May 13, 2025 • 46 mins
In this episode of IAMCP Profiles in Partnership, hosts Anthony Carrano and Rudy Rodriguez sit down with Aaron Udler, CEO of OfficePro, to explore how integrity, trust, and innovation fuel long-term success in the Microsoft Partner ecosystem.
Aaron shares his journey of transforming OfficePro from a small family-run business into a nationally recognized training and staffing powerhouse. Along the way, he underscores the importance of building strong channel relationships, staying true to your partners, and the power of clear communication.
Throughout this episode, Anthony, Rudy, and Aaron discuss:
- Trust Over Transactions: Learn how Aaron’s commitment to honoring partner relationships—even when faced with direct client offers—has helped build OfficePro’s reputation for integrity and dependability in the channel.
- The Evolution of AI in Training: Discover how OfficePro is leveraging AI to reshape learning experiences across enterprise and government clients, from creative Copilot use cases to responsible implementation strategies.
- Building for the Future: Hear how Aaron’s forward-thinking investments in AI content, Microsoft certification programs, and workforce development initiatives position OfficePro at the forefront of industry transformation.
- Innovative Offerings Like AIHeadshotMasters.com: Explore how OfficePro’s unique AI-powered headshot service is bridging technology and personal branding, especially in support of job seekers and workforce agencies.
Whether you’re a partner looking to strengthen your channel relationships or a leader navigating the fast-paced evolution of AI, Aaron’s insights will inspire you to double down on communication, community, and doing business the right way.
Listener Links / Resources
Guest:
Aaron Udler, CEM, CTS
CEO at OFFICEPRO
Show hosts:
Anthony Carrano LinkedIn, Managing Partner at Dunamis Marketing
Rudy Rodriguez LinkedIn, Managing Partner at Dunamis Marketing
Profiles in Partnership, brought to you by Dunamis Marketing
International Association of Microsoft Channel Partners: IAMCP Website
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Anthony Carrano (00:05):
Welcome to the IAMCP Profiles and Partnership,
the podcast that showcases howMicrosoft partners and IAMCP
members boost their business bycollaborating with other members
and partners. I'm your co-host,Anthony Carrano. In each
episode, I'll be talking to someof the most innovative and
successful partners in theMicrosoft ecosystem. The
(00:26):
International Association ofMicrosoft Channel Partners,
otherwise known as IAMCP, is acommunity of Microsoft partners
who help each other grow andthrive. Members can find and
connect with other partnerslocally and globally and access
exclusive resources andopportunities.
Whether you're looking for newcustomers, new markets or new
solutions, IAMCP can help youachieve your goals. We'll hear
(00:49):
their stories, learn from theirexperiences and discover the
best practices and strategiesthey use to increase customer
loyalty and grow revenues.Whether you're a new partner or
an established one, you'll findvaluable insights and
inspiration in this podcast. Wehope you enjoy this podcast and
find it useful and inspiring. Ifyou do, please subscribe, rate,
(01:09):
and review us on your favoritepodcast platform. And don't
forget to follow us on socialmedia and connect with us on our
website,www.profilesandpartnership.com,
where you can find moreinformation, resources, and
opportunities to partner forsuccess. Thank you for
listening. And now let's getstarted with today's episode.
(01:29):
But before we dive into ourinterview, let me ask you, how
are you leveraging the IAMCP andMicrosoft partner network to
grow your business? And how areyou evolving your business in
order to stay relevant andcontinue to provide value?
We dive into these questions andmany others in this podcast with
the help of our guest as heshares stories, challenges and
(01:51):
successes, as well as practicaltips and advice on how to
partner for success. Are youready to join us on this
journey? Then stay tuned becausewe have a great show for you
today. Our guest is Aaron Udler,the CEO at Office Pro, an award
winning training curriculumdevelopment training services
and short and long term staffingsolutions provider that has
(02:12):
trained over a million peoplewith professional high caliber
training. Let's hear what he hasto say.
Welcome Aaron to the podcasttoday. Really appreciate you
joining us.
Aaron Udler (02:23):
Thanks for having me. Excited to be here.
Anthony Carrano (02:26):
Excellent. Let's jump right in. Let's start
off. Tell us a little bit aboutyourself and your role in the
company.
Aaron Udler (02:31):
Sure. I'm the President and CEO of Office Pro.
We're started in 1984. My dadstarted the company back in
those days, training on a brandnew type of technology called
computers. And man, have we comea long way. And so today we
still do a lot of computer typetraining, whether it's Microsoft
Office, we do a lot of break fixservices in the AV space, we do
(02:55):
help desk services, and we alsoprovide AI training.
Anthony Carrano (02:58):
Oh, okay. Excellent. Now, I also know,
just heard that you played alittle football in the day.
Aaron Udler (03:05):
Yeah. I played football for Indiana University.
I was, I was a walk on. And so Iwalked on as a kicker. I put on
about 90 pounds in eight monthsand got really big and really
tough and ended up switching totight end. Finished up as a
tight end and just had a blastdoing that. It's big ten
football, some of the best inthe country. Got great stories.
And then, you know, this pastseason, we had, one of the best
(03:27):
years, ever in Indiana football.So it was great to be on the
national stage.
Anthony Carrano (03:31):
So I have to ask, what's your opinion about,
you know, the the new playoffs,you know, the schedule and how
that works?
Aaron Udler (03:39):
I think it's really cool. I love change. I love how
they expanded it. I just feltbad for Indiana because we had
to play an away game in thefirst round. I wish we would
have had a home game, but so itgoes or maybe even a neutral
site game. So I think in thefuture, if they go more neutral
site games for that first round,it makes it a little bit more
fair. But at the end of the day,I think it's super cool for for
the game of football.
Anthony Carrano (04:00):
Very cool, very cool. Now tell us a little bit,
when did you join the IAMCP?
Aaron Udler (04:05):
So I came to Office Pro and joined IAMCP both in
2013. My dad had been retiredfor about ten years. He had
hired someone to run thecompany. And so when I came in,
I just got my MBA, came toOffice Pro. I was like, alright.
What other resources are outthere? How do I learn about the
industry? Found IAMCP. Didn'treally know much about it. And
(04:26):
wow. What a terrific group,terrific organization. I'm glad
to be a part of it.
Anthony Carrano (04:31):
Excellent. Before, we kinda get into, you
know, the actual, partner storyhere, can you share a little bit
more about, Office Pro's, youknow, areas of, specialization
and expertise?
Aaron Udler (04:42):
Yeah. We, you know, when I first started and till
still to this day, our core isend user training. That's what
we love to do. Word, Excel,PowerPoint, SharePoint, Teams,
and so on and so on. Everythingend user based.
And then along the way to keepour partnership Microsoft, we
had to do IT training. So welove doing IT training, whether
it's Azure or SharePointadministrator, or we're super
(05:07):
big now in Power BI, we love it.That's like the hottest class
that we teach today, that andExcel. And that's kind of what
we focus on from a trainingside. And then we also have a
whole staffing group withinOffice Pro.
What we do is we help partnerswhether they need, if they need
MCPs to provide differentservices to help their IT group
(05:28):
run, or if they need AV, whichis audio visual, if they need
video conferencing room support,we provide help there. We
provide break fix services, andwe also provide AI services. So
we'll talk more about the AIstuff in a little bit.
Rudy Rodriguez (05:43):
So I've got a question regarding the type of
training that you do. Is it allinstructor led or are you doing
a blended solution or are youoffering e-learning solutions as
well?
Aaron Udler (05:53):
99% of our training is instructor led training. It's
either live in person or livevirtual. Since COVID, it's been
more live virtual, but we'restarting to see more and more
folks going back into theoffice. So we are doing in
person training as well. We dohave clients from time to time
that say, Hey, we need somecustom videos. Can we, you know,
(06:13):
do a video on Teams or how tocreate a pivot table in
SharePoint or create a pivottable in Excel or how to
whatever it is, right? So we docreate a lot of content in
house.
Rudy Rodriguez (06:26):
That's great to hear that. I noticed that you've
trained over a million people.Is that correct?
Aaron Udler (06:31):
Yeah. I mean, when you're a 45 year old business,
yeah, you've kind of been aroundthe block a couple of times.
We've trained a lot of folksover the years.
Rudy Rodriguez (06:42):
That's a lot of office training. My gosh. That's
that's wonderful. That'swonderful that you've kept track
of all that. I know how hardthat is to do.
Aaron Udler (06:49):
Yeah. We've done a lot of averaging and, you know,
figure out, you know, what isthat number? And so when we've
we do a lot in the federalgovernment space and we're big
in several different agencies.We've been with lots of agencies
for years and years, and wecontinue to win recompetes. When
we factor in how many hundredsof thousands of people within
all these different agencies,they add up and then add in the
(07:13):
commercial side of the businessand, you know, in state and
local county governments aswell. So yeah, we've done a lot.
Rudy Rodriguez (07:21):
Are you on the GSA schedule or not?
Aaron Udler (07:24):
We are on the GSA schedule, we're on schedule 70.
Rudy Rodriguez (07:28):
Great. Great to hear. I'm sure our our partners
would like to hear that toobecause there's, we have a lot
of partners that do federal workoutside of the DC area. So
that's always great to knowpartners that are on GSA.
So I've got a question for youbecause we want to hear the
story. You know, we we receivedyour story from the IAMCP
headquarters, and we want toknow more about this partner
(07:49):
showcase. And can you tell us alittle bit about, you know, what
the project was? Don't have totell us a client or any anything
else about you know, but tell usabout what the solution was, how
you how you encountered thisbusiness and then the challenges
that you might have faced onthis project?
Aaron Udler (08:07):
Yeah, you bet. So prior to joining Office Pro, I
worked for a trade associationcalled Infocom. And Infocom is
now called Avixa, but they stillhave a trade show called
Infocom, and it's an audiovisual show. And it's all about
understood channel sales. And alot of people don't understand
what that is.
And when I came to Office Pro, Iknew that I had a small
(08:28):
business. There were six fulltime employees. I was the one
sales guy. Everybody else wasops, and I needed to grow and I
needed help. And the only thingI knew how to do was channel
sales.
So what is channel sales? That'sa big question that a lot of
people don't understand. Andwhat channel sales is, let's
take a TV that you have at home.Let's say you have a Sony TV at
home, and let's say it costsSony $25 to make the TV. Well,
(08:51):
then Sony will sell it to adistributor such as Synnex or
Ingram Micro, there's a lot ofdistributors out there.
They'll sell to them for $50 Andthen they'll sell it to a
retailer like a Best Buy orAmazon for a hundred dollars.
And then they'll sell it to youand I, the consumer for $200 And
everybody along the way isgetting a piece of the action.
And there's differentsalespeople within that model,
(09:12):
within that sales channel. Soeveryone's making a small piece
of the pie.
And I knew when I came to OfficePro, I'm a small business. How
am I gonna be able to grow mybusiness with just me? There's
just, I'm limited. So knowingthis, went back to what I knew
best, AV. And I went to an AVvideo conferencing show in New
York and I at the event, I'mnetworking and this guy looks at
(09:34):
my business card and he seesthat we're a Microsoft Silver
Learning partner. And he's like,Oh, that's a big deal. And this
is back in the fall of 2013. I'mlike, Yeah, I guess. I don't
know, I'm new to Office Pro. Idon't even know what this means
that we're a silver learningpartner. And I'm like, It sounds
pretty cool.
Sure, yeah. I mean, it is a bigdeal. And so I started talking
to this guy and he works for aVAR. A VAR is a value added
(09:57):
reseller, which is kind of likea distributor. It's kind of like
a retailer.
The VARs mainly sell to endusers, to pharmaceutical
companies and big Fortune 500type companies to kind of give
you an idea. And a VAR is avalue added reseller. And so
what we did was, or what I didwith him was, you know, I was
(10:18):
just trying to sell them overand over and I called them all
the time. And finally he's like,Hey, we're doing a, there's a
hospital in Chicago. They needsome Skype for Business. Or I'm
sorry, not Skype for Business. Ithink it was Microsoft Lync 2013
training.
Can you go train the super userson how to use it? Sure. So he's
like, there's just 10 peoplegoing to be in the training.
It's going to be virtual. And Iwas like, great, sure. We'll do
(10:41):
it, dude. So we go and we go dothis training and they loved it
so much that they said, hey, wewanna train the other 200
workers at the hospital. I waslike, okay, great.
So we proved ourselves to thisVAR and I'm like, okay, this is
pretty cool. And this is backin, you know, I don't know,
probably middle of 2014. Andthis guy keeps on calling me
literally for the next twelvemonths. Hey, I need an outline
(11:02):
for, you know, now Skype forBusiness, or I need an outline
for this or that, whatever itis. And finally, was like, Bro,
you keep on calling me. You're anice person, but you're wasting
my time. I keep on sending yououtlines. I keep on getting you
quotes. I'm not gettinganywhere. And all he said was,
Aaron, stick with me, stick withme.
I'm like, Okay, sure. So we getto, right about a week or two
(11:23):
before Thanksgiving in 2015, andhe says, hey, and he names this
big pharmaceutical company. He'slike, hey, these guys are
rolling out Skype for Business.I'm like, great. Who is that
company? I'd never heard of thembefore. He's like, dude, come on
bro. So I Googled the companyand they're like, at the time,
like, I don't know, 20 or$30,000,000,000 company. He's
like, come meet me out at theirheadquarters in the LA area. I
(11:45):
was like, okay.
So I fly out to LA and I meet upwith them and we go to the spa
room and we find out thatthey've got, I don't know, it
was like 10 or 15,000 userson-site. They're rolling out
Skype for Business. They havesome Polycom video conferencing
solutions. They've got someCrestron hardware. Crestron
does, they have a product calledAirMedia, which is a wireless
(12:08):
screen sharing and it'smanufacturer agnostic, meaning
you can have a droid, you canhave an iPhone, you can have a
PC, you can have a Mac, itdoesn't matter. You can
wirelessly screen share in theconference room. And they said,
Hey, we need to train everybody.Can you create the training
content and train all, you know,10 to 15,000 users? I was like,
Yeah, sure. We can do this withour eyes closed.
Needless to say, we had neverdone any AV training before, but
(12:30):
we're a small business and mybackground's AV. So I called up
my buddies that I used to workwith at Infocom like, hey guys,
can you help me out with this?And so we came up with this
whole training plan. And alongthe way, know, we do this
training and next thing youknow, we're like a big deal in
the training space in both AVand in the Microsoft community
(12:51):
because we got this contractthrough the channel. Now this
channel was really bizarro.
It was a bigger channel thankind of what I mentioned
earlier, because we had the enduser, which sold to a change
management company. The changemanagement company sold to the
VAR that I mentioned earlier,who's also a Microsoft partner,
who's a part of IAMCP. They soldto us Office Pro and of course
(13:13):
Office Pro, we're a smallbusiness. We had lots of subs on
this as well to make sure thatwe had a successful project. And
yeah, and we had a supersuccessful campaign with this
project.
We still do work for thiscompany today. And again, this
is big pharma. Multiple timesover the years, this pharma has
come to us and said, Hey, Aaron,we wanna work with you directly.
(13:36):
And a 100% of the times, everytime I said, No. And they always
say, Why? We're gonna throw youmillions of dollars. And I'm
like, Well, you know what? It'snot honest. And they're like,
Well, what do you mean? It'slike, Well, I wouldn't have been
at this party to provide you allthese good services if it wasn't
for the channel.
And I learned in life that yourintegrity is like your
virginity. You only can lose itone time and I'm not gonna lose
(13:56):
it. And it's not worth it tomake a couple extra bucks
because I'd rather get all theother clients within that
channel system, right? So I can,you know, do training for all
the other clients that are inthere. Sure enough, we've been
rewarded and we do training forall their other clients within
the VAR community.
So, you know, the first timethat you, you know, take this
(14:19):
extra, you know, money is thefirst time you ruin the channel
and everybody sees you andthey're like, alright, you know,
Office Pro violated the channel.We're not gonna work with you. I
don't wanna I didn't wanna haveto go through that.
Rudy Rodriguez (14:30):
Well, that's great to great story to hear
because, you know, that's one ofthe one of the mantras of the
IAMCP is about doing businessethically and building trust
relationships. So that's anexcellent, excellent story to
tell. So is your friend retiredat this company? Because you've
made him a lot of money or what?
Aaron Udler (14:49):
I wish he actually, he actually left the company to
go work from from a, you know, aseveral hundred million dollar
VAR to a fortune 10 typecompany. So he's he's really
grown in his career as well. Soit's been a, it's been a win
win.
Rudy Rodriguez (15:03):
Well, that's great to hear. Now I know what
it's like to build those channelrelationships and and, having
been in your business before,I've seen all my friends retire.
And it's like, you build thoserelationships at these
companies, and it's always goodto learn who are their their
successors are. You're trying tomake it work.
Aaron Udler (15:22):
Yeah.
Rudy Rodriguez (15:23):
Anthony, do you have some questions?
Anthony Carrano (15:25):
Yeah. So when you were, working, you know,
with, you know, this SI toserve, you know, the larger,
pharmaceutical, company, whatwere some just things like
during the course of theengagement that you would say
were really important, as assome best practices to make it a
successful engagement?
Aaron Udler (15:45):
Yeah. I have a saying at Office Pro,
communication winschampionships. Firm believer in
that. You gotta get everythingdocumented. You gotta, you know,
you know, repeat, repeat,repeat.
You gotta say things over andover and over again. When we
started doing the conferenceroom training, we ran into an
issue. And it wasn't with the SIper se, but keep in mind that
there was another changemanagement company. We ran into
(16:07):
an issue with them. And whathappened was we're doing these
trainings in these smallconference rooms, and there's
only four chairs in there.
But the page management companywere doing tours of this new
building and this new officespace with 30 to 40 people in a
group. Well, you can't fit 30 or40 people in a four person
(16:29):
conference room. Maybe you canget six, maybe seven. Right? And
so, you know, we started gettinga bad we got a bad review from
both the, the end user and ourVAR, our system integrator
saying, Hey, what the hell isgoing on here? Your training's
not good. I'm like, Well, whatam I supposed to do? Right? I've
got 30 or 40 people in a fourperson conference room. This is
(16:50):
beyond my control. I need somehelp here. Can you help? Right?
We went through this and all thereview process and the channel
partner that was the changemanagement company, they made
changes at the last minute,didn't tell me. Right?
And that's communication 101.You got to tell me so and make
me prepared so we can makeadjustments. Maybe we'd go into
a larger conference room andthey did have larger conference
(17:13):
rooms, right? We'd adjust thetour. So it just goes back to
communication, communication,communication.
Anthony Carrano (17:19):
That's good. I'm smiling here because usually
isn't it a defense winschampionships, you know, coming
from a former big ten collegefootball player, but
communication winschampionships. So I like it.
What about some of the otherside of that, like, what were
some of the challenges that youall experienced during the
(17:41):
engagement? And, you know, howdid you, you know, work together
to overcome that in addition tocommunication? Like what what,
you know, some things that youhad to kind of work through?
Aaron Udler (17:52):
Yeah. You know, the human aspect about, you know,
you expect labor to be on-siteand somebody calls out sick last
minute. What do you do? Yougotta figure it out. I remember
telling my wife, I mean, for us,it was a big contract and we had
someone call out sick the daybefore.
I live in Washington, DC and theclient's out in LA and at twelve
or 01:00 in the afternoon, Iwent to go book a flight, to go,
(18:12):
you know, for a 06:00 flight togo to LA. And my wife's like,
what the hell is wrong with you?And I'm like, well, I gotta make
sure we run this trainingsuccessfully tomorrow. I gotta
be I'm thrown into action. Youknow, things like that happen.
You know, I remember one of myfirst sales jobs, my sales
manager said to me, and this iswhen I was right out of college.
He said, If you don't hit yourquota for the month, what's your
backup plan? Right? And thatstuck with me, you know, to this
(18:36):
day, you know, if I'm nothitting my numbers or if I've
got someone that's supposed tobe on-site, what's my backup
plan? That's so important.
So, I mean, that was one of thebiggest challenges. One of the
other challenges we faced isthat just from a payment
perspective, I remember thechannel partner wasn't paying
us. They owed us $250,000 and Iwas freaking out and they were
(18:57):
90 days past due. And I had my,all my credit cards maxed and I
didn't have a, you know, abucket to poop in, so to say. So
I was like, all right, what do Ido?
So I literally had to call themup. I'm like, guys, look, I got
my bills to pay. I got people topay. I got my credit cards maxed
out. I'm almost out of mypersonal cash.
And they're like, they said, youknow what? I'm glad you
(19:17):
communicated to me. Go ahead andsend us a, what do you call it?
Send us, you know, your invoiceagain. And they overnighted me a
check, right, for $250,000 Andever since that time, I haven't
had to worry about money since,because that was able to propel
me, to the next level, hire theright people. I had to pay off
everybody I needed to. It got meout of debt. And I haven't
again, I haven't really had toworry about money since.
Anthony Carrano (19:40):
That's fantastic. That is, that is
awesome.
Rudy Rodriguez (19:43):
So, Aaron, you know, in in, working on a large
project like this, you know,getting customer sat, keeping
track of customer satisfactionand how you, how there's a lot
of logistics that you've got todeal with. Cause you've got two
customers. You've got acustomer, the person who
introduced you to the eventwho's probably the prime on
(20:05):
this, as well as the end usercustomer. And there's a lot of
logistics in the trainingbusiness, especially on a large
corporate project. Can you tellus a little bit about how you
handle those types of things?Because there's a lot of
logistics that have to gethandled and just a lot of
tracking.
Aaron Udler (20:21):
Yeah, no, you bet. So when it when we first got the
contract, the system integrator,they wanted to make sure this
was, white labeled or privatelabeled, meaning they wanted
their brand. They didn't want,the Office Pro brand on it. So
what they did was they assignedus, email addresses to their
domain. So, you know, my emailaddress was
audler at their domain dot com.
(20:42):
Fine. So we were in the loopevery step of the way. They were
monitoring all of ourcorrespondence. And so if there
was a mistake made, yeah, youbet. We would know about it,
right?
If we had success, yeah, we'dknow about it. It's always fun
to get those success emailssaying, oh, you know, John Doe,
you know, said training wasterrific. It was really good.
After a while, happened waspeople would wanna hit us up on
(21:04):
LinkedIn. They'd say, Oh, Aaron,we see that you're with Office
Pro, not the system integrator,what's going on?
And then we'd explain it andthey'd be like, Okay, yeah,
sure, whatever. Nobody reallycared that much, but it was just
mainly for the system integratorto track. But yeah, we would
always, you know, after everytraining session, provide a
customer or rather a studentevaluation to see how we did,
(21:26):
right? Did you learn more? Whatdid you learn in the class
today? Do you feel that thetraining today on Skype for
Business and Polycom Trio,whatever the, you know, whatever
we were training on, did you,you know, what was your
knowledge before the training?What was your knowledge after
the training? What'd you likemost about the class? What'd you
like least about the class?
So, and we would take all thesesurveys and just compile them
(21:47):
together and give it back toboth the channel, you know, to
the two channel partners and theend user so that they knew what
was going on.
Because again, transparency issuper key. And if we're making
mistakes or if we're missingsomething, we gotta know about
it. So that's kind of whathappened. Along the way, which
was kind of flattering too, isthat our system integrator,
(22:08):
there was another proposal thatcame out and they lost that
proposal to one of theircompetitors. Well, the end user
ended up saying to thatcompetitor, Hey, we love working
with Office Pro.
They know the right way ofrunning training. They know the
right way of staffing this. Youneed to work with these guys and
we're not gonna accept anythingelse. It's because they
understood the channel and Iunderstood the channel and I'm
(22:29):
not gonna go direct and violatethat. And so next thing you
know, I'm working with this, youknow, a much bigger, you know,
system integrator and they're,you know, we're providing the
same services to the samepharmaceutical company.
So ended up working reallynicely. And because of that,
because they were voluntold towork with us, now we're doing
more business with that secondsystem integrator. And next
(22:51):
thing you know, we're marketingto everyone's competitors and
blah, blah, blah. So we're a subon a lot of different projects
these days.
Rudy Rodriguez (22:58):
Wow. That's great to hear. That's great to
hear. So are you still the onlysalesperson for your company or
how have you are you trainingother people to do some of these
things?
Aaron Udler (23:07):
Yeah. No. I've trained other people. So we we
we split our company up into,we've got our government or, you
know, we got our governmenttraining or end user training
department. I got a, I gotsomeone that manages that from a
sales perspective. And then onthe AV side of the business, I
got someone that manages that,in terms of selling and we kinda
tag team it. But, yeah, that'syou know, there's multiple
(23:28):
people now.
Rudy Rodriguez (23:29):
So are you working still primarily with the
IAMCP chapter there inWashington DC, or have you
connected with other IAMCPmembers across the country?
Aaron Udler (23:38):
Yeah. I've connected with other IAMCP
members across the country.Unfortunately, I think the DC
chapter folded as we're part ofthe national chapter right now
of IAMCP. I am the leader thoughof the, the Washington DC
Microsoft Teams user group,which is which is a 501c3. So
I'm running that for the DCarea.
So it's kinda like IAMCP for DCfor the DC area, but not really.
(24:02):
It's again, it's just a focus onMicrosoft Teams. But I loved I
loved during COVID when we hadthe national conventions. I
think it was I forgot what theycalled it, the Microsoft
Conventions, whatever they werecalled. I remember being in some
of the meetings and hearing,let's say, you know, a speaker
and I'm looking at the attendeesin the meeting, I'd be like, oh,
this person's a trainer.
(24:22):
I reached out to this gal andnext thing you know, she's a
trainer with us. I reached outto this other guy and he owned
a, an LMS, training company outof Toronto. And, you know, both
these guys are in the IAMCPcommunity. They're in the
Microsoft channel community. Andwe're partnering with those
guys.
And it's one of those where yougotta make yourself available
and you gotta put yourself outthere and take a risk on people
(24:44):
and see their work,interviewing. You know, you
gotta know what the needs ofyour company are to help you
grow, and we've been able togrow with partners. It's a
beautiful thing that, you know,this ecosystem that we have. I
love it.
Rudy Rodriguez (24:55):
So you've mentioned a lot of end user type
training. Have you jumped intothe more technical, areas like,
you know, you mentioned, I thinkyou mentioned Azure as well. And
have you moved into, you know,can you tell us a little bit
about what what your otherproduct areas are?
Aaron Udler (25:11):
Yeah. So we're doing a lot right now with,
Power BI is huge right now inthe government, especially in
the government space. We do alot for different government
agencies. You know, take NIH,for example, I'm gonna I'll name
those guys, because they dealwith health on a regular basis.
And can you imagine the numberof columns and rows of data that
they have for whatever diseasesare out there, medications,
(25:32):
whatever it is?
So we're helping those guys, youknow, work in Power BI and
create dashboards and thingslike that. Azure is super big
right now in the federalgovernment space and we do a lot
of DOD work. And so when we workwith DOD, it's funny because,
you know, our troops are alwaysmoving around the world, right?
You know, they're protecting us.So, you know, nailing down dates
(25:55):
can sometimes be challenging,but we're doing a lot of Azure
training in the governmentspace.
AI is big too, right? You'vegot, different AI courses that
Microsoft's come out with.Unfortunately, Copilot's not in
the government space yet. It'scoming though. It's not part of
GCC High, we're waiting forthat, but we're doing Copilot
training more in the enterprisespace right now.
(26:16):
And then we're doing basic AItraining for different federal
agencies. One of the coolthings, I think that, not to get
too political, but one of thecool things that I think
President Biden was able toimplement during his presidency
was an AI agency. So there'sAI.gov. And so AI right now, I
think we can all agree is kindof like the wild, wild west. And
(26:36):
this is the first time thatindustry has come to the
government and said, Hey, weneed some regulations around
that.
Can you put something together?So the Biden administration puts
something together and everyfederal agency has to put
together a certain amount ofcontent and leave it in the
public domain in terms of howthey're using AI. And so we've
(26:57):
been able to come into theagencies and say, Hey, you know,
this is how you write chatprompts correctly using ChatGPT,
or, Hey, this is your agency'spolicy on using ChatGPT. What do
you put into it? What do you notput into it?
Because we gotta remind folksthat whatever you put into
ChatGPT, that goes into thepublic domain. So you wanna be
very careful what you put intoit. Some agencies, they
(27:19):
encourage people to sign up forChatGPT with their government
email address and some say, No,please use your Gmail address or
Hotmail address or a nongovernment related address. So
every agency is still trying tofigure it out. They do have
guidance from the AI.gov agency.
I don't know what that agency isoff the top of my head, but
there are rules and regulationscoming out, for that. So it's
(27:42):
really cool what I think ishappening in today's day and
age.
Rudy Rodriguez (27:47):
Yeah, that's one of the things I stress about
with, I have friends who workfor a large Texas state agency,
and, we were having lunch theother day. We were talking
about, hey, have you alldeployed ChatGPT or CoPilot in
your organization? This is aboutover 100,000 people that work at
this agency. And they said yes,but it got issued without rules
(28:13):
and now we just have chaos. Andso that's what will happen if
you train people to use theproducts with the specific
purpose and security.
Which leads me to anotherquestion, have you moved into
anything in the security worldat all?
Aaron Udler (28:30):
We're doing a little bit in security. We do a
little bit of, I forgot the nameof the Microsoft courses, I
think it's like MS 500 or SC500. We do a little bit of
training on that, but, for themost part, that's not our bag.
It's just when companiesspecifically say, Hey, can you
guys do security training? We'llhelp them. We've got a whole
network of instructors that wehelp out with, but again, it's
(28:50):
not our specialty.
Rudy Rodriguez (28:52):
Okay. Thank you. Appreciate that. Anthony, turn
it back over to you.
Anthony Carrano (28:56):
Just to even backtrack a little bit. So I'd
like to kinda get yourperspective on what you're
seeing as, how because you youknow, you work with enterprises,
you also work with, you know,federal government. How are they
approaching it, AI differently?And how are they approaching it
the same?
Aaron Udler (29:14):
We'll start with the same. Both the government
and enterprise are excited aboutAI. They're ecstatic. They're
like, Wow, I didn't know I couldwrite an email to a dissatisfied
customer in like thirty seconds.I can take their email, put it
into an AI platform like ChatGPTand have it completely turned
(29:35):
around.
Everybody's super stoked aboutthat part of it, right? The
government is, there's been astereotype of the government for
years that they're anywhere fromfive to ten years behind
industry, right? And I thinkthat's still the case. AI has
been out for several years now,but it's becoming more
mainstream. The media has pickedup on it.
(29:55):
Putting in front of us on adaily basis, but the government
is just much slower to react.Small businesses is more quick
to react because you know, I'm asmall business guy. Right? We
can pivot really quickly. Biggerbusiness, enterprise, those guys
have have I don't wanna use theterm, you know, tons and tons of
money, but I think they've gottons and tons of money because
(30:16):
they're able to put togetherthat plan, you know, pretty
concise and put it together veryquickly.
They have access to ratherCopilot, right? The federal
government's not there yet. It'snot part of their program. So, I
mean, those are some of thedifferences. But I think at the
end of the day, everyone is justsuper excited about AI.
Anthony Carrano (30:40):
What about then since you work with both spaces,
what lessons have you learnedfrom working with both the
enterprise clients and, youknow, the government entities
that can benefit other, like,smaller partners?
Aaron Udler (30:53):
Yeah. It goes back to communication, communication,
communication. Right? You gottasit down with the customer. You
gotta explain to it what AI is.You gotta do demos of it. You
gotta make sure that they'recomfortable with it. One of the
things I do from a salesperspective is is especially
when people are nervous is Iwanna create an environment
that's safe for them to make amistake. Right? We're human.
(31:14):
That's adult learning theory.It's okay to make a mistake in
training. So when I meet withsomebody, I'll be like, hey, you
know what? Have you opened upchatgpt.com yet? No. Or have you
tried Copilot? No. Well, youknow what? We've got a training
account at Office Pro. Why don'tyou log in with our training
credentials to our Microsoftecosystem and give it a shot?
Let's, well, let's create aPowerPoint presentation with
(31:35):
Copilot. Let's, you know, askChatGPT to to write a, you know,
a love letter to your spouse orsignificant other or whatever.
Right? There's there's so manycool things. One of the things
that my staff loves is that, myson, and and I'm sure he's gonna
hear this recording in inseveral years, but, his mom or
my wife, you know, she was outof town, and my son lost a
(31:58):
tooth.
And my wife said, hey, Aaron.You gotta write a note from the
Tooth Fairy, to our son. I'mlike, I don't know what the hell
to write. So I go to ChatGPT,and I type in, Hi, ChatGPT. Can
you help me write a note fromthe tooth fairy to my son? He
just lost his first, two teethon the same day. I have no idea
(32:21):
what to say. Can you help meout? And sure enough, ChatGPT
said, yeah. Hey. Let's use this.And the email started or the
email the notes started offwith, dear brave tooth explorer.
Wow. What a wonderful occasionfor you to, you know, lose two
teeth on the same day, and itjust goes on for two or three
paragraphs. And I was like, youknow what? ChatGPT, can you make
(32:43):
this, you know, six sentences intotal, not three paragraphs?
So it was, you know, it wassuper cool that, you know, I was
able to to to get the what doall I was able to get these
notes to my son because, again,I don't know what the heck to
write.
Anthony Carrano (33:01):
Yeah. You should you should go back to
that for the next time and thenjust, you know, after you write
the you know, you get, like, thethe main like, the message that
you want. But then go back andsay, you know, rewrite this as
and put in, like, x, like, youknow, character celebrity
persona type in there, and thenit'll reformat and rewrite it in
(33:25):
that voice.
Aaron Udler (33:26):
Yes. I've done that before where I've taken an
Excel. I say, Hey, can you writeme an Excel pivot table lesson
in the voice of Doctor Seuss?And the thing that all the words
are rhyming with each other, itit is really cool.
Anthony Carrano (33:42):
You should do it in the in the voice of Yoda.
That would be that would beawesome.
Aaron Udler (33:46):
I love that. That's a great idea.
Rudy Rodriguez (33:49):
Well, well, Aaron, your son's gonna learn
that the tooth fairy didn'texist and ChatGPT is just a
dream crusher, right?
Anthony Carrano (33:59):
That's it.
Rudy Rodriguez (34:00):
So, you know, you've told us this great story.
You know, how do you how are youplanning on working with more
and more partners and findingmore VARs that you want to work
with? We've talked aboutreaching out to other IAMCP
partners. What's part of yourbusiness plan to continue this?
And also as the market keepsevolving, what are you doing to
(34:23):
evolve your business?
Aaron Udler (34:24):
Yeah, so from a growth standpoint, I continue to
go to all the different eventsthat are out there. There's
great industry events from allthe Microsoft shows to shows
like Enterprise Connect orConsumer Electronics Show or
Infocom or I don't know. There'slike a zillion different events
(34:45):
out there. So I think from ourstandpoint, we know what shows
to go to. But for other smallbusiness partners, hey, figure
out what is your niche and whatindustry events can you go to
and where can you put yourselfin front of other partners that
could help you out.
I think that's always important.One of the things that we've
been doing is, I'm always tryingto think ahead, right? Where's
(35:08):
the industry going? And so froma Power BI's perspective, we
were able to recognize that,hey, Power BI is going be
something special. We need toinvest money into it.
So I got my full time instructorcertified in it. We're training
it. We've created our owncontent to complement
Microsoft's training content.That's been big. We saw a need
in the federal government space.
You heard me speak earlier aboutChatGPT and training federal
(35:31):
government employees on how touse AI. We think that was a big
deal, so we invested a ton ofmoney and resources and time to
create our own training content.And then to put icing on the
cake about 6 or 8 months ago, webought a website called
AIHeadshotMasters.com. And whatthat site is, it's AI generated
(35:51):
selfies of yourself. So the waythe site works is that you take
10 selfies of yourself, youupload them to our site.
Once you upload them to oursite, the pictures get sent to
what's called a GPU, a graphicalprocessing unit. And within
thirty minutes, you'll have ahundred pictures with 13
different backgrounds ofyourself. And they're really
cool to use for LinkedIn orFacebook or whatever. If you
(36:14):
look at my Facebook or I'msorry, my LinkedIn photo, that's
my picture. It's it's an AIgenerated photo.
You know, it's AI, right? Itgoofs up your fingers or limbs
sometimes, but you have ahundred pictures to choose from
and it's really cool. And whatwe're primarily doing with this
site is selling it to oractually, we're actually giving
it away for free for forcompanies that sign up for AI
training with us because wethink it's cool. Hey, you know
(36:37):
what? You're gonna learn aboutAI training and let's get some
cool pictures in front of you.
But we also sell it to workforceagencies because we see a big
need in workforce developmentwhere people, need to have their
hair done or their makeup ortheir beards trimmed or they
need nice clothes or goodbackgrounds, whatever it is. And
this is something that jobseekers can do in the comfort of
(36:57):
their own homes. So theworkforce agencies don't have to
hire a photographer to come intothe office and then hope that,
you know, all the the folkslooking for jobs need to then go
to the workforce agenciesoffices. So it's kind of a cool
thing that we're doing. We enjoyit. It's a lot of fun and I
highly recommend you guys checkthat out as well.
Rudy Rodriguez (37:15):
So you haven't worked that into the, you know,
students come in before trainingand after training yet and give
them their headshots there?
Aaron Udler (37:25):
Well, we've done it mainly for clients that when
they buy the AI training, theyget a free code to go to the
website and it reduces the costdown to zero so they can give it
a shot. But no, we're verycareful. We don't want to overly
sell in our private classes tothe clients that have not
specifically asked for it.
Rudy Rodriguez (37:45):
That's good to hear. No, that's a great, great
product or great service thatyou have there, especially with
workforce development. Thatreally, really works well.
Aaron Udler (37:54):
Yeah, thank you. Yeah, those guys are super
stoked about it. So it's fun tosee the smile on people's faces
when they realize, wow, I didn'teven know that green dress
existed or man, I look great ina suit. And you know, they don't
necessarily own a suit becausethey're in between jobs and they
can't afford a new suit orwhatever. But it you know, it's
their image. And and that's whatwe, that's what we as, people
(38:17):
buy when we're trying to hiresomebody. We wanna see somebody
look sharp.
Anthony Carrano (38:21):
I didn't realize when I was, when I was
doing research and, you know,obviously looking at your
LinkedIn profile that that wasyour photo was AI generated. So
it it does a really good job. Imean, it's it's you don't look
it doesn't really look fake orcartoonish or anything like
that. So, yeah. No, that waspretty impressive.
Rudy Rodriguez (38:40):
I got a question for you regarding workforce
development training. Have youworked through any colleges or
universities or communitycolleges to deliver some
workforce development training?Reason I'm asking because we we
need to talk after this. I'maware of a grant here in Texas
that is $17,000,000 forworkforce AI training for
(39:02):
workforce development. Just sowe can talk later.
Aaron Udler (39:05):
Interesting. Yeah, no, thanks for that info. Yeah,
mean, do a lot of work withdifferent colleges within the
state of Maryland and we're bigfans of the MOS certification,
which is Microsoft OfficeSpecialist, Right? So if
somebody wants to get aMicrosoft certification in Word,
Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, orAccess, you can get a
certification in it. And OfficePro is one of the top two, top
(39:28):
three companies in America thatare new in all the exams for it.
We're proctoring for it. So it'sa really cool service that we
offer. And so we've partneredwith different colleges where we
can both teach them how to useExcel and teach them proctor the
exam. One of the reasons why Ithink this exam is important,
especially Excel, is that moststudents today, at least in the
(39:50):
state of Maryland, they're beingtaught Google. And I'm all for
free market capitalism andhaving competition with
Microsoft.
But when you have 80% ofbusinesses in the entire world
that are on the Microsoftecosystem, I think the school
systems need to teach that. AndI don't think the school
systems, at least in the stateof Maryland, are doing a good
job because they are on Google.And I understand the reasons
(40:11):
why, and those reasons aremainly because Chromebooks are a
hundred bucks, and I don't thinkMicrosoft has come out with a,
you know, a lower expensivecomputer yet. But again, I think
we're doing a disservice to thestudents if they're not learning
the Microsoft ecosystem inaddition to the Google. So we
partnered with differentcolleges in the state of
Maryland where we're teachingthem how to use Microsoft Excel,
and then the students aregetting their MOS certification
(40:34):
in Excel. So it's been reallycool to see that because there
are a lot of jobs out there thatdo require the the MOS
certification in Excel.
Rudy Rodriguez (40:41):
Are they going to incorporate Copilot into that
anytime soon? Or have you heardanything from Microsoft
regarding that?
Aaron Udler (40:47):
I haven't heard anything from Microsoft on that
yet, but I could see that comingout soon. I mean, that it would
be a great certification.
Rudy Rodriguez (40:55):
Yeah. I would. I certainly would. Anthony, back
to you.
Anthony Carrano (40:59):
Yeah. This this has been fantastic, Aaron.
Really appreciate your insightsand perspectives. How can how
can folks find out well, wherecan they go to find out more
about you and connect?
Aaron Udler (41:10):
Yeah. Feel free to hit me up on LinkedIn. Aaron
Udler. I spell my name just likeAaron in the Bible, a a r o n.
And my last name is Udler, u d le r. Hit me up on LinkedIn. I'm
I'm on there pretty often. I'vealways got posts on there about,
training and AI. But in ifyou're ever in the DC area, hit
me up. Let's grab a let's grab abeer. I'm I'm open to meet just
(41:31):
about anybody.
Anthony Carrano (41:32):
Excellent. Excellent. Well, definitely, I
know my wife and I love DC, soI'll have to take you up on
that.
Aaron Udler (41:38):
Awesome. Looking forward to it.
Anthony Carrano (41:40):
Excellent. Well, you have a great rest of
the day. Appreciate you beingon.
Aaron Udler (41:43):
Cool. Thanks. Thank you, guys. Appreciate you.
Rudy Rodriguez (41:46):
Thanks, Aaron.
Anthony Carrano (41:48):
Well, that was a fantastic episode. I really
enjoyed having Aaron on. I mean,he was so conversational, had a
lot of really great insights.You know, I know in particular,
the one thing I appreciate,especially I thought it was so
cool. I mean, was a former, youknow, big 10, football player.
And the fact that they talked alot about communication wins
(42:08):
championships and just how justthe importance of, you know,
communication, communication,communication, and just, you
know, just being veryintentional, you know, about,
you know, repeating those pointsjust to make sure that your
message gets through. So I Ireally appreciated that. You
know, being a being a coach,always preaching, you know,
defense wins championships. Ithink I'm gonna slip that in
(42:29):
there that, communication winschampionships for sure.
Rudy Rodriguez (42:32):
Oh, that'll definitely help. That'll
definitely help.
Anthony Carrano (42:34):
Well, know you because you played, you know,
college ball as well. So I'msure, you know, I know everyone
says defense wins championships,but, that communication, I'm
sure that helps too.
Rudy Rodriguez (42:45):
It really does. It really does. I mean, your
coaches communicate everythingthey expect, and what they want
you to do, and how you do it,and communicating with your
teammates, it really rings true.It really rings true. You know,
what I appreciated about Aaron,was his forthrightness and stuff
about how, you know, he hadworked out in industry before
(43:08):
coming back to his familybusiness and how he had to
reshift the focus of the familywas a small business with only
six employees, and then how hechanged the whole focus of the
business and how that businesskind of took off on them.
And he did that by buildingtrust relationships out in the
(43:29):
channel, which really helped anddedicated staying serving those
markets and turning that aroundand leveraging the experience he
had from being in the channeland understanding how building a
channel worked and buildingrelationships worked and they
used that to grow theirbusiness. And it turned into
(43:50):
something where, you know, nowthey've trained over a million
people over the years. So it'sreally exciting to learn to
learn that. And I think there's,you know, he had several other
stories about working in thechannel. I think you have some
comments on that.
Anthony Carrano (44:04):
Oh, yeah, absolutely. And it was really
fascinating too, especially thembeing a smaller partner
connecting with a mid sizedpartner to sell into an
enterprise, you know, multimulti, you know, you know,
billion dollar, you know,pharmaceutical company, and
create such an opportunity. Butthe thing that he, you know, he
talked about just the importanceof, you know, honoring the
(44:27):
channel and really respectingthe relationships and that there
was an opportunity where andit's not like that, you know,
the client was doing anythingwrong or insidious. They were
just they really liked the workthat they did. So he went
direct, you know, after theengagement was done to see if
they can do more work for them.
And he was like, I can, but I'mnot gonna cut out my partner.
(44:49):
And, you know, to your pointthat, you know, one of those
aspects of those, you know,those trust relationships is
that it's just it's important,not only, you know, just to be
delivering during the course ofthe engagement and
communicating, but then evenmaintaining your integrity post
engagement and really respectingthat relationship. Because
(45:09):
that's something that, you know,I mean, word spreads quick,
right, in the community, bothgood and bad. And, and just to
to, you know, not try and grab,you know, the easy money or grab
more money, but, you know,respect that and honor that
relationship, you know, and havethat long view when it comes to,
you know, having partners. So Ithought that was really
(45:29):
fantastic.
Rudy Rodriguez (45:30):
Oh, it it really was. And it that really hit home
because that's part of what wewhat the IAMCP preaches is about
building strong businesspartnerships and trust
relationships. And and he hereally epitomizes the value of
those relationships. So Ithought that was a really good
story from Aaron. It really was.
(45:52):
We want to thank all of you forjoining us on this episode of
IAMCP Profiles in Partnershiptoday powered by Dunamis
Marketing. We hope you enjoyedthis podcast and find it useful
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of the best ways to partner forsuccess is to join IAMCP, a
(46:15):
community of Microsoft partnerswho help each other grow and
thrive.
IAMCP members can find andconnect with other partners
locally and globally and accessexclusive resources and
opportunities. Whether you'relooking for new customers, new
markets, or new solutions, IAMCPcan help you achieve your goals.
(46:35):
To learn more, visit the websiteat www.iamcp.org.
Welcome to the IAMCP Profiles and Partnership,
the podcast that showcases howMicrosoft partners and IAMCP
members boost their business bycollaborating with other members
and partners. I'm your co-host,Anthony Carrano. In each
episode, I'll be talking to someof the most innovative and
successful partners in theMicrosoft ecosystem. The
(00:26):
International Association ofMicrosoft Channel Partners,
otherwise known as IAMCP, is acommunity of Microsoft partners
who help each other grow andthrive. Members can find and
connect with other partnerslocally and globally and access
exclusive resources andopportunities.
Whether you're looking for newcustomers, new markets or new
solutions, IAMCP can help youachieve your goals. We'll hear
(00:49):
their stories, learn from theirexperiences and discover the
best practices and strategiesthey use to increase customer
loyalty and grow revenues.Whether you're a new partner or
an established one, you'll findvaluable insights and
inspiration in this podcast. Wehope you enjoy this podcast and
find it useful and inspiring. Ifyou do, please subscribe, rate,
(01:09):
and review us on your favoritepodcast platform. And don't
forget to follow us on socialmedia and connect with us on our
website,www.profilesandpartnership.com,
where you can find moreinformation, resources, and
opportunities to partner forsuccess. Thank you for
listening. And now let's getstarted with today's episode.
(01:29):
But before we dive into ourinterview, let me ask you, how
are you leveraging the IAMCP andMicrosoft partner network to
grow your business? And how areyou evolving your business in
order to stay relevant andcontinue to provide value?
We dive into these questions andmany others in this podcast with
the help of our guest as heshares stories, challenges and
(01:51):
successes, as well as practicaltips and advice on how to
partner for success. Are youready to join us on this
journey? Then stay tuned becausewe have a great show for you
today. Our guest is Aaron Udler,the CEO at Office Pro, an award
winning training curriculumdevelopment training services
and short and long term staffingsolutions provider that has
(02:12):
trained over a million peoplewith professional high caliber
training. Let's hear what he hasto say.
Welcome Aaron to the podcasttoday. Really appreciate you
joining us.
Aaron Udler (02:23):
Thanks for having me. Excited to be here.
Anthony Carrano (02:26):
Excellent. Let's jump right in. Let's start
off. Tell us a little bit aboutyourself and your role in the
company.
Aaron Udler (02:31):
Sure. I'm the President and CEO of Office Pro.
We're started in 1984. My dadstarted the company back in
those days, training on a brandnew type of technology called
computers. And man, have we comea long way. And so today we
still do a lot of computer typetraining, whether it's Microsoft
Office, we do a lot of break fixservices in the AV space, we do
(02:55):
help desk services, and we alsoprovide AI training.
Anthony Carrano (02:58):
Oh, okay. Excellent. Now, I also know,
just heard that you played alittle football in the day.
Aaron Udler (03:05):
Yeah. I played football for Indiana University.
I was, I was a walk on. And so Iwalked on as a kicker. I put on
about 90 pounds in eight monthsand got really big and really
tough and ended up switching totight end. Finished up as a
tight end and just had a blastdoing that. It's big ten
football, some of the best inthe country. Got great stories.
And then, you know, this pastseason, we had, one of the best
(03:27):
years, ever in Indiana football.So it was great to be on the
national stage.
Anthony Carrano (03:31):
So I have to ask, what's your opinion about,
you know, the the new playoffs,you know, the schedule and how
that works?
Aaron Udler (03:39):
I think it's really cool. I love change. I love how
they expanded it. I just feltbad for Indiana because we had
to play an away game in thefirst round. I wish we would
have had a home game, but so itgoes or maybe even a neutral
site game. So I think in thefuture, if they go more neutral
site games for that first round,it makes it a little bit more
fair. But at the end of the day,I think it's super cool for for
the game of football.
Anthony Carrano (04:00):
Very cool, very cool. Now tell us a little bit,
when did you join the IAMCP?
Aaron Udler (04:05):
So I came to Office Pro and joined IAMCP both in
2013. My dad had been retiredfor about ten years. He had
hired someone to run thecompany. And so when I came in,
I just got my MBA, came toOffice Pro. I was like, alright.
What other resources are outthere? How do I learn about the
industry? Found IAMCP. Didn'treally know much about it. And
(04:26):
wow. What a terrific group,terrific organization. I'm glad
to be a part of it.
Anthony Carrano (04:31):
Excellent. Before, we kinda get into, you
know, the actual, partner storyhere, can you share a little bit
more about, Office Pro's, youknow, areas of, specialization
and expertise?
Aaron Udler (04:42):
Yeah. We, you know, when I first started and till
still to this day, our core isend user training. That's what
we love to do. Word, Excel,PowerPoint, SharePoint, Teams,
and so on and so on. Everythingend user based.
And then along the way to keepour partnership Microsoft, we
had to do IT training. So welove doing IT training, whether
it's Azure or SharePointadministrator, or we're super
(05:07):
big now in Power BI, we love it.That's like the hottest class
that we teach today, that andExcel. And that's kind of what
we focus on from a trainingside. And then we also have a
whole staffing group withinOffice Pro.
What we do is we help partnerswhether they need, if they need
MCPs to provide differentservices to help their IT group
(05:28):
run, or if they need AV, whichis audio visual, if they need
video conferencing room support,we provide help there. We
provide break fix services, andwe also provide AI services. So
we'll talk more about the AIstuff in a little bit.
Rudy Rodriguez (05:43):
So I've got a question regarding the type of
training that you do. Is it allinstructor led or are you doing
a blended solution or are youoffering e-learning solutions as
well?
Aaron Udler (05:53):
99% of our training is instructor led training. It's
either live in person or livevirtual. Since COVID, it's been
more live virtual, but we'restarting to see more and more
folks going back into theoffice. So we are doing in
person training as well. We dohave clients from time to time
that say, Hey, we need somecustom videos. Can we, you know,
(06:13):
do a video on Teams or how tocreate a pivot table in
SharePoint or create a pivottable in Excel or how to
whatever it is, right? So we docreate a lot of content in
house.
Rudy Rodriguez (06:26):
That's great to hear that. I noticed that you've
trained over a million people.Is that correct?
Aaron Udler (06:31):
Yeah. I mean, when you're a 45 year old business,
yeah, you've kind of been aroundthe block a couple of times.
We've trained a lot of folksover the years.
Rudy Rodriguez (06:42):
That's a lot of office training. My gosh. That's
that's wonderful. That'swonderful that you've kept track
of all that. I know how hardthat is to do.
Aaron Udler (06:49):
Yeah. We've done a lot of averaging and, you know,
figure out, you know, what isthat number? And so when we've
we do a lot in the federalgovernment space and we're big
in several different agencies.We've been with lots of agencies
for years and years, and wecontinue to win recompetes. When
we factor in how many hundredsof thousands of people within
all these different agencies,they add up and then add in the
(07:13):
commercial side of the businessand, you know, in state and
local county governments aswell. So yeah, we've done a lot.
Rudy Rodriguez (07:21):
Are you on the GSA schedule or not?
Aaron Udler (07:24):
We are on the GSA schedule, we're on schedule 70.
Rudy Rodriguez (07:28):
Great. Great to hear. I'm sure our our partners
would like to hear that toobecause there's, we have a lot
of partners that do federal workoutside of the DC area. So
that's always great to knowpartners that are on GSA.
So I've got a question for youbecause we want to hear the
story. You know, we we receivedyour story from the IAMCP
headquarters, and we want toknow more about this partner
(07:49):
showcase. And can you tell us alittle bit about, you know, what
the project was? Don't have totell us a client or any anything
else about you know, but tell usabout what the solution was, how
you how you encountered thisbusiness and then the challenges
that you might have faced onthis project?
Aaron Udler (08:07):
Yeah, you bet. So prior to joining Office Pro, I
worked for a trade associationcalled Infocom. And Infocom is
now called Avixa, but they stillhave a trade show called
Infocom, and it's an audiovisual show. And it's all about
understood channel sales. And alot of people don't understand
what that is.
And when I came to Office Pro, Iknew that I had a small
(08:28):
business. There were six fulltime employees. I was the one
sales guy. Everybody else wasops, and I needed to grow and I
needed help. And the only thingI knew how to do was channel
sales.
So what is channel sales? That'sa big question that a lot of
people don't understand. Andwhat channel sales is, let's
take a TV that you have at home.Let's say you have a Sony TV at
home, and let's say it costsSony $25 to make the TV. Well,
(08:51):
then Sony will sell it to adistributor such as Synnex or
Ingram Micro, there's a lot ofdistributors out there.
They'll sell to them for $50 Andthen they'll sell it to a
retailer like a Best Buy orAmazon for a hundred dollars.
And then they'll sell it to youand I, the consumer for $200 And
everybody along the way isgetting a piece of the action.
And there's differentsalespeople within that model,
(09:12):
within that sales channel. Soeveryone's making a small piece
of the pie.
And I knew when I came to OfficePro, I'm a small business. How
am I gonna be able to grow mybusiness with just me? There's
just, I'm limited. So knowingthis, went back to what I knew
best, AV. And I went to an AVvideo conferencing show in New
York and I at the event, I'mnetworking and this guy looks at
(09:34):
my business card and he seesthat we're a Microsoft Silver
Learning partner. And he's like,Oh, that's a big deal. And this
is back in the fall of 2013. I'mlike, Yeah, I guess. I don't
know, I'm new to Office Pro. Idon't even know what this means
that we're a silver learningpartner. And I'm like, It sounds
pretty cool.
Sure, yeah. I mean, it is a bigdeal. And so I started talking
to this guy and he works for aVAR. A VAR is a value added
(09:57):
reseller, which is kind of likea distributor. It's kind of like
a retailer.
The VARs mainly sell to endusers, to pharmaceutical
companies and big Fortune 500type companies to kind of give
you an idea. And a VAR is avalue added reseller. And so
what we did was, or what I didwith him was, you know, I was
(10:18):
just trying to sell them overand over and I called them all
the time. And finally he's like,Hey, we're doing a, there's a
hospital in Chicago. They needsome Skype for Business. Or I'm
sorry, not Skype for Business. Ithink it was Microsoft Lync 2013
training.
Can you go train the super userson how to use it? Sure. So he's
like, there's just 10 peoplegoing to be in the training.
It's going to be virtual. And Iwas like, great, sure. We'll do
(10:41):
it, dude. So we go and we go dothis training and they loved it
so much that they said, hey, wewanna train the other 200
workers at the hospital. I waslike, okay, great.
So we proved ourselves to thisVAR and I'm like, okay, this is
pretty cool. And this is backin, you know, I don't know,
probably middle of 2014. Andthis guy keeps on calling me
literally for the next twelvemonths. Hey, I need an outline
(11:02):
for, you know, now Skype forBusiness, or I need an outline
for this or that, whatever itis. And finally, was like, Bro,
you keep on calling me. You're anice person, but you're wasting
my time. I keep on sending yououtlines. I keep on getting you
quotes. I'm not gettinganywhere. And all he said was,
Aaron, stick with me, stick withme.
I'm like, Okay, sure. So we getto, right about a week or two
(11:23):
before Thanksgiving in 2015, andhe says, hey, and he names this
big pharmaceutical company. He'slike, hey, these guys are
rolling out Skype for Business.I'm like, great. Who is that
company? I'd never heard of thembefore. He's like, dude, come on
bro. So I Googled the companyand they're like, at the time,
like, I don't know, 20 or$30,000,000,000 company. He's
like, come meet me out at theirheadquarters in the LA area. I
(11:45):
was like, okay.
So I fly out to LA and I meet upwith them and we go to the spa
room and we find out thatthey've got, I don't know, it
was like 10 or 15,000 userson-site. They're rolling out
Skype for Business. They havesome Polycom video conferencing
solutions. They've got someCrestron hardware. Crestron
does, they have a product calledAirMedia, which is a wireless
(12:08):
screen sharing and it'smanufacturer agnostic, meaning
you can have a droid, you canhave an iPhone, you can have a
PC, you can have a Mac, itdoesn't matter. You can
wirelessly screen share in theconference room. And they said,
Hey, we need to train everybody.Can you create the training
content and train all, you know,10 to 15,000 users? I was like,
Yeah, sure. We can do this withour eyes closed.
Needless to say, we had neverdone any AV training before, but
(12:30):
we're a small business and mybackground's AV. So I called up
my buddies that I used to workwith at Infocom like, hey guys,
can you help me out with this?And so we came up with this
whole training plan. And alongthe way, know, we do this
training and next thing youknow, we're like a big deal in
the training space in both AVand in the Microsoft community
(12:51):
because we got this contractthrough the channel. Now this
channel was really bizarro.
It was a bigger channel thankind of what I mentioned
earlier, because we had the enduser, which sold to a change
management company. The changemanagement company sold to the
VAR that I mentioned earlier,who's also a Microsoft partner,
who's a part of IAMCP. They soldto us Office Pro and of course
(13:13):
Office Pro, we're a smallbusiness. We had lots of subs on
this as well to make sure thatwe had a successful project. And
yeah, and we had a supersuccessful campaign with this
project.
We still do work for thiscompany today. And again, this
is big pharma. Multiple timesover the years, this pharma has
come to us and said, Hey, Aaron,we wanna work with you directly.
(13:36):
And a 100% of the times, everytime I said, No. And they always
say, Why? We're gonna throw youmillions of dollars. And I'm
like, Well, you know what? It'snot honest. And they're like,
Well, what do you mean? It'slike, Well, I wouldn't have been
at this party to provide you allthese good services if it wasn't
for the channel.
And I learned in life that yourintegrity is like your
virginity. You only can lose itone time and I'm not gonna lose
(13:56):
it. And it's not worth it tomake a couple extra bucks
because I'd rather get all theother clients within that
channel system, right? So I can,you know, do training for all
the other clients that are inthere. Sure enough, we've been
rewarded and we do training forall their other clients within
the VAR community.
So, you know, the first timethat you, you know, take this
(14:19):
extra, you know, money is thefirst time you ruin the channel
and everybody sees you andthey're like, alright, you know,
Office Pro violated the channel.We're not gonna work with you. I
don't wanna I didn't wanna haveto go through that.
Rudy Rodriguez (14:30):
Well, that's great to great story to hear
because, you know, that's one ofthe one of the mantras of the
IAMCP is about doing businessethically and building trust
relationships. So that's anexcellent, excellent story to
tell. So is your friend retiredat this company? Because you've
made him a lot of money or what?
Aaron Udler (14:49):
I wish he actually, he actually left the company to
go work from from a, you know, aseveral hundred million dollar
VAR to a fortune 10 typecompany. So he's he's really
grown in his career as well. Soit's been a, it's been a win
win.
Rudy Rodriguez (15:03):
Well, that's great to hear. Now I know what
it's like to build those channelrelationships and and, having
been in your business before,I've seen all my friends retire.
And it's like, you build thoserelationships at these
companies, and it's always goodto learn who are their their
successors are. You're trying tomake it work.
Aaron Udler (15:22):
Yeah.
Rudy Rodriguez (15:23):
Anthony, do you have some questions?
Anthony Carrano (15:25):
Yeah. So when you were, working, you know,
with, you know, this SI toserve, you know, the larger,
pharmaceutical, company, whatwere some just things like
during the course of theengagement that you would say
were really important, as assome best practices to make it a
successful engagement?
Aaron Udler (15:45):
Yeah. I have a saying at Office Pro,
communication winschampionships. Firm believer in
that. You gotta get everythingdocumented. You gotta, you know,
you know, repeat, repeat,repeat.
You gotta say things over andover and over again. When we
started doing the conferenceroom training, we ran into an
issue. And it wasn't with the SIper se, but keep in mind that
there was another changemanagement company. We ran into
(16:07):
an issue with them. And whathappened was we're doing these
trainings in these smallconference rooms, and there's
only four chairs in there.
But the page management companywere doing tours of this new
building and this new officespace with 30 to 40 people in a
group. Well, you can't fit 30 or40 people in a four person
(16:29):
conference room. Maybe you canget six, maybe seven. Right? And
so, you know, we started gettinga bad we got a bad review from
both the, the end user and ourVAR, our system integrator
saying, Hey, what the hell isgoing on here? Your training's
not good. I'm like, Well, whatam I supposed to do? Right? I've
got 30 or 40 people in a fourperson conference room. This is
(16:50):
beyond my control. I need somehelp here. Can you help? Right?
We went through this and all thereview process and the channel
partner that was the changemanagement company, they made
changes at the last minute,didn't tell me. Right?
And that's communication 101.You got to tell me so and make
me prepared so we can makeadjustments. Maybe we'd go into
a larger conference room andthey did have larger conference
(17:13):
rooms, right? We'd adjust thetour. So it just goes back to
communication, communication,communication.
Anthony Carrano (17:19):
That's good. I'm smiling here because usually
isn't it a defense winschampionships, you know, coming
from a former big ten collegefootball player, but
communication winschampionships. So I like it.
What about some of the otherside of that, like, what were
some of the challenges that youall experienced during the
(17:41):
engagement? And, you know, howdid you, you know, work together
to overcome that in addition tocommunication? Like what what,
you know, some things that youhad to kind of work through?
Aaron Udler (17:52):
Yeah. You know, the human aspect about, you know,
you expect labor to be on-siteand somebody calls out sick last
minute. What do you do? Yougotta figure it out. I remember
telling my wife, I mean, for us,it was a big contract and we had
someone call out sick the daybefore.
I live in Washington, DC and theclient's out in LA and at twelve
or 01:00 in the afternoon, Iwent to go book a flight, to go,
(18:12):
you know, for a 06:00 flight togo to LA. And my wife's like,
what the hell is wrong with you?And I'm like, well, I gotta make
sure we run this trainingsuccessfully tomorrow. I gotta
be I'm thrown into action. Youknow, things like that happen.
You know, I remember one of myfirst sales jobs, my sales
manager said to me, and this iswhen I was right out of college.
He said, If you don't hit yourquota for the month, what's your
backup plan? Right? And thatstuck with me, you know, to this
(18:36):
day, you know, if I'm nothitting my numbers or if I've
got someone that's supposed tobe on-site, what's my backup
plan? That's so important.
So, I mean, that was one of thebiggest challenges. One of the
other challenges we faced isthat just from a payment
perspective, I remember thechannel partner wasn't paying
us. They owed us $250,000 and Iwas freaking out and they were
(18:57):
90 days past due. And I had my,all my credit cards maxed and I
didn't have a, you know, abucket to poop in, so to say. So
I was like, all right, what do Ido?
So I literally had to call themup. I'm like, guys, look, I got
my bills to pay. I got people topay. I got my credit cards maxed
out. I'm almost out of mypersonal cash.
And they're like, they said, youknow what? I'm glad you
(19:17):
communicated to me. Go ahead andsend us a, what do you call it?
Send us, you know, your invoiceagain. And they overnighted me a
check, right, for $250,000 Andever since that time, I haven't
had to worry about money since,because that was able to propel
me, to the next level, hire theright people. I had to pay off
everybody I needed to. It got meout of debt. And I haven't
again, I haven't really had toworry about money since.
Anthony Carrano (19:40):
That's fantastic. That is, that is
awesome.
Rudy Rodriguez (19:43):
So, Aaron, you know, in in, working on a large
project like this, you know,getting customer sat, keeping
track of customer satisfactionand how you, how there's a lot
of logistics that you've got todeal with. Cause you've got two
customers. You've got acustomer, the person who
introduced you to the eventwho's probably the prime on
(20:05):
this, as well as the end usercustomer. And there's a lot of
logistics in the trainingbusiness, especially on a large
corporate project. Can you tellus a little bit about how you
handle those types of things?Because there's a lot of
logistics that have to gethandled and just a lot of
tracking.
Aaron Udler (20:21):
Yeah, no, you bet. So when it when we first got the
contract, the system integrator,they wanted to make sure this
was, white labeled or privatelabeled, meaning they wanted
their brand. They didn't want,the Office Pro brand on it. So
what they did was they assignedus, email addresses to their
domain. So, you know, my emailaddress was
audler at their domain dot com.
(20:42):
Fine. So we were in the loopevery step of the way. They were
monitoring all of ourcorrespondence. And so if there
was a mistake made, yeah, youbet. We would know about it,
right?
If we had success, yeah, we'dknow about it. It's always fun
to get those success emailssaying, oh, you know, John Doe,
you know, said training wasterrific. It was really good.
After a while, happened waspeople would wanna hit us up on
(21:04):
LinkedIn. They'd say, Oh, Aaron,we see that you're with Office
Pro, not the system integrator,what's going on?
And then we'd explain it andthey'd be like, Okay, yeah,
sure, whatever. Nobody reallycared that much, but it was just
mainly for the system integratorto track. But yeah, we would
always, you know, after everytraining session, provide a
customer or rather a studentevaluation to see how we did,
(21:26):
right? Did you learn more? Whatdid you learn in the class
today? Do you feel that thetraining today on Skype for
Business and Polycom Trio,whatever the, you know, whatever
we were training on, did you,you know, what was your
knowledge before the training?What was your knowledge after
the training? What'd you likemost about the class? What'd you
like least about the class?
So, and we would take all thesesurveys and just compile them
(21:47):
together and give it back toboth the channel, you know, to
the two channel partners and theend user so that they knew what
was going on.
Because again, transparency issuper key. And if we're making
mistakes or if we're missingsomething, we gotta know about
it. So that's kind of whathappened. Along the way, which
was kind of flattering too, isthat our system integrator,
(22:08):
there was another proposal thatcame out and they lost that
proposal to one of theircompetitors. Well, the end user
ended up saying to thatcompetitor, Hey, we love working
with Office Pro.
They know the right way ofrunning training. They know the
right way of staffing this. Youneed to work with these guys and
we're not gonna accept anythingelse. It's because they
understood the channel and Iunderstood the channel and I'm
(22:29):
not gonna go direct and violatethat. And so next thing you
know, I'm working with this, youknow, a much bigger, you know,
system integrator and they're,you know, we're providing the
same services to the samepharmaceutical company.
So ended up working reallynicely. And because of that,
because they were voluntold towork with us, now we're doing
more business with that secondsystem integrator. And next
(22:51):
thing you know, we're marketingto everyone's competitors and
blah, blah, blah. So we're a subon a lot of different projects
these days.
Rudy Rodriguez (22:58):
Wow. That's great to hear. That's great to
hear. So are you still the onlysalesperson for your company or
how have you are you trainingother people to do some of these
things?
Aaron Udler (23:07):
Yeah. No. I've trained other people. So we we
we split our company up into,we've got our government or, you
know, we got our governmenttraining or end user training
department. I got a, I gotsomeone that manages that from a
sales perspective. And then onthe AV side of the business, I
got someone that manages that,in terms of selling and we kinda
tag team it. But, yeah, that'syou know, there's multiple
(23:28):
people now.
Rudy Rodriguez (23:29):
So are you working still primarily with the
IAMCP chapter there inWashington DC, or have you
connected with other IAMCPmembers across the country?
Aaron Udler (23:38):
Yeah. I've connected with other IAMCP
members across the country.Unfortunately, I think the DC
chapter folded as we're part ofthe national chapter right now
of IAMCP. I am the leader thoughof the, the Washington DC
Microsoft Teams user group,which is which is a 501c3. So
I'm running that for the DCarea.
So it's kinda like IAMCP for DCfor the DC area, but not really.
(24:02):
It's again, it's just a focus onMicrosoft Teams. But I loved I
loved during COVID when we hadthe national conventions. I
think it was I forgot what theycalled it, the Microsoft
Conventions, whatever they werecalled. I remember being in some
of the meetings and hearing,let's say, you know, a speaker
and I'm looking at the attendeesin the meeting, I'd be like, oh,
this person's a trainer.
(24:22):
I reached out to this gal andnext thing you know, she's a
trainer with us. I reached outto this other guy and he owned
a, an LMS, training company outof Toronto. And, you know, both
these guys are in the IAMCPcommunity. They're in the
Microsoft channel community. Andwe're partnering with those
guys.
And it's one of those where yougotta make yourself available
and you gotta put yourself outthere and take a risk on people
(24:44):
and see their work,interviewing. You know, you
gotta know what the needs ofyour company are to help you
grow, and we've been able togrow with partners. It's a
beautiful thing that, you know,this ecosystem that we have. I
love it.
Rudy Rodriguez (24:55):
So you've mentioned a lot of end user type
training. Have you jumped intothe more technical, areas like,
you know, you mentioned, I thinkyou mentioned Azure as well. And
have you moved into, you know,can you tell us a little bit
about what what your otherproduct areas are?
Aaron Udler (25:11):
Yeah. So we're doing a lot right now with,
Power BI is huge right now inthe government, especially in
the government space. We do alot for different government
agencies. You know, take NIH,for example, I'm gonna I'll name
those guys, because they dealwith health on a regular basis.
And can you imagine the numberof columns and rows of data that
they have for whatever diseasesare out there, medications,
(25:32):
whatever it is?
So we're helping those guys, youknow, work in Power BI and
create dashboards and thingslike that. Azure is super big
right now in the federalgovernment space and we do a lot
of DOD work. And so when we workwith DOD, it's funny because,
you know, our troops are alwaysmoving around the world, right?
You know, they're protecting us.So, you know, nailing down dates
(25:55):
can sometimes be challenging,but we're doing a lot of Azure
training in the governmentspace.
AI is big too, right? You'vegot, different AI courses that
Microsoft's come out with.Unfortunately, Copilot's not in
the government space yet. It'scoming though. It's not part of
GCC High, we're waiting forthat, but we're doing Copilot
training more in the enterprisespace right now.
(26:16):
And then we're doing basic AItraining for different federal
agencies. One of the coolthings, I think that, not to get
too political, but one of thecool things that I think
President Biden was able toimplement during his presidency
was an AI agency. So there'sAI.gov. And so AI right now, I
think we can all agree is kindof like the wild, wild west. And
(26:36):
this is the first time thatindustry has come to the
government and said, Hey, weneed some regulations around
that.
Can you put something together?So the Biden administration puts
something together and everyfederal agency has to put
together a certain amount ofcontent and leave it in the
public domain in terms of howthey're using AI. And so we've
(26:57):
been able to come into theagencies and say, Hey, you know,
this is how you write chatprompts correctly using ChatGPT,
or, Hey, this is your agency'spolicy on using ChatGPT. What do
you put into it? What do you notput into it?
Because we gotta remind folksthat whatever you put into
ChatGPT, that goes into thepublic domain. So you wanna be
very careful what you put intoit. Some agencies, they
(27:19):
encourage people to sign up forChatGPT with their government
email address and some say, No,please use your Gmail address or
Hotmail address or a nongovernment related address. So
every agency is still trying tofigure it out. They do have
guidance from the AI.gov agency.
I don't know what that agency isoff the top of my head, but
there are rules and regulationscoming out, for that. So it's
(27:42):
really cool what I think ishappening in today's day and
age.
Rudy Rodriguez (27:47):
Yeah, that's one of the things I stress about
with, I have friends who workfor a large Texas state agency,
and, we were having lunch theother day. We were talking
about, hey, have you alldeployed ChatGPT or CoPilot in
your organization? This is aboutover 100,000 people that work at
this agency. And they said yes,but it got issued without rules
(28:13):
and now we just have chaos. Andso that's what will happen if
you train people to use theproducts with the specific
purpose and security.
Which leads me to anotherquestion, have you moved into
anything in the security worldat all?
Aaron Udler (28:30):
We're doing a little bit in security. We do a
little bit of, I forgot the nameof the Microsoft courses, I
think it's like MS 500 or SC500. We do a little bit of
training on that, but, for themost part, that's not our bag.
It's just when companiesspecifically say, Hey, can you
guys do security training? We'llhelp them. We've got a whole
network of instructors that wehelp out with, but again, it's
(28:50):
not our specialty.
Rudy Rodriguez (28:52):
Okay. Thank you. Appreciate that. Anthony, turn
it back over to you.
Anthony Carrano (28:56):
Just to even backtrack a little bit. So I'd
like to kinda get yourperspective on what you're
seeing as, how because you youknow, you work with enterprises,
you also work with, you know,federal government. How are they
approaching it, AI differently?And how are they approaching it
the same?
Aaron Udler (29:14):
We'll start with the same. Both the government
and enterprise are excited aboutAI. They're ecstatic. They're
like, Wow, I didn't know I couldwrite an email to a dissatisfied
customer in like thirty seconds.I can take their email, put it
into an AI platform like ChatGPTand have it completely turned
(29:35):
around.
Everybody's super stoked aboutthat part of it, right? The
government is, there's been astereotype of the government for
years that they're anywhere fromfive to ten years behind
industry, right? And I thinkthat's still the case. AI has
been out for several years now,but it's becoming more
mainstream. The media has pickedup on it.
(29:55):
Putting in front of us on adaily basis, but the government
is just much slower to react.Small businesses is more quick
to react because you know, I'm asmall business guy. Right? We
can pivot really quickly. Biggerbusiness, enterprise, those guys
have have I don't wanna use theterm, you know, tons and tons of
money, but I think they've gottons and tons of money because
(30:16):
they're able to put togetherthat plan, you know, pretty
concise and put it together veryquickly.
They have access to ratherCopilot, right? The federal
government's not there yet. It'snot part of their program. So, I
mean, those are some of thedifferences. But I think at the
end of the day, everyone is justsuper excited about AI.
Anthony Carrano (30:40):
What about then since you work with both spaces,
what lessons have you learnedfrom working with both the
enterprise clients and, youknow, the government entities
that can benefit other, like,smaller partners?
Aaron Udler (30:53):
Yeah. It goes back to communication, communication,
communication. Right? You gottasit down with the customer. You
gotta explain to it what AI is.You gotta do demos of it. You
gotta make sure that they'recomfortable with it. One of the
things I do from a salesperspective is is especially
when people are nervous is Iwanna create an environment
that's safe for them to make amistake. Right? We're human.
(31:14):
That's adult learning theory.It's okay to make a mistake in
training. So when I meet withsomebody, I'll be like, hey, you
know what? Have you opened upchatgpt.com yet? No. Or have you
tried Copilot? No. Well, youknow what? We've got a training
account at Office Pro. Why don'tyou log in with our training
credentials to our Microsoftecosystem and give it a shot?
Let's, well, let's create aPowerPoint presentation with
(31:35):
Copilot. Let's, you know, askChatGPT to to write a, you know,
a love letter to your spouse orsignificant other or whatever.
Right? There's there's so manycool things. One of the things
that my staff loves is that, myson, and and I'm sure he's gonna
hear this recording in inseveral years, but, his mom or
my wife, you know, she was outof town, and my son lost a
(31:58):
tooth.
And my wife said, hey, Aaron.You gotta write a note from the
Tooth Fairy, to our son. I'mlike, I don't know what the hell
to write. So I go to ChatGPT,and I type in, Hi, ChatGPT. Can
you help me write a note fromthe tooth fairy to my son? He
just lost his first, two teethon the same day. I have no idea
(32:21):
what to say. Can you help meout? And sure enough, ChatGPT
said, yeah. Hey. Let's use this.And the email started or the
email the notes started offwith, dear brave tooth explorer.
Wow. What a wonderful occasionfor you to, you know, lose two
teeth on the same day, and itjust goes on for two or three
paragraphs. And I was like, youknow what? ChatGPT, can you make
(32:43):
this, you know, six sentences intotal, not three paragraphs?
So it was, you know, it wassuper cool that, you know, I was
able to to to get the what doall I was able to get these
notes to my son because, again,I don't know what the heck to
write.
Anthony Carrano (33:01):
Yeah. You should you should go back to
that for the next time and thenjust, you know, after you write
the you know, you get, like, thethe main like, the message that
you want. But then go back andsay, you know, rewrite this as
and put in, like, x, like, youknow, character celebrity
persona type in there, and thenit'll reformat and rewrite it in
(33:25):
that voice.
Aaron Udler (33:26):
Yes. I've done that before where I've taken an
Excel. I say, Hey, can you writeme an Excel pivot table lesson
in the voice of Doctor Seuss?And the thing that all the words
are rhyming with each other, itit is really cool.
Anthony Carrano (33:42):
You should do it in the in the voice of Yoda.
That would be that would beawesome.
Aaron Udler (33:46):
I love that. That's a great idea.
Rudy Rodriguez (33:49):
Well, well, Aaron, your son's gonna learn
that the tooth fairy didn'texist and ChatGPT is just a
dream crusher, right?
Anthony Carrano (33:59):
That's it.
Rudy Rodriguez (34:00):
So, you know, you've told us this great story.
You know, how do you how are youplanning on working with more
and more partners and findingmore VARs that you want to work
with? We've talked aboutreaching out to other IAMCP
partners. What's part of yourbusiness plan to continue this?
And also as the market keepsevolving, what are you doing to
(34:23):
evolve your business?
Aaron Udler (34:24):
Yeah, so from a growth standpoint, I continue to
go to all the different eventsthat are out there. There's
great industry events from allthe Microsoft shows to shows
like Enterprise Connect orConsumer Electronics Show or
Infocom or I don't know. There'slike a zillion different events
(34:45):
out there. So I think from ourstandpoint, we know what shows
to go to. But for other smallbusiness partners, hey, figure
out what is your niche and whatindustry events can you go to
and where can you put yourselfin front of other partners that
could help you out.
I think that's always important.One of the things that we've
been doing is, I'm always tryingto think ahead, right? Where's
(35:08):
the industry going? And so froma Power BI's perspective, we
were able to recognize that,hey, Power BI is going be
something special. We need toinvest money into it.
So I got my full time instructorcertified in it. We're training
it. We've created our owncontent to complement
Microsoft's training content.That's been big. We saw a need
in the federal government space.
You heard me speak earlier aboutChatGPT and training federal
(35:31):
government employees on how touse AI. We think that was a big
deal, so we invested a ton ofmoney and resources and time to
create our own training content.And then to put icing on the
cake about 6 or 8 months ago, webought a website called
AIHeadshotMasters.com. And whatthat site is, it's AI generated
(35:51):
selfies of yourself. So the waythe site works is that you take
10 selfies of yourself, youupload them to our site.
Once you upload them to oursite, the pictures get sent to
what's called a GPU, a graphicalprocessing unit. And within
thirty minutes, you'll have ahundred pictures with 13
different backgrounds ofyourself. And they're really
cool to use for LinkedIn orFacebook or whatever. If you
(36:14):
look at my Facebook or I'msorry, my LinkedIn photo, that's
my picture. It's it's an AIgenerated photo.
You know, it's AI, right? Itgoofs up your fingers or limbs
sometimes, but you have ahundred pictures to choose from
and it's really cool. And whatwe're primarily doing with this
site is selling it to oractually, we're actually giving
it away for free for forcompanies that sign up for AI
training with us because wethink it's cool. Hey, you know
(36:37):
what? You're gonna learn aboutAI training and let's get some
cool pictures in front of you.
But we also sell it to workforceagencies because we see a big
need in workforce developmentwhere people, need to have their
hair done or their makeup ortheir beards trimmed or they
need nice clothes or goodbackgrounds, whatever it is. And
this is something that jobseekers can do in the comfort of
(36:57):
their own homes. So theworkforce agencies don't have to
hire a photographer to come intothe office and then hope that,
you know, all the the folkslooking for jobs need to then go
to the workforce agenciesoffices. So it's kind of a cool
thing that we're doing. We enjoyit. It's a lot of fun and I
highly recommend you guys checkthat out as well.
Rudy Rodriguez (37:15):
So you haven't worked that into the, you know,
students come in before trainingand after training yet and give
them their headshots there?
Aaron Udler (37:25):
Well, we've done it mainly for clients that when
they buy the AI training, theyget a free code to go to the
website and it reduces the costdown to zero so they can give it
a shot. But no, we're verycareful. We don't want to overly
sell in our private classes tothe clients that have not
specifically asked for it.
Rudy Rodriguez (37:45):
That's good to hear. No, that's a great, great
product or great service thatyou have there, especially with
workforce development. Thatreally, really works well.
Aaron Udler (37:54):
Yeah, thank you. Yeah, those guys are super
stoked about it. So it's fun tosee the smile on people's faces
when they realize, wow, I didn'teven know that green dress
existed or man, I look great ina suit. And you know, they don't
necessarily own a suit becausethey're in between jobs and they
can't afford a new suit orwhatever. But it you know, it's
their image. And and that's whatwe, that's what we as, people
(38:17):
buy when we're trying to hiresomebody. We wanna see somebody
look sharp.
Anthony Carrano (38:21):
I didn't realize when I was, when I was
doing research and, you know,obviously looking at your
LinkedIn profile that that wasyour photo was AI generated. So
it it does a really good job. Imean, it's it's you don't look
it doesn't really look fake orcartoonish or anything like
that. So, yeah. No, that waspretty impressive.
Rudy Rodriguez (38:40):
I got a question for you regarding workforce
development training. Have youworked through any colleges or
universities or communitycolleges to deliver some
workforce development training?Reason I'm asking because we we
need to talk after this. I'maware of a grant here in Texas
that is $17,000,000 forworkforce AI training for
(39:02):
workforce development. Just sowe can talk later.
Aaron Udler (39:05):
Interesting. Yeah, no, thanks for that info. Yeah,
mean, do a lot of work withdifferent colleges within the
state of Maryland and we're bigfans of the MOS certification,
which is Microsoft OfficeSpecialist, Right? So if
somebody wants to get aMicrosoft certification in Word,
Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, orAccess, you can get a
certification in it. And OfficePro is one of the top two, top
(39:28):
three companies in America thatare new in all the exams for it.
We're proctoring for it. So it'sa really cool service that we
offer. And so we've partneredwith different colleges where we
can both teach them how to useExcel and teach them proctor the
exam. One of the reasons why Ithink this exam is important,
especially Excel, is that moststudents today, at least in the
(39:50):
state of Maryland, they're beingtaught Google. And I'm all for
free market capitalism andhaving competition with
Microsoft.
But when you have 80% ofbusinesses in the entire world
that are on the Microsoftecosystem, I think the school
systems need to teach that. AndI don't think the school
systems, at least in the stateof Maryland, are doing a good
job because they are on Google.And I understand the reasons
(40:11):
why, and those reasons aremainly because Chromebooks are a
hundred bucks, and I don't thinkMicrosoft has come out with a,
you know, a lower expensivecomputer yet. But again, I think
we're doing a disservice to thestudents if they're not learning
the Microsoft ecosystem inaddition to the Google. So we
partnered with differentcolleges in the state of
Maryland where we're teachingthem how to use Microsoft Excel,
and then the students aregetting their MOS certification
(40:34):
in Excel. So it's been reallycool to see that because there
are a lot of jobs out there thatdo require the the MOS
certification in Excel.
Rudy Rodriguez (40:41):
Are they going to incorporate Copilot into that
anytime soon? Or have you heardanything from Microsoft
regarding that?
Aaron Udler (40:47):
I haven't heard anything from Microsoft on that
yet, but I could see that comingout soon. I mean, that it would
be a great certification.
Rudy Rodriguez (40:55):
Yeah. I would. I certainly would. Anthony, back
to you.
Anthony Carrano (40:59):
Yeah. This this has been fantastic, Aaron.
Really appreciate your insightsand perspectives. How can how
can folks find out well, wherecan they go to find out more
about you and connect?
Aaron Udler (41:10):
Yeah. Feel free to hit me up on LinkedIn. Aaron
Udler. I spell my name just likeAaron in the Bible, a a r o n.
And my last name is Udler, u d le r. Hit me up on LinkedIn. I'm
I'm on there pretty often. I'vealways got posts on there about,
training and AI. But in ifyou're ever in the DC area, hit
me up. Let's grab a let's grab abeer. I'm I'm open to meet just
(41:31):
about anybody.
Anthony Carrano (41:32):
Excellent. Excellent. Well, definitely, I
know my wife and I love DC, soI'll have to take you up on
that.
Aaron Udler (41:38):
Awesome. Looking forward to it.
Anthony Carrano (41:40):
Excellent. Well, you have a great rest of
the day. Appreciate you beingon.
Aaron Udler (41:43):
Cool. Thanks. Thank you, guys. Appreciate you.
Rudy Rodriguez (41:46):
Thanks, Aaron.
Anthony Carrano (41:48):
Well, that was a fantastic episode. I really
enjoyed having Aaron on. I mean,he was so conversational, had a
lot of really great insights.You know, I know in particular,
the one thing I appreciate,especially I thought it was so
cool. I mean, was a former, youknow, big 10, football player.
And the fact that they talked alot about communication wins
(42:08):
championships and just how justthe importance of, you know,
communication, communication,communication, and just, you
know, just being veryintentional, you know, about,
you know, repeating those pointsjust to make sure that your
message gets through. So I Ireally appreciated that. You
know, being a being a coach,always preaching, you know,
defense wins championships. Ithink I'm gonna slip that in
(42:29):
there that, communication winschampionships for sure.
Rudy Rodriguez (42:32):
Oh, that'll definitely help. That'll
definitely help.
Anthony Carrano (42:34):
Well, know you because you played, you know,
college ball as well. So I'msure, you know, I know everyone
says defense wins championships,but, that communication, I'm
sure that helps too.
Rudy Rodriguez (42:45):
It really does. It really does. I mean, your
coaches communicate everythingthey expect, and what they want
you to do, and how you do it,and communicating with your
teammates, it really rings true.It really rings true. You know,
what I appreciated about Aaron,was his forthrightness and stuff
about how, you know, he hadworked out in industry before
(43:08):
coming back to his familybusiness and how he had to
reshift the focus of the familywas a small business with only
six employees, and then how hechanged the whole focus of the
business and how that businesskind of took off on them.
And he did that by buildingtrust relationships out in the
(43:29):
channel, which really helped anddedicated staying serving those
markets and turning that aroundand leveraging the experience he
had from being in the channeland understanding how building a
channel worked and buildingrelationships worked and they
used that to grow theirbusiness. And it turned into
(43:50):
something where, you know, nowthey've trained over a million
people over the years. So it'sreally exciting to learn to
learn that. And I think there's,you know, he had several other
stories about working in thechannel. I think you have some
comments on that.
Anthony Carrano (44:04):
Oh, yeah, absolutely. And it was really
fascinating too, especially thembeing a smaller partner
connecting with a mid sizedpartner to sell into an
enterprise, you know, multimulti, you know, you know,
billion dollar, you know,pharmaceutical company, and
create such an opportunity. Butthe thing that he, you know, he
talked about just the importanceof, you know, honoring the
(44:27):
channel and really respectingthe relationships and that there
was an opportunity where andit's not like that, you know,
the client was doing anythingwrong or insidious. They were
just they really liked the workthat they did. So he went
direct, you know, after theengagement was done to see if
they can do more work for them.
And he was like, I can, but I'mnot gonna cut out my partner.
(44:49):
And, you know, to your pointthat, you know, one of those
aspects of those, you know,those trust relationships is
that it's just it's important,not only, you know, just to be
delivering during the course ofthe engagement and
communicating, but then evenmaintaining your integrity post
engagement and really respectingthat relationship. Because
(45:09):
that's something that, you know,I mean, word spreads quick,
right, in the community, bothgood and bad. And, and just to
to, you know, not try and grab,you know, the easy money or grab
more money, but, you know,respect that and honor that
relationship, you know, and havethat long view when it comes to,
you know, having partners. So Ithought that was really
(45:29):
fantastic.
Rudy Rodriguez (45:30):
Oh, it it really was. And it that really hit home
because that's part of what wewhat the IAMCP preaches is about
building strong businesspartnerships and trust
relationships. And and he hereally epitomizes the value of
those relationships. So Ithought that was a really good
story from Aaron. It really was.
(45:52):
We want to thank all of you forjoining us on this episode of
IAMCP Profiles in Partnershiptoday powered by Dunamis
Marketing. We hope you enjoyedthis podcast and find it useful
and inspiring. If you did,please subscribe, rate, and
review. Review us on yourfavorite podcast platform. One
of the best ways to partner forsuccess is to join IAMCP, a
(46:15):
community of Microsoft partnerswho help each other grow and
thrive.
IAMCP members can find andconnect with other partners
locally and globally and accessexclusive resources and
opportunities. Whether you'relooking for new customers, new
markets, or new solutions, IAMCPcan help you achieve your goals.
(46:35):
To learn more, visit the websiteat www.iamcp.org.
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