorb that information and act on it the same. Right? Maybe you can, you know, like a military setting or a sports setting. Right? Because that's kind of the expectation. But when you're working with individuals who each have their own career ambitions, their own, various levels of experience, their own personalities, you can't give one straight direction. Just expect them all to just execute similarly. Right? And so you can manage. I did develop ways to manage. I I'd like to think effectively by learning, again, the personalities of those folks who I manage. It it would take time to really get to know them. And, sure, you could give a directive, but you could then follow-up with, hey. Did you understand, what we're going for here? I know one of your strengths is this. Can you focus here? Right? And that person's gonna take this maybe this directive that they're not crazy about. They can then look at it through, like, a little bit of a different lens and say, yeah, I do have that strength. Here's how I can here's how I can contribute. Different for another person, different for another person. And I think as a leader or just somebody who interacts with a lot of different people throughout the day, that's very helpful to know that, you know, this person in engineering versus this person in HR or marketing, they're not gonna understand all the same. Right? And as you go through and you work with some of these folks, you can learn what their strengths and weaknesses are. You know, maybe, this individual in engineering doesn't need as much handholding, but maybe this individual in HR needs just a little bit more. If I'm gonna be a 100% effective at my job, I'm gonna think about that. And that's how I'm going to approach working with them. Yeah. Totally. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for that. I think, like, we've talked a lot about I think let's call those soft skills, which are, of course, important for everyone. But, pivoting back to harder skills, I suppose. I I do wanna to bring the focus back to some automation stuff now because I think, like, your current position as team of one managing IT by yourself is really is really fascinating to me, and I think, like, that is that's a daunting position to be in. So you spoke about this a little earlier, but I do wanna come back to the onboarding question. It it is something we focus on a lot here at Rippling, and it's something that, you know, again, like I said, we certainly hope that we make easier. So I would love for you to expound a little on, like, what you have found your onboarding experience to be like in past lives versus what that looks like for you now. Like, what are the biggest changes? What are the things that have impacted your day to day in our regard? Yeah. Yeah. Great. No. I can remember, you know, ten years ago, right, when you have a new hire, part of your role as IT was to set up the account, the access account to the network. I think at that time, it was a a Microsoft environment. So you set up a user in active directory, set the name, you set what the you hope the email would be, what the permissions are, and it's just this monstrous manual task. Right? And you go from that resource. Okay. Well, they need access to this resource. Again, set up the account. This resource, again, set up the account, set up the account, set up the account. And at the time, that's just those were the options. You know? That's that's what you had available to you. With, a resource like Rippling, Google can do this to various degrees, Okta, some of these SSO companies. IT is now in a in a an area where a lot of that can be created and set in the background, and HR can now onboard someone in Rippling if IT completes, the background configuration for that user account or that account at Zoom or that account in Slack. A resource like Rippling can go in and set all those accounts that that user needs. Right? And you can get it to a point which I am actually actively working to with Rippling to where IT doesn't even need to be involved if I did my job right. Right? HR can onboard this person, enter them in Rippling, and then the automation takes care of the rest. And it just it wasn't like that, you know, ten years ago. And that's just been a huge time saver. It's been a huge win in regards to reducing manual errors. Right? Like, I don't know how many times I fat fingered or, you know, spelled somebody's name incorrectly. Now that almost never happens. But that little thing is a blessing because if you can set up 10 accounts, but you set up, you spell the last name wrong, you've gotta go back in 10 accounts and correct that. Right? And so there are little things that I think people don't easily think about when it comes to the benefits of automation, and that is one of them. It takes a lot of it takes out those manual tasks, but also reduces those manual errors to save you time and efficiency, going down the road. And that just you know, that wasn't always the experience. That also applies to, you know, if you need to, set up a new laptop, a new endpoint for an end user. There's automation you can do to where an IT individual almost doesn't even need to touch it anymore. Right? And, you know, ten years ago, you would have to set that up. You'd have to start it. You have to configure it, install Slack, install Zoom, install, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. And it's just this massive time consuming thing that allows for a lot of errors. Now, if the automation set up right, you can trust that that'll happen and it'll be done correctly in just a complete time saver. So. A 100%, somewhat related territory, because I would imagine automation plays a role in this too. But I I don't wanna leave this conversation without asking, like, you about the field that you're in because it's quite specific. You know, you are handling you're handling medical data. You're integrating with with EHRs and and all that. I would think that you at SAW have an even larger security and compliance burden to worry about than your average company. That's awesome. Can you can you explain how you've been approaching that and just how you've managed to, like, stay on top of again, these are, like, quite daunting, you know, this is this is a a daunting undertaking for a single person to do. So, like, how are you managing that? Yeah. No. You know, I would say, you know, learning since joining Salt, and, again, being a team of one, though I do have access to a couple some external resources, some security minded folks, some engineering minded folks. When joining Solve, I was not aware of the intricacies that were required around, health related data. Right? That just didn't exist in the real estate world of Trulia and ZOLL. Sure. And so one of my tasks from my CTO was to come in, understand our environment, implement the security controls, the security policies needed, in effort to make, an effort to get Solve Health up to speed when it comes to, HIPAA compliance, health care data compliance, password policies, those kind of things. Right? And so I was able to take my knowledge of IT, right, and apply almost kinda like a layer of icing for data compliance, which was completely unknown to me at the time. Luckily, I've I've been able to reach out to some resources. I've done a ton of Googling, but this is also kind of comes back to that tenacity factor. Right? I didn't know really what a lot of that was, but I knew that I could figure it out. And then I knew I could do the work to get there. Right? And so once I understood the mission and once I understood the goals, I started putting in place the efforts, to get Solve Health to a place to where we were able to get HITRUST certified. You know, you establish a stock two report, and just learning you know, realizing that there's this whole other facet of IT or whether you wanna call it, security and compliance that it just was not privy to with, previous roles. So now needing to do IT with that on top, it was quite an effort. It still is, but it's almost kind of a little bit more rewarding as well because you know that the work you are doing is also securing some pretty sensitive information. It's it's really stabilizing the environment that Solve Health is working in. And that makes us that much more, that much more attractive to potential partners and consumers to know that we are taking care of that, you know, level of compliance and we are taking it seriously. And being in IT is it's it's a great thing to learn, but just how, you know, how intricate and how severe and how serious, you should take some of this stuff. Yeah. I I gotta say, I've I've interviewed a lot of people in this field. That is the first time I have heard compliance likened to icing, and that that's a new one that I may need to I may need to take and keep that. But, Yeah. I I will say, with Solve, I've learned through my day to day, I think, compliance first. And then I I step into the IT roles. Like, how will this how will this affect Solve's security and compliance program? Oh, okay. And then you take on the next step. You know? But, you know, in this role with this type of environment, that's that's just how I've had to adapt. Right. Yeah. Oh, I I can imagine. But, listen, Jake, this has been this has been awesome to talk with you. I really appreciate you Yeah. You sharing all of that, like, super valuable insights. I'm I'm sure everybody listening would agree with me. So let me thank you again for your time, and I'll I'll let you go. Yeah. Thank you very much for the opportunity. It's been great. Awesome. Alright. Take care. And we are back. Let me get the correct set of slides going here. Jake will be with us shortly. So well, first off, let me first say thank you very much to everyone who came out today to watch and engage. We are not done yet. We did go over a ton of stuff there, so I hope you all took something useful away from this already. Yes. We'll get to the raffle for those of you eagerly awaiting that. But, before we do hit q and a, I do wanna spend a couple seconds just previewing the next two sessions that we have coming up in a few weeks' time after the holidays. So, we're taking a few weeks off. Hopefully, you are as well. But when you are back on the grind come January, we will be too. So, hopefully, we will see you at, this session on the seventh. We're gonna be talking to another customer of ours named Paul Strauss. He's the CIO of Carollel. He'll be talking with our brand new team member here at Rippling IT who are very excited to welcome to the org, and that is James Sorrenti, our new IT strategy and community lead. He is great, as is Paul. So if you're at all curious about the common missteps that organizations run into when they are building out an in house IT function, highly encourage you to join us, for that one. Ton of experience between those two. I promise you, you will you will learn something. So, that is on the seventh. On the fourteenth, a week after that, we will be back with, kind of, like, a tips and tricks talk that we're hoping to do on a recurring basis every month. Kind of just part of the initiative of trying to show and not tell what Rippling IT can do. So this particular session will be with one of our lead IT solutions consultants, which is what we call sales engineers around here, and our IT community manager, Carter Francis, who many of you will know from prior sessions, and they're gonna be talking about using the platform to automate policy enforcement in all its many forms. So, that is that. Let's do some q and a. So I think what we ought to do here, if it's all good with you, Jake, I'm just gonna take these in order, Careful. and I'll let you go on these. So the first question is from Paul, and I'm just gonna read this verbatim. Paul asks, as a solo IT later leader not reading it very well. As a solo IT leader, what's the best way or ways multiple to identify and nurture automation champions within different departments to help drive healthy adoption? Yeah. Awesome. Thank you, Paul, for the question, and honestly, thank everyone or anyone else who took the time to join us today for this. It's a really neat opportunity. I was I was looking at the question there. I think and this is just a specific to my to how I work, and that's how my answer is gonna be. I've I've definitely, figured out how to not be an early adopter. I know it's it's very tempting to want the latest and greatest of the technologies, but I also remember a lot of that is just marketing for customers and subscriptions and etcetera, etcetera. And so I'm able to take a step back and take some time to really poke through and review how some of this technology is supposed to work, how it could work, how the team developing it wants it to work, but oh, it might not do this yet or might not do that yet, but the marketing says otherwise. And so I take a little bit of time to really get into the details of whatever product or process I'm looking at. And then if I ever or when I do choose to pursue any kind of automation, I think of it as in I'm going to automate that which I can trust to be automated. If there's something that is, you know, marketed as, oh, this is going to be automatic once you set this and this and this up, but you have to farm a bunch of alerts or you have to double check that it's working. Or when it doesn't work, it creates an hour's worth of work for you. In my opinion, that's just not automation, and it's just not worth it. And so when I look at something, I I need to know that it's going to work. I'm going to test it given the opportunity. And then I'm I usually approach with kind of like a slow rollout because I I wanna trust that this product or process is gonna work, but I am also gonna verify it. And if it doesn't work, then I'm gonna pull I'm gonna pull it back, and I'm gonna, lick my wounds and try to figure out how to execute execute a little better. Right on. Well, thank. you, Paul, for for getting us started. We'll, we'll get back to you because you have another one in this list. But let's, Yeah. let's go to Logan's question next, and that is, what suggestion could you give to us, IT leaders, in trying to identify a person's specific strength? Maybe the. question can also help, non IT leaders listening in on what steps they can do to showcase their strengths. Yeah. Yeah. Great. Logan, thanks for the question. I actually really like this one. My approach here is I ask questions. I ask a lot of questions. Sometimes maybe too many. Some folks definitely can get questioned out. But I think that's, the best way to learn about anything, about anyone is just just ask questions and, really listen listen first, ask after. I I I sometimes do it so much I wind up actually, interrupting people, especially over, like, a video conference in in person. But, you know, depending on what what somebody's talking about, what they're doing with their life story, I wanna ask questions, and I wanna try to pick things apart, in a very diplomatic fashion to where it doesn't feel like, you know, I'm attacking or criticizing. I'm just, just genuine curiosity. And you can learn so much by learning how to ask the right questions about what someone's talking to you about. And, you know, you I think of it as kinda like asking questions peels back the layer, that, people like to put up on pub in a public way. You know? And it really helps get into, like, this intimate knowledge of people and what they're doing with and what they're working on. And I think that's when you really learn people and how they're working, and what their strengths and weaknesses are. Great. Yeah. Very much very much agreed with that for the record. Not that anyone asked me, but just saying. Alright. So back to Paul here and another sort of it's called a soft sales a soft skills question. But, what skills. of a solo IT leader should be carried into a new role where they may manage teams or work as a bridge between teams in which they may have to adjust to scaling or reframe automation usage, not just deploying? Yeah. Good question. I think when you're in an IT role, you you would really do well learning how to work with others. There's a lot of folks in leadership positions who want to, you know, die on the hill that they're on with the decision that they're in, the project, the direction they're taking it. And, if you can figure out a way to work well with those folks and, you develop a rapport with them by asking questions, by seeing offering how you can help even if it's something you don't really have knowledge on. Get your foot in the door to their mentality and their mindset and see, you know, where you can connect, what you can do to to help move the mission along. I think it's, you know, it's it I I'd like to approach anything IT IT leadership, working with business partners, business leaders with a very diplomatic approach because that's how people respond best. And what I need ultimately is people to work with me and to work with me well and come along on the journey and vice versa. And so I tried my best to remain someone who is easy to work with, and someone who is consistent and someone who can be trusted. And I think if you can if you can establish some of those, some of those facets, then, people will start to respect you, and they'll come to rely on you, and they'll come and they'll have confidence in you. And, you know, it it sounds funny, but it'll even, kind of open you up to if you make a mistake, Well, Jake's great to work with. He's always, you know, always contributing, always helpful. It's fine. You know? Let's do better next time. And that's really benefited me a lot too is just making those relationships. Yeah. No. I I truly believe that's pretty sound advice no matter what part of the org you happen to be in. So that. is that is good and widely, applicable, anything. advice. Yes. Exactly. Yeah. I think that that might just be a life lesson sneaking its way into into this talk. But, Yeah. that is great. Randy, I see a couple of product focus questions here. I will get in touch with you and loop you in with one of our SCs who will really be able to speak to that a lot better than you would like me to. Trust me on that. But, with that, I am gonna let you go. Jake, you've. been you've been awesome. Thank you so much for your time today. The last thing that that I will do just to send us off here because we do always I know. The drum roll here. We do always give give out one $500 gift card to one attendee. I've run the numbers here. I've used the draw the names thing. Our winner today is Terry from Loop. Terry Terry Deer, I should say. I hope I'm not mispronouncing your name there. Apologies if I am. You will get a note with a postal link, and I will explain what that is tomorrow. So, keep an eye out for that. Happy holidays to everyone. Really appreciate your time, especially while, the high holidays are underway here. So so thank you so much for being here. Hope you found this useful, and, we hope to see you again hopefully soon. So, till the New Year, wishing you all well, and happy trails. See you guys.