730 ASCII Live Powered by RYTHMz

[Uncle Marv]
Hello friends, Uncle Marv here with another episode of the IIT Business Podcast and if you are watching this stream you will see that we have a live feed as I am here live in St. Petersburg at the ASCII Edge, the last leg of the ASCII Edge series which is called the ASCII Cup. There will be a big old party here once we're done. So I've got a camera set up and right now they are in a session.

People are taking away the brunch that we had and that is our live stream. So yes, you can see that we are live at ASCII. The other reason I am doing this live stream is because I'm joined by Steve Copeland with RYTHMz.

[Steve Copeland]
Hi, how are you guys?

[Uncle Marv]
Good to be here. Glad to be here. There we go.

I was just watching. There we go. Oh my.

So Steve is here because as the new partner of the IIT Business Podcast, a new vendor of the channel, we are streaming exclusively on the RYTHMz internet in a box. Internet in a box. Yes.

So if you're wondering if the hotel Wi-Fi is good enough to stream, I don't care because I have my own box and I'll be showing that a little bit later but we've got a box here. I've got a very special SSID set up for me here. Thank you very much for doing that.

And RYTHMz will be my powered by RYTHMz live.

[Steve Copeland]
Yes. I'm glad to do it. It's a lot of fun.

I mean, this is, cell signal is a little weak out here. I've noticed it all over town just because I think there was a hurricane or two that may have come through. Yeah.

So there's a couple different pieces but it seems to be going well. I'm happy. All right, we've got another box in the room.

So we're good. We're proud ASCII members as well. So very, very excited to be an ASCII with the Uncle Marv piece.

Yeah. So there we go.

[Uncle Marv]
So if you are wondering, yes, St. Petersburg was one of the areas hit by Hurricane Milton. Milton actually came in south of us. So a lot of the heavy winds and storm surge did not come through.

If you saw my video that I posted afterwards, we are literally blocks from the Tampa Bay Stadium where the roof was blown off. Yeah, we passed that as well. I was like, whoa.

Yeah. Very interesting to see. So it's now an open air stadium for the foreseeable future.

[Steve Copeland]
Retractable roof. Yeah.

[Uncle Marv]
So Steve, I mean, we've chatted before. You were a part of the IT Nation PitchIT program. I was, yes.

Which is culminating in a couple of weeks in Orlando. Don't know how you didn't end up in the final three.

[Steve Copeland]
It was a tight race. I did actually get to talk to a couple people. It was very, very tight.

Very proud of the final three that made it. We'll still be there representing. We're going to be doing a lot of fun stuff at IT Nation.

We've partnered with half of our PitchIT vendors. There's a bourbon and cigar night. So a taste of three bourbons and then actual hand-rolled on-site cigars.

So we're part of that. And then with the MSP block party, we've partnered with Total and we will be doing the Flo Rida concert as well.

[Uncle Marv]
Nice. So, yep. So that is IT Nation, folks.

That is coming up November 6th through the 8th. So that'll be in Orlando, Florida. So if you're in Florida, you got to make it.

If you're not in Florida, why don't you come down and visit a nice climate this time of year?

[Steve Copeland]
It is actually very nice. It's a little humid for me because I'm from California. So I'm a little spoiled about the humidity.

[Uncle Marv]
This is low humidity for us. What are you talking about?

[Steve Copeland]
It hit me a little bit. I'm like, okay, this is interesting. But I had to go to the Wawa.

So you guys have Wawa.

[Uncle Marv]
So I was and viewers who may not know, let's describe Rhythm in more detail. I pretty much described it internet in a box, but it's obviously a lot more than that. So explain that for us.

[Steve Copeland]
It is internet in a box, but really this is a 5G solution. And one of the things that we've been talking about over the last year going out to all these conferences is really it's what's coming. 5G is going to take over.

We were looking at a demo of 6G yesterday. It was just 15,000 times faster than 5G. So it was ridiculous.

It really is, everything's in the cloud. And that's why one of our taglines, take back the cloud. Everything's in the cloud.

Internet connectivity for any size partner, any size business is absolutely crucial. So if you lose access to your accounting system, if you lose access to your ERP, even if you lose access to just email, really it becomes a connectivity side. So we've come into a business where with the channel program, we're leading the quadrant in business continuity.

So that's one piece of it. We've got some great partners that are doing some interesting things. And as we joined this, I came back to the MSP community.

One of the things that I really enjoyed was learning how we could do more. And we had one partner, they were going to do a $10,000 deployment of 5G. And this is for a downtown area with Starlink and pieces like that.

They were going to make $0 on it. They made $7,000 when they partnered with us. There you go.

And that's on one day. So there's a lot of different pieces of business continuity. And nobody, and I say this all the time, and it's really funny because I've had one vendor come up and call me and they needed a box.

Nobody's ever had this, where your partner or your client calls you and goes, hey, we just opened an office. We need internet by Monday.

[Uncle Marv]
Never had that.

[Steve Copeland]
Never been an issue. We come in as that ISP stopgap. The other side of that is obviously business continuity, staying up with always up situations, you need that.

Disaster recovery. We shipped a lot of boxes out to Tampa. One of the things that we did, we had some partners out here.

We suspended billing until everything was done. There is some cell towers that went down so I can see it, right? We've done events.

We just did a World's Away event with Chainsmokers, Tiesto. I don't know any of these bands, and I don't expect you to either. Are you telling them friends?

No, this is a 7,500 person event. Chainsmokers, Tiesto. I'm not going to name everything that has run World's Away.

It was a great first-time, first-year festival. We were able to provide connectivity and we partnered with the ticket company. So when the ticket company came to us, they were using another piece and they came and I was eye in the sky.

I stayed out. It wasn't my type of music, but I stayed back and we did. I stayed back as the eye in the sky and we kept the ticketing up and we kept the POS up and we're able to keep all of these different crucial systems in this ecosystem up.

The ticketing company called me and they were like, we want to partner with you. And I said, well, that's great, but we're a partner only company. So how do you do that?

And we kind of talked through it and they were, you know, these events charge $8,000, $6,000, depends on where you're at. And I said, the benefit that we have is with our partners, no matter where you're at, we can have partners on site. We can have partners do that.

So we're developing this into also a lead source for our partners. And that's going to become something more and more, especially as this ticket company, another ticketing company, it's not Ticketmaster, but it's pretty decent. So having these pieces out because on-site connectivity is crucial for them.

You can't scan a ticket; you can't do anything. So finding these new opportunities to bring back to the channel, right?

[Uncle Marv]
Well, I mean, you mentioned a lot of those big things, but let's go back to, you know, the customer that calls you and says, Hey, you know, we're moving in on Monday. This would have been great for me a couple of years ago, where my client moved into a new building and did not have internet for months. And it, you know, there were multiple reasons, but the point is, is I could have taken one of these boxes and set it up.

One of the reasons they didn't have it is because I can say this much, Port Everglades is where they're actually inside the port. And there's only two vendors that are allowed to provide service into the port. It was during COVID.

So everything was backed up and they just had to wait. There was nothing we could do.

[Steve Copeland]
Bringing in a box would have solved their issue. And it is something that's very important with some of the other things that some of our vendors are doing. We had one vendor shoot out a newsletter to his clients.

And he said, Hey, are you guys doing conferences or events over the next year? We can help you provide internet, right? And literally, I think he had four responses immediately.

Because when you go out to these conferences, the hotel will charge you for three megs, $5,000. And they went, Okay, this is amazing. This is great.

We're going to, we're going to jump this in. So he's actually, I've got a couple appointments with him to make sure that we can get that side of it down. So there's a lot of different, you know, I'm on a panel later today, and I'm not going to actually talk about 5G.

It's going to be more AI.

[Uncle Marv]
I was going to ask you about that. Because I mean, you're here, obviously. But I saw you were speaking.

Can you at least because these people that are watching or listening, they're not here. Okay.

[Steve Copeland]
So right now, it's interesting, because I laughed during this time. Right now, the MSP community and your clients are going through something that we haven't seen since 2010, 2011, with the advent of the cloud. Okay.

So that is coming with his 5G connectivity as a part of that AI is definitely a part of it. If you think if anybody's been on LinkedIn, and you think you're getting hit up, your clients are both being hit up. We can help you do this.

Have you used AI for this? And so really, it becomes how do you the ever evolving channels, what I call it, but how do you evolve to catch that? How do you evolve to make that?

I'll give you the preview. There's only three ways, in my opinion, that MSPs can use AI today, that I see that is value safe, secure. Okay.

One is operational efficiency, that operational efficiency within their own organization. And then the second one is a knowledge base, a ticketing knowledge base. I think that's invaluable right now for tech support.

But thirdly, is not compliance, but monitoring of AI. And I think the problem is, nobody's monitoring AI. You're starting to see it at the enterprise level of people are cutting it off.

[Uncle Marv]
Yeah.

[Steve Copeland]
Because I don't know what Susie is going to look at, or Tim. And can Tim see what is the average salary for a project manager in Phoenix, Arizona? Yes.

And they should be able to see that. Can Tim see what every project manager in Arizona is making? No.

And that becomes the problem. There's no safeguards for that.

[Uncle Marv]
Well, and not only that is who is going to be in charge of the information that is disseminated on behalf of the company that you may not get to see- And where's it going? Susie does an AI research project and submits that, and it's wrong.

[Steve Copeland]
And where's it going?

[Uncle Marv]
And where's it going?

[Steve Copeland]
So Susie uploads all of the financial data in a totally innocent, nice way to see, hey, what can we do to make this, how can we make my company better? Really, just not even in a furnace actor, but an innocent actor. So I think there's training for AI that needs to happen.

I think there's a monitoring piece that needs to happen, and really not even just going into compliance issues, and that becomes a big issue. But more importantly, how do you train your clients? Because they're hearing it, they're seeing it just like we all are, and it really becomes that.

But AI, 5G, and then what's called IoT, I think you and I have had this conversation before. The steam engine was just a lab toy until somebody invented the railroad. So the steam engine, right now, AI is still a lab toy.

5G has moved out of the lab toy piece. IoT has definitely moved out. There's internet of things that are going on that's amazing, and it's called high value, low data.

And you can track... There are two industries, I'm only going to name one, that really lead to the internet. I was going to say, agriculture really leads the internet, and they're using a lot of these 5G box, 5G over satellite, and these 5G boxes to kind of go out.

Garlic farms, we have a partner doing huge things with garlic farms. And where do we water, this is in California, where do we water when and how? And what is the soil temperature?

What is the water piece on there? And all of that is done with these little internet of things.

[Uncle Marv]
Well, we're seeing that. I was talking to another podcaster who does home gadgets, and he always has somebody on talking about the irrigation systems that they're coming up with, just for residential, in terms of the way that they can use AI intelligent irrigation systems that will water where they're supposed to. They can actually do framing and shaping so that you're not washing the side of your car.

I mean, so there are some things coming out that it's really going to be practical.

[Steve Copeland]
And that's all led by high value low data. The actual data transmission is minimal, right? But the value of that and being able to use that, and we've talked about this, and this has been a big joke, but they've talked about how they're bringing down a server, and that server is going to do the pieces in a local retail restaurant.

I think I've talked to this a lot. And instead of doing that out in the cloud, it's better to do it here. So, and they're calling it edge computing.

Edge computing is coming back down into this whole internet side of it. And really that's being led by the latency of 5G, AI implementations, small language modeling versus LLMs, and then the small language modeling going up to LLM. All right.

Well, there's the preview of...

[Uncle Marv]
I don't think you're going to make it through that whole presentation, but good luck.

[Steve Copeland]
I think we'll have some fun.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. So, well, we're still live. So it's up and running.

[Steve Copeland]
It is. If it was choppy, I apologize.

[Uncle Marv]
Well, my listeners will let me know.

[Steve Copeland]
Oh, I know they will.

[Uncle Marv]
I know they will. So this is one of those tests of your internet in a box. I am on location, streaming all of my gear, my laptop, my tablet, my phone, my Rodecaster.

Everything is connected to this RYTHMz in a box. So... My phone's connected.

If you want to know whether or not this box will support you, I think a live stream is a pretty good test.

[Steve Copeland]
Live stream is probably the best test you can do.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. Thank you so much. Well, Steve, thanks for hanging out here.

[Steve Copeland]
Thank you.

[Uncle Marv]
We'll let you get back to the show. Thank you all, folks. I'm going to put back up the camera so you can see that, yes, we are live here at ASCII.

Nobody's out right now because they're in session, but that's going to do it. I'll be back with another show probably later today, but always head over to itbusinesspodcast.com. Follow us on your pod catcher to know when these shows go live.

Check you later. Thanks. Hello, friends.

Uncle Marv here with another episode of the IT Business Podcast presented by NetAlly. And we are live in St. Petersburg at ASCII Edge. And this show is powered by our good friends at Rhythm, the portable internet in a box so that we can live stream and record over the air.

But this is going to be a fantastic interview.

[Dawn Sizer]
You say that. And yet here we are.

[Uncle Marv]
I have with me Don Sizer from Third Element Consulting, visiting Florida, not south of Orlando.

[Dawn Sizer]
Right. I didn't know there was anything south of Orlando. Who knew?

[Uncle Marv]
Now you know.

[Dawn Sizer]
Now I know.

[Uncle Marv]
Yeah. You'll have to get down to my office at some point.

[Dawn Sizer]
We do. We do.

[Uncle Marv]
So Don is here. I believe you made every ASCII event this year, did you not?

[Dawn Sizer]
Yes and no. So I did not physically make the first one, though. I presented at the first one in California.

So I was in multiple places at one time.

[Uncle Marv]
So you did a virtual?

[Dawn Sizer]
I did. I did. I defied the laws of physics and I was presenting in California while being in Florida.

[Uncle Marv]
Did you do an AI graphic virtual image of you?

[Dawn Sizer]
No. Actually, ASCII did a phenomenal job on bringing me in on Teams and stuff just to present. Yeah.

So it worked out really well. Only it's really hard to present to a very large audience when you can't see them. Yeah.

It's weird.

[Uncle Marv]
I do that all the time.

[Dawn Sizer]
I know. It's so weird. I struggle with it, even doing live streams and stuff.

I always struggle because it's like if there's not somebody else there with you, you're like, what do the people look like? Are they okay with this? I don't know how to function.

[Uncle Marv]
So I've thought of actually putting up a board of people's faces. I don't know if you remember when things started to go back live after COVID and they would have cardboard pictures of people in the stands at football games and basketball games. I thought about doing that in my studio.

[Dawn Sizer]
I don't blame you. It's hard. It's harder than I think most people realize.

[Uncle Marv]
Yeah. This is interesting because at least there are people there that if they were listening, they could at least turn around and acknowledge Wave or whatever. All right.

So let's talk about the fact that so earlier I did a recording with Stan Louissaint and he was giving his shout out to people and one of the shout outs was you. He sat in on your presentation.

[Dawn Sizer]
He did. He did.

[Uncle Marv]
Yeah. He asked a really good question too. He asked a question and I asked him to clarify where he was going with that question because I think he tried to get you to give something specific.

And for those that don't know, Don's talk was on automation and how to help it increase your operational efficiency and was talking about how they use automation at their business to help them grow in scale. So you had given a bunch of examples. You had talked about some of the tools that you use and he asked you, was there anything that came up that you thought about automating that you ended up not automating?

[Dawn Sizer]
Right. And what he wanted was an actual example of are there things that take too long, cost too much, that kind of thing. And what I gave him was if people are involved and you really should be dealing with people, you should go deal with the people instead of automating it.

But he's completely right. There are plenty of times when you have things that it will either take too long and or cost too much to automate a thing or it really doesn't take you that long to do the thing. So it shouldn't bother to automate it.

So it's the cost benefit analysis, right? Making sure that there's a true ROI on anything that you're looking to automate. So are there specific things that we've looked at?

I mean, there's so many little things that our techs will find any reason to write a quick script for anything if they can automate it. They will 100% do it or spend three hours automating something that maybe only takes them 20 minutes every two years to do. There's no ROI on that.

So anything that you're looking at when you're looking at an automation, there's got to be either a direct ROI, immediate. It's something you're doing on the regular over and over and over again, probably a couple of times a day that's super simple that you can do that will give you an immediate ROI, get it off your plate on to something else so you have more time. Essentially, you're just buying back your time to do other things with.

[Uncle Marv]
So let me ask this question that was not brought up by anybody, but as essentially a solo tech, I do have subcontractors and it's easy for me to script together things to save me time. It's easy to script together a couple of things where I can send somebody a file and say, hey, while you're on site, run this script. Those things work.

Does it get to a point where the larger you are, it's harder to look at automation? Because for me, I can script things where it would save me time where I would not have to bring in a second person. You have multiple people that you can bring in and shrink the time.

But is it harder to justify that when you're looking at a larger number of people?

[Dawn Sizer]
No, I think it's a slower process. So I don't know that it's a harder process or anything like that. I think it's a slower process.

So what you end up doing is that the conversation that has to go on around it is somebody will say, oh, I can automate that. And three other people will be like, yeah, you could. But why are we doing that?

So I think when you would say, oh, I could just automate that, and you just do it, we have that trial by committee of, okay, what are we trying to accomplish? What does that look like? How much time will that really save us?

Is it just easier? And or are there enough nuances to it that we shouldn't automate it? So I think it's a slower process, not necessarily the other way around.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. So let's go off of the ASCII script and talk about what's happening with you guys. So I know that you are growing.

[Dawn Sizer]
We are.

[Uncle Marv]
And it sounds like you're growing exponentially.

[Dawn Sizer]
We are.

[Uncle Marv]
Like huge leaps and bounds. So let me ask, if we were to take automation out of the equation, what are some of the reasons that you guys are experiencing so much growth?

[Dawn Sizer]
We have some clients that are expanding exponentially, which is fantastic. We have people that are finding us, which has been really interesting.

[Uncle Marv]
Not because of your marketing, right?

[Dawn Sizer]
Little marketing that we do, right? And to be fair, we do some marketing, but I don't know that we do the amount of marketing or put the amount of money into it that a lot of people do. It's more like we do some things on social media.

We have very targeted things that our CRO runs. It's a very strategic outreach kind of thing. That has been working though.

So I think that does play a part in it in a way. But when you're reaching out on LinkedIn and creating that relationship, then putting them into a drip and then creating more of a relationship, and then you're having a conversation and they're introducing you to their network of people, that's a completely different scenario than spaghetti-at-the-wall marketing, right? So I think it's a very different way of doing it.

It's a very targeted way of doing it. And quite frankly, it's a very smart way of going about it and building that relationship first and then coming along behind and saying, oh yeah, I mean, we can help you with that when something comes up.

[Uncle Marv]
Right. So companies expanding, that has happened to me, which has been fantastic. Anytime a law firm opens another office, it will be more income.

And I've always benefited from word of mouth referral marketing as part of what we do. And you know me, I don't really market, but I may need to do that in the future because I'm at a point in time where I want to grow the business and bring in some people and take some stuff off my plate. So I talked to some friends of yours, the girls over at Decoded Strategies.

[Dawn Sizer]
Oh, Decoded Strategies, yes.

[Uncle Marv]
So Kristen and...

[Dawn Sizer]
Annie.

[Uncle Marv]
Annie.

[Dawn Sizer]
Yes.

[Uncle Marv]
So I know that you use them.

[Dawn Sizer]
I do. Interesting. I do.

So when I say I use them, they... So we reached out to them about a year, year and a half ago and said, our website sucks. And they're like, yes, we agree.

And actually, I think what we said was, I think it needed some help because we don't know how to phrase our language appropriately for the audience that we want to target.

[Uncle Marv]
Okay. I want to ask you a question because most people would say that their website sucks only from an aesthetic standpoint. They don't like the way it looks or whatever, but were you doing it based on analytics or just that you didn't feel it said what it needed to say?

[Dawn Sizer]
It did not say what it needed to say. So analytics wise, we actually do fairly well. We don't get a ton of conversion and I'm okay with that.

We did not feel that the language adequately portrayed what it was we did and how we did it. And I think once you get down into the weeds of things, especially after 20 some years of doing what it is that we do, it's hard. It's hard to articulate that kind of thing and do it at a that the average person that you're targeting needs to hear it at.

Like I can spew it stuff all day and be really excited about it. That doesn't mean that my particular demographic that I'm trying to target is going to be as excited as I am.

[Uncle Marv]
No, they're not.

[Dawn Sizer]
No, they are not.

[Uncle Marv]
Okay. So you reached out to them about the website and what happened from there?

[Dawn Sizer]
So from there, they're like, okay, this is what we do. This is what it costs. Are we going to do this or not?

And I'm like, yep, we're going to do this. So we sat down and they interviewed Dave and I, my partner in the business, for I think it was like two, two and a half hours. And we talked all around all the things that we do, how we do them, what that looks like.

And they came back to us with essentially a wireframe on what language we needed to use on our website, on the front page of the website, what that looked like, what the calls to action were, where we need to pull assets in and then how to use all of that language throughout the rest of our marketing. So it was an endeavor to figure it all out. It was an endeavor to reuse all of that in different places.

So it was pretty significant.

[Uncle Marv]
Okay. So when did the new website go live?

[Dawn Sizer]
Probably about a year and a little bit ago. Yeah.

[Uncle Marv]
And have you seen any dramatic change? Do you have anybody that's gone to your website that you've talked to that they said, hey, yes, this was an easy process. It said everything that was needed to be said.

We picked you because of the website. Any of those?

[Dawn Sizer]
It was, I could identify myself in how the language is set up. So we specialize in high risk people. So the average ice cream shop, not who we're looking for, that kind of thing.

But anybody that has significant IP that they're trying to protect or significant data that they're trying to protect. Maybe they're an accountant or a law firm that does injury law or something like that. Those are all the high risk people.

They're like, yeah, we understand that you're talking to us. We can see in your list of people that we serve; we see ourselves there.

[Uncle Marv]
Nice. All right. So that was one thing.

So can you share anything else that has kind of spawned that growth? I mean, obviously not every client is going to expand exponentially.

[Dawn Sizer]
No, they don't. They don't. So some of it's strategic.

We knew from probably a year, year and a half ago, we were going to start expanding some of the services that we do. And we got down into the nitty gritty of it this year. And so we've got three new divisions coming up.

[Uncle Marv]
Okay.

[Dawn Sizer]
Yeah. So we have controls coming up. So access control cameras, surveillance, that kind of thing.

[Uncle Marv]
That's an interesting vertical.

[Dawn Sizer]
It is an interesting vertical. And we've picked our vendors very specifically that are very MSP friendly, and they're set for that particular scenario. So we didn't just go, oh, we're doing access control now.

No. So again, we've picked very carefully. We have a partner that will be coming along with us on that side of things that does the wiring, that does their wiring, electrical, and some other things.

Things that we don't touch. So their services end exactly where our networking picks up and goes forward. So really good scenario there.

We have an events team that's going to happen. So really big, large concerts event.

[Uncle Marv]
Yeah.

[Dawn Sizer]
So we have that coming online.

[Uncle Marv]
We need to talk.

[Dawn Sizer]
We do.

[Uncle Marv]
I just dumped an events company.

[Dawn Sizer]
Well, I don't want to talk about that.

[Uncle Marv]
Okay. Not today.

[Dawn Sizer]
But we're already in with some of the groups that we're using for that. So that's coming out really, really nicely. And then content on the other side of that, the marketing piece of certain parts of that.

When you bring up, say you're doing a large concert venue or whatever, a lot of them want to have the PR tied in and the marketing tied in and the media up ahead of time tied into all of that. So we have the context. We have the network to be able to pull that off.

So we're going to bring that up as well.

[Uncle Marv]
Nice.

[Dawn Sizer]
All right.

[Uncle Marv]
Sounds like it's going to be a fantastic time. And is there a timeframe that you see a lot of this happening?

[Dawn Sizer]
Some of it will start to go live here at the end of the year and then probably Q1, the rest of it will come online.

[Uncle Marv]
Okay. And will that sustain you for any length of time, like doing these three things? Is there a one year, five year plan that that's what you're going to focus on to refine it and make sure it's where you want it to be before looking at the next stage?

[Dawn Sizer]
I think a lot of it is that we're going to do one or two things and we're going to do them really, really well, document the heck out of it, make sure that we know what we're doing. We want to build out a very specific IT team that goes to each of those things. And we're just going to deploy that team for that particular scenario.

So we're looking at doing that. So to answer your question, yes, there is a plan as far as that goes and what that's going to look like and what timeframe that that's going to be. And we're looking at the next 12 months, what the projections are and how that's going to function.

And then after that, we're also looking at acquisitions in different parts of the country. Florida? Maybe.

[Uncle Marv]
South Florida?

[Dawn Sizer]
Maybe South Florida. Well, I mean, I've heard, I don't know that this is true, but maybe somebody can shed some light on this.

[Uncle Marv]
You've heard of the Everglades, right?

[Dawn Sizer]
I've heard that there is actually Florida, south of Orlando.

[Uncle Marv]
You've heard of Key West, right?

[Dawn Sizer]
I've been to Key West. So I know that that's there.

[Uncle Marv]
But you just can't skip over, you know, it's not Orlando, then Key West.

[Dawn Sizer]
Well, that's, I mean, that's how I understood it.

[Uncle Marv]
Oh, all right. So before we go, I'm going to give you the same opportunity I've given others. Anybody that you want to give a shout out to over the year?

[Dawn Sizer]
Actually, I'm going to give the shout out to you. This, this relationship started across this microphone. How many years ago?

[Uncle Marv]
Uh, let's see, it was pre-COVID, so going on five years, six years?

[Dawn Sizer]
Going on five years. And you are probably one of my favorite people in the channel.

[Uncle Marv]
Oh, stop it.

[Dawn Sizer]
No, you are. Legitimate, legitimately.

[Uncle Marv]
Okay, you've never said that before.

[Dawn Sizer]
Surprise, surprise. No, I have said that. You just haven't heard it.

That's all. Sometimes things just don't get back around to you. So that's my shout out this time.

[Uncle Marv]
Well, maybe I didn't believe it the first time I had to hear it.

[Dawn Sizer]
You probably didn't believe it. I've even written it in writing and you're like, whatever.

[Uncle Marv]
Okay, that sounds like me.

[Dawn Sizer]
Exactly.

[Uncle Marv]
So here's the thing I will say. It is much better to see people in person.

[Dawn Sizer]
Oh, it is.

[Uncle Marv]
100%. And I mean, we've probably spent 90% of the relationship over a microphone.

[Dawn Sizer]
Not in person, yeah.

[Uncle Marv]
Teams meeting and all of that. And it just doesn't ring the same when you're able to actually sit down with somebody and engage and it's not tied to a 15 minute slot or a 30 minute slot.

[Dawn Sizer]
And it's not tied to an event. It's not tied to an interview. It's not tied to business, right?

I mean, we've had conversations that have zero to do with business unless it's about the iguana business.

[Uncle Marv]
It might be other businesses. And Iggy says hi, by the way.

[Dawn Sizer]
Exactly. But no, I think you're right. There's a lot of this stuff that goes on that I think we forget as IT people that not everything has to be technology related.

And that really relating as people at the end of the day is so important.

[Uncle Marv]
Yes. Well, I will do a shout out back to you and say thank you. You are one of the people that when I started on this journey, most of what I did in IT was just simply related to me and my immediate surroundings.

And when I started to venture out and do some of this stuff and be a member of ASCII, do the podcast, there's a small handful of people that I met early on that I truly engage and truly am happy to talk with. You were one of those people. And it was always one of those things where you never know exactly how to approach the relationship outside of those things that we do.

And you have been somebody where I've not felt uncomfortable.

[Dawn Sizer]
Well, that's good.

[Uncle Marv]
You know, this is going somewhere positive.

[Dawn Sizer]
No, I know what you mean.

[Uncle Marv]
You meet people and it's like, okay, are they really who they appear to be?

[Dawn Sizer]
Yeah.

[Uncle Marv]
You know, are they the same? You know, when I meet them in person, are they people I really truly want to hang out with?

[Dawn Sizer]
Yeah, 100%.

[Uncle Marv]
And you're one of those people. That's probably the best way I can say.

[Dawn Sizer]
That's super nice.

[Uncle Marv]
And when you meet the wife, she'll let you know.

[Dawn Sizer]
Yeah, exactly.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. So we're going to end this love fest before Dave walks over and says something.

[Dawn Sizer]
Give my wife back.

[Uncle Marv]
But thank you for stopping by as always. And we'll see you again down the road.

[Dawn Sizer]
Maybe even in your neck of the woods. You never know. Maybe I'll come visit you.

[Uncle Marv]
Listen, I know that there's a point in time where you're going to do a cruise and you'll have to fly out of Fort Lauderdale, Miami.

[Dawn Sizer]
I'm not doing a cruise. It's not happening.

[Uncle Marv]
No?

[Dawn Sizer]
No.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. Well, let's say goodbye. And oh, look, Sean Lardo in the house.

That's going to do it, folks. Thank you to Don Sizer, Third Element Consulting for hopping by. And we'll be back soon.

Talk to you later. Bye-bye.