The Small Teams Episode: When IT Needs to Punch Above Its Weight

Enterprise expectations. Startup-sized teams. And zero margin for failure.

Across museums, national parks, retail stores, and nonprofit organizations, mid-market IT leaders are being asked to do more than ever—with fewer people, tighter budgets, and growing complexity. Most burn out. Some figure it out.

In this episode, The Catalyst brings together two leaders navigating that reality from different sides of the work:

• Scott Gagon, Network Security Engineer, Event Network
• Tariq Chaudhri, VP of Technology, Goodwill of Northwest North Carolina

Together, they explore what it takes for small IT teams to support enterprise-scale environments—and why trusted partnerships are often the difference between survival and real progress.

You’ll hear:

• How small IT teams manage massive, distributed operations
• Why empathy, mission, and decisiveness matter as much as tools
• How partners like Softchoice become force multipliers—not vendors

The Catalyst by Softchoice is the podcast dedicated to exploring the intersection of humans and technology.

Transcript

0:04

I was grabbing an Uber into work and somehow in this 15 minute Uber ride, I got to know this guy. He goes, I know that address. Are you on a Goodwill, the Goodwill offices? I'm like, yeah. And he just started telling me his story, his background He was at his, with his last dime. He was, going through some sort of treatment and he applied for a training at the Goodwill that I was working for. It's always stuck with me. The, the phrase he used, he goes, they gave me a lot of grace there. They gave me grace. Tarik Chaudri is a VP of it. He manages technology for a nonprofit in North Carolina, about 60 locations, 1200 employees, and a mission that goes way beyond keeping servers running. But when he talks about his job, he doesn't start with the technology. He starts with an Uber ride. he pulled up in front of the office and he was still just talking to me. I didn't want him to stop because I was like, wow. This is kind of like a why, why I work here, But it was completely random. He was just start, started talking to me. You work at Goodwill. Lemme tell you my story. Meanwhile, about 2,500 miles away in California, there's a man named Scott Gagon. He also runs it for a retail operation, gift shops in museums and aquariums across America. And when he's asked about the complexity of his job. He talks about wifi on a retired aircraft carrier. The Midway is probably the strangest one because it's in an aircraft carrier. The wifi there is really weird because again, it's this big metal ship that was never designed to have, modern wifi in it. From Softchoice, a worldwide technology company, this is the catalyst. I'm Heather Haskin. This season, we're doing things a bit differently. We're making audio documentaries, real stories from the front lines of it, exploring the challenges of small teams chasing big dreams. Today's episode, what happens when your IT team is smaller than your problem? We meet two leaders who figured out how to punch above their weight, their common thread purpose, and knowing when to ask for help. We're calling it the Small Teams Episode, act one, the Impossible Job. Let's start with Scott. He's the VP of technical services at a company called Events Network based in San Diego. If you've ever bought a stuffed whale at an aquarium gift shop or a replica fighter jet from a museum, there's a decent chance his team made that transaction possible. We are a retail company that owns and operates a couple of different retail arms. originally and when I first started with the company, it is, gift shops for museums, aquariums, other attraction type locations, around the United States Events Network, operates gift shops inside some of America's most beloved institutions. The USS Midway Museum in San Diego. Alamo Aquariums and natural history museums from Hawaii to New England to the Caribbean, but here's what makes Scott's job different from most retail. It. Retail is, is kind of different. And event network's a pretty unique, retail environment because our brand isn't what's on the front of the building. Nobody goes to an event network store. What they go to is a store that's at a, for instance here in San Diego, we call it our flagship store is the USS Midway Museum. and so nobody cares about event network. They care about the midway. Every single location is a different partner, a different relationship, a different physical space with different constraints. Every one of our stores is with a different partner. We have, I couldn't even tell you how many, but that relationship, adds some really interesting, unique challenges. sometimes we're in really interesting infrastructure places. Again, to highlight the midway, our stores inside of an aircraft carrier inside an aircraft carrier. Let that sink in a ship that was built in the 1940s designed to launch planes, not run point of sale systems. We have all over the us So distributed, as far as stores everywhere from Hawaii to, new England to even the Caribbean. We've got some stores in the Virgin Islands, dozens of locations. And Scott's infrastructure team, when he joined. As far as like our IT infrastructure team goes, infrastructure, day-to-day operations and things like that. It started out three of us, two of us kind of on the systems side with me also focusing on security, one individual in, network administrator. Then at the end of last year, events Network acquired another company. Travel traders, which operates gift shops in hotels and resorts. The footprint doubled the complexity, doubled the licensing costs, doubled the team. It grew a little, but not by half. The number one thing was that we were, similar in size, similar in footprint, and so. Very much the conversation with our CTO, my boss and kind of his way at, at hinting at how things were coming was well, you know what, if we doubled in size, what would that look like? On the one hand, overnight, all of our licensing costs doubled, which was mentally something that took a little while to kind of let that sink in. I had some sticker shock because we're now twice as big as we were a year ago. Megan Au is an account manager at Softchoice, who's worked with Events Network for several years. She watched this acquisition unfold. Their IT team really didn't grow very much. They hired on a few, who came from the travel trader side, but it's really the team who is taking this on to, expand their business to make sure all the other locations are, secure, are all. Utilizing the tools that they have. They wear multiple hats. Every person I work with, Scott especially, he, he is doing multiple things on the team. They all have multiple roles. Chris Harrison is another account executive at Softchoice who works with Scott's team. He's spent his career working with IT departments of all sizes, and he says there's a real difference. You've got guys who are responsible for not only security, but maybe patching, maybe infrastructure. There is so many different hats that these guys wear, where in the larger corporations, they're really siloed. You've got one guy specifically. Doing disaster recovery and backup. That's his only role in his job. It's really fulfilling because you really get to understand and see the one thing that you'll continually hear. We wear many hats. That is unequivocally so true. Now let's go to North Carolina to a different kind of retail operation with a different kind of mission. Tar. Rick Choudry spent most of his career in corporate it. Big teams, big budgets, mature technology environments. Then he saw a job posting that caught his attention. Honestly, it was outta pure curiosity. I was in Winston-Salem. I wrapped up a role here really like North Carolina. Didn't feel like moving back to Atlanta where I had moved here from and I saw this job out there and I'm like, that's interesting. The job was at Goodwill of Northwest North Carolina and Tarik admits he didn't really know what he was walking into. So what started off as kind of just a curious pass that what do these people even do? They sell clothes, I think to wow, they actually have a mission and I really like their leadership, like where they're going. I kind of don't wanna be part of that. Team Goodwill's mission isn't just selling donated goods. It's using the revenue from those sales to fund workforce development, job training, career services, second chances for people who need them. Our mission is pretty basic, but really important. Essentially, we create opportunities for people to enhance their lives through training, workforce development, collaboration with other community organizations. Essentially, we help people help themselves improve their lives, and we, and we feel that through our retail operation. The region Tarek's team serves stretches from Winston-Salem all the way to Asheville, deep in the Appalachian mountains there. Educational challenges are, there's a huge digital divide in that part of, North Carolina, so we sort of serve a great need there. But when Tarek arrived, the technology department was struggling. We both were kind of in there from these mature technology backgrounds, looking at a nonprofit with a small team, a legacy, a lack of investment in technology a a team that was in constant break fix mode rather than focusing on anything value added, stretch to capacity, outdated infrastructure. And it was every day was a, Fire alarm, drill for something, something really minor, but that would just blow up the team. When Tarek started four people, him, the new director of IT, and two technical support engineers, four people supporting 55 locations, an aging network and a data center that needed serious attention. Today, the team has grown, but not by much. It's 10 people For a 1200 person organization, 10 people, 1200 employees, 50. To 65 locations spread across rural North Carolina. This is the reality for mid-market IT leaders, enterprise expectations, startup resources. So how do they do it? Act two, two approaches. Scott Gaghan has been in it for nearly 30 years. He's worked at hospitals, startups, Oracle managed service providers. When he's asked what his superpower is, he has a quick answer. I always joke that computers behave better when I'm around, but the real answer is something else. I'm kind of the, the guy who's make the decision and move forward. We talk a lot. We're very collaborative. It's been kind of my role, especially as the newer person within the event network team to kind of go, alright, I know we did it this way forever. Tell me why we do it this way. Scott's philosophy comes down to something he calls the 80% rule. I could agonize over getting this exactly right, or we can. Get a solution in place. That's, is it 80%? Is it 80? Do we have a solid 85%? perfect. Whatever. Perfect. Looks like we can tweak it into that 90 plus or whatever, but the sooner you can kind of get that into motion, get the project moving, get the changeover done in the long term. It's better to have the tool or the solution that kind of sort of fits, but it gets you moving towards that better solution. Don't wait for perfect, get to 80% and move because on a small team with a massive footprint, waiting for perfect means getting nothing done. No matter how hard you plan some of these processes, something's gonna break somewhere. And so kind of that, let's get a plan together. Let's minimize the risk. Let's keep those fallout from being, explosive and really causing a problem. But also understand that sometimes when we move and we make these changes, things are gonna break. And accepting that risk and moving forward is also one of the big parts of the job.'cause otherwise we'll Stuck in our own planning stage and we'll never actually get it done. We'll never get it turned off, but decisiveness alone isn't enough. There's something else Scott has learned, something that might sound counterintuitive for someone who's been doing this for three decades. more than 80% of what we do is pretty close to the same as or identical to what you would do at any other organization. Don't get too caught up in that kind of thing. And what's great about that is it allows you to be willing to go out and ask for help and get outside expertise because once you realize that you're not all that special, there's a lot of opportunity to pull from other people's experience. Once you realize you're not all that special, it's a surprisingly humble thing to say, especially from someone with his experience, but Scott means it because when you're four people managing dozens of locations, you can't afford to pretend you have all the answers. Even at four people we're running like crazy all day every day and need to bring in outside expertise, and that's really been where Softchoice has been helpful. Tarik Chaudri came to a similar conclusion. You can't do it alone, but he got there a different way. When Tarik arrived at Goodwill, the IT team wasn't just understaffed. They were demoralized a team that was in constant break fix mode rather than focusing on anything value added. Stretch to capacity, outdated infrastructure. Every day was a fire alarm. Drill for some, something really minor, but that would just blow up. So Tarek's first priority wasn't technology, it was people. The lucky part was between. Himself and, and me working with our team, empowering them to be guys, don't just fix something small and walk away. find out what the real issue is and let's work on it together. That was the first three months was exploratory culture shift management with the team to move away from being this downtrodden group of technology professionals to actually owning the Asian. Christina Bills is an account executive at Softchoice who's worked with Tarik across multiple companies. Christina met Tarik years ago in an unlikely place. She was his bartender. He was a regular who came in with colleagues to work over lunch, and he was one of the people who inspired her to get into tech. So this started about six, seven years ago at Ted's Montana Grill, whereas bartending, he would come in with, colleagues. So every time he would come in, it was with people that he worked with, whether it was his boss or other coworkers. And he would always talk to me about my attention to detail, my plans, you know, if I was gonna be there for a while or if I had other aspirations. And I told him I always wanted to be in tech. so once he saw me on LinkedIn and I had the job at Softchoice, he actually reached out to me and said, you know, I've worked with Softchoice before. I love them. and he asked me to be his account rep, which really stuck out to me because that showed me that he trusted me with his accounts, and his professional life as much as he did just coming in to have lunch. And that meant the world to me. Now she works with him as a trusted advisor and she's watched how he. He always makes people feel comfortable, respected, and like an equal. He never talks down to people. and he treats everyone with the same respect and values their opinion in the same way as well. So he'll have anywhere from the CEO to the basic end user in the same meeting to gather opinions and he talks to everyone in the same way, with the same level of respect. Tarek's approach isn't just about being nice, it's strategic. When your team is small and your mission is big, you need everyone operating at their best, and people operate at their best when they feel ownership, not obligation. Once you get the day-to-day bread and butter sorted out, you want your team to be lean and focus on value added projects, like what can they bring to the table that actually helps the business, helps the mission, helps organization. I would focus on talent, quality or quantity, right? I mean, bring the right talented people in. And then for areas where you need additional help, I mean, I would turn to partners, turn to partners. It's the same conclusion Scott reached. When you're trying to achieve enterprise level results with a startup size team, you can't do everything yourself. Megan au sees this with Events Network too. The partnership to me with Event Network or any of my clients is the most important part of the role. It feels like we are more an extension of their team. We're not just a vendor, we're not just selling them something. Um, it's not just a business transaction. Understanding what they need, what their goals are, and helping them through that. Their IT team wears many hats. They, they are, uh, small but mighty. Um, and I am always so impressed by the work that they are doing, small but mighty. It's a phrase that could describe both teams, but it only works because both leaders. Scott with his decisiveness, Tarik with his empathy, have figured out the same fundamental truth. You can't do it alone at admitting that isn't weakness, it's strategy Act three, why it matters. There's something underneath all of this, the decisiveness, the empathy, the partnerships, the 80% rule. Something that explains why Scott and Tarek do what they do and why their teams stick around to do it with them its purpose. Scott's job on paper is keeping gift shops systems running, but that's not how he thinks about it. You know, a lot of these natural history museums are a real common one. Aquariums do you know, amazing things for education and the environment and just fantastic social in institutions. And so we wanna support that. Events. Network isn't just a vendor to these museums and aquariums. They're partners in something bigger. It is great to know that you have a small background deep in the, the recesses of the machine that makes this all happen, but that you have a definite part of some really great community organizations, you know, entities and organizations that do tremendous work. And Scott has started thinking about the families who walk through those gift shops, what they're really taking home, whether it's a school field trip, whether it's a family vacation, and they've decided to spend part of their day. Looking at fish at the aquarium, you know, touring the Midway Willis Tower is one of ours. So, going up in a really tall building and seeing, you know, some really impressive sites, they're enjoying a moment, they're making a memory. They take home a physical token, they purchase a, a, you know, a little toy or a hoodie or a hat. Um, and every time they wear that hat, they, they think of the time they had with our partner, and we get to be, a link in that chain. Is pretty cool a link in the chain. That's how Scott sees his role. His team keeps the systems running so that a kid can buy a stuffed dolphin so that a family can take home a memory. How often do we hear the stories of somebody that they've been carrying that plushie around for, years or decades from that family trip to somewhere and it's special to them and It's not every one of them, but it's a, it's a lot of fun to know that the, somewhere in there, we have a little bit of a part in that. For Tarik, the purpose is even more direct. It's not abstract. It's in front of him every day. The main thing that was different was the focus wasn't on let's go make money. The focus was on, we make money to service our mission. And that's that was apparent in every meeting every day. Right. And that for me was a huge shift. ideologically, Tara came from corporate IT manufacturing, financial services, places where the bottom line was the point at Goodwill, the bottom line is a means to an end. It was so ambiguously, ambiguously embedded in the culture. That's what it's about. It's about the mission. And of course, bottom lines matter, margins matter. All those things matter.'cause it's, it's, it's a business, but the business is feeling something real besides just making money. Something real like a mobile technology unit, an RV equipped with laptops and internet access. That Goodwill is rolling out to serve communities where connectivity isn't a given. It's a technology workforce development hub, so it's gonna be out there basically as a, as a service to our, to, to our population here in Northwest North Carolina. It's gonna go to places where set up in parking lots, where people don't have access to things. Tar admits this was a blind spot for him when he came from the corporate world. Coming from a tech background and a corporate sector, I just always assumed everybody has a laptop at home. Everybody has internet surface. How do you not, how do you not, it's true. People don't, and that purpose, that mission is why his team stays. Having a small team, building that camaraderie, building that. Familial professional vibe, right? It's important, you're, you're, you're working with these people day, day in and day out, and it's not all video calls. You, you're working with them in person. Everybody in my team understands why they're here, right? They could all probably go get a job working at a normal retail operation or another tech company or whatever, and they're here because they like what we do. They, they're really, really good in what we do, and that's important. Two leaders, two small teams, two very different organizations. One, making memories in museum gift shops. One, giving grace to people rebuilding their lives, but the same truth underneath it all. When the job is bigger than your team, you need purpose to fuel you and partners to fill the gaps. Before we go, I want to come back to something both Scott and Tarek said, because it's easy to miss and it matters. When Scott was asked if he could do this job alone, his answer was immediate. Oh, absolutely not. I could see how it would've been so much worse to try to do it ourselves. And Tarek said something similar. We're a small team and we have some great talent on board, but we're trying to do things like. Not just in our, in our little silo, right? I mean, I would trust them to come up with a solution or say, we don't do that, but here's a partner we've worked with in the past. And they, they'll work with you guys that it's, it's that kind of relationship. If you are an IT leader listening to this, running a small team with a big mandate, wearing multiple hats, wondering how you're supposed to keep up, you are not alone, and you don't have to do it alone. That's what Softchoice does, not just as a vendor, as a partner, an extension of your team. Since I started at Softchoice, that's one thing that. They really teach you. And that's one of our biggest values. the first thing I do whenever I'm speaking to any customer, I don't just take things at face value. If they come to me and want a quote for 20 laptops, I'm not just going to say, okay, and go grab a quote for 20 laptops. I'm gonna do the work and ask them why there's a need for it. what's the initiative behind that? how can I help with the bigger picture and kind of help frame it in a way to set us up, both of us up for success and future partnership. I don't wanna just take orders. I wanna help them understand why and the thought process behind what they're doing. And that's something that Soft Choice does a really good job at doing that some of our other competitors are lacking. If you want to learn more about how Softchoice helps Mid-Market IT leaders punch above their weight, visit softchoice.com. The catalyst was reported and produced by Tobin Rimple and the team at Pilgrim Content Editing by Ryan Clark. With support from Philippe Demas, Joseph Beyer, and the marketing team at Softchoice. Special thanks to Scott and Taek for sharing their stories. I'm Heather Haskin. Thanks for listening.