Weighing the Chickens with JT Perry

Justin Garrison (00:21.486)
Hey everyone, welcome to Fuck Around and Find Out. I am your host, Justin Garrison. With me as always is Autumn Nash. How's it going, Autumn?

Autumn Nash (00:29.262)
Slightly caffeinated. We're almost there. We're almost there. Yeah, I mean this isn't bad. It's not too bad. Well, I mean like what what are we calling a cup? 'Cause like I've got like a very big like vessel that is like full of like chai and coffee, but I put creatine in it, so like it's almost healthy though. Like yeah.

Justin Garrison (00:30.586)
Slightly caffeinated. I we're recording I don't know, we record a little early sometimes. Got kick in. How many cups have you had?

Justin Garrison (00:41.824)
We gotta we gotta adjust the.

Justin Garrison (00:55.672)
Is that how that works?

JT Perry (00:56.897)
Yeah. Autumn bath.

Justin Garrison (00:58.723)
I don't know if that's how.

Autumn Nash (00:59.818)
Exactly. It's automatic. See, J T knows me. That's how you know this is how you know we're friends 'cause he's like, Yep, this tracks. Like

Justin Garrison (01:02.194)
the map, there you go.

Justin Garrison (01:06.35)
For for anyone listening to the show that would ever like to escape to the woods and not do tech anymore, we have J JT Perry on the show. Hi welcome to the show, JT.

JT Perry (01:14.817)
Thanks for having me. Happy to be here. That is correct. Fo

Justin Garrison (01:15.886)
You are founder of Barn Analytics, is that right? And so this is like a mixture of like let's never touch tech again and go work on a farm and then also bring tech with us.

Autumn Nash (01:25.698)
But like it's so real. Like how many times do you hear the when I'm done I'm going to buy a farm and never do this again? And like you live the dream, like

JT Perry (01:25.729)
Yeah.

JT Perry (01:34.759)
I live the dream. Yes, yes. It's usually a dream. Occasionally blurred blends into the nightmare side of the house. But yeah, it's been pretty fun.

Justin Garrison (01:43.834)
'Cause now you well, I I guess like you're on a farm so you have real shit to deal with. Like this is

Autumn Nash (01:44.302)
Okay.

JT Perry (01:47.787)
Yes. Yeah.

Autumn Nash (01:49.058)
His pigs get out. But they're so cute though. They're so freaking cute. Can we just like in the show notes, can we put pictures of little pigs and chickens? Be so cute.

Justin Garrison (01:51.054)
Yeah.

JT Perry (01:56.204)
Sure, we c we can we could do that. Yeah, yeah.

Justin Garrison (01:56.41)
We'll figure it out. JT, so tell me about this dream that you've lived so far. What what what kind of experience have you had and and what are you working on now?

JT Perry (02:06.197)
Yeah, I I was the token enterprise guy at all the tech conferences for a long time. no, not not AI tokens. kind of quote unquote well was in the Navy submarines, doing things like AN Yuck sevens to play acronym games, DEC VMS, fun stuff like that. and then

Justin Garrison (02:13.401)
Not A AI tokens, like the

JT Perry (02:34.347)
Ended up in the most boring name startup ever, Administrative Systems Inc., which was actually at the time solved the major problem of of at that time if you wanted, you know, your employer gives you all these benefits, disability insurance, critical illness, all this kind of stuff, they could only s like bill the employer of like X dollars per employee, right? And and

Justin Garrison (02:40.865)
Mm-hmm.

JT Perry (02:58.667)
This is when, and we can talk about motivations and all of that fun stuff, but when employers decided you should pay more for your benefits. And so we solved the how to payroll deduct from you maybe a portion for all that fun insurance stuff. and then ended up getting bought by insurance company called Assurance, spent a long time there, worked for the the most hum awesome human being ever, Carla Schott.

Hopefully Carla listens to this. It's been a while. Need to catch up. ended up kind of in leadership of there, helped run this

Another boring name company, but disability reinsurance, outsourcer for disability companies. launched a line of business there with another awesome friend, Amy Thompson, and then eventually joined the big evil borg that is Primera Blue Cross. I say that with a smile. ran transformation there, helped modernize them, helped launch their health clinics, bunch of other fun stuff. then was at VMware for quite a while, Tianzu.

JT Perry (04:10.985)
helping other CIOs and CTOs and all that stuff figure out what this this transformation meant, what it you know, what was definition, what were outcomes, all of those kind of buzzy word things. and then met Jen Kenyon, who's my co founder over in Windsor, UK. And we decided that we were both on the bench for a little bit and

ended up moving out to the farm and and started solving my own problems and we decided to see if we could sell those solutions to help fund my pig and chicken problem.

Autumn Nash (04:47.191)
Where were you what were your titles at VMware and Premier?

JT Perry (04:53.303)
Primera, I was VP of Transformation, did a brief tour of CIO during this thing called COVID. which, you know, let let's never do that again. was an amazing learning experience though. I I mean I have to say. I I no enjoy is not the right word, but

Justin Garrison (05:04.634)
Please.

JT Perry (05:16.683)
Just a crazy challenge. Crazy challenge, right? To take Yeah, I do. I do.

Autumn Nash (05:19.147)
I think you like doing hard things.

Justin Garrison (05:22.894)
W was that was that like a digital transformation for the company? Like what did that entail?

JT Perry (05:26.689)
we we set back. I I it's kind of a don't know, funny to me story. I I was actually hired to run enterprise architecture. and I at that point I had been basically traveling for thirteen, fourteen years of my life, like you know, leave on Monday, come back on on Friday kind of thing, two two to three weeks a a month. And so Primero was local here in the Seattle area, up north of Mount Lake Terrace. And

That was really attractive. Like I could drive into an office. but when I first got there, ended up being a part of this group to figure out what Primero was gonna be when I grew up, kind of thing. Primero was just fine as a company, but you know, having only certain types of insurance, you know, had some gaps of or not even gaps, the gaps makes it sound bad. They had opportunities to to do better.

to help kind of build this transformation plan that that looked at really three different areas. One was the sales strategy, what were the gaps, what were lines of business that that Primera could do differently, and then a digital transformation as well, right? All the data was locked in these silos. You you had a claim system.

very enterprise story, right? You had a claim system, you had kind of a CRM system, you had an enrollment system, you had all of these things. but but trying to get data across those or or you know, just the process of enrolling somebody through the systems took several batch cycles, right? Over overnight. So, you know, by the time we would enroll somebody, it would be, I don't know, I I don't remember.

the dates so so nobody quote these but like you know six or seven days before we'd ship off the the to go get the enrollment card my favorite story of that was was just kind of looking at that process we we realized there was one individual in the operations area whose whole job was to review when I say review like a

JT Perry (07:27.38)
print out well on screen, but print out an XML file and and review it, right? Right. XML was never developed for for for humans to to go through and and and look for errors because at some point that XML file got screwed up. Right. And and for an insurance company, your first

Autumn Nash (07:43.479)
Yeah, and it they're not readable at all.

JT Perry (07:47.187)
No, no. And and it's dense, right? Name, date of birth, blah, blah, blah. And then it's also very repetitive, right? So how do your eyes become I I don't know how she did it. awesome human, but you know, enterprise scar tissue, because at one point this file went out wrong.

insurance company the first way they interact with the customer, their first real entrance, right? Because you're an employer, you sign up, you click some magic form, maybe you picked out that it's it's Primera or United Health or you know Voya or or whoever the company is, but

insurance company's first real interaction with that that customer is the insurance card, right? So so those are incredibly valuable, right? Now you get texts and sign up for mobile apps and all of that. So that has evolved, but but still at this time the insurance company. Anyway, that went wrong. So very enterprise reflex. Well we'll have a human look at it. Right. And and that right and that probably only needed

Justin Garrison (08:42.522)
Yeah, build it into the process.

JT Perry (08:47.21)
didn't you know, even if it needed to be done, probably only needed to be done for like two weeks after, right? Cause cause whoever made the patch fixed the software, but but in that very enterprise way, once you put that check in there, it like it never leaves. Right. So I I used to look at transformation, I did some of it back at assurance and DRMS too, as as like surgery, right? Right. Go remove the scar tissue. That stuff builds up. You can't flex your arm anymore. go get rid of it so you can flex your arm, right? So

Justin Garrison (09:13.668)
Yeah, trans transformation is definitely more about unlearning than learning in a lot of ways.

JT Perry (09:17.14)
Yeah. Yeah. So we built this VMware was part of was my official title was a Tanzu Value Advisor. It'd probably be equivalent to a field CTO, field CIO, something like that.

Autumn Nash (09:18.251)
What'd you do at VMware?

Autumn Nash (09:31.469)
'Cause it's so crazy. I feel like your like executive and like your history sounds like you're so like I don't know, like not boring, obviously, but like it seems like so very like

Justin Garrison (09:44.718)
It makes sense why you wanted to move to a farm.

JT Perry (09:46.89)
Yeah. It it

Autumn Nash (09:46.979)
Yes. Yes.

But like you in real life, like your picture on like like blue sky, I didn't even recognize you from Linux Fest and then you in real life is like so much fun. Like like it so aligns more with like barn analytics and like you 3D print your own boards and do all these things and put things together and build things that work in real life. Like how do those things translate? Like how did you go from that like to like this? 'Cause what you're building now is like so cool and actually solves like problems.

JT Perry (10:16.82)
Yeah, I I I've always been a builder. Yeah, I mean I've I've always

Justin Garrison (10:18.138)
As opposed to all the other stuff. We all understood.

Autumn Nash (10:20.586)
Well, I mean they were solving problems, but like I I can't imagine like like it's hard to go from like CIO or VP back to being technical. Like I don't know if a lot of people can like do that.

JT Perry (10:26.868)
Because

JT Perry (10:31.604)
Well yeah, I I would say I never really stopped being technical. It was like my escape from the the politics and all of that stuff. I mean I've I've always been a nerd geek, insert you know, whatever whatever title you want here. I I think you know fixing computers and fixing people you know, two different challenges, but they really build on each other.

from from you know that perspective. and I like people. I do. you know don't like politics. I I can play the game. but you know it's it's one thing to build a board and and you know d design a circuit board and bring it together and write the software and make that that that's one real cool feeling.

Another awesome feeling though, and even a better feeling is to give somebody who like on paper, maybe they're too junior, quote unquote, for for whatever the job is, but you see something in them and and you give them that shot and watch them like kick ass at it, that's an even better feeling, right? And and I do, you know, from the CIO, CTO, whatever world, I miss that aspect, right? I miss the leaders the true pure leadership aspect.

That's you know, r where the robotics coaching I think comes in and and even working with the kids. But that's an even better feeling than right, taking this, you know, old Pentium whatever and and rebooting life into it running, you know, insert Linux here.

Autumn Nash (12:10.718)
I will say that I am so impressed because like most people can be very deeply technical or be really good people people or they can be like a little bit of both. But you are so deeply technical but also really genuinely good with people. Tell us more about your robotics coaching.

JT Perry (12:26.26)
Yeah, report yeah.

Justin Garrison (12:26.298)
Wait, wait, I don't want to jump ahead too much. Wait, I still want to go on on on Tanzu. Let's let's start there 'cause like we're kinda going in order here. And I'm like I was curious, the when you went to VMware, this was I'm assuming pre pre Broadcom. was that like Heptia was part of that purchase in there too? Like when did that all

Autumn Nash (12:30.019)
yeah, okay.

JT Perry (12:30.654)
Yeah.

Autumn Nash (12:36.128)
Wait, what is Tanzu?

JT Perry (12:39.327)
Yeah.

Yeah, that that was right as that was all going, right? Joe, beta, shout out to Joe, was

I don't remember his exact title, but but I will say kind of the senior technical architect, right, right, for it for Tanzu. so Tanzu took the you know, this is where VMware I think really rightfully said, wait a minute, we're a little bit, you know, we're we're in whatever, n 80, 90 percent of data centers. I I have no idea what the the real number is from a virtualization perspective, right? VMware ESX, all of that stuff.

Justin Garrison (12:55.108)
He was founder at yeah.

JT Perry (13:17.428)
But but that that right the the room for growth there wasn't anymore, right? I mean when you when you completely own the market, you you completely own the market. So how do you run up and so and also realize that technology was going to leapfrog itself, right? So what was next? So they went out and they bought Pivotal, they bought Heptio, they bought

Did the the certified container images of various software can't think of that? I want to say BitFoundry, but that's not right. and kind of brought it together into this new modern app, right? So they took the Cloud Foundry from Pivotal, the the data pieces from Pivotal, and then you've got Heptio, right? This is as the as Kubernetes is just taking off. And how could they kind of bring this together, right? Cloud Foundry was and and frankly is awesome.

you know that that platform as a service. I I really wonder what would happen if if Pivotal would have stayed independent. That's that's no slight at VMware. It was you know you suddenly had Cloud Foundry and Kubernetes and which was gonna be the the front runner of the two. And the real goal of Tanzu was to bring that Cloud Foundry experience to Kubernetes. and we got really, really close, right?

And enterprise politics, they're a thing. you know, my my personal rant is I have no idea how to solve it, but if I could get rid of the quality or the quarterly reporting for for enterprises, I would absolutely do it because it never lets them take a strategy long enough, right? There's no way to say, I need three years to do this, or two years to do this, or or 18 months to do this. And and look in the tech world, you gotta go much faster than than we were anyway.

Justin Garrison (14:57.934)
Longer than a quarter.

JT Perry (15:09.161)
We just never quite got there. We never quite got that CF push experience to Kubernetes, but damn it, we were close. And that was exciting, right? That was fun to watch that that build. And and you know, politics and all that stuff and Joe and and Craig McClucky and and all of that. I think, you know, patience. It just wasn't quite getting there. And so everybody went their their separate ways there at the end, right before Broadcom. and then Broadcom happened. And

You know, that that was less than enjoyable from a staff perspective. But you gotta give Broadcom credit. I you do. you know, he's a jerk. He's a flaming jerk. He tells you he's a jerk. I have to say they were incredibly transparent through that whole acquisition, even from the, yeah, you know what, the reason VMware isn't making money is because you guys do way too many employee fun things and you're way too fat. We are going to cut all of that.

He did, right? I but was incredibly transparent about it. But the idea that look, if VMware is so integrated into your systems that all we have to do is like, you know, we don't have to innovate that much. We have to keep up with patches, we need to keep adding small features and we can jack the hell out of the price and you can't do anything about it. we can all sit here and have a moral conversation about that. But it worked. Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

Justin Garrison (16:29.198)
They they play the quarterly report game very well. It I mean like Tanzu's still a thing, but it is focused on the like application management side of things. Like it is more the Cloud Foundry components of it. Like they don't do as far as I know, they don't do as much of the like VMware's still underneath. They have their like distro that they VKS that they run on top of that, but like the the Tanzu stuff is

JT Perry (16:34.085)
And so go ahead.

JT Perry (16:45.182)
And

JT Perry (16:51.625)
Yeah. But the the Tanzu Kubernetes stuff ran it is now part of the the the core part of of VMware. I don't know, system ESX or all that. But also Spring, right? I I will, you know, I I will say Hoctan, the CEO of of Broadcom, I I wasn't too sure how he was gonna keep playing in in that world. And they've really leaned into Spring and and that perspective and and kept that going. And look, Spring is an amazing framework if you're a Java human.

and so, you know, th that's kept going and it's turned into be a good moneymaker for them too. Good good for them.

Justin Garrison (17:28.014)
And I I will just point out that the the company you're trying to think of was Bitnami before with all the container images. Yep. They had all of the best community. Yep. Yeah. In Bitnami and that basically just went away. Yeah.

JT Perry (17:31.251)
Bitnami, there you go. Thank you. Thank you. I couldn't pull it out. Yeah.

Autumn Nash (17:36.683)
That's a cool name too.

Justin Garrison (17:40.452)
Yeah, that was a that was a big container play for quite a while and then also got absorbed into the Broadcom Beast and

Autumn Nash (17:46.677)
I just wanna point out that you always talk about how many things Google gets rid of but you have not started a whole thing about like the different things that Broadcom has eaten.

Justin Garrison (17:56.729)
I mean Broadcom has acquired and killed a lot stuff, but killed by Google is a actual website. Like I'm not the one that runs that. Like that is a thing. That is something that everyone else notices. That probably I I don't even know, I think they have more things they've killed than AWS services.

JT Perry (18:03.187)
Yeah.

JT Perry (18:12.661)
my yeah, probably and and dear God, don't put me in the spot of defending Hoctan and and Broadcom, but you it you know, killed things that just nobody was using or nobody was making money anymore, right? Or and just renamed, right?

Justin Garrison (18:18.894)
Ha ha.

Justin Garrison (18:28.344)
Not beloved things like reader. Come on. killed by Killed by Google says there's three hundred and seven things or services that Google has killed that they've tracked. so.

JT Perry (18:30.845)
No. Like

JT Perry (18:38.623)
Yeah, and people used every day. Right. but they're Chromecast.

Justin Garrison (18:41.144)
Many of them, yeah. Like Chromecast. What the hell Google? Chromecast. I love I still have a Chromecast plugged in back here. And like nah, just no more support.

Autumn Nash (18:50.603)
So weird too. I was like, Is this a like symptom of like empire building? If you have to build empires every week you have to kill them too.

JT Perry (18:57.725)
It's a promo i it's a symptom of promotions, right? How many chat variations, right? If if my way to promote it Yeah, to get promoted I can release a new thing and show that it has traction and all of that. And the best way to get that, you know, version B to get traction is to kill version A.

Justin Garrison (19:00.334)
Yeah. Yeah. Eighty seven chat products because that's what yeah.

Autumn Nash (19:13.931)
Do you think that politics are as bad at startups as they are like enterprise?

JT Perry (19:19.231)
they can be. and it it it's more of a size thing than anything else, right? We're we're a startup of of basically three people right now. four-ish, right? Occasional volunteers and all of this. I mean all all of us are making exactly zero dollars, so there's that. you know, but once money starts flowing in, absolutely, right? Because now you get motivations and

Right, the the core feelings of of people of of I want mine, right? Even at some visceral right, I'm not a psychologist, but some inner level, right? Like jealousy comes into play and and things like that for sure. Right. And then

Autumn Nash (19:54.827)
Yeah.

Autumn Nash (20:00.628)
It's wild how much of tech isn't actually the tech part, it's the trying to deal with humans part.

Justin Garrison (20:05.425)
yeah.

JT Perry (20:06.62)
Yeah, I have a poster somewhere that says tech is easy, people suck. Right? You know.

Justin Garrison (20:12.27)
My my my my single person experience of working at a few enterprises and and one startup is basically that the like the enterprise politics is more about power and access than it is anything else. Like 'cause I've been shut out of so many meetings and conversations just because they're like, Yeah, we just don't want your input. Like we're just gonna do the in like in startups it's so much smaller it's easy to like pull someone aside and say, like, hey, like we're all working on this together and there is no money, so it's a little easier to like take some some big bets and and at large companies it's really hard just to even like

get access to like the data or the right person to be able to say, like, hey, this is my opinion.

Autumn Nash (20:45.949)
I feel like now that la layoffs are happening at like, you know, years over and over and over again, Enterprise has turned very much into like the hunger games. Like it already was, but like

JT Perry (20:55.566)
I mean the Yeah, and it depend like each one has its own culture, right? This this is right, I can nerd out on this too, right? Each each one has its own it's looking at it like a system, looking at it like just a a a to turn it back into geek, like an old highly distributed system and trying to figure out where the data flows, right, what ports are open, all of that kind of stuff. You you have to sit back at an enterprise for a while and just

watch it, right? and and try things, right? let me try to ping this server. Well, let me try to go this way. wait, that hurts when I do that. I I'm not gonna do that again. I'm I'm gonna go this way. th they're they're they're just systems and trying to figure out what's motivated.

Autumn Nash (21:40.073)
It's weird because I felt like all the cultures are changing though. Like AWS used to be so good at operational excellence and like I feel like a lot of in you know, Microsoft was very like I feel like it was like it was like the dream to go work there. You know what I mean? Like I felt like at AWS like Microsoft was like the dream because it's like

JT Perry (21:44.423)
Mm-hmm.

Justin Garrison (21:54.666)
Good at something.

JT Perry (22:00.219)
Yeah.

Good.

Autumn Nash (22:04.405)
fam I felt like it was more family oriented maybe and like it was like the like one day when I grow up I wanna work there. Like AWS was like okay that you get your foot in the door, you you're gonna work really hard and like it's gonna like suck for a while and then Microsoft was where you like dream to be. And then Google's always been like Empire Building and Google and then Meta was always like blood money. Like like

JT Perry (22:27.784)
You how much of it is enterprise scar tissue, right? I'll come back and use that phrase again. Right? What what went wrong? What what caused them to, that didn't work, right? I and I know very little about the internals of of AWS other than I know a bunch of people there. but you know, even from an operational perspective, right? Something went wrong, so they put in a a patch of some kind.

Autumn Nash (22:31.176)
That's true.

JT Perry (22:51.558)
And now I bet those patches have built up and that's what's keeping them from being, you know, the it feels like safety, but it's not, right? And then bring in lawyers and regulatory and all of that stuff, and that amazingly slows you down too, right? And and this passionate belief. I'm sh I actually doubt this is the case at AWS, but back at enterprises that, humans have to make that check, right? You can't check on that box that said you looked at it from a regulator and have a computer to do it. I think AI is changing that.

But that is so much of the why can't I get access at it? Well, 'cause it's my ass, right? I'm the one that has to sign that to the insurance commissioner of whatever state, Mississippi, that this didn't, you know, go beyond the five people. Yeah. And and then that accountability also then turns into power. And power is fun, right? so

Justin Garrison (23:34.702)
The accountability is yeah. Is is a big thing.

Justin Garrison (23:44.931)
Out of before we get to to your current stuff with with leaving Broadcom, what looking back at all the places you've been and the things you've worked on, what would you say is a common pattern for either something that someone's missing in the like how to maintain systems over time or or just how to make them like something that is reliable and trustw trustworthy. I don't want to say trustworthy because that's like a person sort of thing, but like a technically good over time. Like how do how do we maintain this software for the last

twenty ish years of of doing it.

JT Perry (24:15.486)
so I think at the risk of people coming out with torches and and pitchforks and stuff like that, there is some benefit to just leaving shit alone. I'm not talking about security patches and and all of that, plea but you

Autumn Nash (24:24.745)
No.

JT Perry (24:36.606)
The mainframe was damn good at what it does, right? There's reasons they still run, right? So how do we build on top of instead of kind of trying to replace? We just had this Google conversation, right? Don't build your 87th enrollment system. You know, improve the one you have. If it's the UI, just write a new UI. You don't have to move it to a vector database because that's the new thing and it's cool.

That goes against everything we do, right? As as geeks and and right, I I as somebody who plays with this shit all the time in the in the server down the hall. you know, it's one thing to do that, but I think people come in and they want to use that new toy. Or as a CTO, like how am I making my mark? I'm gonna, you know, modernize everything and change everything. For what?

Justin Garrison (25:24.76)
And how do you like y there you need a balance there of people need to understand what the new technology is so they can know what it's useful useful for. And I feel like a lot of times companies don't give anyone the freedom to say, yeah, here's here's some time and money and whatever you need to go figure out do we want this thing or not. And and I love like your point, every every system is built at a time a moment in time with the current

understanding of what the world is with the current set of technologies, with the current process at the company and their fit for the best use case of that time. And then three, four years later, like things have changed. And now how do we how do we keep what we knew then working today?

Autumn Nash (26:07.453)
Also though I feel like people come in and like nobody takes the time to like figure out why the decisions that were made were made. Everybody just comes in and they're like, I can do this better and I know how to do it and like you lose so much context. Like but you can't just walk into like a system and a code base and just think that you know everything because like half the time if it something looks weird or it wasn't the chosen path, it's probably because there was some sort of constraint that got you there.

JT Perry (26:35.365)
Yeah, it's gonna come back to people and and people systems, right? The the enterprise. But the the geeks and the technologists come in and Justin, you're a hundred percent, right? How do you stay current? How do you get people to learn about this thing called Docker containers back in the day, right? And and stuff like that. And what advantages do they bring us? They have those where they do that, or those individuals come in or they figure it out on their own at home or whatever, they

IT, right? Tech has this conversation. Nobody goes and has the conversation of what is the business outcome where there, right? At assurance, if you join IT at in and you know, assurance since been bought by Sun Life, etc. etc. etc. But you know, if you if you went and joined there today and said, Boy, my goal is to just bring in AI, right? I just want to play with AI. Well

A is an old enterprise the place that you go to do that? Like if you if you walk in the first day and say, my goal is to play with the latest thing at an enterprise company, you're probably gonna be disappointed. Like just just start start there, right? So so but even then I would say if you come in as the new CTO like that, you you're gonna be there 18 months and you're gonna be out. Either you're gonna leave in frustration or they're gonna bounce your ass out. And they should.

Autumn Nash (27:46.41)
Unless you're the new CTO or something.

Justin Garrison (27:48.705)
Mm-hmm.

JT Perry (28:00.124)
Right, you're joining a company. What is that company's goal? Right? What what makes that company better than it is today? Right? Is it if it's a disability company, is it enrollment? Like we need more people? Is it claims? Like, wait a minute, we're paying way out more a whole lot more money than than AFLAC or any other insurance company, right? It's the business outcome.

So you have you come in with this shiny new toy, and a lot of times we just shove in the toy because we want to use the toy, which is cool. I use the toy.

Autumn Nash (28:28.615)
Doesn't that feel like that's like the thing right now? Everybody is shoving in the shiny new toy, like into things that nobody asked for. Yeah.

JT Perry (28:34.363)
Yeah, I'm a b I'm gonna I'm gonna totally date myself back to the CGI bin days, right? Right, pre-dot com crash. We were all building websites. We had no idea why. Right? At ASI, boy, we we have this cool building feature. We have to build a website. okay, we we built a website. W why? What what what was the business nobody knew what to do with the outcome.

Right, there there was no business outcome to it. It wasn't so that we could like get more customers. Our customers were insurance companies. That you know, CEOs and head of sales and insurance companies weren't surfing the web during lunch. There they're it wasn't a thing yet, right? As much as I still prefer using Blink and HDML, like w the wasn't a thing. And then

And that led to the crash, right? All sorts of things, right? Building out dark fiber, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But it was all this: we're building websites and throwing money at websites, but we nobody knew why they were. A couple people were figuring it out. And then it crashed. And then we all sat down and went, All right, we have this really cool technology. How can my business be better? And then look what happened, right? It launched crazy money, right? And

Autumn Nash (29:43.977)
think that's a lot of times where we have this disconnect between people who want to build cool stuff and actually understanding the business use and value.

JT Perry (29:52.808)
Yep. And that and that's, I mean, to come back to that's why I'm answering, you know, Justin's question is what is the business value? If I move my sorry, I'm stuck in insurance world because that's where I grew up, dental business off of a mainframe to, you know, some relational database running on Amazon, cool. Why? Why?

Justin Garrison (30:10.073)
Mm-hmm.

JT Perry (30:15.769)
And you've either got to save a ton of money, which hey, back to Broadcom. If you own a mainframe, get off the mainframe, you'll save a lot of money because they own a lot of the parts and pieces of that. so so that's a real reason, right? Just money. But then you've got to be very careful about how you move that, right? The CEO, the board, the stockholders, whoever you wanna put, the customer gives no shits that it used to run on some mainframe and now runs on you know PSQL in the cloud. Like

Nob nobody cares. And so you can care. Like important pride, maintainability, setting up automation, DevOps, right? I can release now every week. Again, that that's awesome. And you should do that. But what is the business value you're driving there? Because if you're just running up expense, and you know, back to, you know, I'm old, right? I helped figure out the cloud strategy at assurance. you know, I can spin the meter on cloud, it might have

Justin Garrison (31:05.997)
Yeah.

JT Perry (31:14.597)
And there's a whole lot of things I get out of that, but you have to articulate that and bring it to life, right? Just 'cause in a PowerPoint you said we're gonna save a thousand dollars a month, cool. You better really see that in the CFO's books, right? And and

Autumn Nash (31:28.423)
I will say that

Justin Garrison (31:28.769)
I mean like in in some way like the business value is customers expectations change. Right? Like when when companies were making mobile apps for the first time too, right? Like n they there wasn't a a a mass amount of people that wanted it until it hit mass market. And I think it was something like two thousand twelve is when like half of the US had smartphones. Something around that. Or like, guess what? Now like half your customers all of a sudden expect this. I

You know, IOS launched an app store in what, two thousand nine, two thousand eight, and so it's like, hey, if you weren't building an app, like no one knew why they were building apps at the time 'cause they're like, no customers are here. But then also immediately customer expectations change. And what I almost hear you saying is the scar tissue is kind of the point. The learning experience in failure at least once is kind of the point of doing all this stuff and trying some new things. And the hard part is really not letting that embed the

dictate what you do next. Right? You need to be able to learn from something, recover from it, and then maybe switch directions or whatever without too much of that process being completely embedded in the process to say, we have to have mainframe because our process is tied to the mainframe.

JT Perry (32:40.667)
Yeah, but also like yes. And and also decide are you a first mover, second mover, third mover, right, right company, right, from from that perspective. but so I I'm with you, right? Like when mobile apps come out, you've gotta figure out how to bring in that team, right? Where where enterprises really screw up is they say, Okay, in order to bring that mobile app to life for dental, because I now need to see if I've hit my deductibles or how much it's gonna cost me to go get a root canal or

Yes, bring that to life. That doesn't mean you have to move off of the mainframe to do that because you now took what was a a three, six month project and made it into years, right? You you be creative, right? Right? That's what we should be doing. You you can make an amazing mobile app that's databases freaking on the mainframe. Sorry, right? Yeah, you can. We've done it.

Autumn Nash (33:31.933)
I've seen so many like I've seen so many people lose like eighteen months of like software cycles because they wanted the new cool database that was not any better than the one before or it just was like no sequel's cool but there's a lot of things you can do with this old SQL database that is like much more like aligned with the use case.

JT Perry (33:51.399)
Well and know your customer, right? If if you're JP Morgan Chase in the stock market, yeah, milliseconds matter, right? So so then please get to the latest database, right? All of that. Because the business outcome, right? Milliseconds matter.

Autumn Nash (34:08.829)
Yeah, 'cause it needs it.

JT Perry (34:10.384)
Dental, nobody cares if the data's twenty four hours old. They they really don't, right? Two days, that's a problem, right? If I went to the dentist yesterday, I want to see today what the bill's gonna be, all of that kind of stuff. Great, fine. But but know that business outcome, know that customer. And I don't even know how I got down this rabbit hole, but but you know, come in and absolutely use the new technology, use it where it matters and it moves the needle you're trying to move. That that's the big key. And that's how you come in and and

Autumn Nash (34:28.486)
Okay.

JT Perry (34:40.26)
you know, use this stuff. And yes, you should eventually get off the mainframe, right? We we should all be getting off the mainframes.

Justin Garrison (34:43.78)
So so

Autumn Nash (34:44.529)
I liked how I AWS and a as a solutions architect what you would like usually propose if somebody was like, Hey, I have all these like on prem, like data centers and all these workloads, but I wanna I'm interested in cloud and everybody tells me to use it. We'd always like, Well maybe the next project that you're gonna build that you haven't started yet, you could do, you know, a little bit of cloud here and this is why this brings business value. But like people are like, I'm gonna take my whole operation and change it overnight and you're like, Bro, calm down like

JT Perry (35:12.304)
Yeah. Right. Entire lift while that's where lift and shift happened, right? I'm gonna lift it all up and move it all to the cloud.

Autumn Nash (35:14.453)
Let's see if this adds value. And by the time they shifted and do the lifting, a new person came in and they don't even know why you were doing it and everybody hates it.

JT Perry (35:26.854)
Well because you're now lifting and shifting and the business is getting nothing out of it. Or or if the business might be even getting some financial gain out of it.

Right. Or things that are hard to document. We're more nimble. We can recover quicker. We we can put it in multiple zones so things fail over better, right? And we have better availability and all that. That that's all real. But the business also now can't go do this other thing that would really allow them to make more money because all the tech resources are just lifting things from one server to another, right? From an on-prem to sure.

Autumn Nash (35:59.453)
Lifting and shifting became the business for a minute there.

JT Perry (36:03.908)
Right. Because it also became the only you know, the board all the board members read in Harvard Business Review that you have to go to the cloud. And so the boards went, go to the cloud and so everybody's like, All right, we're gonna go to the cloud and then

Autumn Nash (36:09.776)
Exactly.

Justin Garrison (36:15.545)
Well, I mean that that also like the the end of the day like a business is serving, you know, shareholders and the board and and and the actual value isn't what you ship to customers, it's how much the stock price goes up for a lot of these companies. And if if you are on stage at reInvents as a partnership with AWS because you're shifting to the cloud, guess what? You made a lot more money than shifting sh like shipping anything to a customer. Right? Like you're just like, Cool, your stock price is going up because we saw a good partnership and the in today it's AI, right? And and if

JT Perry (36:22.321)
Yeah.

JT Perry (36:27.548)
Yep. Or's that too.

JT Perry (36:38.136)
What

JT Perry (36:43.216)
Yeah. But but you gotta play that game, right? That that peak runs out, right? And so how do you make that next leap? And that's that's where CTOs and all of that, right? But but so okay, I'm I don't know, Coca Cola, right? Just 'cause I need to talk about something besides insurance before if everybody falls asleep. Okay.

Autumn Nash (36:43.986)
How do you

Justin Garrison (36:44.091)
Twenty twenty five years ago as a website. Yeah.

You we wait for the next wave.

Autumn Nash (36:49.96)
I was gonna

Justin Garrison (37:01.379)
Not sponsored by Coke unless Coke wants to reach out, by the way. F A F O dot Fm slash sponsor. I know, but you know, we'll we'll we'll we'll let it go.

Autumn Nash (37:04.54)
He's a Doctor Pepper fan. Don't don't smother. Yeah.

JT Perry (37:06.852)
Okay, the the yeah, whatever. but you know, okay, Dr. Pepper, right? So they they're on the stage with AWS and they get the bump, right? But but if Dr. Pepper can't turn out cherry Dr. Pepper, because now they're doing nothing but moving their servers from one to the other, so they got that bump for six months or maybe a year, which is great. That that's good.

But but you've got to figure out how to do that so that nine months into that cycle you can release Cherry Dr. Pepper and g get the Dr. Is it? You know everything cherry is like cough syrup and brings up horrors. I can't do it. But but if if you can't launch Cherry Dr. Pepper because you're moving your servers, then then you're gonna lose that right. Y the stock is gonna do the roller coaster thing of come back down. So it's how do how do I be on the stage with

Autumn Nash (37:44.968)
Safe, save.

Justin Garrison (37:58.618)
the tenure but but with the tenure it doesn't matter, right? Like my my CTO, CAO tenure is a couple years and I can kind of ride that and and promise some things, right? And that's the that is the real crux of like where a lot of this is falling apart where

JT Perry (38:05.872)
Well yeah, that's

Autumn Nash (38:11.261)
What was that like though? Like being the actual technical person trying to balance shareholders and customers? 'Cause I think like from our point of view we're always thinking about like building the right thing and like customers, but like how did you do like I feel like that's like the cap theorem, but like worse like trying to do you know like

JT Perry (38:27.996)
to that. I mean, one is it's exhausting, right? It is mentally exhausting. And nobody should feel sorry for anybody up at that title. That is not my my point at all. because you're being compensated very well for it. So suck it up. but you're

You know, not only managing your team, where hopefully is taking a lot of your resources, if you're doing it right, like mental resources, right? How do I make this team effective? You're managing a board. You're managing all the politics of the others that have a C suite. you know, depending on your personality, you're all worried about is the VP below me trying to do the palace coup thing? that that wasn't me, but I saw so many other people do that, right? And and it's just

you know, unnerving to watch that that, you know, go read about any king or royalty, right? That that starts worrying about the the you know, the inside of of what's going on, the palace intrigue type type stuff of it. So it it's exhausting. But the other thing is, yeah, it's really hard. Like I'm gonna come in and do a a a a strategy and right and I was only CIO, you know, kind of a interim brief

Period through all of that. But I was the dog that caught the car. I was like, man, I've wanted to be a CIO. I've wanted to be a CIO. And I was a CIO and I was like, why did I want this? Just it wasn't me. but even at the VP of transformation level, which was CTO-ish, I would say, but had a big business component, right? The board gives you X millions of dollars to do this over X years. Cool, but then they get bored too.

Autumn Nash (39:56.594)
That's so real though. Yeah.

JT Perry (40:15.384)
they want the next shiny thing. And and there's always right, lots of books and all of that stuff around transformation and my lived experience, right? The first six months are the most fun you're ever gonna have because you are the shiny toy, right? Primero was had never launched a healthcare clinic before. They they were an insurance company, they'd never done the actual doctoring and nursing part of it, right?

We we launched the first one of those. We were heroes. We re had a team that retooled the the some of the sales strategy, right? And all of that. But then you get into the slog of the rest of the work of that you have to do behind that, like 18 months. And by the way, now you're disrupting everybody else's day-to-day workflow. They've done it this way for 20 years and now you're transforming it. the numbers aren't gonna move as like the numbers move really quick in a transformation in the front and the back. That bottom trough.

Is like, can you just keep going through it? Can you just keep everybody from going, that's it, we got what we're gonna get out of it, let's shut it down, right? the politics of that. Somebody else, right, wants to be the new shiny because that's how they make their career, right? The CFO, the CMO, like insert person, right? Well, they need money. Where's the best way to get money? Well, this this transformation's in its trough. I can go pick off some of those dollars, right?

It's all of that and it's just hard. And that's why, you know, I'll get on my soapbox again about businesses need three year strategies, right? I why Walgreens is falling apart just kills me to to no end. They've had three runs at a strategy and and at least two of them were amazing and they just never could ride it out long enough to to get through it. you know.

Autumn Nash (41:56.016)
And it's wild because it's now like we've entered in this like area of like this monopoly for pharmacies, you know, like the way that C V S is going, it's going to be a C V S and that's all. Like

JT Perry (42:10.137)
Yeah, I mean they're th they're probably all gonna start splitting back apart anyway. How did we get here? yeah.

Justin Garrison (42:15.343)
I I don't know. I I actually wanted to use this transition a little bit and and talk about and ask what what old tech are you using in your new venture and who are your customers?

JT Perry (42:25.523)
so so customers are farmers. So old tech, I would say pitchforks, hay, chickens, that kind of stuff. yeah, this this old tech is is actually probably like, you know, relational databases, you know, even mobile apps, right? I would argue are pretty much old tech at this point. we're solving the problem of how do you keep tri you know, chickens healthy.

A server that I'm running a bunch of stuff off of is an old enterprise Dell EZ Xeon. I don't know, it's eight, nine years old. you know, I think the most modern thing in it is a old what now is an old P4 NVIDIA. can run a very, very small model. has SSDs, not spinning. So I guess, you know, that that's new.

Justin Garrison (43:22.115)
That's fancy.

JT Perry (43:23.253)
but no the but even the concept so so chickens chickens have this incredible prey response evolution, right? They will not show injury or weakness. Because if they do, right? Even even for you know, look at the farmer as the prey, right? If if you know go back.

Shit, probably don't even have to go back a hundred years, right? If if I'm raising chickens to, you know, just actually literally feed my family and neighbors. I've got ones that lay eggs and I need one for dinner. Well, which one am I gonna probably take out? Well, the one that's not laying eggs, right? So anyway, they have this prey response, so it's really hard to see if they're sick, right? and anybody, you know, any of us that have dogs and cats, you're like, man, that dog isn't looking right today. It's been two days now. maybe I should take him to the vet. You don't get that with chickens, right?

So if you're, you know, how do you know that they're getting sick? Because if you see a chicken that's truly sick, like you're within, you know, rule of thumb, you're within 24, 36 hours of of death. Like you're you're there's nothing to do because they hold on that long. So but one of the things they do pretty early is quit eating when they're sick.

and stuff like that so their weight changes right so you talk about what old tech are you using we've basically right at the risk of insulting our company we built a fancy scale you know so how do you right you know this sits in the nesting box and where chickens go to lay eggs don't know how much you know about chickens they they generally will go to the same spot to to lay eggs we call them nesting boxes right they're made out of wood you can get fancy ones and all of that kind of stuff

But and then we put I don't have one in front of me, an RFID tag, around the leg of the chicken. and so the the RFID antenna in the lid. so the chicken comes on and we weigh it, right, at the end of the day. And then if the chicken lays an egg, well the weight's still there, right? So if it you know, when the chicken's on there it weighs, you know,

JT Perry (45:33.51)
three kilos and leaves and there's still a five hundred gram weight there, well then the egg weighs five hundred grams, right? So then I know that you know, whatever chicken Nougat is one of our chickens, laid an egg today and it was five hundred grams, then that's what is that a medium egg? Small egg, I have to go back and I remember my ma chart of my math thing. But so, you know, old tech, yeah, there's a strain gauge. They've been around forever that does the weight, right?

it does is me measure the electric the electrical change by the deflection that there's nothing new about that right and those have been around 60s 70s probably if not longer new tech wise though we use an ESP32 chips and and you know SD cards and all that stuff because you got to retain it most coops people keep pretty far away from their houses chickens smell they do

They do. They they don't smell like roses. and so that means you probably don't have Wi Fi out there or or there's a good chance you don't, right? If you're the suburban house that you know, only has three or four chickens, they don't smell and they're close to your house. that's for you, Autumn. Make sure Billy hears that part. but you know, a lot of people don't, so it's gotta sit there and

Autumn Nash (46:34.843)
Okay.

JT Perry (47:01.679)
you know, hold that data until you go out to collect eggs or check on your chickens or whatever. And if you've got your phone in your back pocket, we'll then use BLE, low low power Bluetooth and sync it across from that perspective. so that makes battery life the real big challenge. You know, good news is we don't even try to do Wi Fi because Wi Fi will write the the that

kills the battery. But even Bluetooth, we do some things to just kinda light up every minute or a couple of minutes to say, Is there a phone near me? and then, you know, power up and and go across. But yeah, I'm long winded way of saying old tech batteries, strain gauges, you know, there isn't you know a whole lot of bleeding edge stuff in that way. but you know, then you get into Bluetooth and some of that other stuff. But yeah, we're storing the data. Yeah.

Justin Garrison (47:50.842)
Which is exactly exact exactly what you've been saying, where like that scale is your mainframe that you keep around and then you just layer on top of and say, Hey, we're gonna add some new tech to this old thing and the old thing is is turns out is really reliable and cheap to get. And so having that as like the f foundation of what you're what you're working with, and then saying, Okay, well let's add some newer technology that maybe isn't as proven, isn't as reliable or more expensive, and we can figure out how to sparingly use those things as well.

Autumn Nash (48:18.279)
But to me the exciting thing is like you're solving a real problem in real life with like stuff that you can get and, you know, put together, like and it makes like sense in the physical world. Like there's not a lot of that you see right now.

JT Perry (48:33.22)
Yeah, and and farmers especially, right? Stereotyping is dangerous. It is horribly dangerous. But just wanna be able to put something in and work. They're not gonna wanna fiddle with it. They've got other things to do, right? They've gotta go, right? It's time of year to start prepping the field for for garlic, for example, right? They they don't they just need it to work. And that's been, you know, a big piece of our focus, right?

Autumn Nash (48:58.022)
I was gonna say that like I feel like that would be like very back breaking, like time intensive time. So like it must be awesome to find something that will just make your life easier, you know? And finding like building something that's just gonna make somebody's life easier is really cool.

JT Perry (49:11.918)
Back break it, you had to go there. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah yeah. For those that don't know, I broke my back a few weeks ago. but yeah, it's it's it's hard. Yeah. Yeah.

Autumn Nash (49:14.15)
Ha ha ha

Justin Garrison (49:15.321)
Ha ha ha

Autumn Nash (49:17.434)
gonna put you in a bubble, friend.

Justin Garrison (49:20.656)
So

Autumn Nash (49:24.282)
You farmed so hard you did the actual back breaking. You overachiever you.

Justin Garrison (49:28.965)
So so what for for your

at on the website like the slogan is big insights for small farms. Like these are small farmers. Like this is like the big farms are already mechanized. They already have like the big systems and networking and all this stuff. And one of our my at work, one of our clients sells like automated milking machines for cows, which are like fantastically huge. It they're amazing machines that like they it's like it but they also do like the weighing, the feed, the collar, the milking. They they check like the acidity of the mil all this stuff is like that is so cool. Like and it's just like

JT Perry (49:49.006)
Yeah.

Yeah, the call it yeah.

JT Perry (49:57.185)
All the stuff, yeah. They will adjust the feed ration the cow is eating while milking based on on th the the pH of the stuff. Yeah, it's amazing.

Justin Garrison (50:02.296)
Yeah.

Autumn Nash (50:03.45)
That is so cool.

Justin Garrison (50:04.835)
Yeah. And and so you're you're taking the other approach of like, hey, like what about all the other like middle like smaller farms that are like I don't have thousands and thousands of chickens. I might have like like tens or something. Yeah. what what is the like is the value mainly like, hey, I know if one of my chickens is sick and I can I can eat it now? Or is this

JT Perry (50:14.522)
Five. Right.

JT Perry (50:25.028)
Yeah. The there's you know, w small backyard chicken owners will look at their chickens more as pets a lot of times. Right? We're up at let's see, we have twenty-three now. I can never remember their names and and my daughter and my wife.

Will make fun of me for this. but they know all their names, right? from that perspective. and I but I also think the world of them, right? It it it you do build an emotional connection to them. If you're that homestead type farmer, your income depends on it. That that's a a a big deal, right? you know.

Up to 100 chickens is probably our our sweet spot. I I don't know if that number is 100 or 500, but but from a marketing perspective, we'll say up to a hundred. so it's either the people that are tech, right? Like the geek tech side of it and and measure anything else, right? The the home assistant community. right, the the same people that that you know wire misters to their pigs when it gets over you're gonna

In California, but over 75 degrees up here. but the you know pigs can't sweat, so it's 75 is actually an important thing. and yeah, that's me, right? That that built a Zigby reporter repeater, you know, 3D printed it, put it out at the barn, right? All of that kind of stuff. There that's a big draw. But also if if you're really trying to make a go at at supporting your your family or making it a real business, it it actually matters to know.

Justin Garrison (51:35.171)
I wish.

Autumn Nash (51:40.07)
They're so cute.

JT Perry (52:01.718)
over time which breeds right slow down in the winter, which ones maybe don't as much. there are a lot of people who play with the like the UV lighting in the coop and all of that to try to override that. There's some animal welfare questions I have about that, but hey, whatever. I I'm I'm not here to yuck your yum. and you know, so having the data about which ones of those is working or not, but you know.

Justin Garrison (52:30.437)
But in and you're selling you're selling to farmers, not tech people generally, right? So like where like is this a Okay. If you have home assistance, like do you send a box with it and say here's a

Autumn Nash (52:30.49)
Which is crazy 'cause

JT Perry (52:34.754)
we're trying to hit both. We're trying to find the tech people that are farmers are really the big community. No.

D.

Autumn Nash (52:44.644)
I actually think this is a big market though because like I don't know if it's just the like the Facebook groups and places that I'm in because I like gardening, but homesteading is like a really big thing. A lot of people are doing homestead like stands. So they're selling like chicken eggs not chicken, sorry, but ch like eggs and bread or like whatever. Like I think a lot of people are yeah. Like a lot a lot of people are worried about like I I want pork and garlic. But like

JT Perry (52:54.394)
Mm.

JT Perry (53:04.174)
They they are selling chicken though too, right? Right? Meat chickens. Pork. By the way, you wanna buy pork? let me know.

Autumn Nash (53:14.69)
He really does. He has bacon.

JT Perry (53:14.924)
All right. USDA certified, I can send it to you.

Autumn Nash (53:19.578)
But like I really think people are kind of worried about like where food is coming from and like if we're going to have enough food. Like and I think w with all the weird stuff in the food system it seems to be like very popular for like regular people to want like a small farm whether it's just to feed their family or if it's like a small side hustle on top of like having a farm. So like it's wild. Like every day like there's new like bakers, cottage bakery bakery 'cause you that there are different laws for cottage bakeries and like

homesteading and all these groups are showing up in my Facebook and like it's so crazy. Like there is actually a huge market for stuff like this because people generally when you start your own your first homestead like you've never done it before. So you need a little bit of extra help to kinda help you along with like is am I killing the chickens or

Justin Garrison (54:05.199)
Now i i is this is this the I have a new hobby?

hundreds of dollars of stuff for the new hobby and then it's gonna sit in my closet 'cause I never finish the hobby sort of thing? Or is this I I guess for people that are making money like if it is a actual side hustle where it's like, hey, I need extra money to pay rent or something, like you have to put more effort into it. It's different than me

JT Perry (54:23.906)
Well, I I mean, homestead in general, I think your first thing is is right, right? People, especially tech, right? Those of us that, you know, used to get excited and buy the iPhone right when it came out, you know, where now it's like, yeah, whatever, my iPhone can last three years. I think the the same thing happens in homesteading too, right? If I can I see this gadget in my Instagram feed, that will mean I only have to spend twenty minutes on it instead of two hours at it. Yeah, right. you know, maybe I'll buy it and that kind of thing.

our device, no. Hopefully you just put it out there, charge it every couple of weeks overnight, which is fine because chickens don't lay eggs overnight. they sleep. so take it out at night, plug it in, go put it back out there the next day. so this isn't right something that should sit in a closet or or anything like that. It's you know, maintenance free and you're just building the data on your phone from from that perspective.

Justin Garrison (55:20.731)
Does the data all save on the phone?

JT Perry (55:23.326)
no, we upload it to Safe. No, no. Yeah, no, no, no. Right, you do, right? Mine's I I was n I could make an iPhone last forever or whatever, Android, all of that. I don't mean to push just one. I'm just in the Apple world. but you know now, right, it's all if you can see cracked and you know, all of that because you drop it off.

Justin Garrison (55:24.697)
Okay. So you like a certain like I was gonna I like that would be disastrous if I'd imagine if I worked on a far and I would lose so many phones.

Justin Garrison (55:49.379)
Yeah. No case, man. Out on the farm with no case, you are brave.

Autumn Nash (55:53.798)
also think the thing is is that a lot of people that are starting homesteading like you can't decide that you're you bought five acres or ten acres and now you're like chickens are harder than I thought, I'm gonna just put it in the closet. Like you kinda have to figure it out. You know what I mean? Like you're too far in sometimes. So like I think like even in my neighborhood people are like, Hey, I bought some chickens and it was harder than I thought. Does anybody want any free chickens? Like I think that like it it may it's harder.

JT Perry (55:54.026)
I

Justin Garrison (56:19.6)
Yeah.

JT Perry (56:20.739)
Th they're yeah, they're pets, right? It's a five it's a eight ish, I think is the average year commitment, right? For for egg laying, right?

Autumn Nash (56:26.861)
Yeah. So like I think that if people like, you know, get in and they're like, crap, I need a little bit more information or a little bit help, like I think this is actually like a really good market right now. Also, I mean, his marketing plan's great. He just like posts like really cute pictures of chickens and then all his tech friends end up wanting chickens and then he's creating his own market. So like, good job. Proud of you.

JT Perry (56:39.929)
Mm.

JT Perry (56:50.627)
Yeah. This this loops back to some of what else we're talking, right? Our second product that is in development at the moment is actually just a very simple thermometer for freezers and refrigerators. So especially if you get to USDA certification, right? You're required to track the temperature of your thermo all the time. log if power went out, what did the temperature curve do over that?

You have to have two probes, one for the air temperature and one either in a piece of protein or a protein substitute. right. So glycol is the big thing, right? You you stick a thermometer probe in a little thing of glycol. And that's right, how do we gauge not only did the maybe the freezer went up to thirty-five degrees, but maybe the meat all stayed at thirty-two, so everything's fine, right?

Well you and how do I record that in a way that I can just hit print for the USDA inspector that comes out every one year, 18 months, whatever whatever the case may be. you can look you can go to Amazon and find all sorts of thermometers and all of that, but they require Zigbee or you have to have home assistant or it has to plug into Alexa or it has to plug into all of this. no, we just it's gonna be simple Wi-Fi upload.

call a daughter plug so you plug this into the wall and then you plug your freezer in behind it. That's how we know that it lost power. and it can run on battery for, you know, a week. Hopefully you get power back in a week or you have other problems. you have to have power to it right within a week and we're gonna record it. That's it. Done. Does not require anything else but Wi-Fi. And there's nothing there.

Autumn Nash (58:26.691)
I also think that's gonna help a lot of the small like family farms compete with the bigger farms 'cause like they're like annihilating family farms right now. The amount of family farms that are losing to like big farms, especially with like the fertilizer and just all the issues that like a lot of farms have been dealing with. I think that like having a way to like automate some things and make things easier and to help you like kind of, you know, do the things you need to do to be USDA certified but like farms need help right now.

JT Perry (58:31.095)
Mm-hmm.

Autumn Nash (58:56.705)
I think this is actually like a great, you know.

JT Perry (58:59.935)
And it it's you know, back to safety a little bit. It it does help if we can get everybody to to use them, because today it's a paper log. D do you really think the farmers are recording the temperature every hour? D do you really think so? The log looks like it. Like Yeah.

Autumn Nash (59:13.443)
And I mean, look at all the stuff that we're going through right now. Like lettuce might kill you, like eggs got salivanella, like you know.

JT Perry (59:19.693)
But yeah, I yes, by the way, eggs always have salmonella. Salmonella is a living bacteria in a chicken. Like like you know, it just means they didn't get cleaned. and sorry, that's a vent topic for me. but go ahead.

Justin Garrison (59:31.994)
What what problems have you run into? like w like what are you like what are the challenges that you've been running into with this?

JT Perry (59:39.172)
The the the absolute biggest challenge is the prototype time. the the time to cycle between versions, right? I can write this the software or have Claude write the software. Whatever, right? I write it, it doesn't matter. And spit out new versions multiple times a day. If I find a problem with the circuit board, you know, which is still my problem, right? I didn't need a ten ohm resistor, I needed a hundred ohm resistor. I, you know, was too much beer before I did that math. What whatever.

Justin Garrison (59:44.113)
Hmm.

JT Perry (01:00:08.809)
Is, you know, you're looking at least two to three weeks from when you make that change to when it comes back to you. you know, so one cycle a month, right? you know, especially as tech people. Imagine if I said you could only push to production once a month. That's it. that's an incredibly long time. And not only can you only push to production once a month, you can only run your CI once a month. So you check in a change, it'll be one month before GitHub tells you whether it passed or not.

That's incredibly, incredibly hard. and that's because you're using overseas board manufacturers. There are ones in the US, but that that price difference will just break you.

Justin Garrison (01:00:47.302)
Yeah. Yeah, the the price point needs to matter for the end customer too.

JT Perry (01:00:51.755)
Yeah, right. it it's fifty X, sixty X, right, in in in many cases. and then I I'm not gonna get on a political soapbox here. I'm not gonna get on a political soapbox, but tariffs, right? I've ordered two sets of boards in the last two weeks for two different problems. One was tariffed at twenty five percent and one was tariffed at thirty five percent, and no one can tell you why.

Autumn Nash (01:01:15.15)
That's wild. Like how are you supposed to anticipate those like crazy numbers?

JT Perry (01:01:19.905)
Yeah, you can't, right? you know, somebody wakes up and and hits true social and suddenly your business plan blows up. that that's a real thing. at at at the margins and stuff like that. So that's but yeah, if we could solve any problem it would be that, the the prototype run trip.

Autumn Nash (01:01:37.164)
I have a question. go, you can go. How do you think like the Navy and like your career and like insurance and everything like prepared you for like start up life? Or even maybe the navy prepared you for enterprise life? I just think that's an interesting career trajectory.

Justin Garrison (01:01:37.83)
Huh. Go ahead.

JT Perry (01:01:54.349)
Yeah, the the Navy taught me about people, right? Yes, it taught me a lot about electronics and I wouldn't build circuit boards without it and all of that. And I I absolutely adored my time in the Navy. do it again tomorrow if I could. But I'm old and broken, so no. but it the leadership in the military, right? F you know, is a thing and is generally amazing. That doesn't mean there isn't bad ones.

Right. I think if if you did a four-year tour and had a horrible one, I can't imagine. I was pretty damn lucky on Parchy to have Al Ochevar as a a captain and and someone I still get to occasionally exchange a message on Facebook with or something like that, who was the guiding light and the amazing example. And that's what I got out of the Navy, right? That's where I learned that take the junior person, give them a shot.

Right, within controlled boundaries, right? Let's let's not cause a nuclear reactor to combust or anything like that, right? Important things. But just see what they can do and they will absolutely amaze you and blow you away 99 out of 100 times. that's that's really what I took out of the Navy. And the look, when things go really sideways, just focus on the problem.

just get through the problem. We can all break down and lose our shit and cry, laugh, yell, whatever when whatever scenario disaster is over. But in the moment, just take a deep breath and focus all the way through it. And know that you're gonna have room to have whatever, you know, emotional breakdown or joy after after the end of it. 'cause that's what you need. Right. And and I think in an enterprise that's a really big, you know, when there's an outage, look for the people who are

Just like, okay, we're gonna fix this. And we're gonna fix it urgently. I'm not saying look for the person that's like, I'm gonna go eat lunch. but the ones that are running around like chickens with their heads cut off and yelling and screaming, no, you need to get them out as soon as possible. Yeah.

Justin Garrison (01:03:58.022)
Bringing it right back to chickens. JT, thank you so much for coming on the show. people can find you at barnanalytics.com and I think you're on Blue Sky, right? So

JT Perry (01:04:03.321)
You bet?

JT Perry (01:04:06.829)
Yeah, circle jtp.me.

Justin Garrison (01:04:09.136)
And we will add you to the Blue Sky starter pack, which will be in the show notes. So anyone that is looking for any of the guests on the show, we have a starter pack. If they are on Blue Sky, we put in there. So if you're new to Blue Sky, you also can just follow everyone that's been on the show. And yeah, thank you everyone. We will talk to you again soon.