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MSP Mastery Podcast
Welcome to MSP Mastery Podcast, the podcast for IT leaders, MSP owners, and service delivery professionals who want to elevate performance, improve processes, and stay ahead in the fast-changing managed services landscape.
MSP Mastery Podcast
From Backpacker to Cybersecurity Specialist: Philipp Rieth on Attitude, Initiative and Building an IT Career
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Welcome to MSP Mastery Podcast, the podcast for MSP owners and leaders who want to build a better MSP, one that actually works for them.
I am Jeni Clift, joined by my husband and long time business partner, Nick Clift. Together, we unpack what is really working in thriving MSPs, including insights from the trusted partners and peers who support them.
In this episode, we are joined by Philipp Rieth, Cybersecurity Specialist at Emerging IT in Melbourne. Philipp shares his remarkable journey from a young IT trainee in Germany to working in Australia, travelling across the country in his beloved Toyota Troop Carrier, Brutus, and eventually building a career in cybersecurity.
Philipp first came to Australia on a working holiday visa and joined the team at DWM Solutions in Echuca through a trusted connection. What began as a short working adventure became a much bigger story of persistence, resilience and finding a place to call home.
Along the way, Philipp and his partner travelled throughout Australia and New Zealand, taking on jobs in bricklaying, landscaping, painting, potato packing, scaffolding and tourism to keep their journey going. He shares how these experiences gave him a deeper respect for people at every level of an organisation and shaped the work ethic he brings to his career today.
After visa setbacks, changing requirements and border closures delayed his plans to return to Australia, Philipp chose to complete a Bachelor of Science degree in cybersecurity. He then built experience as a penetration tester in Germany before finally returning to Melbourne and joining Emerging IT.
This conversation is full of practical lessons for MSP leaders hiring their next team member, as well as emerging IT professionals who want to grow their confidence, capability and career.
Here is what we covered together:
✅ Philipp’s pathway into IT: How an apprenticeship in Germany provided a practical foundation in service desk, technical support and project work.
✅ The value of trusted relationships: How a recommendation from a former manager created Philipp’s first opportunity to work with DWM Solutions in regional Victoria.
✅ The Brutus adventure: How Philipp purchased, rebuilt and travelled Australia in a Toyota Troop Carrier that became central to his journey.
✅ Learning through unexpected work: What bricklaying, landscaping, potato packing, painting and other labouring jobs taught Philipp about resilience, humility and effort.
✅ Respect across every role: Why working in entry level and physically demanding roles helped Philipp value every person within an organisation.
✅ Overcoming setbacks: How Philipp navigated visa challenges, changing migration requirements and the disruption of international border closures.
✅ Choosing education to create opportunity: Why Philipp completed a cybersecurity degree when formal qualifications became necessary for his pathway back to Australia.
✅ Building a cybersecurity career: How Philipp moved into penetration testing and incident response, helping organisations stay ahead of an evolving threat landscape.
✅ Hiring for attitude: Why Philipp believes technical skills can be taught, but willingness to learn, energy and a positive attitude are much harder to develop.
✅ Being coachable: Why emerging IT professionals who actively seek feedback, learning and improvement can progress quickly.
✅ Taking responsibility before being asked: How identifying and solving problems before a manager notices can build trust and create career opportunities.
✅ Adding value to the business: Why promotion and career growth come from consistently making a meaningful contribution to your organisation and its clients.
✅ Creating space for emerging talent: Why flexible, supportive workplaces can give people the confidence to take ownership and develop beyond their current role.
✅ Finding your own path: Why Philipp’s story is a reminder that careers do not always follow a straight line, and persistence can lead to opportunities worth waiting for.
We created this podcast to share the real conversations and lessons we wish we had more of while running our own MSP, with practical insights from people who understand the challenges of this industry.
Connect with Philipp Rieth on LinkedIn and learn more about Emerging IT:
Philipp Rieth Linkedin.
👉 Read more episode notes here: mspmastery.blog
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I think skills are teachable, but your attitude is not. Doing like basic jobs that you get rid of your kind of entitlement in some form. And I think if you have worked in these really pretty much bottom spectrum of the hierarchy, that it gives you a lot of respect for these types of jobs. What worked extraordinarily well for me is taking up more responsibility and finding problems and picking up problems and solving them before my manager actually noticed that they were there.
SPEAKER_03Welcome to MSP Mastery, the podcast for MSP owners and leaders who want to build a better MSP. I'm Jenny Clift, and alongside my longtime business and life partner Nick, we draw in our 60 plus years of combined experience to explore what's really working in thriving MSPs. Our goal with this podcast is to share the real life stories and hard-won lessons that inspire and add genuine value to our industry, helping you build a business that is both profitable and fulfilling. This is MSP Mastery. Here's Nick, myself, and today's special guest. Joining us today on MSP Mastery is Philip Reith. Philip is a cybersecurity specialist with emerging IT in Melbourne. Driven by a genuine passion for the field, he focuses on penetration testing and incident response and helping organizations stay one step ahead of an ever-evolving threat landscape. In today's episode, we are following Philip's journey from his Australian working holiday at age 20 when we met him 10 years ago. Complete with the obligatory farm work, a stint working with us at DWM Solutions in regional Victoria, and then travelling around Australia in Brutus, his much-loved Toyota Troopie. Along the way, we'll hear how a German backpacker became a proud Australian, right down to phone calls that start with, I need to do some repairs to Brutus. I'll see you in eight hours. I'm coming from Adelaide, but it's a great story of determination, adventure, and finding a place to call home. Philip, welcome to MSP Mastery.
SPEAKER_00Perfect. Thanks. Thanks for having me. Good to see you again, Philip. No, it's good.
SPEAKER_03So we're just saying before we got started that first time we met Philip was our son was sent to the airport with a uh a phone or with his phone and a photo of Philip and Philip coming out of international arrivals with his phone and a photo of Oscar and wandering around the airport trying to find each other.
SPEAKER_00So Yeah, pretty much. Yeah. When we first met, we didn't actually I think we never spoke to each other. I think the first time we saw each other was actually when you came home from work and I was in your living room and like, oh hey, I'm Philip, how are you?
SPEAKER_03Which for anybody who knows us is kind of what we do. We've taken we hosted it 10 exchange students over about a 13-year period. Plus, we we have these people from around the world that we've just collected and brought into our lives and our family, and Philip was one of them. So it seems like more than 10 years ago, but yeah.
SPEAKER_01And the interesting thing here is that we were introduced to Philip through uh a friend of ours who worked for us as well, and it's that that that's where you've got to just develop a level of trust. Like Christian did the similar journey, came on holidays, worked for us for six months, and he said he got he went back to Germany and said, Oh I've got one of my guys here who wants to come to Australia. Would you in would you give him a job? I said, Is he any good? Yes, he's very good. I said, Okay, he has a job, done. And it was just as simple as that. Like you meet people in your life and through your journey and you develop this trust, and it worked out really, really well. So yeah, glad you're here to share a bit of your story, mate, and a bit of fun.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, for me it worked the exact opposite. Where so maybe maybe to go a few years back, how I ended actually ended up working for DWM or ending up in your living room. A bit of background on my how I got into IT and how I ended up working for you in in Ichuka for DWM. So pretty much straight after high school, or essentially finished finished high school in Germany with 16. So in Germany you have these three different school forms, and one of them you finish high school at 16, essentially. But I was always like really interested in in IT and that kind of stuff, and decided to do pretty much it's a kind of an apprenticeship or um or a traineeship as an IT specialist that goes for three years. So it's very similar how someone straight after high school here, they just apply for level one role and just go from there. And that is that's essentially what I did. So the three-year traineeship that I did, Christian, he was my manager in the company that I used to work for. And pretty much the training ship works. The first year you just start off as a level one technician, mostly doing service desk work. The second year, you pretty much move more into level two role, and third year, just a bit of level two work and project work. I finished that essentially when I was like 19 or 20. In between, I did a bit, went to school again, did another course, pretty much a TAF thing. And then I was just sitting there with like 19, 20, and I thought, oh, what do I do now? Do I just work for the next 10 years or what do I do? And essentially I sat down with Christian, my manager, and we had a bit of a chat. And he said, Hey, why don't you go to Australia and work there for a bit? And he he essentially in his late 20s and early 30s, he did the same thing. He went to Australia on the working holiday visa, and because he had the IT background, he thought I can't be bothered to do farm work, peeking Nashis or whatever. So he thought might as well work in IT. And he, Christian, ended up working for you in Ichuka with with DWM Solutions. And yeah, I think he was really good. And he ended up coming back to Germany working for the same company again. And he pretty much told me, Hey Philip, I know this IT company, they're really good. They probably give you a job. Do you want me to ask them? And then essentially, I think I gave him my resume. He forwarded it to you guys. And I don't think we even looked at it.
SPEAKER_01I don't think we even read it. We just said if Christian said it's good, yeah, he's good.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think when I was a bit younger, I was a bit disorganized. And I think you wanted to organize pretty much just uh just a phone call or a meeting or whatever. And I you know how you are when you're like 18, 19, 20. And I think we never managed to actually meet each other, but you just fully trusted Christian with, yeah, if we we trust Christian, if he says he's alright, then I just we'll give him a job, whatever.
SPEAKER_03And interestingly enough, in uh in two days we fly out to Germany to spend some time with Christian. So I don't know how long it is we've known him, 12, 14 years or something, a long time.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, we've known each other for 10. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Anyway, let's get into it. So, firstly, Philip, please share your personal and professional best from the last six months.
SPEAKER_00Personal best is probably that just so with the Land Cruiser, I developed an obsession with 30-year-old four-wheel drives, especially Land Cruisers and Toyotas. And I'm really into four-wheel driving and touring, remote desert touring, that kind of stuff. And I always, my dream was since first coming to Australia, to do it one day with my family. And just recently I bought like a 20-year-old Toyota Hylax, and I invited my siblings over. So I have a younger brother and a younger sister, and with the two cars, so my wife and my siblings, we did a three-week outback trip together, all the way, Little Desert, Big Desert, Mildura, the Mango National Park, all the way up to Flinders Rangers, back down along the coast, uh, did rope, and there was an absolute blast. So that was something that was in my bucket list for like pretty much 10 years. Finally did it, and that was yeah, one of the best things ever.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I've been seeing the the shorts or the reels on Facebook, and I go, Yeah, I remember doing that too, some of those trips I've done. So yeah, it's good fun.
SPEAKER_03And you've come a long way since I think I overtook you while Nick was teaching you to four-wheel drive in our highlights at the time. And I overtook you in my Range Rover evoke because you were going so slow.
SPEAKER_00Yes. And I remember the one time I got stuck in my very capable Land Cruiser, and you had to come and rescue me in your Range Rover.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, how embarrassment.
SPEAKER_00It was really good.
SPEAKER_03That phone call. I'm stuck in the bush. Okay. Where? I don't know.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Okay. Professional best.
SPEAKER_00Professional best, there's probably nothing that stands out in particular. I think we're just gaining a lot of traction with bigger clients at Emerging IT. And I think we're at a very mature point from our cyber perspective. I think probably the most exciting thing is we're getting ISOL 2701 certified soon. There was a lot of work, but I think it'll also open up a lot of opportunities for like bigger clients, especially. Cool. Awesome.
unknownOkay.
SPEAKER_03So you gave us a bit of a rundown on your background. So let's jump in to how you ended up here. So we talked about you you worked for us at DWM based out of Ichuka. What else did you do on that working holiday? Because you had quite the adventure.
SPEAKER_00I did indeed. So yeah, essentially to continue the story, arrived in Australia, got picked up, and I lived the first four months up in Ichuka working for DWM Solutions. And from there, I pretty much always saw how you can do a safari in Africa and how they did it in those Range Rovers or Land Rovers in the Toyotas. And I always thought, man, that's this would be something I'd be so cool to do one day. And then I realized Australia is a massive country and you can essentially do safaris in Australia, which is just called touring or four-wheel driving or like overlanding. And I randomly started Googling what is a good four-wheel drive to buy to do touring. And I ended up heard that a land cruiser is a pretty good car, didn't even know what a land cruiser was. Googled it and I ended up buying. Yeah, saw that there was a camper to order troop carrier, like a 90s model up for sale in Sydney. I thought, man, it'd be so cool to have one. So did a bunch of overtime at DWM because I had the money to buy it. And I flew up to Sydney, bought it, and then I had had the Land Cruiser, and I essentially had to fix it up a little bit. And the idea was that one of my good friends from Germany would come over after my time at DWM. And then the whole idea was that we'll just do pretty much a bit of traveling for a month or two, and then he would have to go back home again. And my idea was okay, I sell the car again and I fly back home to Germany and go on with my life. And that is not how it turned out at all. So that two-month intended journey turned into a nearly two-year journey along or during which I actually met my future wife, which was really exciting.
SPEAKER_03Plans always get derailed by a girl, don't they?
SPEAKER_00You always, yeah. You always do. But essentially, what happened, yeah. We were traveling and as a backpacker, you somehow always hang around with other backpackers. And what happens, it's not only other backpackers, it's always the same nationality as yours.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, the bloody Australia was Australia back then was full of Germans. Like they're everywhere.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, German backpackers everywhere. Yeah, you can spot them by their hiking boots. Oh, and and their colourful rain jackets and outdoor gear, pants that have lots of pockets.
SPEAKER_01Lots of pockets, yes, exactly.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, but essentially during traveling, yeah, we met other backpackers. I met another German backpacker girl that ended up becoming my girlfriend. And for four years ago we got married, which is awesome. So we've been together for yeah, close to 10 years. Yeah, but essentially, when my mate, my friend, he had to fly fly back to Germany, so he moved out of the camper, and my girlfriend moved into the camper. And from there, pretty much another it was just us two in the car, and we were just around Victoria, and from there we traveled all the way up to Adelaide, Central Australia, did Alice Springs, from there we took the Great Central Road down to Perth, did the whole east the whole West Coast, did Broom, Kimberley's, everything around Darwin, the Kakadoo National Park, ended up doing Cape York and Brisbane in the end. And yeah, it is traveling is not free, it costs money, and every couple of months when we ran out of money, we just started to look looking for jobs. So, for instance, in in Adelaide, I used to work as a bricklayer. I used to pay people's driveways. I used to do or in Adelaide as well, like did a bit of landscaping or ended up working for quite a while in a potato factory where they would pack potatoes into 20 kilo bags, and I had to just chuck them into the truck. So I think per day I was lifting like close to eight ton worth of potatoes. Yeah, that kept us going for a couple of months and then did a bit more work up in Darwin on a remote station where we did some gardening, not gardening, more like landscaping type of work. And that's how we ended up in Darwin. And then our journey came to a sudden halt where as a backpacker you're always pushing your limits a little bit, and maybe you're a bit naive as well. And I had only like a couple of weeks left on my working holiday visa, which was just about to expire. And because I didn't do those 90 days of dedicated farm work, I couldn't apply for like then a two extra year extension. So I thought, yeah, I thought, oh, it's all right, I'll just apply for a tourist six-month tourist visa. I think it cost like six or seven hundred bucks, which is a lot of money for a backpacker. And then that got rejected because they they're always afraid when you're on a work visa, going on to a visa where you don't have work rides, that you're doing like cash jobs. So then we're pretty much sitting there up in Darwin. We still had our car and we're like, oh, what do we do now? I had we had to leave the country within a week, and we just really were really we were devastated. We didn't know what to do. And up there on the farm as well, there was this Kiwi couple working there, and there they were like, Why don't you just go to New Zealand? Just apply for the working holiday visa there, you'll get it straight away. You can fly over there, have a good time, earn a bit of money, and then you come back on the tourist visa in six to twelve months and you finish your travels. And that is essentially what we did. So we left the car at our friend up in Darwin, packed our backs, flew to Christchurch, and ended up living in Queenstown. And because yeah, I got obsessed with four-wheel driving and touring during my time in Australia, applied for a job as a four-wheel drive tour guide in Queenstown working at Nomad Safari, so one of the bigger four-wheel drive touring operators there. And as always, you just apply for the job and don't think too much about it. And they're like, Oh, you need to get a P endorsement, which is like a taxi license kind of thing. And that took forever to get. So I had to do like all the pretty much got my Kiwi taxi license. That took me two months, and in between, again, to not staff. Essentially, I was working in landscaping again and as a painter on a construction site in Queenstown and also doing a bit of scaffolding. Yeah, finally got my P endorsement, and then I had the best time of my life. I was pretty much driving eight hours a day, driving old Land Rover defenders and troupies again, showing people around Queenstown. As part of that, I was also working as a quad quad bike tour guide up there in the hills, did a bit of hiking, a hiking guide as well. So we did half-day hiking tours. Yeah, and the plan from there essentially was okay, we're in New Zealand, we save a bit of money, go back to Australia. And that's when you guys reached out to me again. Hey, Philip, we're looking for a senior technician, we're willing to sponsor you or give you a job. Are you interested? And I said, Yeah, hell yeah, I'm 100% interested. Calm down. Yeah, calm down, 100%. I come over straight away. And you, I remember we started talking to a migration agency, and from there, essentially, we had to get our like a birth certificate and a police break on check in Germany and all that kind of stuff. And we thought, hey, we might as well end our journey here in New Zealand a bit early. We fly back home to Germany to organize all of the paperwork, and then once the visa's through, we fly to Australia. So we packed up our things in New Zealand, flew back to Germany, and then that must have been I think late 2010 no must have been 2017 or something.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I think so.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, Australia changed their visa regulations where I, with my work experience and my IT qualification, Australia no longer recognized that as being sufficient for a sponsorship. And then, yeah, essentially, then I mean you would have given me the job, but essentially the government would not have given us or me the visa.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And then pretty much sitting there in Germany, devastated, where it felt again like that for a second time everything is collapsing around you. Like when we were in Australia, our visa expired, everything is collapsing, and then you're back in Germany and you had this plan and everything is collapsing. You're like, you're sitting there, man, what do I do now? And we looked into the new visa regulations, and the only way how I could get a visa is through like a bachelor or master's degree. And I never had the intention of going to university, getting like a like a Bachelor of Science degree or something. But because I fell in love with the idea of moving to Australia and just making it home permanently, or at least living there for a while, I thought, hey, might as well give it a shot going to university. I never thought I was good enough to go to university because, as I said, like in in high school I was really bad. Like high school, yeah, it was really hard, tough time for me. But then in my professional occupation, that is where it was really good. Anyways, gave the university a shot and yeah, essentially completed my Bachelor of Science degree in cybersecurity at one of the harder universities. So, from 120 students starting, I think only 25 made it, got the degree the four years later. Yeah, and then finally got my cybersecurity degree, qualified again to go to Australia. Let's go, let's go, let's go. And what happened? That was 2019, and then COVID hit. What's going on here? This is the worst.
SPEAKER_01You're not supposed to ever get back to Australia, were you?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and I mean you start questioning yourself as well. It's like, man, is this? I mean, this is the third time now where I'm trying, and maybe I should do something else. But, anyways, yeah, Australia crossed their borders during COVID, and then we're like, okay, let's just, I mean, it'll not last forever, let's just get regular jobs here in in Germany and do that. And with my background in in cyber, I started working as a penetration tester, so pretty much uh an ethical hacker for one of Germany's pretty much largest penetration test organizations, and then working there for a couple of years, and then COVID lasts one year, two years, three years, Australia still not opening their borders.
SPEAKER_03In Melbourne, it felt like 17 years. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00I've heard that it was a lot worse for you guys here. Yeah. But then essentially on the news, we've heard we've already kind of already given up on the plan. It's said, let's just do something else. Maybe we visit the Australia, or maybe we circle back to the Australia dream in five years or in 10 years, but maybe let's just focus something else. But then we heard on the news Australia's opening the borders again, they're approving visas again. And we're like, man, let's just give it one last shot. And if that doesn't work out, we do something else. And I reached out to you again. So, hey, I'm ready. You take me, take me. But I think yeah, your business situation had changed in between. But you you were, hey, we can, we're part of the EO group. Make sure you send us your resume. We know a lot of people, know a lot of good MSPs in within the Melbourne region. We can hook you up with a few people. And yeah, I had a few job job interviews with a couple of organizations, and one of those organizations was Emerging AT. And it's obviously a big investment for an organization to import a German and give him a sponsorship visa. There's a bit of cost involved there as well. So I think they put me through four job interviews with five different people. But that's essentially, and then yeah, the visa took a couple of months to get approved, but that was then mid-2022 where we finally arrived in Melbourne, and it was it didn't feel real. And sometimes it still feels like where I wake up in the morning and I hope this is not a dream that I'm here because it was so much work and so much pretty much dedication, consistency to actually arrive here. So I still hope it's not a dream, it doesn't feel like one, but I'm loving it.
SPEAKER_03I think it was the first, was it 30th of June or 1st of July or something you arrived? Because I remember standing on our balcony. So Philip and Anne-Marie stayed with in our apartment in Melbourne for a couple of months while they found somewhere to live. And we're standing on the balcony the morning. I think you're right in the evening. The next morning, standing out in the balcony, it was cold. And Anne Marie just kind of said, I can't actually believe we're here. Yeah, like you said, it just felt like a dream and taken so long to get back. So yeah, quite the journey.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, definitely. Yeah. And and so I remember there's a couple of things that stick out for me on on your journey through. And one of them was, oh yeah, we might stay with you guys for a couple of weeks, but we'll just find a rental place. And we said, Yeah, no, you won't. It's good, you'll be here for at least three months. No, no, no, no, no, no. Because I think we were living, we had the apartment in Melbourne, but I think we were living in um Torque at the time. That was kind of yeah, we come and up on the sometimes stay in Melbourne with stuff and down there. So I think yeah, you were there for three months, and you're oh I didn't think it'd take that long. Oh, that's okay. It's but you found the you found the and luckily you found the right place and you got a good place enough. So I think for the listeners out there, and thank you for Phil for sharing that story. It's for me, there's a couple of key things that come out of that is have your dream, you're gonna get setbacks and knockbacks, but don't give up on it. And yeah, it took you three litch literally three massive efforts to get to part of what you wanted to achieve, and you got there in the end. And Sam, our younger son, similarly, he wanted to go to Europe. And he's not definitely not as organized as what you are, Philip.
SPEAKER_03We call him the idiot abroad.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, he's going he's going to London. He'd already booked his that was his twenty first birthday present from us at the airfares and everything to get across to Europe. And I said, Now you need to get a visa to work in the UK. We once again we teed him up with a couple of contacts to do an interview, and they said, Look, sounds good, but we Can't offer you anything and we have to interview you in person in London, or we can't offer you a job remotely.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And they go, I said, Well, Sam, if this goes well, you're going to need a visa so you can work. And so, of course, Sam being Sam, he's leaving on Saturday. He goes, He goes to the visa to apply for the visa on the Wednesday before he's leaving on Saturday. And they said, Guys, I can't believe it. They wanted to keep my passport for seven days. And I said, that's we've been telling you this for three months, mate. So anyway, he gets to London, gets the job offer, but he hasn't got a visa. So he had to leave London to Norway for two weeks, apply for the visa and come back. So yeah, visas are a complicated thing. Uh and it's and especially with with us in in Indonesia in Bali now, visas here change every six months. Like literally, the rules change. So what worked six months ago may not work again now. And and from a training point, so for someone out there that's listening to this and thinking, oh, that's really cool. I I want I want to do that. They're thinking about IT, or they're probably if you're listening to this, they're in IT or and they want to go and work overseas. What are what are some of the key things you can think of that would be universal, like universal skills that are accepted everywhere? Is there anything that sticks out for you?
SPEAKER_00I think it's more I'm I'm always trying to to differentiate it between your soft skills and like I call them like hard skills, where your hard skills is pretty much the the technical skills, how you know how to do a particular technical task. And I think the hard skills are something that you can learn over time, but something that is kind of embedded into your personality are kind of your your soft skills. And I think if you're just interpersonal skills is I think something that stands out the most. Because I think imagine you go into a job interview and you're there, you can articulate yourself, you're not shy, you go into the job interview, and sometimes it's less about it's more about the attitude of the person rather than their actual skills. Like for instance, if we're interviewing a new candidate at emerging IT, I think skills are teachable, but your attitude is not. And pretty much someone being having this drive to succeed and having a dream and this vision and energy, even though maybe you're a junior, maybe you're a junior tech, you're 20 years old, or you're just starting out. But I think it's just don't focus too much on what you can, just show your willingness to learn and improve and grow, and also being like teachable or coachable in that way. If someone wants to learn something and get better and improve, you can't keep them from improving and getting better. But you can't force someone to get better if or improve or learn if the person is not willing to do that themselves. So I think for instance, ri in the past two years, we have so at Emerging IT, we have pretty much a dedicated cybersecurity department that operates mostly separate, and we're now with like eight members in the team. And over the past two years, we have onboarded two like rather junior new technicians to the team. And one essentially was kind of his first second-ish job, not having a lot of let's say, technical background, but his attitude towards learning and his willingness to learn, pretty much he is 20 times better than he was pretty much a year ago. And then it's more, it's less what we're looking for in Canada is less. I mean, yeah, it's nice that you have a certification or or proof that you have the the experience, but I sometimes think that attitude of a person is way more important than what they already know. And and that is, I think the hardest bit is that you show that to the person that you want to work for. Yeah, and kind of communicate as well where you see yourself in the future. And if you if you're junior tech and say, you can say yourself, where do you I see myself in the next four or five years as a level three technician or doing as a project engineer because that's where I want to grow, because that's what you want to see. You want to see that people have the drive to improve and get better and yeah, add as much value as possible. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03I was thinking back while you were talking then about, and I'll use Nathan Gemmel as an example. I I know there were times in our office when he was in his early, early days with us and you know, major incident had happened, and that senior techs were there trying to sort something out, and it was, you know, end of day, and Nathan would still be there and I'd say to him, Oh, you know, are you heading off? And he's gone, No, no, no, no, I'm not going anywhere. You know, I I'm he was just so keen to learn and be part of it and and be part of the team. And then there were others, of course, that at you know, 5-0-0, their you know, car was disappearing out of the car park. So I completely agree that, you know, you can't teach that and you can't force people to some people I think have that and others just don't and won't.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, exactly. You probably want to get a question line on your list, Jen.
SPEAKER_03Oh no, we've been covering the questions, we're all good with just been talking about them. So if you think back, Philip, to all of those jobs that you had while you were starving, backpacking, and your bricklaying and um I know when we interviewed Christian originally, who you worked with in Germany, he was picking beans in Gippsland. And the interview was him sitting at the uh in the camper van and his laptop sort of crouched down on his laptop. So the typical backpacker story, but what do you think some of those jobs taught you that have you brought into your career now?
SPEAKER_00The fact that that doing like basic jobs like landscaping or painting or bricklaying or potato working in a potato factory is that you kind of that you get rid of your kind of entitlement in some form that you think within an organization you always have some for a level of hierarchy where you have people standing above you in the hierarchy and people standing below you. And I think if you have worked in these really pretty much bottom or bottom spectrum of the hierarchy, that it gives you a lot of respect for these types of jobs. And what it taught me most, I think, was that regardless of the position in an organization, I treat everyone with the same level of respect. So it doesn't matter if it's the posty that's knocking the door, a level one technician or our technical director, I treat everyone with the same dignity in that why. Because I think sometimes everyone has the experience that you have work with people together who don't do that, who are very hierarchy, who essentially treat people below them not very well. So I had experiences where let's say very, very senior technical people, technicians that are extremely good in their job, but kind of makes them a bit arrogant.
SPEAKER_01Just not not just not nice people, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Correct, yeah. But again, I think overall just a good very good work ethic. That I mean, un unless you start your own company, you will always be employed by someone else, and you're just trying to add as much value as possible, and that comes through just a just a work ethic, I think. And just probably just you learn how to be a good employee in that way. You and and I mean that gets rewarded as well. If you solve problems that your employer has, you get promoted in that way, and that is and and it also helps a lot. Essentially, you want to add as much value as possible because then you can also justify maybe wanting a a pay rise or getting promoted. Because if you can show that you're delivering the value and you actually do, and your employer sees that, then that's that's the way to go.
SPEAKER_01And it's it's the opposite to this entitlement thing where oh, I've been here for three years, so I'm entitled to more pay and entitled to a better job. Don't work any harder or smarter. I'm not adding like your keyword there for me was value. Add value. So whatever role you're doing, whatever company you work in, if you're adding value to that business or the customers of that business, then you're basically writing your own path. You can, you're right, you can go to the team and say, hey, I'm really it I think I'm really achieving well here. Am I yes, yeah? Great. That's what's the next step for me? I'm really keen, I want to work hard. What's the next path for me? So yeah, it works well. That's good feedback.
SPEAKER_00I think in terms of adding value, another really, really big one is taking up more responsibility yourself. Because what's generally really hard is that nobody will come to you and give you more responsibility. Responsibility generally is something that you have to take up yourself, and generally your supervisor or your manager will be extremely thankful of you doing that because they are under the palm like day and night, they have so much stuff to do, they have to manage their staff, they have to manage the pressure they are getting from their superiors, and at the same time, they're having like five people they have to manage. And if you are one of the people in their team, what your manager just loves to see, if he gives you a task and you go off, you disappear for a week, and you come back and you say, It's done, you don't you worry. And it's more that you because he has all these things on his desk, and then if if you want to go one step ahead, is when you do stuff and you pick something up, instead of just not doing anything with it or just telling your manager to take care of it, I mean it takes a bit of courage as well, and there's a fine line between overstepping maybe where you sit in the organization, but what worked extremely well for me with within all I think I worked in like seven or eight different IT companies through my life, and what worked extraordinarily well for me is taking up more responsibility and picking up finding problems and picking up problems and solving them before my manager actually noticed that they were there. It's more like, oh hey, by the way, I noticed that this was a problem. I took the initiative and fixed it, and this is what happened, it's all good now, just letting you know. And they're like, Man, you're the best. They didn't even have to worry about it, it's already done. And that is what I mean with with stepping up in responsibility. And I always, for me, it was always hard. I always was afraid to overstep the line where someone could say, Hey, that's outside of your that's outside of your responsibility, you should not have done that, even though you were just trying to do something good. And and had the feeling it it worked in Germany, but not not quite as well as here in Australia. Had the feeling like the hierarchy and your position where you're supposed to operate in in Germany or in German organizations is a lot more well defined, and you're not supposed to step out of that line because imagine you know, you you're a part in an engine, and that part is supposed to do exactly that. And if that part decides to do something else, it's either inefficient or the machine stops working. While in Australian organizations, I have the feeling maybe it also depends on the size, that there's a lot more flexibility in terms of just picking up new responsibility, and that is if you take on more responsibility, then you add a lot more value and you're taking like workload off your managers. And that in Australia, I think that worked at DWM, that worked extremely well for me in some German organizations on and like especially at at Emerging IT.
SPEAKER_03Because that can give opportunity too. That flexibility can give opportunity. I think the reason we invited Philip to join us today was just highlighting there are so many different options to find really great staff. And things have changed from putting an ad on seek or going to LinkedIn, but through that connection with Christian, through that first opportunity with Christian, then being introduced to Philip. We've had some great members of the team and now part of our lives as well. So look outside the box, I think should be the uh the title of this. I just wanted to finish this with we have so many stories with you, Philip, but I wanted to uh share the purchasing of the vehicle that we came to know as Brutus. So Nick, do you want to take us? You and Philip have landed in Sydney to go to Cranulla to have a look at this vehicle. Share the story.
SPEAKER_01Oh, I'll give my version, then Philip can give his version.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, you go you go first, Nick. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01So I I thought Philip and I had a discussion. He showed me the car and I said, Yeah, that looks like what you want. It was a fully set up land cruiser, troopie. You know, it was obviously a canter that had been around a bit. Had it done a few kilometers, hadn't I made about 400? 450, yeah. Well and truly a proven unit, yeah. And he said, Yeah, I want to buy this one. And I said, Yeah, that's cool. I said, I'm gonna go up there on the weekend and pick it up. And I said, Yeah, cool. And Jenny says, You have to go with him. Like, he's got from Germany to here. It can't be that bad to go to Sydney. Anyway, so finally You went. I agreed to go. So we got there a bit early. We flew up, we went and did a bit of a tour around Sydney. We got to Crenella and we're standing at the train station where we'd agreed to meet this guy, and this heard this racket and this noisy thing coming around, and it's this 10-foot tall troopie on big off-road toes sliding sideways around the corner, crashed into the curb, and this 50-year-old hippie gets out of it, and like a surfie went, Philip, uh, holy shit, what's going on here? And he goes, Jump in. So there's only two seats. So I'm in the back of this bloody troop van rolling around on a bed while they're taking off into the bush somewhere. And uh, and the guy says, Oh, yeah, you want to have a drive. And you know, Philip's got his thousand Christian, you know, good German boy, a thousand a list of a thousand Christians in his head about this vehicle. And I'm thinking, Oh god, here we go. Anyway, he jumps in and has a drive, and then I realize I don't think you've ever driven a manual. This is gonna be funny. So we're bunny hopping, we got going there eventually, got to the guy's place, went over the vehicle for what, half an hour, an hour or so, Philip, I think, and yeah, checked it all out. It had all the bits and pieces. It was a well-used vehicle, and the story was the guy that owned it, this is the way it always goes, right? A mate selling it for a guy that owns it, who met a Swedish backpacker and he's gone back to Sweden for a holiday and never came back. And this guy says, Now I'm stuck with this piece of shit in my yard. I want to get rid of it. I'm I'm negotiating the price. And he goes, I don't care, just make me an offer and I'll make it happen. Okay, cool. So we kind of get we talked about that, and and there was one thing that bloody Philip would not let go of, and he just he needed the answer to this one thing. I don't even remember what it was.
SPEAKER_00I think it was the battery system and had this weird manual do it battery system.
SPEAKER_01I think it had three batteries in the end. We ended up ringing this guy in Sweden at 2 A Limited to get the answer to whatever the question was. Anyway, did the deal and um agreed on a price. Then Philip also discovered that Australian banking systems are a little bit different, aren't they, mate? What what happened there?
SPEAKER_00So essentially, I think it was like I think it was up for sale for 16 grand, and I negotiated down to like 14, and the guys are like, I don't even care anymore, just buy it, please. I want to get rid of it. Just take it away. Yeah, and I think I think it was we I think we were there on a on a weekend. I had the limit on my bank account set to like five grand or something. It was one thousand. Oh, even even one thousand, yeah. And I think over the phone I could only increase it to like five, and then I'm just sitting there just trying to send the guy the money, and it didn't work. And then oh, I can't buy the car, I was panicking.
SPEAKER_01And so, yeah, I rang Jenny and said, Jenny, can you um just get into the bank account, transfer this money across to this guy? But we need a receipt. Like, I need you need to print out a receipt or something, and then it was just a combination, and I won't go into the whole story, but it took literally took 45 minutes to get this payment through. And us being good host parents of international students, we obviously, when there's an advantage of having a little bit of fun at someone's expense, we would obviously do that. So Jenny's got on the we're on his group phone call on the on a on a chat speaker phone, and Jenny's, oh, it's all done. Yep, I transferred the $4,000 across. And Phillips, like, he's already a bit white for coming from Germany. He's just turned a pale shade of grey, and he goes, No, no, no, not $4,000, $14,000. And Jenny goes, Oh, only joking, yeah, I've done it. And then, and then the guy in jer in Sweden wanted the receipt, proof of payment, and then Jenny's whatever.
SPEAKER_03My laptop crashed and I couldn't get a receipt out of it.
SPEAKER_01And anyway, long story, we got we got there in the end, and it's so such a classic scene. So Philip's got this grin from ear to ear, like he this is his dream, right? He's come to Australia, he's got his touring vehicle. It's like, oh my god. We're supposed to be meeting my sister for dinner at six o'clock. It's already about 7:30 p.m. by this stage because nothing happens in a hurry. And we're sitting there and he's sitting in the driver's seat, he's playing with all the knobs, and and this little couple, the couple that are selling at are standing there kind of cuddling each other waving, going, get the fuck out of my house, go away. I don't want this vehicle here anymore. And and I'm sitting there in the passenger seat, and uh I said to Philip, you need to wind the window up. And he's looking at me going, I said, wind your window up. And he's going, What what what what for? I go, and there's this massive, I'm talking like a full hand-sized huncement sprawling across the windscreen. He hasn't Philip hasn't seen it yet. No, and I said, Wind your window up, and he's gone. And I finally it got about halfway across the windscreen. I knew what I was gonna do, it was gonna come around the corner and he sees it, he's gone, and he winds the window the wrong way, so it goes down. The spider's getting closer and closer and closer, and eventually, and this couple out there, they are absolutely hacking themselves because they can see exactly what's going on. And eventually I think you might have caught one of the spiders' legs in the window as you round it up so fast, and he's there, he's like hyper-ventilating. Said, We need to leave now, let's just drive. And and then we then we had like a 14-hour drive home because it was yeah, you discovered the 30-year-old troop carriers don't have a lot of power, do they, mate?
SPEAKER_00Nah, I thought I thought it was when at first drove it, I thought it was broken. Like you're like just a small like incline, you're like second gear, 4,000 rpm, doing like 30 or in a hundred zone on a highway. It's like, what's wrong with this car? It's broken, and you're like, nah nah, they are this slow, they're like a four-liter, 4.2 liter non-turbo diesel, yeah, 20 horsepower or something. So it's essentially just a tractor in disguise.
SPEAKER_01And we had to learn how to drive with momentum, so you would try not to slide out, flood out down the hills and roll up. Anyway, it was a it was a fun trip back, and yeah, we got to really bond over that. We spent like 14 hours in that car all the way back to a chuca, and and then then that's when I I I saw the dedication and the passion in Philip, and I knew whatever you put your mind to, you would do it. Because even that that 14-hour trip, you were you'd redesign the entire vehicle in your head already, and then it then he'd set to work for the next three months while he's working with us, pulling the thing completely apart, rebuilding it all, every single part of it, and it served you well for the two-star years you had it.
SPEAKER_00So yeah, and looking back how German I still was, like the whole thing with having a sense of humor. I think as a German and Australians, they're on opposite sides of the spectrum when it comes to humour, and you took advantage of that all the time. But I remember just on the on the way back when Nick you were driving for a bit, I just found the user manual of the car. And I sit let's literally just sat there reading the hundred-page user manual of the car because that's what you do when you buy something new, you read the manual. Yeah, you gotta figure out how it works.
SPEAKER_01Yes, exactly, exactly. Uh good times, mate. And uh yeah, I'm really glad that you guys and the other interesting thing is I think did you get married like a week before you moved to Australia or something?
SPEAKER_00Yes, so it was pretty much two weeks before flying to Australia we got married. So, I mean, I had the idea in my head of of getting married at some stage, but then that's when we were halfway through the visa process to move to Australia and it was still like half a year or like three-quarter of a year out. And I thought, oh hang on, I pretty much want to propose to Henry and get married, let's say within the next year. But if we move to Australia, if the visa gets approved, we move to Australia pretty straight away, and then we are in Australia and I propose to her, and then we maybe get married in Australia and like inviting all of my family over, my siblings, her family, grandparents, and whatever. I thought, oh, that's gonna be really expensive. So I thought, okay, I propose to her now, and then we do a last-minute wedding in Germany with all of our friends and family before we fly over. And that was essentially, yeah, we had the flights booked for beginning of or essentially end of June. And beginning of June, we got married, and we're still saying that it's just our honeymoon. So our honeymoon that's been four years and we just never came back.
SPEAKER_01Awesome, mate. Well, thank you so much for sharing some of that story, bringing back some good memories too.
SPEAKER_00No, it's good.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, thanks so much for joining us. So, as always, we're out of time, but there's so much more we could share. But thanks so much for joining us.
SPEAKER_00That was good. Yeah, really enjoyed it. Thanks for having me.
SPEAKER_01It's a very good insight to there for guys thinking about careers in IT and attitudes and how to put your best self forward. Opportunities come to those who put their best self forward. But sitting back and waiting for it to happen is not where we are. And I and we haven't even talked about AI, but I always like to throw a bit in. And if you're not improving yourself and learning and you're just doing a mundane job at a keyboard, then that's the first jobs that are going to get replaced at some point.
SPEAKER_03Sooner than we think, I think. If this conversation hit home for you or got you thinking, head to mspmastery.log and keep the conversation going. You'll find all our episodes there and more wisdom from the peers and partners who are shaping the future of our industry. And make sure you subscribe so you don't miss future episodes. We've got plenty more great guests and stories coming your way. Until next time, this is MSP Mastery.