Episode 322: Operating Systems for Businesses (Part 2)

---

Tom Bridge (00:01:30):
Hello and welcome to the Mac Monds podcast. I’m your host this week, Tom Bridge and Charles, those were very impressive Rex specs that you were wearing. They weren’t Rex specs, though. They were magnifiers and toolkit objects. You almost looked like you were a mad scientist. .

Charles Edge (00:01:46):
I I have the eyesight of a mad scientist who’s been experimenting with too many chemicals. ,

Tom Bridge (00:01:53):
. I think we’ve all been there. Mm-hmm. . Um, but, uh, I was gonna say it’s been a spectacular weekend here in Washington. It’s the first like true summary weekend. Right. Uh, and so, you know, Marcus, you’re also on the other side of the, the midwinter line at this point. The days are technically getting longer at this point

Marcus Ransom (00:02:13):
By, by one or two days, I think. Um, yes. So very much, um, enjoying that. My, um, personal, my personal training class, um, is dark and we’re actually having to wear l e d head torches to get from the car park Oh my. Where we do the training. So yeah, like, um, and, you know, trying to go off on short runs and realizing that you, it’s dangerous and you’re like trying to navigate, um, you know, bitman paths in a, in a park at nighttime. Yes, the light can show me a path in front of me where I’m running, but realizing that all my navigation and understanding is around the things that are off path and around the path, and realizing I have absolutely no idea where I’m going and getting lost a few times. And the trainer laughing at the five or six of us that do this training session or, or seeing all of these lights disappearing off into the bush in different directions and like, you know, we’re safe. He can see where we are, everything like that. But clearly we, we got no idea. It’s like getting stuck in them and

Charles Edge (00:03:25):
In, in case the readings, police are listening. That was Bitman not another word. .

Marcus Ransom (00:03:33):
Yeah. Okay. Pavement. Um, tarmac. Yeah,

Tom Bridge (00:03:39):
Tarmac Tar McAdam as, uh, as the, uh, tarmac is short for. But we have a returning guest, Lucas Acosta. Welcome back to the Mac Admit podcast. It’s a great pleasure to have you back.

Lucas Acosta (00:03:49):
Hey, it’s really fun to be back. Um, I see Marcus one familiar face, and then it’s, was it James last time? Right? Yep. Sorry, James. So now, now, okay. We can still say sorry, James if we have some errors. Okay. Good to know.

Marcus Ransom (00:04:04):
We’re not that sorry. ’cause James is, he’s been sending me photos of the beach in Greece and the Ros he’s eating. So,

Tom Bridge (00:04:10):
Yeah, I was gonna say, I want the Euro photos. I did not get the Euro photos. I did get the beach photos. So like, we’ve got that going for us here. I really enjoyed, uh, I, I unfortunately was on assignment when you were recording with Marcus, um, about e o s, and, uh, I had the great pleasure of listening to that episode after the fact and just devouring, I just, you know, ingested all of that. I was like, yes, yes. This is so good. Where was this like 10 years ago when I really

Lucas Acosta (00:04:34):
Needed it? I, I know that’s, I’m asking myself the exact same thing. So I’m, um, it sounds like there was some good feedback from the community in Slack. Um, so thanks for having me back on. Um, we have a neat little collection of questions here, but, uh, yeah, I think Marcus and, and, uh, sorry James took great care of me, um, in y’all’s absence . So yeah, thanks for having me back.

Tom Bridge (00:04:59):
It’s a huge pleasure. And you know, just if you haven’t found this episode in your player yet, um, and you haven’t listened to it out there in the world yet, go back and listen to episode three 17 before you listen to this one. Uh, we’ll wait, just hit pause and then you can come right back.

Charles Edge (00:05:13):
And, you know, I would say one thing we can do is semi pick up where we left off last episode. And even though I wasn’t here, I was on the same assignment you were on , but having gone through e o s in the previous episode, um, I, I think one thing that I felt like we could expand on is that it’s not just for small businesses like Scrum and Kanban. It can be used for teams of various sizes and large enterprises, nonprofits, and kind of anyone else who wants to bring vision and values, maybe to the front of what teams are doing and, and how they roll up within an organization to the kind of vision and values of the whole org, because they’re not always the same from teams to, to the overarching ones for organizations. But that kind of structured approach to how we apply frameworks.

(00:06:12):
I, I feel like EEO SS is a good structure for some of that. And like, I’ve seen Scrum be used in accounting teams. I’ve seen e o s be used in large nonprofits. So, um, one thing I did think would be kind of interesting to delve into a teeny bit, um, not just ’cause Tom said it, but you know, product teams and teams of engineers. So thanks for joining us again, Lucas. I I guess can we start with, uh, how you might see a larger organization being able to map their purpose, um, or a smaller organization within a larger organization, be able to map their purpose up to how the larger enterprises run? And I, I guess, you know, we can stick with the product team example if you want.

Lucas Acosta (00:07:01):
Sure. I’m happy to share from our personal experience, and you brought up a great point that, uh, it’s not just for small business, in fact, um, I, I would say the inverse, I think it was originally, if you go through the materials, it’s designed for companies that are around 10 million to a hundred million, uh, in revenue. And so if anything, we were on the small side of that, you know, just, you know, to be an open book. We’re, uh, we just broke a million dollars in revenue last year, so we’re kind of in that early. Yeah, like lower 1 million. Congrats tracking for the same, same this year. Thank you. Yeah,

Tom Bridge (00:07:42):
I was gonna say, huge congrats. I was gonna say, we never quite cleared that at techno missionary. I was gonna say the most that I think we got to was about nine 50. So, uh, huge. Congrats. That’s a, that’s an amazing accomplishment. It’s a, it’s a weird number, right? It is. I mean, you don’t, you, you think you, you kind of, you’re like, holy crap, that’s, that’s a big number at that point. I mean, it’s not that much bigger than like nine 50, but mentally huge

Lucas Acosta (00:08:03):
. No, completely. Um, and we were also stuck at around like we’re at the seven hundreds for a while, then eight hundreds for a few years, and it, it, it really did plateau. Um, and kind of help maybe look at what else can we be doing to, to improve this? What’s the bottleneck here? So, Charles, going back to your question, a lot of the material yes, is geared, uh, to, for organizations that already have maybe a leadership team, right? Like vice presidents or directors or managers. And so for a flat organization like us at the time, you know, seven people we’re now at nine, um, we kind of had to create that structure. And I think that’s what was so eye-opening for us. Maybe if you’re within a product team with, with not much of a hierarchy, um, you know, introducing a hierarchy not for the sake of, you know, control or these negative connotations that we all kind of feel when we think of hierarchy from the jobs where it didn’t really have a, a great feeling associated with it.

(00:09:19):
Um, but the right hierarchy really does create speed at the end of the day. Um, and for a small business that translates to, you know, what I think of as profit, um, or goals, like goals for the team, like benefits. And then for a product team, speed obviously equals, you know, being able to, to bite off more, um, or, or take on more sprints per year if there is a hierarchy introduced. So that, that’s probably the, the biggest, um, takeaway or benefit that, that we’ve received, is that it really does start with the hierarchy. And I, I was always of the opinion that we didn’t need a hierarchy. You know, it’s kind of like, you can almost brag whenever it’s like, Hey, all my people are are self reliant, they’re autonomous. We don’t, we don’t micromanage here. We, we can take, take care of our own work here.

(00:10:21):
Um, when in reality there’s just a lot of, uh, I think wasted effort and duplicate work if, if you have seven really smart people trying to, you know, do good work, but, but not completely aligned. Um, and by going through this, it, it really did help us not just align goals, but have really basic conversations of who’s responsible for what, you know. Yeah. Again, we’re all smart grownups here with professional lives, and we think we, we know that. But it’s not until you sit down or maybe a Zoom call to just have this very fundamental defining conversations about roles and responsibilities that, that you really start to, to see this, uh, your performance progress,

Tom Bridge (00:11:11):
Those quality ownership moments, right? Like, I mean, ’cause that’s really what the, what we’re after out of all of this is really ownership and empowerment in a lot of ways. Yeah. And I think about, you know, the, the, the work that we’ve done on my own team to kind of like, understand each other’s roles, um, and understand who owns what, and have those conversations around ownership and around, you know, responsibility, um, having those agreements in place. I mean, you know, not to take this back to Cristobal and, you know, uh, season two of Barry, uh, which if you have not seen yet, is absolutely marvelous. Um, it’s on, uh, it’s on Max I think is where, you know, it used to be called H B O I don’t know why they got rid of like the good name and left the crappy name. ’cause I mean, a folks of a certain age, we all remember, you know, Showtime, Cinemax and, and, and, and H B O.

(00:11:58):
And it’s wild to me that H B O is now the brand that is like, sailed off into the sunset while Showtime and, and Max remained. Um, but like, neither here nor there. But, you know, there’s this conversation between, you know, Cristobal and NoHo, Hank, and, you know, it’s, I don’t know, it’s delightful. But what it comes down to at the end of the day is ownership and, and responsibility and integrity. Um, you know, whether you are working in an IT organization, working in consultancy, working in a product organization, or, you know, organized crime, uh, you know, you get different kinds of, you know, you know, options in terms of how you express ownership over

Lucas Acosta (00:12:33):
Them. Hey, I, I glean a lot of management theory from organized crime as well, so I’m, I’m glad to see we have that that come out.

Marcus Ransom (00:12:40):
They’re, they’re very efficient. Like, they, they don’t mess about, they are dotted line

Tom Bridge (00:12:45):
Reports. Guido and Nails don’t say much, but they speak with their actions.

Lucas Acosta (00:12:48):
Is that another episode? Um, ’cause there was a Sons of Anarchy really taught me the value of, of having like referral partners because they didn’t have to go look for, for people to sell arms to, they just had to be the middleman between two arms dealers. And it’s brilliant.

Tom Bridge (00:13:10):
That’s exactly right. Really

Charles Edge (00:13:11):
A logistics company. I mean, at the end

Lucas Acosta (00:13:14):
Of the day,

Charles Edge (00:13:14):
At the end of the day,

Marcus Ransom (00:13:16):
With whole, whole untapped audience for LinkedIn here, that ink in maybe, I dunno,

Charles Edge (00:13:25):
Ink in, oh my

Lucas Acosta (00:13:27):
God. There’s inspiration everywhere.

Charles Edge (00:13:29):
So I, I do think Jack’s, um, in Sons Anarchy was a, a, a visionary, let’s say. So do you wanna explore the visionary? Wow. Look at that integrator relationship. ,

Lucas Acosta (00:13:41):
Great segue. . Yeah, I can’t, I can’t, uh, best that one. Um, so since you asked , um,

Marcus Ransom (00:13:53):
It’s not, sorry James, we have to have here. It’s, sorry, everyone. I think ,

Lucas Acosta (00:13:57):
Right?

Tom Bridge (00:13:57):
,

Lucas Acosta (00:13:59):
Yeah. Um, so to, to get us I guess back on a little bit of track here. Um, yeah, the questions that, that came in over the last couple weeks ended up being rooted in, in this core relationship, uh, within e o s really any business. And that is the relationship between the visionary and the integrator. And all E OSS has done here again, they just put like the Kleenex name on top of tissue paper. So this isn’t, this isn’t anything fancy. Basically the word visionary they use for c e o, like what you would think is a traditional c e o role and the integrator role is the c o o role. Um, they just took it upon themselves to reinvent the wheel, I guess, um, and, and have their own titles to that. However, and, and so I never thought I needed a C O O and I never thought I was a C E O.

(00:15:03):
It’s like, I, I guess the c e O calls the shots, but what else does that do? Um, you know, I didn’t go to school for this. I’m, I’m a certified Apple technician multiple times over, uh, so c e O is just on my business card because that’s what you do. Um, so the way the roles differ, the, and what I learned, what A C E O should be doing is focusing on things 90 days and, and beyond really the direction of the organization, the culture, uh, the passion, the industry trends, what are customers saying? What’s going on in conferences, um, yeah, just, it’s really, really big picture stuff. Um, which is what I was not doing right. Uh, I, I’m attracted to fires and as fixers, we are attracted to take care of the fires in front of us. And that’s why it was absolutely critical not just to have like a loyal employee on my team as like a confidant or anything, but to actually have a C o O role, which is the integrator role.

(00:16:09):
And the integrator focuses on executing the 90 day plan every 90 days so that the one year plan is accomplished. And having that separation between two people, uh, really is like the left brain and right brain of our own brains. Um, because you can’t do it. It no, humans can do both effectively. When was the last organization you saw where the, the speaker on stage was c e o and c o o? That that doesn’t happen for a reason because they really are two modes of thought. One is big picture, you know, creative thinking and, and industry leading. The other one is absolute e execution and keeping the train running on time. Um, and if you don’t have that role, we all think we’re super people because we are to some extent, but getting, getting, um, one or the other next to you, I is absolutely critical. And maybe in a product team, if it’s not a completely flat, uh, like horizontal relationship, having someone else who’s more, um, focused on the tactical, right? Like the weekly strategy in a product team versus maybe the, the long-term strategy and maybe someone on the team who’s dealing with upper management directors, right? And budgets. Um, and so by splitting those up, there really is a lot more clear thinking.

Charles Edge (00:17:45):
Yeah, I, I, I do see sometimes there can be kind of three legs in a development, uh, teams reporting structure where there’s a manager, the person who manages the day-to-day, I would think of that more as kind of that c o o type of integrator type of position. Um, and then the visionary would be the product manager guiding the scrum team’s 90 day forecast of tasks. If you’re ahead of that, unless there’s an apple release, which I think there you just bucket like Apple release in the, in the, you know, in what the developers are gonna do. But, um, but for the most part, if, if you’re getting in their grill in less than 90 day increments, then you’re probably gonna be pissing off the third person in this like, weird management triumvirate, which is the scrum master who might really be more the in the integrator.

(00:18:45):
But, um, I think parts of what e o s talks about, there are one and the parts or the other, um, where that scrum master is guarding the process and how the process is carried out as opposed to trying to manage the humans, which requires a whole different skillset or trying to manage the roadmap, which requires an entirely other skillset. But that, that’s kind of the development side of things. Um, as a product team, if you have a portfolio of products, you know, now you’ve got a manager of the product team, and I, I don’t know, it all gets messy at scale. Everything gets messy at scale. , which, you know, to me is, is why this is kind of an interesting framework. It’s like, well, every sub-organization of an organization can have their own sprint cadence, um, and or even their own framework, although it kind of works better if everybody’s using the same thing because there are tools that map these things. And if different teams are using different things, then you can’t use a tool to be able to see how you map up to the next tier who maps up to the next tier. Um, sure as the, as the org kind of scales. But, um, you know, I, I do think

Marcus Ransom (00:20:07):
Another thing I liked about this was the ability to understand why you are making a decision in a certain way, um, and which, which hat you wear you’re wearing when you’re making that decision. And I think seeing that translate through to whether it be product teams or operational teams or development teams, um, I remember going from being a designer in a really small business where we were doing trade shows and I was the account manager, the designer, the site manager, the project manager, and coming out of that organization thinking that I was doing a really bad job, which I probably was, um, and then moving into a slightly larger organization where I was just the designer and involved on site and realizing that when I was making decisions as to there was a request from a customer, am I making this decision based on the designing designer wanting to maintain the integrity of the solution and the beauty and the overall solution?

(00:21:06):
Or was I making that decision based on being the project manager that this was gonna blow out our implementation time? Or was I making that decision based on the site manager as actually that’s gonna be really difficult to execute on site, so I’m just gonna say no, we can’t do it Based on that. And realizing, like, even if you are combining those roles, being honest to yourself as to which one of those roles you are acting in when you are making these decisions, um, is the key to understanding why you are making a decision, not just what the decision is. But certainly, you know, when you’ve got the ability for those to be different people, you then don’t have to constantly be taking hats off and on completely and working out what to do. It literally is you have a discussion with the person who’s got that responsibility to then, you know, not have to have this internal dialogue of all the different voices in your head. Squabbling,

Lucas Acosta (00:22:01):
We’ve certainly seen that be because we’re each wearing much fewer hats now there’s less hesitation when making a decision, right? Because we can really play both sit on both shoulders of every decision. ’cause we see how everyone’s impacted. However, now that we actually have a, a director of sales, that’s not me. He, he can make decisions and, and oh my goodness, it just like alleviates that, that anxiety from me. And they’re not actually the same that I would make, but he’s owning it and I’m giving him that trust. And then there’s the director of ops as well, uh, and then director of finance. So once I’ve, now that I’ve done it this way, I would, I really couldn’t go back because I’ve, now I see how much capacity I have, um, now that I’m not having to, to switch those hats, you know, throughout the day.

Marcus Ransom (00:23:03):
Do you, do you find it refreshing when you’re in those situations where somebody makes the decision that with hindsight you sort of realize I probably wouldn’t have made that call, but absolutely it was the right one.

Lucas Acosta (00:23:14):
It, it happens weekly with every, and I’m not necessarily talking to all of them. I don’t talk to all of them daily. All of my directors now, our, our integrator does, that’s his job. His entire job is to, to manage that mess wrangle to wrangle, that’s right. Again, he’s keeping the the train on, on time. Um, so he’s got, you know, a hundred conversations in his head and that is part of the role, right? And that’s what was what was on the job description. And it’s not for everyone. I, I did it because I was the founder and what else can you do? But now those hundred conversations are not in my head that, that he just has, you know, he’s always kind of managing. Um, and it allows me to, to have clearer thought and, and dedicated work times of strategic thinking or maybe experimenting on my, my Test Mac environment. Um, because I’m, I’m planning again for things that are 90 days out,

Tom Bridge (00:24:25):
Designed by maced admins for maced admins. Simple M D M is everything you need from an M D M and nothing you don’t. This week’s episode of the Maced Admins podcast is brought to you by Simple M D m, the ultimate Apple device management solution. Gain complete control over your iOS and MAC OSS devices in a manner of minutes with flexible enrollment options to fit your fleet’s needs, automate workflows and force policies, and customize settings with simple MDMs advanced configuration options. Select from a variety of pre-made profiles or create your own within the user-friendly interface. Deploy apps and packages at scale. Utilize app store V P P and custom apps, or leverage simple MDMs hosted monkey integration to provide a self-serve experience for macOS users. Simplify your workflows and unleash the full potential of your Apple devices with simple mdm. Visit their website@simplemdm.com slash mac admins podcast to learn more and start your free 30 day trial. Thanks again to our friends at Simple MDM for sponsoring the Mac Admins podcast.

Charles Edge (00:25:29):
You know, the fidelity of communication, I think there is interesting, like you mentioned, you’re not having conversations with them. The director of ops is kind of having some of the, or the, the, uh, wrangler slash integrator is the

Lucas Acosta (00:25:47):
Integrator Yes.

Charles Edge (00:25:47):
Is having those conversations. But, um, yep. How, how do the visionary and these contexts and the integrator stay on the same page? And I guess as, as a further, how does that happen efficiently? Because you can over communicate and not, you know, so, so to me, you know, it’s kind of like sending too many packets and , nevermind . You see where I’m going? ?

Lucas Acosta (00:26:23):
Yeah, yeah. No, that’s exactly right. If, if you’re entrusting the operation of the company or of the team to someone else, almost entirely, um, how, how do you do that? How do you trust that person? And what if I do have ideas or there’s feedback from either of us that needs to go back and forth? It, it is a, a relationship, uh, it like a marriage. And if anyone, um, has been in a long-term relationship, and then you wanna add like children to that relationship, what do we all know? You gotta put the date night in the calendar or else it won’t happen, right? So it’s, it’s actually the same thing here. Um, it, when you’ve got your well-oiled machine, it, what we do is, uh, a monthly, uh, visionary integrator meeting, VI meeting. It’s supposed to take all day, um, eight hours where we, uh, hash out this kind of like loosely scheduled day.

(00:27:27):
Um, Justin and I right now are, can do it in about four or five hours. And there is a little format for that where I keep my ideas, that’s my role, my ideas on a list and a note every month. And I literally, if you look at my note app right now, I have the February vi, March, April, may, June vi. And so we’re about to, to meet for the July VI in a couple of weeks. And he is also building his list. So we rarely talk, um, throughout the week because we we’re each doing, doing our own thing. But whenever we do come together, it is a dedicated time to get on the same page. Um, and that, by the way, keeps the entire company on track because I’m not throwing grenades in the room. Have any of us been, been, uh, accused of that, where the team is in the middle of something and then we say, oh my goodness, we should roll out blank.

(00:28:33):
Or Oh my goodness, check out this cool product. And that’s why our progress was so slow for so many years, is because I was kind of chasing the squirrels because they were really exciting. I’m passionate about this better thing, a better mouse trap that’s out there. However, now that I’ve got an integrator, I have to, to bite my, my lip and only once a month can I share with him these ideas, direction, feedback. And it, it keeps the steady cadence that I, I think everyone really appreciates on the team because they, they, their expectations are clear. Um, so in this vi meeting, um, I won’t go into all the, the details here, but it, some things are really quick, like HR questions that come up. Um, how have we done this in the past? Sometimes they’re pretty significant questions and or, or discussions. And there can be an all out brawl, um, like on a, how much budget should allocate for this thing next year?

(00:29:44):
Um, or do we really need to send four people to that conference? Um, and what, one thing that I did two years ago that if we had e o s may not have been approved, I’ll just admit, is one year I decided everyone at Fuji deserves, um, a meta Oculus quest. Uh, two. So, ’cause this is about two years ago, they were only, what, 2 99 at the time. And I thought, this is the future of computing. Let’s do all of our team meetings in VR so we can understand this presence and this, you know, kind of new thing. And so for Christmas, we got everyone on the team a headset, which was super cool, and it’s like big, um, culture play, right? Huge, like, um, trends kind of making a trend, making decision. We’re kind of following the future trends. But if I had an integrator at the time, he might’ve said, uh, yeah, that’s cool, but there’s no budget.

(00:30:50):
And you can see there are two sides to that coin, and there can be two very passionate sides to all of these decisions. Um, so it’s in these monthly vi meetings where I kind of bring up silly ideas like this. Like, Hey, we should have everyone go to the Mac admins conference. Wouldn’t that be great? And my integrator has to say, yes, but it’s not in the budget, so let’s work on that for the, you know, 20, 24 budget. Um, and so that’s currently being decided, but that’s just an example behind the curtain of the types of like healthy disagreements we have that I may be super passionate about, but he’s grounded with reality, right? Oh, and lastly, I wanna mention this is really strange for any business owners out there. The integrator is the tiebreaker. This is a big deal. Um, because the integrator at the end of the day is actually responsible, um, in a business anyway for the, for the p and l for the profit of the organization.

(00:32:02):
So the integrator must have the final say in an, in a disagreement, because at the end of the day, the success, the, the p and l of the organization is on his shoulders. So that if I come up with a crazy idea like, oh, we should pivot and start manufacturing hula hoops, it’s his job to say, Lucas, that’s actually a terrible idea and we’re not going to do that. Right? Um, so the integrator does actually have, um, that ability because at the end of the day, he’s, he’s trying to make the company successful. So what happens at the end of that, that meeting is, um, the visionary and the integrator like mommy and daddy after a date, date night, we are on the same page one unifying vision. Um, so that the visionary and integrator in all the team meetings are always sharing the same message, the same reasons. And this, you know, same direction. Um, and this helps cut down from, you know, someone asking one or the other for approvals or something like that. Um, we, we always wanna be on the same, uh, presenting the same message,

Charles Edge (00:33:20):
Truly. And it does feel like, like that, especially when there’s multiple partners that asking different people to try to get different answers. I mean, my kids do it. I never thought my team would do it, but it happens way more , you know, , I mean, I’m sure if Marcus, for example, wants to go to j o c, you know, I, I can ask this person, then I can ask. Nevermind kidding. Oh, absolutely. , yeah, .

Lucas Acosta (00:33:50):
And sometimes it’s, it’s not even maliciously, right? It’s just like policies or anything.

Marcus Ransom (00:33:56):
Who’s, who’s the right person to ask? Like sometimes, you know mm-hmm. outside of this system. Um, and also coming back to, you know, who is, who is making, who is gonna make that decision in a way that enables yes. To be the answer rather than, you know, I don’t even know why you’d be asking me, so I’ll just say no, because that’s the, that’s the default answer. Who who has the ability to say yes?

Charles Edge (00:34:23):
Yeah. Um, I, I do think to, to make room for more of these meetings. And maybe it’s not even more meetings, maybe it’s actually less because you have to have these interlocking kind of things. Um, but time management is, is definitely a thing. Uh, you know, you can look at my outlook and you can see that I’m booked for every minute of every day, even though I might only actually talk to three or four different humans a day because I’m just jamming stuff in there for myself. But, but I, I guess how would you get into the time management side of this?

Lucas Acosta (00:35:05):
The, this is a great question. Um, we got from the, the community as well. Um, at least I know the Mac Adams community is very large, but the questions I was seeing was for, for teams that are small, that are, that are trying to, to grow bigger, and yeah, that is a difficult reality as a founder or even just a, a small business leader of wearing multiple hats. And I used to see this as a chicken and egg problem. Like, how do we make more money to promote people to have a bigger team? And I’ve now learned that it’s time management is not a chicken and egg problem, but rather, you must create the structure first to be able to delegate. And your calendar won’t change until there’s, until there’s other people on your team that are wearing your hats. ’cause you’re, I imagine listening to this, you’re probably wearing five hats, six hats, you know, or more.

(00:36:13):
And you’ve gotta give those hats to other people on the team before your calendar will clear up. And guess what? It’s really cool once you, you, you, you, uh, delegate those responsibilities to other other people, you don’t even have to clear out your calendar. It just starts getting emptier. It, it’s really cool because they take ownership and they’re taking those calls now. So it, it’s like a rolling, you know, 30 days, like all of a sudden, oh my goodness, why is there nothing on my calendar next week? It’s because there’s three other people that have taken on those, those tasks, right? And you didn’t have to ask anyone, like, Hey, can you take this meeting for me? No, it’s not really that they just know sales ops or finance, they take those meetings. So I, I answer to kind of summarize, I answer the time management question with, again, how, how important that structure is, even if you can’t offer a salary. Now, I think I mentioned this in the first, uh, uh, episode offering just a small portion of like a profit sharing coming up with a very basic profit sharing and just asking for help. And you will find that people want to help you grow that team, that company. If, if they can be part of the bigger vision, also, they, they wanna help. They’re just waiting for you to ask, uh, to help them lead.

Charles Edge (00:37:39):
That’s an interesting point. I, I actually, I don’t, I don’t think I’d call it consult because I refuse to take money for, for some of this, these things that I, I do sometimes, um, mostly ’cause I don’t wanna be on the hook to be, to have to do it, I guess. But I, right, I, I do talk to a bunch of, um, consultancy type of, uh, business owners and sure, I hear very similar, very similar things, but I’ve never heard anyone say, oh, I don’t have money for a salary so I can do profit sharing. I, I, I kinda like the interesting out of the box thinking of different ways to go about kinda getting some of the help and and or support you need. Um, that’s, that’s, that’s cool. That’s all I’m saying, ,

Lucas Acosta (00:38:29):
It’s, it’s, it’s

Charles Edge (00:38:30):
Interesting from the point of an employee, um,

Marcus Ransom (00:38:35):
When you offer people profit sharing, make it real, make it actually sharing. I oh, yeah. , the, the number of times I’ve been, um, sounds like you’ve been bit by that

Lucas Acosta (00:38:43):
One.

Marcus Ransom (00:38:43):
. Yeah. Foghorn Leghorn, who, who is, you know, another great, um, yeah. Business influencer there has a great line where two, two half, nothings don’t make a whole nothing. And I’ve been promised lots of half nothings in the past by, by businesses. And it was interesting because, you know, it, it led led to me creating exit strategies fairly soon afterwards

Lucas Acosta (00:39:04):
Where something, something stock options. Something something. Yeah.

Marcus Ransom (00:39:07):
Yeah. I was, you know, if our company makes a million dollars profit, you’ll get $5,000. And that wasn’t a million dollars revenue. That was a million dollars profit for a design consultancy with eight designers. And it was like, if we’re making that much profit, I would expect a hell of a lot more, you know? Yes. And, and I also understand A C F O can make profit disappear very quickly if they have a very

Lucas Acosta (00:39:33):
Quickly Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

Marcus Ransom (00:39:34):
There’s

Lucas Acosta (00:39:35):
No, that really is a great point. And that’s good to, to keep this conversation honest too, because you want to be authentic with what you’re, you’re planning. And, uh, I think that’s actually a, you’re a good testament, Marcus, because I don’t think you’re with that company anymore, right?

Marcus Ransom (00:39:53):
, this was a long time ago. Yeah.

Lucas Acosta (00:39:56):
Right. And it’s, I think we can’t guarantee success, actually, that was one thing that I learned after probably too many years. I cannot guarantee success to my team. It’s not my responsibility. Um, however I can, if they want to be part of the opportunity, they can, I’m, I wanna share the spoils of that. And you know, what, if it’s not a, if there is no profit, you put a few years into this or whatnot, then that’s the universe telling someone that whatever direction that was, that ship was going, there’s not much profit in that direction. So you end up finding another way. But that, that is a good point. You, you do need to create your own boundaries as the employee, um, to not just hope, hope for, uh, hope, I guess for hope’s sake.

Marcus Ransom (00:40:51):
And, and also as the employer or founder, to understand that what motive motivates you may be very different from what motivates the employees. And structuring something that does provide, um, you know, a reward for, for treating somebody else’s business like it is your own, um, if it’s done well, can be really, really empowering. Um, it’s about, you know, I I suppose very similar to how you structure, you know, operational and visionary, um, understanding, um, reward and remuneration works the same way that what may be seen as being a great for compensation, um, from one side of the argument may be perceived very differently. And so being able to structure it in a way that there is, you know, that it will get buy-in, so you do have the rest of the team wanting to be part of this because they can see value in this, um, is, is a really great approach. And I think, I think I I, the line you used of AU authenticity, um, I feel really covers that,

Lucas Acosta (00:42:01):
Right?

Charles Edge (00:42:02):
You know, I, I feel like, so the first one of these types of frameworks that I came across, I think was E-Myth. Um, when I was at Accenture early in my career, we got schooled on like T Q M and Six Sigma and some of these other types of larger frameworks, but that doesn’t at all work for a small business, anyone under 10 million trying to do Six Sigma, unless you’re straight up manufacturing and you’re trying to truly get to six Sigma style outcomes, um, is, is really quite challenging. Um, but I always saw like e-Myth as an example, as, um, like the Six Sigma for dummies kind of, um, or Six Sigma for s m B, not dummies at all. ’cause you know, right. You, you can’t run a small business for more than a week if you’re not smart, I don’t think, you know, in general .

(00:42:56):
But, um, but I, I do feel like, um, we mentioned a Scrum master earlier, and one thing that I always saw is where something like E-Myth would break down is people would weaponize it and use the words, um, in like their, ’cause they, they ended up with books and books and books worth of, of content to try to run things. And you can, you can take like a sentence or, or a paragraph from E-Myth or the Bible and, um, and you know, weaponize that in Yes. In such a way that you’re just saying, oh, well this is, you know, outta context ish. But, um, right. You know, going, kind of piggybacking off the Scrum type of framework, um, which is more for development practices, I think it turns out that managing that framework, the reason that bigger dev organizations as an example, have scrum masters is because managing time and process is, is, is a thing. So how do you go about managing the framework itself, or at least your interpretation of it, if that makes sense?

Lucas Acosta (00:44:04):
Great question. And we, we failed at this the first time. Um, so I can speak from failure here. Uh, we did try to self implement because we are by nature as small business people, self implementers. Um, and we really yeah. Ended up needing a coach to, on the second go to, to really kick this off. However, to answer your question, how do you kind of manage e o s? The, the answer is the integrator, the integrator role. The c o o is actually who manages the company. Uh, the c e o does not manage the company. So, uh, to think of e o s, it, it really is just how to run a business. Again, it’s not this, this crazy new paradigm shifting way of thinking. It really is just like meetings, promotions, one-on-ones annual reviews, budgets, right? So it’s actually the C o O and I didn’t know that until I went through this.

(00:45:26):
And that’s what’s, so I, I laugh because th they’re not, you know, new ideas, but they’re so simple. It’s been staring me in the face for 15 years. Um, and I didn’t know that oh, A C O O would’ve really, really helped me, uh, help this whole company grow. So that is really their job. And that’s why this is another really interesting truth that I did not want to believe the c o o the integrator needs to be full-time. And this is when everyone is like, what, what do you mean a full-time integrator that does not take care of clients? Okay, it does not do client work, does not do tickets, does not do engineering work or bookkeeping, or does not do bookkeeping. Right? Good point. Charles, um, doesn’t do all of that. And when I first heard this, like, how am I supposed to pay that guy that much money for quote unquote not doing any work?

(00:46:26):
And it wasn’t until we rolled this out where I realized, oh, actually it’s a lot of work. It’s a lot of messy work to manage e o Ss. But again, you can interchange e o s with business to manage the business, um, to manage it, right? So again, answering the question a different way, the integrator is working with the director of sales, director of ops, and director of finance. Those are the three, um, major legs of every business on the planet. No matter how innovative you are, you have those three parts of your business. Um, which is another thing I didn’t wanna believe, but it’s the truth. And the integrator is making sure that all of them have everything they need to accomplish their, their goals that week and, and the fires that come along with that. Um, so, so the, the question that this actually relates to that I’ve got here from the community is the question was what should I sacrifice in my day-to-day consultancy right now in my small business so that I can do e o s? And I understand what, what you’re asking, however, you really do just need to have someone else implement e o Ss is the short answer. so can ’cause it is,

Charles Edge (00:47:48):
So what you’re saying is cash at that point. I mean, you know,

Lucas Acosta (00:47:52):
Right. And, and, and even getting, um, a coach for 2000, $5,000 one time over a few week period would do that. Maybe ego, that’s

Marcus Ransom (00:48:06):
A lot. Maybe ego is another way of describing it, actually. Uh, realizing that trying to do it yourself isn’t the,

Lucas Acosta (00:48:13):
The solution, right? Right. Um, and I, again, I didn’t know this either until our coach said, no, Lucas, you’re the, you’re the visionary. You’re the c e o fly and be free. You don’t, you don’t get any tasks, you don’t get any, any goals this quarter. Um, it’s Justin that’s running this

Charles Edge (00:48:36):
Except to set the goals for next quarter . I mean,

Lucas Acosta (00:48:40):
Exactly right. Yeah. Uh, but, and, and I think naturally if you are the visionary, you’re gonna have those, right? And I don’t see it as homework. I, I see it as like another idea out of the shower Yeah. That I have to write down so that I don’t forget it for Justin on our next meeting. If, if

Marcus Ransom (00:48:58):
You don’t have them, that’s probably a sign of a bigger problem that, that the organization has.

Lucas Acosta (00:49:03):
Exactly. And, and you’re absolutely right. And I learned that not everyone has those ideas, and that is okay, right? Like, we are all, like, we all have different strengths. And, and, and if you don’t have those ideas that are just constantly coming to mind, that’s totally fine. There’s another, there’s a multitude of like, uh, that come work at any other company that will take you because there’s so much good work to do that I think the right c e o, the right visionary will always have, you know, something to execute, something to improve the company.

Charles Edge (00:49:40):
And I, I meet very few people that don’t have plenty of ideas. I think a lot of people just haven’t given, been given permission to float their ideas, if that makes sense. Um, yeah.

Lucas Acosta (00:49:53):
But that’s a great

Charles Edge (00:49:53):
Point. Yeah. I, I, I typically find, you know, you’ll, I, this happens a lot with seasoned long-term software developers, like people who have been writing code for 15 or 20 years in a big company, and yeah, they’re like, I just want somebody to tell me what to do. But then when you start kind of pestering ’em, like, what do you think we should be doing? And yes, at first they’re like, ah, man, I, I, I’ve, I’ve been here. I, you know, you’re, you’re just gonna get me to say something so that you can crap, you know, take a big dump on my ideas. But then, you know, after a few months, you know, they start loosening up and they’re like, ah, blah, blah, blah. And you’re like, yes, .

Lucas Acosta (00:50:35):
And then that’s exactly right.

Charles Edge (00:50:35):
And then you can’t shut ’em up. . So yes, but under, but,

Marcus Ransom (00:50:39):
But understanding, are those ideas, visionary ideas, or are they integrator ideas and who to provide that information to to Okay, implement.

Lucas Acosta (00:50:49):
Great, great point. Back to the hierarchy, it floats up to your, your director or the, you know, whoever it might be, it’ll end up with one of the leaders and it’s their job to bring it up. And every week we meet every Monday. And so I actually had someone ask me a question, a new hire pinged me last week. Um, I actually forgot the question, uh, but I wrote it down for my, the on Monday’s meeting, which is tomorrow morning. So I know that, and I told this new hire, I said, Hey, bye Tuesday, tomorrow you’ll have an answer. Um, so whether it’s a question or it’s an idea, we either say, Hey, that’s a great idea. We’re gonna execute, we’re gonna implement it within seven days, or that’s a great idea that’s going in our bucket for, and that’s not an e o s term, that’s a Lucas term.

(00:51:41):
Um, it’s going in the bucket for next quarter where the leaders, those five people will go on an offsite or a Zoom call all day. We do it once a quarter. And again, I never even managed my company by quarters before this, that like, I feel very corporate saying this. Like, we have Quar, we have quarters now , um, we never had quarters ’cause we’re a small business until e o s. But now when we meet, there is a invaluable list of ideas, challenges, uh, from the team that were not able to be accomplished as like a small task, right. If someone has like a big picture issue or, or a idea that that will go to the quarterly meeting with the leaders.

Charles Edge (00:52:34):
Have you done the v t o vision statement type thing where you kind of map out the three and 10 year? Yes. Yeah. Nice.

Lucas Acosta (00:52:42):
Um, yeah, that, I think we touched on that on the first one. And it’s so abstract. It’s, you really should Google that. Like just look at a a I’ll throw a link for you. Yeah, yeah. Like anyone listening should, should look at kind of a template v t o and that helps really keep, keep all the goals on track for the entire company.

Charles Edge (00:53:08):
Yeah. I’ve, I’ve always thought of, it’s interesting the difference there. Like I often hear in large enterprises as an example, like vision, um, mission, vision values, kinda, you know, laid out. Um, but that V t o added another thing that I thought I thought was really interesting, like core focus, which is getting into kind of mission, but not Yes. So that, that to me was interesting. And, um, and then, you know, the marketing piece, I, I like that they kind of include that,

Lucas Acosta (00:53:46):
Right? The V T O again stands for vision traction organizer. It, it really is. It’s only two pages long. So first page is the vision, second page is the traction. Um, it’s very simple page, but it is a very meaty, very dense, um, document that, that requires the visionary and integrator working together for weeks for a very long time. But once you have it solved, it’s solved for every, not only everyone on the team, but every new hire as well. So everyone knows our core focus. Everyone knows our values, you know, everyone knows, like you said, our marketing angle. How, how, what are our key messages that Fuji in our case is going to be known by. So it’s, again, I’ve probably read a, a business book about 15 different topics that would all just fit in the V T O. And that’s why I think I’m, I, I’m such a proponent of e o s, it’s because they kind of, they just simplified everything.

(00:54:54):
And I’ve been reading the, the leadership books, the management books, the, you know, everything you can think of. But e s just condenses it all. And you don’t have to worry about reading everything. Just, just follow this worksheet and, and you’re gonna get all of these very important, um, decisions made for your company. And another question that actually led me to one, um, that we got for like, new hires, like how do we make sure that new hires understand the lingo and everything? I’ll tell you what we do just two things. The first is that the new hire gets an email from me, from the visionary that tells the new hire what Fuji is gonna look like in 10 years. And it, it’s a really neat exercise. The first time I did this, and I loved it so much, um, and I just referenced our V T O and that they, they basically get an email that says, welcome, uh, this is what our company looks like now.

(00:56:02):
This is the comp, this is what we’re gonna look like in 10 years. And they’re getting all of these marketing messages, our core values, everything listed out. Um, it’s kind of a rallying cry, you know, kind of like a, it’s a vision. It’s what it is. It’s a vision of what they’re joining. So that’s one thing that we do. The second is that in their initial training, um, they spend, it ends up being like two, two hour sessions with me and I go over the entire v t o with them. Um, I say entire, it is only two pages, but you know, you, you only get to be a new hire once. So you’re, you’re learning about like the why behind a lot of the things inside the V T O and that makes sure that the new hire is, is getting started on the right track.

Speaker 1 (00:56:53):
This week’s episode of the Mac Admins podcast is also brought to you by Collide. Our sponsor, collide has some big news. If you are an Okta user, they can get your entire fleet to a hundred percent compliance. How if a device isn’t compliant, the user can’t log into your cloud apps until they’ve fixed the problem. It’s that simple. Collide patches one of the major holes in zero trust architecture device compliance without collide. It struggles to solve basic problems like keeping everyone’s OSS and browser up to date. Unsecured devices are logging into your company’s apps because there’s nothing to stop them. Collide is the only device trust solution that enforces compliance as part of authentication, and it’s built to work seamlessly with Okta. The moment collides agent detects a problem, it alerts the user and gives them instructions to fix it. If they don’t fix the problem within a set time, they’re blocked. Collides method means fewer support tickets, less frustration, and most importantly, a hundred percent fleet compliance. Visit collide.com/mac admins podcast to learn more or book a demo. That’s K O L I D e.com/mac admins podcast. Thanks to collide for sponsoring this episode of the Mac Admins podcast.

Tom Bridge (00:58:19):
Well, Lucas, one of the other questions that we got from the community, uh, you know, do you regularly have other e o s savvy business people sit on your L 10 meetings and then give you feedback after and you know, after that on how to improve?

Lucas Acosta (00:58:31):
Oh, that’s a great idea. And maybe we should start, um, just to yeah. Get some fresh perspective into our meetings. Um, well first off, let me explain what an L 10 is. Sorry for the lingo. It stands for level 10, and I’m gonna go ahead and say it’s the cheesiest word out of this entire system. , um, get this guys, it. Why they call the the leadership meeting in L 10 is because they wanna make sure that it is out of a one to 10 score, a level 10 meeting every time you have it. Mm-hmm. .

(00:59:13):
And when I heard that, I just thought that’s the most corporate-y corporate thing I’ve ever heard of in my life. Um, like let’s have a level 10 meeting, but I’m a convert and we x vaccinating, right? . Right. And guess what, only 10 x business people allow . Right? What’s so, um, interesting about this, not only is the L 10 for leaders every, every week, right? It’s, there’s a simple format that we follow, but at the end of the meeting, everyone ranks that meeting the performance of it on a scale from one to 10. So think about the meetings you guys have run before. Would you want your attendees to give you a rating on how well that meeting went? That’s a pretty vulnerable place to be. Oh yeah. Right? Uh, , because you don’t wanna waste anyone’s time. You feel like you’re kind of wasting people’s time.

(01:00:07):
And so the entire point of this is to not waste people’s time. And the first several weeks we were having some pretty middle scores up and down the chart, and now we’ve been about a year and a half in, and our meetings are usually rated, you know, nine, 9.5, um, for different reasons. And it’s a way to be accountable, um, to ourselves every week to make sure that we’re not wasting any time. Um, so anyway, that’s L 10 to answer the, the question, we don’t have other e o s folks join in. That’s a great idea. However, how we benefited early on was having that implementer. Again, if you can spend just a little bit of cash on an implementer, they can help you make that L 10 very effective. And, and then your team one, once you can follow the format, your team is gonna have all the great ideas, right? Like the idea is to let your team talk ’cause they, that that’s gonna make your company better. Um, that’s still a good idea. Maybe I’ll, I’ll pinging you and you can join in on our next L 10 .

Charles Edge (01:01:24):
Well, you know, speaking of not wasting people’s time, one of the things that, for me at least, and I don’t know if I’m the only one, but I’m guessing Tom will be like, yes. Um, that can be frustrating is ceremonies for the sake of ceremonies. Uh, so do you have any tips for, I don’t know, just in time provisioning and meetings or cutting down meetings because well, we’re supposed to have meetings, you know, um, because you don’t need an L 10 every day, but maybe you skip them every now and then, but maybe never. I don’t know.

Lucas Acosta (01:02:01):
Right. Um, that’s a great question because especially in a small business, we don’t wanna waste anyone’s time. Um, we don’t like ceremonies for the sake of ceremonies either. And that’s why I didn’t want structure mm-hmm. for over 10 years. Right? Like, that’s the whole reason we started a small business. I see. Like Tom shaking his head, is that you don’t you don’t want all that bloat and bureaucracy in your business. Uh, we’re, we’re here to have fun and, you know, do good work, right? Um, and so we don’t have ceremonies here. And by having kind of these worksheets for how a one-on-one is operated, how an L 10 is operated, um, we just get right to it. And the L 10 is fluffy as it gets, is at the beginning of every meeting. They just want you to share good news. So share good news personally.

(01:02:59):
One good thing, and then good news professionally, and that gets the meeting started. And you only have five minutes to cover five people. So an L 10 is 90 minutes long, and that starts the meeting. So if you’ve never run a meeting before, be honest and say, we’re just gonna follow this. ’cause I’ve never done this before. And I think you might actually get rated pretty low, score your first time, and that’s okay. But everyone wants to make that better because no one wants a ceremony at the end of the day. Um, and, uh, yeah, I I think by, by having these frameworks already mapped out, it, it allows you to just cut through that, that extra fluff.

Tom Bridge (01:03:46):
Nice. Yeah. One of the things that’s really important is, is, you know, meetings that matter, right? Like, that’s one of the things that we talk about about it internally at JumpCloud is that every meeting has to matter. ’cause it’s, it’s gotta be, you know, otherwise there’s, there’s more important things for us to be doing, right? Like, we’re, we, we don’t get into this gig to meet, like that’s not what the, that’s not what the job’s for our job’s to fix things. Our job is to make things. Our job is to, you know, resolve things. Not just to, you know, sit around and, and be in a, be in a Zoom call together. Even as much fun as that can be. Um, it’s really gotta be valuable to your organization to have a, a cadence involved. And so, one of the things that we, we do, I have a standing Monday meeting with, uh, a bunch of our engineering managers, a bunch of our product team, a bunch of our user experience designers, and it’s the, it’s the leads meeting.

(01:04:34):
And so the agenda is agreed to ahead of time, and then at the end of it is like, do we need this next week? Nice. And if the answer is no, it comes off the calendar and then we reins instantiate it, you know, the fri the, the Friday before, and it’s like, alright, let’s do it. Let’s go. We’re in kind of a crunch time right now. Uh, and so that meeting is five minutes long right now on Mondays is, do we have any blockers? Are there any, you know, execution concerns? Yep. Does anybody have a, have a, something that they need to get answered by this team

Lucas Acosta (01:05:06):
And how, how many And

Tom Bridge (01:05:06):
Not in a Slack thread.

Lucas Acosta (01:05:07):
That’s awesome. How many people are in your standup meeting,

Tom Bridge (01:05:12):
In that meeting? Close to 20.

Lucas Acosta (01:05:14):
Okay. And that makes sense, right? You don’t wanna waste anyone’s time. No. What are the big blockers? That’s right. Um, so I think that format makes sense for that, and that’s really cool. I’ve never heard of a standup that just is willing to to skip one. Well,

Tom Bridge (01:05:28):
And that’s the whole thing with Agile, right? Like so many of these ceremonies that are there, they’re there for the, for the satisfaction of the, of the process. And you have to derive what you need out of the process. Right? And sometimes that’s not ideal.

Lucas Acosta (01:05:40):
Yeah. And, and for this L 10 meeting, uh, this is only five people. So whether your company mm-hmm. is 1,000,500 thousand or, or 30 million. This L 10, uh, is a 90 minute meeting because it really is with the directors, the, the, you know, the executive team, if you will. Um, and so there, there’s, we don’t always use all 90 minutes. If we can wrap up early, that’s great, but we’re, yeah, we do all have work to do. And so we’re happy to, to wrap those meetings early.

Tom Bridge (01:06:21):
Mm-hmm.

(01:06:24):
Here at the Mac Admins podcast, we wanna say a special thank you to all of our Patreon backers. The following people are to be recognized for their incredible generosity. S Stu Bacca. Thank you. Adam Selby. Thank you. Nate Walk. Thank you. Michael Sy. Thank you Rick Goody. Thank you. Mike Boylan. You know it. Thank you. Uh, Melvin Vive. Thank you. W Bill Stites. Thank you. Anush Ville. Thank you. Jeffrey Compton, M Marsh, Stu McDonald, Hamlin Cruin, Adam Berg. Thank you. AJ Reka. Thank you. James Traci, Tim Perfi of two Canoes. Thank you. Nate Sinal, will O’Neill, Seb Nash, the folks at Command Control Power, Stephen Weinstein, Chut Swarthout, Daniel McLaughlin, Justin Holt, will Smith and Weldon do. Thank you all so much and remember that you can back us if you just head out out to patreon.com/mac ADM podcast. Thanks everybody.

(01:07:20):
So I think that, you know, we, we, that question that you asked, uh, that to start those l l 10 meetings is spectacular. And so, you know, I think that that’s a, that’s a great place for us to sign off today. And so, you know, do you have any good news to share today? I think that that’s, you know, we, we always start our product meetings. What, what did we win last week? What were the wins? So, you know, I think that that’s a great place for us to, you know, wrap this up and, and, and put a nice little bow on it. So, you know, with that all said, Charles, do you have any good news to share today?

Charles Edge (01:07:48):
Oh, the kid is having a blast at camp. I mean,

Tom Bridge (01:07:53):
Nice. Excellent.

Charles Edge (01:07:54):
You know what else? I, so I’m not supposed to know about anything happening at camp because they’re at camp. There’s no phones at camp.

Tom Bridge (01:08:03):
Yeah.

Charles Edge (01:08:04):
Slides. Um, the other kid is a counselor who hasn’t gone to camp, so the counselor is texting the other counselor, you know, so I, I do, uh, not spying, but just, oh, everything’s going great. They’re having a blast, yada, yada yada. So, you know, it, it might seem mundane, but it’s great to know that your kid No, it’s because this is the first year we’ve done a two week stay away camp. It’s always been one That’s a big deal One week, you know, so gone for two weeks. A i, I can’t tell you the last time I didn’t see my kid for two weeks, but, you know. Yeah. Are

Lucas Acosta (01:08:43):
You okay

Charles Edge (01:08:44):
? Oh yeah.

Lucas Acosta (01:08:45):
I’m great.

Charles Edge (01:08:46):
. And this should happen more. No, I’m kidding. Um, but Tom, your kid’s at camp, right?

Tom Bridge (01:08:51):
I was gonna say my camp, my Charlie left for camp this morning. He said camp the Goshen Scout Reservation in Southwestern Virginia for the next six days. And you know, it was really funny because the bus pulled away. We were all waving and waving and like every parent, once they turned the corner, everyone’s like, woo.

Charles Edge (01:09:06):
School’s

Tom Bridge (01:09:07):
Out summer, and like, you know, I mean

Charles Edge (01:09:10):
Alice Cooper School.

Tom Bridge (01:09:12):
Yeah, a hundred percent. And, uh, so, you know, it’s nice. My wife and I went out to dinner tonight and, you know, had a l you know, a slow easy dinner at Lina here in DC and had a very nice, uh, you know, Aperol spritz. Uh, and it was, you know, not the dinner that Charlie would’ve, you know, gone along for, or at least like, and so, you know, it’s funny, we’ve got, you know, we, we wanted to like put a, put a bunch of things on the list. What are we gonna do? What are we gonna do with our child this week? Um, and sleep. So yeah, we, we planned out the rest of our weeks. We’re gonna, the movies twice. . It’s gonna be amazing. . So, you know, it’s funny, we were gonna go see like, you know, movies for adults, talk about what are we gonna see about what, what are we gonna go see into the Spider Verse in Indiana

Charles Edge (01:09:53):
Jobs . Yes.

Tom Bridge (01:09:54):
So, yeah, I was gonna say, I don’t know if this is a total fail or, or what this plan is, but we’re gonna have a blast and, you know, it is, I’m really excited for him to have this experience. We’ve been kind of back and forth to him and I over this one. ’cause I went along on this, this trip last year, and he saw some of his friends get homesick, and so he’s a little worried about that, but I think you gotta figure that out on your own at some point. And I think that’s where we are. And so I’m thinking good thoughts. It’s 10 15 at night here. I’m hopeful he’s been asleep for two hours or at least 90 minutes and, or at least

Marcus Ransom (01:10:27):
Getting up, getting into some good trouble not being asleep.

Tom Bridge (01:10:31):
Oh, well he’s, he’s an early to bed kind of kiddo. Like, I mean, that’s just who he is. He’s an up with the dawn kind of thing. They

Charles Edge (01:10:36):
All are

Tom Bridge (01:10:37):
His he’ll be up. He

Charles Edge (01:10:37):
Won’t be for long. Yeah. No offense. Yeah. Um, but oh

Tom Bridge (01:10:40):
No, I totally understand. Is that

Charles Edge (01:10:42):
Your good news though, ?

Tom Bridge (01:10:43):
Yeah, that was my good news. That was 100% my good news. I think he’s gonna have a great week. See Charles,

Lucas Acosta (01:10:48):
Charles Marcus. Charles is the integrator here. He, he’s just wrapping up the good news. He’s moving on to the next, keeping the train on time.

Tom Bridge (01:10:55):
That is 100% Charles’s role. .

Charles Edge (01:10:58):
Yes. I do it a lot, don’t I? How about you, Marcus? So,

Marcus Ransom (01:11:02):
So my, my good news, I suppose is the opposite of that, that, uh, we’ve got a got a week left, left to go, which brings us to the end of the financial year, which is insanely busy. I’m getting on a plane up to Sydney on Thursday and then back on Friday night. But the great news, the really good news is I’ve got the next week off, I’ve got the first week of July off and at school holidays. So I’m, I’m actually enjoying being able to spend some time with family and not just, oh, sorry, I’ve got a meeting. I’ve just gotta jump on a call. I can everyone just be quiet please. We’re recording a podcast or , you know, talking to some customers or, or, or that sort of stuff to actually, I dunno, try and try and pretend that computers don’t exist for a week and, you know, go and have some fun.

Tom Bridge (01:11:43):
That sounds like the dream right there. Yeah.

Marcus Ransom (01:11:45):
Yeah. And then, then

Charles Edge (01:11:47):
I would say, I didn’t even do that on my honeymoon, but yeah, I, I’m not still married, so

Marcus Ransom (01:11:51):
That, I know that would be a, not

Charles Edge (01:11:52):
A good thing to say,

Lucas Acosta (01:11:53):
.

Tom Bridge (01:11:55):
I was gonna say the, uh, first day of, uh, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s really funny. The first day of our honeymoon was in fact totally torched by an email server. Um, that, uh, had a huge, uh, disaster. And you know, this, it’s really funny because I now know my current boss, Greg Armini at, at, uh, at JumpCloud, uh, used to be a product manager at Zimbra and , and I’ve told him this story and he’s like, you know, it was just one of those like cover your eyes kind of situations. But the thing was Zimbra would run on a Mac mm-hmm. , you just had to give it a, a path for the, for the, uh, for the storage. And so if you gave it the path slash volume slash external slash you know, et cetera, it would store it there. But the problem was the Zimbra server didn’t check, or it would only check to see if that directory existed. It would not check to see that it actually mapped to external storage. Um, and so when the drivery started and the mail array was just a little bit slow to come back online, oh, it didn’t sleep, it would create before

Charles Edge (01:12:54):
That

Tom Bridge (01:12:55):
Volume appeared in

Charles Edge (01:12:55):
Volumes

Tom Bridge (01:12:56):
. Yeah. Yes. And so it just created a, a path in slash volume slash external and just started to put all the mail there and then like everybody’s, you know, freaking out because, you know, they’re, they’re, they’re logging into web mail or they’re logging into their computer and like none of their mail is there. The index is there, but it can’t display the message. And so everybody’s like flipping. Yeah, that totally ruined my first day of Tom.

Lucas Acosta (01:13:19):
That’s, that’s giving me the chills. Like I thought hearing a mail server story, like I like stories, you know, the, the good old days. Not that,

Tom Bridge (01:13:30):
Not

Lucas Acosta (01:13:30):
Those ones. Not mail servers. story. So the good news is that

Marcus Ransom (01:13:35):
Nobody runs self-hosted mail servers anymore, do they?

Charles Edge (01:13:38):
Yeah. Hopefully not.

Tom Bridge (01:13:39):
Oh,

Lucas Acosta (01:13:40):
Hopefully not. I

Tom Bridge (01:13:40):
Had, I have some, I have some regrettable news for you, my friend.

Charles Edge (01:13:44):
I had nine all-nighters with mail servers, almost all of which were with Exchange One was with, uh, some vendor. I’m not gonna bad mouth. Yeah. But yeah. Ouch. Yep,

Lucas Acosta (01:13:57):
Yep. Mine were all with, um, with Apple, uh, with OSS 10 server, mail server, which was do Dovecot. Oh. Like I learned way more about Dovecot than I ever wanted to.

Charles Edge (01:14:10):
Yep.

Lucas Acosta (01:14:11):
Oh, that’s right.

Tom Bridge (01:14:14):
So yeah. No, thank you. Don’t want mm-hmm. I think those are the, those are days that are hopefully gone for most of our listenership.

Lucas Acosta (01:14:20):
The,

Marcus Ransom (01:14:21):
The olden days friend, the olden

Tom Bridge (01:14:23):
Days. If you’re out there and, and you’re still managing an onsite mail server, oh, friend,

Charles Edge (01:14:29):
It doesn’t have to be this way.

Lucas Acosta (01:14:31):
Yes. It doesn’t

Tom Bridge (01:14:31):
Have to be this way. Let’s, let’s, let’s find you, let’s find you some good man out there. Let’s make your life better. The

Charles Edge (01:14:37):
Fact that I, at first I didn’t trust cloud-based mail as a consultant, you know, um, I was like, Nope, we have exchange servers. And it wasn’t for a couple years with Google Mail that I was like, oh, wait. Because I would say half the clients that we ever lost were due to those all-nighter that I pulled then being without mail that night, you get the mail backup up, right. You, you do the heroic. I mean, this is why we’re consultants. You’re like, yes, I did it. And they’re like, yes, you did it. And then a week later they’re like, yeah, but you built it and it went down eventually. And you’re like, but Exchange goes down. E s e till exists for a reason. But yeah, that’s

Lucas Acosta (01:15:28):
What it

Charles Edge (01:15:28):
Does. Right. But, you know. Anyway, um, so how about you Lucas? Do you have any good news?

Lucas Acosta (01:15:38):
Uh, sure. I, um, I’m gonna do two quick ones. Okay. Sometimes we can break the rules. Yeah, I got to go. We family went to Austin, Texas. Mm. I love Boston. Just a couple weeks ago, all my family’s out there, so that was just a grand old time. Um, great to get away. No mail servers went down, thankfully. Oh, during that time. Excellent.

(01:16:01):
Um, and then last week is a bit more of a, of a, an adulting, uh, good news. Our range, our, that’s what you call ovens. I guess. Our range, uh, had failed, uh, several months ago. And we’ve had a quote unquote warranty coverage like service. Oh no. That’s been taking care of it. And I’ve just been hope, uh, hoping for the best, but expecting the worst for the last three months of back and forths. And a repairman came on Thursday, fixed the range, it’s in brand new working condition, and the invoice was $0. So as an adult, that really has just, that made my weak

Tom Bridge (01:16:48):
You are once again cooking with gas

Charles Edge (01:16:50):
, quite

Lucas Acosta (01:16:51):
Literally.

Tom Bridge (01:16:52):
Yes, yes, indeed.

Marcus Ransom (01:16:54):
So the, so what you’re saying is the integrator responsible for dealing with that, did

Charles Edge (01:16:58):
Their job properly, ? Yes,

Lucas Acosta (01:17:00):
Correct. That’s right.

Tom Bridge (01:17:02):
I I will leave the, the team with one great thing. The, the, the, the, the thing that I have enjoyed most lately, and you, we brought up food. So I’m thinking about it, is season two of the Bear on Hulu?

Lucas Acosta (01:17:13):
Oh yes. Ooh. Um, I haven’t started that yet.

Marcus Ransom (01:17:16):
I haven’t started season one. Yeah.

Tom Bridge (01:17:18):
Season one is amazing. I need to get out one. It is every bit. So season two is every bit Ted Lassos equal. Yeah. And I say that with deep and abiding affection and knowing that I just, we just mainlined the whole thing in maybe 28 hours.

Lucas Acosta (01:17:35):
Wow.

Tom Bridge (01:17:35):
Um, like it was an afternoon spent, uh, enjoying today and I came away both fed and starving. So, oh, the bear on Hulu. Go see it.

Lucas Acosta (01:17:47):
So

Marcus Ransom (01:17:47):
Good up to, up to episode six of season two and can confirm we’re, we’re, we’re rationing to try and maintain our emotional ability to function because yeah, it can confirm. Absolutely amazing. The food is phenomenal. The warm in a glow is brilliant. Yes.

Tom Bridge (01:18:05):
Episode. Okay, fine. Episode seven. Now I’ll watch

Marcus Ransom (01:18:07):
Season one

Tom Bridge (01:18:08):
And two. Episode seven is the best.

Marcus Ransom (01:18:10):
Alright, well that’s tonight.

Tom Bridge (01:18:13):
Yeah. So I was gonna say, you, you, you, you have me, you have, you, you have that to look forward to. Um, it is nothing but perfection,

Lucas Acosta (01:18:22):
So.

Tom Bridge (01:18:22):
Wow. And I say that with nothing but love and I’m probably gonna watch it again tomorrow.

Lucas Acosta (01:18:27):
Wow. All right. That’s some good

Tom Bridge (01:18:30):
News. Alright, wi with, with that, we’ve had our good news. I feel like this is a great place to leave it for tonight. Lucas, thank you so much for joining us for, uh, tonight. Um, uh, just a quick reminder for folks, where can they find you on the internet? Where should they go looking?

Lucas Acosta (01:18:43):
Sure. I am in Slack, um, in the Mac admin Slack, and I’m at lucas acosta.com where you can find all of the socials. Uh, but yeah, pinging me, uh, this has been awesome. Thank you so much for, for having me back. Uh, it was really fun and great to see the, the questions from the community. Um, so yeah, thank you guys.

Tom Bridge (01:19:03):
Huge pleasure. Thank you so much. Um, and thanks so much for our wonderful sponsors this week. That is Kanji collide and Simple, m d m. Uh, and thanks everybody. We’ll see you next time. See you next time.

Marcus Ransom (01:19:17):
See you later.

Tom Bridge (01:19:31):
The Edmund’s podcast is a production of Mcad Admin’s podcast, L l c. Our producer is Tom Bridge. Our sound editor and mixing engineer is James Smith. Our theme music was produced by Adam Coga the first time he opened Garage Band Sponsorship for the Mac Admins podcast is provided by the mac admins.org Slack, where you can join thousands of Mac admins in a free Slack instance. Visit mac admins.org and also by teary l c technically we can help. For more information about this podcast and other broadcasts like it, please visit podcast dot mac admins.org. Since we’ve converted this podcast to a P F S, the funny metadata joke is at the end.