Solving, Not Selling: From Condiment Dispensers to Gas Pumps and Navigating the Evolving Tech Workforce with Michael Kuptz

Ever poured ketchup from a bottle and wondered about the technology behind it? Believe it or not, our guest Michael Kuptz tackles the innovation even in condiment dispensers and fuel pumps, and unveils the fascinating world of Edge Compute. Inspired by the Coke Freestyle machine, he speaks about the Heinz Remix, a dispenser that pushes the boundaries of what's possible with condiments. On top of that, we examine the Anthem product by Dover Fueling Systems, an integrated solution aimed at revolutionizing gas pumps. 

Let's face it, layoffs are tough, emotionally draining, and they've become all too common in the tech industry. Michael and I discuss the psychological impact of these layoffs and the rise of usage-based business models that are transforming how we look at the workforce. But it's not all doom and gloom. We also delve into the tools that are shaping the future of work, from chatbots to AI and large language models. As the pandemic shifts the way we approach work, geo-flexibility is on the rise, traditional employment models are being broken down, and a new normal is emerging in the workplace. Join us as we navigate this fascinating journey, highlighting the necessity to shift from selling to solving and the power of having the right connections in this rapidly evolving tech landscape. Tune in, you don't want to miss this!

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Transcript

Pete Bernard: 0:58

Let's start our recording session. These can be the outtakes.

Michael Kuptz: 1:05

I'm not sure, what that means, but thank you.

Pete Bernard: 1:07

Outtakes yeah, the director's cut Alright, so you've got your water. This is exciting. This is the first episode, potentially the first episode. I haven't really decided how I'm going to publish these in chronological order or whatever but I'm sure there are any other good ideas that will do that.

Michael Kuptz: 1:23

Who does the editing, by the way, Pete?

Pete Bernard: 1:26

Oh, I have a friend of mine named Pete Who does that You have such a dry sense of humor, you really do. No, it's not too bad. The only editing I really do is taking out some of the ums and the aas and stuff like that.

Michael Kuptz: 1:43

No, I get it.

Pete Bernard: 1:44

Try to do one long take, kind of a Martin Scorsese approach, one long shot. But I would like to introduce you, Michael Cupps. Thank you for joining. But I think, for folks that are not familiar with Michael Cupps, maybe you can give us a little bit of your backstory before we get into the media topics.

Michael Kuptz: 2:06

Uh, i'm happy to, and thank you for the forum or the platform, i'm not sure which is how you refer to it. The, uh, the backstory is um, i don't know. 18 years ago, roughly, there was a, a, a, a, a posited or a question that basically said how do I and how do I know if certain features and functions are being leveraged or used on devices? And this was kind of the IBM, you know, pc division, and they got acquired by Lenovo. And then there was this continuum of uh desire or curiosity around well, do people use certain like instant boot functions or do they use, you know uh, access to the web functions, or do they use blah, blah, blah, whatever? And so when I came into these, these groups, i had a team of you know both sales and and engineers.

Michael Kuptz: 3:12

that asked the question of do people care about these things? And that kind of started my journey of insight around features and functions that are utilized. And that's how I came to Microsoft, because we developed an out-of-box experience at a startup that captured insights, usage and utilization for devices I see.

Pete Bernard: 3:44

Cool, and you were. How long did you? how long were you at Lenovo Um four years?

Michael Kuptz: 3:49

Four years. And then how long were you?

Pete Bernard: 3:50

at Microsoft Seven years.

Michael Kuptz: 3:56

Seven years.

Pete Bernard: 3:56

Cool. And where did you? where did you grow up? Where'd you go to school?

Michael Kuptz: 4:02

I love these questions. I uh, i really do, because I uh, we moved eight times before I was 12.

Pete Bernard: 4:12

Oh boy, and now I'm not in the military. I'm not in the military, i was going to say it sounds military family, but just moving around.

Michael Kuptz: 4:19

No, not, not in the military. It was back when you, my dad and my family I had five siblings took a job and you moved, And the last move that we did was we didn't unbox anything and my mom just put lamps on the boxes. Oh, yeah, Yeah.

Pete Bernard: 4:38

Yeah, but I went anyway.

Michael Kuptz: 4:40

I went to school down in LA, i went to undergrad in LA and then I taught in the central valley and then I moved to San Francisco.

Pete Bernard: 4:50

I see Cool, cool, yeah, no, these days, i mean, that was it. But you know, when there was a job, you moved. I actually had breakfast this morning, or a coffee, with a someone who used to be on my team who's interviewing. I don't want to call her out, i won't say her name, but she was interviewing for a Bay Area job for a very major company Yeah, one of the one of the fangs, and um, and I told her I said you know, if you, if you get this job, you're going to need to move to the Bay Area.

Michael Kuptz: 5:17

Yeah.

Pete Bernard: 5:17

Right, i mean, and she was like, oh, i really don't want to do that. I'm like, no, i mean that's and she's only a few years out of school and she was hired during the pandemic right, where it's all remote, and I'm like, no, that's like that's the typical thing, like you go to where the job is, uh, especially, i think, early in career, and there's a lot, of, a lot of folks talking about that, but if you're early in career and you're hired into a job, these days, it's, i think it's super important to be there. But, uh, but back in the day, yeah, you're right, people just or you worked for a big corporation and they moved you around the country and you moved And that's just the way it was Well and and so back to the why did you move so much?

Michael Kuptz: 5:54

It's, my dad was in uh, as an executive working for a publisher, william Hearst, and he was in distribution. So, and my path has been in distribution, for his was in magazines and in editor or in newspapers within the region And you had a region And we went to that region. So we lived in Canada, we lived in Chicago, we lived in Wisconsin, we lived in California and so on.

Michael Kuptz: 6:25

And then my mom finally said we're done moving And we settled and that was you know, that was how we navigated the world of subscriptions And I actually sold subscriptions to end users when I was in high school.

Pete Bernard: 6:47

Magazine subscriptions.

Michael Kuptz: 6:48

Yeah, yeah.

Pete Bernard: 6:49

Cool, i remember those. I remember magazines.

Michael Kuptz: 6:52

Yeah, Yeah. Now it's all on your on your tablet, it's on your phone.

Pete Bernard: 6:58

I still get the New Yorker. I have a subscription to the New Yorker which I don't know. I feel like I'm the last one that has that thing.

Michael Kuptz: 7:04

But it's ridiculously expensive.

Pete Bernard: 7:06

It shows up like every week.

Michael Kuptz: 7:08

It is, i get it, i get it Anyway. So that was kind of the journey too. And then when I was at UCLA I went through the process and IBM hired me into a sales role. But I didn't want to go into sales, so I went into engineering system engineering but I wasn't an. I wasn't electrical or mechanical, but I was technical. So that's how I got to IBM and then navigated my way through the process from there.

Pete Bernard: 7:39

Right, right Makes sense And you know so. I met you full disclosure. We worked together at Microsoft And when I met you you were driving a lot of the IoT sales in the Americas and a lot of the kind of solution selling. And one of the big things that I talk about with Edge, celsius or with clients is that this is a the edge ecosystem and the kind of stuff you were talking about, like telemetry and measuring things and figuring out what's actually happening out there.

Pete Bernard: 8:09

Any of these solutions. It's really a team sport. You know there's always so many different partners involved And so when you're going in to sell, i don't mean to curious what your definition of sell is, but selling is not just selling your thing, it's really trying to help the customer solve the problem And you know, whatever company you're coming from, that's just kind of part of the solution And obviously needs to work with lots of other parts and no one company can go in and just solve the problem by themselves. But I'm curious, like when you put on your sales hat at Microsoft, like in selling, what did selling mean to you in the context of Edge?

Michael Kuptz: 8:49

I like the way you phrase that because the world I came from I was at a startup for eight years. I guess you could say it's really a startup.

Michael Kuptz: 9:00

It's eight years, But it got me going on the journey to solving problems and providing a solution, And so I would I'd reposition the engagement from what are you selling to what are you solving. And you know Microsoft, IBM, Lenovo they have products that they sell And they sell value, they sell productivity, they sell innovation and but what problem is that solving? And the IoT pivot and the Edge to Cloud pivot was really around solving a fundamental challenge or fundamental issue, And I'll use an example, if that's okay.

Pete Bernard: 9:52

Sure.

Michael Kuptz: 9:53

Around a recent announcement that was made less than a month ago And it's called Remix, remix, and it's the Heinz dispenser And Heinz, yeah, ketchup mustard. You know, by the way, that the you know Heinz 57, that number meant nothing. It wasn't like there were 57 ingredients in it, but what? Heinz and the team came to Microsoft over a year ago and said we need to innovate around providing combinations of condiments. That solves one problem And that one problem is we put packets into bags. You ever go through drive-thru and putting five, 10 ketchups 20 ketchups, right relish, mustard, blah, blah blah.

Michael Kuptz: 10:52

And they said well, in restaurant experiences we wanna create combinations that go beyond three And they wanted to create 200 combinations. So this dispenser and you can go online and you can type it in. They announced it at NRA, the National Restaurant Association, and they said we're creating a customer experience that's going to create or deliver a unique Custom condiment combinations.

Michael Kuptz: 11:24

Well, customizable condiments, that is, for whatever you've ordered, and they announced it and the process. Back to your question on the ecosystem. But the process started with we wanna eliminate two things We wanna eliminate the waste associated with ketchup packages that are thrown away And we wanna eliminate the fact that there's only three choices. So, but again, it's in store or in restaurant experience. So they announced this dispensary and it took 15 companies that came together to design and innovate for that dispensary, because the viscosity of ketchup and the viscosity of mustard and the viscosity of relish are very different. And then when you mix in jalapeno and you mix in spices and all of that stuff. But the inspiration so back to the why people care about those edge experiences and devices was Coke freestyle, right, i remember that.

Pete Bernard: 12:37

Yeah.

Michael Kuptz: 12:38

Coke freestyle came out 15 years ago. Wow, and other companies that are in the beverage industry are working to innovate around differentiation that customizes exactly what you want.

Pete Bernard: 12:56

Right right. So listeners that don't know what Coke freestyle is, it's a machine that you walk up to and you can sort of custom mix your own soda So you can get the diet Coke with lime and peach or whatever, i don't know, and it's all touchscreen based, i think. Actually it runs Windows IoT, that's what I heard.

Michael Kuptz: 13:17

But And why you have soda strain with Pepsi, soda strain with.

Pete Bernard: 13:21

Pepsi, yeah. So everyone's trying to do this customer. So Heinz brought it to the condiment world. Actually, do you know what the original Heinz innovation was, way back when, when they first got started?

Michael Kuptz: 13:34

No.

Pete Bernard: 13:35

The original innovation was they put their product in a clear glass bottle Because back then in the early 20th century, food was pretty gross, it was pretty rancid and pretty gross looking, and so people put all their product in like brown bottles and dark green bottles so you couldn't see it. And Heinz was so confident in the freshness he wanted to communicate the freshness of his product, and so he said I'm going to put it in a clear glass bottle so you could see it. And people were blown away with this. They're like, wow, i can see this and actually looks edible.

Pete Bernard: 14:10

And back then the ketchup. He was the first tomato-based ketchup. The previous ketchups before that were made of other stuff And basically people had that condiment at the time because the meat tasted so bad you had to slather it with something to cover up the kind of rotten meat taste. So anyway, probably too much about ketchup, i know too much about ketchup So. But so when you brought it up I just had to go there.

Michael Kuptz: 14:33

So as well. And the example of the dispenser, the customizable dispenser called Remix, was I want to bring 200 options together, because that's number one, that was the customer experience. But number two was I want to minimize or eliminate waste, because you've got all those plastic packets that gets thrown away.

Pete Bernard: 14:56

Sure, well, i can imagine costs too. I mean the operational cost of manufacturing those packets and shipping those packets versus bulk condiments, things like that. To your point, this is like any of these problems need to be solved by multiple companies coming together. The stuff needs to work together, it needs to be integrated, their schedules need to be aligned, the architectures need to be open so that people can integrate and manage it, and it's all those details. And so that's why I think the edge ecosystem and what you were doing at Microsoft selling that instead of solving, solving, solving that That's fascinating to me, and I think that companies that are in this space, they all have a role to play. They all have cool stuff, but if it doesn't kind of come together in a solution that it's kind of like a tree falling in the forest right, a piece of tech edge tech that isn't part of a solution doesn't even really exist. It's just sort of a neat thing.

Michael Kuptz: 15:50

Can I do one more example? Go for it.

Pete Bernard: 15:52

I don't know if I'm gonna top that one though.

Michael Kuptz: 15:54

Oh, you like that one, i like that one too.

Pete Bernard: 15:57

Who doesn't like ketchup, except Mr Keeb?

Michael Kuptz: 16:01

So condiment experiences. So the next one I'll use is the. You know is a fuel pump, a basic, you know. Going into a gas station and There is a company called Dover fueling systems and the product is called anthem and THM and it is the Edge Edge innovation that was Originally designed and this has been a market a couple years now. But it's been designed to solve one problem, and that problem was When you pull up into I don't know four pumps, eight pumps, whatever the number of pumps is, and that pump isn't working And you go hey wait, i put in my credit card, maybe it's the card reader, maybe it's the, you know, dispenser, whatever it's not working. So what do you do? So There are three options. Number one find another pump right. Number two Go to another gas station.

Michael Kuptz: 17:04

Hmm number three was go into the convenience store And this is primarily for convenience stores and say that pumps not working right. Do you know what percentage of Failed pumps were identified by the individual who took option three and said that pumps not working? 80%. And you know what the time to fix was on that failed pump? It was at least 10 days, geez. So now multiply the revenue lost on a failed pump And you know how the little yellow bag that sits on the yeah, on the handle.

Michael Kuptz: 17:39

Yeah, so they. So Dover Came to Microsoft and said we've got to figure out a way to Predictive, be predictive and be able to identify that this is going to fail. The of the of those pumps that fail, over half were because of card readers, because of scamming, because of jamming Baba right because of the automatics and the mechanics associated with getting fuel into the car.

Michael Kuptz: 18:07

Hmm the second problem that they wanted to solve and we did a whole whiteboard session on this was Well, if you're fueling, what's the average dwell time of fueling? Do you know what depends on the car?

Pete Bernard: 18:20

obviously it's been so I don't know five, six minutes.

Michael Kuptz: 18:24

That's well. It's actually four half, but you're damn close. It's four and a half minutes of dwell time right regardless of whether you've got a big, you know, suv, or you've got a little tiny, you know, fuel efficient car. So What they then did is they created a user experience that created upsell for the convenience store.

Pete Bernard: 18:44

Oh yeah, I've seen those.

Michael Kuptz: 18:46

Video thing or something well, it's a big media, It's like 24 inch and it's a huge media and they basically Then they added a third element, which was to create it and Experience around smell. So a smell of coffee in the morning, the smell of hot dogs in the afternoon.

Pete Bernard: 19:06

Wow, it became an ambient experience those, like the churro smell, would be wafting out and like have price churros.

Michael Kuptz: 19:15

And then if and then they had, you know, weather maps and all that other stuff.

Michael Kuptz: 19:18

So word Yeah, so so, and I've got 20 more examples like that. But but the point being is, you can't do any of this and you can't connect in a way unless you have a platform that enables you to have that closed loop around. You know telemetry, use, utilization, experience, feedback, how many people clicked on this, right, all of that stuff. Yeah, so I mean you take the you know basic search and you take all of the you know ad-based environments that we have today and you um exponentially expand into Every single interaction that you have with a kiosk, with a you know ordering terminal, with whatever.

Pete Bernard: 20:10

Yeah, yeah, definitely smooth in that direction. By the way, did you know that those gas pumps, if you keep it, if you Put the thing in your car and you drive away, it will snap off automatically, has like a quick release. Uh, in in case you drive away? Yeah, because I did that. I drove away with the thing in my tank and It kind of did a quick release and I was dragging the the hose behind me really like about 100 feet. Yeah Yeah, so a little Little anecdote there just in case it's designed for idiots like myself, who.

Michael Kuptz: 20:42

I did not I did not know that, Otherwise I mean it'd be a disaster, right?

Pete Bernard: 20:47

I mean you can't just like have gas spilling everywhere as you drive off.

Pete Bernard: 20:51

Well, it messes up your car and obviously Anyway, they designed it for folks like myself, but anyway, um, no, that's, that's cool. Yeah, i think there's a lot of these examples where it all has to come together and It's way more complicated than most people think and it all starts, like you said, with problems. They need to be solved, some sort of business problem pretty well identified and you work. You always work back from the customer. But, uh, is it okay if we switch gears a little bit on topics? So let's talk about layoffs, let's talk about getting laid off, because that's another thing you and I have in common, other than working at Microsoft, is getting laid off from Microsoft. But you've actually gone through this, like several times five times Yeah, Lord and it's, and it's a.

Michael Kuptz: 21:35

It's a transition. Right, it's a trend, it's a transition. Now, whether it's a transition based on my decision or it's a transition based on the company's decision. I've had, i've had the, i've had the opportunity to experience five of them and and Everyone has resulted in a better place. So just build your timeline, whatever that means in terms of you know when that happens. But also, every one of them was built on the experiences from the previous. You know years, months, weeks, whatever of How you drive value and how you drive impact so right, yeah, and it's You know.

Pete Bernard: 22:23

I mean there's probably about 400,000 of us out there listening that have been impacted by tech layoffs over the past six months or so or less, and So I'm sure it hits home with a lot of folks that maybe it's happened to them for the first time, i don't know. People say don't take, you know, can't take it personally. It's just kind of your name is on a spreadsheet and it happens that way, but it's hard not to take it personally when someone tells you I don't want you to work here anymore. So I live a block for Microsoft and and I loved working at Microsoft is fantastic. I always tell people like you know, they got their money's worth. I got my money's worth and It's all good and I'm still a shareholder. I like to submit think myself as a big shareholder from my perspective, probably small from their perspective, but so I'm all in on Microsoft but it's hard not to take it personally.

Pete Bernard: 23:08

When I drive past the campus, i'm like mmm, yeah, you know, it's nice to be able to leave on your own terms, but when you're, when you're not leaving on your own terms, you're right, you have to sort of take a step back and think about you know, what have you gained from that experience? Then how do you, you know, transition, or I would even say, transform you know into the next experience And have that kind of it's almost like a leap of faith or perseverance necessary to you know, go forward and and and move on to the next thing, because it's it's just a fact of life.

Michael Kuptz: 23:43

It is. You know it's interesting on How you, how you describe the tech layoffs, And I actually am thinking More around that. You know tech innovation, and in order to Resource and support innovation, you need to. Companies need to move from being a Being a product based or a transactional based to subscription based. That's kind of the model that you know the classification or classification of companies has moved to, but the one word now is even more, is even more Transformational, because it's moving to a whole different model of work.

Michael Kuptz: 24:37

Right, whether you call it AI, you call it large language models or you call it generative capabilities, doesn't matter it. It is going to move those resources from Where they were and what they were doing to another place, and every company Is going through and you said this earlier digital transformations, but now they're accelerating through integrating how they want to leverage. You know tools like chat, tpt, or tools like like Baird, or tools that Make them more productive in a shorter period of time, and I've been using them for eight, six months now, but it it doesn't change The way we work. It just changes, though, the how and the output of the work. That's that's really. That's really so.

Michael Kuptz: 25:38

This is a restructuring, if you will, in the industry and it's a restructuring from I need people to go and and you asked me about selling versus solving, and I really like that. I like that, that positioning, because You don't sell AI. You. You solve problems and you solve them through tools and technologies and platforms that are going to accelerate value, right and value creation.

Pete Bernard: 26:10

Well, it's interesting. So, yeah, the what's going on here I mean this is not the typical sort of layoff sort of economic Situation, right where it's kind of traditional margin crunch you know, margin crunch, you know, drop your cost. What's happening is, like you said, there's a move toward more usage based business models, for tech Is also the pandemic has enabled a lot of geoflexibility in work And, frankly, a lot more. I would call it deconstructed work, so people are able to do different jobs at different times and come and go, and there's a lot more fluidity in the workforce geographically as well as kind of the number of gigs and types of gigs that people are getting, and so maybe there's some combination of that kind of usage-based kind of models and this kind of pandemic accelerated transformation of work that's coming together and it's impacting also how people are thinking of staffing and how they're thinking of their workforce.

Pete Bernard: 27:15

And I had someone I don't know if it was today someone said, oh, when do things go back to normal? And it's not going back to. There is no more normal, like we're just moving forward to this new thing and people just need to wrap their heads around that and there's no shortage of work to do. I mean, there's no shortage of work to do and problems to be solved, but it's a matter of shifting your mindset from I'm building a product that I'm gonna sell as opposed to I'm going to help solve, and that's kind of a shift that everyone sort of needs to sort of internalize a little bit.

Michael Kuptz: 27:48

Well, it's a patterns of innovation. And if you think about steam engines to gas powered, those manufacturers that were manufacturing for steam powered or trains and automobiles, had to rewire and rebuild factories for combustible. That was a very different infrastructure. So I kind of break it into four pieces Patterns of innovation that the web basically changed. Pcs basically changed how people produced output And the way in which they did it.

Michael Kuptz: 28:33

And then back to your question on transformations and transitions. There's also a strategy And the strategy for how to. Obviously it's skilling, There's a big piece of that. But it's also who are the companies that are looking for that kind of resource and that kind of talent that you know you can go back 150 years to those that came to the West to farm and build out the lands and create towns, villages and cities that ultimately became where we all are today. But then you have connections that matter. And the connections that matter are the ones that are the most compelling, because you and I can have a discussion and it's like, well, go West, young man, or go do this, young lady, But if those connections aren't going to help reinforce the work and the place that you're in? And then, last one is referrals to opportunities. What does that look like And what are you hearing And? what are you?

Michael Kuptz: 29:39

saying, and so I break it into those four pieces, and every transition has its own, obviously, characteristics and opportunities, but people make those connections and those referrals help move them along.

Pete Bernard: 30:00

Oh, yeah, for sure. No, and that's where you know, having a, i feel fortunate that I've developed a nice network over the years of people that I know and worked with. I talked to some of the folks who used to be on my team that maybe were much more earlier in career. They haven't yet developed those networks And sometimes that's a struggle right To get those referrals until your network becomes more mature. But it's kind of just the way things are going to be working.

Pete Bernard: 30:25

Moving forward, i think things are going to be a lot more flexible, a lot more deconstructed and a lot more networked, and that goes for the work and the way of working as well as the technology itself, and I think that's just kind of the way it is. But yeah, it's an interesting time to navigate, navigate all that, and I know that. You know you've got a lot of experience there. I know you've also provided a lot of leadership and guidance, which is appreciated to folks at Microsoft that have been impacted as well. So hopefully, hopefully, people will take away some good, good lessons from that. And you know, for me it's like, you know, if I hadn't gotten laid off from Microsoft and I wouldn't be doing Edge, celsius or I wouldn't be talking to some of these amazing companies I'm talking to and doing some cool stuff And you know I'm kind of looking forward to the next, the next phase here, because I think it's going to be, you know, pretty exciting and pretty fluid And I think the these older ways with that are, you know, kind of hard-coded patterns that keep repeating over again, are probably going to get broken up And that's probably a good thing.

Pete Bernard: 31:31

So but it is very disruptive, i have to say quite disruptive, to go from a regular full-time gig to, you know, this kind of more deconstructed life. It takes a little getting used to, but I have a lot more time for tennis now, which is good. It's pretty disruptive to kind of go from this kind of set pattern of, you know, going to work and coming home and all this stuff to go to a new pattern to be defined. You know that's a little more deconstructed and a little more variable And but you know, i think that's just kind of where things are heading. I think that's a factor, like I said, of much of these things around pandemic and the way of working and even the way some of these business models and consumption models are happening for technology. So, but you know, we'll see, see how it goes.

Michael Kuptz: 32:22

I've got a few that are entering or in the workforce and their mindset is and I think that is what it really comes down to is that what's your mindset? Cause, if your mindset is, i'm going to be here for the next you know X number of years, that's probably not realistic. And if your mindset is, i'm going to keep doing this, what I'm doing every day, that's probably not realistic, exactly But but. but the mindset that they've coached me on is really around. just how does what you know your purpose? you?

Michael Kuptz: 33:00

know what is that, what is the purpose of what you're doing and why, and is it going to be meaningful for you individually and personally, and is it going to be meaningful for society? And you know so. They're you know that generation and they're, you know, 30 plus years younger than me, but they're much more purpose driven and much more focused on what's the overall impact. And you know, and and how can I be part of that And do I feel valued as part of whatever that is?

Pete Bernard: 33:34

Yeah, And this whole formula of, you know, intrinsic motivation. Daniel Pink wrote a big book, Yeah, A drive right, Intrinsic motivation, And part of it is, you know, there's autonomy, there's mastery, but there's also, you know, aligning yourself to some kind of vision or purpose that's bigger than yourself. And I think if you can get those combination of things done and whatever your job is whether it's, you know, kind of gig work or You know, working with multiple companies or working at a single company, whatever as long as you can kind of get those things lined up here in good shape, But I think we all need to. Like you said, it's a mindset shift as opposed to going back to that, going back to quote unquote normal, you can't see my air quotes, but I'm making you normal.

Pete Bernard: 34:21

Rethink normal, that's my catchphrase.

Michael Kuptz: 34:23

I agree, i agree. So how do you? so how do you, you know? let me just ask. you've asked me these questions, but how do you manage through your transition? You've got like many things going on.

Pete Bernard: 34:38

Yes, I have lots of things going on. In fact, today I felt like I'm busier now than I was when I was working full time at Microsoft and running an organization, So my typical day would be there's a little bit of mentoring involved, like I had coffee this morning with a colleague on some mentoring and practice interviewing. I'm working with a number of companies through Edge, Celsius or on some kind of strategy alignments and strategy efforts. So that's usually part of the day. This podcast is part of the day. Usually I'm doing some yard work and some tennis as well And basically, you know, just kind of looking forward to the next thing, And I think it's.

Pete Bernard: 35:22

It is about perseverance and it is about kind of getting comfortable with a new mindset and staying connected to people too. I think one of the things that I found was I really liked being back in the office. I liked that face to face engagement. I think one of the downsides of kind of consulting and stuff like that is that sometimes you're just working by yourself and you're part of a virtual team, but you're sort of a temporary, you're the outsider, And so I kind of look forward to getting back to more of that kind of face to face team environment, And so we'll see. We'll see how that works.

Pete Bernard: 35:54

I'm actually setting up with one of my clients a workshop, like a day long workshop. We're going to work on some strategy stuff and that'll be in person in the Bay Area, So that'll be good. But yeah, I think you have to find, like you said, find what you're, what you're all about and what kind of gets you going, and zero in on that and do as much of that as you can And then hopefully that fills the tank for for your other stuff. And I think that that recipe is going to be different for everybody And that's okay, Nothing wrong with that.

Michael Kuptz: 36:22

It is, it is.

Pete Bernard: 36:23

Well, Mr Cups, always a pleasure. I think maybe next time we'll meet at Chase's Pancake Corral or one more time at Chase's.

Michael Kuptz: 36:33

I am always open for that. I asked you the question kind of of the you know time and place, of where and how you're spending it. Mine is is in and around two things One is family, obviously, And two is connections and where those connections are And, like you said, being part of a team or being part of a community. That gives you energy.

Pete Bernard: 36:59

So Yeah, yeah for sure, and I think we sort of maybe lost sight a little bit of that, of how much energy you can get off of others and their interactions with you. And you know it's a big part of life where humans, at the end of the day, are just carbon-based life forms. You know, struggling through the universal void.

Michael Kuptz: 37:20

All right, thank you again. All right, sir, have a great afternoon.

Pete Bernard: 37:24

Take care, thanks, michael, bye-bye. See you Bet. Thanks for joining us today on the Edge Selsior Show. Please subscribe and stay tuned for more and check us out online about how you can scale your edge compute business. Thank you.