#607 More AI Won’t Help. Better Processes Will | Lara Hamilton

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Mehmet: Hello, and welcome back to an episode of the CTO Show With Mehmet. Today, I'm very pleased, joining me, Lara Hamilton. Lara, she is a technology leader. She's been in the industry for s- quite some time. Um, she's working into a very interesting space as well, which is related to, to properties and property tech, uh, which we're gonna a little bit talk about today.

As I do usually with all my guests, I don't like to steal their time. Lara, thank you again for being here with me today. Please tell us a bit more about you, your background, your journey, and then, you know, we can dive into discussion right away after that. 

Lara: That sounds great. It's so great to be here. Um, so I st- I didn't start out on a traditional path in IT.

That wasn't what I grew up and wanted to be in, in, in technology. Um, I stumbled into it by working at a bank that had, um, an opera- uh, banks have operations departments that handle all the backend work, [00:01:00] and I was in that department. And what I did was I worked in a, a wire transfer desk where we were, uh, doing everything manually, and I was able to make it more efficient just out of sheer boredom, and, um, I eliminated my own position.

Um, instead of letting me go, what they did was they moved me around into other departments so that I could make those departments more efficient as well, and it, it snowballed into my s- um, my position now into te- in technology. And, um, once I left the banking industry and went into, uh, directly into IT, um, I started working for the company I'm with now, and, um, it just grew from there.

Mehmet: Great, and thank you again, Lara, for being here with me today. So after all this time, you know, working at the intersection of IT operations and compliance, so, like, what drew you to this space and what [00:02:00] has kept you there, I would say? 

Lara: Well, the one thing about IT is it's always changing. Um, it's interesting.

There's always something new to learn. Uh, I am not one of those people that wants to do the same thing over and over again. Um, I like learning new things, and so that's really kept me interested in the, in the industry and in the, uh, position I'm in. Uh, the thing, you know, the thing that I hear a lot is, "Well, that's how we've always done it," and to me that's like the worst answer ever because that means you haven't tried to improve on what you're doing.

Mehmet: Uh, I, I, you know, love this because I am one of the ... They used to call me the troublemaker. I used to work in IT department once, you know. And, you know, my first question is why, why you do it this way? And, you know, of course, maybe when I was younger, probably maybe my voice tone, maybe my, you know, um, body language was people they thought, like, I'm aggressive.

But actually I meant like: Okay, [00:03:00] why we do it this way? Like, maybe there's another way we can optimize on it. So yeah, and I, and I'm beli- big believer that actually anyone that works in technology, uh, this is should be their number one goal, like how we can keep optimizing the systems we have. So now at your current, uh, company, uh, Lara, so you provide, you know, help desks to other realtors, right?

So, so, so you work with a lot of, you know, real estate agents, property managers, I believe, right? Correct me if I'm wrong. 

Lara: Yeah. 

Mehmet: So, um, like how much technology powers modern property management, and what surprised you the most, uh, about the space, especially when, when, when you shifted into it? 

Lara: Well, when I shifted into it, um, a lot of the things that people did were very manual.

Um, I actually taught a, a property manager how to turn on a computer and how to take all her index cards and transfer that information into a software. And so, um, it was very much [00:04:00] going from, um, the very manual, no computer, using dial-up internet kind of thing, to how do we get that into a system that'll help you with your processes?

Uh, and so that's been my, my beginning experience in this industry. But what I, what surprises me is that sometimes even today, those are still, um, I'm still dealing with those same things. Although most people have computers and they have some type of software, it's where's that operational friction coming from that we can do something to help streamline what you're doing and make your day be more useful?

Mehmet: Right. A- are you still, you know, out of curiosity, in, in this domain specifically? Because I had some guests, like some of them, they were in the banking sector, which you used to be in. Yeah. Some they were in the healthcare. So here, like for when it comes to adoption and, you know, willingness to, you know, try [00:05:00] to, to optimize maybe some processes using technology, uh, like is it a domain where you see a lot of pushback from people, or is it like more, um, like they, they, they are happy to, to, to try and...

Like how, how's the acceptance, I would say, of, of trying new things in, in this domain? 

Lara: I think it's mixed. I think some people, um, you know... So the, the, the hot topic now is paperless, going paperless. Mm-hmm. And, and people are very attached to their paper. They like to highlight, they like to circle things.

They like to... That physical touch of, of something. And so to be able to, um, navigate that, um, and, and try to help them see the benefit of going paperless, that's one thing. And then AI is another, um, that big elephant in the room for everyone, and it's scary to some and some it's exciting. For me, it's a, a middle ground.

I think it's exciting, but you still need to have [00:06:00] governance that's, uh, helping you navigate that properly. 

Mehmet: Right. I'm gonna come to the AI l- later on, but I, I want to go back to something you mentioned in your intro actually, and it seems like y- y- you became ex, so expert in this, which is basically optimizing and at the same time scaling, right?

Yeah. So, um, so what are the biggest mistakes usually you, you see organization they do when they try to scale operations? Uh, and you know, what's the secret to do it without increasing, you know, um, indeed in this case, the IT teams, like to, to keep, you know, the IT department lean, um, while the business is growing?

Lara: Well, the thing is, is the days of someone sitting and looking and watching your servers, um, and having that one IT guy that stays in the I- in the IT closet and never leaves it and all those things, those days have gone to the wayside. Now it's more of, um, optimizing your, um, things [00:07:00] online. More people are, um, uh, using the, their computers on a more regular basis to get their jobs done.

So it's become more, um, of a prevalent thing. More average regular employees, a leasing agent, these people are very knowledged in technology because they've been raised with it. And so, um, utilizing that, that skill set without taking the human element out of it has been the challenge too

Mehmet: Right. Um, Lara, I, I gotta, you know, tell you a little bit, uh, some background about this podcast, and this is will lead to the question. So my main goal, why I start this podcast and why I called The CTO Actually, because, you know, I felt there is, you know, a, a more... I'm not saying it doesn't exist, but, you know, there was I felt a need to bring more people who can bridge between IT and business, right?

Lara: Right. 

Mehmet: A- and, you [00:08:00] know, this is something, you know, you, you, you've done also as well. So why we keep seeing, you know, or hearing sometimes, you know, from people like, you know, organizations struggle, um, with, with this gap bridging kind of thing, and how we can improve that from, from leadership perspective.

Like, what, what could be, like, the secret sauce, I would call it, to make sure that, you know what, because us as people working in, in technology, we tend to talk too much about, you know, the bits and bytes and, you know, the hertz, megahertz and gigahertz and, you know- Yeah ... now with AI we have new terms also as well, a lot of jargons.

So what, what can be done to make sure that we are bridging this gap between the IT and business in a better way? 

Lara: Well, you know, you have, uh, people in a company, in a business that are very high level thinkers, your CEOs, people like that, and they see vision of how they want something done. [00:09:00] They see the buzzwords like you're talking about, and they want, how can we bring that into our company?

But they don't know how to implement that in a real situation. How d- how's that going to affect the, the employees? How is that gonna affect my IT world? And, and that's where IT comes in and should be able to, um, help and not over-acronym people to death, you know what I mean? Uh, w- and we do that. You know, we do have a tendency to get g- really excited about something, and we start throwing acronyms out and terminologies and all these things.

But it's how is that process going to help you? One of the main things is, do you have a process? You know that somebody does a task, but is that, is that process of how they get from point A to point Z, is that laid out in a format? Do you have each step someone has to go through? And I think that's one of the biggest hurdles companies have, [00:10:00] because they've gone through the motions, they're doing it.

You've got long-term employees that are doing things that they've done, and maybe they've changed their processes over time, but they have this internal knowledge that's never really been documented. And understanding what those processes are and what those steps are helps in how can we make this process more efficient for you?

Not because you want to, let's, let's just throw it out there, 'cause this is what people think. People think you start writing things down and you start eliminating employees, and that's not what it's meant for. It's meant to understand and how can we improve that employee's life And give them the time back that they really need in their day to do things that are more important.

And I'm not saying what they're doing is not important- Mm-hmm ... but we wanna build a system or a, uh, processes in place that will help with the friction that they're seeing, their frustrations, and will [00:11:00] eliminate some of those frustrations so they have that more, can be more of that person that you can go to.

How can I sell a, a unit, sell a, um, an apartment to a, a person coming into my office if I'm spending all my time pulling reports and adding this to the spreadsheet because it's not already there, and all these other things, um, that are just creating busy work, so to speak? 

Mehmet: Right. S-- do you think, like, this is one of the reasons...

Now, of course, AI is, is the biggest thing here, but, uh- 

Lara: Mm-hmm ... 

Mehmet: is, is this, you know, the, the main reason why we see sometimes s- projects fail? Because we don't have the, you know, what you just described. Like, we, we, we don't, we didn't have, you know, uh, the time maybe, or maybe we ignore to document how we do things, and then we...

To the, to the example of the AI, someone, you know, [00:12:00] maybe mentioned to the business owner, "Hey, you should adopt AI," and next day the, the guy comes in say, "Guys," like, "We need to de- deploy AI." And then after a while they figure out, oh, like, it didn't work, and then they think the technology, it didn't prove itself.

So, um, how much that is, is important when we need to deploy or let's say adopt a new technology successfully? 

Lara: Oh, it's, it is the most important part. It's the foundation of your house. If you don't have a strong foundation, then everything you build on top of that is not gonna be strong. AI is that way. It is the ex- exactly that way.

If you don't have your processes put in place and understand them, you can't teach or tell AI what processes to do next. It's only as good as what you put into it. It's not... It doesn't have logic. It doesn't think logically. It, it's gonna do exactly what you tell it to do. Uh, but also property management software, um, QuickBooks, anything [00:13:00] that you're doing outside, even outside of AI, is only as good as the process that you put in place.

So if you have... And I'll give you an example. In property management- Sure ... we have, uh, five things. If you don't do five things, then you're, you haven't really completed the process. If you don't have a prospect, um, and you don't put that prospect information into the system, uh, then you're gonna put in that application for that person.

You're gonna run screening for that person. You're going to move them in once they've been approved, and then you're gonna- Mm-hmm ... then you're gonna take their payments for their rent and their security deposit and all these things. That's five easy steps, right? But there are processes and steps that have to be done with each one of those things that make everything work seamless.

If you don't have that email address, then once that person moves in, they can't go online and make a payment. You have... They have to bring you a check, right? And we're out, we're kind of out of the world of checks almost nowadays. So it's all these [00:14:00] things that are the dev- the devil's in the details. Mm-hmm.

So if you don't have those details put in place, it, whether it's in your software process or whether it's in a task that someone does, then there's no way to really truly do something successfully. 

Mehmet: Right. Now, this is very important, Laura, because this is like, I would say the, the basics, which for you and me, it might be like very obvious, but it's good we mention it because, you know, people, they need to understand that without having, you know, these steps done, you know, any technology, whether it's AI or oth- or other than AI, you mi- you will struggle.

So, um, a- and you know, I still get surprised when I hear people like say, "Hey, like we need, you know, the best in class thing," um, whatever technology, let's say a CRM or, I don't know, like helpdesk, uh, system or so on. But you find out that, you know, after a while they start to complain then exactly the [00:15:00] reasons you mentioned- Yeah

because, you know, they, they, they didn't put the basics, you know, before adopting these technologies. Now, coming to the AI, and it's a coincidence just before I record, uh, start recording with you today, Laura, is I read a post and then I had prepared also a post myself on LinkedIn talking about, um, the AI and, you know, what's happening around the AI.

Because I think the biggest debate today in tech, uh, and for leaders in, in IT, like whether are we in, in a hype? Like, do really people are seeing ROIs and, you know, the, the study I just read and then I, you know, wrote about, it's mentioning that how IT departments from 2024 to 2025, they had to slash and reduce, you know, some of the budgets, you know, related to AI because they didn't see ROI.

But on the same, uh, you know, uh, research, they said, but some people, they were able actually to see [00:16:00] a good ROI. So from, you know, the, the, the position you are at today, Laura, like what kind of actual use cases you're seeing organizations successfully deploying in their, uh, in their, uh, environments? 

Lara: And with AI, using AI?

Mehmet: Using AI, yes. 

Lara: So I think some of the things that I've seen, uh, that have been really successful and things that are, um... It's like t- it's taking these small tasks that, and putting them i- into a real world scenario and helping take out that, a- again, I'm gonna just say it again, operate, that operational friction that your employees might face.

And I'll use an example in our own company. Mm-hmm. So one thing that we do is we have a ticketing system. All of our, um, anyone that needs assistance, they, they put a ticket in, we help them, and then all of our clients, they want reports based off of that information. Uh, we [00:17:00] provide our, ourselves with reports based off that information, and what we do is we take them and then every day we send out notifications to the employees, "Hey, here's how many tickets we've done.

Here's how many hours we've supported people," uh, based off each employee. That information used to be a manual process where we would go in and we would pull this information out, we'd put it in Teams. Here's this information provided to you on how we're doing for the day. How, how did we do yesterday? We have used now AI agent where we have implemented all this information and it every day shoots out this information to us on a, on a every morning before everyone gets to work.

Here's what we did yesterday, let's keep going, let's do a great job today. And nobody has to touch the system to do that anymore. That's a simple thing that we've done, but it's something that's been super effective and super helpful. Um, and nobody has to go in and do something and pull a report and screenshot and do all these things, um, that were...

It was [00:18:00] causing us operational friction because it was something that could have been eliminated and put into an automated process that AI was able to help us with. Right. And that's just one thing 

Mehmet: And you can put, like, if, if you want to give another example, you know what I'm interested in, Laura, like, you can put, of course, reducing operational friction is big, but can we put a price tag next to that?

Like, can we say, like, we save this amount of hour and this hours, like, cost us X amount of dollars? Or maybe we, uh, we remove the friction because, you know, based on all the enhancement we, we did using these AI tools, maybe, you know, customer satisfaction increase and, you know, we, uh, we remove the risk of losing customers maybe.

And again, we can put... So, so how are you seeing, like, also these kind of conversations going? 

Lara: Well, let, let's just say you saved, um, let's just say you saved an hour a day just by not having to pull reports and put it into [00:19:00] a format that's, that's readable and, and then put it into a, a Teams chat or where- whatever format you're using.

That's five hours a week. Um, you know, that's almost, you know, a full day of someone's work that you've just retrieved back and giving them, giving them life to. That's a small, simple task. That's not something like, uh, an Excel report that you're having to pull different reports and put it all into one report and pull the information in and, but the software doesn't have it in this format, so we have to pull two reports to get it into one and all those things.

So there's a lot of things like that that are very... I, I call them time sucks. You know, the information's there and you have it, but you have to put it into some format that, that the end person that's reading that report needs to see it to where they can make, um, educated decisions for financials, for budgeting, for other things within your organization.

So that could save you hours a day and, um, you know, give [00:20:00] you time back that you can use doing other things, making better decisions, doing proactive actions instead of reactive actions. 

Mehmet: Right. And I think, you know, we need to wait some time, like, because people nowadays, they are, you know, the AI made us like this, I believe, and you know, of course, um, w- we want something immediately.

We want, like, it's like click button and then we see the ROI immediately. Yeah. I think sometime we need, we need, we need to give it also some time so we can collect better data and then we can compare to- Before and after, and then, you know, like, uh, expecting an ROI in, in, I don't know, like less than a year for me is like a little bit still it's...

W- w- we're not there yet. Like, you need to, to put it into action for some time before really we see, um, the benefits. But of course, there maybe there are some tangible benefits we can see immediately. But I mean, to have the full picture, we still need to wait. Like, this is my, my humble opinion on this. And but, you know- Yeah

because of all the noise that's [00:21:00] happening, whether in, in, in media or like, um- Mm-hmm ... you know, stock market and, you know, all the things that are happening and, you know, the, the creators who talks about AI, they created a h- kind of a hype not into the AI itself, but you know, the expectation. And I think this is something, and that's why, you know, I'm, I'm happy you, you mentioned this also, Lara, because this is s- coming from someone who's actually living in, in, into the scene of, of the technology, like managing an IT department.

So, so you know this better than anyone, and, and I'm happy you mentioned this. Now We're mentioning AI, we're mentioning, you know, adopting technologies. We're mentioning some of the challenges. Top of mind for any leader like yourself, Farah, I'm sure is, you know, the data, right? So, and, and protecting the data, cybersecurity.

Uh, and AI is making this more complex today. So in your domain, um, what are, like, the major threats you're seeing today? And [00:22:00] like, did AI made this worse worse? And I mean, uh, what are you seeing in that space? 

Lara: Yeah, I c- I can give you a great example of where AI- Sure ... was a, was a, uh, a hurdle for us. Um, so you can...

And, and I wanna make sure everyone understands, too, AI is not a purple- people replacement. Mm-hmm. And this is a good example of where AI is used as a person, and it's, but it's not a replacement for a person. And that is, uh, we have a company that uses AI in their, uh, voice answering. And so you call and you get a prompt, and it sounds like a person, and they're, they ask you what your issue is, what, who, do you need this, do you need that?

And you've heard, you've seen it, many- Mm ... uh, companies use prompts. Um, press one for this, press two for that. And, and what we were finding as an IT support system for this company was we never got to a live person, and bec- it always went to an AI agent. [00:23:00] And because of that, we were not able to get to the live person that needed a, um, h-hardware support.

Mm-hmm. And so they have an issue with their computer, but we can't get to a person to get them support because we keep getting an AI agent. And so we had to come find different ways to, to, of communicating, "Hey, I need you to call me," or, uh, shoot them an email, shoot them a Teams message. Uh, is there another phone number where we can get around this AI agent because we're not getting a live person that's actually reaching out to us for support.

And so that was one of the things that we've seen as a hurdle with AI. And when I say hurdle, it's not just that we couldn't get to them, it's that sometimes, uh, an, an AI is not y- is not a replacement for a person in a way of it doesn't, it doesn't, can't analyze and think logically as far as emotion. It doesn't understand those kind of issues.

And so, you know, when you need a, a person [00:24:00] that can empathize and that can understand, um, in a different way than just straight facts that you're putting in, an AI, AI bot can't do that. Right. And so, you know, the human element still, is still very real and still very needed. 

Mehmet: Right. Now, you know, talk about, you know, security.

How do you balance, you know, you know, the strong security practices with the need to keep, you know, people productive? I think I, I, I watched something, um, the other day, like which mentioned, you know, that every time you try to, to enhance the security measures, um, you know, people, um, try to, to avoid it somehow.

Actually, I had a guest who mentioned this also to me a couple of weeks ago, uh, and he just told me, like, if, if you just keep putting all these things and try to, um, make it harder for them, they will try [00:25:00] to actually avoid this somehow. So how to keep the balance, um, especially, you know, and I'm sure maybe, you know, when it comes to, to property, do you have a lot of sensitive data over there?

And actually all the data's, you know, it's a property for the company, so it should be sensitive by nature. But how do you keep the balance so you don't let people feel like they are overwhelmed with all the security measures? 

Lara: I mean, the bad, the, the bad word in the industry, nobody likes it, the reg- regular users, none of us like it, it's multi-factor authentication.

Nobody wants to use it. But it is really important to utilize because it does give you an extra layer of security. With that being said, um, there are ways, um, where you can im- implement single sign-on and things like that that help with, um, hurdle over that. With that being said, um, you know, criminals are getting smarter and every time you can come up with a [00:26:00] way to protect yourself from a scenario, ransomware or phishing or whatever the, the issue is, um, criminals are smart- are getting smarter, where, okay, well, now we've got AI poisoning, where people create websites that are false and s- send out false information.

You go look for something in, um, in a AI chat, like you're going, you search for the best... "I need the information for my bank," and they are sending you false information because they've created this amazing website that seems real and AI cannot determine what's real and what's not on the internet. So the best thing you can do is to, what the old term is, trust but verify.

Make sure that you're calling the right phone number, make sure you're going to the legitimate website, all those things. And, um, yes, AI might spit out a great report for your, um, about dinosaurs, but does it have [00:27:00] source information? Is-- Where is that information coming from? Uh, when you go, is it providing you with links to where you can go verify that information?

You still have to verify. 

Mehmet: Absolutely. You still have to verify 100%. Now, other than-- We spoke a lot a-a-about AI, but, you know, from what you're watching, uh, Lara, and I'm sure you, you get exposed from a lot of maybe vendors and maybe if you go to some conferences. So other than AI, like, what are some trends you are closely, you know, watching and paying attention to at the moment, and you think that they deserve, you know, us to, to watch them?

Lara: Well, I see trends in, uh, people using software, property management software specifically, to help them with, um, tasks like, uh, mass text [00:28:00] messaging, um, and using things like, um, being able to screen their employees... I mean, their, um, their potential residents better. Uh, those products are improving every single day.

Integrating, uh, databases together where you can have a single source of, of information for all of your stuff. Um, I see softwares that have the ability to, uh, migrate your data out of their software into your own SharePoint environment so that you have ownership of your own data and things like that, and I think those are really strong softwares that do that.

Um, there's a lot of things, like I s- I said before, people are going paperless, and COVID changed the way we do business. It really did. A lot of people now had t- were forced to learn how to do things they d- they, they were... It wasn't in their wheelhouse. It wasn't comfortable. Paying your rent online wasn't comfortable.[00:29:00] 

Uh, but people started doing it because they didn't want that face-to-face interaction during COVID. Now, paying your rent online is almost the best practice, and people don't come into the office and pay their rent with a check. They don't bring money orders and all those things. And so, uh, I see the industry changing in that way, where it's almost where they don't even take those things.

It's, it's more rare that they take a check or a money order or a cashier's check than people paying online and doing everything electronically. 

Mehmet: Definitely. You know, like, um, you know, this is one of the key takeaways in my opinion about everything is going paperless, and I'm sure there's a lot of businesses that still they do a lot of paper-based work, and maybe there's a huge opportunity, uh, in, in the space.

Whether it's in the property sector or maybe any, any other vertical, I'm sure there's a lot there. Now, I want to, you know, ask you about leadership in technology. [00:30:00] Now, AI is changing a lot of things, um, because the way also, like, I'm guessing, correct me if I'm wrong, and, you know, h- here, here's the question.

You know, if... Because I used to work in IT department 20 years ago, so my KPIs, if I, if I might use this term, to my manager, direct manager They were, of course, like for example, how many tickets I closed per day. They were like, I don't know, of course there are like the soft skills, how you talk to people, all this.

But I mean, as hardcore competencies, like how much do I learn? Like which certificate I took, you know, which conference I attended. So now in the age of AI, when it comes to you as leader, like what are like most of your time spent on when it comes to evaluating, uh, the staff that are reporting to you, Laura?

Lara: So, um, eval- you, you talking about for my own employees? 

Mehmet: Yeah, in [00:31:00] general I would say, and if you want to give example how, how you're doing it today, feel free to do so also. 

Lara: So with my own people, so my goal in, in our company was to build a team that had, uh, various skill sets that complemented each other.

Um, and one of the things is, um, if I can't train someone up and, and improve their skills to where they can take my job, then I haven't really done my job because... And you can't really move up in a industry if you don't bring people up with you. Um, and so the important thing for me was to build a team of people that each had different skills but brought positive impact and was wi- w- they were willing to share their skills with each other.

And so I might have one person that's an expert in firewalls, another person that's an expert in, um Building PCs or, um, reconfiguring com-- PCs and creating images and things like that, and they share [00:32:00] that knowledge with each other. So what I've built is a team of people that are all skilled in all of these things over time.

Um, and it's, it's really worked well for me. With that being said, uh, some of the things that we do to monitor that, like you were saying, like tickets and all those things, those are-- those KPIs that, that you talk about, those are gonna n-not really ever go away because you do still have to have some form of measurement of, do I need more people?

Are my people overworked? But it's not just about the numbers. You also have to look at the people. Um, are they doing a lot of things outside of tickets and outside of phone calls that aren't measured, you know? Are they, um, answering the door every time somebody comes to the door? Are they, uh, taking inventory?

Are these things cr- um, a ticket entered for those things? Uh, there's a lot that goes on to a bus- into a business [00:33:00] other than just sheer numbers. And so you still have to look at the, the people individually as well. 

Mehmet: Right. Now, you know, a lot of people who, you know, uh, enter this sector, um, after a while they say, "Okay, one day I want to become, you know, the leader of the IT department," like whatever the title is, director, some organization CIO or CTO.

So what lessons have been most valuable throughout your career that you can give as an advice, you know, to people who are just, you know, entered this domain? 

Lara: So the best advice I can give you is to learn. Learn every single day. Learn more information. G-gather more information. Learn how to do the thing that's hard.

There are things that I've learned that I didn't really want to learn. They weren't things that were fun to me. They were hurdles I had to get over [00:34:00] because I needed to know it for this other thing, and, um, report writing was one of those things. I didn't really want to learn it, but I had to learn it, I needed to learn it, and that skill set helped me with so many other things.

So just continue to learn every single day. And there are going to be obstacles, and those obstacles could be tasks or people. They could be yourself. Don't let those obstacles stop you from what your goals are. Keep pushing, because- Everybody's gonna have obstacles, and some are gonna be worse or harder to get over than others.

But if you really want something, just keep learning more and more, and over time, those skill sets will become a knowledge base, and you will become a knowledge base for your company. And that's-- there's no price you can put on that. 

Mehmet: Absolutely. There [00:35:00] is no price you can put on this because, you know, you become the knowledge base.

You, you become the, I call it, like, you become the wiki, uh, for, for your, uh- For... You know, like, people will come to you and ask you, "Hey," like, "How you do this? How you do that?" And it's not easy to replicate it using an AI system. I, I, I can guarantee you this. Lara, as we almost, uh, you know, um, coming to an end of the episode, the traditional question I ask all my que- all my guests, where people can get in touch, and if, you know, you have any website or you, you want to, to share anything with the audience, feel free to do so.

Lara: Thank you so much. Yes, you can, uh, find us at helpdeskrealty.com, and, um, you can message me there, and I'm happy to help you in any way I can. 

Mehmet: Great. I will make sure that I will put, you know, the link in the show notes. Again, Lara, thank you very much for this, you know, uh, very, you know, great discussion that, uh, that we had today, uh, especially from a sector I didn't cover much, uh, [00:36:00] from someone who've been, you know, in, in, in the technology for, for quite some time, and you have a lot of experience.

So I encourage people, you know, to, you know, listen and, you know, share it with their, um, friends and colleagues. And this is how I end my episodes. This is for my audience. If you just discovered us by luck, thank you for passing by. If you did so, give me a small favor. Share it with as much people as you can and subscribe also.

We are available on all the podcasting platforms and also are available on YouTube. And if you are one of the people who keep coming again and again, thank you very, very much for all the support, for the messages, for the feedback. I try to read every single thing you, you send me. And again, you are keeping the podcast in the Apple Top 200 podcast chart across multiple countries in the technology, uh, category.

So this is-- I cannot do it by myself. This is because you, the audience, you come and you listen again and again. And final thing, which, uh, it's been a while since I didn't remind you [00:37:00] to do, if you also want to support the show, so there's one way you can do it. So, um, last year I published a book called From Nowhere to Next, so you can go and find it, and you can, like, learn more about me and why I started the whole thing.

And if you'd just like, just get in touch, also you know how to find us. And as I say always, stay tuned for a new episode very soon. Thank you. Bye-bye.