Nicholas Pollock of Tampa International Airport and host Ryan Bankston of CIO.LEGAL discuss best practices in IT Service Management and the impact of HDI membership on their careers. Nicholas and Ryan are both board members of HDI Skyway.
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Ryan is a cohost of the Sun Leaders Podcast.
Ryan Bankston: (0:00:22-0:00:59)
Thank you for joining us at the Sun Leaders Podcast Service Management section. I am your host, Ryan Bankston, founder of CIO.legal. We focus on IT solutions and operation solutions for solo practice and small law firms. Get a part-time CIO for your law firm, starting at just $200 a month, month to month. I am so happy to be joined today by Nicholas Pollock, IT veteran, Tampa native, and an IT leader at TIA or Tampa International Airport for going on seven years now, in charge of Field Services and client support, I think? Nicholas, what is that?
Nicholas Pollock: (0:01:00-0:01:12)
To translate, that would be like your service desk and your desktop teams, and then all the ITSM different areas, like change, incident, problem, request. So I wear a lot of hats at the airport.
Ryan Bankston: (0:01:13-0:01:23)
Yeah, a lot of hats. That's awesome. You said ITSM, and I got to ask about that, given we are the service management section of Sun Leaders here, what is ITSM?
Nicholas Pollock: (0:01:24-0:03:36)
It's Information Technology Service Management. So that's born from ITIL, which is information technology—ITIL, the name escapes me at the moment, but that's a best practice, right? It's a framework for how you can manage your IT infrastructure, how all the different things work, how things come in, how they get resolved. And then how do you look at it to make things better?
And then how do you continually make things progress and get better so that it's just more efficient and has a better customer service standpoint for everybody. So I own the service desk and the desktop side of that for the airport. In fact, when I went to the airport in 2018 they didn't have a service desk, and a service desk is a specific thing for ITIL. Before you may have heard of Help Desk, right? Where, like you call and, well, yeah, you hope they can help you, right?
There's no specific training, there's no structure. Just make a phone call, they pick up, they help it the best they can. Right? Service desk is a little more specific. Where the agents are trained, there's a ticketing system. There's some expectations around how you work a ticket. Is it when it's opened, how you follow up with a customer when it's closed. Is there knowledge management if there's a continuing issue, is there something that we engage another team on? Is there something we follow as a process for when we are going to change something so that we're notifying the customer so they don't have to call in? There's just a little more forethought around what you do in IT that keeps things efficient. So in a help desk, someone may have reset, you know, restarted the server, right? And that server may have been something everybody was using at the time.
Well, that's probably going to make everybody call in or email in, or come down, or get angry or upset or frustrated. Well, using ITIL methodology and service desk and change, you would plan that in advance, and you would look for that time frame where it's not going to impact customers or let them know, hey, it's going to happen at this time. Don't use it and then do it at that time. So that's one of the hats that I get to wear, and it's boring yet exciting for me.
Ryan Bankston: (0:03:37-0:04:28)
Yeah, yeah. Well, I get excited about that. It's been a career in the servicedesk and in that operation of IT. So a lot of what you say, of course, I can identify from experience and from years of aligning IT with business outcomes, right? Like, what are we really here for? And servicedesk being that, that single point of contact, oh, the SPOC, yeah, yeah, yeah. Single point of contact for customers. But that leads me to a question. You know this the service desk for Tampa International Airport, like, who's calling in? I can't imagine, just like anybody that walks into the airport and sees like a coke can in the middle of the terminal is going to call the IT service desk, but maybe there’s like a ticket?
Nicholas Pollock: (0:04:29-0:07:27)
It's a really interesting question, because the airport, if you think about it, is its own municipality, right? So there's, every department that a city might have. You have transportation, you have police, you have fire, you have all the administrative, procurement and finance and executive and IT obviously. And then you have the business of the airport. You have airplanes and airline agents and all their supporting people there. So you have all their supervisors and managers and people that print things and people that deliver stuff. And then you have all the concessions people, right? So think about the Applebee's or the Chick-fil-A's and the pizza places and the coffee joints. We have 37 or 39 restaurants on site, and we sell more Starbucks at the Tampa International Airport than they do anywhere in Tampa.
So if you think about it we supply a lot of the infrastructure. So our IT group supplies the infrastructure for them to do business right there, their internet effectively, and the Wi-Fi. So obviously, everybody that works for the airport, there's about 800 people-ish that we directly support. Beyond that, there's another 10,000 plus vendors right between the concessioners, their real estate folks, and all the people that come to the airport for business. If we are going to support them, we have a phone number like, literally, printed out and pasted on their monitor for support. Call this number, and they call us, and we can typically support them.
The airline agents are the most fun ones. So if you can imagine the airline industry, if you've ever flown, when you go to the ticket counter, it's typically people that if you're flying, especially like some of the European airlines and some of the Latin airlines, I go to South America and Middle America, sometimes there's a language barrier, right? So we get calls from them all the time for all of their stuff. So it's never a lack of busy-ness at the service desk. It's more what can you prioritize first? And that's part of ITIL, and how do you get through the day and make sure that everybody's covered? But you mentioned something that made me think no one's gonna call if they see a coke can in the airport. I would be surprised if there was a coke can staying on the floor.
The first day I was at the airport in 2018 I was getting a tour from the director of IT, my senior manager and some other folks, and we're walking around, and the director bent over and picked up a piece of like boarding pass paper that had been dropped on the floor and didn't miss a beat, just bent down, picked it up, kept walking. And then my senior manager at the time did the same thing, like we walked out of the way to go pick up some trash. And as they were talking, they just said, you know, it's part of our culture here at the airport, everything gets picked up first, everybody, including the CEO, is always picking up trash because we want that to be America's favorite airport, and part of that is just staying clean. Wow. So there's a lot of thought that goes into that.
Ryan Bankston: (0:07:28-0:07:37)
Wow, sounds like there may have been some thought that went into that walk, if it's day one, onboarding like that is a great way to communicate. Like, what's your culture here?
Nicholas Pollock: (0:07:38-0:08:24)
They didn't say it, they did it, and then told me why they did it. And it really stuck with me. So I do that to this day. Whenever I onboard somebody new I actually, literally have a checklist. It's six pages long when I onboard somebody of all the things that I want to do, and that's the last part, is giving them the tour and making sure that I'm showing them all the things that we do during our tour of the airport. So it's a long tour, as you can imagine. There's four air sides, three floors of the main terminal, short term, long term, all sorts of areas of the airport. We walk around. It's like a four mile walk. So there's all sorts of things we do, and it's a lot of fun, but that's one of them, is making sure that we show them we clean up, because that's a big thing. When you go to the airport, you notice things like that. They like a Coke can, yeah? So when I heard that, my mind went straight to that first day once at the airport, watching all of my leaders pick up trash.
Ryan Bankston: (0:08:25-0:09:14)
Wow. Well, that was something I've noticed before. I think a lot of locals, folks that live in the area, have a lot of love for Tampa International. There's especially any of us that have traveled for business in and out of other cities, like, fly out of Chicago, fly to New York, fall in love with Tampa International. It's nice to know, though, how much, how much hard work goes into that and that there's a culture, you know, among those in service at the airport that keep it that way. You know, it's not just the design of the building, but the—Yeah, it's not by accident, that's for sure. It's about that walk on the first day. That is awesome. Nicholas, well, tell me, you know, when did you know you were gonna get involved in IT as a career?
Nicholas Pollock: (0:09:15-0:13:07)
Oh, man, it was kind of accidental. So I graduated high school, and like any kid that was like any kid that was in high school that first summer out was glorious. You know, I did absolutely nothing. And the best thing my mother ever did for me, she sat me down in the backyard and she said, Nicholas, you have three choices. You can move out, you can live here and pay rent, or you can live here rent free and go to school. And it was the most accountable thing my mother did for me up until that point.
And I said, you know my friend Jeremy, he's going to this school in Lakeland. Maybe I'll do that. I'd like to live here rent free. Someone checked it out, and it was a tech school. It was called a Florida Career College, and they had like a computer networking and engineering course that you could take. It was like 18 months or 13 months or something. And I ended up getting into that course, and that's how I started my career. I loved every moment that there's so many great memories of that school, so many but when I got out, I was working at Best Buy way before there was Geek Squad. I was the guy at the front that fits computers, and I was just literally the geek at the front. And I got a phone call from some guy named Jeff Peavey, and he's had a real southern drawl accent. He said, my name is Jeff, and he offered me a job over the phone. Never had met me. He had my resume, but he had been recommended by the school as one of their top candidates, and I was offered a job to be a field tech for Dell. So I did field tech work for Dell in this area, in Pinellas. I'm looking at the buildings outside the window, and I'm kind of remembering I've probably been down this street, and I have probably fixed computers in these buildings in my career. So I did that for eight years, about 12,000 service calls between Pinellas and Hillsborough, and we're landing keeping count. I'm a big data guy. I like knowing what my performance is, but I transitioned there, I met a wonderful young lady who I eventually married, and I decided we're gonna have a family. Probably need to get a gym, like a job, job, not just a contractor deal.
So I went into the call center for now. I was like, well, transition. I'll take a step down, take a little less pay. And I was on the phone for a little bit about three months. And then I became a senior, then I became a manager, and then I started launching call centers around the world. In El Salvador and Canada and in Tampa, I launched a couple call centers for Dell, and I saw the impact I had, I couldn't see it, but I could feel it. And what cemented that for me was we got a phone call one day from someone on highway 60, which is here in Brandon. And at the time, I was with the Enterprise team, I managed the enterprise line of business, Riddell, you know, all the technicians, they were joking. This guy's right down the street, and he's got a failed raid 50.
We could go take the hard drive to him, rebuild his array, and get back before we can walk him through over the phone with this. And we all kind of laughed about it, like it just kind of sucks to position how close he was. And I drove home that night, and I drove past where that building was because we looked up at Google Maps, and it's on, it was literally on my way home. And remember looking at that, and it struck me that I have fixed, or my teams have fixed, hundreds and 1000s of computers all around the world, and I've only seen this one, and it stuck with me, and I decided then I wanted local impact. And I started working for a local MSP. And then when I saw the position come up with Tampa International Airport, I thought, Where else would you want to work? Like when you say, hey, where do you work? And someone says, Tampa International Airport. Every time someone goes, Wow, you work at the airport, yeah, sure, do something to be proud of. So that's why I landed where I landed.
Ryan Bankston: (0:13:08-0:13:14)
That's awesome. That is awesome. That is a great story. Well, we're connected through HDI in our local chapter. What is that?
Nicholas Pollock: (0:13:15-0:15:23)
So HDI is a local or is a national organization that is out there to help individuals that are not necessarily in tech right now, but want to get in tech, and also those are in tech to promote their skills, to get them to their next level. One of the reasons I'm even in this organization is, when I was coming through tech, I had no clue what was out there. I didn't know that there was a desktop technician. I didn't know there was a server technician. I didn't know anything. I just knew there was a guy that took care of computers. That's about as far as HDI breaks it apart, right? They introduce you to the ITIL concepts that introduce you to the training that you can take that can help you be the right candidate for the role that you're applying for.
A great example right now I'm sitting in front of 200 people applying for a role that I have open and HR, obviously they cut out a whole bunch of people, but then I'm left with like, 20 or 30 that I got to look at. Now, how do I determine between those folks? Well, if someone's got some certifications and some education and maybe some experience. I'm gonna look at them first, and that's what HDI hopefully does is, they give you some certification and training. Beyond that, it's not what you know, it's who you know. Right? You can know all you can have all the certifications, all the education. You may have fixed a couple computers, but I'm probably gonna talk to you, unless you have talked to somebody I know who can vet you.
HDI has local panel meetings. They have local events, and that allows you to build your network much like LinkedIn. You may know some people kind of like Facebook in the tech world these days and the business world, but at a local meet, you can see someone face to face. And you can really get that foot in the door, and they'll remember who you are. And that's the other thing. And the last thing that HDI provides is that local connection, so that you can know people who can get you a role, who, instead of you looking for a job on a website that may or may not be posted in a way that you find, they reach out to you. They go, you know, I got a guy for this. Let me call him, make sure he sees this. And that's the last bit that HDI does for our local members.
Ryan Bankston: (0:15:24-0:15:55)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. The network of HDI has always been very helpful for me since I got involved right out of the pandemic. Actually when I got involved, somebody I was working with real closely in IT was my client. They said, Hey, there's this conference, this group, I know, I think they're great. They have, you know, a great collection of best practices, and there's a conference. Why don't we go together? Like, Sign me up. Yeah, great time. We ended up being there together, even though I don't think we, you know, we didn't become friends, and they passed each other in the hallway, line dancing at the party.
Nicholas Pollock: (0:15:56-0:15:58)
Was that the Orlando one?
Ryan Bankston: (0:15:59-0:16:03)
Yeah, 2021 I think it was 2021 wasn't it? Yeah, into 2021 November, I think?
Nicholas Pollock: (0:16:04-0:16:10)
Yeah, that might have been service management. That was November. Maybe I was in Vegas. I There are all the conferences that started blending together after a while.
Ryan Bankston: (0:16:11-0:16:26)
Yeah, yeah. That conference was so much fun, though, I remember when I was there feeling like I was among my people. You know, I'd been working many years in the Help Desk role, Service Desk role, leadership and that side of IT, that customer facing side of IT, you know, even working with engineers that are going on site constantly to work on the same partners. Machine that just, you know, needs that little extra help over the shoulder, it has that same buggy printer.
Nicholas Pollock: (0:16:27-0:17:28)
Right when you're at the conference, like you said, You're with your people. I think that my favorite part of the conference, and I don't know if the conference people will like this, my favorite part of the conference is lunch, because they usually have those big 15 people tables at the conference. And I kind of look around, I go, what's the group that isn't that looks like the me's of the table, like, I go sit with the people that just don't look like me. Yeah. I go, sit down. I go, Hey, my name is Nicholas. Where do you guys work? What do you do? What are your challenges? And I like talking. And you find out, you end up finding people that are really passionate about what they do, and they have unique solutions, and they have great stories. And that's probably one of my favorite parts, is the lunch table. But Yeah, everybody's got their guard down. They're eating, they're not in front of a microphone, they're not in front of a panel, they're not being interviewed. It's just people that are in the industry that are sharing their stories with you.
Ryan Bankston: (0:17:29-0:17:55)
Yeah, I love going into the lunchroom and seeing people I know already. You know, like, I love meeting people, but there's like, a special moment being like, especially a conference that's like, out of town, you go into that lunchroom and see somebody you know. Last week's conference I was at, I saw the help desk manager of Akerman, you know, and I hadn't seen him in a while, and I was like, Oh my gosh, you know when I sat down, caught up, sharing more stories. You remember when, which that probably is on your bingo card? Yeah, talking about the good old days.
Nicholas Pollock: (0:17:56-0:17:59)
Yeah, talking about the good old days.
Ryan Bankston: (0:19:28-0:19:42)
Yeah. Speaking of bingo, I've met a lot of people over my years in management and leadership that think employee engagement is a survey. What do you think about that? What's employee engagement to you?
Nicholas Pollock: (0:19:43-0:24:26)
Employee engagement is every moment that you're there. So the employee engagement survey is like, how did we do over the last year? Right? And that's like, the objective measurement, like that gives leadership a way to objectively measure, do we do better than last year? Are we better? Or worse, like, what the areas can we get better in? Or what can one group do better than the other? Can we do the same thing with another group? And that's the objective part of it, but that's one day.
That's a slice of a day, and you may have caught that person's time and attention on that survey where they just got, you know, a bad experience for their boss, and you know, you're probably not getting the most realistic slice of the year. And play engagement is all year long as a leader. And we're talking about this a few minutes before this podcast. Everything that you say as a leader is going to drive a behavior, regardless what it is, if you say something positive, they're going to react positively. If you notice something that maybe they didn't notice, they're going to think, Oh, he's looking at that. And that's going to drive behavior. So you have to be very conscious about what you do as a leader, because that will, for sure drive a behavior, and that's employee engagement.
So things like, I have a candy dish at the service desk, as you can imagine, if you're in finance or procurement, or if you're in any group where you are the like, maintenance is a great example. This is a great story. Amazing maintenance folks. These guys fix things that the normal person has no clue how they work, electronics and the electrical system, and how you get a three way switch to work, and why the LED lights don't work and why the plumbing doesn't work, and they can fix all they know, everything they have, all the special tools. It's amazing to watch those guys work.
When it comes to computers, they are super scared to come ask for help, because they are the person that never has asked for help. So in order to lower the level of engagement for anyone, we have a candy dish at the service desk. And what that means is we literally have a little dish sitting out front where people walk by that's filled with delicious candy, like High Chews. And I don't know what the little caramel chocolate deal is, Tootsie Rolls. Those are terrible, by the way. I very much don't like this, but we put them in there because other people like them. And we have all sorts of candy we change it up all the time. And the intention behind that candy bowl is so that when someone walks by that doesn't necessarily have an IT problem, they stop and they grab a piece of candy. And that's a moment in time where the Servicedesk can engage with the person on something that is an IT, where they can get to know my service desk person as Zane, and not that scary IT guy that sits behind the desk, that always has to ask whenever there's a problem.
So now they know him a little bit. And they do. They get candy a couple times, right? They know that's our candy spot, right? Well, now when they have a problem, and instead of them going, uh, Googling it or trying to figure it out or trying to overcome it and get frustrated and tired, and now a technology robot has happened. Now, instead of that taking an hour, let's say they spend two minutes on I go, You know what? Let me go talk to Zane. I could get his candy? While talking to Zane, he can fix this. So now they're less frustrated. They've probably, overall, spent less time getting their issue fixed, and they've also built a relationship with Zane, right, right? So human connection, my team has had 100% CSAT scores for months and a row. Wait, I thought that was impossible. I thought it was impossible too. We've had two blips and both times. So our scores one through five, right? Yeah, five being the best. The two blips were two. People gave us ones because they thought we were number one. I call them because if we get a bad score, like, I look at scores every day, it's all my checklist things to do. And now one I went, Oh, man, let me get this guy call. What happened here? Okay, this is Nicholas, the manager of the Service Desk. Well, I see that you left us a survey score. I want to understand more about what happened. Like, oh, you're the best. You're the best. You're number one. I'm like, did you score number one? Like, we're number one. Yeah, you're number one. Like, yeah, that was one. Like, we're bad, and I'm so sorry. So both those times were a mistake.
But that candy dish is that, that reducer of engagement, right? So they build a relationship, and you have that engagement with each employee, so that their frustration for doing their job comes down, and it helps the Service Desk, because think about selfishly, when someone calls a service desk, they're not pissed, they're not upset, they're truly just looking for help, and their defenses are down, and it's an easy conversation, and no one's getting hurt, and they get it fixed, and they feel better for it. So the candy dish is a huge help. And I've been pulling engagements every single day, and there's a million ways to do it, and the candy dish is just one of them.
Ryan Bankston: (0:24:27-0:24:36)
Yeah. I mean, that's thoughtful. That really speaks a lot to customer experience. And like being very thoughtful about that engagement with the customer base, right and alignment.
Nicholas Pollock: (0:24:37-0:25:13)
It's a great excuse to expense just lots of different kinds of candy, even the ones you don't like, even the ones we had a couple months ago, we had, we got tired of the same old candy. So Amazon had this pack of Asian candy, and it was like all the candies from across Asia. And then they had a Latin America pack, which is like candies across like Mexico and in Central America, and we set them out, and we were, it's like a little experiment to see which candies disappear first. Asian candy is objectively better, in my opinion, the Latino candy is it's something else.
Ryan Bankston: (0:25:14-0:25:18)
Wow, okay, yeah, yeah, I'm sure there's, there's probably some passionate opinions about that.
Nicholas Pollock: (0:25:19-0:25:49)
Oh yeah, I'm sure there is. Because the one candy that sticks out to me, they had, like, these licorice strings. And you would unpack the back and add a little, like a tub, if you can imagine, they're sitting in there, then have a little separate packet of salsa. Yeah. So these liquor strings also had, like peppers in them, and then you had salsa, so it's sweet and salty and like, then the peppers and tamarind, and you dumped a salsa on these little licorice strings that are like cherry or strawberry or something, then you would eat them. Yeah, yeah. It was as bad as you think it is. It was not good.
Ryan Bankston: (0:25:50-0:26:41)
That reminds me of a moment I, like you, talked about opening service desks, kind of around the world, in different areas. I was in the Philippines, where I had a service desk I had opened in Manila, and the team was great, and they just showered me with all this wonderful stuff, home, cooked food, things that were popular among their friends and family. And one thing that popped up a lot were dehydrated banana chips, which at first I wasn't a big fan of them, like, oh, you know, thanks. And then I was like, Oh my gosh, I have all these bananas. And then somebody was like, you know, they're kind of paying attention that wasn't eating them. And they were like, have you dipped them in your coffee? I'm like, what dip? A dip, a banana chip in my coffee? Like, yeah, it's, it's what they're for. Changed my life. This is really so good. It's like the French fry and the frosty really, yeah.
Nicholas Pollock: (0:26:42-0:26:49)
I have to try that. I’ve never, I’ve never had it. I will stop by some ways and get that later on, yes.
Ryan Bankston: (0:26:50-0:27:22)
Good times. I always love chatting with you about these things. But I want to pass on some value to our audience. You recently learned something that we were talking about in our board meetings, and I thought that the audience would really benefit from the knowledge. What is it that you learned about Microsoft licensing for nonprofits and not for profits? And what the heck. I thought those were the same thing, Nick.
Nicholas Pollock: (0:27:23-0:30:27)
Oh man, I'll tell you. Coming into a nonprofit organization like HDI, as an officer on the board, I knew I was gonna be out of my comfort zone. I had to learn a lot. This was one of them. So we're always looking for a free solution, right? Because we don't have a lot of money. It's a non profit organization. We're not for profit. And, heck, I can't remember when we were not to go look at my notes either way. So I figured, well, we're not for profit. Microsoft gives away things all the time for free. Google gives things away all the time for free. So I went on the web page and started looking for how to get free stuff from these companies so that we could have our own email addresses and 365 cloud accounts and all the things that make us productive, right?
Well, learning has shown me that Microsoft considers some not for profit companies different from other non for profit companies. If we are a company that services like, disadvantaged folks, if you could think of, like, make a wish. Make a wish, exactly, great, great example, like the Make a Wish Foundation, the, like, the good wills of the world, those kinds of places, well, you are okay for Microsoft to give services to, right? Like, well, it's, it benefits them. Here's the hands, yeah, they're like, Here, here's your three subscribe accounts. You can use it. It's whatever. But if you're just like an HDI, where we're not directly helping disadvantaged folks like a professional, right? What we're doing is we're, we're helping people get into the, you know, professional industry of it, right? And helping them move through that profession and industry.
Well, we're not exactly the same, and we're classified differently, and you have to have an IRS tax number, and you have to have an EIN and there's all these things that I've had to learn and well, we're just not we're not giving enough, apparently, because there's different levels of organization, so we've had to look for other free tools.
But yeah, like you said, it's, it's a it's a lot of learning, and learning how to look for those those solutions, learning how to research those solutions, and then also how to kind of break the news to the rest of the team, like, hey, listen, here's what we're doing. But I couldn't make this happen. I was really excited, but I had to tell everybody, listen, I was unable to get it done, and here's why.
It's, hopefully not my fault, but it's Microsoft drawing a line in the sand. Because, as you can imagine, fire Microsoft, I'd have to draw a line in San somewhere, too, and saying, well, anyone could be a non for profit, like you can literally register, like I registered this chapter with the state of Florida. And started a not for profit business and paid $65 and I had to learn how to do that and start opening up a bank account and put that in there. We got the EIN, we got all that stuff. And it was just me, like a guy that's not a lawyer, and I said to Google some stuff. So literally, anyone can do it. So I'm sure Microsoft put a line in the sand, yeah, keep meat from doing that as a regular old entity, to getting free whatever for a business I'm running as a side business. So I'm sure there's a reason there.
Ryan Bankston: (0:30:28-0:31:18)
Yeah, it's challenging, though, because we have cost, of course, but we're not, we're not like, selling a product, right? So, right. We're not like, we don't really like, offer something like that, but not directly the cost, like the $65 you mentioned, or, you know, we had a conference not too long ago. It was at the Denver national conference, and we were fortunate to have several, you know, HDI Skyway, our local chapter, and several members that were nominated for various things. So, you know, obligated to do our best to get them to Denver to be present on Chase stage if they accept that award, you know, and it's hard, but we have to rely on either membership dues or sponsors or the organizations that those people work for supporting us.
Nicholas Pollock: (0:31:19-0:32:25)
Well, the good news is, HGI has a really compelling section that says, convince my boss, right? Yeah, a piece of paper that you have to hand out, like you have to print it, you have to go give it to your boss. Oh, yeah, the Firstly, they had the first conference I did. I absolutely used that to convince my boss and like, hey, here's what I want to do. Here's where I hope you get out of it. Here's what the answer says, here's what I'm gonna do when I come back. And I gave it to him, and I made a business plan for me, and spending 1000s of dollars of the company's money to go off effectively on what might have been considered a mini vacation, yeah, and, you know, I came back revved up, and it was really exciting when I came back, I put a lot of things into place, and those have been implemented, and they've been impactful, and I kind of revert back to those, and I tell my boss, hey, look what we did when I came back. That's where these ideas came from. That's where this energy came from. So if you go to these conferences, you're going to meet people who you can then also reach out to to revitalize that energy, to input or implement these changes that you want to make that are truly impactful to your company and your customers, and it drives revenue 100% but you gotta be able to tell that story.
Ryan Bankston: (0:32:26-0:33:02)
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely, yeah. I can think of something that I wouldn't say that I single handedly put in place, you know, but, but I was in a session at a conference. I took some notes, downloaded a wonderful PowerPoint deck, showed it to a couple of bosses, and got a couple of managers excited before. You know, everybody's like being or a significant portion of the leadership teams, like, hey, I think this could work. We could change how we hire. You know, get 90 days ahead. You know, use our natural attrition rate for good instead of thinking about it is like this awful thing that's always keeping us call center.
Nicholas Pollock: (0:33:03-0:33:06)
I remember that A word.
Ryan Bankston: (0:33:07-0:33:18)
Oh my gosh. There's just so much to learn at those Well, we have an event coming up. We do just a couple of weeks because now, but that event is September what?
Nicholas Pollock: (0:33:19-0:34:30)
Yeah September 26, 6pm to 8pm at the Tampa International Airport sky center. I can't say this enough. I I love working in the sky center. Is a beautiful building. Funny story, if you ever get to go to this Tampa International Airport sky center, if you walk into the atrial menu, smell that is a branded scent they pump in this brand. It's branded, so they have this ginger, Jasmine smell in there. And it's not sweet, it's not floral, it's not, it's a lot of things. It's like, it's almost not savory. I'm not really good with describing smells. But if you imagine the smell, if you've ever walked into a Tvana and it's not overpowering, like, Ooh, this is, this is nice. I want to smell like this all the time. It's that inside of a building, and you're like, Wow, this is really branded for the bill Tampa International Airport. They've contracted with a company that made the scent for their scent, and it gets pumped in through the HVAC. And where do I get my bottle? I wish they would sell it. I would put it in my office at home, but we don't sell it, all right? It's only in Tampa International Airport. That's the smell of the airport. Wow. Well, at that building, at least.
Ryan Bankston: (0:34:31-0:34:54)
That's wild. See, that's why, that's why Tampa International Airport. I never knew that that type of effort and thought went into the experience of not only the people that work there, but the people that come in and out every single day. You know, from the mayor welcoming me home when they get, oh, my flight, I'm riding across to that smell that is. That's just awesome.
Nicholas Pollock: (0:34:55-0:35:17)
Yeah, they count the number of steps you take. So there's a number of steps that's optimal. That they want you to not exceed, to get to your airplane, from the car to the airplane, I think it's like 700 something steps, or 1000 steps. It's not many steps. So if you can't imagine, that's a huge campus, but it doesn't feel huge. It's miles across, but you're not walking more than 700 steps. That's pretty insane. And they engineer everything to meet that.
Ryan Bankston: (0:35:18-0:35:25)
Wow, wow. So you have to work hard. If you're wearing your Fitbit at Tampa International Airport, you're gonna have to get some cells to get those steps.
Nicholas Pollock: (0:35:26-0:35:39)
You can take some steps. So one of the teams I used to manage was a common use team, and their job was to get there four in the morning and make sure every screen was working correctly in the airport. It's a four mile walk at four in the morning to go look at all the screens everywhere.
Ryan Bankston: (0:35:40-0:35:50)
I miss that screen that you used to put messages on when you had, like, family flying in, you know, and so when they're riding that long escalator down, it would like, come up, and you'd be like, Welcome home, you know.
Nicholas Pollock: (0:35:51-0:36:01)
No, I know the one you're talking about. You sound the baggage, yeah, the exact screen is gone, right? They've replaced it with an even nicer screen. But they do sell all the advertisements. I bet you could buy, yeah.
Ryan Bankston: (0:36:02-0:36:17)
I've never asked what it was. Probably some companies advertisement, probably were doing it, but it was just, it was so cool you couldn't put advertising on there. You want to advertise a Tampa International Airport. Think about that big screen heading down the baggage claim.
Nicholas Pollock: (0:36:18-0:36:55)
One of the best places of the airport, in my opinion, is if you're ever in the main terminal where the people are coming off the train, and there's four spots, right? And if you ever see someone saying, there are a family with a sign that says, Welcome home, every time I stop and I wait, if I get a couple minutes, I'm gonna wait, because chances are, I want to see that family reunite.
Yeah. And there is no greater zenith of humanity. Oh, yeah. Then seeing a family reunite after they've been apart for so long, usually you can tell because they scream and they run and they hug, and there's just a few moments of just the absolute, think, perfection of humanity. Yeah, and then I get to go on, I have my Chick fil A.
Ryan Bankston: (0:36:56-0:37:26)
That's wonderful. That's what I've been fortunate to be there for one of those, where a dog's present, you know, or, yeah, like a service dog back when they were all over the airport a couple years ago. But, yeah, seeing, like, a dog running up, like, oh yeah, Tails shaking, they're crying, oh yeah. Well, we're getting pretty close to time. Nicholas, but, you know, let's, let's give the audience something. You've been at Tampa International Airport for a while. Do you have any tips for travelers?
Nicholas Pollock: (0:37:27-0:39:12)
The tips for travelers, I would say Tampa International really puts a lot of thought and effort into the recreational traveler and the business traveler. There's some unknown things that are out there that when you're not traveling, that you could take advantage of. There's a tour of Tampa. So if you call the Tampa International web page, there's tours that happen all the time. In fact, my family, just one on one Mike, the people in my cul de sac, all the little kids, up to 11 people for free, can sign up and you get a tour. They put you on a bus, and they drive you on the air size. They take it to the fire department, to the airfield maintenance. They drive you all over the airport, where you could never drive. And there's someone telling you all about the airport, all the behind the scenes stuff, where the baggage goes, everything for free. That's amazing. And they do that constantly. They do tower tours. They do airfield tours. There's all sorts of tours you can sign up for. You just give him a call and you'll speak by Darius, and he's the one at the front desk, and he can tell you what tours are, what dates are available, and they're again, they're all free.
Anoother thing that's free that no one knows about, except for what they know about it, obviously, you can get a day pass. So if you go to the Tampa International Airport, I think it's the website, you can sign up for a boarding pass that will allow you to go to any air side. And you can go in. You have to go through TSA, but you can go visit any of the restaurants and have lunch at the airport. As I mentioned earlier, we have 37 restaurants. There's things like Columbia, Goody Goodies, The Cafe Cuba. There's all sorts of restaurants. I have four. Green field is out there. It's one of my favorite Irish places. And I get great fish and chips there, but you can go as just a regular traveling member of the public that doesn't have a ticket to go fly. Go get the free boarding pass from the Information Center, go to the air side, have lunch and go home.
Ryan Bankston: (0:39:13-0:39:27)
Wow, yeah, yeah, that's, that's interesting. I didn't know you could do that. Yeah. That definitely changes my thoughts on how a family's going and it's like, an early flight, and, you know, get through, it's like, you can, you can actually go all the way through security and wait at the gate if you wanted to.
Nicholas Pollock: (0:39:28-0:39:48)
There's a mise en place there, which is an amazing restaurant that I don't think there's one in Tampa. I haven't looked, but it's a, I think it's a French restaurant. And they're in, I think air city, yeah, air city, and it's a great, rated restaurant, and you could get a free pass to go to the airport and go eat at me someplace.
Ryan Bankston: (0:39:49-0:39:57)
That's awesome, yeah? Well, uh, you can expect to hear from me, because I have a child that would probably love those tours. Oh, man, no, I would. I've always not been a sucker for airplanes.
Nicholas Pollock: (0:39:58-0:40:15)
So they actually drive you out onto the taxiway and wait for a plane to take off while you're on the taxiway. So there is no greater experience than having a plane take off literally next to you, shaking less like you're there with the plane. It's a surreal experience.
Ryan Bankston: (0:40:16-0:41:08)
Thank you for those tips. Nicholas Pollock, and thank you for joining us today. We'll go ahead and end it here.. It has been so nice spending some time with you today. Listener, join me next month, where I will have Martin Catania, a long time IT veteran man who hired me in 2010 and I have considered a mentor ever since. We'll be getting together and sharing a lot of stories of Do you remember that time when and of course, we at Sun Leaders put out a podcast every week, we have several different hosts talking about all kind of wonderful topics about building the community, our community here in St. Petersburg, Florida, in the Greater Tampa Bay area, a lot of great topics about entrepreneurs, about doing business and community outreach. So we'd like to see you! Have a great day.