IAM876- Founder Brings Quality IT Service to Business Owners

Oscar Diaz has 20 years of experience in the IT industry. Oscar studied Information  Technology Engineering at UNITEC (http://www.unitec.edu.ve/). During his five-year program, he worked as a Coding Instructor and participated in several university programs to attract new students to the faculty. After graduating, Oscar started working in the telecommunications industry at Digitel Corp (www.digitel.com.ve). His first position at Digitel was as a System Administrator, where he had several servers under his responsibility, including the email system that supported 3000 users. In the next five years, Oscar demonstrated he was willing to take on new challenges and responsibilities; this allowed him to climb the organizational ladder and earn a management position where he was in charge of the server infrastructure running on Microsoft products (200+ servers and 10+ engineers on his team under his direction).

After that, Oscar moved to the position of Application Manager, where he was in charge of (a) Business Intelligence, (b) Web Application Development, and (c) Customer Liaison Units (where he had 20+ engineers, business analysts and team leads working under his supervision). After ten years working in the Enterprise world and seeing the opportunity to bring Enterprise IT practices to small and medium-sized businesses, Oscar founded Tecbound Technology in 2011. The goal of the company was to bring quality IT service to business owners and help them navigate the challenges of using IT in their business.

Tecbound has grown ever since and now has a presence in Calgary, Vancouver, and Latin America. Oscar sponsors several children through not-for-profit organizations like World Vision and Christians Children’s Fund and has a passion for helping kids get involved in sports activities to promote family values, and respect for others and encourage them to become the best they can be.

• CEO Hack: Two books – (1) Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill and (2) Never Split the Difference by Christopher Voss
• CEO Nugget: Start early, don't overthink it because there's never a right time to do it
• CEO Defined: Learning and running a business, looking after employees, and taking care of customers

Website: https://www.tecbound.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/tecbound-technology/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tecbound
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tecbound
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Tecboundtech

Full Interview:

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Transcription

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00:02 – Intro

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkless values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO Podcast.

00:29 – Gresham Harkless

Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast and I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Oscar Diaz of TechBound Technology. Oscar, it's awesome having you on the show.

00:39 – Oscar Diaz

Yeah, I'm glad to be here as well.

00:42 – Gresham Harkless

No problem. Super excited to have you on as well. Before we jump in, I want to read a little bit more about Oscar so you can hear about all the awesome things that he's doing. And Oscar has 20 years of experience in the IT industry. Oscar studied information technology engineering at UNITEC. During his 5 year program, he worked as a coding instructor and participated in several university programs to attract new students to the faculty. After graduating, Oscar started working in the telecommunications industry at Digitel Core.

His first position at Digitel was as a systems administrator where he had several servers under his responsibility, including the email systems that supported 3000 users. For the next 5 years, Oscar demonstrated he was willing to take on new challenges and responsibilities, and this allowed him to climb the organization's ladder and earn a management position where he was in charge of the server infrastructure running on Microsoft products. After that, Oscar moved to the position of application manager where he was in charge of business intelligence, web application development, and customer liaison units.

After 10 years working in the enterprise world and seeing the opportunity to bring enterprise IT practices to small and medium-sized businesses, Oscar founded TechBound Technology in 2011. The goal of the company was to bring quality IT services to business owners and help them navigate the challenges of using IT in their business. TechBound has grown ever since and now has a presence in Calgary, Vancouver, and Latin America. Oscar sponsors several children through a not-for-profit organization like World Vision and Christian Children's Foundation Fund and has a passion for helping children get involved in sports activities to promote family values, respect for others, and encourage them to become the best that they can be. Oscar, you're doing many phenomenal things, my friend. Are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

01:58 – Oscar Diaz

Yeah, I'm ready. let's do it.

02:00 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome, let's do it then. So I know it touched on your story a little bit in your bio. Could you take us through anything additional that you can tell us about your CEO story so that you get started with the business?

02:38 – Oscar Diaz

Yeah, so essentially, I started at ClickBank as you also mentioned in 2011. What happened is that before that, I used to work enterprise level. Okay. So and I, IT environment, the way that IT works in enterprise level is very, very, there are processes, it's very structured, is there is a lot of process and procedure you have to follow in order to be able to run an IT department in the enterprise level. So then what I realized in 2011 is that those procedures, that structure doesn't exist for mid-side businesses.

So they need IT, they need technology, but there is no structure whatsoever. So there was an opportunity there. I found a tech-bound technology to bring that expertise from enterprise to mid-size businesses, because I mean, technology is very important today. Now it's more important than ever and will be important for the next decade. So who knows who and when? So yeah, that's basically the main reason why we started the Tech Band.

03:40 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, it's so funny you said that not too long ago, I wrote this blog post where I say people are starting to hear people say, we're a technology company that does this, we're a technology company that does real estate, we're a technology company that does cooking products, we're a technology company that does this, that, and that because it's literally in everything that we do. And as you said so well, being able to not just make that available for those enterprise-level businesses and have that knowledge and information, but be able to help those small to medium-sized businesses to not to be able to leverage that and understand that and to be able to really make sure that they're leveraging themselves and their businesses the best that they can.

04:19 – Oscar Diaz

Yeah, and the interesting thing is that you can find technology and businesses. I'm going to give an example. 1 of our customers is a diesel shop. They repair heavy-duty trucks. So you might think what the hell? So do they use technology? Yes, they do. So essentially, if they don't have a computer to run the diagnosis on the truck, but to fix it. The trucks today are computers and wheels. So they have computers, you need systems, you need software in order to be able to know what's going on with the truck and then start repairing the truck. So that's when you see something like that, you'll see a company, the only thing that it does is repair trucks. So where's technology here? Well, they don't, they need a technology unit to do their job. So that's the way that technology nowadays has been plugged into our lives, right?

05:11 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely. It's so funny. Like, I think I read something that said, that if you look at the very first computers, they would blush like the coffee machines just because the technology they have within them is so robust compared to what it used to be. So you're absolutely right, whereas literally in everything that we see. So I wanted to drill down a little bit deeper. I know I read it in your bio. Could you take us through a little bit more on how you work with your clients and some of the solutions you provide for these businesses?

05:39 – Oscar Diaz

Yeah, so what TechBound does is what is known in the industry as a managed service provider. Essentially what that is is an IT provider, an IT company that works with their customers to run their IT department. We become the IT department for our customers. Essentially, what that means is that if we go to the enterprise level, for example, you have a department that looks after the servers, the help desk, the projects, processes, and procedures that can have activities, we move that to the small businesses.

So the idea there is to help them not just to provide regular help the SOU to when they have a problem with the printer or their computers or browsing the internet, but also to make sure they have all their processes in place to have a security awareness training that they have a strategy, that they have a budget, that they have everything up to date because it's important to have everything patched up to date. So, that's basically what the service is about, but on top of that also we work with our customers to understand what they do and essentially how their business does, what services provide, and where their problems are. Once you understand what they're doing, then you can see how IT or technology can help them with those problems and potentially also be an edge for their company against their competition.

So the final portion of all this is because the IT technology is remote. So we're doing everything remotely nowadays. The majority of the service can be provided over the phone. So, when you do it like that all the time, and then you lose that face-to-face contact, that would be that human relationship. So we add that component as well. So people can see there is someone behind the phone, there is an actual human working with them, there is someone that actually cares about the technical problems and that's trying to help them to figure out how to get the best out of the technology.

07:46 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, and that's so huge. It almost sounds like and definitely correct me if I'm wrong, you're like an IT partner, you're a partner in their business because you understand their business. You understand some of that kind of, I guess, nuances of not just what they probably need now, but probably what they need to grow and expand and reach all the goals that they have, but to be able to have that human touch, that human interaction on top of knowing their business and being able to kind of have that education, that experience and all the knowledge that you have is probably a phenomenal thing.

08:15 – Oscar Diaz

Yeah, and the beauty of the work is that when you start working with a customer, they're having all sorts of problems, technical problems. The printer is not working, the network is slow, Wi-Fi is not working, and you tackle those problems and you fix those problems for your customers. And then the conversation is translated to, let's see what else we can do, or what things we can bring to the business in order to innovate, to improve, to bring new services.

When we get to that point where our customers, and basically we get with all of them. And to that point where they're still thinking not just to, okay, this printer is going to work or not. They're now still thinking, okay, how can I do what can I do to bring more services to our customers using technology? And that is the beauty of the job. Once we get to that point, we know that the basics are there, the foundations are there, and now we can start improving and moving forward.

09:09 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, it sounds like you really get to that innovation level and you're able to not just, you know as you said, get the printer working, but you start to create and develop solutions to not only help out that client, but help out your clients, clients, clients, and so on and so forth.

09:23 – Oscar Diaz

Yeah, that's correct. And there is a particular example with 1 of my customers that they wanted to create a piece of software for their internal processes, and we did it for them. And now he uses that piece of software as something unique in their business. So when he talks to their customers and tries to differentiate them from the competition to says, okay, we have this, this is the way we manage our customers. And that's something that we build for them. And what's their idea? And we help them to build the software. And that's the part that is unique and beautiful about the services that we provide.

10:01 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, I love that. And so would you consider that to be what I call your secret sauce? The thing you feel kind of sets either you personally apart or your business apart, it makes it unique is that ability to kind of have that partnership be able to see somebody's vision, hear their vision, and be able to help them create and develop these solutions.

10:21 – Oscar Diaz

Yeah, it is part of the secret sauce, as you said, which is basically understanding what they're doing, right? So once you become part of their business, then you start helping them, okay? That is very key in the way that we deliver IT services. And the other one is just to have that connection, that relationship with our customers, because Otherwise there is not that relationship, then there is no way for us to learn what they're doing. Also, there is no way for us to build trust, a relationship where they can share information with us so we can help them. And this kind of interaction also with the helpers is that to help them in other activities.

We have customers who have phone raisers every year and they ask for help. And this is, Can you be one of the sponsors? Yes, for sure, let's do it. And once you build that relationship, then everything just basically flows and you can help in other areas as well.

11:26 – Gresham Harkless

I wanted to switch gears a little bit. And I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be like an app, a book, or a habit that you have, but what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?

11:36 – Oscar Diaz

I'm going to talk about 2 books in particular. one is by Napoleon Hill, Think and Grow Rich. That's an amazing book. That's crazy things. The other one is by Chris Boss and never split the difference. I don't know if you ever heard about it and Chris Boss was a hostage negotiator in the FBI. So the guy knows how to negotiate.

12:04 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely.

12:04 – Oscar Diaz

So the thing is here, the 2 things here is that you need to focus and visualize yourself in the things that you want to have and feel like you have it, feel it that you're having at the moment, and start working towards it. But as long as you feel that it's happening, it will happen.

12:25 – Gresham Harkless

Absolutely, I love that hack. And then so now I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO nugget. And this could be a word of wisdom or a piece of advice. It might be something you would tell a client or if you happen to be a time machine, you might tell your younger business self.

12:39 – Oscar Diaz

So if I were back in time and talk to myself, I would say, start early. So then a business, So, and just do it. I mean, don't rethink, don't overthink things, just do it because that's the only way for someone who wants to actually start something. So, if you overthink and think about trying to find the best moment to do it, the reality is that there is never a good time to do it. So it's just better to do it. If you're going to fail, just fail, learn from it, and start over again. So that would be the nuggets that I would sell myself. If I travel in time and find myself and say, Hey, this is what you have to do now.

13:25 – Gresham Harkless

Absolutely appreciate that nugget. And so now I want to ask you my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. And we're hoping to have different quote-unquote CEOs on this show. So Oscar, what does being a CEO mean to you?

13:37 – Oscar Diaz

Oh, shoot. A CEO for me is a person that is doing these things. First of all, is obviously learning and running a business, thinking about looking after his employees, and also taking care of their customers. I would say the most important one, I think is the second one, is to take a look after your employees. If your employees are happy, they like what you're doing, what they're doing, they believe in what you're doing, they basically breathe and talk your same mantra, then they will look after your customers.

14:12 – Gresham Harkless

Oscar, truly appreciate that definition and I appreciate your time even more. What I wanted to do was pass you the mic so to speak just to see if there's anything additional you can let our readers and listeners know and of course how best they can get a hold of you, get a copy of the awesome book that I know you have available and all the great things that you're working on.

14:29 – Oscar Diaz:

Yeah so We have just, I work in a book with other specialists and experts around cyber security. It's a really nice book. It's really easy to understand. It's not techy, believe it or not, but it's just for a small business. So they know what's out there, and what they can do in order to mitigate risks. The name of the book is on the thing iced, is available on Amazon and you can buy it anytime. So I prepared myself, I wrote a chapter there about security for mobile devices. And then they provide a few tips on how to protect your company, and your employees when using wireless networks. For example, one other thing is that when you go to, I'm going to give you one tip right now. So when you go to a mall, don't use free wifi. You don't know who's using that free wifi. Then that's when the problem starts.

15:24 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely. And I definitely appreciate that. We will have the links and information that show notes as well too, for people to get ahold of Oscar to get a copy of the book. And that's absolutely a great nugget because I think so many times, we don't forget, we forget about all the vulnerabilities that we have. Sometimes being out using the free Wi-Fi, and not having a secure device, not only opens us up to things right there but opens up to things later on as people have gotten access to our devices. So I appreciate you for obviously writing that chapter and informing us today and all the great things that you're working on.

15:57 – Oscar Diaz

Yeah, no, you're welcome. So anytime it's very important today to have security in mind. So phones now are any mobile devices like a door to your house, to your network, to your house, to your information. So you have to, so someone wants to have to be very careful how to use them.

16:16 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely. It's just absolutely huge. So I appreciate you for doing that. Thank you so much again, Oscar, and I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

16:19 – Outro

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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