Welcome to the Adaptive Mindset. I'm Brett Gallant, cybersecurity thought leader and founder of Adaptive Office Solutions. Here, we don't just talk tech, we unlock the strategies, stories, and mindset shifts you need to stay secure, lead boldly, and thrive in a digital world. Let's get started. Welcome back to the Adaptive Mindset. I'm very pleased to have Don Semenowich here with me, the Business Development Manager for IT Advisors. Don and I have been working together for a number of years. It seems like forever. Don, welcome to the podcast. Hey, thanks for having me. gives me something to do in my day. Yeah, because we know you don't do anything. Folks, you're going to see probably a little bit of the banter that we have while we're talking. But Don, one of the things that I'm really happy to have you here with us today is is to share some of the mindset shifts that you and I have had, because I've had the great pleasure and privilege to be working with Dawn over the last two years. We are accountability partners. We meet with each other every Friday. And I would say for the both of us, we've had tremendous growth in our mindset and what we believe is possible from those meetings.

Brett Gallant 

Absolutely agreed. I think that's what we decided we were going to talk about when you invited me to the podcast. Just the benefits of the accountability partner, building that relationship and having that commitment. Commitment number one starts with every Friday morning of every week, almost without fail, unless we're doing something travel or speaking event of something. Then we try to tried to do our best to get onto a call. Even when we are in vehicles, we've had had calls. And I think that's where it started. That was your ride over two weeks, two weeks, two years ago. And when you first pitched nine o'clock on Fridays, I said, sure, no problem. And then about two days before our first meeting, I realized that means 7am central time. So that changed my schedule permanently. And over the last number of years, I slowly worked towards having this earlier start, which is my time of the day to shine, actually. I come in, get a bunch of stuff organized, coordinated and done, work through my morning, and then I kind of get sidetracked a little bit more in the afternoon. So number one, first thing that we held accountable was making sure that we didn't fall off the meetings and Now, two and a half years or so later, we had a meeting this morning, a couple of hours ago, actually.

Don Semenowich

That was a great one, a great banger. We were talking over a few challenges and some opportunities, and we made some commitments on what we were going to do this week. And there's been so many shifts and change in what we've done. But I want to give you a moment to shine and just tell our audience what you do, Don. And then we'll dig into a few other things because there's, you have, Don's got a diverse background and he's doing some great things. We're partners in crime and offering cybersecurity solutions to businesses. And Don's got his, so many different takes on other avenues, what he does. I want to give you an opportunity to tell people a little bit about you.

Right. Well, we have an organization called Taylor Technologies, doing business as Brandon Computers. Brandon Computers is a company that Dan Taylor started 14 years ago. I used to work with Dan Taylor at Hotel Organization. I was Director of Operations for 14 years. with Genesis Hospitality. When we had the opportunity to expand Browning Computers, Dan approached me and so I left the corporate world and went to a private or small business, sort of a mom-and-pop shop. A couple months later, we moved to a 2200 square foot space on the main drag in our city, right in the center of the city. Slowly but methodically, we started planning the cybersecurity division. Now, we weren't focused on cybersecurity as much back in 2018-2019. We were just looking at getting into a more consistent monthly recurring revenue program, so it was more managed services. Meaning our mindset was, you know, you pay one price, you get unlimited tech support, unlimited onsites. If you're within a certain area, you don't pay for mileage. And then we proactively manage all of your devices to keep them up and running for business continuity and backup purposes. But slowly and surely, I think the, Landscape had started to change. Really, it was around 2018 when cybersecurity really started to pipe up. Even the government of Canada started a couple divisions and started talking about it. But we're out here in the prairies in the center of Canada. And like everything else, we feel that we're four or five years behind the times. So actually, in that case, we turned out being ahead of the times. Very much so. Yes. We fell onto a gentleman by the name of Chris Weiser. And I think Dan was being chased by Chris a little bit to come join his program back when Seven Figure MSP, which is what the organization's name is now, I think it was, I can't even remember what it was called, Chris Weiser's Elite Group, something like that. Anyhow, late 2019 we started with that program and Dan invited me in as a business partner to come and see what the program was all about and how the processes worked. I don't come from a technical background, I come from a business development, business management background. I have, of course, a different view. You don't have to pull me out of being tech all day, but I know that's your Jedi superpower, whatever the process is and put it into a system that's repeatable, tradable and can scale. So, um, since then we've started, uh, we brought in our own bookkeeper and now have two people in the bookkeeping division with about 12 businesses that we do the books for. Um, Completely not to do with tech, but to do with systems and just another avenue. So there's always a little bit of a trickle. You're building little empires. That's what you were calling it, yes.

Yeah, that's exactly what I'm calling it.

This last year, we started secure shredding. So just like Shred It or Iron Mountain, we do a very similar program, a little bit more local. But what we'd felt was, and What we realized was we're doing all of this work and we've got businesses paying thousands of dollars a month to keep everything secure. All it takes is for their employees to print it out, throw it in the recycle bin unshredded, and you've lost everything that you've worked for to keep things secure. We also have that open to the public over in the retail side, branding computers. And then in addition to that, we've started a print division because to come full circle and make sure that we've got the full suite, what we started to find with our clients was there was inconsistency and disappointment with some of the print services or the print side. For many years, we were hands off, hands up. We don't touch print. We've got to Gold or Kyocera or whoever. And now we're starting to embrace it. So recently we've partnered with HP. I think I've got an HP background on my screen. So Hewlett Packard Business and Enterprise Print Service in partnership with Footprint, it's called. They do the managed print or the metered prints. Supplies are always refreshed and service always gets it. So that's where I get to put my little pitch in.

That's really where we're at, but go ahead. You and Danny and with your business, I think you're a really good example about having an adaptive mindset of seeing an opportunity, recognizing it, And taking your shot, like I always, I like to refer to Wayne Gretzky, you miss 100% of the shots you don't take. And you have certainly taken advantage of that by diversifying and seeing the reality, most importantly, I believe near and dear to my heart, which is cybersecurity. It's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when. And so recognizing that and having those conversations with the public and the people you serve to inform them and tell them why it's so important, which is so great. I know You and I talk about this a lot, about scarcity and abundance mindset, and we can dig into that a bit if we wanted to, about some of the times we do that all the time.

We talked about that this morning, weren't we? Yes, the statement I was saying was I recently had a meeting with an organization and they weren't very open to going into the world that we provide. I'm not sure how to say that the best, throwing them under the bus or anything, but they wanted to stay the same. They're working with technology in a setup that is 25 years old and just not modern for today.

And sometimes that's where people are at and they can't, they're not ready to change and that's okay.

And that's okay. But the thing is, if you think about two, three years ago, I would have hung myself up on this one client. I would have been thinking about it after hours over the weekend. I would have been trying nine times different ways to. push on them when they're not ready yet. And so one of the things we talked about this morning was the abundance that's out there. And we were reviewing a tool that I've been using. I don't need to bring up tools on this podcast, but a tool is just a very simple, simple sort of list where I can list hundreds of people that I haven't spoken with yet. So I'm not going to take the time to put them into our CRM. and build them as an organization. If I'm not going to be doing drip campaign or anything like that to them, I'm doing very targeted, specific phone calls, introduce ourselves, what it is that we do. Most times they'll recognize us from our 14 years with brick and mortar brand of computers. And then I can move into whichever starter track they're interested in, whether it's VoIP or shredding or print, whatever it might be. If they're not interested, again, no hard feelings and no. kick in the sand, just move forward with the next one.

The opportunities are out there for, I would say this applies to just about anybody in any line of business. If you show up and make the phone calls and make the connections and relationships, I believe, and I know you do, relationships matter. And when you make those connections, maybe there may not be an opportunity yet. there will be an opportunity potentially tomorrow.

Well, I was going to say, I guess I already have, but I think you and I both agreed that years ago, and we really changed our mindset with this weekly commitment of going out and making the calls and finding other people and getting that head trash out of our brains that nobody wants to hear what we do and nobody wants to take a phone call or get an email. But for whatever reason, we get an idea that a specific client or organization is our target. We're going to get them. And then we're putting all of our efforts into somebody who's really not interested yet. So just shelf them. Keep them in your radar. continue to go on forward with your flat list of new fresh contacts. It just changes your outlook on it. There's tons of opportunity out there.

There's so many ways we can go with this, but I'm going to shed on something that I know you've talked about and you taught me. And I love this term, you call it spinning plates. Do you want to tell our listeners a little bit about that? I love that concept.

This was probably near the end of our first year and around the Christmas season. And then in our business, much as many others, everybody tones down, relaxes, takes their foot off the gas as far as any new contracts. Partnerships, whatever you might call them. And so for us, that's the previous year when I, for the very first year that Brett and I had met and continued to meet like this weekly, I was a little bit down because I was ready to go and we wanted to scale. We're ready to go right now. Everybody else was on holiday mode. And when they get out of holiday mode, it's vacation mode. They're not even in Canada. So you have to prep yourself. And the very first year I more complained about it. I would say by coming into that season, by the end of the second year, you and I just two years ago, coming into the Christmas season, we changed our mindset a bit, said, you know what, this is our time to study. This is our time to set up, build our bus so that it's ready to get passengers on it once the year starts turning, which is about this time of year.

And I just noticed it again, this is our- Yes, things are starting to go like bananas.

Much easier this year. continued our weekly meetings, you and I, Brett, and we continued to reassure ourselves that yes, it's just the downtime and that's how everybody operates. Everybody's back from their vacation time and holidays. They're now ready in a new year with a new budget, time to go and ready to go. So this year we were much more prepared for that. It's really been working out well. And I think I probably didn't take us in the direction that you'd

No, but specifically what you do sometimes with the spinning plates, oftentimes we have these projects or clients that we're trying to reach out to. And I remember you saying this, you wrote the list, you had a list of about 15 or 16 clients. And they were at different stages and there was no yes, no answer. And you made that list and you committed to executing on that list so that you could get the next steps. And so there were those stages, those spinning plates of wherever you were with talking with that client or prospect, you moved it to the next step or put it on a drip for a later and just made a decision on how to handle it.

I remember that. I actually just put it in a Canva. PDF and I had it up in my cupboard in the old office and I'd open up the cupboard all the time I'd look who am I gonna call next okay yeah and then write a little note on it what I was calling the plates was if you weren't ready now or if you were a no we need to put that plate back into the cupboard put it back in the cupboard

And then pull it out later when we're having the fine dining, we'll bring it out and have a client. Yeah. Because a lot of, you know, the reality is sometimes we have this scarcity mindset and, and like we mentioned at the beginning, it's an abundance. As long as you show up and do the work and have the conversations, good things will come.

So we did a, we did a little stint with Xerox for six months last year, just covering the region. And one of the things that were really reinforced was always having 15 more calls you're ready to vote about to make. One of the things that I think that I'd learned mindset wise was when we start off with a commitment to someone that we've done some work for, let's say we've done some break, fix, repair, sold them some hardware. And we want to try and ease them into cyber security and fully managed services. and they're not ready to do it right now, and we keep pandering and bugging them, that's noticed in my reflection now. I think that the client sees that and almost smells a bit of desperation, whereas- Commission breath is what I heard somebody call it. There you go, but it's like, okay, you're there, I'm putting your plate back in the cupboard, because I've got more dishes to wash.

Yeah. And sometimes, though, I believe where we put the extra effort, though, to be fair, especially when we know that the client wants it and needs it. Sometimes, though, on the other side of that, doing that extra push is important to help them, you know, come to a decision with respect of their time as well. But why are we doing this? So we want to help people.

Someone in our IT group, our cybersecurity group, seven figure, someone posted recently and I apologize that I can't remember who it was, but it was great for them to post. I mean, look in the last 24 hours, sometimes when you say to the client, you know, it looks like we're not ready or we're not a good fit, whatever it might be. And certainly Cindy Phillips, one of our sales coach has come across this a lot of times. The client doesn't want to be dismissed or I don't know the right verbiage for it, but telling them that maybe it's not a right fit, maybe we're not good, maybe it's not within your budget. they'll tell you what they're actually looking for. They'll kind of chase you back.

What the real objection is. Yeah. Sometimes we don't know what the real objection is or what's really troubling them. And that's part of the whole process of having those follow-ups are so important. But at the same time, you know, that commission breath, I like to think, well, I know when you're doing the follow-up, you're doing it because you're concerned about their business. You're concerned about their municipality, their organization, and you know, and you've seen how much risk they've had. So you want to just make sure you've done your due diligence to show up the best way that you can to serve. I've said this a few times on this podcast, as I heard this recently from someone that said, who's missing out because you're not showing up.

Yeah, you've said that many times before. It's a Brett-ism.

Yeah, well, I don't take credit for it. I think Sebastian Russ taught me that. So, but I- Don't worry, you can get hacked in your pajamas. Yeah, that's a Brett-ism. I ordered the t-shirt, by the way.

You bring up a good point though, that I'll always come back around to. We've got, as an example, a car dealership, hour or so out of town. We have done a lot of work for them. And the general manager, she knows that they need to meet certain standards for the brand, the auto brand. But the owners don't feel it necessary or they're going to try and hold off as long as they can, that's for sure. And it's in Dan's hometown and he's seen that pattern when they were being pushed to get a new building because these larger auto organizations have mandates and requirements. You have to meet certain

Some brand refresh. Yes, that's right.

In order to keep the brand franchise. So anyways, it's coming, but in the meantime, about every, I want to say every quarter, maybe six months, I've got her, the general manager in my CRM and I touch base again with her and never fail. I'll touch base with her and say, you guys ready yet? No, I don't. I haven't even talked to them about it. We're not ready. You know, it did come up and they were saying they just, they don't want to spend money on any of this stuff, but I do need two new laptops for the service bay. So there you go. That call was worth it right there.

Well, yeah. And that's, if you were not making the followups, you're not doing your job and you're not being pushed. You're just checking in. And that's a great thing because it shows how much you care.

I guess that's true. I never looked at it that way from their perspective, but as long as you're sincere with it, you're not being all salesy.

No. And you're being sincere. I know you enough that I can feel it. And that's what I'm doing as well. I'm a good actor. I took a lot of acting classes. Yeah. I know who you are. Yeah. You're the Don. Godfather. It's pretty interesting, this journey that you and I've been on and part of this bigger coaching community. What do you think has been the most impactful for you over the last year in terms of growth and mindset and opportunities? There's certainly been a shift in you that I've seen and I observed.

So I guess, yeah, two things. Number one, doing the full Xerox training and actually diving into that world of sort of high pressure, a little bit more corporate sales. And I don't mean to take any of that, it's just that was where the realization of the abundance out there came from. And they're pretty big, so it's not as structured as I'd like to be, because I'm a checklists kind of guy, checklists and tools. Another thing is Dan and I had both started seriously almost competing listening to audiobooks. No television, I haven't had television for years. But even driving, rather than listening to music, instead listen to audiobooks.

University on wheels.

Yeah, and a lot of these suggestions come from the seven-figure group. That just leads to more. As soon as you listen to one, your app will Audible, for example, will just give you other suggestions that other people have listened to. But not having to take everything to a tee, but gleaning the parts that you know you're going to be able to incorporate. We've got another accountability group within that seven-figure. It's a bigger group, it's not a one-on-one, but as I mentioned this morning, yesterday we made on Thursdays. Yesterday I made the commitment that I'm going to continue to get into deep work and what I've done to do that. I was showing you earlier I made a little door hanger just like at a hotel for outside the office door. Office door closed. I use Clockify app. Use any sort of Pomodoro that's going to work for you. So you're starting a timer and you get set down. There's the cinema mode where before you go to watch a big three-hour movie, you go to the bathroom, get your popcorn and your drinks and get yourself prepared for it and settled in so that you don't.

Yeah, that's a really interesting mode for when you're doing your deep work, have everything you need.

I get myself set right up.

You've got your hydration tools there.

Coffee and water. I've got a little bit extra warming.

Backup coffee.

Yeah. And then I think I'd mentioned prior to getting into this, because I'm considering this like a deep work session, I will And I've lost the head trash of putting my phone on do not disturb people can wait for 45 minutes to an hour. Yes, you have to put phone and my two because we've got all these different channels. I've got a print phone and a portable store phone and then Just all of these channels that kept interrupting you all the time. There's always these bells and whistles ringing. I'm not flying a plane here.

So let's... No, no. And we have to do this. And you and I talk about this a lot. The biggest yes is what you say no to. So putting yourself first, for example, having this one hour block of time where you've communicated to your team, I'm in a meeting for the next hour. They know. that whatever comes up, you got your team, you trust them, they'll handle it, and then you take care of it in an hour's time if there's something urgent that needs your attention. It's been a huge change in my life, even for this morning, I made the decision, I hadn't been out for various different reasons, travel and et cetera. I haven't been out hiking. I love to get out in this beautiful trail near me. And today I said, no, I'm starting my day and I'm gonna go for a 45 minute hike. And I did that and it was the best thing I did today.

If I could interrupt, you're the one who got me started to get up out of the office. Not because I'm on any sort of health journey or weight loss journey, nothing like that, mental. You saw that I was scrambling and getting too many squirrels. It was you who said to me that you'd asked if I would commit to at least try and get out every single day, seven days, get out for at least half an hour, go for a walk, even if it's around the building. And as soon as I started doing that, I'd like to say I'd easily 13,000 steps a day, whereas before I was getting what?

Amazing. Yeah. Yes. I remember that. Yeah.

I'd just taken the time and just the mind shift, maybe what you've recognized is a calmness and not feeling anxious because I might have emails that are unread.

Right.

I've actually gotten a little tip from you and I try not to abuse it, but I do use it and I use it effectively to be able to progress. And that is I've got right now, if you were to message my email, you're going to have an autoresponder that says, I'm in meetings this morning. Checking periodically because I've had three meetings and I've got one coming up at 11 o'clock here on 10, right now, central time or 1030. And I don't even want to check or look because then my mind won't be focused on what I'm doing here and what I'm doing in the next hour. I can check from noon till one. if I want, but that should be taken for me. I should be going for a walk, having some lunch. Then I'll come back and I can sit down and there should be no reason why someone, and it says right on there, if you need something urgent, contact the store at this number and talk to the technicians.

Don't let your email rule you. You rule the email. And the same thing with your business. I used to say the business, this business owned me, but now I own the business.

You trying to start a book of breadisms?

I'm working on it. There's a book coming at one day.

You've got to write them down. Well, I guess you don't have to write them down. You're recording them.

Yeah. It's incredible though, what you, what you realize, what you've learned from speaking with, you know, our conversations and other people that have inspired me and that continue to inspire me and people that continue to inspire you.

Well, along, along the path, I recall a couple of years ago, this was when we first started, I mean, six months in, eight months in. We were on a Friday morning call and Brett looks up to the camera. He says, Don, can you hold on? I've got to take care of this. I've got to answer this person. This client's bugging my Gmail. So A, you weren't fully focused because you were watching.

I was not present. That's right.

Second, you were responding and I said, Brett, stop. Who did you say takes care of coordination and dispatch. That person at the time. I said, CC that person, respond to them and say, I've CC'd this person. They will take care of it moving forward. And then you don't even need to be CC'd after that. And if they continue to CC you, I think I'd mentioned to you, you don't need to respond because you've got proper person in control of that response and that activity.

That's been the biggest shift that I've done and I continue to evolve and you and I talk about it, transformational leadership, where you would, and I tie that into scouting, train them, trust them, let them lead is a saying that we say in traditional scouting.

This morning we talked close to that as well. This call is very much like our talks. We're talking about the past things that we're moving forward to try and do, but with this past week and putting that Do Not Disturb on the door of my office and I've got a window in my office. For a couple of days, I took a big calendar and stuck it in the window because it fits perfect. They couldn't even make eye contact because they'll try the door and they won't do that. So then they'll look through the glass. But something we talked about this morning is the problem and solution pair. At least that's what I always refer to it as. Don't come to me with a problem. Come to me with a problem and one or two solutions. And if I don't think it's right, I'll tell you what I think my idea might be and together we can solve it. But if you allow your employees or your team to continue to come to you for an answer and you just give that answer, you're just training them to constantly just get the answer from you.

And they need that so that they can think. And my team is really great at that now.

Well, it was earlier this year, it was this time last year, it's not earlier this year, geez, time flies, that you had mentioned to me How was that working? It was on our weekly. And I said, so how's that working out? Have you been enforcing the answer or getting them to do it or think of it themselves? They said, yeah. And I said, I think we need to move to the next stage. And he said, what is that? I said, well, I think that they're all adults. They've all been working for us long enough. They shouldn't have to ask permission to do something in their own department. So we started working on that and it probably took March, April, and right into May to get the store guys to the point where if they want something to display over here, they just go move it. They used to have to ask me, what do I think Dan's going to think? Maybe we should do it. Don't ask. Next stage after that, Dan used to do all the ordering. We started to get Reece, one of our guys, to do the full ordering. What Dan did was share it into the company's accounts for our order channels and just gave him the right to go ahead and build a cart. Very quickly, he learned he doesn't have to ask permission because he knows this stuff. He knows what's a proper price and what a sale or deal is if he's been searching for that. Then we also had made a shift where We're training him and the guys in the store. People aren't always coming in just looking for a deal. We're looking for free help or cheap. So go in the same as we do with the mindset of our cyber program, where you start at the top. We're not at a race to the bottom. We're not necessarily the cheapest in town, but you're going to love doing business with us. I know we're all over the place, but you just reminded me of that little sort of, how do we take where we're at right now and build something forward?

Well, and I want to just touch on something before we get to the end here, which I've really learned from you is system, systemizing things. And, uh, I was on a coaching call last night and the, uh, one of the gentlemen was saying, well, I, I need to know every question for the discovery call when we're meeting with our clients. And I shared with him, because I remember what you and I talked about in the process you've implemented, and I now take it in part of my world. When you're doing the discovery call, you put it in a system and you do it together, and the clients see the questions, you fill it out together. And I said, it's okay to share the questions and do it together. But the person at the time, early in their stages of being in the field, thought that they needed to know it all and know every question. But you don't.

Anybody doing any sort of sales, developing the relationship with any of their new clients, as long as we're very transparent. And I do, I open up my screen on a Teams or a Zoom, whichever they're comfortable with, typically Teams, and I show them and we do it literally. And they see me making my typing errors and correcting it, but it gives me a good chance to let them feel like we're working as a team and not me doing all the selling and them having to.

Well, really though, honestly, it is a team effort. because you're vested in helping them with their cyber and educating them, and they want to know what they need to know.

What was the one that we looked at this morning about the printer? They spent $3,000 piece of shit. Yeah, yes. You might have to edit that out. I don't know where it's from.

No, no, no, that's OK.

But I literally used her actual words, and she got a good kick out of that. But like I said, why would I change that? That's how you feel.

Yeah.

And I marked it, colored it.

Oh, yeah, that's right. I saw that you put it right in. But it's true, though. You're having an informative sales discussion, an honest discussion. And sometimes we say words that are colorful. And they reflect what the reality is. And that's okay.

Don't get me wrong, this individual, she's the kindest person. She's very nice. She's just not happy with this thing.

Okay. Did you ever see the movie Office Space?

Yes.

Okay, do you remember the scene where they're beating the crap out of the photocopier? I think everybody, every listener that's listening right now has had a special moment with a photocopier or a printer. And a car as well, but especially a photocopier.

I'm stealing that right now. I'm going to write a line in my monday.com that I use for the first time of appointment.

Yeah, well you should show that scene where they're beating the crap. I remember my career, I worked in corporate IT for a construction fabrication company. I got to share this with you and hopefully the listeners enjoy it. Our payroll administrator had worked with a dot matrix printer for years, for a few years, and it was dot matrix over five, 600 employees. And the thing would keep jamming and she'd call me and say, Brettster, I need help with the printer. And I remember when we switched to laser, I took that printer back in the shop. And I put it underneath where the two ton weight is. And I, I gave the controls. I said, I said to the lady, I said, I need you to come out in the back for a second. I got to show you something. I gave her the controller and I had her push the button. She got to destroy the printer. She was so happy. I wish I could find the pictures because I took it, but everybody's got a moment like that. So that's right.

Well, I definitely picked something up there. I'm adding that to my introduction. So have you had any special moments with your. Existing hardware.

I'm going to reach out to her and tell her that I shared that story today. We still stay in touch. Lovely lady. So Don, we're getting close to wrapping up. It's hard to believe. I've asked this to every guest. What's been the most impactful book that you've listened to or you've read or that you're currently reading that you share with the listeners?

Am I limited to one?

No, some people have said two or three.

Definitely, and this has come from years ago, I actually converted it to a course. I would train all the managers at the hotel organization. We had 13 hotels at the time, so 135 managers. We did something called Getting Things Done. It's about just changing, putting context into your list, getting it out of your head, getting it into a trusted space. Sometimes the trusted space gets a little out of control. I'll have my weekly review and I'll get all that stuff digitized or dealt with or put it in another bucket.

Yes. Yeah. Deferred delegate. Yeah.

Yeah. So that's just a collect right there. Right. It still needs to be decided on. It's definitely David Allen's getting things done and I've gone back through that. Well, both in audio and I've got more than one copy. up on my shelf right now. It's just a classic. It makes sense and stuff you can utilize starting when you start reading the book and it'll just unclutter your brain. The second one is what I'm currently continuing to implement and bounce back and forth. What I do is I typically, when I listen to a book, I'll go back and hit chapters again, kind of sporadically after I've listened to it. through and focus on that because you get a different take, a different understanding of what's being said when it's the second time around. So, deep work, Cal Newport.

Oh yeah, I heard about that. I never read.

That's where I'm getting this concept of getting into my zone where I can just get things done. And then, honestly, another one that's We've recently kind of started to adhere to Sell or Be Sold. Authors failing me at the moment should give the credit. Grant Cardone. Again, totally different books, different things. The idea of focusing on those ones, and I'm going back on Sell or Be Sold. He does a really great, near the end, it's chapter 14 or something, and it's about getting rid of the negativity. And so 24 hours without thinking or saying or presenting something negative. Very difficult.

Like you said, or even if you start your day with gratitude, I started with thinking about gratitude, everything that I'm thankful for. Yeah.

Right.

Yeah.

So that's the kind of the key things coming out of then again, seller be sold. I'm not focused on the sales part as much as I am on the mindset. which you and I talk about all the time, and that's where I'm really focusing on, is just not being negative. It's so easy every day with all the incoming, especially with being in IT, as we always say with IT, If it's all working, why are we paying you? If it's not working, why are we paying you? There's never a happy balance.

I know, I know. That's the reality.

One of the things that we'd said in the store and I can wrap it up, I know we're getting near end here, but one thing that we say with the store, we used to do counter work and we actually have to check everybody in in queue, which is good because we're getting busy enough. But even when you're checking them in, you have to remember that you're part technician and you're part psychologist. Yeah. That's such a person. People have such personal connection with their digital. Yes. Even more so than a vehicle.

Yes.

We've all been to the dealer, getting a service change or whatever and seeing people. They're much more level-headed and reasonable when their car blew up and they need to get it, an engine rebuilt surprisingly, but when they can't get their photos dead to download off of their iPhone. Yeah. Very emotional. And that's because that's such personal stuff.

And that's the only place it is now sometimes where the children's only pictures.

Businesses, the guys refer to the non-managed clients, just the break fix clients that come in as a same day service. So it'd be Brett, same day service, Galant. Yeah, because you come in and you need it now and your business is operating off this and it's urgent. So we always have to tell our guys, don't let their lack of planning default to an emergency on your behalf.

Yeah, because you have to honor the other clients you're serving as well. And unfortunately that's happened to the, to those people, but you have to do what's best for the business and for the other clients that you're serving. Right. So it's just, it's unfortunate that we can't always serve people like boom, boom right away, but there's a method for, for some of the, for some of the why that, that you do that. That's right. And it's okay. Yeah. So, yeah.

You need to as well, but we'll treat you with just as much respect.

Once we get you to the, we generally want to help you and support you.

Yeah, this we've been all over the board, Brett. I know we've got to get going. I need to get reset. Yeah. Anything you want to say before we go, I was just going to say, I wasn't sure the name of the podcast should be the adaptive mindset. No, I know, but it should be the 80. I don't even remember what it is now. 80 H.

Yeah.

Is it ADHD?

Yeah. But, but we, um, I knew that. that our conversation would be a little different than everybody else that we had because we touch on so many things. And I think the biggest takeaway that I would like everybody to take away from this episode is if you don't have an accountability partner or if you're not connecting with people, do that, support each other, lift each other up. You'll find on when you form that relationship with others, Not only will it benefit you, it will benefit the other person. It will benefit your business and your family and your community. So Don, I want to thank you for our relationship, our accountability calls. They are so valuable.

I think what you just reminded me of, and if anybody wanted to reach out to you or even myself, I'm sure you can share my information, but regarding the system to the weekly accountability and how we write down up to, but no more than three things that we'll commit to commitments and having a placeholder, which I was recently moving around again, but I think I've reset myself. So just need a specific, consistent tool where it's shared between the two people. We also went down a path beginning where we were bringing in others and nothing against those other amazing people, but it doesn't work for the accountability one-on-one process. If you think we are all over the board, think about adding a third. a third cage of squirrels that you're releasing into the mix.

Oh, 100%. Don, I'll definitely have your contact info in the show notes. Folks, I'd encourage you to connect with Don. He's a man of many talents, and I really appreciate you being on the podcast today, Don.

Well, thanks for all that praise. Check's in the mail.

Perfect. Thank you. Thanks for tuning into the Adaptive Mindset. If you found value in today's episode, don't forget to subscribe, leave a review, and share it with someone who's ready to thrive in the digital age. Stay secure, stay adaptable, and I'll see you next time.