Pandemic Paradox: Seeking Better I.T. Value When Budgets Are Tight and Others Are Cutting Back

Speaker 1:           Welcome to the JMARK Business Innovation Technology Experience.

Todd:                    Okay, welcome everybody that’s joining us on Facebook and to those of us joining us on the podcast, welcome, welcome, welcome. Today we have another fascinating topic that we are going to discuss and that is what we are calling the pandemic paradox. What we’ve seen a lot is a lot of companies are wanting and seeing that they need to adapt and know that technology is a way that they can adapt and innovate, but at the same time, they want it at lower cost. The pandemic has seen massive changes. We’ve talked about how there’s been a huge increase in digital transformation. We have companies like Facebook that have said that 50% of their workforce will be remote for five to 10 years, that they’ll be able to work remote for five to 10 years. Twitter has announced that their employees can work remote forever, as long as the company is around or unless the change policy.

So that’s changes in the fundamental ways of how we use IT, and companies are changing how they operate. They’re doubting the purpose of travel. Doubting that so many trips are needed. They’re doubting that events are needed as much. At the same time you have people that are kind of Zoomed out and kind of sick of all the virtual meetings, so it’s a conflict on both sides. But the truth of the matter is that in order to innovate and adapt in this changing world, we have to be better. We have to use technology and all the resources and tools at our disposal to innovate and create a future that serves our customers and helps our employees and company be successful.

So, Jeremy, you interact with a lot of prospects and a lot of clients and have for many many years, what are some of the things that you’re kind of seeing in the marketplace right now, when you’re talking to prospects in terms of money? And is money really the big dilemma or is it something else?

Jeremy:                Sorry, it’s always good to start out with a big cough, especially during a pandemic, it sets the tone. One of the things I think that I’ve seen more in the last few months, when talking to clients and prospects alike is I think everybody is just looking for more bang for their dollar. You can equate that to the recession or to the pandemic or to the social situation, the election year, it all repeats. It’s a lot like it was in 2008, 2012, just kind of amplified. Everybody wants to see more bang for their dollar. They want to see that they’re getting more value for what they spend. I think it’s interesting that it doesn’t matter what it’s in, whether it’s in IT or whether it’s in their marketing spend or whatever it is. They are as almost a whole across anybody we’ve talked to it’s, “How can we get more for less?”

Being kind of the old guy here at JMARK, who has kind of seen the iterations over the years, I’ve always pointed to 2008 as kind of a transformative year. The recession in 2008 was when JMARK actually had some of its biggest growth because people were looking to squeeze more value out of their IT dollar and we stepped in and provided that in a lot of companies where we would either augment or replace a poorly performing IT situation. It’s almost like that’s happening again, just in a bigger way because of the pandemic and the fact that more people are working from home is in some ways actually affecting the IT situation in a positive way, because people are realizing that the only way they can do this is with IT.

I was talking to my father-in-law the other day, who is retired, but he made a comment that it kind of hit me like a ton of bricks that, “Yeah, I’m able to work from home or I’ve been able to do this and most people have been able to work from home.” Can you imagine what would have happened if this pandemic would have happened 20 years ago, 25 years ago, before the internet infrastructure was what it is today. It’s not perfect, but it’s a heck of a lot better than what it was, and before technologies like Zoom and Webex were out there and VoIP was pretty much everywhere, or everybody pretty much had their life on a mobile phone where they could just step in and do business from home like it’s no big deal.

The fact that people view that as kind of a norm, has kind of worked kind of to an advantage for an IT person or for an IT company or IT strategist, because it’s not as big of a pivot as it could have been or it would have been to try to move infrastructure into a cloud environment where it’s more accessible. To try to put companies in a position where they can say, “Yeah, my workforce is going to be remote for a year, for two years, whatever.” If you remember back in March, we started out saying, “Yeah, we’re going to work from home for two weeks and see what happens.” That’s what everybody said. It was, “Springs break’s going to be an extra week long.” Remember that? I mean, that’s kind of a laughable thought now, but that’s what we all thought.

Dax:                      Nobody remembers that that was might as well have been the [inaudible].

Jeremy:                Anyway, I ramble but I think it all comes down to people wanting more bang for their buck and more value for the dollar. I think IT budgets and budgets in general got squeezed by about 25% looking for more effectiveness in 2008. I see it happening again now, again in a compounding method.

Todd:                    One thing you said that kind of strikes me though is, because I have experienced this all through my life, you get what you pay for. I mean, I was relaying this story to others, but I can’t stop thinking about this, the other day I took the kids to a restaurant and we hadn’t been to this restaurant for nine months, or however long COVID has been going around, and honestly we’ve had tons of problems at this restaurant in the past and it would be a restaurant that everybody would recognize, but I figured with COVID they’d surely upped their game. So we went there, the kids love to go there, and they had messed up my order. They messed up the hamburger. I’m dairy free and they threw cheese on it. I never forget to say, “I can’t have cheese.” They had brought my son the wrong thing and it was just a fiasco. It made me think at the time and I talked to the manager too, it’s like, “if you’re going to survive,” if they’re going to survive, they have to adapt.

When I apply that technology to technology, I’m thinking, okay, so this company has these little kiosk things sitting on the table. I’m sure you’ve all seen them where kids can play games. You can pay your bill on there and you can actually order from there. So why don’t they arm these serves with the same stinking application. Give them an iPad or some tablet, let them note what it is, turn it to you and face it. I mean, it’s a very, very small thing where you’re investing in IT to create an experience that will help to level up your organization and help it to survive and strive in a post-COVID world. But, they are doing exactly what you are saying, they’re trying to get more bang for the buck. The server was writing on a piece of paper in chicken scratch, handed that to a cook, who probably didn’t speak English as a first language and things got mixed up somehow in there. It’s just the bang for the buck is all great when there’s a really good strategy to make sure you’re actually getting more, but when you’re just trying to reduce funds for the sake of reducing funds, you’re going to give up something.

Jeremy:                Maybe, but I’m going to keep going with the food thing, because I’ve literally gone weeks at a time without leaving my house during this process, and I’ve kind of grown to like it. But, from an eating out perspective, I haven’t eaten out hardly at all and it used to be a pretty big part of my life.

Todd:                    This was the first [crosstalk] in months, so I know what you mean.

Jeremy:                But I will admit one of my guilty pleasures is Sonic. No product placement here, sorry. But I recently discovered for being a Sonic’s fan, I recently discovered their mobile app. It got me to thinking, their mobile app, it helps them out because it reduces the amount of time that you sit there taking up one of their stalls. They get their orders in, it takes out a human interaction that you just said. It probably saves them some human capital, but I would say even though I love Sonic, I will recognize that when I would go and order and push the button and give my order, it would be wrong 60% of the time, because I always have a weird order.

I always get a number two hamburger, no cheese, with mustard, no onions and onion rings. The no onions on the burger plus onion rings as the side, mind blowing. But on the app, it’s never been wrong, because it’s written down and it doesn’t have to rely on that person to translate it. So that’s kind of the converse to what you’re talking about. But then, do you want to be the guy that advocates Sonic reducing their headcount by one, because they don’t need that person to sit there at the microphone and take orders?

Todd:                    Well, I mean, even in that experience, they didn’t have paper menus. They gave you a little card on the table that had a QR code and you scan it with your hand and it takes you to a PDF document that you’re sitting there kind of enlarging and moving around. I mean, in the same experience, they could have just sent you to the app, because they have an app or created something to help you have a better experience.

Dax:                      I think there has to be a desire, like you guys are talking about, to use the technology well, to put in the work and that’s where your IT provider, your IT partner can come in and help you. A larger, big organization might be able to do this with their own IT company, but even if you have an MSP, they can come in and be a partner to help you figure out how to take the IT, take the technology that’s available to you and start leveraging these opportunities the technology can bring you, but you have to have the desire to do that. You’ve got to want to … I always hate to say the phrase, you’ve got to put in the work, because too many people hear that and they’re like, “Putting in the work sounds like a lot of work.” So they kind of start zoning out.

But the thing is, again, with the right IT partner, it might not be as much work as you anticipate and that’s the conversation that you need to have to find out how you can start leveraging technology, because one thing that occurred to me Jeremy when you were talking is this idea you were talking about what would we have done 20 years ago without Zoom and all of the technologies that we’re using so much now. I always think that a lot of these technologies have sort of been lingering around for at least a few years in some cases, but it often takes a crisis or something to sort of push things into overdrive where people adapt quickly. But that’s the key right there is, the companies that on the other side of this that are going to be furthest ahead are the ones that really do adapt. I say that as coming from somebody who in my personal life is not an early adopter. I’m always slow and I always want to be taking my time and thinking and mulling things over, but that’s not the way to get ahead.

Todd:                    Yeah, I agree with you. In thinking about that restaurant experience, and I don’t want to point the finger and say they just don’t know what they’re doing, but in truth they don’t, but that’s not an insult, it’s ignorance. You’re in your world. A restaurateur is a restaurateur. An engineer is an engineer. Often times we don’t look outside our bubble to solve a problem. For years and years and years and I don’t know how many, people have been writing orders on paper. That’s just what they do. I would think as a restaurateur you’d be like, “Well, that’s the cheapest thing we can do.”

But going back to this cost discussion, one thing that I think we need to address is that the true problem is not always cost. There’s a perception of cost. If we solve a problem, that problem is potentially costing us money, whether that’s hundreds of dollars or thousands of dollars or millions of dollars. So when we’re in those bubbles and we have these stories that we’re telling ourselves, we often don’t realize that technology, while there’s an investment that has to go in, it could prevent that loss of revenue, loss of that big experience problem that you’re having on the other side. So then it’s not a discussion of cost, it’s a discussion of reducing risks, it’s a discussion of increasing revenue. It’s a discussion of being more successful.

Jeremy:                And just devil’s advocate though, that’s real easy to say whenever you’re well prepared and you’ve got a little bit of money in the bank versus you’re scared. Investing isn’t a word that comes up when people are scared. I think a lot of people are really scared right now. Again, regardless of what it’s because of, pandemic, recession, election and da, da, da, dah, it’s harder to hear the word invest. It’s harder to think about the future whenever fear is driving you. A lot of that comes into a person’s mental state and their ability to get beyond the fear, and it’s hard to do.

Dax:                      It is. The one thing I wrote down a few minutes ago when you were saying something, Jeremy, is the idea, and I think this is how you get past that fear is to try to flip the script in your mind so that you’re not thinking about what you’re spending, but you take the first step and get smarter, which is what Todd is talking about having conversations with people who understand that we’re talking about technology here. So getting ahold of an MSP that can help you and make you smarter so ultimately you’re spending smarter. You’re putting the money where it’s going to bring you the best value, because maybe it’s not a matter of just spending less, or spending more, or something as black and white as that. Maybe it’s a matter of moving your technology investments and taking a look to see where you can spend better that you’re not doing at the moment.

Kristina:               I would think that these would be conversations that your technology partner would be having with you as well. Yes, you do have to put in the work, but if you have a good partnership there, they’re going to be initiating this, because they are the expert in that area.

Todd:                    Going back to one of the things that Jeremy said, we’re always investing. Every executive on the planet is always investing in something. There’s budget discussions and experience more so now as we’re getting closer to the end of the year, and especially during a pandemic, because we’ve seen loss of revenues. There’s always the decision of where to invest something. We were talking earlier about sales and marketing, we all know, and it’s been touted for generations that you don’t not invest in sales and marketing during a crisis. You have to power through it. You have to communicate. You have to adapt and be ready for when that crisis ends or you get to the other side of the crisis and you’re not going to have any sales or leads in your funnel to be able to bounce back.

Not to dispute what you said, because it is true that there’s a lot of fear and there’s a lot of uncertainty in the world among people, but it’s also, I mean, getting out of our skin and going back to what Dax and Kristina said, “Working with people that understand things that you don’t.” Sometimes that’s just your employees. Widening the scope of what are the problems. Often times there are problems that employees are having that executives don’t even know about, because they’re so far down the line and the employees are just powering through and banging their head against this problem and just dealing with it, and executives don’t realize that there’s a problem to be solved. So, I think it’s all true though, there is fear, but at the same time while true we should invest in the sales and marketing, we also have to invest at this point in change, whatever that change is. Because unlike many crises that we’ve had over the years, this crisis is different because behavior is actually changing.

Like you said Jeremy, you like working from home. You don’t like going to restaurants that much now. Your behavior has changed. So how are people going to adapt to that change? If they only invest in sales and marketing to sell a product that was attractive before the pandemic, or a service that was attractive before the pandemic, that’s not going to help them during or after. Often times, and this isn’t always the case, but there’s a big portion of time when technology will feed the innovation and feed the adoption and the change and the innovation to whatever this new platform is. Part of that is not because technology is some holy grail, it’s because the world is changing. Everybody is digital. They’re looking at their phones. They’re downloading these apps. They’re ordering things online. Traditional businesses and a lot of businesses have to adapt and figure out how they’re going meet customers where they are.

Dax:                      Yeah, I think you mentioned one word Todd, that I think I might have mentioned this last week or the other week during podcast, but this idea that we talk about innovation and I think with always have to remind people that innovation doesn’t mean this grand leap forward. Innovation means what it means for your business, the change you make. Maybe the innovation is moving from a notepad that you’re taking orders on to some kind of app on an iPad or something. It might be small, but it can still make a difference for you. Then also, when Jeremy and Todd, you were both talking about fear and the thought popped into my head that again going back to this idea of what Kristina was saying, “Fear is destroyed by knowledge.” So if you do have this fear, the first thing to do is go out and learn everything you can with the help of your MSP, with the help of your IT provider about what you can do. That can help alleviate that fear of the unknown because suddenly it’s known.

Jeremy:                I think that’s great and the other thing that I would add to that would be don’t try to build Rome in a day. It’s something that Tom Douglas has been preaching at JMARK for years and it’s proven itself to be kind of prophetic, I think, in this day and age. It’s the idea that if everyone will strive to be more efficient and provide 25% more value, than they are expected to, than they’re paid for, whether that’s an employee, whether that’s a service provider, whatever it is, provide 25% more value. Not double, just a little bit more. Then four people can do the work of five. $4 have the spending power of $5.

If you can just think of it in small steps, all those little things added up across a company, across a department, across an environment make a big deal. If you’re a football player and you try to go out and throw a 70 yard touchdown on every play, you’re probably not going to last long. But if you make just four yards on every play, every third down you’re going to get a first down and you’re going to win football games. Those aren’t the ones that make the news. They’re not the ones that get on the highlight reel as much, but they win Super Bowl rings, so I think that all applies. Think small and coordinate those efforts.

Todd:                    I was thinking as you were talking, Jeremy, I was thinking about still this idea of the title of what we chose for this discussion, more IT at lower cost. The thought kind of popped into my head, is it possible to have more IT or better IT at lower cost? I wanted to explore that whether there are pitfalls or advantages, because I think that there are a million variables. You deal with these probably more than anybody, Jeremy, with talking to prospects and different industries and employee count and the maturity, and whether they have an internal IT person or outsourced, and whether they’re in the cloud or not in the cloud, there’s a million variables.

But as we’re talking about how customers are kind of enthralled in the digital experience, what is the change in IT that’s needed to keep that experience? We have people working from home, is that potentially more expensive or less expensive? We have office space that’s not being used, is that an avenue where we could shift? There are tons of applications online where if you’re potentially changing software, if you’re using an on-premise software to do project management or collaboration, there’s potentially lots of avenues where it may or may not be beneficial to switch to a SaaS application. I’m just throwing random things out, but I don’t know, what are you thoughts, Jeremy, on can you really get more bang for your buck?

Jeremy:                I think you always can. Like I said, I think it just goes back to what I said a minute ago is don’t try to do it all at once, try to do it in little increments. Don’t just focus on cutting, focus on adding in the right places and shifting rather than cutting. So many people make the … Oh gosh, I’m trying to remember, there was a term that was used and I don’t remember the exact wording. It was at the beginning of the COVID stuff, that when we at JMARK, at the executive level were looking at our budgets and how it was going to affect things, somebody said, and I’ll get the quote wrong but, “You can’t cut your way to savings. You can’t cut your way to making your budget. You can’t cut your way out of the hole. You shift. You adjust.” To me that’s what it all comes down to.

When I go in and meet with somebody, if I’m having an appointment with somebody who’s invited JMARK in to talk to them about their IT needs, generally they have some pain, there’s something going on. They don’t just invite somebody to come in and talk about their IT because they’re bored, most people have too much to do. But usually I can tell within the first five minutes if this is somebody who is trying to cut their way to savings or if this is somebody who is trying to increase efficiency and expand their way into a better normal and a better world. It is interesting how much that’s changed in the last year, because it always used to be more about how do I keep the status quo just by doing something different and now, how do I turn the status quo upside down because my hair is on fire.

Todd:                    What I found is kind of interesting through this particular crisis, the pandemic, is that the problems just changed. It’s like there were challenges before the pandemic, but they kind of just like you said, you have to shift solutions, but the reason why you have to shift solutions is because the problem shifted. You previously had a problem with such and such, now you have a problem with this, whether that’s video conferencing or how to manage a project with people being remote. It’s just another problem to solve so to speak.

But in that sense of shifting the same is true for budgets, the same is true for the solutions, but I think going back to kind of what Dax was saying, and everybody I guess, there’s just so many different avenues we have to get out of our shell and get out of our bubble and look at what is the best solution to solve the particular problem. Most of the time, the problem that we’re trying to solve, at least in my experience, is often something we don’t have experience with, especially during this, during COVID. There’s always been problems in the world, but it’s like all of a sudden there’re new challenges that I have to figure out a solution for, whether that’s through a software or through a tactic or whatnot. And I have to reach out to those that understand and that have experience.

Jeremy:                Recognizing that sometimes the answer is going to change, it’s adapt, because this pandemic isn’t over. This year, 2020 and the dumpster fire that it has been isn’t over yet, we still have a whole quarter left. Arguable the roughest one-

Todd:                    We still have the asteroid.

Jeremy:                What’s that?

Todd:                    We still have the asteroid to come.

Jeremy:                We still have an asteroid. We still have an election. I mean, what do we have double hurricanes. How about some triple blizzards. What do they call that? I’m waiting for the polar vortex and a hurricane to come at the same time. I think that’s going to be epic. I’ve got that on my bingo card for November. But, I think people need to get out of the mindset of change to change. You change because the world changed, so I’m going to change. It’s adapt, it’s roll with the punches. In boxing, it’s a dance. You change your stance based on what your opponent is doing and how they’re moving. I’ve never boxed in my life, so I don’t know why I’m using a boxing analogy, but I do know that you don’t go in with just a straight up plan of how to attack, because as they say, “No battle plan survives first contact with the enemy.” This battle is still going on between the pandemic and everything else. So just be agile and keep shifting.

Dax:                      And I think, Jeremy, like you said, we talked about this the other week, but I think people are sort of settled in and they’re worried about having these conversations and you talked about people that only call us when they are in trouble, when there’s some pain. But maybe, even if you don’t have pain, I think people get afraid to call us. We talked about this the other week, because there’s this fear that we’re going to come in, not just JMARK, but any MSP is going to come in and be like, “Hey, lets just have you spend a lot of money. That’s what we’re here for, is we’re here to sell you a bunch of technology so you spend more money.”

And that they should not look at it that way, but again as an opportunity to call in somebody who can help you do exactly what you were talking about, Todd and understand something that’s out of the realm of your knowledge and find those ways that you’re looking for that you’re not going to be able to find for yourself. And don’t be afraid to call in an IT company and have that conversation to learn and see where you can make those adaptations.

Kristina:               I feel like some people too are probably scared that they’re going to come in and not just try to sell you something, but they’re going to come in and find some things that they maybe kind of deep down know are there and they’re not prepared to deal with yet. But putting it off is not going to do you any favors in the long run.

Dax:                      I’d tell you Kristina, speaking to that, just as we were beginning, I had this thought in my head that I should look up statistics about cyber security and cyber crime in COVID-19. So I ended up on the website ZDNet, which is an important news source for all things technology and IT, and they have this page that’s a roundup of all COVID-19 cyber security challenges. I started scrolling to look, I was like, “Oh, I’ll find something real quick to find a statistic.” This page is like a never ending scroll. There are so, so, so many articles about different cyber security challenges that have arisen because of COVID-19, that yeah, that is definitely not a place where you want to be pulling back your spending right now.

Todd:                    Yeah, that’s a good point, I hadn’t even thought about that for this discussion. I mean, we’ve talked about that in other scenarios about how I think the number of cyber attacks has quadrupled, if I’m not mistaken, since April, and it’s insane. But in the vein of the discussion about getting more bang for your buck, I know a lot of people don’t really look at it from the other side and go, “Okay, we’re in a pandemic, revenue is down, what could destroy us? What could really be bad, because this isn’t bad enough? We’re masochists, we want to make it worse. What could really be bad?” One of those things that could really be bad is having your data stolen and having to shut down your company.

Jeremy:                Well, I mean, to say one thing for criminals, I mean, they are opportunists. This is a huge opportunity for cyber criminals to take advantage of a situation. Something Dax just said made me think of something that I struggle with. So I wear two hats right now at JMARK. You guys know this, but for anybody that might be watching, I’m going out and visiting with new clients, but I also am overseeing our telecommunications division. My job is to help people with evaluating their internet circuits, their private lines, their telephone systems, their telephone circuits. I’d say eight out of 10 times I’ve talked to somebody that is willing to talk, I can actually save them money because there is a more efficient way to do things. And until you’re in the industry, you don’t know. It’s so easy to get taken for a ride by a carrier or by a provider. Or maybe not even taken for a ride, just be left on an inefficient plan, because things become more efficient as time goes on.

Something I’ve noticed this year, since the pandemic, is what I’ve started referring to is salesman fatigue. Even though nobody wants to hear the fact that I can actually free up some budget for you and probably get you more product for less than what you’re paying on that side. Not managed service, but on telecommunications, doing an audit. Nobody wants to hear it. Everybody’s got fatigue. They don’t want to hear about anything new. You’re trying to sell me something. I’m actually not, but click. Okay, cool. I know you guys see this on the marketing side. I think people are so fatigued right now with being talked to, told what to do, given advice, offered a solution, I think people are shut down as it relates to being sold or marketed or talked to, that they just don’t want to hear it.

Sometimes that’s to the people’s detriment, because there’s a great opportunity out there and if you don’t open your eyes to it, you’ll never hear it. And I’m guilty of it too. I counted up just a minute ago, this week I’ve gotten 18 solicitation emails from lead generation companies trying to sell me lead generation, because of that very reason. Guess how many I’ve replied too. So I mean, I’m guilty of it as well, but I think it’s part of the pandemic. It’s another pandemic. It’s caused people just to shut down and have this level of fatigue.

Todd:                    Yeah, I would agree, I think that’s a good comment. And we’ve seen that on the marketing side too. But I wouldn’t call it sales fatigue, I would just call it more fatigue in general. There’s the garbage that’s all over social media. There’s the bad news left and right. There’re schools shutting down and schools going up and then shutting down, and then going up and then shutting down. Parents are dealing with this stuff and all of that affects your business life. I have seen that exact same thing too. I mean, when I’m dealing with the million things that I deal with and I get those same emails probably two to three times as many and every single one of them is just delete, delete, delete, archive or whatever, partly because I don’t want to take the energy to vet them out. I don’t want to take the energy because that energy is essentially a cost.

So I think that … I know that’s a good point on the telecommunications. We sent an email to roughly 80,000 people on our list, maybe … When was it Dax, maybe three months ago … regarding telecommunications, because we’re not trying to sell anything. We could actually save money. And what you said, Jeremy, eight out of 10 people you can save money, because that is an area where people just ignore. It’s like you just pay the bill, pay the bill, pay the bill, pay the bill, not realizing that behind the scenes there are changes in the industry. There are changes in technology. There are changes in bandwidth that all could affect your business, so you could be spending money elsewhere. We got zero response on that email and part of it I think is just because this idea of, “Oh my gosh. Changing internet providers, oh man, that would be a pain in the butt. Or changing my phone line”-

Jeremy:                It ain’t broke, I’m not going to fix it.

Todd:                    Exactly. It’s the perception of the fatigue to come.

Dax:                      I think about that as the idea of when your alarm goes off in the morning and you’re laying in bed and you’re just like, “I am too tired to get up. It’s going to take so much energy to get up. It’s going to be horrible. I can’t think of anything worse than throwing off the covers and putting my feet on the ground.” And then you do it and you’re like, “Oh, that wasn’t so bad.” But while you’re in bed, it’s like you can’t imagine anything worse and you have to just kind of power through. You’ve got to put your feet on the ground sometimes. That’s when you find out, “Oh, that wasn’t as bad as I was expecting it was going to be. I’m actually okay now that I’m out of bed.”

Todd:                    Also, one thing that I changed on that … Not really with the bed analogy, but one thing when I’ve been looking at solutions to problems that I’m dealing with, I’ve looked at them with a little bit different vein in the last year, and that is, I think a solution, but don’t want to be the solution. I don’t want to be the integrator of the solution. They innovator of the solution or whatever. So if I’m going to be given a solution to a problem I have right now with whatever that is, I’m okay with spending a little bit more money so that somebody else can be the integrator of that problem or that solution and I can focus on all the things that I need to deal with.

I think that’s one thing we forget about, because our industry has a little bit of a bad rap. There are so many people that have hired IT providers, have hired phone system experts, have dealt with ISPs, which is about one of the worst things in the world, and they’ve just had this horrible, horrible maddening experience, and so they just think that’s just how it is. They don’t realize that they could innovate. Solutions could be solved with someone else actually doing that work and that’s where someone like JMARK comes in.

Dax:                      And that can give you that energy back. Doing exactly what you’re talking about, Todd, which is handing off the thing that is going to sap your energy, to somebody else. Having taken the time to do that.

Todd:                    Okay, so I think we’ve had a pretty interesting discussion. I appreciate everybody joining us today and appreciate you, Jeremy, for giving us your perspective, as always, entertaining and insightful. I think some of the takeaways that I’ve gotten and feel free to throw out anything that I might not mention, from this, is that we have to look at IT not from the standpoint of an expense, but a standpoint of as investment. We have to innovate in small steps, whether that’s through technology or through other means so that we can meet customers where they are and innovate in this pandemic and post pandemic world to create a new normal.

We have to continue to innovate and adapt to meet our customers where they are. Security is still a big issue and we have to look at adapting to the risks that are coming to us. So there’s a lot of things to consider and we’d invite everyone to take a look at our website, jmark.com. We have a lot of information on every avenue of security and innovation and adapting to the new normal there. We’d love to talk to you, and please join us next week, where we will be giving away a special prize. Stay tuned.

Jeremy:                Hopefully it’s Sonic onion rings.

Dax:                      They might get the order wrong.

Jeremy:                I’m going to have to go get some onion rings.

Todd:                    Thanks everybody, have a wonderful week.

Speaker 1:           Thank you for attending this podcast. We hope it has been informative and helped convey that at JMARK, we are people first and technology second. To learn more and discover additional content relative to your business, please visit us online at jmark.com or at LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. You may also call us at 844-44-JMARK. Thank you for your time and we look forward to seeing you again.