Computer Labs, Panera & Geeks w/ Mike McTaggart | Ep. 140

In this episode of the Biz/Dev podcast David and Mike McTaggart, President of Global Digital geek out over all of the things they don't know and how to move their pride to the side and let their entrepreneur flag fly.

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Email Mike McTaggart: mike@globaldigitalit.com

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David Baxter has been designing, building, and advising startups and businesses for over ten years. His passion, knowledge, and brutal honesty have helped dozens of companies get their start.

In Biz/Dev, David and award-winning Creative Director Gary Voigt talk about current events and how they affect the world of startups, entrepreneurship, software development, and culture.

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Mike: I try to be available. I love having conversations like this.

I'm convinced the only way I'm going to grow personally is just keep having conversations with other smart people. 

[00:00:13] David: Hi everyone. Welcome to the biz dev podcast, the podcast about developing your business. I'm David Baxter, your host. And I am without Gary for the first time in like forever, really, literally ever. I am podcast hosting without Gary or that any co host, but I do have a guest.

Who is Mike McTaggart? Hello, Mike. Who are you? And what are you doing here?

[00:00:34] Mike: Hello, David. Sorry I missed you, Gary. I am Mike McTigart. I'm the president of Global Digital, and we are essentially a collection of fractional C suite IT executives. We consider ourselves a consultancy, but because we're made up solely of former senior execs, we're a little bit different than the average consultancy.

It's it's fun to be here. Glad you invited me.

[00:00:56] David: So I have known Mike for a long time now. Gosh, you, I'm going to tell you a story. You didn't know this. This is true. I've never told him the story you contacted me. Big pixel was really new. It was just me and you reached out to me. You were working for one of the large tech firms here. I don't know if they still are large, but at the time they were one of the big boys.

And you reached out, you were one of their top guys and you wanted to have, we sat at Panera at Crabtree and we had lunch and you talked about, feeding me scraps from the big boy and it was really fun. And I, here's the part you don't know, cause you were there for all that. That was one of the very first calls that I ever had as big pixel that, you know, someone important. Wanted to talk to me, right? It was it was a big day for me. Like we, I'm trying to think how old the company was less than a year for sure. And it was just me and you were talking about what, and I explained what we did and all that stuff and you were just great.

And you were just very nice. And I felt very important that day at the Panera Bread.

[00:02:05] Mike: You should have. So maybe part that you don't remember, maybe I've not shared this with you. Because I've, I'd had businesses prior but was working sort of as an employee at that time. And I think my original intent was actually to recruit you. I wanted to hire you, but quickly realized that I think we have enough shared DNA from the entrepreneurial like genes perspective that I recognized.

I'm not going to be able to recruit him. he owns his own thing. He, that is, this is where he belongs. And as much as I would love to have him on. My team. That's not gonna happen. Um, yeah. I remember that lunch or that meeting out at Crabtree. Panera as well, but maybe from a different perspective.

[00:02:58] David: It's funny. And I think the lesson to be taken there, I remember early on, and I may have said this on the podcast. I don't remember, but I remember early on people would ask me, are you freelancing Like it was just me, right? I was doing all the work. Are you freelancing? And I was like, no, I run a company.

I am just the first employee. And people had said, I've never heard that before. That's so interesting. And I was like, that's the mindset that I wanted to bring to this, that I'm just the first one in the door, but there's others coming behind me. I just don't know them yet. And we're about to hire number 14.

So it's very, It's strange. They're here now. The people are here now. And we've ridden this dragon now for over 11 years and It is just really interesting. I think the point to take in that is saying, if you're starting your own thing with generally for service business, it's very easy to just freelance, right?

Fill your own bucket, make good money. And when you filled the bucket, you're done. You've done your job. You're freelancing correctly. That's fine. There's nothing wrong with that in the world, but if you want to be an entrepreneur, it's a mind shift. It's not. Filling the bucket. You're you now have an infinite bucket called your company.

You are just the first bucket. And then getting other people on board with that is important. And it really does change the tone of the conversation because I will tell you people treat you differently when you are a founder, entrepreneur, which when I was growing up is so funny. I mean, you're about my age.

When I grew up, the word entrepreneur meant unemployed.

[00:04:29] Mike: right?

[00:04:29] David: It's funny. I don't know if it doesn't mean that now, honestly, because it's so overused now. I mean, to me, it's not a job. It's a mindset. And I think that people think it's a job. Like I've seen people put it on their resume and stuff, entrepreneur. And I don't understand what that means.

[00:04:47] Mike: Yeah. I don't see it's not the appropriate label in that context. Because it is more of a, it is a mindset, it's a way of life. It's not a job, I

[00:04:56] David: It's not a job.

[00:04:57] Mike: entrepreneur, I guess, unless you work for the magazine. Yeah, so it is different.

It is different, but I, and I also think it's something that you're you're made for, it's not an easy road. It's not necessarily something that everyone chooses or is right for everyone.

[00:05:10] David: So keying off of that. So you've owned several businesses, including your current one. In your life? How old were you ish when you knew that was what you wanted to do? I, you probably didn't know what it was, but you knew you wanted to run your own thing when was that.

[00:05:25] Mike: I mean, my path is a little bit weird. I left home at 16. Wind up going to Duke and started my first company really coming out of freshman year. I mean, so I was still an undergrad and started it kind of out of necessity. It was more, I was an engineering student and I didn't have the computer that I needed for engineering stuff, and I didn't like hanging out at the computer lab with all the other geeks.

I wanted, I needed to get a job. And I didn't want to work in the library or, as a barista. I figured out this way to join what was essentially a, I guess today we would call it a blog, right? At the time, it was a couple of guys that were just talking about computer parts and reviewing them and, overclocking CPUs and see when they melt down and things.

And I joined up and kind of made a go of it. And that was the start of the first company that I had. And by my senior year, we have 57 employees. So it was, I think, and in that time I had the benefit of being sort of a. com owner while also trying to figure out. What I wanted to be when I grow up.

So I actually simultaneously took like internships and worked in engineering at bigger companies, big corporate environments. And I remember very distinctly working in engineering with a large automotive company. And looking around one day at their in the office still running the.

com on the side and thinking, if I work really hard at this and, over the next 20 years, I could get a cubicle with a window

[00:07:09] David: Yeah.

[00:07:10] Mike: and it just, it hit me that was The, the track that I was on and it it sort of sucked all the air out of the sails when it came to pursuing that career track, like it just lost all momentum and I count myself. Incredibly blessed to recognize early on that's. That's not where I thrive.

There was in that same job, that same summer internship, there was so much bureaucracy and sort of legacy thinking and mindset. You'll get a kick out of this. The thing that I did in that short summer internship. I recognized that there were engineers struggling to communicate around the design of a particular system and somewhere here in the States, somewhere in Europe, somewhere elsewhere.

And the progress was slow because to communicate, it seemed to require people getting on airplanes. And flying back and forth and bringing, files on disc and, sitting around a screen together to, to look at a drawing a schematic and so what I did in that internship was build their first intranet,

That was what I did and launched it before I quit before, the summer ended.

And all of a sudden these engineers didn't need to get on a plane. They didn't need to wait three days to talk about a problem. They could send the files up, look at them at the same time, do simple stuff, annotate and shoot a version back all in a secure way. And it was, it seemed like such a disruptive thing to them.

But such a common sense thing to me. And and it still didn't go fast enough. Like the fact that I had to fight to build that and justify it and, get even just a little sliver of server space to host it, it was a battle through the bureaucracy, so I learned, I am a disruptor by nature and I don't.

Thrive embedded in that, or bound to that corporate environment. I thrive where I can be more agile or I can be more disruptive. I might be a catalyst for some corporate environment. I've had some success doing that. But that's only because I'm coming in as an outsider and playing outside their rules.

Yeah, but that was the first time, and I was still an undergrad in college, I think. And I realized I'm probably going to be making my own way. Okay.

[00:09:41] David: reminds me and I never put these together, but it probably influenced me more than I realized my junior year college. Yeah. After my junior. So before senior, I got an internship at EDS, which I was in Dallas. That was their headquarters. They actually, here's just a funny side note there.

They had this big, huge, beautiful headquarters. They had built over there and it was built. It always looked like from a distance, like a transformer coming out of the ground. It was these two big squares and then a square on top. And the plebes, the regular workers were all in the bottom ones and the leadership was up in the top one.

And they called that the God pod. If you ever got summoned to that top box, that was called the God pod. And that was like a big deal. Like something, Whoa, either you were being fired or promoted one or the other. I was an intern for them. There was this guy, man, I wish I could remember his name.

He went to my church growing up and he was a young guy, but he was super driven. He was he, and he kind of took me under my under his wing for a little bit. And he was like known at EDS for working like a dog, 80, a hundred hour weeks. And he had this idea in his head. He was a Christian obviously, cause he went to my church and he said, I believe my time to work is now.

Jesus turned 33 and that was the end of his working time. I'm going to do the same thing. This guy, I mean, he was like 31 or 32 at this time but he was just, and at that time, I can't remember his exact title, but it was something like senior vice president. So he was super young, very high up. And so he's I'm going to bring you on as an intern.

I don't even know what you're saying, but it sounds great. So he brings me on and there's literally no place for me that year was a bad year for whatever reason. And they had canceled their internship program. I was the only intern or one of the very few. And so they're like here, just use him somehow.

So I'm there as a computer nerd and they put me in this area and I was automating their testing scripts for one of their bazillions of platforms. And this was early, early on kind of stuff where you would write scripts and click and it would remember where you did and all of that kind of stuff. Every one of my team, cause I'm trying to like 21, maybe everyone on my team was 50 plus. And I remember very distinctly. So I was going in there and they didn't understand what I was doing. They had been all given this task, but this was very big shift for them. They'd been doing it the same way forever, manual paper, all this, and I'm bringing in this software stuff.

And while I was there, they were doing a round of layoffs. And I remember going into the office and every day, all of these people, there were five or six of them that were on my little team. Were petrified that they, because they knew someone, everyone knew someone who had gotten the letter, had gotten the email, had been brought into the office, and they were petrified that they were next.

And that really hit me. Like I didn't like that at all. Now I'm not saying you don't get similar vibes when you run your own company. It's scary because the whole thing could implode. 

[00:12:45] Mike: Oh, yeah.

[00:12:45] David: But it is different. And I remember not liking that. But that, that, but I never, I didn't say that's when I'm going to start my own business that wasn't until a couple of few more years later, but when I decided I wanted to do that, I met at my first job, there was a guy, I know I've told this story, but I'll tell you.

There was this guy named Doug Wendler. He doesn't remember me from Adam. I was a very low guy, straight out of college. He was the COO and he was 33 of a pretty good size company. They sold that company for 20 million. So good size little company. He was 33 years old. And I said, I didn't know you could be young in my head and run a company.

The owner was basically absent, right? He was running the company. And so I was like, that's amazing. So I was like, okay, I'm going to run my own company by the age of 33. I started at 34, so I failed, but it was not too bad. I'm not too bad, but but it was really interesting. That was, and Doug, if you ever listened to this, thank you.

Because you really were an instrument of change for me. But again, he has no idea who I am, but that was my entrepreneurship story, because I do think everyone. Who is an entrepreneur has a story like that. I think every single person at some, they could have been a five year old kid. It doesn't have to be grand, but they've decided I'm different.

And I'm going to do this on my own, whatever that means. Sober software. And I think that's a unique thing that entrepreneurs have.

[00:14:06] Mike: I think it is. And yeah, I don't really know how to quantify it any other way, but it's something that through experience, I feel like is ingrained in me, when we met, I was, I'd shifted to employees, so it was, yeah as both Christians, it was God's timing, I, I just had the conversation with my wife around, Hey, we need to.

Spend more time and energy on building a family and less on building a company or building a business and opportunity came along for me to essentially exit and sell off the company. But, and then stay on as an employee. So I could transition from being owner to employee. And that happened mere months before finding out we were having triplets. And, God blessed us with triplets. Three beautiful girls and they're healthy as can be. And, that was nearly 13 years ago. But I was able to spend, the first, five years of their life kind of as an employee, with that, it's a different mindset, different viewpoint, different focus.

But, that entrepreneurial itch is one that, you just can't, it has to be scratched, 

[00:15:11] David: it'll find his way out. I don't think you can really get rid of it. And I think, I don't know if you really want to. 

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[00:15:51] David: I think entrepreneurship kind of follows the same thing. If you don't let that out somehow. It's going to come out.

It's going to have some consequences. You're probably not going to be a great employee, probably because you're, you probably think you can do better. You're probably, it could be a side job, right? It doesn't have to be your career, but somehow you're going to open up a lemonade stand.

proverbial lemonade stand to scratch that itch. And that's a great way to do it. There's nothing wrong with that. And other people just take the dive and jump in and have a go. And then some people jump out and fail miserably, right? Just because you have the itch doesn't mean you're any good at it, right?

That's for

[00:16:29] Mike: It's such entirely different skill sets, right? And you've learned. Being great at doing what your business does is not the same as running and growing a business.

[00:16:39] David: Oh, 100%.

[00:16:40] Mike: And, sometimes there can be polar opposites, and I think you see that most often in these technical fields like we're in. Because the skill sets required to be technically excellent and passionate about engineering, software development, et cetera, don't tend to overlap with the skills required to, manage finances, sell, market, network and schmooze. And some of the things that frankly are necessary to get a business up and running and off the ground.

I know some brilliant people that. Are awful at sales.

[00:17:16] David: Yeah. Oh, that certainly was the case for me. I was very good at my job. I was a good developer. I was an okay designer. I could do that and I could sell and I could keep me busy. And when I started bringing on employees, I was horrible. Absolutely horrible. So bad that, and I've told this story before, but so bad that I had three employees that quit within a month.

[00:17:38] Mike: Oh,

[00:17:38] David: I was yeah bad. I had a lot of, I had good projects and no one to do them. And so it was at that point that my mind shifted and I realized, I filled that hole and we use contractors and solve that problem, but realized I was really bad. At running the business. I was a horrible businessman, good at my job, bad at business.

And so I started becoming a student of that, where I joined a business group, C12, which I talk about pretty regularly, but I also just learned, tried to learn and tried to grow because I was so bad at it, that people were running from me. And I knew. No matter how good I was at just the job, I wasn't good at leading.

And so I think that's something you really have to come to terms with. I could sell, I could do the job, but I couldn't lead. I couldn't build a culture. I couldn't do any of that stuff. And it took me years. And one of the. Spinoffs of that journey has been this podcast. Gary and I started the podcast originally, me and him, we were just talking about things I was learning.

I was reading books and reading articles and this is what, and I was helping startups get up and running and helping them with their mind, get their minds right and stuff like that, and that's where this came from because those are not the same thing you might be great at making soap that has nothing to do with building a culture, right?

And I think that is something that. You shouldn't beat yourself up with, I think I'm wondering, I've never actually had, how many people are good at the business stuff and bad at their jobs. Is that even a thing? What is that job? You're good at business, but you're bad at the tech, the, whatever the,

[00:19:15] Mike: Yeah. I mean, I think that's, I mean, that's why we have people that, that take care of legal for us, that take care of finance, that take care of HR. I mean, those are, I mean, in my mind, those are all the. Operations components that I'm not good at, but thankfully there are people that are and that are as accurate

[00:19:35] David: to do it.

[00:19:36] Mike: about that as I am around the technology, the fact that someone can sit down with an ERP system or sit down and say, look, no, Mike, this is, these are the changes you didn't make in FinOps in order to, to get more visibility in your cashflow.

Thank goodness there's someone like that because my eyes glaze over and I'm like, okay, I don't really know how to do that. I can tell you that it needs to be done. I can even advise, this is something I had to learn early on and I still learn and struggle with every day. There are things that it's easy for me to see and advise in a client's business, but I can't see or do for myself.

[00:20:11] David: That's deep. I like that. I'm chewing on that one. That's,

[00:20:14] Mike: Yeah. And I think honestly, if I'm being honest, a little on the vulnerable side, here, I think it's because of pride, I think there are things that I don't want to admit that I can't do, or I don't want to let go of as an entrepreneur or as the owner or if I've, let something slide a little bit like, okay, collections have kind of gone up a little bit.

That means I've failed at something. That means I have to ask for help or I have to admit that I've failed in some way, whereas, I wouldn't take that stance with any of my clients. I would say, you know what, it is what it is. Let's get the right specialist in, let's get the right tools in places.

Let's sure up those processes and just get it done. Let's just fix it. But I struggle with doing it for myself. So I'm thankful. It makes me thankful for the people that I have around me that do help me, in running the business because I'm not good at parts of it.

[00:21:11] David: I think it's easy to delegate things you don't like doing. The problem is sometimes you don't realize you're bad at things and that's where the pride gets in. You might think you're good at accounting, basic accounting a small business needs. You might think you're good at sales or marketing, but you might not be very good at all.

And the question becomes, are you? So proud that your business is going to, that you're going to allow your business to suffer, or are you going to be humble enough to take the advice from someone? Obviously a third party, you're not going to recognize your bad at it as yourself, but a lot of advisors, mentors, wherever, go get those.

If you don't have those, go get those. They should be speaking truth into your life and they're going to be painfully obvious. I mean, you see those people, right? Those people who refuse to let go of X. Because they think they're good at something and they're just not. And can you put your pride down?

Boy, that's a tough one. It's tough because every entrepreneur at some level, I mean, I always try to be humble, but there's always, if we're all being honest, there's an ego right in there. It's kind of how it works. You kind of have to believe you're better at something than someone else to even take the plunge, right?

So that ego is almost given,

But how much does it rule is really the question who wins these fights, right?

[00:22:34] Mike: Yep. Yeah. And ultimately, and that's where, I'm thankful I can interface and I hear you've talked about C12 and in groups like that as well. I think where you put your dependency is a defining factor, and so if I'm dependent on myself, then that's going to place pressures in a particular way.

If I am dependent on God, then. My weaknesses actually, if dependence on God is the objective, then my weaknesses are an advantage.

[00:23:05] David: Okay. Okay. I see that. Yeah. I mean, that's all Paul coming out there. 

[00:23:09] Mike: And if, but if I, but if I'm dependent on myself, then my weaknesses are our weaknesses is something that I have to, I have to wrestle with. I it's difficult to embrace. Yeah.

[00:23:22] David: that's tangentially related, but it's hitting me for some reason. You can see the future. And I'm going to quote this horribly wrong, but you'll get the idea. You can see the future of a person by the people he hangs out with in the books he reads. I love that quote. And I've been, I've, I said that to my kids just the other day.

It is such a profound thing because And that's where I think the business group for me became a big deal is I didn't you don't There's not a community on the regular that you just hang out with a bunch of people who are ambitious and entrepreneurial and all of that business owners, that doesn't come naturally.

You got to go find those people and it's worth it every time. Because if you start finding yourself with people who are above you on this ladder, we're all climbing boy. You can learn a lot. I mean, and it's, that's what I say. Get mentors, go find them. They're there. I mean, I mentor all the time. I love doing it.

I love helping. Maybe my advice is worth what you pay for it. But it is something that people really enjoy doing. And there you'd be surprised how many people will say yes. If you just ask,

[00:24:27] Mike: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think in general, most people don't want to see others make the same mistakes they've made, I, I certainly don't want to watch someone else go down, a bumpy road if they can avoid it or if we can

[00:24:39] David: unless they're a competitor, then that's fine. Just kidding. Just kidding. Sort of.

[00:24:45] Mike: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's, I'm, groups like that are good and you're right. You do have to seek them out. It's amazing to me how, I think in general, whether it's business owner or even senior executive as you climb that ladder, Yeah, as you get into the God pod, as it's people don't like to admit it, but it's lonely.

[00:25:07] David: Yeah.

[00:25:08] Mike: And it's, and our culture, I think, doesn't help that because I think it's, it reinforces this idea of. You shouldn't need to ask questions or, you got there because things or because you're good or because of X, Y, Z. And so to step out of that image and say, no, there's still stuff I don't know, and I need a mentor.

And, I can acknowledge expertise in this vein, but I can also simultaneously acknowledge. I need help here. That's hard and not a lot of people do it.

[00:25:43] David: and there's a lot of pride there when you start seeing a little bit of success too, because Oh, I'm running a X million dollar business. I must have it together. But there's always someone who's running an X times 10 business. There's always someone ahead of you. And I mean that not in a competitive way, but there's someone who's further along than you and they have things to teach you to.

There are very few people at the top of the mountain. Yeah. There's a few, we all know the names, but. Even they make mistakes and even they probably wish there was, they had someone to talk to. I remember years ago, there was a story. Michael Jordan tells this famous story of the first dream team back in what nineties, mid nineties, where it was Michael Jordan, magic Johnson that whole era of amazing players.

And they were all drafted to be on the first dream team, which was this crazy Olympic team. And he said, my favorite times were in the hotel afterwards because we were all together, these five, I can't remember all their names, of course, but these top, 0. 1 percent of players who've all won championships and they no longer had to be humble.

They no longer had, they, I was sitting next to, Magic Johnson, sitting next to Michael Jordan. And they've both been at the pinnacle. Larry Bird and they could talk openly about what it's like to be at the top of the mountain. And they were so excited to do that. And I bet if you could, there's probably some secret room where all the top tier business people, Jeff Bezos, Nylon and all them are getting together to rule the world.

And I'm sure that they enjoy being, it's like the, when the former presidents get together, they always talk about how amazing that is. Cause there's never more than five of those people alive at any one point in time. And regardless of whether you agree or not on politics, that job is unique and allows them to talk.

And I think leaders of all sorts, size doesn't matter. You need that because it is lonely at the top. It really is.

[00:27:39] Mike: Yeah, I think so.

[00:27:40] David: All right, I'm going to switch gears. And when I ask the one question I always ask,

[00:27:45] Mike: Okay.

[00:27:46] David: if you were talking to a new entrepreneur, a new startup, and you wanted to give them your three best pieces of advice, what would those be?

[00:27:55] Mike: Oh my goodness. All right. So first of all, I think I think I, the advice has to be mixed, it's a bit professional, a bit profess personal, right? Similar to what we were just saying, the humility. Be willing to admit what you don't know and eager to learn it. Yeah, I think the differentiator between success and failure in a lot of different frames of reference is how fast you learn, and that's a sort of, it's a little bit of the agile list kind of coming out.

It's one of the core principles, right? Learn fast, or, I used to say fail fast, but it's really how fast can you learn, right? If you can learn faster than your competitor, then you've got a strategic advantage. But I think that's, that can be applied in a lot of other situations.

And as an entrepreneur, that's particularly important because learning fast also typically means failing cheap, right? So how quick can I learn? Is this the right product fit? How quick can I learn if this channel is the right one to promote inside? How quickly can I learn, whether I can operate in this fashion or that fashion learning fast, and being intentional about it.

How can I try something out and learn as quickly as possible, whether it's going to work or not, or if I need to, shift gears or, take a turn. So I think learning fast is definitely one sort of mantra to keep in mind. I think the second, to switch gears would have to be on the personal side.

And also kind of consistent with what you were just saying. It's it can be a lonely and challenging path. It will definitely be challenging. It doesn't have to be lonely. I'm thankful that my wife is absolutely amazing and has been with me. And, I think it's as much as it is special, or it takes a certain kind of gene or makeup to be an entrepreneur.

I think it also there's a special kind of person that is an entrepreneur's spouse. We have had those conversations through every iteration of business, highs and lows of. Where are our priorities? What, I think the first time I went out and started, business, I could probably look around the apartment that we had together and say, okay, honey, if we lose everything, we're out like that futon and those lawn chairs there's not like we can rebuild.

But most recently, it was looking around and saying, okay, we just bought this house. Okay. The kids are at private school, we've got commitments and responsibilities and there's so much more at stake, but we're still aligned in what's important, how committed we are, to each other, and able to walk in lockstep through the highest envelopes.

And so that, that notion of, all right, it's going to be hard but you don't have to do it alone. Maybe you're, the entrepreneur isn't, maybe you're not married. Maybe, you don't have a significant other, but they can be a mentor. It can be a peer, it can be an accountability partner.

It can be somebody else that can walk alongside you and keep you on track and also just be there when those tough times come. And then maybe that kind of brings me to the 3rd. I hadn't really thought about this before, but I think the, when those challenges arise, there is, there's a reason.

I think in most cases you went out to become an entrepreneur, right? And it's bigger than self, at least in the cases I've seen where people are successful and have that X factor to push through the challenges it's because there is a cause or a vision that is bigger than. I just want to hustle and get my next rent check covered.

It's bigger than that. And so remembering what that is. And if it's not, and if it's not clear in the beginning, it's just this undefined, feeling of there can be more, maybe that's part of the entrepreneurial itch. It's just that life can be more. I think it's worth putting the time into defining what that looks like, life can be more, but in what way, is it more time with your kids?

Is it more, the ability to travel the world and see certain places? Is it the ability to give back in a way specific to your community or to whatever it will cause? But I think having an eye on that why is is big and the, your partner in all of this is a good way to stay anchored to that.

If y'all are in tune. This is why you're doing this. This is why it's worth it to get through this tough phase. Now that's I don't know if, I hadn't put a ton of thought into it, but those three kind of come off the top of my head.

[00:32:37] David: That's great. No I, those are powerful. I think those are really good. So if anyone wanted to reach out to you and learn more about you, or just say hi, how would they do that?

[00:32:47] Mike: Oh, send me an email. Mike at global digital it. com. Find me on LinkedIn. Mike McTaggart. I think I'm. Like one of very few might make Tigards on LinkedIn, surprisingly, but you'll find me out there. Yeah, I think my phone number is even out there. Give me a ring. 

I try to be available. I love having conversations like this.

I'm convinced the only way I'm going to grow personally is just keep having conversations with other smart people. 

So David, I sure do appreciate it.

[00:33:14] David: Absolutely. This has been a lot of fun. Thank you everyone for joining us this week. We will be back next week. We'll have all of Mike's stuff in the show notes, so you'll be able to click on those. And we will talk to you all next week. Thanks again.

[00:33:28] OUTRO: Hi, I'm Christy Pronto, Content Marketing Director here at BigPixel. Thank you for listening to this episode of the BizDev Podcast. We'd love to hear from you. Shoot us an email, hello at thebigpixel. net. The BizDev Podcast is produced and presented by BigPixel. See you next week. Until then, follow us on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Threads, YouTube, and LinkedIn.