Unpacked with Ron Harvey

Tech Leadership in an AI-Driven World

Mark Wormgoor Episode 122

Technology expert Mark Wormgoor shares his journey from tech specialist to leadership coach, revealing how effective tech leadership requires balancing technical expertise with genuine people management skills. He explores how the widening gap between agile startups and slow-moving corporations creates both challenges and opportunities in today's rapidly evolving technological landscape.

• Understanding the critical transition from technical expert to people leader
• Defining exceptional leadership in tech as a combination of team leadership, technical breadth, and business acumen
• Embracing AI through small, quick pilots rather than long-term implementation programs
• Recognizing how technology's accelerating pace requires shorter planning horizons and more iterative approaches
• Identifying three core qualities of effective tech leaders: vision, boldness, and stakeholder engagement
• Helping tech teams adapt to constant change by balancing stability with innovation
• Supporting first-time tech leaders by focusing on team development rather than personal technical contribution
• Encouraging CTOs to spend half their time outside their department connecting with other business functions

Visit The Maverick CTO at themaverickcto.com for technology leadership resources, or contact Mark through Tairi (T-A-I-R-I.co) for technology consulting services.


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Disclaimer:

The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and guests and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any organization or entity. The information provided in this podcast is intended for educational and informational purposes only and should not be considered as professional advice. Listeners should consult with their own professional advisors before implementing any suggestions or recommendations made in this podcast. The speakers and guests are not responsible for any actions taken by listeners based on the information presented in this podcast. The podcast is not intended to be a substitute for professional advice or services. The speakers and guests make no representations or warranties of any kind, express or implied, about the completeness, accuracy, reliability, suitability or availability with respect to the information, products, services, or related graphics contained in this ...

Speaker 1:

Welcome to Turning Point Leadership Podcast with your host, ron Harvey of Global Core Strategies and Consulting. Ron's delighted you joined us and excited to discuss and help you navigate your journey towards becoming an effective leader. During this podcast, ron will share his core belief that effective leadership is one of the key drivers towards change. So together let's grow as leaders. Here's Ron Harvey.

Speaker 2:

Good morning. This is Ron Harvey. I'm the vice president and chief operating officer for Global Core Strategies and Consulting, which is a leadership sustainability firm where we help leaders be better connected to their workforce so that the people that are helping them be successful they're taken care of and making sure they have everything all the resources and the support that they need. We spend all of our time helping leaders be better connected to the people that are going to make you successful or break you from being successful. We believe in leadership every day.

Speaker 2:

Based out of Columbia, south Carolina, my wife and I have been in business over 10 years, love what we do. We're passionate about it. We both have a military background, so we love serving. Our entire business is about serving other people to be successful. But we pause every single day, and every Monday we release a podcast, and today I have a phenomenal guest. Mark is going to be joining us. He'll tell you who he is, where he's at, and I'm excited about having people with all backgrounds from across the globe to say yes to this podcast. The beauty is, I don't know what I'm going to ask them. I don't know what they're going to say. All we'll promise you is we're going to talk about leadership, so hang on for the ride. Stay with us. We'll spend about 30 minutes with you, but we're really going to share real insights behind the curtain. That's why it's called Unpacked. So, mark, I'm going to hand you the microphone and we're going to jump in after you finish introducing yourself.

Speaker 3:

Hey, ron, good day and thanks for having me. It's really a pleasure to be here. So a bit about myself, my background, mark, I live in the Netherlands, so indeed, the other side of the ocean, based in Central Europe, and my background is in technology. So I've been in tech for all of my life. What I do today, I have basically two businesses. I run Tyree, which is one of my businesses, where I provide IT services to startups and scale-ups. We do a lot of software developments, ai services, data engineering, and I also and this is what I love doing I coach tech leaders, so people in tech companies that are in a leadership position, from a small CTO to, like corporate leaders in bigger companies. I coach them on their leadership and on their skills, and that's why I really love being here as well today.

Speaker 2:

Awesome, awesome. Well, thank you for joining and so, like I tell you, we're global, we believe in reaching across the ocean in different places and communities, so I love that you're going to come across and talk leadership, like you said your background. So let me dive in a little bit for you. When you think of tech companies and you think about you started, terry, in your CTO program. What made you start it? What did you see as an issue or concern that made you lean in? This is where you want to spend your time.

Speaker 3:

So those are two different things. First, I love technology. So I've been in the tech space for 30 years and it's my passion and that's really why I started the company. I mean, tech is just it's in every company today. It's gone through such a phenomenal growth over the past years that every company depends on technology today and it's becoming more and more complex. And it's my passion, it's what I love and I love.

Speaker 3:

I love helping others with technology and providing services and just I speak to a lot of entrepreneurs that want to make better use of technology. They just don't know how, they don't know where to start and I love helping entrepreneurs. And the other part is also the leadership parts. Like I said, I've been in a leadership position in technology, so my background is in corpus as well. I've been. I worked for accenture in consulting. After that I had some major leadership quotes in large corporates and I grew into my, my leadership skills as and especially in technology. That's quite a tough skill for people because they grow up as developers, they know servers, they know codes. Going from there to leading a team, leading a set of teams and leading a department those are some big steps to grow into and I love just helping people on the road.

Speaker 2:

Let me unpack that a little bit for you. As you know, you have the background in technology and you started getting promoted or elevated to this leadership thing. What were some of the challenges of going from the subject matter expert in technology to being an expert of people, which is what I'll tell leaders. They have to be really good at leading and knowing people well. What were some of the challenges for you, For our tech people that are listening, that may be on the journey that you had to go through? What were some of your biggest challenges of making that transition?

Speaker 3:

To be fair, I got a very long way without knowing people, without just delivering the work, getting the work done, managing people right, as we say, just managing finances, budget managing a team, just getting the work done. I got a very long way until at some point, I did trip, like many people do along this road, and I figured out that it's good to have an interest in people, but just actually caring about the people that you work with, taking a true human interest in them, like understanding who they are, what their passions are, what their ambitions are, giving feedback on a human level instead of just following the process. Yeah, I think that's one of my, and I think it's a trip up that maybe some of us, or a lot of us, make on the journey, but it's one that I certainly made, yeah, how do you define really great leadership in tech space?

Speaker 2:

Now that you're in that space and you realize you have tech, how do you define really great leadership? What does it look like in the tech space? Exceptional leadership.

Speaker 3:

So in the tech space, like I said, it's just so complex. So the tech space requires really good leadership. Team leadership is critical. Right, you have a team or a set of team leads that report to you. You need to manage them, you need to care about the culture, you need to care about the human beings, you need to care about their ambitions and the culture and the team and, working together, solve issues as they arise. So the team leadership is like any leadership position is a critical part of it. The other part of it is you need to understand the technology.

Speaker 3:

I come across and technology is so incredibly broad that makes it really hard. So you need to go anywhere from infrastructure to applications, to codes, to ai these days, to cyber security, and you need to understand all the different bits and pieces as you grow up in leadership and technology. So it's a very broad technical role as well. So I say that's the second part. You get all the other leadership fun items like budget, financials, understanding, like all those aspects and, on top of that, managing all your stakeholders.

Speaker 3:

You need to be able to have a discussion with the CEO or a CFO and talk about technology. You need to explain technology to them in a way that they understand that makes sense. If you have ideas or plans, you need to be able to explain them in business talk. You need to talk about ROIs. You need to talk about budgets. Explain them in business talk. You need to talk about RIs. You need to talk about budgets, about CapEx versus OpEx. You need to be able to have all those discussions at a CFO or a CEO level. So it's such an incredibly broad space to be in and I think that's why it's so interesting to me.

Speaker 2:

Yes, I think you're tapping on a lot of things that I want to unpack a little bit with you AI, every conversation. I mean, I've been doing this podcast for a while and I can tell you in the last six months I don't think I've had a podcast that AI term did not show up. So when you think of leadership, you think of AI. What are some of the nuances that's shifting the space for leaders when it comes to AI and technology?

Speaker 3:

So if I talk about, let me talk about tech leadership, right, because that's the space that I am, and then I'll talk about it for entrepreneurs In tech leadership. So first of all, you need to really understand AI and we all. I mean I've seen a graph about the type of people and the different generations that use AI and there's actually not even that big a difference between Gen Z or boomers. I mean they all will go and even like mom and pop, they will go on chat, gpt, they'll prompt something, they'll do something. So a lot of people know what ai is or roughly what it can do, and that's based on their own consumer experiences. And as a CTO or as a tech leader, you need to be able to make the translation from all the different capabilities that there are in AI and translate that into what is possible for your business, your organization. So translate it from a technology into an opportunity in sales and marketing and logistics and delivery and manufacturing. In manufacturing, depending on the company you're in, you really need to have that broad discussion and be able to understand ai in all the different service lines in your company and be able to explain that and have a discussion again with the board about what is possible, what you can do and what you want to do. I think that's one, and from there I'm a big fan of running small pilots. So we all want to go and deploy AI at scale, which is really cool, but I always promote doing really small pilots.

Speaker 3:

Think about a big problem you have as a business, see where AI can actually go and solve that and do a small pilot and a small pilot doesn't have to be expensive for 5K or 10K. You can probably do a pretty decent pilot and see if it is actually going to solve your problem. Also, ai is moving so fast that you can't run a three-year program anymore. So you can't, because in three years the world's going to be completely different. So everything you do needs to be short-term, it needs to be quick, quick turnarounds, lower budgets and get realization of value very quickly. So that's, if you're in the tech space and I think the same for entrepreneurs, because it is getting so complex I say, if you don't have someone in your vicinity that understands this space really, really well, find them. Either hire a, a part-time cto, on board, or bring a, a consultancy firm, in, or hire someone in your team. Make sure that you have someone who can really stand by you and help you with all of this technology, because it is so complex.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I love that and I think that's worth repeating too. When you think about it, mark, is it's moving so fast and I'd love you to emphasize the importance of that, because the days of you having five years or three years now to wait for something to come to fruition is not reality anymore. Can you speak to the speed of change and the speed of technology and what do we need to do as leaders to embrace it? Because there's some fear we know people are intimidated by, but there has to be some level of how do I get comfortable even though I'm nervous and unsure. How do you speak to that? Because it's moving fast, it's not going to wait for us.

Speaker 3:

Yes, no, and I think that's how the tech world has changed. About 10 years ago, it was quite normal that you would source a new contract and you would have a contract for the next five years, or you would outsource something, or you would run a large transformation program in technology that would run three to five years. I think those days are gone. It's going to be really difficult to right now plan for what's going to happen in 2030. In five years from today, we're in 2030. I can't tell you what the world's going to look like, what the technology space is going to look like.

Speaker 3:

So having large, multi-million, multi-year programs, I think, is maybe something of the past that will still be there, but they're going to be a lot less. Instead, have really small projects, have really small iterations, do pilots and just move quickly, but make it really small. Keep it small, keep it containable, keep it affordable and just make really small iterative changes and learn as you go. So try something, test it out. Does it work? Great, we're going to build on top of it. If it doesn't work, scratch it and try something else. So I think that's really the change in leadership it's a lot faster, it's iterative and it's a lot shorter term.

Speaker 2:

Awesome. What do you see as some of the low-hanging fruit? So you work with entrepreneurs, you're in the tech space and you have a really nice blend of skillset. You know, very rarely do you have someone that's tech in leadership, helping entrepreneurs and doing this. What's the low-hanging fruit? So if someone's listening to this and they're small business on an entrepreneur, so I'm leaning in that space for them, what's the low-hanging fruit for?

Speaker 3:

entrepreneurs leveraging technology. So I think what a lot of entrepreneurs are probably already doing I'm in quite a few entrepreneur groups or communities as well. Actually, quite a few of them are just using like chatPT to create a content schedule, for example, to create a sales approach, to create a marketing approach, and you can just. I love using things like that for just even brainstorming. So I'm not always the most creative mind. I love using it for brainstorming. So if I need 10 ideas for something, I will always ask ChatGPT first. I can Google the internet. It's going to take me an hour or two hours and just ask the question first. So I think that's what a lot of entrepreneurs are already using for today, and all the models are getting a lot better and they're so much better now than they were a year ago. So the answers are improving rapidly as well, which is good. So I think a lot of the consumer type tools that are out there like chat, gpt, like claude, like gemini are already being used by a lot of entrepreneurs.

Speaker 3:

If you're not using it yet, I'd say we get on board, because everybody else already is, but it's not extremely difficult. I think by a couple of our youtube video you can figure out how to use it for sales or marketing or deliveries. That's that first one, and the second one is really when you have, as an entrepreneur, you have business challenges, so either you will need more leads or you want more sales, or maybe you need to optimize your team or your supply chain. There are different AI based solutions for all of those spaces. I think the trap that a lot of people fall into is taking the technology and seeing what problem we can solve, instead of turning it around looking at your business like what are the challenges that you have in your business from finance, supply chain, marketing, sales and seeing how can you implement AI to solve that problem and improve your churn, your customer retention, your customer happiness, satisfaction, like how can you improve those using AI?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I mean, and if you're listening and you're watching, I'm a golden nugget because you dropped something that's super important is how do you look at your own business and your own problems and let AI help you get better at taking care of your customers at the end of the day? I want to pivot a little bit and talk about you. You've been in this business industry for over 30 years nearly 30 years anyway. How has your leadership style evolved over time?

Speaker 3:

Quite a bit, I would say. And mostly, like I said in the beginning, I was this. Really, especially in my consulting days, I would say give me a team, give me a budget, I'll get it done. That's the kind of leader and that's also maybe quite fitting for someone in consulting. That was my management style. Right, I could get any project done as long as you gave me a budget or a team and I'd get it done. Didn't matter what the problem was, we'd get it done. So that was really my original leadership style Get stuff done, which I think is good in the early days of your career.

Speaker 3:

Over time, that's gradually changed. I've broadened my skills into finance, into larger programs, into bigger teams and then also into people management, and that's really where I've made probably the biggest steps in the last 10 years, because that's the really hard part, or at least it was for me the people management. So talking to people, talking about their weekends, talking about their families, their ambitions, listening. I've read a lot of amazing books. My journey actually started with one of Brene Brown's books I forget which one, but one of those like about vulnerability, actually showing up myself as a vulnerable person, making myself vulnerable to the people I work with asking for feedback, accepting feedback, listening to feedback.

Speaker 3:

As a leader, I think that's one of the most important things that we can do, and I do a lot of coaching these days, and that's it's almost the first thing that I tell people that I coach. Go to your team, go to your peers and go to your manager and just ask them for feedback, like what am I doing really well and what are probably the couple of things that I could get better at? Right, what do you suck at? But what can I really get better at? What can I improve? Because that's incredible feedback and most people are really afraid to ask that question what am I not good at yet? And that's a question that I love asking myself. I always ask my own customers, I always ask the people that I work with. It's one of my standard questions and I think that's the biggest thing that I've learned over the years.

Speaker 2:

I love it. I mean, and you put yet at the end of it what am I not good at yet, which makes you vulnerable but open to growth and curiosity? You've worked with KLM, air France, shell. What are some lessons you've learned from working with big clients like that? Because you do learn. So what's the lessons you learned from working with big clients like that?

Speaker 3:

So I still work with big clients. I do some interim work as well. What I'm seeing is that the shift between the corporates the big corporates and the startups I do a lot of work for the startup world as well that gap it seems to be getting bigger and bigger almost every year. The corporates are often slow moving and I think that's really where they're struggling. I've learned so much from the years that I worked with those big companies. I got to do the most amazing projects. For example, if you look at a company like shell, at the time that I worked for them, they had over 300,000 people working for them all across the world. So I would run a small project and it would affect the lives of 10, 20, 30, 40, 50,000 people immediately, just because of the projects, the size of the company that I was working for, and it's amazing to learn from the people that I was working for and it's amazing to learn from the people that work there in a company like that of that size.

Speaker 3:

But I feel today, and I don't know where the world is going to, I still see those same corporates and it's almost feels like they're moving slower and slower. In the technology space where you see, on the other hand, you have the tech giants and they're still, even, despite their size, the Googles, the apples and the metas of the world. Despite their size, they're moving at incredible pace. And you see the corporates and in their technology departments they haven't adjusted to that same pace. And that gap between where the world is going and where the world is technology-wise and where those companies are, it's growing up. But also that creates enormous opportunities for smaller companies, smaller entrepreneurs, because they can step into that space, because they are a lot quicker on their feet, they can move faster. So I think it's going to be a cool future for smaller companies.

Speaker 2:

Yes, yes, I love that you're sharing. I mean so. You had the experience, and every client is an experience. You learn and grow with them as well as helping them. If a corporate is listening and that gap is getting wider, how fast they pick up pace to start making these changes? What recommendations do you make to? Because you're right, I mean we go to some and they're lagging behind on technology because of budget or because of hesitation or because of fear. There are multiple reasons. What advice do you share with corporates that listen to this podcast about how not to let that gap continue to get wider?

Speaker 3:

So I usually coach on the other side. I coach on the technology side, and what I tell the CTOs or the CIOs that I work with, I really tell them that they need to go and inspire their boards. So we have a lot of people in boards that aren't completely in the tech space. They don't know everything about technology and, of course, they can't because they have a business to run. They need to care about finance, about customers, about supply chain, about everything else in the world. Technology may not be at the top of their mind yet, and I feel that that's the job of the CIO, the CTO, to change that. So they should really go and get on the board.

Speaker 3:

I'm a big fan of having a technology person on the board, so we still have a lot of companies, large corporates, where the CIO or the CTO doesn't sit on the board yet. They report into the CFO, for example, and technology is seen as just a supporting function, and I think that that's the first thing that needs to change. You need to have a technology person sitting on the board next to the rest of your C-suite. So I'd say that's number one Don't let it report into finance and don't dismiss it as another supporting function, which is what we see quite a bit in the bigger corporates. So change that, put it on the board and listen to what they have to say. If you have a CTO or a CIO that listens into all the strategy conversations, all the challenges that a company has, all the opportunities that are there, maybe some acquisitions that are going to get done or divestments, it's a critical role that the CIO or the CTO can play in those discussions. So they should be part of those strategic board level discussions.

Speaker 2:

Wow, love it. I mean, you're dropping phenomenal data for people to listen, which is what I love about the podcast, because people walk away with answers, and I want to remind everybody that's listening that we both run businesses. I love that Mark is sharing, and at the end of this podcast we're going to tell you how to get in touch with him, so if there's something he said or shared that you need help with, I want you to feel that you have access to him, and so we'll drop information at the end of it. So, mark, think about it. If you were to tell an entrepreneur like me that doesn't have a huge budget but needs to have someone techie, so I don't miss the boat and the gap doesn't get wider what do you tell an entrepreneur? That they don't have the budget or the revenue to bring on a full-time person to do this? Where can they start to start making some kind of changes in their business so they don't miss the boat?

Speaker 3:

So a couple of things. The first, and that's really where it starts, we're seeing a lot more fractional leadership roles these days. So that's not. It's something that's come up more and more in the past couple of years. If you don't have the budget or even the need right now for a full-time technology person on board budget, or even the need right now for a full-time technology person on board, there's a lot of fractional CTOs out there. So see if you can get somebody for a day a week, two days a week, and there's a lot of fractional CTOs out there that are more than willing to contribute or be part of an organization for just one or two days a week. So that would be the first recommendation. And if that's not an option, you can find a reliable technology partner to work with, somebody that's going to give you advice, that's going to give you a real trusted partner that you can work with.

Speaker 2:

I want to shift over to mentoring or coaching, which is some of the work that you're doing. What qualities do you look for in a leader in a tech space or leader period you can go either direction with responding to that question. But your coaching? What are some of the qualities you look for in tech leaders?

Speaker 3:

Most important for me. So I run a program called the Maverick CTO, and it's called the Maverick CTO for a reason. A lot of technology leaders are very service oriented and they just wait for their CEO to call and ask them to do something. I don't believe in that. So I really think technology leaders need to be mavericks, and by maverick I mean they should have their own vision, their own vision for the technology in the business that they work for and what that technology can do for their business. So that's one and two. They really need to be bold about talking to the people around them. They need to just take bold steps, not always wait for it Sometimes it's better to ask for forgiveness than permission and just do something.

Speaker 3:

Show that it can be successful. Just do something on a small scale, a small project. Show that it can be successful to show to the rest of the board, the rest of the company, the successes that technology can actually bring to the business. So for me, vision, having a vision and just being bold about the things that you do I'm going to change again for us.

Speaker 2:

I've heard the technology, I've heard the leadership, and you're constantly embracing change. How do you balance the need for speed and innovation while also making sure you're paying attention to long-term sustainability and development?

Speaker 3:

It's a tough one because that second one is becoming more and more difficult the long-term sustainability. It used to be that we could implement a new system and we could run the system for the next five or 10 years, and I think that's getting harder and harder. So the one thing that I always preach is at least make sure that you're up to date, that all the systems that you have are fully up to date. Your patch, you're on the newest versions you're on don't accept any technical debt. So that's the first one. So any old systems that are out there, just start working on them now and don't accept that they get outdated, because it's going to get worse and worse to replace them and upgrade them because the technology is going faster and faster. So that's the first one.

Speaker 3:

The second one is make a difference between the different systems that you have. You will have, like in bigger corporates, you have the core ERP, which is a really big system. It takes years to implement and it doesn't give a lot of room for experimentation or moving fast and it's a really stable system. But on the outside you can do a lot more with custom development, continuous development, for example, if you have a customer-facing system or you have a CRM system. Those are often systems where you can do gradual changes and just continue to develop at a steady pace so you don't stick behind and you implement all the new features that you need and you actually stay up to date with with all the technology and what's available out there. Just, yeah, I think technology has become. It's gone from a place where we used to run projects for a year and then stop and pause for a couple of years to something that's that's gradual and ongoing. So the iterations have become a lot smaller, but you can't stop working on the iterations yeah, which I want to unpack a little bit.

Speaker 2:

How do you help teams prepare for the unpredictable nature of technology?

Speaker 3:

It's hard, and the reason it's hard is that what you see in the teams that I've worked with in my past as well you have different types of people. You have people that really are most comfortable in a steady environment, and I think especially for those people it's hard to deal with the continuous change, and it's a gradual process and it requires quite a bit from their leaders or coaches to help them adjust and accept change as a new thing and a constant. And then those are the people that you really need to invest in to make sure that they come along but also start to embrace change. On the other hand, you also have a lot of people that enjoy change and for who it's a good thing.

Speaker 3:

I think the most important thing about change and technological disruption is that it's and that's the way that I look at it it's really interesting, it gives a lot of opportunities. It gives a lot of opportunities. It's not a bad thing. The world is going to change and that's a given. You can actually have fun along the way. If you just keep adjusting and keep adapting and keep making small changes and learn about the new technology, you can have a lot of fun with it.

Speaker 2:

Just enjoy the change. Yes, we're going to do two more questions, and the first is what advice would you give to someone that's their first time becoming a CTO or their first time becoming a leader in tech? What advice would you share with them based on your experiences?

Speaker 3:

So I think first time leader in tech and I coach quite a few of those people who have been like a leader for a year or two years I think take a step back, because the work that you have is completely different as a first time leader than the work that you had before as an individual contributor. So the advice that I always give them is your job has changed. It's no longer about the deliverables and the work and really it is about the team. It's about growing the team, developing the team, making their lives slightly uncomfortable, taking them a bit out of their comfort zone, but letting them step up a little so that as a leader, you don't have to do the work yourself, but you can really build a credible team that you can really rely on. So that's the first step and that's with a lot of first time leaders. Those are the steps that we look at. How can you delegate, how can you develop your team? How can you take a step back and really trust on each of the members in your team to do the work themselves and maybe run a small project, run a small task, but really let them step up. So that's first time leaders if you're a cto, and that's maybe the next step up. You're leading a bunch of different teams. You have some team lead experience. It really is all about stakeholder management and it is about talking to.

Speaker 3:

It's very easy to get stuck in just leading your own teams, focusing on the technology, focusing on what needs to get done, instead of focusing on the world outside. So my advice to them is look at the people around you. Spend at least half your time outside of your own team, outside of your own unit. Spend time with marketing. Spend time with sales. Spend time with HR your own team outside of your own unit. Spend time with marketing. Spend time with sales. Spend time with HR, with your CEO, with your CFO. Spend time with your customers. Understand the customers of the business, how they think, what they do, why they're a customer, and really understand the wider landscape of the business. You know the technology as a CTO, you really know the technology. You know all of that. Start learning everything else and start speaking to everyone else outside of that You're right in my lane.

Speaker 2:

I'm a people person, so when you said that, I'm like, yes, how do you get back connected to these people that are behind these machines? And so I love that you're speaking that language. So, as we begin to close, before we start putting out contact information, if someone's listening and they're trying to figure out whether they should give you a call or reach out to you, what are some things that they would see that's happening in the organization that will say, hey, give Mark a call.

Speaker 3:

So two situations team, but they're not moving at the pace that you'd like, or they're not speaking your language, or it's just not not moving fast enough, or it seems to just never work the way you want it. I think that's really a time to call and really I want to work with that technology leader and really help them get up to speed and move faster and do better. So that's one. The second if you're an entrepreneur and you don't have that technology team yet, you really don't know where to go for your technology questions. Just feel free to just schedule an hour with me. We can have a discussion I'm happy to do that with any entrepreneur, just because of my passion for technology and let's talk about your business, the technology that you do have, or where you think technology could really benefit your organization.

Speaker 2:

I need to schedule a call after this just because I don't have technology and we're doing well and we are, you know, in full transparency for people that are listening. We're trying to figure out what exactly what you're talking about, Like how do we leverage it and use it? Well, Because we're not leveraging it and we're probably working harder than we should and so we need to figure it out. So, for all of you that are listening, if you're like me in Global Core, we're trying to figure it out, Don't do it by yourself, you know. So you'll have Mark's contact information, which I'm going to say now. You know you're running the program, so can you speak to the program and then tell people how to reach you.

Speaker 3:

So for technology leaders, the program that I run is the Maverick CTO. It's quite easy, the maverickctocom. You can go there. You can download our free CTO compass that we have a couple of guides that you can use on your own or just schedule a call with me and get introduced and we can talk about it. If you're an entrepreneur and you're looking for technology advice, tairi T-A-I-R-Ico is the company that I run. It's my business and it's really where we help entrepreneurs. You can book a call right there. So feel free to go to the website and just book a call with me, schedule something, and I'm happy to get on a call and see what we can do.

Speaker 2:

Thank you. Any last minute thing that we did not cover that I may not have asked, that you are passionate about that you want to share before we begin to wrap up, no, I think we covered everything.

Speaker 3:

I really enjoyed the discussion, thanks.

Speaker 2:

Yes, you did a phenomenal job and, for those of you that are listening, we're super excited about what we bring. We want to add value. I mean, how do we help business owners and entrepreneurs? And you and I have that in common, mark. I love helping entrepreneurs. I love helping them figure out how to close the wealth gap, how to make money, how to be financially secure and that's what business is really about, and there's a smart way to do it.

Speaker 2:

And you don't have to make the mistakes that you and I may have made. Mark in business and flying and navigating and trying to figure it out, leverage people like us. Reach out to me or reach out to Mark. I will be happy. You can always find me.

Speaker 2:

With Global Course Strategies and Consulting, my primary source of communication is my email or you go to our company's website and it gives you an opportunity, just like Mark, to reach out to us. We love to help. We are business owners, we love helping entrepreneurs, and so thank y'all for joining us. It's been a pleasure to be of service to you once again and to share some really, really great insight around technology, which all of us are asking and for our guests.

Speaker 2:

Technology is not just AI. It's more to it than just that, and I know that's the buzzword, but it's so much more to it, so don't get caught up like use it, know it, but there's more to it than just the word AI. So you want to become smart in your business. So thank y'all for joining. It's always a pleasure. Mark, thank you for being with us and sharing your programs and your wisdom, and for you that are following us, please share our podcast and information with anyone that you think can benefit from what we're doing we release every Monday. Thank y'all, and Mark and I will, until next time, tell you have a phenomenal 2025 and we look forward to talking to you again.

Speaker 1:

We hope you enjoyed this edition of Turning Point Leadership with your host, Ron Harvey. We're so glad you joined us. Remember to join us every first and third Mondays and expect to receive real answers for real leadership challenges. Until next time, make a difference where you are and with what you have. There are those who are counting on you for effective leadership.

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