Global IT Field Services at Scale with Chad Mattix

s1e28 Global IT Field Services at Scale with Chad Mattix

In this episode of The Wired Garage with Pops, we pop the hood on global IT field services with Chad Mattix, founder and CEO of Kinettix, a field service provider that gets skilled IT technicians onsite in over 90 countries, often within 24 hours, 24/7/365. Kinettix supports large retailers, telecoms, banks, restaurants, and multi‑site enterprises with everything from wireless access point installs to CCTV, large displays, and data center infrastructure deployments.

👤 Guest: Chad Mattix, Founder & CEO, Kinettix
🌐 Kinettix: (add website / LinkedIn links here)
🎙 Host: Pops (The Wired Garage with Pops)

If you enjoyed this episode, hit subscribe and share it with a fellow IT or field services leader.

Chad walks us through how Kinettix went from SmartSheets and SharePoint to a global dispatch engine that coordinates multi‑country projects, break‑fix work, and even highly remote satellite deployments, all while navigating VAT, currency, and compliance challenges. We dig into how AI, agent‑to‑context models, and better data are changing labor procurement, rate negotiations, photo validation, and end‑of‑day reporting at scale.

We also explore how IT leaders should think about:

• Relying on contingent field services vs W‑2 employees
• Building a global field tech network without sacrificing quality
• Platform choices (ServiceNow, Salesforce, Azure) and avoiding fragmentation
• DevOps, citizen development, and governance for AI and automation
• Roadmapping ITSM and AI investments over the next 12–24 months so you don’t get crushed by technical debt or obsolescence

Tags / Keywords
global IT field services, Kinettix, Chad Mattix, IT field technicians, multi site IT deployments, retail IT infrastructure, telecom field services, data center deployments, contingent IT labor, IT service providers, ServiceNow, Salesforce, Azure platform, DevOps, citizen development, ITSM roadmap, AI in IT operations, AI for field services, IT governance, shadow IT, portfolio management, global dispatch, The Wired Garage with Pops

These reflect core topics and phrases from the episode (global field services, contingent labor, AI, ServiceNow/Azure, governance).

If you care about large‑scale IT rollouts, multi‑site operations, or how to safely bring AI and citizen developers into your service delivery stack, this one is packed with field‑tested lessons.

🎧 Topics we cover:

• Why Chad founded Kinettix and the market gap he saw in global field services
• How Kinettix delivers IT projects in places like mainland China, Cairo, London, and remote mining facilities in Australia
• Moving from basic tools to a purpose‑built dispatch platform (and the $3.5M investment behind it)
• Using AI for ticket routing, skill matching, photo validation, and deliverable audits
• Managing margin, scale, and quality in a commoditized services business
• Citizen developers, Power Apps, and the “Wild West” risk without governance
• How IT leaders can protect against shadow IT and risky AI usage while still empowering teams

If you enjoyed this episode, hit subscribe and share it with a fellow IT or field services leader.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

If you're an electrician or a plumber, you probably have a longer life expectancy of doing work than if you're an analyst of some sort. But it's finding and compelling people to get like that whole mic row trying to get people to think about instead of going to college, you could build a trade. In the field services space in the US, the average age of a field tech is 50. So over time, you know, over the next 10, 15 years, if you can't bring in younger people, unless, and it's highly likely, Optimus and what Elon is doing with these robots, I mean, if they can build the dexterity, maybe we have rope what humans are no longer needed. Seems like that's a long way off. But trying to compel people to build those skills or to you know there's gonna be some gaps there that AI is gonna I help help take us to the next level, but I think it's also gonna create some gaps that we'll have to figure out how to do that knowledge transfer and how to how to still be advisors or strategists on a particular workflow.

SPEAKER_00 1:45

Today I'm joined by Chad Mannix, founder and CEO of Kinetics, a global IT field service provider that helps large retailers, telecom organizations, and IT service providers get skilled field technicians on site in over 90 countries, often within 24 hours, 24-7, 365. So Chad's built Kinetics into a fast-growing company, recognizing programs like Red Hawk 50 and Cincinnati's Fast 55. And his team supports massive multi-country deployments and break fix work around the world. We're going to dig into how they built that engine, how technology integrations power global dispatch at scale, and what IT leaders should be thinking about when they rely on contingent field services. Chad, welcome to the show. Thank you very much. So for folks who don't know you yet, who is Chad Maddox and what does Kinetics do in Playing English?

SPEAKER_01 2:35

Yeah, I mean, Kinetics is we are functionally focused on IT field service. So we tend to work with large IT service providers, multi-site organizations, and we help deploy IT infrastructure. So we're doing things like installing wireless access points, bricata cameras. We do a lot of work in data centers. And so we're enabling the scale or deployment of IT infrastructure. So when there's projects and banks or restaurants, retail environments, or whatever it may be, need techs on site, we provide that level of effort and they can consume it as needed. And so a lot of the work that we do, we're on site for a day, and then we complete that work and we move on. So we variabilize that cost. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 3:21

You've been in IT services and managed services for decades, Chad. That's not a knock on you. Including founding prior companies before kinetics, what problem did you see in the market that made you say, I need to start kinetics?

SPEAKER_01 3:36

Yeah, that's interesting because when I knew Brian, I was in the legal vertical, we were doing IT infrastructure support for the firms. That business was sold. And when I was looking for the next thing, I worked with a company called Contingent. And they do exactly what we do today. So I worked there, I was in VP of corporate development, really had my eyes opened of how we can consume labor in this contingent labor model, very skeptical. How do you control the quality? We always had our own U2 employees. So I learned a lot in that environment and that experience. Then over time, I got a little bit more involved in the global side of things. And I started working with companies like CompuCom and Fusion Storm and this company called Jitronics and saw this happening globally. So as I was looking to get back into maybe starting another business, I was involved with like Queen City Ventures and was just investing in small maybe startups and other types of environments. And I in 2016, which is now 10 years from this year, um, I decided to build something like Contingent, but do everything but the US. So when Kinetics was incubated, we would deploy in other countries. So Apple stores being deployed throughout mainland China, and we would work with these large service providers and provide that scale. In 2015, so one year before uh, you know, I started Kinetics, Contingent was sold. So it was sold to a Comcast. And over the years, as that business kind of transformed, I had an opportunity, which really was a lot of luck that allowed me to bring in a leadership team and a structure that had done that before. So then our revenue profile started to shift. And we did a lot of work in the US as well as in the global work. But it to this day remains a point of differentiation. So if someone is doing a deployment and they need someone in Cairo, they need someone in London to do the work, that's what we do. And so we remove that friction to be able to dealing with like VAT issues, currency, and all the different elements, we we provide that type of scale. So that that was kind of the the point where I thought I could do what they are doing in the US, but do that on a more global basis and purely to avoid competing against formidable providers that are out there still today. Gotcha.

SPEAKER_02 6:01

So you mentioned starting in 2016 and you talked about some of that early formation. What did version 1.0 of kinetics look like compared to today?

SPEAKER_01 6:14

Lots of transformation. I mean, uh uh it'd be it's kind of an exercise we're going through right now. Like if we were to start kinetics today without any technical debt, what you know, there's a lot of advantage to being able to scale that up. When we first started, we were working really in smart sheets, we were dealing with like some SharePoint sites and a pretty rudimentary mechanism of how do you find text, how do you track the project, how you put these things together and provide that scale. So it it was really brute force. And uh, we built some relationships really through like platforms that are now like Upwork that allowed us to find um labor in the Philippines that could allow us to be 24 by seven, started to do all of our accounting and those back out back office elements. Today we're really thinking about a gentic context and how we can leverage our data in the procurement of labor and negotiation of those rates, uh, looking at tickets and matching skill sets and helping with end-to-day reports or even deliverable audits. So when we're looking at 50 photos that might be part of a particular deployment, we can now have recognition saying this is the right photo, it's in the right format, and that really gives us a lot of capacity there. So it's changed substantially where the tech stack we always knew was going to be important, but now I think how we embrace AI and how we're gonna leverage these things is gonna matter deeply in terms of what we do. We are a pretty commodity service. I mean, we have a component cost of the labor that gets on site. There's a lot of different ways you can find that labor. So the differentiation is how do you manage the control, the scale, and putting those things together? And there's just uh not a lot of margin for us to be able to use labor to perhaps coordinate and manage things. So a big shift, like even when I started with contingent, there'd be things where we could live in a 50% gross margin world. So if we had to put more labor into something or put something together, it's like, okay, we had that work. Now it's so lean and so scalable. We're we're working on some projects right now that are just making us think completely differently, like satellite deployments and getting techs on site in truly remote global locations. Like you're in Australia in a mine mining facility, and how do you get access and get all those things deployed? So the technology has just changed dramatically. I mean, we've invested over three and a half million dollars into dispatch one. And in a lot of ways, I feel like we're getting ready to do another complete transformation from this. And now when I'm talking to other, you know, private equity groups or trying to understand how people are building these things, you you can build applications now for a fraction of the cost. So now there's this disadvantage that we have because we have a lot of legacy elements to our our system. So now we've become this incumbent and that becomes so in 2016, it was easy for us because we could start with nothing and and that whole entire framework was just something we could adapt through. But it's it's it's happening quickly now.

SPEAKER_02 9:15

That's wild. And I think there are some really good call-outs there, especially with how AI is changing in the game. The one thing that I am curious about, and what we can save this for later, is just fragmentation. I do wonder about the fragmentation of those solutions, if you keep those all on a platform or if you use best for the use case.

SPEAKER_01 9:34

Yeah. Um, this is interesting because I I know the theme of this podcast has a lot of ServiceNow references to this. And one of our first decision making was do we use Salesforce, ServiceNow, or do we just build something on in our particular case? We did this around Azure as our as our foundational framework. There's there's a lot of decisions that have to be made. And now this discussion about fragmentation, we might be able to iterate and build things that before we might have to license that can allow us to organically integrate it together. So for us, it's trying to automate that entire workflow. So the more we have command and control of that process, the more we think we'll be able to scale in the future. But there's a lot of decision making that has to go around. Um, it's almost a religious framework, whether it's ServiceNow or Salesforce. I mean, these all require tremendous amounts of customization to be able to build exactly what you're looking for. And so it's it's building the right DevOps teams and the resources, it's aligning with the business, trying to find the right business experts, business process people that can help us iterate to that next level. So the world of the DevOps, I mean, I almost believe like DevOps won't be its own group. It's just fully, it's cross-functionally integrated into the business. I mean, we are a we're a platform company that happens to deliver field services. And every person that we are working with, our customers internally, you know, it it all ties into the DevOps process.

SPEAKER_00 10:56

Yeah. So like a lot of the AI stuff we're seeing, like in ServiceNow and some others are, we're allowing more of that citizen development, not totally all the way through from A to Z, but the idea generation. You know, let them get a taste of what they're trying to build and get to a point to where we can finish it off. And that not only kind of allows you to spread out that latent development labor in a sense, but you're getting a little bit closer to those stakeholders and they've got some buy-in, right? They're seeing what it what it means to, you know, change the form five or ten times, you know, and just just different idea generation, things like that. And I like the idea. I don't like it getting all the way through test into prod, you know, directly, but there is some things there value that we learn off each other better by more sharing about development.

SPEAKER_01 11:45

Yeah. Citizen developers are critically important. It's just how do you govern it, make the consistency? At what point does this go into the core, the spine of the platform? But this is where we're seeing a lot of the business users. I mean, those are going to be the subject matter experts that will know how to automate that process. And so that that empowerment, I mean, I'm not a developer by, and now you're able to do things that, you know, in the even a year ago, never would have thought that I would be participating in. So it is kind of interesting, but it does. If you if you get some of the assistant developers, especially if they have a lot of initiative, you can start to iterate and automate processes that aren't governed maybe through what the core looks like. And I think that's where AI becomes challenging because as you can get this data structured in your data fabric, this is what's going to produce the right outcomes. It all has to be tuned. And there's such disempowerment now that, you know, people can do a lot of amazing things. I have a friend that he's finding a lot of the accounting resources in these organizations, they're becoming some of the lead citizen developers because they have a fundamental knowledge of how these transactions flow through and they're looking for optimization that come through that in our world, you know, be a power app type of process. But you know, there's a lot of things you can do now that and and so that can turn into the Wild West, but it can also do some amazing. So how do you govern that? I mean, it's a question for you guys. What do you see with those things like that? How do you govern something when you have all that empowerment and tools and access to information? How how do you how do you get those forces all to kind of work off the same sheet of paper?

SPEAKER_00 13:15

I don't know about for steel, but for us, we I try to keep a lean development department for one, too. I I want to keep it small, I want to keep it intimate in the sense the more developers I have, the more stray I can get with various personalities and and cultures and various ways of programming and coding. So we use a partner to help us with the governance and try to stay very close to service now directly. Um just to have those conversations. This is one of our goals are and this is what we're challenged with, and just to keep the constraints in place and then let people, you know, get involved. And my I'm a developer, and so is my uh one or two other people in my team, but they're also BAs. They carry many hats, right? So we're having open discussions on the business process, not just how do I get this GUI or get this form or get this report or get this notification out. We're capable of doing that, but that's not really what our bread and butter is. Our bread and butter is how do I get the most out of this product to meet the most for our client, our stakeholders.

SPEAKER_01 14:19

We're trying to find how to productize our service so we can make things very consumable. So if you want to get something like install a 150-foot cat six cable run, and I'm gonna attach a wireless access point or a 65-inch screen, we can build almost like this IT service factory that says, okay, we know what the level of effort's gonna be, and we can assemble these things and do those things very, very quickly. Now, what we're trying to do is almost pausing some of our DevOps at some of these sprints and really look at the roadmap and reset some of these priorities and try to share a vision of what we think the next 12, 24 months would look like. So that when we focus on the next two, three, four sprints, we have a lot more clarity and we're showing people where we think we're going. These things are iterating so quickly that we we've lost some of that vision sometimes. So it's always nice to kind of reset that. So I think uh road mapping is an interesting exercise as you're thinking about your IT service management strategies and what you're doing with AI or how you scale that operation because things are changing rapidly and be roles that could change. I mean, even in the legal vertical, I mean, if it's NDAs or, you know, if the firm builds a very controlled small language model, uh, they can do a lot of things now where they can look at documents and go through a lot of the red lines and you know, there's a multiple uh force multiplier here that they can do more with, but they it's incumbent on you, because this is what you're doing, is to build something that really maintains that quality and that scale. But you know, what does that roadmap look like and what what is our personas or what are gonna be doing in the next you know one to two years? We're thinking about things that are gonna be incredibly disruptive. And so that's challenging us to think about what we should do with that. Because if we're wrong, because I mean, Brian, we've lived through all the fiber build-out, you know, in 2000 with the you know, um, the internet coming and all that stuff is out there, and they way overbuilt, but fiber is fiber. As the internet started to catch up, it it all got filled in. AI, some of this stuff, you're investing a lot of money in tokens and CPU cycles. And what is the life expectancy of these devices? So I think of these, the there's almost a deeper risk here that there's this obsolescence that you're up against, but you're still trying to transform the business. And you know, we're a relatively small organization that, you know, if we get this wrong, it it could be it could be detrimental. It would be detrimental.

SPEAKER_02 16:38

The way that I think about it, and this is sort of an aggregate, not necessarily specific to a platform, is part of your job is managing a portfolio. You have to manage the governance of the portfolio, the architectures underneath it. You have that line of sight on the roadmap that you mentioned on where it is that you're going. And the example that I think back to is app stores. You think about the 99 cent apps that your attorney downloads because they they don't want to use what's on their computer. They found this app that makes it easier to do for 99 cents. Well, what's your risk now? Is it malware that they just downloaded and they're uploading firm data to? Governing, kind of thinking back to that example uh to make it a little bit more, a little less abstract, is you've got to have policies, governance, you need everybody on the same sheet of paper, all moving in the same direction. There's gonna be a lot of iteration, POCs, trying to figure out what comes next, what that looks like. But I also think to some degree, you know what you don't want. You don't want security risks, you don't want folks going off on their own, doing their own things. You want to have a concerted effort to move forward because you want to move fast and because the space is moving so fast. So looking at it from a portfolio management perspective, where are my policies, where are my guidelines, where are the general things that just make good business sense? And then how do I align that with where AI is moving and then just kind of keep that up to date?

SPEAKER_01 18:04

Yeah, because now you have a lot of challenges with maybe I want to use Chat GPT or I'm gonna use Grok and they're putting these things basically into the public. And how do you teach your users and how do you give them tools that have equivalency to that so they feel like they can get the benefit of AI and keeping people from going off in that shadow IT world where they might start using AI tools and unknowingly taking confidential information or whatever it might be into the into and that's no doubt gotta be part of the strategy.

SPEAKER_02 18:29

Get it out there, make it free, get everyone used to it. So be asking for it privately. Yeah. Um, yeah, it it's certainly not without its challenges. And because of those things that you mentioned earlier on what it can do and how it does enable folks, it's just important to get in front of that as much as possible, enable it as much as possible while still still keeping those guardrails, developing those guardrails, updating them, making sure that they're still relevant. Because to your point, every couple of weeks it feels like something is changing or has massively changed. You have a good spec from finance, you've now got a finance application. It's crazy. It's crazy.

SPEAKER_00 19:08

So, like an international company that a lot of companies are that the challenges we have are moving into new countries, new regions, volatile regions in some areas. Culture is vastly different, you know, from one from another. And that's the challenges that companies have, and that's the answer you provide, right? You come in and say, hey, we've got that mapped out, we can deliver that for you, or we can help you with this because we have those relationships in place. The challenge that you have is how do you keep the process and the partners and the systems in a s in a way that meets the the goals of those cultures and the safety and security in those regions, but also make it repeatable and profitable. Right? That's that's your challenge, right? And I think that's that's a difficult thing to do. It's hard for us maybe to go out and to Saudi Arabia, Doha, Japan, wherever, and move into a new region. But for you, it's how do I make all those regions work together under one umbrella in a sense that makes sense? Because you have to use Philippines, people in the Philippines who are actually doing some of the the, like you said, the back office work, right, across the the the world. So it's a challenge. I could see that.

SPEAKER_01 20:23

Yeah, I mean, like some countries like China, for example, we we had to have a what's called a WOOFI, what's a wholly owned Ford entity. You have to have partnerships with people in China, you have to invest lots of relationships, a lot of cadence of communic communication, meeting with them. So some of these roads can can take a long time to do that. And so we've had to set up different types of entity structures to validate our capabilities. I do think that one thing that's gonna be really interesting and makes gonna make our job a lot easier over time is the evolution of the use of crypto, whatever, whatever your preference would be, if it's Solana or Ethereum, or even Bitcoin as payment rails, so that we can pay people in different countries in in minutes at a fraction of the transaction cost. We're we're paying people through Wire, we're paying through Western Union, we're paying through a lot of different global API platforms that are out there. And we might have an event that we might uh have a 250 USD equivalent, but I might pay $25 or $50 to pay uh for that particular resource. So that's incredibly margin dilutive. Where now with like Strife and other um these these payment platforms that are out there, we can move things into their currency. It all happens immediately for pennies uh on that transaction cost. So I think one of the things that's really important with building these different countries is understanding their culture, but it's the currency of our network that builds our viability. So what made us unique is that a lot of these large IT service providers needed to be in these different countries, but they didn't really, they didn't go in these countries as Any level of frequency. So we would aggregate that. So now if we need someone in Saudi Arabia and we have someone in Rihad and we need to be able to do a like an Amazon data center visit, we know exactly who to go to. They know who we are. We've gone through the vetting process, there's global background check services like Accurate, and there's APIs that can kind of facilitate this onboarding stuff. But it's trust. So it's how many countries have you been in? When's the last time you're in that country? And at what frequency are you engaged in that country that will determine how effective you can be? So last year we're in 108 different countries, but really you can narrow it down to probably 35, 40 countries, which we're in there at a high frequency level. So those have a lot more currency, a lot more relevance than, you know, I'll use Iraq as an example. There's bases there and we have resources that can put text on site, but we we use them rarely. So that has less value than if it's something where if I'm, you know, somewhere in Western Europe and we're there every week, that that becomes a lot easier for us to be able to scale. But a benefit we had is we're just trying to consolidate that. And all those relationships and all those different cultures all have to be respected because it takes time. But trust and transparency can pierce through a lot of different uh cultural elements. If they know you're gonna give them real work and they're gonna get paid, and there's trust to that and there's repeatability to that, then I think a lot of those barriers start to come down. So we seek volume that contributes to the currency of our network.

SPEAKER_00 23:26

So what are those levers that you can control? Is it just people? Is it like is it's a relationship? Like you said, it's it's a relationship, it's um and how often you've worked with them just to get it right, I guess, right? That's sure.

SPEAKER_01 23:42

Yeah, and I think it's making content or instruction that is clear and concise. So when a tech goes on site, there's this unique relationship. They want to show up, they want to know exactly what it's expected to do. They want to have, you know, what's the definition of done here? So they want to know, you know, how do I check in? How do I check out? What are all the different expectations? So that layer of support, so every ticket that we have has coordination. Now, maybe over time we'll we'll use AI to help scale that, but it's still human beings interacting with other human beings to jointly assure they that they get on site. So that's what you can control. So how the tech app can help with that, how they know everything's been complete. Because where we create problems is if it's not clear instructions, hey Brian, we want you to go on site, we want you you install this screen. And if that's all we told you, go install a screen, you're gonna show up and you're gonna say, What screen? Where do you want it? What do I have to plug this into? I mean, there's all these elements that have to be written precisely so that they can really uh have success with that. So imperfect humans, working with imperfect humans sometimes is a better outcome than than what you maybe an AI or a machine learning framework could provide. So, and we're also thinking deeply about what do you offer for someone to complete work in a country that either you do a lot of work in or you don't? So, what are the different indicators you can look at to determine the currency, the cost of living, and and because you know, people you can offend when you maybe you underbid on something. We we we do this in the US. I mean, like what labor might cost in Dayton, Ohio, for example, might be different than what labor might cost if we want some to be in Queens to do work at a McDonald's as a as an example. So understanding what to offer and how to compel someone to do the work, our model, there's no obligation for anyone to continue to work with us. So if we don't serve that, that the most important persona is the tech. Like if we don't treat them well, make sure they're paid, give them clear, concise instructions, when there's escalations, they got technical, competent people that can help them get them off site. I think that really goes a long way. Those are things we can control. People can find techs anywhere. People can, you know, negotiate price to win these contracts, but it's how you scale that to this different level. And this is the journey on right now. Like what is the scale of revenue for a field services business? Because right now we're we're passing the 20 million mark and really the 50, 60 million mark of of field services is kind of a the the air thins out a little bit there. Uh, there's big companies out there, but field service is just one component part of it. Uh, we've gotten past that base level, but it the scale is challenging because all those relationships have to have feedback real time because they can fall apart ticket by ticket.

SPEAKER_00 26:28

So dispatch one becomes really the the glue, whatever they what you depend on. Because to me, it's like a service now with um ITS um now assist with ITSM. It'll take AI, it'll read the tickets, it'll help them with closure notes, which techs aren't very good at documentation, right? So it'll take what's happening, even if I just put chicken scratch notes in it, it'll take it, make it fuller, give me some closure notes, give me a KB article that I can read and approve and push through. You want that because you're trying to gain information gain information, collect those crumbs and cookie crumbs of history to say when I'm switching a screen in this place, that when it says it's at this closet, well, that closet's actually around the corner behind this bin, hard to see, right? I mean, you want to capture that to make that next experience of your tech so much easier. Yeah. Just to keep growing naturally. I always said, like, you know, instead of barking orders at attorneys and making follow you, we just kind of follow them and make their life easier in their path. And I think it's the same way with your tech, because your tech is your bread and butter, right? You gotta have competent ones, they gotta be friendly, you want them to come back and you wanna be used, you want to trust them, and you want to build a nice platform for them to feed information and gain information so that they feel proud of the work that they've done.

SPEAKER_01 27:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:51

And you become more profitable.

SPEAKER_01 27:53

And then the platform can say, look, these are the type of tickets that we have or in this particular area. So if you have ECHA house skill set, if you have a fluke scanner, if you have these things, we could give you more work. And so there's this interactive element that goes into these things. Right.

SPEAKER_00 28:08

I mean, all of those things go into feeding that next experience. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 28:13

And there's some interest we we had a meeting with with Amazon, which was very profound. I mean, these are big thinking scale projects that they're they're talking through. But it even makes us think about when the tech goes on site, collecting the deliverables, you know, instead of just taking pictures of the screen that we installed or the data rack or the back office element there, taking photos of the entrance, the parking lot, and different types of things. Because over time, as you have multiple visits, you start to build this data map and awareness of what's around there. So now when other techs go on site, they're gonna know this is what you're gonna expect, this is what things look like. And you can start to stitch together this digital view of the location. So we think about the tech, the location, the time we're supposed to be on site, the assets that are affected. And as you can start to link all those things together and feed that in a structured way for AI can really help you when you go on site to what to expect. Here's what you're gonna look at, here's the information. If there's any any kind of uh deviation from the expected outcome, AI can help feed in that next step to help with that first visit resolution.

SPEAKER_02 29:15

So you talked about scale uh and congratulations on that milestone. I I know the air is starting to get thin there. Uh fanatics has grown fast enough to land on lists like Red Hawk 50 and Fast 55, or since now you Fast 55.

SPEAKER_00 29:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 29:33

What did you have to change in yourself as a leader to go from startup mode to scaling mode?

SPEAKER_01 29:39

I think the most important thing is having a, and this is cliche, but I really think it's having the right team. One of the biggest contributors was contingent exited to Comcast. There was a known group of people that were able to join. And so I think it's the people, the process, the tools, and having people that can work together. We went through that already, that trying to figure things out really, really helps. We have a sales, we have a really effective professional sales team. We have a delivery organization that's been there, done that. And then we've added, and this is something I learned from CompuCom, is we added a solutioning team as a mitigator between what the sales team wants and what delivery says it's going to cost to bring things together. And that has really allowed us to scale because part of it is just surviving. Like we don't chase something and go into a particular price point that we we start to burn cash and then all of a sudden these businesses go away. And you'll see a lot of field service organizations because the barrier of entry is relatively low. They'll rise up and then they get past one, two, three million, and then they they they spin back down just because of the the cost to get to those next stages. It's the people. So I think you have to be able to delegate and trust and and and find those different types of relationships. So things are always improving on the business that in this case I am not directly involved in. And so I think that's the most important thing to scale is having that that data. That's awesome.

SPEAKER_02 31:12

What a great answer.

SPEAKER_00 31:14

So uh here, we want to do a rapid fire here, real quick. So what's the one of your favorite places you visited for work or to meet with your teams and why?

SPEAKER_01 31:24

I think one of the most interesting places I've ever visited would would probably be a couple different cities throughout mainly in China. And going there over a series of years, it it feels like the future there. Apple built a store in Shanghai in a in a region called Podung, and it was just it was just extraordinary. The the way they build bonding and rapport, um, they have these dinners. There's these almost like lazy Susan, what I would call lazy Sue, like these glass circular um um inlet on a table, and it's just endless food coming in. They drink uh something called Mautai, which is just, I mean, it will whatever you think about the moonshine that we had referenced pre this call, it it's it's it's unbelievable. But but just watching how Beijing and Shanghai um built out as a company. We are we have an office in Cebu, which is the third largest island in the Philippines, in Manila. We fly our U.S. team out there every quarter, and we have incredible events out there, incredible celebrations, Christmas parties, and it's become a real family there. And I think that culture has been good for us because when we were first using offshore labor, it's hard to build trust and understand what these people are going to do what we need them to do. And it's it's it's become this truly integrated uh family. They are they are equals to us. And um, and so I've enjoyed those events. And then in the US team, I mean, before this call, we we went to a gun range and we had a little team building event, and we'll we'll go to some you know off-site planning sessions. We try to do things to to bring people together because we'll do a lot of things, and sometimes you don't feel the success, or sometimes we just get beaten up. And it's like it's just nice to be able to get together and do things together, like um I'm using together too much there. But I it's it is I think those those environments that kind of bring in a particular city and some events and working with your team, those are always exciting.

SPEAKER_02 33:28

I feel like we've probably talked about this one. So don't feel like you have to use this as an answer. What's one technology trend in the next three to five years that you think will most impact field services?

SPEAKER_01 33:40

Well, a close second, I think, is gonna be payment. I think with with stable coin and things like that, um, we we will pay techs typically three to seven days, where there's like we can have fast funds or you know, our customers pay us net 30, net 45, net 90, net never, whatever it might be. And so we're always having to pay these, but payment is gonna get to the point where if you do all these different things, we'll digitize this smart contract. If you did everything you're supposed to do and you uploaded these documents and we have clear evidence that the ticket is closed appropriately, we're gonna be able to pay immediately. And that will help with us trying to negotiate better cost. And I think people still believe in the time value of money. So if you know you're gonna do something and you can leave that site and immediately you have your incremental element. So I I think I think we're gonna be digitizing and scaling payment. So um, and so I'm I'm I'm gonna be going from my second year now to the Bitcoin conference. And um, and I'm still learning. I'm I'm still trying to understand how these different payment rails and how the blockchain and crypto comes together in ways. But then to layer on top of that into the lead-in, you know, it's clearly gonna be automation with and really understanding how much work can we do to scale and and how do we vet these things. And and, you know, Brian, one thing I was thinking about was like, I mean, when I met you, you were at Coolidge, but everyone had some kind of a start. Like you're learning the entry-level positions. And I think AI might eliminate some of those entry-level tasks now that can just be completed. And that's going to be challenging for the next generation to get some of the core understanding of what's happening. So when you're you're troubleshooting a network and you've you built the PCs, you installed the Ethernet cards, you terminated the cables, you compiled the drivers, you did all those things like back in the 90s and early 2000s. Now everything can be implemented and scaled so quickly. There's a benefit of having just that historical experience of how things worked. So AI might have this opposing force for how do people learn why things are failing? Because I think it can make the assembly of code and can put all these things together so rapidly. Someone needs to know those little nuanced elements. Yes, that's a correct answer. This logic makes sense. Experience helps make that happen. So I I'll I'll be interested to see what that looks like and how do we scale the business, but how do we also get the next generation to be able to understand why things work the way they do and what we have to do to do?

SPEAKER_00 36:17

It's like the long math, right? You know, we did long math, you know, we had it all the way down to paper and some projects were a whole page, you know, long. And we we understand like you said, we we understand the value of working versus not working and what it takes to get there. And when you don't have that, and this is maybe it's just our conception, there's a block there, but I can't see how we can be successful if people don't have that information, but they're not gonna have it. So now what do you do? Right? If if everything's disposable or renewable or whatever that is, and you don't have to go fix it, take a screwdriver to it, fix it, you know, mess with it. What do you do? Well, I don't know, but that's the world we're gonna live in. So we've got to find ways, new ways of valuing things and uh the work ethic and what people bring.

SPEAKER_01 37:09

Definitely think if you're an electrician or a plumber, you probably have a longer life expectancy of doing work than if you're an analyst of some sort. But it's finding and compelling people to get it, you know, like that whole Mike Rowe trying to get people to think about maybe instead of going to college, you could build a trade. In the field services space in the US, the average age of a field tech is 50. So over time, you know, over the next 10, 15 years, if you can't bring in younger people, unless, and it's highly likely, Optimus and what Elon is doing with these robots, I mean, if they can build the dexterity, maybe we have rope, you know, then humans are no longer needed. Seems like that's a long way off. But trying to compel people to build those skills or to, you know, there's there's gonna be some gaps there that AI is gonna I help help take us to the next level, but I think it's also gonna create some gaps that we'll have to figure out how to do that knowledge transfer and how to how to still be advisors or strategist on a on a particular workflow. Having your experience that both of you have makes a difference in how you're architecting, even the work you do from an IT ITS in perspective. You almost had to go through all the things you did to be in the roles that you are in today. You know, it's it's highly unlikely someone who just came out of college could replicate what you're doing right now because they just don't have that experience yet. Yeah, especially when they want to skip help desk and they won't go right to directing or owning. Yeah. Well, maybe there is no help desk though. I mean, you even they can't they there may be no help desk. It could be complete certainly helping desk.

SPEAKER_00 38:48

It's but it builds empathy. It builds how do I build a scalable and trust system that people will use. And I'd say I think it takes help desk to understand what people are looking for, where they're stumbling with it, things like that. And I'm sure AI can track and say, here's where they fields aren't getting filled out correctly, or whatever it is, but there's still that emotion that you know that has to get, you know, answered.

SPEAKER_01 39:15

So it's a good skill set if you can learn how to communicate with people. I mean, you you want to you you need that. Do you have a favorite book or podcast?

SPEAKER_00 39:22

I do like the all-in- and you don't have to say wired garage pop so you can say something.

SPEAKER_01 39:28

Well, eventually I'll get there. We're gonna get there. But I like the all-in podcast. I went to one of their events uh two years ago, and I find that pretty interesting to listen to. Uh, I enjoy the different perspectives, the the counter opinions and their view of AI and and what's happening out there. So I I really that that tends to be one of my go-to podcasts.

SPEAKER_02 39:51

If you could give your 25-year-old self one piece of advice about entrepreneurship and IT services, what would it be?

SPEAKER_01 39:58

I mean, that's a tough question. I mean, I I I I went to Miami University when I was a junior. Uh, I started a company, but I I don't think I thought big enough. I didn't reach or maybe go into different cities or test waters in different ways. So I think I think taking big risk, because I started kinetics when I was 45 years old. That was a lot more risk than when I started my first company when I'm 20 years old, because I didn't own a home. I was very comfortable being poor. So if I didn't make a lot of money, I you know, I could kind of work my way into that. So I think there's a lot there that maybe pushing myself to think bigger and and to take more risk, I thought thought very local. And uh and I saw a lot of interesting things. I mean, that but you can't regret anything. I mean, I we've all of us have seen extraordinary things. I mean, Google, those are all starting. So now there's this enormous stuff, and then the practicality, and what I kind of like about the all-in podcast is these are still just human beings that happen to have a better network and a and a better capital structure that they could pilot and test and incubate and start some, you know, PayPal and all these incredible companies are out there. So I think if I could go back, that would probably the thing to look at is to take um bigger, bigger risk. And I had a couple peers that took bigger risk and and they had different outcomes than I did. But but again, we are where we are because of those other experiences, and I wouldn't want to change any of that, but certainly I think doing that probably would have gotten my uh degree in accounting. I got my degree in finance, and I I just believe that probably the most used skill set that I involved in now is everything goes around accounting and you know, from where the business is going and how we're putting those things together.

SPEAKER_00 41:53

But well, Chad, this has been awesome. Thanks for taking uh under the hood of the Global IT field services and how kinetics is powering deployments in 90 plus countries. For listeners who want to learn more or connect with you, um, we'll drop some links in the show notes. And if they enjoy this conversation, hit follow, share this episode with a fellow IT leader, and stay tuned for more episodes of the Wire Garage with Pops, where we are exploring the real world side of enterprise tech. Thank you, Chad. Thank you, gentlemen.

SPEAKER_02 42:22

Cheers.