The Founder Formula

Mike Pfeiffer - Founder of CloudSkills.io

• Trace3 • Episode 30

Share episode

For this Founder, getting out of the cubicle and teaching completely changed his life and his career.

We’re talking to Mike Pfeiffer this week on The Founder Formula. He’s the CEO and Founder of CloudSkills.io, the most immersive cloud and devops learning community in the world. Mike realized as he was working in tech support and cloud architecture that his true calling is to teach, but on his own terms.

Listen to this and all of The Founder Formula episodes through your favorite podcast platform or Trace3.com.

Mike Pfeiffer:

I think podcasting is the best way right now to connect with your potential customers, add value to your community, because people are busy. And if I can listen to something and learn while I'm doing the dishes, mopping, working out, whatever, it's a massive, massive value add.

Intro:

The founder formula brings you in behind the curtains and inside the minds of today's brave executives at the most future-leaning startups. Each interview will feature a transformative leader who's behind the wheel at a fast-paced and innovative tech firm. They'll give you an insider's look at how companies are envisioned, created, and scaled. We hope you're ready. Let's get into the show.

Todd Gallina:

All right. Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the show. Of course, we're thrilled to have you here. My name is Todd Galena, and with me is the Chief Marketing Officer here at Trace3, Sandy Salty.

Sandy Salty:

Hi, Todd Galena.

Todd Gallina:

Hey, how are you? Good.

Sandy Salty:

It's good to be here.

Todd Gallina:

Yes, it is great. This is actually a monumental moment because you and I, the co-hosts of the Founder Formula for this episode, are in the same room at the same time.

Sandy Salty:

Yeah.

Todd Gallina:

She's like, what's the perk?

Sandy Salty:

How exciting.

Todd Gallina:

She's physically scooting back right now. No, but I mean, I think there's this, there's this notion that when, when people get together for a podcast, they would all be like in the same booth area. There's the host, the co-host and the guests. And as you know, technology has gotten us to the point where, you know, these podcasts generally recorded remotely across the board, but, um, I think it's awesome that we can both be, we can look at each other. It's

Sandy Salty:

so much fun to be here and feel energy, like the real energy, you know?

Todd Gallina:

Yeah, and the office is opened up. So our recording booth here at the office, there's some other people moving around. It's starting

Sandy Salty:

to feel normal again.

Todd Gallina:

Totally. And great to have you back. The last time you and I were together recording an episode, we had, I'm trying to remember the guest.

Sandy Salty:

Ah, the one and only. Nolan Bushnell. Oh, yeah, yeah. That was like the highlight of my 2020. I've said that before. Yeah,

Todd Gallina:

2020 is, it was a highlight Huge highlight for me. But for 2020, of course, we've joked about this. It's a pretty low bar. But I want to share with our listeners before we start to talk about our guests coming up, but I want to share with our listeners a little bit about some of the impulsive things you've done in 2020. You've made like two. A lot of people have bought houses and moved into new houses and stuff. Sandy didn't do that. She made two major purchases, neither of which is a house. Perhaps you'd like to share. I

Sandy Salty:

mean, one could be considered a house on wheels. It's a 16 foot camper, nest camper, which has been super fun. I can't say we've taken it very far, but we've definitely explored some local areas and done a little bit of camping. And I think the best part of camping right now is that we get to take our second COVID purchase on those camping trips with us, which is our puppy, our COVID puppy. His name is Ollie, and cute as can be, he's been so much fun to play with.

Todd Gallina:

I've known you for a while, and I never really thought that you would be a dog owner. So what happened in 2020 that kind of hastened this purchase for you?

Sandy Salty:

You know, I'll tell you, like, I am not actually a dog person. You're spot on. But, like, this thing is... so damn cute that you don't have to be a dog person to fall in love with this puppy. It is the cutest Labradoodle and he'll charm the heck out of anybody he meets.

Todd Gallina:

Yeah, I know. I've seen some pictures and super duper cute dog, but the dog owner world is a very strange world. I know this because I've taken my dog to a dog park where the whole premise of a dog park is you let dogs run around and play with each other. And I've managed to break almost every single possible rule a human being can break in a dog park, which is like managing my dog. It's like I have to parent my dog when I'm at the dog park when I thought I'd just let him run around and do whatever he wants with the other dogs.

Sandy Salty:

Yeah, you know what's amazing is like when we go to the dog park and... And there is a super aggressive dog, which has happened to us, by the way, in those dog parks. Because in my mind, I'm like, you are like, as the owner of the dog, you probably know he's pretty aggressive or she's pretty aggressive. And you're basically unleashing a killer in the middle of like an open field of puppies. We've had some funny stories in dog parks for sure.

Todd Gallina:

Yeah, I know. And I've also, my dog is also a wimp. The two dogs that we've brought have been on the wimpy side and very rarely my dog will appear to be a dominant dog. So I get the whole thing, what you're saying. You know, my, my sense is if I have a dog that is a rowdy dog, let's just say not a killer, like you said, but a rowdy dog. Where else are you going to take him? That's why they were invented. Do you want your rowdy dog in your backyard barking at everybody all the time? Or do you take him to a dog park and then run around until he's tired and bump into some other dogs and wrestle?

Sandy Salty:

And kill other

Todd Gallina:

dogs. All roads lead to death. This is the puppy death podcast. I'm sorry. I'm going to edit that out. Okay, so... Today, we have a very unique guest coming on. I won't say his name because we'll do that for the whole intro, but this gentleman has built a business around education, mentoring. And I know that for you, you have a big passion in this business that we're in, the technology business. You have a passion around helping people up-level their skills. And I know that you and a few other people here at the company have launched a pretty cool project. It's very related to our guests. Perhaps you'd like to share with the audience what's going on.

Sandy Salty:

Yeah, I mean, I think one of the more exciting programs we've launched recently is the Legends program. And Legends program is really like, it's taking technology leaders and technologists and providing them with a program that will take them from foundational knowledge all the way to practitioner and And the cool part is that this program is really like, it's in gratis to anyone who wants to take it. And I think the reason I'm passionate about that stuff is because like empowering people and uplifting our clients and prospects and partners and team members, like that's what we stand for as a company. It's always what we've stood for as a company beyond the technology solution, selling and consulting and everything else that we do services. It's really about lifting, it's the human experience. It's like lifting other human beings up. Like that's, that is actually the essence of what we do as a company. It's a higher calling, you know, to a degree. I know it sounds a little bit cheesy, but it's true.

Todd Gallina:

Well, if there's a practical business reason for it too, you lift, you lift human beings. You, you lift people. the business, you lift the industry. Yes. All boats rise.

Sandy Salty:

Totally.

Todd Gallina:

But knowing you as I have, I also know that you personally take a lot of interest in individuals, you know, within the business or not, and are always looking out for others and trying to help them along in their careers. Yeah,

Sandy Salty:

it takes one to see one, I think.

Todd Gallina:

Thank you. Anyways, so the recent phase of Legends, phase one, huge success. We had over 500 people register for that, and now we have 300 of those registered. Moving on to phase two. Yeah. So all systems go.

Sandy Salty:

For sure. I mean, there's a huge appetite in the market for programs like this. And especially because we're not trying to monetize it, like truly, like this is for the people. And so yeah, we're seeing a tremendous amount of interest. And a lot of the folks, you know, the 300 that you mentioned just finished their phase one are about to get into phase two of the program, which is obviously a higher level that builds off of the Cloud Foundations course in phase one. So it's been awesome. That program is currently led by the office of the CTO, Tony Olzak, who a lot of our podcast listeners know well, and Aaron Shaver, who's our field CTO as well. And, you know, those two guys, I think what makes the program cool is that It is absolutely one part education. It's one part mentorship. It's a whole lot of collaboration amongst the participants and they get people like really engaged and they're super fun. They're funny guys,

Todd Gallina:

you know, so for sure

Sandy Salty:

it makes the learning experience bearable.

Todd Gallina:

Yes. Yes. At the very least.

Sandy Salty:

At the very least.

Todd Gallina:

Yeah. We invite you to go check it out. The easiest way to do that is to find Tracery on LinkedIn and we promote this quite a bit. Watch our feed and you'll see some stuff there. And we'd love to have you participate.

Sandy Salty:

Absolutely. Take advantage of it while it lasts.

Todd Gallina:

Are you ready to get to our guest?

Sandy Salty:

I'm ready to roll.

Todd Gallina:

Let's do it. Okay, joining us today is an entrepreneur, author, podcaster, and influencer who spent over 20 years in the IT industry working at places like Microsoft and Amazon Web Services. He's founded and is the CEO of CloudSkills.io. an education and advisory platform, 100% focused on cloud and DevOps, where he's trained over half a million students. In addition to that, he's the author of six books and hosted over 125 episodes of an extremely popular podcast that's listened to in over 140 countries. And on that podcast, he offers career advice to folks in the tech industry. So he's done a ton. Please welcome to the show, Mike Pfeiffer.

Sandy Salty:

Welcome, Mike Pfeiffer.

Mike Pfeiffer:

Thank you so much. I am really excited to be here. So I'm looking forward to the conversation.

Sandy Salty:

Mike, you have one of those names that has to be said in its entirety. Like, I can't just call you Mike. I have to call you Mike Pfeiffer. I don't know if you know that about your name.

Mike Pfeiffer:

Well, it's interesting because most people can't pronounce my last name. So I'm sure that there's people out there that are saying it the wrong way, but I appreciate you getting it right. So

Sandy Salty:

Mike, tell us about cloudskills.io and why you started it.

Mike Pfeiffer:

Sure. I got into... Well, here's the thing. I was working at Amazon in 2016. And I was thinking about getting back into teaching because I'd spent a lot of time starting around 2010 doing classroom training. And then I got onto Microsoft. And as part of my career at Microsoft as an engineer, I taught in the field. And then went over to AWS and was an architect there, was teaching workshops with our partners and customers. That was a lot of fun. And so in 2016, I was like, I'm going to go back and doing teaching again full-time. I'm going to go back and write some more books. And when I got out, I was doing live trainings, like traditional stuff. So if you've ever gone to instructor-led training type of class, five-day training, right? You're sitting there for the entire week. And I was teaching those kinds of classes. And over there, a couple of years after 2016, I was teaching Azure architecture. In the early days, there was nobody in the class. A couple of people in the front row and that was about it. But as the years went on, more and more people started coming through the classes. And I just realized that the way that we were doing the training wasn't going to scale. It just wasn't sustainable. I was tired at the end of five days. The people that are sitting there were kind of staggering out. And I was basically focused on doing two things. Number one, how do I solve the issue for myself? Because I can't stand up here for five days straight every week and explain all this stuff. And number two, more importantly, how do I... set something up and explain this in a way that makes sense and it's absorbable over time. And CloudSkills has been that experiment. We're basically a blended learning platform, which means we've got live trainings, we've got pre-recorded content, and we have a thriving community where we encourage our members to really get in the game. And so we're trying to figure out new ways of delivering training. That is why I started the company.

Sandy Salty:

I love that. And you know, training and development is super important to our company, Trace3. It actually guides our mission statement as a company. Our mission statement is securing and lifting the lives and careers of our clients, employees, and partners. Let's play a little game of truth or...

Todd Gallina:

You're

Sandy Salty:

introducing a game? I love it. But let's play a little game of fact or fiction. Would you agree with this statement that Technologists and technology leaders need to keep their skills sharper than ever before. Yeah,

Mike Pfeiffer:

you know, I would really agree with that because every company is becoming a technology company, whether they want it or not, right? If we just look at the pandemic and the pressure that's put on businesses to get more into technology than they ever have before. Absolutely. So as a leader, and it's interesting too, because now I'm having conversations with folks that I didn't use to talk to about technology. You know, cloud architecture, implementation, building teams to support this, closing the skills gap. And so, yeah, now more than ever, executives all the way up to the CEO, which people I didn't really spend a lot of time talking to in the past. I've also got friends that are kind of telling me they're having the same situation. It's really interesting. So, yeah, this is the time for all business leaders to really understand the opportunity. And this is a massive shift as well. It's going to change the way that we do everything. So, yeah, you need to be able to understand, you know, how to make sure you're not going to spend too much money and build the right team. Make sure that you're going to be able to keep folks engaged because the technology changes almost every day. And so, yeah, it is a really interesting challenge. So I think, you know, for myself, I'm always thinking about, you know, what's happening in tech, but also how do I evolve kind of the culture of the company to keep up with that?

Sandy Salty:

Yeah. And for the listeners that aren't in the industry, Mike, can you help them understand what cloud is in the context of the enterprise?

Mike Pfeiffer:

Yeah, absolutely. I'd like to explain cloud because you hear it all the time. I'd like to explain cloud kind of like this. It's just somebody that's maybe not aware, maybe not even in IT. So think about it this way. Every business... over the last couple of decades, all the way back starting in the late 90s when I got into it, filled up these giant rooms with computers. And so that's what IT people do. They go in there and make sure that everybody in the company can get to those computers, all that kind of fun stuff. And so what the cloud is, is it's an opportunity for us to move all that infrastructure off to another place. And that would be providers like Microsoft and Amazon and Google. And so you kind of think about it this way. Imagine a Costco-sized warehouse. full of computers. And everybody's mobile phone just goes over the internet, connects to maybe a data center, a Costco, quote unquote, size data center, right? Full of computers. And that's kind of like what the cloud is. It's just these gigantic facilities full of infrastructure that companies can now lease and access and build their applications on top of instead of having to do it themselves. So it's a massive shift because we're trying to move all this stuff into these cloud platforms. And think about it this way as well. If you ever streamed Netflix, who hasn't, right? That's accessing the cloud. So Netflix has very famously used Amazon's cloud. They've got their own stuff. But ultimately, that's what it is. It's businesses... outsourcing a lot of the infrastructure and doing it in a more cost-effective way. The challenge is the cloud platforms that we use are completely different than anything we've ever used before. So there's a massive shift happening. People are having to skill up, learn things that they've never done before, and that's where all the opportunity is.

Todd Gallina:

Yeah. I always wonder, yeah, I mean, who came up with it first? Why did it stick so well? There could have been so many things you could have called, you know, a giant Costco-sized data center in the middle of the desert.

Mike Pfeiffer:

Well, you know what it is? It's because in the architectural diagrams back in the old days, we would use a cloud as the icon to describe the external networks that you were leaving. So you're leaving the local environment, the local network to go out to some other thing. And the stuff we use on the architectural diagrams was a diagram of cloud. So there you go.

Sandy Salty:

Awesome. So cloud represents that external leaving the perimeter, basically.

Mike Pfeiffer:

Yeah, exactly. And these days you can treat it just like it's local because there's a ton of security implementations you can do. But yeah, that's kind of the story. So not the most descriptive name, but yeah, that's kind of the backstory.

Todd Gallina:

Mystery solved. Yeah.

Mike Pfeiffer:

There you go.

Todd Gallina:

Mike, take us back... to take us back into, I don't want to say your childhood, but did anything happen in your life where you kind of saw yourself running your own business? Was this something that, like you said earlier, you just happened to be an engineer, you hated going through courses and you just wanted to start your own course. Take us a little bit behind the scenes as to what you saw in yourself that made you believe you can run your own company.

Mike Pfeiffer:

Yeah, I love that question. And I got the perfect moment right here in my head. I remember working on a project This is one of my first consulting jobs, one of the first consulting companies I worked for. And this is early 2000s. And they came in and said, hey, we got this new project. And it was like this really complicated project, an old archaic mail system that I had to move over to the new way of doing things. And I did that project. I pretty much project management, did all the project management. I did the technical implementation. I followed up with the customer. I closed the project out. I did the documentation. And then I really... sat there after that because it was really, you know, challenged me in so many ways. And as it was decompressing in the weeks after, I'm like, hey, pretty much the only thing that the company I'm working at did was get the customer. And to be honest, it was a little naive in the sense that thinking, hey, if I could just go on my own and do it all by myself, I could do this whole thing. But I recognize that, you know, if I could close that gap, then that's the solution, right? I wasn't at that time. It's just like in my late 20s. I wasn't really appreciating everything that goes into running a company. However, I did do that. I did leave the consulting company and I spent about three years doing a consulting business here locally in Phoenix, Arizona. And then I was quickly humbled and I learned a lot. And then it wasn't what I wanted to do. So I kind of kept that in my pocket, ended up cashing out that business and had a partner in that consulting company. But it was a big learning experience. And for me, I think that that was the kind of nudge in the direction of really embracing and liking the idea of entrepreneurship. And what I'm really excited about today is that the barrier entry to creating a company is so low. Now it's a lot easier than it was when I started the first company. And I think a lot of the success that we've had at CloudSkills is due to the fact that it's easier than it's ever been to start a business.

Todd Gallina:

It's so true. I remember you had to put your fictitious business name into a newspaper classified ad to really start a business. Crazy stuff. You mentioned... You know, the hardest part was getting a customer. Do you remember when you had to get your first customer? Was it hard or did your partner do that?

Mike Pfeiffer:

No, it's interesting. Actually, it was hard. It was way harder than I'd ever imagined. And the way that I had got the customers for that company when we started out was by using search engine optimization. The search engines were still fairly new back in the early 2000s. And it was much easier back then to show up on page one of Google when somebody searched for something. And I would not recommend putting all your eggs in one basket for a lead acquisition, right? But that's kind of how we did it. And it was funny because for a long time, the phone would just ring all day. And algorithms changed one time and the phone stopped ringing. So that was kind of something interesting to work through. But yeah, that was how we got that first customer over there at that company.

Sandy Salty:

On that topic, Mike, with your current businesses, do you find that your podcast feeds your training and development business or your training business feeds followership on your podcast or both?

Mike Pfeiffer:

Well... I was actually asked that question a couple weeks ago on a call with a bunch of people. They asked me about... And it was one of our coaching programs that we got over at CloudSkills. And everybody on the call is working on technical skills, but they're also building up their personal brand and figuring out how to get out there a little bit more. And the question came up, if I was doing personal branding, would I start a podcast? And I said, well, let's take a quick... Let's find out right now. And I asked the whole group, who here... was a listener of the podcast before they signed over this thing. Every single person on the call raised their hand. And so, yeah, again, that would be my answer here. I think podcasting is the best way right now to connect with your potential customers, add value to your community because people are busy. And if I can listen to something and learn while I'm doing the dishes, mopping, working out, whatever, It's a massive, massive value. And if you look out there, you guys, I'm sure know this, but podcasts are just exploding. And so, yeah, absolutely. And I would go as far to say, if you're in business and you don't have a podcast, that is a huge problem that you need to fix.

Todd Gallina:

I can't believe that every student raised their hand. That's impressive. Which leads me to another question about yourself. And in some ways, I don't want to overhype, but you're kind of a modern person. media mogul in the sense that you've got a mix of traditional and new forms of communication. Was most of this deliberate or did you learn this along the way? What additional advice besides the podcast would you give to a listener if they're simply interested in building an audience?

Mike Pfeiffer:

That's a really good question. When it comes to building an audience, you have to have some kind of consistent way of sharing your message so if i circle back a little bit or step back a little bit my first thing would be is you have to have something worth sharing and that'd be step one and i think that that can be scary for people so i'll come back to that but number two like you got to get your message out there and it's got to be done consistently somehow for me so to answer your question of is this all deliberate yeah for in a sense like i had a framework in mind and i knew that the podcast was going to be a huge part of that and that's why I started podcasting every single week starting on January 1st, 2019. Now we're over 120 episodes. And so we've missed a couple of weeks in there. But to me, that was the consistent thing. If I'm not going to... Well, let me say this. I'm thinking I got to put something out at least once a week. That's just my thought if I'm building an audience. So number one, what's the message? Number two, how are you going to get it out there? And you can start small. So If you're scared about the idea of or maybe you're resisting it because you're like, well, I don't really have a message. You do. You absolutely do. The message could be how you're figuring this out and then you just share that. And so it's an interesting time because you have to figure out how do I artfully share what I'm doing to build that audience because they're seeing people are scrolling to their feet. They're seeing the same things over and over. So you have to have something that can catch people's attention and you have to have consistency to give your listeners or your audience that expectation of, oh, okay, these guys are going to keep showing up every week. I'm going to subscribe and get into this. And so those are just a few things that I know I'm kind of going all over the place, but just to answer your question, I think that's it. It's like you got to decide what am I going to be talking about? And then you got to have a consistent schedule and pick a modality. Is it audio? Is it video? Are you going to blog? But those are my thoughts. And, you know, it's a lot of work. It's not easy.

Sandy Salty:

It definitely is. Yeah, Todd would know. So I'm curious about like the business that you're in has probably, it has got to be a gratifying business in the sense that you are impacting people's lives in such cool ways. Like you're up-leveling them and their skillset and their careers. And I just want to dig into that topic a little bit. Have you had, is there any one story that kind of sticks out in your mind where you feel like, the impact you've made on a podcast follower or a student or a client was just so incredibly memorable and material.

Mike Pfeiffer:

Absolutely. I have more than I have time to share. And it's unfortunate that I can only pick one. But yeah, so there's a guy named Luke Oriana, who started out as just one of our boot camp attendees. He was a VMware administrator. What that means is he just worked in kind of a traditional IT job and he came into one of our programs. I quickly recognized his ability and just wanting to learn and already had a great skill set. And I think there's a lot of people out there that have that, which they've got a ton of skills and they just need a couple of tweaks. to move into cloud. But anyways, he came in and what he was able to do was figure out the new technology and get certified and all that. But I gave him an opportunity to start blogging on our platform. And then that went really well. He's a guy that works on something called Terraform, which is an emerging, very popular technology in IT. And so that went really well for him, blogging about that experience. And then along the way, he got another job. went into a cloud-focused kind of position. Now he works in any switch jobs again. Now he works at Microsoft as something called a site reliability engineer, an SRE, which is kind of like one of the very cool and sexy technical positions you can have in modern IT. And honestly, he did... half the work or maybe even more all the work, but that's kind of what we try to do. There's a lot of places where you could go learn all this binary information. You know, the documentation's got it. It's on YouTube at scale. And so what we try to do is, you know, basically just orient people to start going in a little bit more of a different direction. And so, you know, obviously Luke did a ton of work on that and we've got a bunch of stories like that. I've got to do a better job of surfacing those in the future and we're working on that. But yeah, you know, it's, Being able to do that kind of impact is what's kept me going in tech.

Sandy Salty:

Yeah,

Mike Pfeiffer:

I can imagine. I've pretty much done all the technical stuff that you could do in a career. And so this is a cool way for me to be able to help other people. Because for me, the biggest reason is that I got a chance when I was younger. I had no business being in tech support. I had a woman named Glenda Martinez who gave me a shot because she knew that, well, she had a feeling, I think. that I would work out. And so that's what I'm trying to be for the folks over at CloudSkills.

Sandy Salty:

That is so cool. Thank you for sharing that. Shout out to Glenda. Yeah.

Mike Pfeiffer:

Yeah, totally. I don't know where she is, but she has probably no idea how much impact she's had on my life. So that's what I try to do with the business. So it's not easy to do, but it's so worth it. And we're just getting warmed up. So I'm excited to see what happens.

Todd Gallina:

That's great. And your first story is, is he still blogging for you?

Mike Pfeiffer:

He's actually, that's an awesome follow-up question. He became our lead Terraform instructor, and he's helping me with, we have an Azure DevOps refresh. We have a bunch of content around Azure DevOps and the EZ400 certification for anybody listening that's very connected in the Microsoft technical space. But yeah, he's like one of our instructors now.

Todd Gallina:

Oh, that's great. It's a huge success story. I love that. That's awesome.

Mike Pfeiffer:

Yeah, yeah.

Todd Gallina:

But keep an eye on him. He might become a competitor.

Mike Pfeiffer:

Yeah, that's okay. I'm cool with that.

Todd Gallina:

Are you?

Mike Pfeiffer:

Okay, good. Yeah. I mean, I always tell them, like, my goal is for you to pass me at some point. I would love that.

Todd Gallina:

Oh, that's great. So give our listeners the real scoop about authoring a book.

Mike Pfeiffer:

Sure. My experience of authoring a book is all on the technical side. So I haven't done anything like written... I've not written a biography or a Harry Potter or anything like that. All my stuff is really nerdy and probably put most people to sleep. But my first book was in 2011, and I spent all of 2010 writing it. And so what I can say about writing books, especially in the technical space, is that it's not going to be something that makes you rich. It's really more of a marketing thing. It's really nice to be able to say that you're the author of this book and get your name out there. I spent almost a whole year writing that first book. And the challenging part in tech today is that tech changes so fast that sometimes you write stuff and it's already out of date before it goes live. My last two books that I've done with Microsoft Press, have been successful and awesome. We've actually been able to give away a bunch of free copies, which I'm excited about. But it's pretty funny because the first one we did came out at Christmas time. I think it was 2019. And then Microsoft came back. Actually, the publisher came back, Microsoft Press. Technically, you know, a little bit different thing. when they came back and they're like, Hey, Microsoft changed the certification. So we need to rewrite the book. And I was like, Oh, but that's only been like three months. Yeah. So like the, the pace at this point in tech, in my opinion, it's so fast that you don't have time to write a book. I think. And so that's, I mean, technical step-by-step, like the one you were saying you edited Todd, like with, you know, screenshots and stuff. It's so hard to do these days because it changes like almost every week. And the other thing is, Like I said, you're not going to make a ton of money in the tech space writing a book unless you self-publish. So I will add an asterisk to that. If you self-publish, you got a shot at making some decent money. But it's a job. So you have to make that thing work and sell books. But that's the upside. So if you're looking at it as a financial thing, self-publishing would be... Or writing a Harry Potter and getting in a big publisher, that's a different story. But yeah, that's kind of my... My take on it, it's insanely hard. It's time consuming. I actually, I'd love to write. I started as a writer. Getting into like, when I got into the technical communities and stuff, you know, 12, 13 years ago, I started as a writer. So I've always loved writing. But yeah, it's not easy. It's a passion, a labor of love. It's nice to have a book on your name, right? But I don't think it's for everybody.

Sandy Salty:

Well, Mike, you're a super humble guy. And I'm going to ask you to just put your humility aside for this next question. What do you think your like on the map moment was in your career? Was there a point in your life when you were like, yep, I'm feeling it like I'm there? Or was it more gradual?

Mike Pfeiffer:

It's definitely been gradual. I think there's been different seasons where I've had that thought. And so when I was younger, I think I really had that. When I got my first certifications, I started in tech support. Remember Gateway Computers, like the cow boxes and stuff back in the 90s? Of course.

Todd Gallina:

Of course. Great marketing.

Mike Pfeiffer:

Yeah. And then AOL, too, was kind of a place where I started. But I remember when I was at Gateway, there was a guy that I was in a little training class thing. And the guy was all tatted up. He had tattoos all the way down to his wrists. He was a punk rocker like I was. And I had no idea that people like that existed in corporate America. And he said, you know, you can be as technical as you want to be in this industry. And that really just resonated with me. And, uh, I knew in that, and I just had a funny feeling. It's like, Oh, I can choose how much energy I put into studying and doing all this stuff. So that was kind of a big one for me because I'd made it into that company, despite the fact that I did not have the technical skills and, uh, Before that, I was scrubbing toilets at the ski area, so I didn't really know what was going to happen. So when I was young, that was like a moment where like, hey, I made it. I'm in tech support. And

Todd Gallina:

that's because you got certed, right?

Mike Pfeiffer:

No, that was just now. It happened. I got certified while I was working there. I actually knew Glenda Martinez from an older job that I'd done. She knew I was good on the phones, and that's why she gave me the shot in tech support. That's awesome. But yeah, that was the first one. And I would say probably later in my career when I got into teaching, I kind of stagnated. And I would say around 2010, I was just sitting in a cube. I would get my work done in the first couple hours of the day. And I had built all this technical capability and I wasn't using it. And so I'm actually an introverted person. I'm not... Everybody that knows me from the internet and stuff and from all these events and stuff may not realize that, but... When I go to places with my wife and meet her friends and stuff, a lot of times they're like, hey, why does your husband never say anything? She's like,

Todd Gallina:

he talks all day

Mike Pfeiffer:

on a podcast. Exactly. But I mean, to me, it's not my default, right? So getting out of the cubicle and going and teaching completely changed my life and my career. And I'm so glad that I did it. So that was kind of like my biggest moment, if there was one, of figuring out how to get out of the cube and express myself and start leading other people. So it was a huge game changer for me. That's

Sandy Salty:

a great answer. What do you think is next? Is there something in particular that you want to chase a little later in your life or even as the next chapter in this life?

Mike Pfeiffer:

Yeah, I think I'll always... I'm always going to be a businessman of some kind. I think I'll always have some kind of business going. And I haven't really decided yet, you know, long term what we'll do. I'm going to write another book someday that... is non-technical. But I think in the short term, the stuff that we're doing over at CloudSkills is really interesting to me, and I'm going to continue to iterate on that. I think there's a lot of opportunity to take the framework that we've created and use it in other ways. I'm really excited. We got something coming up here by the time this podcast goes live. It'll be up. We've got something called the CloudSkills Academy, where we're not just giving people the technical stuff to pass the exams and stuff, but really trying to do what we did with Luke. and create those opportunities and give people the tweaks that they need to go out and land a job. There are tons of jobs out there that need qualified people. And a lot of times it's just getting past some of the mental barriers. And I did that. I didn't apply at Microsoft for five years because every job requisition always said, must have a college degree. I dropped out of college. So that kept me from doing it. And I think that there's a lot of opportunities out there that are being missed because people just need a little bit of a tweak. And I think that's like that for lots of stuff. I think that, you know, going forward in my career, I'm just going to continue to do that. I'm just going to continue to like have ways, you know, whether it's writing books or doing these coaching programs, trainings to help people move forward and achieve their goals.

Todd Gallina:

That's great. Do you have a place that we could send the listeners to for cloud skills Academy, or will that be something we can kind of promote when this episode goes live?

Mike Pfeiffer:

That would be great. Yeah. I just send everybody. If you're listening, head over to cloud skills.io, our website, and you'll see under products, cloud skills Academy. Also, we do weekly podcasts, like you guys mentioned. So cloudskills.fm, you can hit that in a browser. We live stream the episodes on Fridays right now on YouTube. So youtube.com slash cloudskills. Those would be the places to go to check us out.

Sandy Salty:

And Mike, how does it feel to be on the other side of the table being interviewed rather than interviewing?

Mike Pfeiffer:

It's such a relief, if I'm honest. You just sit here and answer questions. So yeah, it's awesome. Thank you so much.

Todd Gallina:

Okay. So now I'm going to really put you on the spot. So your non-technical book that you want to author fiction, nonfiction, if fiction, what genre, give us some insight here.

Mike Pfeiffer:

Yeah, that's a good question. I haven't really decided yet, but I'm saying, I think that my first non-technical wouldn't be nonfiction. I think that that would be my go-to. I've got a lot to share there, but like I said, I'm a writer. That's kind of like my original thing, how I see myself. And, uh, So yeah, it'll be interesting to see what happens.

Todd Gallina:

Do you want some advice from the marketing folks?

Mike Pfeiffer:

No. No, please. Yeah, go ahead.

Todd Gallina:

I was going to say true. True crime is really, it's like literally you cannot miss. He stole

Sandy Salty:

your

Todd Gallina:

joke with the no answer. He's so much better at this than I am. This has been incredible. We've learned so much. And it's so funny that Sandy and I were both hired by a fellow named Hayes. He's been a guest on this podcast. And some of the things you were discussing sound very similar to some of the things that he imparted on Sandy and myself. And his whole thing was in life to be a kingmaker. Your job is to make kings out of others and try to help them on their journey to becoming a king. And for crying out loud, it really sounds like you're doing that a ton better. Absolutely.

Sandy Salty:

I

Mike Pfeiffer:

love that advice. And I appreciate that. And I can't agree more. I think that that's what we're supposed to be doing. I know that from my experience, just like going out there and testing stuff and trying different things. That is the feeling that I've got. I think that's the right way to go.

Todd Gallina:

Perfect. Hey, so is there anything else that we didn't cover, Mike, that you'd like to share with the audience before we close out here?

Mike Pfeiffer:

go to cloudskills.io, check us out. We're on YouTube. So youtube.com slash cloudskills. And we're putting a ton of free content out on the YouTube channel. So for example, on June 30th, not sure when this episode is going to go live, but June 30th, I'm doing an all day, one day Azure administrator certification exam prep session. So obviously it's not going to teach you everything you need to know, but it will teach you what you should study for for the exam and some stuff that you need to know. So if you're a technical person, Definitely check that out. And I also understand that you guys have some similar legends, right? Where you get people ready for Azure certifications?

Sandy Salty:

We do. Yeah, it's a three-phase program all the way from foundations to architect design with a specific focus on the AZ-900, 303, and 304. I love it. Yeah,

Mike Pfeiffer:

I think that's what I've learned in doing cloud skills and By the way, we're kind of known for being advanced in our training. And so I love that, that you guys are focusing on the easy 900 and bringing people all the way up to architect. It's really hard to do. So it's awesome.

Todd Gallina:

Thank

Sandy Salty:

you so much.

Todd Gallina:

Thanks, Mike. Yeah, we're going to be, this will be posted, I think, just after the 4th of July. So that'll all be up and running for our listeners to check out.

Mike Pfeiffer:

Amazing. Yeah. And we're going to be doing some other stuff. So check us out and really appreciate the opportunity to come on the show today. Love what you guys are doing. And, you know, maybe we'll have some of your folks back on the CloudSkills FM. We had Chris Nicholas over there from Trace3. So, like I said, appreciate you guys' mission and what you're doing. Thanks again for the invite.

Todd Gallina:

Thank you, Mike. This has been tremendous.

Sandy Salty:

It was literally our pleasure. And you're welcome back anytime. Thank you for being such a good friend to the business.

Mike Pfeiffer:

Awesome. Thank you so much.

Outro:

Trace3 is hyper-focused on helping IT leaders deliver business outcomes by providing a wide variety of data center solutions and consulting services. If you're looking for emerging technology to solve tried and true business problems, Trace3 is here to help. We believe all possibilities live in technology. You can learn more at trace3.com slash podcast. That's trace the number three dot com slash podcast. Until

Intro:

next time.