October 25, 2024 • 28 mins
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Houston Business Journal had their episode, their issue come out
last week. I think it was last week that was
the HBJ Fast fifty and that is fifty companies that
are seeing incredible year over year growth. Growth is exciting.
You know, politicians talk about jobs, We're going to create jobs.
They don't know how to create jobs. Do you know
(00:22):
why jobs are created? Jobs are created because entrepreneurial people
need tasks performed that they themselves cannot perform. Jobs are
not created to give people something to do so that
families have money, or so that people have a place
to go so they don't rob you. That's the byproduct
(00:42):
of things getting done, things needing to get done. Think
about when you hire somebody to do something. You hire
them to do it. You're willing to part with your
money to get them to do something you don't want
to do, whether that's change your oil or mow your grass,
or remove a cyst or apoll up or something you
can't do. This is exciting. This is how we transact things.
(01:05):
This is how we improve the human condition. And I
find it very, very exhilarating to talk to people with
an entrepreneurial spirit that are seeing success because for every
person that's having success in business. They've had plenty of
failures along the way, and they may still have some
failures along the way. When I read a food review
of a new restaurant that's open and they're such exciting,
(01:27):
this is going to be a Houston twist on this.
This is the chances aren't there going to be closed
in a year. Doesn't mean they didn't have a lot
of interest, doesn't mean the food was bad, doesn't mean
the experience was bad. It just means that more often
than not, business fails. So when someone's having success, we
should applaud that and learn from it, and today we
do that. Number twenty on that list is Serverless Solutions
(01:51):
dot Com. Ramon, there's a dash between serverless and solutions.
I don't know if you knew that serverless dash solutions
dot com. And Mike Johnson is the big cheese over there.
What is your actual title, Mike?
Speaker 2 (02:04):
We don't really carry those, but partner essentially, there are
three founders that started the company back twenty nineteen.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
Well, let's make up a title that's a hell of
a lot more fun, and then we don't have to
like do all of that song and dance. Mike Johnson's
role at serverleus Dash Solutions dot Com is he's the dude.
Speaker 3 (02:22):
There you go.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
No, okay, you got something better and more. What could
be a title for hend that? Huh? What bad mofo?
Like the it could get a wallet? Okay, we did
get a wallet for No, I'll tell you what. Why
don't you all email me with some ideas. It shouldn't
sound like it's pretentious, right, It shouldn't sound like he's
trying to act like, Oh, I'm a big shot. I
came up with a new title. That's not good, but
it should be something that represents the fact that he's
(02:45):
fun and frivolous without trying too hard. We got this, Mike.
Don't worry about this. We'll have you taken care of
all right. So there are three of you that are partners.
Are y'all just the investors or are y'all the operations
team operations?
Speaker 3 (02:58):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (02:58):
So we got started three of us that all work
together in big consulting companies years ago, and we got
started pre pandemic, getting ready to ramp up and hire
a bunch of people when the world shut down. And
so we're all self funded, really, you know, very active partners.
We all manage different parts of our business, you know,
delivering projects and managed services, data and AI managed security
(03:24):
to different clients around primarily around the Gulf coast.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
So that kind of stuff bores me to tears. And
part of why it bores me to tears is I'm
not good at it. And part of why I'm not
good at it is it bores me to tears. And
I think most people, I mean, look, if you're talking
about the you know, somebody works with the Texans, or
they work with the Astros or the rockets, or they
work with actual rockets for NASA, or they work in
(03:50):
the White House. Everyone is kind of generally interested in that.
These are things that are very dry. They're not exciting
to most people, but they are to a few. The
last they are critical to our lives. How did you
get interested in this field?
Speaker 2 (04:07):
Uh, started out of school and writing code basically was
a business major, and went into consulting and then you know,
managed a team, managed projects, grew a team, and then uh,
you know, the folks that that I enjoyed working with,
we decided, I think we can do this better, right,
and so we we decided to start servilest solutions and
(04:30):
really looking at at building. You know, our main focus
or our value is long term relationships with our customers.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
Work some music on it. Because I'm in a time
in on something. Are you ready tell me when you
got it? You can't have it, you're not even looking okay,
So I want you to do me a favor, Mike Johnson,
Serverlesssolutions dot Com. I want you to explain to me,
like I'm in fourth grade, exactly what you guys do.
I'm on your website, so I feel like I already
(04:58):
have an idea, but I want you to explaining exactly
what you do. And you have one minute go. So
part of our businesses that's awful remote hol on, Hold on, Mike,
that's putting unnecessary stress on demand? Can we get more
like a Jeopardy that would I mean I couldn't have
performed under that. Hold on. We're going to get to
(05:19):
it in just a second. Here, right, We're finding you
the right music because that's important. But I'm giving you
a lecture time to think in the process. Okay, here
we go, one minute go.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
So I would say half of our business is very
project centric. So think of it like construction, where we're
basically building applications for our clients. We're helping them with
data and artificial intelligence things. And then the other half
really is more outsourcing, so we help with managed services. Basically,
businesses that don't want to focus on it and don't
want to be responsible for cybersecurity, they hire us and
(05:51):
we take care of it for them. Half finished earlier.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
How big, Yeah you did. I'm impressed. How big? How
big a how big a share of what you do?
How much of what you do? How much bandwidth are
you spending on cybersecurity now versus when you started, because
I'm guessing that's been forced into being more important.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
Yeah, when we started, it really wasn't a hocus for us.
But as we got more and more into managed it right,
companies are hiring us to take care of their technology.
It's a requirement now. So we've got a dedicated team
that's working twenty four by seven basically constantly looking at
alerts and making sure that our clients are safe. I mean,
(06:34):
look at what's going on in cybersecurity over the last
three years. The number of breaches has probably quadrupled, and
so this is something that you know, big companies were
concerned about five years ago. Now it's something that every
single company needs to be concerned about. There are shops
with five employees that are getting breached every day right now.
Speaker 1 (06:53):
It's scary because in addition to the financial loss of
being held hostage and and data breaches and those sorts
of things. My wife used to work at Olpaso Energy
and their worst fear was because they had they had
gas coming from Bakersfield, California, all the way to Boston.
Bakersfield of Boston was their motto. If one of those lines,
(07:15):
if one of those valves opened or closed when it
wasn't supposed to, you could have an explosion and people
can die. I mean, we're talking about more than just
people's bank account being cleaned out, which in and of
itself is traumatic.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
Yeah, and that's I mean, that's the IoT field, right,
all the technology out in the field. Now you've got
a layer of security on top of that. It's not
just our email accounts, it's everything.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
It's really an interesting world because you embrace technology. I
am dragged into it kicking and screaming, but I do understand.
I do understand that it is here and it's here
to stay. And my role in all of that, much
like engines and a number of other things, is I
(07:59):
may not be good at it, and I will find
people that I trust who are and I will explain
to them what I need done, and I will compensate
them for that in the same way that if I
needed my car worked on, and I'm not good at that.
The worst president, the worst vice president in the history
of our.
Speaker 2 (08:16):
Count Michael Perry.
Speaker 1 (08:18):
We can't afford four more years of this. Mike Johnson
is our guest. He is Ronan. Did you go with
the title? Yet? It's not really a title. What's the
word other than title? His his, his gnome to plume,
his moniker at the at the shop is Mike. How
about this Mike Big Johnson. Now, anybody that puts big
(08:40):
in quotes on a business card? Yep. And it's a
leather business card and it's stamped in there, so it's
not really like a business card. It's a little bit douchey,
but also a little bit Matthew McConaughey, which I repeat myself,
but it kind of works right. It works for him,
and he only carries one into any gathering, and he
only gives out that one to the person he finds
(09:02):
most deserving. What do you think about this approach, Mike
Big Johnson aka Big bj MBJ, there's a lot of
we're working on this, Mike, We're working through this. This
is how this is how the magic's made. This is
how the magic's made.
Speaker 2 (09:15):
Okay, So yeah, clearly need some help in this space.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
Hey, you handle your business. I'll in mind, all right,
the serverless part of serverless solutions, and I don't really
understand the cloud, I will admit it. But on your
on your on your site, it is. It seems to
be the case that this is a big Explain what
that means to someone who's not technical, idea, is this
(09:40):
the equivalent of going wireless?
Speaker 2 (09:44):
It's really going cloud. So if we were looking at
technology ten years ago, you would say I need to
buy a server for that. Right, as as the big hyperscalers, Google, Microsoft,
AWS and some of the others have shifted gears. You
don't buy servers as much now as you buy capabilities,
and so you're buying what you're buying compute, you're buying processing,
(10:05):
you're buying services that you can use. And so for us,
serveral of solutions is all about let's not go and
invest in expensive servers. Let's focus on quick value delivery
leveraging what's already been built and what's already available out there,
and that is fairly secure, and you got to do
things the right way. But it just shortens the gap
(10:25):
from inception to being able to innovate.
Speaker 1 (10:31):
Okay, how is it different? And explain to me like
I'm really really young, Although that's a guess counterintuitive because
young people understand this better than fifty three year olds
like me.
Speaker 2 (10:42):
So yeah, before leveraging cloud, basically you go to Dell
and buy a server and racket either in your closet
or at a hosting facility, and you go and install
an operating system on it, put whatever technology you on
on there, and then you hope that it just keeps running. Now,
in a matter of minutes, I can spin up that
(11:03):
same environment in Microsoft's cloud or Google's cloud and have
it running in no time, and then when you're not
using it, or if it's if it doesn't work out,
you shut it down and you stop paying for it.
Versus the sunk cost of buying servers, and so there's
a little bit of a misconception that cloud is cheaper.
It generally is not. It's just different. It's a lot
(11:25):
more capable. And so with that you also get a
lot of added benefits with security and redundancy for you know,
disaster recovery and things like that.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
Yeah, and so that's one of the few things of
what you would talk about that I understand, and only
because I have an experience in it. And that is
when you buy a new iPhone. You know, in the
old days, they had to plug it in and you
had to you had to port all that information over
and now you just log in and it's in the cloud.
And I still don't understand how any of that works,
but I do find it fascinating and and it is
(11:57):
probably most important. It's very convenient at the end of
the day. The convenience and the speed and all of that.
That reduces cost, increases efficiency, reduces hassle. Those are things
we're looking for. Let's talk about your business. As a business,
it says that you focus on the mid market. So
(12:17):
who's handling Obviously, that's that's a niche you've you've you've chosen.
I think that's smart. Who's choose who is serving the
big boys? Who would be your competitor that handles the
massive companies.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
Yeah, I mean they're they're the big consulting companies, and
they're the big Indian offshore companies and really they're all
heavy Indian offshore for the most part. Okay, so we
do a lot of work with some of the Fortune
five hundred, just that's not really our go to market.
That's not really where we think that we have the
most opportunity. Just looking at the mid market, they're underserved
(12:51):
by people that are good at this stuff, and so
we felt like focusing on that would be a good
and we're back to back to that long term relationship, right.
We feel like focusing on some of these companies that
don't get a lot of attention that that can really
help us drive these ten year relationships that we're looking for.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
So this is not just a project based transactional relationship,
is more of a subscription long term relationship model.
Speaker 2 (13:17):
Yes, yes, so some of that, some of what we
do in this managed services and the managed security space
is multi year engagements. Generally, some of our projects where
we go and build an application might be a month
or two months, but we always have an eye towards
you know, what can we continue helping with because We're
there to fill a gap. And if all it is
(13:38):
is that one thing, that's fine. But most companies there
are other things that we can help with once we
get past that current, you know, initiative. I read this
about it, but really we when we started, when we
started serverle lists, I mean, we had several clients here
in Houston that we had been working with for ten years, right,
fifteen years. I've got a client I'm going to go
visit this afternoon over by the galley that I've worked
(14:01):
with since my daughter was born eighteen years ago.
Speaker 1 (14:03):
Do I know them?
Speaker 2 (14:06):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (14:07):
Are we friends?
Speaker 2 (14:11):
Probably? But I haven't gotten permission to share anything.
Speaker 1 (14:15):
It says our founder spent two decades finding and developing
the best technical talent and hiring the brightest kids out
of college, But companies we worked for were more interested
in driving low cost offshore body shops. We focus on
the right team for our clients at a reasonable cost.
It strikes me that in your industry, because it's not
something that someone can see, they'll pay an extra thirty
(14:35):
thousand dollars for the right features on their automobile, but
they won't pay an extra dollar for something they can't see,
which is what you do, which is kind of behind
the scenes. It's a necessity, not a flashy thing to
look at. Is that something that burdens your industry?
Speaker 2 (14:56):
Definitely? For people that don't understand what they're buying is
the challenge, right, So there is a product differentiation or
a service differentiation. It's just if you're given a hed
want one thousand hours at forty dollars an hour or
one thousand hours at one hundred dollars an hour one
hundred and fifty dollars an hour, which one do you choose? Right?
(15:16):
But reality is, you know that person that's one hundred,
one hundred and fifty might be able to do it
five times as fast, right, or you may end up
doing this for six months and when you get this
product or service, it's not what you thought it was. Yeah,
And so that's really what we struggle with in our
business is just people, you know, not really understanding what
(15:38):
they're getting out of out of the transaction. And that's
why for us, really we're all about the long term transaction.
We don't sign up for projects that we're not comfortable
we can win, we can be successful.
Speaker 1 (15:49):
For you know, I would tell you that there are
a lot of people who think in terms of the cheapest.
It almost becomes an obsession, it becomes a battle. They
don't want to pay a penny more for anything than
they absolutely have to. And these are also usually people
who try to accrue as much wealth as they possibly can,
so it's an odd thing. They want to make a
lot of money. They don't want anyone else to. I
(16:11):
want people I do business with to make money, and
I will say that to them, and I'll say, how
can I help you make more money? And don't give
me a discount. I want to do this. And it's
interesting to me, very interesting, how many people don't think
this way. And this cost saving mentality, I think infects
a lot of things. You shouldn't be wasteful. But when
(16:33):
it's something that matters, what's good is not cheap, and
what's cheap is not good, that rule turns out to
be true many, many, many times, and it's hard for
people to learn that until except for the hard way.
I made a decision on our show years ago, we're
going to have minimums. I'm not going to speak for
a company that isn't invested in what I do. It's
(16:56):
a lot of money and it's a long term investment,
but it's a rich, deep textured relationship over a long
period of time. And I think that it sounds like
that's what y'all are doing with your clients. That's a
better way to do business. It's a more rewarding and
not just financially, personally enriching experience to have that kind
(17:17):
of business. Obviously, you guys are doing something very well
serverless solutions. There's a dash in between serverlests and solutions
dot com. Mike, I wish you guys the absolute best
in what you're doing. Good luck, Thank you.
Speaker 2 (17:30):
I appreciate it. Thank you.
Speaker 1 (17:33):
Joe Biden became mentally impaired with the Michael Perris Tamala
was born that way. I keep a greatest hits of
the audio for this campaign, and it's the things that
I think are most important that we remember, and I've
(17:53):
tried to keep it to a minimum because if everything's important,
and nothing's important, and so what I'm going to do today,
So I'm going to go through and refine this list.
You know, one of the most important things you do
in law school is you it's called outlining. You take
(18:16):
notes every day in class and then you create an outline,
a structure of the law as it relates to that field,
property law, civil procedure, constitutional law, contracts towards and outlining
becomes very important as a means by which you prioritize
(18:38):
what's important. I do this in every aspect of life.
I did this before law school, but law school really
taught me this. I mean, hell, many days when I
get home, I sit in the driveway with my car idling,
my truck, my truck, my truck idling, it's an suv,
(18:59):
and I go through my consul. I take everything out,
I take wet wives, and I wipe everything down, and
then I find anything that doesn't need to be in there,
and I throw it away or give it away, and
wipe everything else down inside there, everything organized. I find
that to be very cathartic and very therapeutic. So anyway,
(19:20):
let's do that now. I want to remind you as
we get and we'll do this again as we get
closer to the election some of the things that are
out there that you may have forgotten. Here in twenty
nineteen was Kamala Harris very proudly when she was running
(19:42):
for president, saying, absolutely, I'm banning fracking. Well, now she's
running all over Pennsylvania saying no, no, no, no, I never
said that.
Speaker 3 (19:50):
There's no question I'm in favor of banning fracking. So yeah,
and starting and starting with what we can do on
day one around public lands, right, and then there has
to be legislation. But yes, and this is something I've
taken on in California. I have a history of working
on this issue. And to your point, and you know
that we have to just acknowledge that the residual impact
(20:11):
of fracking is enormous in terms of the impact on
the health and safety of communities. Yeah, so thank you.
Speaker 1 (20:17):
This is a montage of Kamala Harris using a communist
Marxist statement. This statement is.
Speaker 3 (20:30):
In the.
Speaker 1 (20:32):
Owner's Manual of Marxism and it's one she has used
for years and years and years. And this is just
an example of how many times it's just a few.
Speaker 3 (20:45):
I can imagine what can be and be unburdened by
what has been? You know, what can be unburdened by
what has been? What can be unburdened by what has been?
What can be on burdened by what has been? What
can be unburdened by what has been, What we can see,
(21:08):
what we believe can be unburdened by what has been?
What can be unburdened by what has been? What can
be unburdened by what has been? What can be unburdened
by what has been?
Speaker 1 (21:21):
Who we can be.
Speaker 3 (21:23):
Unburdened by who we have been? What can be unburdened
by what has been? Where we can be unburdened by
where we have been and unburdened by where we are
right now? What can be unburdened by what has been?
What can be unburdened by what has been? What can
be unburdened by what has been? What could be unburdened
(21:44):
by what had been? What can be unburdened by what
has been? What can be unburdened by what has been?
What can be unburdened by what has been? What can
be unburdened by what has been? What can be unburdened
by what has been? Unburdened by what has been? Believing
in what can be? What can be unburdened by what
(22:08):
has been? What can be unburdened by what has been?
What can be unburdened by what has been? What can be?
Speaker 2 (22:17):
Do you remember the Democrats are a party of disinformation.
Speaker 1 (22:20):
So the economy is up, price inflation is down, real
incomes are up, Gas prices are down. Michael, you know,
it's crazy how many things have happened in this campaign
that are a really big deal and then they're forgotten.
Do you remember the June twenty seventh debate between Joe
Biden and Donald Trump? Do you remember the debate between
(22:42):
Kamala Harrison Donald Trump? Do you remember David Muhir getting
all involved in that thing? Do you remember that Dana Walden,
the woman who put the whole thing together, is the
person who introduced Kamala Harris to her husband, Doug Himhoff.
Speaker 3 (23:03):
Is it true you got set up on a blind date?
Speaker 2 (23:05):
Yes, okay. Is it true that you might have googled
him before?
Speaker 3 (23:09):
So my best friend, who was like a sister to me,
call me up and she's like, I need you to
go out with this guy. And she's very bossy, as
best friends should be. Don't google him, just trust me
and go out with him. And I said, okay, and
then I googled him.
Speaker 1 (23:30):
One of the things about Kamala Harris that I find
most disturbing is what a fraud she is. What a fake.
And when she uses phony accents and thinks people won't notice,
I think it tells you a lot about her.
Speaker 3 (23:46):
You better thank a union member for sick leave. You
better thank a union member for paid leave. You better
thank a union member for vacation time. Let's just get
through the next sixty four days. How about that? And
(24:08):
you all helped us win in twenty twenty and we
gonna do it again in twenty twenty four. We will, Yes,
we will. You know. The one thing about all of
us is we like hard work. Hard work is good work.
Hard work is good work. The thing that we like
about hard work is we have fun doing hard work.
Speaker 1 (24:31):
Well, I think he's got to buy it.
Speaker 3 (24:36):
Can I get a witness? All my life I had
to fight. It ain't over with us. In government, we
campaign with the plan Uppercase t uppercase, p DE plan,
(24:57):
and then the environment is such that we're expected to
defend and the planned even when the first time we
roll it out there may be some glitches and it's
time to reevaluate and then do it again. It's just reasonable.
I support the Second Amendment, but it is reasonable to
say we need an assault weapons ban. It's reasonable to
say we need universal background tex Yeah, we need red
(25:18):
flag laws. And I will tell you when we get
this done together, my friend, and when I am president,
I will take on the bad actors who exploit a
crisis is at stake leading up to January fifth, look
at what's happening right now in this state. We're looking
across the country at so much devastation, people who have
(25:43):
lost family members, lost time being able to go to work,
lost time in terms of our children's education, in the
days of their education they have missed. There's been so
much loss these years, and in particular this year. We're
looking here in Georgia at the fact that one in
seven families is describing their household is being hungry. We're
(26:08):
in the midst of a hunger crisis in America and
it's hitting Georgia hard. One in seven describing hunger in
their households. One in six Georgian families are describing an
inability or difficulty to pay rent. One in four small
(26:31):
businesses in Georgia have gone out of business are about
to go out of business.
Speaker 1 (26:38):
Do you remember Kamala Harris claiming that our grandmother would
go to the villages in India with the bullhorn talking
about reproductive health care. You remember that I.
Speaker 3 (26:47):
Come from a long line of tough, trail blazing and
phenomenal women. My grandmother would go into villages in India,
and because she was Indian and lived in India, and
she would go to the villages in India. It was
a famous story in our family. My grandfather would say
(27:09):
she was going to be the end of his career,
but my grandmother would go into the villages with a bullhorn,
talking with the women about the need to have access
to reproductive health care.
Speaker 1 (27:18):
Yeah, you know what she's talking about. She's talking about
a society rural India where little girls are disfavored. You
only want to have boys because boys can help in
the fields and girls can't. The little girls will be killed. Yes,
she's bragging that her grandmother did that. And the other
(27:41):
reason is because in India, in the rural villages, particularly
in the past, it was considered that if you had
a daughter, you had to marry her off. In order
to pay a man to take on the burden of
a woman, you would have to provide a dowry. Study dowries.
That's one of the few things people know about India.
(28:02):
Because I know, because people ask me about it, and
I never got mine, dang it.
Houston Business Journal had their episode, their issue come out
last week. I think it was last week that was
the HBJ Fast fifty and that is fifty companies that
are seeing incredible year over year growth. Growth is exciting.
You know, politicians talk about jobs, We're going to create jobs.
They don't know how to create jobs. Do you know
(00:22):
why jobs are created? Jobs are created because entrepreneurial people
need tasks performed that they themselves cannot perform. Jobs are
not created to give people something to do so that
families have money, or so that people have a place
to go so they don't rob you. That's the byproduct
(00:42):
of things getting done, things needing to get done. Think
about when you hire somebody to do something. You hire
them to do it. You're willing to part with your
money to get them to do something you don't want
to do, whether that's change your oil or mow your grass,
or remove a cyst or apoll up or something you
can't do. This is exciting. This is how we transact things.
(01:05):
This is how we improve the human condition. And I
find it very, very exhilarating to talk to people with
an entrepreneurial spirit that are seeing success because for every
person that's having success in business. They've had plenty of
failures along the way, and they may still have some
failures along the way. When I read a food review
of a new restaurant that's open and they're such exciting,
(01:27):
this is going to be a Houston twist on this.
This is the chances aren't there going to be closed
in a year. Doesn't mean they didn't have a lot
of interest, doesn't mean the food was bad, doesn't mean
the experience was bad. It just means that more often
than not, business fails. So when someone's having success, we
should applaud that and learn from it, and today we
do that. Number twenty on that list is Serverless Solutions
(01:51):
dot Com. Ramon, there's a dash between serverless and solutions.
I don't know if you knew that serverless dash solutions
dot com. And Mike Johnson is the big cheese over there.
What is your actual title, Mike?
Speaker 2 (02:04):
We don't really carry those, but partner essentially, there are
three founders that started the company back twenty nineteen.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
Well, let's make up a title that's a hell of
a lot more fun, and then we don't have to
like do all of that song and dance. Mike Johnson's
role at serverleus Dash Solutions dot Com is he's the dude.
Speaker 3 (02:22):
There you go.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
No, okay, you got something better and more. What could
be a title for hend that? Huh? What bad mofo?
Like the it could get a wallet? Okay, we did
get a wallet for No, I'll tell you what. Why
don't you all email me with some ideas. It shouldn't
sound like it's pretentious, right, It shouldn't sound like he's
trying to act like, Oh, I'm a big shot. I
came up with a new title. That's not good, but
it should be something that represents the fact that he's
(02:45):
fun and frivolous without trying too hard. We got this, Mike.
Don't worry about this. We'll have you taken care of
all right. So there are three of you that are partners.
Are y'all just the investors or are y'all the operations
team operations?
Speaker 3 (02:58):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (02:58):
So we got started three of us that all work
together in big consulting companies years ago, and we got
started pre pandemic, getting ready to ramp up and hire
a bunch of people when the world shut down. And
so we're all self funded, really, you know, very active partners.
We all manage different parts of our business, you know,
delivering projects and managed services, data and AI managed security
(03:24):
to different clients around primarily around the Gulf coast.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
So that kind of stuff bores me to tears. And
part of why it bores me to tears is I'm
not good at it. And part of why I'm not
good at it is it bores me to tears. And
I think most people, I mean, look, if you're talking
about the you know, somebody works with the Texans, or
they work with the Astros or the rockets, or they
work with actual rockets for NASA, or they work in
(03:50):
the White House. Everyone is kind of generally interested in that.
These are things that are very dry. They're not exciting
to most people, but they are to a few. The
last they are critical to our lives. How did you
get interested in this field?
Speaker 2 (04:07):
Uh, started out of school and writing code basically was
a business major, and went into consulting and then you know,
managed a team, managed projects, grew a team, and then uh,
you know, the folks that that I enjoyed working with,
we decided, I think we can do this better, right,
and so we we decided to start servilest solutions and
(04:30):
really looking at at building. You know, our main focus
or our value is long term relationships with our customers.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
Work some music on it. Because I'm in a time
in on something. Are you ready tell me when you
got it? You can't have it, you're not even looking okay,
So I want you to do me a favor, Mike Johnson,
Serverlesssolutions dot Com. I want you to explain to me,
like I'm in fourth grade, exactly what you guys do.
I'm on your website, so I feel like I already
(04:58):
have an idea, but I want you to explaining exactly
what you do. And you have one minute go. So
part of our businesses that's awful remote hol on, Hold on, Mike,
that's putting unnecessary stress on demand? Can we get more
like a Jeopardy that would I mean I couldn't have
performed under that. Hold on. We're going to get to
(05:19):
it in just a second. Here, right, We're finding you
the right music because that's important. But I'm giving you
a lecture time to think in the process. Okay, here
we go, one minute go.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
So I would say half of our business is very
project centric. So think of it like construction, where we're
basically building applications for our clients. We're helping them with
data and artificial intelligence things. And then the other half
really is more outsourcing, so we help with managed services. Basically,
businesses that don't want to focus on it and don't
want to be responsible for cybersecurity, they hire us and
(05:51):
we take care of it for them. Half finished earlier.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
How big, Yeah you did. I'm impressed. How big? How
big a how big a share of what you do?
How much of what you do? How much bandwidth are
you spending on cybersecurity now versus when you started, because
I'm guessing that's been forced into being more important.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
Yeah, when we started, it really wasn't a hocus for us.
But as we got more and more into managed it right,
companies are hiring us to take care of their technology.
It's a requirement now. So we've got a dedicated team
that's working twenty four by seven basically constantly looking at
alerts and making sure that our clients are safe. I mean,
(06:34):
look at what's going on in cybersecurity over the last
three years. The number of breaches has probably quadrupled, and
so this is something that you know, big companies were
concerned about five years ago. Now it's something that every
single company needs to be concerned about. There are shops
with five employees that are getting breached every day right now.
Speaker 1 (06:53):
It's scary because in addition to the financial loss of
being held hostage and and data breaches and those sorts
of things. My wife used to work at Olpaso Energy
and their worst fear was because they had they had
gas coming from Bakersfield, California, all the way to Boston.
Bakersfield of Boston was their motto. If one of those lines,
(07:15):
if one of those valves opened or closed when it
wasn't supposed to, you could have an explosion and people
can die. I mean, we're talking about more than just
people's bank account being cleaned out, which in and of
itself is traumatic.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
Yeah, and that's I mean, that's the IoT field, right,
all the technology out in the field. Now you've got
a layer of security on top of that. It's not
just our email accounts, it's everything.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
It's really an interesting world because you embrace technology. I
am dragged into it kicking and screaming, but I do understand.
I do understand that it is here and it's here
to stay. And my role in all of that, much
like engines and a number of other things, is I
(07:59):
may not be good at it, and I will find
people that I trust who are and I will explain
to them what I need done, and I will compensate
them for that in the same way that if I
needed my car worked on, and I'm not good at that.
The worst president, the worst vice president in the history
of our.
Speaker 2 (08:16):
Count Michael Perry.
Speaker 1 (08:18):
We can't afford four more years of this. Mike Johnson
is our guest. He is Ronan. Did you go with
the title? Yet? It's not really a title. What's the
word other than title? His his, his gnome to plume,
his moniker at the at the shop is Mike. How
about this Mike Big Johnson. Now, anybody that puts big
(08:40):
in quotes on a business card? Yep. And it's a
leather business card and it's stamped in there, so it's
not really like a business card. It's a little bit douchey,
but also a little bit Matthew McConaughey, which I repeat myself,
but it kind of works right. It works for him,
and he only carries one into any gathering, and he
only gives out that one to the person he finds
(09:02):
most deserving. What do you think about this approach, Mike
Big Johnson aka Big bj MBJ, there's a lot of
we're working on this, Mike, We're working through this. This
is how this is how the magic's made. This is
how the magic's made.
Speaker 2 (09:15):
Okay, So yeah, clearly need some help in this space.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
Hey, you handle your business. I'll in mind, all right,
the serverless part of serverless solutions, and I don't really
understand the cloud, I will admit it. But on your
on your on your site, it is. It seems to
be the case that this is a big Explain what
that means to someone who's not technical, idea, is this
(09:40):
the equivalent of going wireless?
Speaker 2 (09:44):
It's really going cloud. So if we were looking at
technology ten years ago, you would say I need to
buy a server for that. Right, as as the big hyperscalers, Google, Microsoft,
AWS and some of the others have shifted gears. You
don't buy servers as much now as you buy capabilities,
and so you're buying what you're buying compute, you're buying processing,
(10:05):
you're buying services that you can use. And so for us,
serveral of solutions is all about let's not go and
invest in expensive servers. Let's focus on quick value delivery
leveraging what's already been built and what's already available out there,
and that is fairly secure, and you got to do
things the right way. But it just shortens the gap
(10:25):
from inception to being able to innovate.
Speaker 1 (10:31):
Okay, how is it different? And explain to me like
I'm really really young, Although that's a guess counterintuitive because
young people understand this better than fifty three year olds
like me.
Speaker 2 (10:42):
So yeah, before leveraging cloud, basically you go to Dell
and buy a server and racket either in your closet
or at a hosting facility, and you go and install
an operating system on it, put whatever technology you on
on there, and then you hope that it just keeps running. Now,
in a matter of minutes, I can spin up that
(11:03):
same environment in Microsoft's cloud or Google's cloud and have
it running in no time, and then when you're not
using it, or if it's if it doesn't work out,
you shut it down and you stop paying for it.
Versus the sunk cost of buying servers, and so there's
a little bit of a misconception that cloud is cheaper.
It generally is not. It's just different. It's a lot
(11:25):
more capable. And so with that you also get a
lot of added benefits with security and redundancy for you know,
disaster recovery and things like that.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
Yeah, and so that's one of the few things of
what you would talk about that I understand, and only
because I have an experience in it. And that is
when you buy a new iPhone. You know, in the
old days, they had to plug it in and you
had to you had to port all that information over
and now you just log in and it's in the cloud.
And I still don't understand how any of that works,
but I do find it fascinating and and it is
(11:57):
probably most important. It's very convenient at the end of
the day. The convenience and the speed and all of that.
That reduces cost, increases efficiency, reduces hassle. Those are things
we're looking for. Let's talk about your business. As a business,
it says that you focus on the mid market. So
(12:17):
who's handling Obviously, that's that's a niche you've you've you've chosen.
I think that's smart. Who's choose who is serving the
big boys? Who would be your competitor that handles the
massive companies.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
Yeah, I mean they're they're the big consulting companies, and
they're the big Indian offshore companies and really they're all
heavy Indian offshore for the most part. Okay, so we
do a lot of work with some of the Fortune
five hundred, just that's not really our go to market.
That's not really where we think that we have the
most opportunity. Just looking at the mid market, they're underserved
(12:51):
by people that are good at this stuff, and so
we felt like focusing on that would be a good
and we're back to back to that long term relationship, right.
We feel like focusing on some of these companies that
don't get a lot of attention that that can really
help us drive these ten year relationships that we're looking for.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
So this is not just a project based transactional relationship,
is more of a subscription long term relationship model.
Speaker 2 (13:17):
Yes, yes, so some of that, some of what we
do in this managed services and the managed security space
is multi year engagements. Generally, some of our projects where
we go and build an application might be a month
or two months, but we always have an eye towards
you know, what can we continue helping with because We're
there to fill a gap. And if all it is
(13:38):
is that one thing, that's fine. But most companies there
are other things that we can help with once we
get past that current, you know, initiative. I read this
about it, but really we when we started, when we
started serverle lists, I mean, we had several clients here
in Houston that we had been working with for ten years, right,
fifteen years. I've got a client I'm going to go
visit this afternoon over by the galley that I've worked
(14:01):
with since my daughter was born eighteen years ago.
Speaker 1 (14:03):
Do I know them?
Speaker 2 (14:06):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (14:07):
Are we friends?
Speaker 2 (14:11):
Probably? But I haven't gotten permission to share anything.
Speaker 1 (14:15):
It says our founder spent two decades finding and developing
the best technical talent and hiring the brightest kids out
of college, But companies we worked for were more interested
in driving low cost offshore body shops. We focus on
the right team for our clients at a reasonable cost.
It strikes me that in your industry, because it's not
something that someone can see, they'll pay an extra thirty
(14:35):
thousand dollars for the right features on their automobile, but
they won't pay an extra dollar for something they can't see,
which is what you do, which is kind of behind
the scenes. It's a necessity, not a flashy thing to
look at. Is that something that burdens your industry?
Speaker 2 (14:56):
Definitely? For people that don't understand what they're buying is
the challenge, right, So there is a product differentiation or
a service differentiation. It's just if you're given a hed
want one thousand hours at forty dollars an hour or
one thousand hours at one hundred dollars an hour one
hundred and fifty dollars an hour, which one do you choose? Right?
(15:16):
But reality is, you know that person that's one hundred,
one hundred and fifty might be able to do it
five times as fast, right, or you may end up
doing this for six months and when you get this
product or service, it's not what you thought it was. Yeah,
And so that's really what we struggle with in our
business is just people, you know, not really understanding what
(15:38):
they're getting out of out of the transaction. And that's
why for us, really we're all about the long term transaction.
We don't sign up for projects that we're not comfortable
we can win, we can be successful.
Speaker 1 (15:49):
For you know, I would tell you that there are
a lot of people who think in terms of the cheapest.
It almost becomes an obsession, it becomes a battle. They
don't want to pay a penny more for anything than
they absolutely have to. And these are also usually people
who try to accrue as much wealth as they possibly can,
so it's an odd thing. They want to make a
lot of money. They don't want anyone else to. I
(16:11):
want people I do business with to make money, and
I will say that to them, and I'll say, how
can I help you make more money? And don't give
me a discount. I want to do this. And it's
interesting to me, very interesting, how many people don't think
this way. And this cost saving mentality, I think infects
a lot of things. You shouldn't be wasteful. But when
(16:33):
it's something that matters, what's good is not cheap, and
what's cheap is not good, that rule turns out to
be true many, many, many times, and it's hard for
people to learn that until except for the hard way.
I made a decision on our show years ago, we're
going to have minimums. I'm not going to speak for
a company that isn't invested in what I do. It's
(16:56):
a lot of money and it's a long term investment,
but it's a rich, deep textured relationship over a long
period of time. And I think that it sounds like
that's what y'all are doing with your clients. That's a
better way to do business. It's a more rewarding and
not just financially, personally enriching experience to have that kind
(17:17):
of business. Obviously, you guys are doing something very well
serverless solutions. There's a dash in between serverlests and solutions
dot com. Mike, I wish you guys the absolute best
in what you're doing. Good luck, Thank you.
Speaker 2 (17:30):
I appreciate it. Thank you.
Speaker 1 (17:33):
Joe Biden became mentally impaired with the Michael Perris Tamala
was born that way. I keep a greatest hits of
the audio for this campaign, and it's the things that
I think are most important that we remember, and I've
(17:53):
tried to keep it to a minimum because if everything's important,
and nothing's important, and so what I'm going to do today,
So I'm going to go through and refine this list.
You know, one of the most important things you do
in law school is you it's called outlining. You take
(18:16):
notes every day in class and then you create an outline,
a structure of the law as it relates to that field,
property law, civil procedure, constitutional law, contracts towards and outlining
becomes very important as a means by which you prioritize
(18:38):
what's important. I do this in every aspect of life.
I did this before law school, but law school really
taught me this. I mean, hell, many days when I
get home, I sit in the driveway with my car idling,
my truck, my truck, my truck idling, it's an suv,
(18:59):
and I go through my consul. I take everything out,
I take wet wives, and I wipe everything down, and
then I find anything that doesn't need to be in there,
and I throw it away or give it away, and
wipe everything else down inside there, everything organized. I find
that to be very cathartic and very therapeutic. So anyway,
(19:20):
let's do that now. I want to remind you as
we get and we'll do this again as we get
closer to the election some of the things that are
out there that you may have forgotten. Here in twenty
nineteen was Kamala Harris very proudly when she was running
(19:42):
for president, saying, absolutely, I'm banning fracking. Well, now she's
running all over Pennsylvania saying no, no, no, no, I never
said that.
Speaker 3 (19:50):
There's no question I'm in favor of banning fracking. So yeah,
and starting and starting with what we can do on
day one around public lands, right, and then there has
to be legislation. But yes, and this is something I've
taken on in California. I have a history of working
on this issue. And to your point, and you know
that we have to just acknowledge that the residual impact
(20:11):
of fracking is enormous in terms of the impact on
the health and safety of communities. Yeah, so thank you.
Speaker 1 (20:17):
This is a montage of Kamala Harris using a communist
Marxist statement. This statement is.
Speaker 3 (20:30):
In the.
Speaker 1 (20:32):
Owner's Manual of Marxism and it's one she has used
for years and years and years. And this is just
an example of how many times it's just a few.
Speaker 3 (20:45):
I can imagine what can be and be unburdened by
what has been? You know, what can be unburdened by
what has been? What can be unburdened by what has been?
What can be on burdened by what has been? What
can be unburdened by what has been, What we can see,
(21:08):
what we believe can be unburdened by what has been?
What can be unburdened by what has been? What can
be unburdened by what has been? What can be unburdened
by what has been?
Speaker 1 (21:21):
Who we can be.
Speaker 3 (21:23):
Unburdened by who we have been? What can be unburdened
by what has been? Where we can be unburdened by
where we have been and unburdened by where we are
right now? What can be unburdened by what has been?
What can be unburdened by what has been? What can
be unburdened by what has been? What could be unburdened
(21:44):
by what had been? What can be unburdened by what
has been? What can be unburdened by what has been?
What can be unburdened by what has been? What can
be unburdened by what has been? What can be unburdened
by what has been? Unburdened by what has been? Believing
in what can be? What can be unburdened by what
(22:08):
has been? What can be unburdened by what has been?
What can be unburdened by what has been? What can be?
Speaker 2 (22:17):
Do you remember the Democrats are a party of disinformation.
Speaker 1 (22:20):
So the economy is up, price inflation is down, real
incomes are up, Gas prices are down. Michael, you know,
it's crazy how many things have happened in this campaign
that are a really big deal and then they're forgotten.
Do you remember the June twenty seventh debate between Joe
Biden and Donald Trump? Do you remember the debate between
(22:42):
Kamala Harrison Donald Trump? Do you remember David Muhir getting
all involved in that thing? Do you remember that Dana Walden,
the woman who put the whole thing together, is the
person who introduced Kamala Harris to her husband, Doug Himhoff.
Speaker 3 (23:03):
Is it true you got set up on a blind date?
Speaker 2 (23:05):
Yes, okay. Is it true that you might have googled
him before?
Speaker 3 (23:09):
So my best friend, who was like a sister to me,
call me up and she's like, I need you to
go out with this guy. And she's very bossy, as
best friends should be. Don't google him, just trust me
and go out with him. And I said, okay, and
then I googled him.
Speaker 1 (23:30):
One of the things about Kamala Harris that I find
most disturbing is what a fraud she is. What a fake.
And when she uses phony accents and thinks people won't notice,
I think it tells you a lot about her.
Speaker 3 (23:46):
You better thank a union member for sick leave. You
better thank a union member for paid leave. You better
thank a union member for vacation time. Let's just get
through the next sixty four days. How about that? And
(24:08):
you all helped us win in twenty twenty and we
gonna do it again in twenty twenty four. We will, Yes,
we will. You know. The one thing about all of
us is we like hard work. Hard work is good work.
Hard work is good work. The thing that we like
about hard work is we have fun doing hard work.
Speaker 1 (24:31):
Well, I think he's got to buy it.
Speaker 3 (24:36):
Can I get a witness? All my life I had
to fight. It ain't over with us. In government, we
campaign with the plan Uppercase t uppercase, p DE plan,
(24:57):
and then the environment is such that we're expected to
defend and the planned even when the first time we
roll it out there may be some glitches and it's
time to reevaluate and then do it again. It's just reasonable.
I support the Second Amendment, but it is reasonable to
say we need an assault weapons ban. It's reasonable to
say we need universal background tex Yeah, we need red
(25:18):
flag laws. And I will tell you when we get
this done together, my friend, and when I am president,
I will take on the bad actors who exploit a
crisis is at stake leading up to January fifth, look
at what's happening right now in this state. We're looking
across the country at so much devastation, people who have
(25:43):
lost family members, lost time being able to go to work,
lost time in terms of our children's education, in the
days of their education they have missed. There's been so
much loss these years, and in particular this year. We're
looking here in Georgia at the fact that one in
seven families is describing their household is being hungry. We're
(26:08):
in the midst of a hunger crisis in America and
it's hitting Georgia hard. One in seven describing hunger in
their households. One in six Georgian families are describing an
inability or difficulty to pay rent. One in four small
(26:31):
businesses in Georgia have gone out of business are about
to go out of business.
Speaker 1 (26:38):
Do you remember Kamala Harris claiming that our grandmother would
go to the villages in India with the bullhorn talking
about reproductive health care. You remember that I.
Speaker 3 (26:47):
Come from a long line of tough, trail blazing and
phenomenal women. My grandmother would go into villages in India,
and because she was Indian and lived in India, and
she would go to the villages in India. It was
a famous story in our family. My grandfather would say
(27:09):
she was going to be the end of his career,
but my grandmother would go into the villages with a bullhorn,
talking with the women about the need to have access
to reproductive health care.
Speaker 1 (27:18):
Yeah, you know what she's talking about. She's talking about
a society rural India where little girls are disfavored. You
only want to have boys because boys can help in
the fields and girls can't. The little girls will be killed. Yes,
she's bragging that her grandmother did that. And the other
(27:41):
reason is because in India, in the rural villages, particularly
in the past, it was considered that if you had
a daughter, you had to marry her off. In order
to pay a man to take on the burden of
a woman, you would have to provide a dowry. Study dowries.
That's one of the few things people know about India.
(28:02):
Because I know, because people ask me about it, and
I never got mine, dang it.
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