746 Building Community with Henry Timm

Hello friends, Uncle Marv here with another episode of the IT Business Podcast, the show for IT professionals, and we are here trying to do our best to help you run your business better, smarter, and faster. This is the Wednesday live show presented by NetAlly, and my guest that will be coming up in just a few minutes, I know you're waiting for him, Mr. Henry Timm, the man of mystery is waiting. But before we get started, I want to go ahead and do a second thank you. 

I put out a show earlier this week and gave a recap of all the conferences that I was at over the last three weeks, and you have noticed the high volume of podcasts that have been released, and they're about halfway through. I've got two more tomorrow and then one on Friday, culminating with the great Rob Ray. So those are all happening. 

I was at ASCII Edge in Tampa. I was at DattoCon of Miami. I was at IT Nation in Orlando. 

I will be talking about SWAG a little bit later as well. I combined all three into one SWAG presentation because you know what, it was too much work to try to do them individually. And of course, all the big news that happened while we were away, the big news at Kaseya with the 365 user, the big news at ConnectWise making much more advances and expanding their ASIO product. 

Some of you may not have heard, but our good friend JB Fowler, the gentleman that was behind a lot of the Domo stuff has left. And I don't know where he went. I don't know what happened, but John Carlo is still there and we are chatting. 

And I mentioned them specifically because many of you have noticed that they've raised their price again. They've actually done two types of models. They've got one site model, which is what most of us are used to where we pay for the device per site. 

And I think that's $35. And then they have a per device model, which is much more closely aligned with our MSP model. So the number of devices that you have at the site, which falls under what they call their persistent devices, is what you'll be charged. 

I think it's like a dollar and something per device. So if you've got a site with 50 devices, you'll be charged 50 times whatever the rate is. A thousand devices, you'll be charged accordingly, which falls in line with a lot of the MSP pricing that many of you are used to. 

So that has happened. No changes for me just yet, although I was presented with a one-year contract to extend with them, which I have not signed yet. I had a chat with my rep today and said, hmm, not sure about that. 

So of course, while I was in Orlando, I had a chat with the CEO at Auvik, a company that I have not spoken with before, the direct competitor to Domotz. And I think there may be something happening a little bit later where I do a show, Domotz versus Auvik, and we shall see how that goes. But looking forward to that. 

Let's see what other notes are here. Of course, coming up on Friday will be my interview with Rob Rae. I mentioned to you guys before that I asked him some questions about the Pax8 pricing. 

I asked him about the credit card fees, which was a big thing that has come up. Pax8 is passing those on to you, just like you are passing them on to your customers. And there was a big uproar about that. 

And of course, the partner pricing, if you're below a certain threshold, you'll be paying a partner fee or platform fee or whatever it is. That probably will be me because I don't have a lot of stuff with Pax8. So we'll see how that goes as well. 

A lot of other news out there. We'll get into some of that with our guest, Henry Timm. But let me make sure that I also give a big shout out and a big thank you to Thread and to Rythmz. 

Those were the two big sponsors while I was away. Thread was the sponsor for the IT Nation live streaming that I did there. They were the winners of the 2023 Pitch It competition. 

So I thank them for that. And Rythmz, the internet in a box company. If you saw, I did a live stream from IT Nation. 

I did a short one from ASCII. I did not do one at Datto. That's a whole other discussion, something I'll chat with Datto about for next year. 

But did the live streams there using my own internet through the Rythmz box. So that turned out to be fantastic. And I will be doing many, many more shows with that box next year. 

That's it. Why don't we go ahead and bring out our guest? And let's see if you are joining us here, go ahead and ask your questions in the chat. I see some people already out there. 

Hello, Darren. Hello Anna. And then, of course, Henry Timm says, holla. 

So our guest tonight, Henry Timm is the CEO of Phantom Technology Solutions. They are a managed IT services provider based in Rolling Prairie, Indiana, and founded in 2010. The company serves partners throughout the Midwest United States.

Henry Timm, how are you? I'm good, sir. How are you? Good. You're on point with the photo selection for this. 

Thank you. If you put those things out in public, they are open for use. Yeah, no, that's fair game. 

Fair game. All right. So you've had a busy last week, couple weeks here.

Yes, this is the busiest stretch. Actually, the busiest three weeks of conferences that I've ever had. I've never done conferences back to back to back. I did a one-day event and then a conference maybe a week apart, but I've never done that many days in that many weeks. 

And it will continue, but not in the conference manner. This weekend, I actually have a gentleman many of my listeners know, Mike Smith, who has a client here in Fort Lauderdale. He's actually driving to Fort Lauderdale tomorrow, and we have a network upgrade for one of his clients that we'll be doing Friday, Saturday, maybe Monday, depending on if it all goes well. 

So yeah, it's going to be a busy time. And then I've got a couple of other more opportunities. I just don't know if I'm going to take them or not. 

I mean, I just realized I am not going to keep up at your pace. Yeah, that's, I can't keep up at the pace I have been here myself. So yeah.

Well, why don't we start with that? Because that is the question that people probably most ask when your name comes up in conversation. The question is how in the world does he do it? So let me just ask everybody. I'm sure you've answered this in private, but I'm going to ask you in public, how in the world do you run an MSP and go to so many conferences a year? And let me ask you to qualify that first by saying, do you know how many conferences you've attended this year? Yeah, so I think I, I think I'm at 47 events so far this year, which is amazingly less than last year. 

I'm traveling less than last year, which is crazy. But I can say that what enables me to do it is that I've got a great team, both with my MSP and with the Tech Degenerates community. So I'm very thankful for that. 

Obviously not a whole lot of sleep, or at least not as much as I would like. And I'm very thankful that we've got some good SOPs and systems and delegation in place. As to why, for me, it's fulfilling a mission. 

It is about educating other MSPs that are out there, extending resources and that education to others, hopefully in removing some paywalls, and hopefully humanizing the space some as well. By the grace of several people in the channel, they've kind of afforded me or supported that endeavor. So a lot of these events that I'm traveling to, I'm either speaking directly involved in the event organizing, or there is a financial component to my attendance there. 

So it's not just paying to go to events to go to events and party and all that good stuff. It's about the content and having a direct impact on the industry and the future of the industry. So let me ask about the impact, because there's a lot of groups, a lot of people trying to make an impact. 

And it's almost as if there's, I don't want to say too many making an impact, but I mean, what is the actual end goal in terms of the impact? Do you have a specific point in mind? I don't know that it's a specific point. I think for me, it's seen some shift a little bit in the dynamic between MSPs and vendors and event organizers, where it's a little bit more equal between those three parts. And I think that kind of, I don't want to say this, I want people to realize that they can be vulnerable with each other, that there's strength in that, that there's strength in community with each other and cheerleading each other. 

There's historically been a lot of bravado in our space and a lot of chest thumping. And I'm hoping in time that we'll see more and more of that fade away. So, I mean, I think I know what you mean, and I'll be ginger as to how I say a lot of this but doesn't a lot of that seem to be changing with a lot of the private equity coming in and vendors are selling out and those private equity folks, they don't care.

They're looking at the bottom line. Yeah, that's kind of the uphill battle to be had here. But I think that there are enough people and vendors and MSPs in the space that give a damn, that they to see a profitable future for everyone involved, where everyone wins, as opposed to kind of a one-sided kind of return. 

So I think what's happening is, yes, you do have private equity coming into the space and polluting some of the products and events in the space. But I think you're also seeing kind of some pushback happen from the wider community where they realize that it's more than just the dollar value at the end of the day, more than just profit, that there are relationships and there's more to add to each other than just that dollar. So there's the private equity side, but there's also the vendors that are doing the marketplaces.

Now, to some degree, the marketplaces are supposed to be for our benefit. They're supposed to make it easier for our clients to go to our own store within a marketplace and purchase. But at the same time, if the doors get opened up to our clients so that they can see behind the curtain, they can see the price of things, they can see stuff, they can purchase things without us.

That's another component that could, and I'm not saying it will, I don't want any vendors yelling at me saying that I'm poo-pooing on the marketplace, but that makes me a little nervous. Yeah, for sure. And I think a lot of that is PE-driven, but I will add that not all PE is bad.

There are some good ones out there that do seem to understand the idea of a wider community and what makes our part of the space different. So there are those benevolent or semi-benevolent PE firms that are out there and do exist. Unfortunately, they are a minority, and so there is a commoditization that is being pushed by a lot of the PEs.

I think where we succeed though as a community is by sharing the tactics and the strategies that allow us to kind of pivot into that next iteration and evolve into those business advisors and add value to those clients beyond just the traditional services that we have been providing. So let me ask this question in terms of the degenerates, because I know that that's your goal, but perception-wise, people see the degenerates at the events and you're dressing up, you're having fun, you're telling crazy stories, and they may not see what happens elsewhere in terms of the community and stuff like that. I'll be honest, for the listeners here, I know I'm a part of the degenerates and to some degree I'm signed up for, and see, here's how bad I am. 

It was Discord, then it was Signal, now it's back to Discord. See, I don't even know. I know when I log in, there's like a thousand messages I haven't read. 

Fair. Yeah, no, we went Signal to Discord. And yeah, there was some strategic reasoning behind that. 

But yeah, obviously the costume portion of things that happens at some events is the most attention-getting portion of things, but I would encourage people to have a conversation with us, or just come explore the Discord, because there's a lot of value that's being created there that is available for free. There's a lot of mature MSPs that are looking for ways to give back, to mentor, to establish relationships with their peers in kind of bi-directional, symbiotic relationships. So I know I've had some conversations, and I know some of the stuff. 

Can you describe to listeners who may not know the Degenerates in terms of what happens, and what types of conversations are had, what types of help are available, just so that they'll know? Yeah, sure. So the group itself started about a year and a half ago. It started as a text group or text chain between a few of us, just trying to keep up in between events and share some resources and knowledge back and forth.

That very quickly morphed into a very large group chat with about 200 people in it, which you can imagine was overwhelming for everyone involved, and just could not stay on top of the conversation. And so what we did is we migrated to Discord, so we could have a little more structure to those conversations. I will be the first to say that I initially fought that, because Signal was just a much easier platform for me that I was more comfortable with.

But I will say that the move to Discord has allowed for a lot more structured, meaningful conversations, and quick access to a lot of resources. So the community itself lives in the Discord. There are all types of channels in there, ranging from personal discussions around sports and pets and crafts, gaming, but there's a lot of business conversations in there as well. 

Best practices, approaching co-managed IT, packaging and pricing, SOPs, tech help. And we've also put a heavy emphasis on health, physical and personal wellness, mental wellness in there. So you'll find some channels around that.

And we also have a fair number of cybersecurity practitioners that are active in one of the cybersecurity channels that's in there. So a lot of times we'll see news hit there before it actually makes it out into the public. So there's a lot of very active channels and discussions going on in there. 

And pretty much anything that an IT business center might be looking for is probably covered in there, or someone would provide those resources to them. And the group is made up of both MSPs and vendors, right? That is correct. No cross-contamination? We very intentionally want there to be MSPs and vendors seen as equals within there.

Our rule for vendors in the space is that they are not allowed to have any direct sales pitches in there. So if people want to talk about products and what might be a potential solution to a technical issue, they can have those discussions as like a sidebar, but there is no hawking of products in there. We want to try to keep that as clean in Switzerland as possible within the Discord. 

We do have a separate channel for vendors to be able to list any special announcements that they have or any upcoming events that they're running. But in general, I would say that we're pretty strict about vendors not being able to hawk their wares there. All right, that's good. 

So I got a couple of the chats going nuts, so I just want to bring up real quick. Tim had said just seeing those side channels, health, etc., nice. Keith brought up, let me make sure, let me clean this question up. 

How do they handle all the negativity and complaining on Discord when it comes to depression? I'll be honest, so I've been in there a couple of times. Now, I've not been in the side rooms, you know, I treat it like Vegas. I stay on the main strip, so I've not seen that. 

Has there been any off-road activity? It does occasionally happen, but I would say in general, we've been very fortunate that the user base itself has been very good at self-policing and self-moderating those that kind of abuse our code of conduct and any negativity. Usually, if something like that happens, and I can only think of one or two instances that really stand out, the admins are typically notified and try and intervene. But usually, the group in general that's in there does a really good job of curtailing the conversation.

All right, so I'm going to do something I normally don't do. You and I have rarely had the opportunity to just sit one-on-one and chat. Got a big posse that follows you, usually in the same colored shirt or outfit. 

I'm going to ask you if I were to come to you and say, tell me about this or that, or give you the opportunity to ask me a question, what would you ask me? I would want to know what your long-term goal is and where you see yourself with your MSP and the podcast in, say, 5-10 years. Short answers, I don't know. It's a hard one, right? Well, it's one of these things where I've got to separate them. 

The business is always first. I know that people may look and see the podcast doing a lot more and wonder if it's going to take over. The short answer is no. 

There is not a ton of money in podcasting, so I've got to work to pay the bills. Plus, the wife would probably stab me in the back. But the love is the podcast, yes? The podcast let's come back to that. 

For the MSP, the business, I have operated my business with intention. Even though I did try to grow it a while back, that just wasn't the path. I have done this boutique style for the last 10-12 years, and it's worked. 

I like it. It's good. Yes, it's comfortable. 

I have this plan in two years where we will start to work on a 10-year exit strategy. That's all I've done. I've not looked any further than that because I don't want to push myself down a path without having time to think about it and stuff.

Because in two years, we will probably not be in the space that we're in now. In two years, the industry will have changed some more because I do believe that we've got another 12 to 18 months of some big changes happening. I want to see how those affect me because I may decide to exit early and not put up with a lot of that, or I may decide to do what my original plan was and just work until I can't anymore but put people around me so that I can have them work the business and I can pull back a little bit. 

That's where I'm at. Okay, very cool. What's a resource or something that you wish you had available to you five, ten years ago? A resource? Yep. 

Whether that's a person or a tool or... Well, I mean, obviously the extra person would probably be it. If I were able to come as close to duplicating myself as possible, that would be it. We have looked at hiring over the last few years and it was always looking at an entry-level person just to kind of take care of the little stuff that... Delivering systems, setting up stuff, watching the dashboard, stuff like that, but it didn't work out. 

But having that person probably would have opened up a lot more doors so that I could go do some stuff. The resource in terms of something for my stack or something, it's hard to say because I've added stuff over the last five years that have actually been pretty great that's allowed me to stay in the business position that I'm at. Mastering my RMM. 

I don't have a PSA. People laugh at me all the time for that, but for the way that I run my business, I don't need it. Implementing ThreatLocker and some other stuff literally quiets the noise. 

I don't have the people going crazy all the time that I have to worry about it. Our phone hardly rings, to be honest with you. When we got rid... Well, I shouldn't say got rid of. 

When our HIPAA client got purchased and absorbed, they were literally half our phone calls. That one HIPAA office, it's about 50 people, over 100 devices. They were the big noise and they got absorbed and we tried to keep them, but it was a big national chain. 

I couldn't... But literally, it doesn't sound like much, but that one client, as small as they were, were a lot noisier than my large law offices where I've got 150 people, seven offices. I had little noise from them compared to the HIPAA. Making the stack work is probably the biggest thing. 

If you could combine it as one resource, it's not one particular stack item, but making the stack work for you has probably been the biggest thing I'd say over the last five years. I think that touches on something. When we were choosing a name for the community, Degenerates raises eyebrows, positive and negatively. 

Our goal with that was to disarm people a bit with thinking that we were some ivory tower organization, that there's one... One of the things we all agreed on that we really disliked in the industry was a lot of the... There's one way and only one way to be successful and this is the boiler print way that it looks like and you have to buy it from me at whatever the price is. So we really wanted to come up with a way that would disarm people from that thinking. Because as you're saying, there's a lot of different ways to find that success and it looks different to every person. 

So I think both your outlook for the future as well as reflecting on the past there embody that. Nice. How many would you say are at the core of the Degenerates? If you had to call a family meeting per se and needed to make a big decision, how many would be in that core group? Sure. 

So we actually have co-founders within it and we meet quarterly for our L10s. There's 10 of us inside of that. And we also have our weekly L10s. 

We operate on the EOS framework and we use those meetings to drive our initiatives. So that's around community, creating education, our tools and resources that we're trying to build out for the community and some consulting and enablement that we're doing with different vendors. So this was not how I planned to start the first part of the show but thank you for chatting about that and sharing about that. 

I want to take a quick minute to transition and thank some sponsors here. So let's do this. The IT Business Podcast is brought to you by NetAlly. 

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SuperOps, by the way, if you watch the live show and you see me sipping from this cup, they are the mug sponsor and they also sponsor the upcoming Florida Man segment. Tim is so prepared. We'll see. 

All right. So let me ask you this. Now let's go back, you know, from the degenerates to your MSP. 

So many people, you know, talk about the fact that does he really work in his MSP? I mean, how does he have it going? Obviously, it's something that you've built up as a well-oiled machine, but talk about how that came to be and, you know, where you got to the point that, yes, it's all where you want it to be, but how did it start, you know, when you left the healthcare sector, I guess is the best way to describe it, right? Sure. Yeah. And I guess preemptively I'll just say that it's not always a well-oiled machine. 

We're dysfunctional like everyone else. So just disregard that right off the bat. But yeah, so I did start out in the medical field. 

I thought I was going to be a doctor one day. I was a biology major in school and was working at a hospital and eventually had pitched some ideas around IT to the department and was offered a position, which eventually led to working for a large distributor as their CIO for a number of years before starting this MSP. And MSP is now, gosh, 14 years old.

Okay. Hang on. You kind of glossed over some stuff. 

I mean, if you're going to school for biomedical stuff, how do you end up pitching stuff if you're going to be a doctor? Yeah, I always had a knack for computers. So I got on the, I became an annoyance to the in-house IT as early as fifth grade, starting to try to get around passwords and so forth on school systems. That escalated in high school where I had an agreement with a few other individuals to effectively test with permission the school's security, technology security, which led to me being pulled out of class and threatened with lawyers. 

But it was good. Got a lot of really great experience out of that. Now, I am very good friends with all those that were on the IT tech team at the school at that time. 

But yeah, I just, despite having enjoyed that time and enjoyed playing with technology, I just always thought that I was going to go in medicine because that's my family was all either doctors or engineers. I was going to say family, right? Dad, mom. It's, boy, make us proud. 

Yep. Yep. That's, yeah. 

My mom's family, my dad's family, everyone was either a doctor or an engineer. So yeah, thought I was going to go down that route. I enjoyed my short stint down that road, but yeah, life pushed me back in this direction. 

So the ideas that I pitched were around the EMR that they had in place in their emergency room and some configuration development changes around that. All right. So I take it they poo-pooed your ideas, said, no, we're not going to do that. 

So you said, I'm going to go start my own company. No. At the time, they actually were very supportive of the ideas that I brought to them. 

And through the previous friendships, someone at a distributor heard that I was making a transition into IT from within the hospital there. And they offered me a position as their CIO for that distributor, which I migrated over to for about what, four or five years before starting this organization. All right. 

And why'd you leave? I mean, that's a crazy path. It is. Doctor to distribution to MSP. 

I mean, what made the shift? I sat on that side of the desk being sold to by people that didn't know and understand the space. They were trying to put up metrics. There's one particular IT shop that was constantly trying to sell me that I just really had a distaste for their business practices and sales tactics and thought that there must be a better way. 

So I figured rather than complain about it with it doing no good, that I could try and be part of that change. All right. And when you started Phantom Technologies, what was your kind of core purpose in the beginning? Other than making money and paying the bills, the core focus really was about having a more consultative approach to the sales, not just shoving product to shove product. 

So I wanted there to be reasoning behind what I was doing, what I was offering, and I guess have a little bit more of a moral and ethics standpoint behind things. Now, were your first customers in the medical field because that's where you were comfortable or where did you get your first customers? Yeah, I would say that the majority of the first customers were either contacts that I had pre-existing that were in manufacturing because they were tangently related to the distribution world that I had been serving in. And I also had a fair amount of medical that we picked up initially as well. 

All right. So how many people ask you what the secret sauce is? I don't think anyone should be asking me for what the secret sauce is because it's going to be different for every person that's out there. I don't know that I have it figured out. 

We have our ups and downs like every organization. I think that to idolize any one person or organization in this space is foolish. I think we're all flawed in some way and there's always learning. 

As you said, what the industry looks like today is not what it's going to look like in a year. And so part of what drives me to still be engaged in the MSP side of things, it creates relevancy for me in understanding around what the pain points are in our space. So I'm not just creating and doing things on a vendor, quasi-vendor, community side of things that aren't truly meaningful and impactful. 

So I think the two of them are very closely related, one drives the other. So if somebody's asking you how do you balance running the MSP and being out in the community so much, if we were to focus on the MSP side, how is that structured in terms of personnel, divisions, any guidance into your stack and processes? I would say that I'm very lucky to have a very good executive team. So that consists of our admin, finance, marketing, sales, and service. 

And as far as stack and the rest of that goes, I think having a good PSA that's buttoned up, good RMM that you know how to use, and having a defensible security stack I think is a really good place to be. For us, that meant leaning towards and moving towards adopting a security framework so I could sleep at night. So we moved towards pushing CIS to our client base so that wasn't just Henry says that you guys should choose these products, that there was some real backing and data behind those selections and offerings. 

All right, so I know you've won like back to back to back, well you didn't win, but you were listed in what was that the MSP 501 list or 500 lists for three straight years, but you've won a bunch of whole other awards. Is there one you're most proud of? Gosh, I would say probably a 40 under 40 award. I couldn't pronounce the name or I would have brought that up, the Michiana, 40 under 40. 

Yeah, so Michiana is this bastardized combination of Indiana and Michigan, which is the local term for the area. But yeah, so it's nice to be amongst a great alumni on that list, a lot of Notre Dame grads, a lot of illustrious people in the local community, and so very honored to be listed with them. What happens at those things? Is it just like a banquet, you guys all sit around, rub shoulders, talk shop? Yeah, so it's a very, they do a banquet I believe twice a year, but it's primarily a networking type of event for those individuals to kind of share experiences and develop some mentorships, mentee ships with each other. 

And how many times can you be on the list? You can only be on once. Really? Yeah. That's interesting.

At least that's what they've told me. Okay, so 40 under 40. So if you hit it in your 20s, you got to find another list. 

Yeah. All right. How long ago were you on that list? Don't tell me your age, just tell me how long ago. 

I think like eight years ago. Okay. So you're probably 40-ish now, so that's good. 

Yeah, 40 will be next year for me. So that's scary, right? Good guess. All right, my friend, coming up on time here from some stuff, anything else that you'd like to share? Like I said, we did not stay on track with stuff. 

I just asked you some questions, you answered and they were all good answers, but is anything going through your head right now? I think the biggest thing that I would want people to take away from conversation is to open up and be vulnerable with each other, find a community, find a mentor, find a peer group, find someone that you can have that vulnerability with and try and grow that way. Peer groups is the thing. Very much. 

There's a lot of value there. That's really the reason I don't make those degenerate groups is my peer group meets on those nights. The one you're doing Dawn? Yes. 

That's why we always show up late. Yep. And you guys have already devolved into your conversations. 

Yes. Yeah, very much so. All right. 

So before we continue on, I did say that we want to talk swag. I'm not going to do the entire swag presentation that I normally do, but I put together a little pictorial graph and that's actually not in order. So the first thing I want to do is say thank you to Cynthia. 

One of the things that has happened with swag at conferences is I go with the idea of I want to find something that is new, unusual, and something that I will use and not something I'm just going to dump in the trash can on the way out of the hotel or as soon as I get home. So CyberQP came up with this nifty new pin idea. And obviously I won't have a way to show you right now, but the reason that it bends the way that it does is that it's supposed to hold up your iPhone or your mobile device. 

It sits up on the side and holds it up there. And I'll be honest, I couldn't get it to work because you can't hold your phone up vertical. You have to hold it up horizontal because the phone is too heavy for the pin.

But kudos to CyberQP for trying to come up with something new and exciting for us to use. I also want to reach out and say hello to Brooke Lee, ScalePad. This was something that she brought to DattoCon down here in Miami. 

A fantastic idea. A bunch of people from out of town showing up in Florida and needing this. And basically it's a bag of suntan lotion, Chapstick, and a cool down lotion. 

I know some of you guys got burnt on the first day, so this was a fantastic goodie bag idea. And I want to say congratulations to Brooke for also thinking out of the box. Moovilla, a new company to me in the channel. 

Actually, I found out that they had a representative reaching out to me to be on the show. And first of all, I'll have to show you guys, but it's a pen, it's an eraser, it's a flashlight. Cool idea for a pen, but I have to say it broke on me today. 

So that's why it's number three in the list and not moving up. Galactic Advisors, I always am looking for pens that write well and have a little bit of heft to them, feel good in the hand. So this is something I wasn't actually counting on, but the Galactic Advisors Magic Pen was just picked up this past week at IT Nation. 

So that is listed there. Edwards, Performance Solutions, a company I had not heard of. And I actually put them on this list, not because I know them or anything, I just grabbed their stuff. 

They had a complete package of swag from the pen to this little cleaning kit. And there was a third item that I cannot find because I think somebody swiped it from me, but I believe that it was... I'm not going to say what it was because I don't want to get it wrong. So if somebody has this Edwards Performance third item in the pack, let me know because I really wanted to thank them for that. 

They also put their business card inside of this, which is something that I like. Rather than having to be scammed at the booth, they just put the card in, knowing you're going to take swag so I can call them at my leisure and they're not hounding me with calls. Black Point Cyber. 

I usually don't do drinkware a lot, but they got a Yeti. And I love me a nice hefty Yeti-type drinkware. Very sleek, very nice. 

Not a fake Stanley, but a very nice mug there. So Black Point Cyber. Now t-shirts. 

And I picked this one only because this is the design on the back. And I know that the CyberFox girls don't like me because I chose Threat Locker over them a while back when choosing a product, but this is a very cool design. The front of the shirt, not so much, but this I thought that's a cool thing. 

If I were to wear a vendor shirt, I could wear this with that on my back. So kudos to CyberFox with coming up with a nice design on the back. The shirt wasn't as soft as it could be, but still a good shirt. 

I have to really do a shout out to Thread coming up with this nice little Florida shirt design. Not one that I would wear, maybe, but a very nice Florida style shirt and very good there. And the final, and what I'm going to call top swag for the last three conferences, Secureframe. 

Again, a company that I've not really chatted with before, never been on the show, but they've got this polo, which is again, something you don't really find at conferences, a polo shirt. And this is actually a Nike dry fit shirt. So boom, very nice design in terms of the shirt. 

A very simple logo on the front. If I were to wear a vendor shirt, this would be one I would wear. And folks, you will never see me wearing a vendor shirt because they don't pay me to wear their shirts. 

But if I were to wear a shirt, this would be the one. Tim, what do you think of my list? Pretty good. And I can appreciate the stance against wearing vendor swag, at least out in the channel. 

Yeah. I mean, I would wear a sponsor shirt and I've told them that Super Ops actually gave me a shirt that doesn't fit or else I would have worn it already. NetAlly, I have socks somewhere. 

Oh, I did have some other socks that I did not put on. So this is the first set of, I usually wear just the crew style socks. This is from ThreatMate.

The only problem is, is I am not going to wear orange unless I'm wearing a vast business shirt or whatever. And Blackpoint also had some socks that these could actually blend in very nicely with the clothing style that I like. So just a shout out to them. 

Yeah. It's always interesting to see what people are coming up with, try and change things up. What did Keith say? My favorite was a giant fox. 

My friend Heather got me for my granddaughter. Heather is awesome. I don't know which Heather that is because there's several Heathers. 

But I think I heard about that, that it was one of the stuffed foxes from CyberFox. Oh, yes, yes. So I usually only talk about swag that I can get without having to, I don't want to say, sign up for a demo because that's not always correct because I do get that swag sometimes. 

But yeah, they were quite stingy with their foxes. I'll leave it at that. One of the things that we ended up doing because I got tired of having to ship swag back is we have an intake form for vendors that want to send us swag. 

So it's got all of our team sizes on the form and numbers and so forth for quantities if they wish to send anything. Nice. Because I got really tired of having to go around. 

So I grab almost no swag anymore at these shows. So another secret, folks, for those of you that wonder, I buy the collapsible luggage bags or compressible. So they make bags that you can stick all your laundry, all your shirts, all your clothing into and then you zip it up and it actually will compress from four or five inches down to one. 

So I bring those bags so that I stick all my swag gear inside of those bags and squash it into my suitcase. That's how I get by with the swag. Pretty good tip right there. 

There we go. All right, Tim. So we are at the point in time, Florida Man versus the world or random question. 

My friend, this is the show, the part of the show where you can give a story to challenge something that I found in Florida Man within the last week or you can answer a random question. So which would you like to do? Let's go. Let's go to Florida Man. 

All right. So I've got two Florida Man stories. So what I'm going to do is let you go first with yours and then I'll let you pick either one or two and that's how I will decide which Florida Man story to go. 

I think you have an unfair advantage with the amount in Florida. So I'm going to be reaching back in our local history here for a couple of years. But there was a 49 year old gentleman that was hunting on his back porch and shot a semi-truck on the toll road that was passing by. 

Police arrived at his place of residence. He invited them in at which point they arrested him for the large grow operation of marijuana that he had in his house. That's about the best local story that I've got for you. 

He was shooting at a truck on a highway, a deer, a deer. Yeah. Okay. 

Yeah. And then when the police came, they found his stash. He invited them in. 

Yes. Okay. Yeah. 

All right. So pick number one or number two. Let's go number one. 

Okay. So the number two story, here's the title that I gave it. Florida Man Pleads Guilty in Massive Biofuel Fraud Stream. 

Okay. So Florida Man story number one. On November 6, 2024, what started as a typical evening of home cooking in a Southwest 8th Street residence turned into a scene of violence. 

Alexander Rodriguez, age 20, was preparing a meal when tensions began to rise. The catalyst? His brother was apparently talking over the food being cooked. The victim, whose name has not been released, managed to flee to his bedroom after the initial attack. 

And what was the initial attack, you say? Well, Rodriguez, irritated by his brother's behavior, grabbed a kitchen knife and stabbed his brother in the neck. Oh, geez. When emergency responders arrived at the scene, they found the victim attempting to stop the bleeding with clothing, a testament to the human will to survive. 

He was transported to Jackson Memorial Hospital, where he was later reported to be in stable condition. During questioning, Rodriguez claimed he felt threatened by his brother's demeaning. Okay. 

Obviously, there's some family issues to work out there. Yeah. So he didn't want spittle in his food and decided it was time to stab.

Yeah, as one does. That's just another Monday in Florida. It is. 

And I see, I wanted to go back in real quick and see if I can find it here. Chat has been busy, but apparently you have been dubbed Dr. Tim from now on. And I want to say to Louis, thank you for the offer. 

But what I'm going to do is I'll put the affiliate link in the show notes. So if you want to get those compressible luggage bags, you can get those. But also anytime folks, one of the best ways you can support the show is on itbusinesspodcast.com. There is an affiliate link for the Amazon store. 

You click that, it goes to Uncle Marv's Amazon store. And anytime you make a purchase on there, no change in price to you. Amazon takes care of giving me, I think it averages out to about 2.5% commission on anything that you purchase.

So that is an easy way to support. You don't have to commit to being a member, a follower, or whatever. Just go to the Amazon store, save it as a favorite in your browser on your desktop or whatever. 

Anytime you go to Amazon, just click that link and that will support the show. All right, Tim, I think that's going to do it. Thank you very much, sir.

Thank you very much for having me on. First time on. Took a while.

Hopefully not the last. I don't think it will be. All right, ladies and gentlemen, I want to thank you for being here.

As I mentioned, supporting the show, when you go to the page, you can click on the sponsor page and support any of the sponsors. Whenever you support them, you support the show. Click on the follow link and if this is your first time watching live, subscribe on YouTube or subscribe on one of your favorite podcasters so that way you can catch the audio podcast as well.

As I mentioned, we were in the midst of releasing all of the interviews that I did at IT Nation. There was a total of 16. I broke them up into eight episodes. 

The first six have been released. The final four will be coming out over the next couple of days and then we will have more stuff coming down the road before the end of the year. We are gearing up to this year's holiday party, which is going to be fantastic. 

And another reason for me to mention the Amazon link, I have seen Black Friday deals are happening already. So if you're already shopping on Amazon, use my link, get those things. So on behalf of my friend, Henry Timm, thank you all for coming out and joining the show. 

And we'll be back next week, at the same time, same channel. We'll see you then. And until next time, holla!