Harry Brelsford has had 20 years of SMB technology experience with numerous technological certifications to his credit. This led him to found his company SMB Nation in 1999, which is currently a 49,000-strong community of small and medium business technology professionals dedicated to providing information technology solutions. His prolific academic experience started with his MBA in Project Management from the University of Denver, all the way to becoming an adjunct professor, and then later on, as a Dean at the Graduate School of Aspen in Technology. His passion for his craft has led him to becoming an in-demand speaker at industry events, publishing hundreds of articles about business and technology, and launching books like “The Pocket MBA”. To this day, Harry remains an active entrepreneur and is the force behind XPmigrations.com and his latest startup, 420MSP.
The global pandemic has forced a lot of us to innovate at a more rapid pace. While this is true for all businesses across different industries, pivoting has never been more apparent for ultra-small businesses trying to survive, or people dipping their toes into entrepreneurship for the first time after an unfortunate retrenchment. But is working for yourself really the right next step if your cheese got moved? Today, I am joined by SMB Nation founder, Harry Brelsford to talk about the concept of Finders, Minders, and Grinders, the business lifecycle, and his Pocket MBA book.
6:07 How this recession has its own unique characteristics unlike any other
8:27 Understanding the finder, the minder, and the grinder
12:17 Harry talks about the different personality tests to assess your career or business fit
14:16 Go with your domain expertise
22:10 Don’t get too comfortable
25:29 Harry talks about delving into the hands-on side of entrepreneurship in his book: The Pocket MBA
34:29 Harry’s passionate plea to entrepreneurs
"Let’s innovate our way out of this one."
GET IN TOUCH:
MARK LEARY:
www.linkedin.com/in/markhleary
www.leary.cc
HARRY BRELSFORD:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/harryb
https://www.smbnation.com/
Wednesday, March 3, 2021
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
business, book, mark, people, entrepreneur, pandemic, grinder, community, idea, run, recession, smb, industry, minder, finder, write, domain expertise, jobs, msp, consultant
SPEAKERS
Harry, VO, Mark
Mark 00:00
So we're rolling, cool. We are live. This is you're doing it wrong with Mark Henderson, Leary and my name is Mark. And I have a passion that you should feel in control of your life. And so what I do, as you know is I help you get control of your business. And part just part of how I do that is by letting you listen in on a conversation between two people who have a passion for excellence in the entrepreneurial world who are talking about something you already know something about. But this time we're digging in way down to the nuts and bolts so you can really get a sense of what's going on, and start to unlock those parts of your business that could be better and break through the ceiling to ultimately let you live that better life. So before we begin my constant reminders, please give us that feedback. It's It's so helpful, so important, it really makes a big difference. Give us the feedback, positive and negative, we're happy to respond to any negative feedback you got. We love it all. And of course, share and subscribe and get this in the hands of the friends that you have who could use this information. So that's it for housekeeping. Let's get into the content. My guest for today is an old friend Harry Brelsford a guy I've known throughout the industry for a long, long time. And he if you don't know him, he's the founder of SMB nation, which is for 49,000 member organization of IT service providers. And it is focused on SMB technology consulting, he holds an MBA in project management. He was a technical guy, all kinds of certifications like the MCC, like I actually have an MC se from the old days. So you know, we don't talk about that a lot. But, you know, 20 years of SMB technology experience 12 years teaching as an adjunct professor, serve as the Dean of Graduate School technology at Aspen University, is an active entrepreneur. A numerous of numerous books to his credit, not the least of which are his his latest work the pocket MBA, and I'm happy to welcome my friend Harry Brelsford. How are you my friend?
Harry 01:54
I'm good, big old howdy to you. Thanks for having me on. I'm gonna I'm gonna speak English properly. today. I'm going to speak Texan.
Mark 02:02
Yeah, that's right. You should do that. So pocket MBA. Tell me about that. What's who's helping? What's he doing?
Harry 02:09
Yeah, so let's, let's back up a little bit. No, thank you. Um, if we back up a little bit, and he keyed on one point, I did teach adjunct for 12 years at night, the typical Tuesday, Thursday night talk taught more technical courses at Seattle Pacific. You loved it, loved it. And on the way up, it rounded out my experiences, right. And so the idea was, I never let that go. Right. It's it's a nice life, the act done properly. The academic community, they all claim you don't get three months off in the summer. But you know, and this book is coming from that genre, right sort of a textbook that can be used in a college amongst other things. So here's what happened. In 2003, I wrote a book that has the same construct, we'll explain a little bit later about finder minder grinder and I did it for small business server. So what we saw was there was the resource kit, there were the technical books, the how tos. But there wasn't a business Bible about how to be a small business server, SBS consultant.
Mark 03:17
So for those who are not familiar, SPSS is a Microsoft software product designed to help small businesses run their infrastructure, and that's the product side. But how this affected the world you were in was they were as a whole it was businesses and professional service people whose job it was to learn the software, install it and grow business helping their customers with it. So it was a product that Microsoft presented and they were trying to make a business out of it.
Harry 03:42
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. Mark is, you know, from the industry, the the fellas and the ladies are not the best business people. They're, they're coming at it from the system engineer perspective, they came up through the game made them and mentioned the MCC. So I wrote the book, I forgot about it. Okay. I mean, it was in in hand for many years. And then you know, it peaked and all that. So I went to at the beginning of the pandemic, Mark, I went to the mini storage, I scratched my head and said, You know, I want to have that business breakout book that doesn't have any type cast, just writing technical books for that community. I found the CD ROM of the Microsoft Word files for the book. And let me tell you, that saves hundreds of hours to be able to edit against that. And so I use that it was my passion project during the pandemic recession. I essentially you do like
Mark 04:38
Hal Elrod, are you going to take the same book and give it 20 different titles, and then five co authors and publish the same book over and over again,
Harry 04:46
they're there. The industry has a little bit of what we call curated content. Yeah, there is a little bit of that.
Mark 04:53
Content is good. The Miracle Morning is good stuff. And Cameron Herald had a version of it. He did so in that Good stuff too. But that is interesting. If you can take one book and make 20 out of it, that's a good business decision.
Harry 05:05
There's some, yeah. Get on you. And so it was this, the the early part of the pandemic, if you can picture me sitting in my bed with a laptop up, you know, and typing, and I was typing two to three hours a week, a rewrite always goes much quicker. And so now we have the pocket MBA a business book on how to be an instant entrepreneur. Hope that answers your question. That's how we got to today. Yeah.
Mark 05:33
So we've talked extensively about this insert entrepreneur, and particularly around the what causes the need to solve this. And there's an there's an essence of it there. periodically and cyclically, we find the community full of a bunch of people who are considering entrepreneurship for a number of reasons. And typically, it's a major change in an industry or a major change in an economy that puts a whole bunch of people out of work, or at least causes them to have to find new cheese in a new location. Right? Yeah. So your speak this is speaking to people who are thinking about chasing new cheese, is that fair?
Harry 06:07
It it is. And I'm going to key in on for lack of a better word, the econometrics of it. That's, that's a that's a $10 word in Texas. But stick with me that the idea is I'm a student of the economy, right, a lay person, but I, you know, follow the different feeds in TV channels. And Mark, this recession is different. Oh, wait, had its own unique characteristics with the financial collapse? This one's different. I mean, there are a lot of jobs that are not coming back, okay, just period and in some of the jobs reports are still a little disturbing, even at these later portion of the, the pandemic, arguably. So the idea being that we're gonna we're gonna have to innovate our way out of this one guy's you know, let's just let's just assume there are no jobs. Economic assumption, as they say. So that's, that's what drove the idea of, you know, and I'm passionate about this, man. I love it when people do startups. And I can go on and on and on, you know, for me, I've done I think 12 and it was really one that hit but I've enjoyed every single one and I got to running right now we'll let you know how it goes in about a year.
Mark 07:26
So So you mentioned finder, minder, grinder. I'd love to unpack that and slow it down because it rhymes so well. I they run together in my mind. So finder, minder, and grinder What does that mean?
Harry 07:38
Yeah, yeah. So let me you know, and I'm a storyteller. So what you see is what you get. So my brother Jeb is a career lawyer in the Silicon Valley middle, oh, Park all that and worked hard. And so at one point, he started a law firm practice in the late 90s. I don't know if you remember that. Company excite at home, they were going to be the A o l for broadband. AOL was a dial up community, excite at home by the way it didn't work out. It didn't work. That's why you might not have heard of them. But but they, he was a lawyer to them and some other things. So in building his law practice, and then running the Silicon Valley branch for Perkins kui, a large law firm. He talked about lawyers need to think in terms of finder, minder, grinders. So a lawyer has to go get the clients that's finder, he has to manage the client relationship and manage his own law practice, right in terms of time slips and billable hours, and you know, the admin, and then grinder is do the work. And so that's how I first learned about it many years ago, and it applies to technology applies to darn near any industry that the paradigm of professional services. And my brother Jim ended the story with pick two out of three. And, and I, again, let me give you a story on that. My, as you mentioned, my graduate degree was in project management. And there's a triangle and project management you have a triangle in one side is time the other is cost and the other is quality. And the triple says right, yeah, and in in project management, we say pick two out of three. Right? And in typically what happens, I've done some work for Microsoft on projects is the the one thing that we call it crashing see a crash one of the legs to keep the project on schedule. And Microsoft's response was always to throw money at it. Right. So maybe the quality was good and you wanted to stay on schedule. And the way you stayed on schedule was he threw a lot more money at it. So back to find your minor grinder. One person can typically do two out of the three. It's very rare to find someone who's triple bright
Mark 09:59
Well, that's it Cuz I ice the triple is interesting because what I advise a lot of my clients and friends is that there is a polarity to the type of work you do. And that you're either focusing your energy outward into the community or focusing it inward into your business, which is the visionary and integrator model on EOS, then there's also sales, which is outbound, you're doing prospecting or you're going inward into account management and the polarity like for you to switch context, you have to like almost reverse the blood flow to be able to do that. Yeah. And there's work and thinking that that doesn't is not compatible, when you put those two together. And so when you put three where you've really got those outward and inward and you've kind of got this oversight, where you're either proactive or reactive, and proactive and reactive, do not coexist. Well. And so those certainly exist in that.
Harry 10:49
Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, you can almost sort of take it to another level mark, that finder minder grinder can be how you organize your company. So for example, I'm, the thing I enjoy most is hunting, gathering or finding, right, and I enjoy the work. I am not a good CEO, I've hired around that. A lot of my listeners will know Jennifer hallmarks, and with me coming up on 14 years, she is a CEO, right. So the trains run on time the bills get paid. Yeah. So I
Mark 11:22
sent her the concept and EOS Absolutely,
Harry 11:24
yeah, I've had to hire around my weakness. Right. You heard it here first. No.
Mark 11:30
No, and you've you've pointed out another trait that I've encountered is that visionary leaders are oftentimes at their best when they're not having to observe the machine, so contradictorily, some of the finest leaders are actually at their best as individual contributors, and that they lead the organization in terms of vision. And then their best work is hands on with a customer or hands on into design or hands on in selling, but not the management and the observation side of it and sort of taking a step back. It's really interesting to see is kind of what you what you parallel there as well. Yeah, yep. So when you advise people how to how to walk me through you tell somebody you know about this? How does somebody on Pathfinder minor grinder to get from where they are to where they want to go?
Harry 12:17
Yeah, so there's, there's a couple of thoughts. One is, in the book, I write about the different personality test. And I've I've done at some Myers Briggs and desk, and I'm sure there's some others. I've gone through Myers Briggs a couple of time, times, and it told me loosely translated that I am not a good employee, he, so I'm not a good employee, he. And I, quite frankly, you know, struggled with some jobs I had, I had a job at the savings and loan buy day at grad school. And Mark, I'm not a banker. That's just I didn't fit him. And fortunately, they moved me over to the IT department in red boxes called NetWare showed up and the rest is history made made made my career, quite frankly. So there's, there's that that you need to kind of, you know, have an assessment and see if you really fit that in and a layer on top of that. A good friend of mine, in San Antonio, Texas, about my age, she works for Chase Bank and the call center. Right? So when you call on your Southwest credit card at Chase, she answers the phone and takes care of you. She is not an entrepreneur, her career is that of wine employ. Right? And she's good at it. She she's she's got it down. I wouldn't last five minutes in a call center. Right? So so there's that the other thing would be people so you need to have a talk with yourself. Now. You may not have a choice with the pandemic recession in the world economy reset, you may have to become an entrepreneur, but at least have that that that clarity upfront about what you look like. The The other thing would be to go with your strength. So in writing this book and doing research, so I did these, like in a book, it's not entirely all my idea. Like I didn't create this paradigm, right? There's a lot of conversations in business books about becoming an entrepreneur, becoming a consultant. And so there's these two gents, over 50 in Australia who have a system about becoming the over 50s consultant, okay, and you buy into that you buy into the system, you know, the systems there 1500 you know, $5,000, but if you sign up before the end of the webinar, it's only 1500 for this system. Yeah. Yeah. So So yeah, so I went to their webinar twice, actually, because the second time I recorded it with Camtasia. So I could Remember it?
Mark 15:01
I won't, I won't tell anybody.
Harry 15:02
Yeah. And they were really slick and their idea, and I give them attribution. But their idea was, you're over 50, you're unemployed, go with your domain expertise. So everybody who's a professional has some degree of domain expertise. And I'll give you an example would be, you're an aerospace engineer, aerospace employee and Boeing in the Seattle area, the 25,000, layoffs, you were impacted. Let's pretend your domain expertise is supply chain management. And boy, you talk about a supply chain. That skill is transferable in the new economy, as it were, I believe to grocery store chains, right, because what was the one thing early in the pandemic where they had to pivot pretty quickly htb out of Texas, a well respected chain, they ran out of water, they ran out of toilet paper, they ran out of this, they ran out of that, and they had to really manage the supply chain. And they sorted it all out. But the point is, if you're an over 50s, individual, and you're you're not employed, and you're recreating yourself, start out as an entrepreneur, in all likelihood, you'll be a service provider, and you would go with your domain expertise, right, and then just transfer that over. Now that said, I write about this. That's how you start right, you need sourdough starter. I mean, the you know, the other alternative would be to drive Lyft and Uber at night. And that's also true. I mean, those are real stories, while you're kicking your startup. But what I like about mark and Simon with the over 50 consultant is, that's something you could do realistically, within 90 days, right? You could go get a client like HDB, no, you're not going to get them on day one, but you got to kind of, you know, do bizdev and get a client. And now you got cash flow. But let's pretend your passion is really fly fishing and fly fishing lures, and you have the next great idea about what a fly fishing luers should look like to snag the Alaska salmon. I I would offer get stabilized get settled as an entrepreneur with step one, and then that's your passion project for step two, maybe at night, and on the weekends, and then maybe you can finally cut over to being a fly fishing lure manufacture. But Mark is, you know, when you get off into the new idea category, that's where I say only one out of 12 works or has been my experience. Right? You're taking on some risk? Yeah.
Mark 17:39
So there's a couple things that come to mind. One is, I think, I think I guess it was Michael Gerber, I give him some credit for these. He deserves a lot of credit for a ton of the things I teach him the idea of difference between being an entrepreneur and working for yourself. That's one concept. It sounds like in certain cases, you got to know the difference, like are you going to scale your supply chain business? Where are you? What are you going to do with that? Yeah? Or are you just going to work for yourself and make an income, which reminds me of Tim Ferriss his concept of the muse. You familiar with that concept now, but I know
18:07
of Tim
Mark 18:08
Yeah. So Tim Ferriss concept is that you can do a lot of great things, if you can take risks, because you don't need money. And your best decisions will come in a place of lack of pressure and fear and scarcity. So he says, you know, make make a really low risk, not risk, low maintenance, low effort business, that'll that'll generate a couple grand. So now you can stop worrying about the rent and the food. And now it makes sure and his whole idea on the Muse is make sure it's low effort, right? Make sure you're doing something that doesn't take a ton of your time, because now you can go to work. And now you can sort of be your own angel investor in in trying and experimenting in this next business. So like if you can, if you have a decent manageable income and supply chain, and your passion is Fly, fly tying, you can spend all your time fly tying it r&d, and then create that business you want from the position of power and risk mitigation.
Harry 19:06
Well, that's exactly what I'm doing today. So my existing company is in a mature business model, SMB nation, supports the MSP community managed services providers. So those are the computer guys and gals. And that's a mature business model, quite frankly, Mark. We're a 22 year old community. And the reason I say mature is number one small business server went away our reason for being
Mark 19:34
Yeah, your reason for being is no longer thing. Okay, fair enough.
Harry 19:37
Yeah. Number two, there's been significant consolidation is I believe you're aware that the as markets mature, any market matures, there's typically consolidation and concentration. And so what you're seeing is for to be profitable with the automation that technology is caused. You have to scale right? It's it's hard to be A one to five computer guy company. And, and so they typically get acquired or retire. Yeah. And they join a larger organization. Like my friend of yours, Tim, Lonnie, who you interviewed some time back, right so he's created a real business and and so that has matured nothing and so goes the MSP model. So goes hairy. But markets still my paycheck and I think it will be for another couple years. But I, you know, I'd be less than honest if I didn't have a transparent talk about business model maturity, and it's okay. It's okay for markets to mature, right. That's, that's not wrong, I didn't do anything wrong. It's more that's just what markets do. And then I have to go recreate myself. So I have two startups going on. If for another show another day, but one is in the, the one of the fastest growing industries in the in the US and Canada. And then the other is kicking around an idea with a business partner about a seminar company, which in this is going to be a year out. But guess what, it'll be based on some of the pocket MBA writings, like a two day seminar in the Texas Hill Country. So So I call SMB nation oxygen, what Tim Ferriss is referring to, that's my oxygen. And I've lowered my standard of living in this transition, and it's all good, it's all good. I wake up with a skip of my step.
Mark 21:30
No, you're hitting, I think, with a great deal of transparency and vulnerability around the fact that every, like every business has an has a life cycle, that causes some form of cheese movement, if you want to move the cheese gonna move, and you're gonna have to move with it. And entrepreneurship definitely brings with it the reality that you're gonna have rainy days and sunnier days. And that's just you're going to have to adapt to that and pretending otherwise is going to put you at significant risk. And so you're gonna have days and weeks and months and years where you're, you're barely working and making a ton of money. And other times, we're gonna be working like crazy to try to catch up and innovate and move around. And that's just the nature of it.
Harry 22:10
Yeah, and that first point you raised is a real trap. When SMB nation, we we hit, you know, thank you, and oh, three through 2012. Good times. And I saw myself and I'm not going to do this again. But Mark, you get comfortable, right, you get cut out going, gee, I'm gonna, I'm gonna duck out of here about 215 and go ride the 32 mile chilly hilly bike route on Bainbridge Island, Washington. You know, you get comfortable and I regret that, you know what I'm saying? I have learned my lesson. Don't get comfortable, man.
Mark 22:50
Yeah, you're not the first person to share that. And it's, it's interesting, as I've learned and digested it, that there isn't, you really ever can't ever get comfortable. Because sometimes to a large extent, the more successful you are, the more at risk you are, because there's a lot of inertia, and there's a lot of expenses. And if you build a big infrastructure that infrastructure has to eat, and it can run you toward the cliff that much faster. So your visionary risk is that find your minor grinder mentality. You know, as a business scales, that finder isn't just about finding business, it's about finding the future. And you have to really feed the business path that comes at you faster and faster, the more successful you are.
Harry 23:29
Yeah, and I peeked at 14 employees, and you're certainly right. You know, learn learn streetwise and some of those categories and how to manage people and hire and so on. And the boy Italia in the recession again, we are good times. But you know, we weren't immune to the recession. And oh, wait for a few years. But the idea was there were times where the Indians ate before the chiefs. Let me tell you that I call that overhead man.
Mark 24:03
Yeah, well, yeah, that's a whole deep well in and of itself. So in terms of advice to people, I want to make sure we get to the essence of this finder minor grinder is not insignificant, that's a lot to think about in terms of roles and transformation people right now who are finding and feeling their their cheese moving. And I think it's happened that a couple different levels as an individual in a company who might find themselves having to make a different direction for their life. And even as companies who are running mature industries, mature businesses, they're going to have to pivot a little bit and start thinking about how to do that. And I do think that that metaphor does very well apply to an individual who has had to sort of look at the business themselves, but I don't I don't think it's lost on larger company as well. Where, okay, what, what is my role here and making sure that is, am I the Finder, and if so, have I been doing a good job? it. And I have I've been getting a little too comfortably. And do I need to feed some powerful vision into my company to get steered in the right direction so I can get my minders on the right stuff. And those grinders can be right size and Right. Right. trained and right. Right, right person for the work we're doing.
25:18
Yeah. Yeah.
Mark 25:20
Is there anything in that model anything in the in the book you'd like to share specific, obviously want to direct people to who are interested in the topic to check out the book, but you know, what do we miss?
Harry 25:29
Well, I think what we missed is the hands on nature of the book and a couple of places. So here's the deal. An academic book is usually a fairly high level conversation, right? And again, I consider it in a kind way I consider this an academic book. That is a four letter word and certain communities like entrepreneurs, like oh, you know, you're a pointy, pointy head professor. Maybe I am. But I have that I have the 10,000 foot conversation, the mission statement that this that that. But what I'm really proud of is Brelsford rules, a 12 is sprinkled throughout the book. And again, part of the feeling was, on the one hand, if you're ever going to get a PhD, you have to invent something. Okay, so yeah, you have to do a unique thesis or invent something, right. And, and so that rules of 12 breaths words, rules of 12, again, would align with the academic community. But more importantly, its speed on the street and hands on. So I'll give you a couple. And I did this, that when I started out, when I left the large, the regional accounting firm in 99, as an IT consultant and started SMB nation that I write each week, give out one business card and collect one business card. Now this is back in the old business card days right now. Now, everybody's LinkedIn, you know, the list, let's connect. But it's the same idea and just consistently get base hits just consistently do it. Because guess what, Mark, you get to the end of the year, and you have arguably 50 business cards, right? My first SBS newsletter went out to 55 readers, and our magazine peaked at 60,000 readers a decade plus later. So this stuff works, right, you get that inertia. But I have all this prescriptive guidance about give out a business card and receive a business card once a week, 12 weeks in a quarter fiscal quarter, it's kind of I think it's 13.5. But I get the point, take a week off. And then one or two more examples would be okay, how are you going to get the business cards? Well, once a week, you need to go to some event like the Kingston Washington Chamber of Commerce has their monthly mixer that counts. A Meetup group, I write about meetups, I even write about starting a meetup group in your area of domain expertise. So you can attract clients. But once a week, you got to do something man and and people forget that in this digital era, and the that now, zoom towns and zooming. You know, when when it when it's at all possible get out once a week, and my dad used to call it circulating. Right. He was a lawyer too. And he told the staff lawyers on the Alaska pipeline, you know, you really need to be going to the American Bar Association monthly lunch, right? You just need that's just on the schedule. And maybe you do some of that stuff. I don't know, if you're at a trade association or a chamber or meetups, you know, I know you're out. You're out circulating? For sure. I
Mark 28:48
mean, certainly in the community that does what I do the leadership team coaches, and so a lot of the coaches hang out. And then a plus entrepreneurship entrepreneurs organization, this stage, the peer group. So those are the places that I spent a lot of time.
Harry 29:00
Yeah. And then the final example I'll give you is I pulled from Warren Buffett's secrets of success. You probably know this. Not everybody knows this. But apparently he reads for two or three hours in the morning. And we want a luxury to read your wall street journal to read the New York Times. I try to read for an hour every morning. not always the case. But the point is read 12 once a week, read a magazine article, read a book do something. So again over the quarter, the fiscal quarter, you've done 12 things to educate yourself. Maybe stretch a little bit, right. But I still consider reading the secret to my success. You know, people ask how did you get to where you are? And I said well, I I read in there like read a lot of people that a lot of people don't read anymore. market?
Mark 30:02
Well, I listen a lot. In fact, one of the recent podcasts about reading a lot of people listen to this book. I mean, read it. No, you don't know and no one reads you. If it's not an audio, no one's gonna consume it. So you if you could write the book and you can put it on the bookshelf like I got behind me. But did I open up a lot of those books know that the odds are very, very high that I listened to it on a dog walk or a run or in a car riding somewhere? Yeah. So I think that's a very powerful concept to make sure you're feeding your brain with the right stuff. And, and I've heard a lot of people talk about that. And I think one of the most important concepts there is a start. So if you're not consuming anything, that's a problem. And then from there, you should put some a lot of attention around curating it, because you can fill your mind with all kinds of things. And there's an awful lot out there. And you should put a little bit of awareness around what it is in terms of what matters, what world are you trying to manifest, and who you trying to become. And make sure that you're feeding yourself the right stuff and hanging out with the right people.
Harry 30:59
Yeah, well, and let me layer on top of that. My sister is married to a career doctor. And he's intellectual. And he reads, and I got to thinking to myself, when I was writing this book, I'm like, you know what, I want my cardiologist to read journal articles, right? I want my doctor to develop their expertise, and it changes and so on. So your mic, you're doing the same. If whatever your line of work, you can read and make yourself a better grinder?
Mark 31:32
Yeah. Well, that's, that's another concept. And I don't want to spark something that should be another whole hour conversation. But it is important to understand the difference between I'm sure you've seen this, somebody has done the same job for 10 or 15 years in a row. And doctors do the same thing. Anybody in any industry can kind of get into the habit of the 80%. And they don't, they don't venture off into the the refinement aspect of their world. And so that's a, you know, that's actually a different caution. I do caution that you go to the doctor, and there's somebody who's been rinsing repeating, and they and they don't really sharpen their skills. There's a lot of people out there who do I know, too many doctors. And now I understand that a lot of doctors really are not sharpening their craft, but a lot really are, they really are passionate about their craft. And I think they kind of what you're talking about is anybody should understand what their craft is. And that's the first step in that you should ask yourself, What is your craft? Am I am I MIT's IT specialists? Am I a leader, a manager? Am I somebody who solves problems? What is my craft? Where's my craft right now? What will it be? In? What? What information might I need to consume to raise the level of that craft? Who might I hang out with who would be a good companion on the journey as I graze that crash?
Harry 32:44
Yeah, and again, the overlay that it's actually a legal concept, Uniform Commercial Code, there's this concept called The Merchant of the trade. And that is both, you know, for permitting, but also litigation and the idea being that if you hold yourself out as an expert, you're a merchant of the trade and Mark, a really practical example of this would be some really good conversations. I've been involved in this year about compliance and cybersecurity. So our industry, being an industry of acronyms, I defined MSP earlier now there's mssp. Okay, so a managed security solution provider. Okay. And you take on some liability, like, for example, the business agreement you signed with a client for HIPAA. Right? Yeah, hear your take? And you will be a merchant of the trade, right? what's what's the council in a lawsuit going to say? Well,
33:40
Mark,
Harry 33:41
I, you published all these articles, and you hold yourself out to be an expert. So the mistake you made, is this a Kindle malpractice Mark? Yeah, for sure. So the point is, stay smart. Stay current, stay smart.
Mark 33:58
Well, awesome, man. Great stuff. Anything else we missed? No, I
Harry 34:02
think, you know, just keep keep positive out there, folks. I mean, again, just to reiterate, the I I'm carrying the flag of innovation on this recession. Unfortunately, I just I really feel passionate about where Mark we're gonna have to innovate our way out of this one.
Mark 34:21
That's what it sounds like. My final question like what's your passionate plea for entrepreneurs right now and it sounds it's in the vein of innovation is that fair?
Harry 34:28
Yeah, yeah, it is cuz I you know, I I don't consider myself a wall street bear. But this this was a reset brother. This one was I'm not gonna forget this one.
Mark 34:45
Yeah, no, I think a lot of things have happened in the last 18 months that people you know, left a mark right, you know, even if it was positive. I know a lot of people who have had their best year ever and it's like you said you still you know, leaves a mark in some some capacity. There are stories for everybody. Yeah. Thank you. Awesome. And so that's it for our time. And if anybody wants to continue the conversation with you how, what's the easiest way for somebody to find you?
35:10
Well, you know, to be honest,
Harry 35:11
I would say, just go up on LinkedIn. My name is Harry Brelsford. My son's name is Harry Brailsford. So between the two years, you're gonna get one of us. But that's in these podcasts. That's where I think is the appropriate way to find me. It's just pop over to LinkedIn. do write me a connection request. Don't Don't just, you know, push button. But give me some context that you heard me on marks. Mark
Mark 35:37
show, for sure. Well, good, man. I'm grateful for this. I am grateful for the wisdom grip for the friendship. And you know, and we'll be talking very soon. So that's it for today. If you found this content valuable, please get it in the hands of your friends and colleagues who can use this make sure they have access to it because it is no good if the people who need it don't hear it. So share that and of course, give us the feedback. We love the feedback, the good and the bad. Everything that God is helpful for us. And it's really, really does make a difference for us. So until then, we will see you next time on you're doing it wrong with me. Mark Henderson.
VO 36:08
This is you're doing it wrong with Mark Henderson Leary for more episodes and to subscribe. Go to lyric.cc