Most IT mistakes aren’t technical — they’re decision mistakes made under pressure, with incomplete information, and too much influence from sales teams.

I’ve spent my career on all sides of IT decisions: as an engineer, a consultant, a service provider, and a buyer. I’ve seen how good teams end up with the wrong vendors, the wrong contracts, or solutions that look fine on day one and hurt a year later.

Today, I help companies make IT decisions with less risk — from defining the right strategy, to choosing vendors, to reviewing contracts before they’re signed, to fixing environments that have grown messy or expensive over time.

I’m not a reseller and my role is simple: help you slow down just enough to make the right call, and avoid mistakes that are hard to undo.

If you’re making an IT decision and want a second set of experienced eyes before committing, that’s usually where I’m most useful.

Max Clark

Five years ago, I hit record with no audience and no plan. I didn’t know if anyone would stick around.

It started in the margins. Between client work and late nights. Progress was uneven. There were long stretches where downloads didn’t move, growth stayed flat, and I questioned why I kept showing up. More than a few times, I sat down thinking it might be the last episode.

What kept me coming back was having a place to talk through the decisions I was watching operators wrestle with every day. The tradeoffs, the internal pressure, the problems that don’t have clean answers. The conversations reflected how technology actually shows up inside real organizations, not the version anyone sells.

Two hundred episodes in, with listeners in more than 100 countries, the biggest change wasn’t reach. It was my perspective. 

Every guest challenged something I thought I understood. Every hard conversation exposed how shallow certainty can be. Recording in public forced me to sit with being wrong and keep going anyway.

This podcast grew because the conversations stayed grounded in lived experience.

There’s still a lot to improve. I’m still learning. I’m still not done. 
But I’m proud I stuck with it long enough for the work to mean something. 

If you’ve listened at any point, thank you - I appreciate the time you gave it.

Making sure one IT decision doesn’t define your career.

200 Episodes In

Forget coffee/uber eats... if someone promised to do 20 burpees I'd take that meeting in an instant.

21 years ago I took my first flight

When I was a kid I didn't even know I could dream of doing this

I'm so grateful for the blessings I've received

What's the greatest lie the cloud sold?

That bandwidth is $0.05/GB

Current retail (aka no commit in a datacenter) is $0.00078/GB

We've helped clients sign volume deals for way less

If you're spending > $100k on egress we can help you save $$$!

February is a perfect rectangular month, four exact weeks Sunday to Saturday all perfectly contained.

If you've never thought about the insanity of our calendar and the arbitrary months (and their lengths) this is what we could be living instead.

Most people hear “AI in the contact center” and think efficiency.
Shorter calls. Lower costs. Better CSAT.

What I keep seeing is something else.

The demo looks great.
Then it hits production and things start breaking.

Teams assume they can just turn it on.
- No clear metrics.
- No guardrails.
- No ownership when real customers show up.

I sat down with Jim K. Tennant from Observe.AI to talk through why this keeps happening and what actually causes Contact Center AI projects to fail post-demo.

What actually happens when experimentation meets real operations - full story in comments 👇

One thing I keep seeing with AI projects - they don’t usually fall apart in the demo.
They fall apart later.

It starts with:
“Just connect it to our data.”
“Just point it at the knowledge base.”
“Just let it start taking calls.”

Then real calls show up.
The data isn’t as clean as expected.
Agents stop trusting the output and work around it.

At that point, the system is technically live - but no one really trusts it.

We unpacked this with Jim K Tennant from Observe.AI on this week’s episode — specifically why contact center AI breaks after approval, not before.

Episode drops Thursday.
Links in comments. 👇

Silicon Valley is the birthplace of tech
Los Angeles & Seattle are the gateways to the Pacific
New York the finance capital
Miami the gateway to LATAM
Atlanta credit card processing
Ashburn is the core of the Cloud

And now DFW... abundant land, power, and people

Open article: Data center construction boom positions Dallas-Fort Worth as national powerhouse for tech infrastructure - Dallas Business Journal by bizjournals.com

Data center construction boom positions Dallas-Fort Worth as national powerhouse for tech infrastructure - Dallas Business Journal

Fortinet CVE-2026-24858... WTF???

”An attacker’s valid FortiCloud session, tied to their own device, gets accepted as legitimate for other users’ devices.”

Free credit monitoring!

If you've ever purchased anything from Under Armor your free credit monitoring is coming

"When I was your age Amazon didn't exist, we had to wait weeks for things to show up!"

I can't breathe 😂

The difference between surviving and being in control.

I’ve been stuck on one moment from a recent conversation. We were discussing this nightmare scenario: Thanksgiving weekend. Peak season. 400+ people sitting in queue.

They knew the volume was coming - they just didn’t know when the plan would fall apart.

You know what happens next.

Everything goes reactive. Emergency hiring just to slow the bleeding. Agents picking up calls from customers who are already frustrated. By the time someone reaches a human, the experience is already broken.

But the part that bothered me most is that none of this was new.
They’d seen it before. They’d gotten through it before. And they were already bracing for it to happen again.

They got through it this time. Real question is what happens the next time around?

If this feels uncomfortably familiar, the episode explores what teams convince themselves is “fine”.. right up until it isn’t.

Michael Cibelli of PolyAI breaks down where things really fall apart. 

Episode drops Thursday - link in comments 👇

Open article: Node.js — Tuesday, January 13, 2026 Security Releases by nodejs.org

Node.js — Tuesday, January 13, 2026 Security Releases

Digital Realty

Partner Advocate to the Global Digital Realty Family of Brands, and Digital Realty Advocate to Indirect Sales Partners spanning the spectrum from VARs, SIs, TSDs and Selling Agents to OEMs, IaaS, PaaS, and Strategic Alliances.

Sr Channel Sales Manager 

Yoga Alliance

I love sharing my passion for yoga with others. Join me on the mat!

I promise you will get the hang of it with practice! It will do wonders for your career - it will help better manage your stress levels, you will get better sleep at night, and you'll get fit in the process!

https://www.yogaalliance.org/TeacherPublicProfile?tid=108857

Yoga Instructor and Student

Fusion Connect

Established thought-leader and change-agent inside my organization and in the Telecommunications and Channel Partner industries as a whole. Supporting partners and Master Agents nation-wide utilizing sales enablement tools, training, events, and incentives to drive sales for Fusion.

National Channel Manager

Doubled 2016 sales revenue from 2015 with only half the number of Channel Managers, effectively turning around the Channel Program. Designed and delivered external partner training, marketing, PR, and outreach combined with internal sales and product training with measurable results. Traveled nation-wide to attend and present at national conferences, regional events, and micro-events for the channel partner community.

National Partner Development Manager

Traveled to our national markets to lead one-week intensive training courses to the new sales representatives hired across all of our sales channels. Revised the program, update the content to include relevant information and best practices from my own sales experience to give my new hires a full-spectrum understanding of a day in the life at Birch.

National Sales Trainer

Hired by Cbeyond as an entry-level outside sales representative. Promoted all the way up the ranks in my tenure in sales. 

Number 2 in the company for 2013 year to date. 

Promoted after the Birch acquisition to train all sales channels in the company.

In sales, worked directly with C-level Executives and small to medium business owners to analyze what their business objectives were and how technology was either helping them or hindering them from achieving those goals.

Consulted with businesses to prioritize technology initiatives, set budgets for technology projects, and manage implementation of cloud migrations, dedicated internet and MPLS environments, VOIP and hosted PBX conversions, etc. Provided each client with it's own unique set of services, incorporating Cloud Computing, Break-Fix IT Support, Dedicated Network, MPLS, Business Mobile, and Hosted PBX. 

Ensured that each company I consulted was leveraging technology in a way that sustained business growth, secured critical company assets, saved substantial resources, and enabled them to better serve their clients.

Senior Account Executive - Complex Sales - Team Lead

My Dentist

Joined MyDentist during my undergrad studies and quickly launched myself into a position reporting to the Founder/CEO and working closely with his EA to support and manage his time, attention, and resources. Collaborated with all parts of the business and the CXOs to deliver strategic value to the business and drive results to be the fastest growing Dental Practice Management company in America leading up to the successful sale to Monarch Dentistry in 2011. 

Prepared learning materials, including compiling data, PowerPoint presentations, hand-outs, and hands-on activities, for all meetings headed by CEO, such as Continuing Education, regional, and company-wide quarterly meetings. 

Scheduled, conducted, and analyzed C.T. scans for all My Dentist offices in the Oklahoma City region. Educated referring doctors on how to manipulate and read results of C.T. scans. Worked closely with founder of C-Dental Xray to master cloud-based implant case-planning software that custom mills surgical guides. Tutored doctors on the software and ordering.

Communicated with doctors who requested CEO's assistance in cases of extreme rehabilitation, i.e. immediate implant over-dentures, All-On-4, or full mouth crown and bridge restorations. Prepared doctors for pre-op requirements, ordered necessary supplies, and traveled to offices in three states to complete procedures. For doctors new to implant surgery, traveled to offices to train assistants on preparation, ordering, aseptic surgical techniques, and tracking patients.

Chief of Staff to the CEO

High energy contributor to the best ecosystem of Partner Sales Leaders, serving the entire spectrum of Indirect “Partners” from Primary Distributors and Selling Agents, to Resale Partners, to Referral and Strategic Alliances. Motivated to go to work every day for a company that has designed the gold standard Hybrid IT strategy to meet the needs of today’s distributed employee and digital-savvy customer, optimizing secure data exchange to unlock new revenue streams while reducing technical debt. By implementing a flexible, future-proof platform design, my customers are built to thrive in today’s rapidly evolving technology landscape. 

If life gets stressful, you can find me in my food forest of a backyard or on my yoga mat. "Life's a garden. Dig it. You gotta make it work for you." Joe Dirt

*Opinions expressed through this profile are my own and are in no way related to my current employer.*

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