On this episode of the NTP podcast we chat with Luke Thompson, CTO at LEOPARD Host. We discuss his experience growing a hosting company in Lake Macquarie and the challenges competing against international players as well as advice he would give to those starting a career in tech. Hope you enjoy the episode!

Listen to the Podcast

Watch the Episode

Show Notes

Here you can source all the things we have talked about in the podcast whether that be books, events, meet-up groups and what’s new in the Newcastle tech scene.

• • Luke’s LinkedIn
  • LEOPARD.host’s Website
  • LEOPARD.host’s LinkedIn

Find all local Newcastle Technology Events

• Event’s Page

00:00:20:13 – 00:00:26:03
James MacDonald
Welcome to another episode of New Tech People. Today’s episode we got Luke Thompson, CTO at LEOPARD.host.

00:00:26:22 – 00:00:29:10
Luke Thompson – Leopard Host
Luke Thank you, James. Lovely to be here. Thanks for having me.

00:00:29:22 – 00:00:32:11
James MacDonald
Not a problem whatsoever. Lake Macquarie Local.

00:00:32:20 – 00:00:34:24
Luke Thompson – Leopard Host
Lake Macquarie Local down in Gaza. Yeah, it’s.

00:00:34:24 – 00:00:44:23
James MacDonald
A part of our Greater Hunter area. For those who don’t know who you are and what it has does might give people an idea of who you are and who is leopard host.

00:00:45:07 – 00:01:12:06
Luke Thompson – Leopard Host
Fantastic. Look at Leopard. I was CTO. I’d say we’re a driving force in the hosting space, so we’re trying to emphasize quality local, but primarily relationship building. Yeah, we’re focused on mineral systems that do more for businesses, and I’d say day to day for me is a bit of a mix. You sort of got systems engineering through general operations, but I’d say overall there’s a real focus there on relationship building.

00:01:12:10 – 00:01:13:11
Luke Thompson – Leopard Host
Yeah, yeah.

00:01:13:19 – 00:01:27:17
James MacDonald
Made the hosting space obviously a very crowded space. Do you consider the likes of an IWC and an Azure or JCP pay a competitor to what you guys do, or is that a different proposition? Give me a bit of an overview there.

00:01:27:18 – 00:01:48:18
Luke Thompson – Leopard Host
Yeah, the trust, the public clouds. I’d say to a degree, of course that definitely in competition with the compute side of the business. But you know on the other hand, we’re not in this to fight down on cost. The compute side is really important to us. But at the same time, I think once you’re in a public cloud system and it’s a microservice doubt and everything else, you’re kind of in there.

00:01:49:06 – 00:02:08:18
Luke Thompson – Leopard Host
So I think what we’re doing is we’re going a different value proposition again, relationship based. But at the same time we’re scaling that side up. But if somebody has gone down the route, how to move the enterprise across, it’s going to be quite difficult to look at pulling them out again. Yeah, so that’s not not overly not I wouldn’t say.

00:02:09:03 – 00:02:13:08
James MacDonald
All right. So your sounds like your biggest value prop is based on customer service.

00:02:13:23 – 00:02:18:24
Luke Thompson- Leopard Host
100% reliability performance. But overall service services.

00:02:19:22 – 00:02:28:21
James MacDonald
In that space, which is often, as you said, dollar driven, especially for enterprise pay, I can move to IWC and save myself X amount of dollars.

00:02:29:01 – 00:02:29:13
Luke Thompson – Leopard Host
Yeah.

00:02:29:19 – 00:02:42:15
James MacDonald
Sounds like you’ve flip that and gone. Hey, instead of competing on price to compete on, is that availability? Is it the fact that is somebody that problem solved? Is that where you find most of your customers coming to you?

00:02:43:02 – 00:03:04:01
Luke Thompson – Leopard Host
Yeah, I think especially with all the acquisition that have been happening, I think there’s really something to be said for quality in terms of reliability. We sort of we’ve stripped everything back. We’ve rebuilt everything with all the years of learning that we’ve had. So the systems that we run now aso rock solid for us that we can always assume that we’ve got that baseline.

00:03:04:01 – 00:03:18:05
Luke Thompson – Leopard Host
And that really lets us focus on the relationship and adding all that value there for people. Yeah, So yeah, I’d say overall that’s, that’s where we, that’s where we see it going the other way and focusing on certainly not the cheapest but providing a lot of value. Yeah.

00:03:18:06 – 00:03:27:08
James MacDonald
And is the target market for leopard homes, small medium businesses, is that enterprise, is that a bit of a mix between dog range?

00:03:27:24 – 00:03:46:03
Luke Thompson – Leopard Host
I think the position that we’re in now, like we touched on before with the public clouds, I think enterprises have gone. They go down their road and they’re quite happy in that space. And I think, yeah, the government just awarded another contract to Amazon who have many millions of the department customer service, and we really won’t go down that route.

00:03:46:03 – 00:03:50:22
Luke Thompson – Leopard Host
We’re much more focused I think in the SMB world. Yeah, and providing value down there.

00:03:51:02 – 00:04:14:24
James MacDonald
Is that also because enterprise people probably have teams internally are reasonably technical, strong and can figure out most problems. And you know, the enterprise customers we work with have internal DevOps teams and they have people that can get within areas to integrate as much as that and fix problems. Whereas as small businesses don’t have internal tech capability to integrate.

00:04:15:06 – 00:04:34:08
Luke Thompson – Leopard Host
Absolutely. And I think as for once, you’ve kind of picked the cloud, you’ve certified around a cloud. There’s no going back to bare bones Linux or anything along those lines. Yeah. So our fully managed services would take away a lot of that legwork in terms of the so-called putting out fires and building services into systems and all that sort of thing.

00:04:34:08 – 00:04:52:04
Luke Thompson – Leopard Host
But I think once you’re there, you’re there. So I don’t think there’s a whole lot we can do in that space short of, you know, five years down the track. If we decide, hey, we’re going to be the next linear or digital ocean and yeah, flip the model back on its head again. Yeah, I just don’t really see the value in going down that path.

00:04:52:11 – 00:04:58:09
James MacDonald
So you’d be more of a service space industry or service based company rather than a broad focused company.

00:04:58:14 – 00:04:59:07
Luke Thompson
Absolutely.

00:04:59:10 – 00:05:04:24
James MacDonald
And that’s am I right in thinking that Leppert has came out of consultancy?

00:05:04:24 – 00:05:33:15
Luke Thompson – Leopard Host
Yeah, we’ve done sort of almost a full circle now, and I’d say so we’ve gone from the world of web application development to working with Red Rooster, working with Mercedes-Benz, working with the Diamondbacks over in the States through to the MSSP model. All the while we still from the Web design days had built out these Linux platforms that we were leasing out and sort of building up that sort of engineering compute side and then tie that into an MSRP model.

00:05:33:15 – 00:05:53:03
Luke Thompson – Leopard Host
We ran a brand called Newcastle I.T. We scaled that up locally and that was humming along alongside the hosting compute right around the time this lovely Spotify who pitched up and caused so much havoc. And that’s when we sort of sat down and went, Look, we’ve always had the hosting compute. We reckon that we’ve got it to a point now where we’ve ironed it out.

00:05:53:03 – 00:06:05:07
Luke Thompson – Leopard Host
We love how it all runs. Let’s take the chance to forge deeper relationships like Data Center and APNIC and all that sort of thing and rebuild upwards. And then just focus down that pathway.

00:06:05:10 – 00:06:10:24
James MacDonald
That Marvin Niche offering as opposed to probably a a broader offering in the MSP.

00:06:10:24 – 00:06:35:10
Luke Thompson – Leopard Host
Well yeah, I think the MSP world was fantastic. We had a lot of fun with it, some great projects and we had some brilliant clients. But you get to a point where I think as well with the model shifting these days, you look at the likes of Microsoft three, six, five, and now the tossing and then sharing. And now, you know, an office manager is also running authentication and security and all sorts of things to provide value in the MSP world.

00:06:35:23 – 00:07:00:07
Luke Thompson – Leopard Host
You’ve really had to evolve quite quickly and things can change within weeks with not a whole lot of notice. So for us, I think it made more sense that we’ve always had this hosting on the side. Why not take it a step further and build that out and focus on what we’d learned over the years of working with the enterprises through to the MSP side, with project management, vendors, trades, connectivity, all that sort of thing.

00:07:00:10 – 00:07:18:24
Luke Thompson
It ties a lot of it in with what we do now and having had that experience with the app dev and all that sort of thing, if we were going to a medium size company, if we’re going into an agency, a dev house and saying, Hey, here’s what we do. By the way, we’ve also got a quite a unique perspective from everything that’s got us to here.

00:07:19:05 – 00:07:21:02
Luke Thompson – Leopard Host
Yeah, it’s been, it’s been pretty good.

00:07:21:09 – 00:07:22:19
James MacDonald
I have to say now.

00:07:23:06 – 00:07:43:11
Luke Thompson – Leopard Host
We’re a team of three, so we keep it nice and lean. Yeah. So when we get to the point of saying really to put somebody on, that’s when we will review our code and go. We can actually automate 4 hours a week here away and so we’ll get rid of that. But we’re sitting at the point now where we need to hire at the end of the year and we need to hire at the end of the financial year as well.

00:07:43:11 – 00:08:08:06
Luke Thompson – Leopard Host
Coming. Yeah, we’ve just been approved. It’s really exciting for an R&D project. Yeah. So some of our software plans that are on the board have got a really fantastic partner down, down in Victoria. So we’re going down that pathway, but we need to be putting on the developers, engineers to start to flesh those out and get us down the road and up and away.

00:08:08:06 – 00:08:16:08
James MacDonald
So it sounds like focus, continual focus in housing, but then there’ll be some tangible projects on top.

00:08:16:08 – 00:08:36:05
Luke Thompson – Leopard Host
Yeah, I think what’s made it really enjoyable for us is that we don’t stop listening, nor moving, nor innovating. So we were looking at our tech stack a while ago and we’d built everything out on VMware. We built switching out to a very basic level. We were routing through a different company, call it to a different company, and that’s where we sort of went.

00:08:36:05 – 00:08:57:21
Luke Thompson – Leopard Host
We need to make a really hard decision here. We need to break away from VMware, we need to go KVM, we need to go down more of a FOSS route and what are we actually operating? Can we expand it, Can we integrate with it can be automate, what can we do? So in rebuilding all of that and going direct with the DC and all the rest of it, we’re now at a point where we’ve got so much flexibility.

00:08:58:04 – 00:09:19:02
Luke Thompson – Leopard Host
It’s sort of inherently in what we’ve built that the road just sort of keeps opening up. Yeah, so not just in terms of a what else can we start to provide, but certainly in terms of what we can scale that really easily, we can add more value here really easily. And then with reporting the bigger clients and that sort of thing, Yeah, not a quite a nice pace of growth.

00:09:19:02 – 00:09:30:09
Luke Thompson – Leopard Host
We don’t want to scream up and away at the same time. Yeah, we’re quite happy with the pace that we’re going and just picking things up nice and consistently and getting the word out there is what it’s all about.

00:09:31:03 – 00:09:40:02
James MacDonald
Getting the word out. Let’s play down that road a little bit. Newcastle like Matt Great. Hunter Yeah. How have you found during a business? You know, in this area.

00:09:40:17 – 00:10:01:14
Luke Thompson – Leopard Host
That’s a broad question. It’s been, it’s a beautiful area. So I mean having grown up, you know, down the coast a bit, but still by the water, always in love with the water. I think having family up this way as well. We’ve always been drawn up. So once we moved up, you definitely start to realise there’s a bit of a bit of resistance to getting in the door.

00:10:01:14 – 00:10:25:00
Luke Thompson – Leopard Host
There’s a bit of, you know, previous self before kind of anything starts to happen. But having been up here now for years and years, at this point, I’d say the biggest things have been now that we’re in the hosting space. We’ve definitely had more than a few stories of being a couple of providers that do like a pseudo hosting solution and might not have had all of the follow through.

00:10:25:00 – 00:10:42:15
Luke Thompson – Leopard Host
So there’s a little bit of resistance there in terms of, well, last time we trusted, we probably shouldn’t have trusted, so why should we trust in here? But at the same time, it’s it’s not all negative because once you start to get the name out there, you’ve got these relationships that like, you know, the rest is almost history.

00:10:42:15 – 00:10:44:10
Luke Thompson
Yeah, NewyTechPeople are taking off.

00:10:45:04 – 00:11:12:22
James MacDonald
I’m doing okay. Yeah. My opinion on Newcastle in particular, I think it’s definitely more relationship driven than any of the bigger markets. From a recruitment perspective, it needs a massive market, obviously significantly bigger recruitment market than Newcastle. Huge. But I feel like it’s definitely more transactional than relationship driven, whereas Newcastle said it takes it more time to earn the trust or to ingrain yourself within the community.

00:11:12:22 – 00:11:21:12
James MacDonald
But the relationships are deeper. Yeah, and I feel like, you know, once you’ve earned that trust, you’ll get opportunities and you get support of the community.

00:11:21:16 – 00:11:22:20
Luke Thompson – Leopard Host
100%.

00:11:22:20 – 00:11:28:17
James MacDonald
Have you found that from a business perspective, do you think it’s a it’s an advantage or it’s a challenge or is a bit of both?

00:11:28:20 – 00:11:53:15
Luke Thompson – Leopard Host
I’d say it’s a bit of both. I think overall, it pays off. If you look at the bigger picture, I think it’s not so much that you’re having to do more to start a relationship. I think it’s more the case that what you’ve done over with one client will inadvertently help you with another client. You’ll look after somebody as part of what you do, the same as what A.P. are always doing, and then you’ll end up running into somebody and saying, Hey, we could work together.

00:11:53:15 – 00:12:15:15
Luke Thompson – Leopard Host
I’ve or I know all about you. We don’t need to talk about that. Let’s do it. Yeah, that’s okay. Oh, I didn’t think about that. But of course, there’s already that link. So in that sense, it’s really good, but it makes the relationships more valuable, I think overall the clients that we have up here, for the most part, we can see them being clients in five years, ten years time.

00:12:15:16 – 00:12:22:03
Luke Thompson – Leopard Host
There’s no hesitation there. Yeah, Yeah. You know what I’m saying? With that, you’ve got to meet with them. It’s like you promote them already for too long.

00:12:22:08 – 00:12:44:13
James MacDonald
Yeah, well, it seems like your, I guess, value proposition. Why you operate your business. Definitely that more service Vegas where it’s building a relationship it’s on to saying what the client really needs and then you know value providing value to them. Yeah. Rather than a one off transaction or hey I can find you online, find out what your price point is and sign up online.

00:12:44:22 – 00:12:46:21
James MacDonald
It’s more of a consultative type approach.

00:12:47:10 – 00:13:09:01
Luke Thompson – Leopard Host
I’d say. Yeah, look for the average age for a managed client that we’re putting on board, pretty much they’re not that good, but they’re not just jumping on and going, Hey, I’ve got blah blah, blah, let’s get going. It’s much more, Hey, I’d love to forge a relationship. Could we have a conversation? It’s always best for us to do it with almost call the discovery when we start to map out who you are.

00:13:09:02 – 00:13:32:00
Luke Thompson
How you doing it? What challenges are, and then start to sort of step back a little bit, go Well, we know that this is what you’re after, but have you considered that maybe making a few tweaks here even over six months, 12 months, 24 months could start to help expand what you’re doing, how you doing it? And for them, profitability was start to really wrap up their operations, especially in the hosting space.

00:13:32:10 – 00:13:38:05
James MacDonald
Yeah, I think it sounds like a bit of a different approach to the hosting, especially at enterprise level. Obviously that’s about costs.

00:13:38:13 – 00:13:40:11
Luke Thompson – Leopard Host
Oh yeah.

00:13:40:11 – 00:13:49:08
James MacDonald
You know, we’ve got a lot of class go down the road because not only do obviously have the hosting but all the different, you know, products and I guess they’ve got a really strong offering these days, right?

00:13:49:11 – 00:13:51:20
Luke Thompson – Leopard Host
They show that they’re launching something every other month. Yeah.

00:13:52:09 – 00:14:04:21
James MacDonald
But yeah, that’s not for everyone, as you said. And a lot of people need maybe a handheld or as you just mentioned, that’s not only a hosting conversation, but it’s a business conversation on, you know, what services can you provide to help their profitability.

00:14:05:00 – 00:14:29:08
Luke Thompson – Leopard Host
Exactly. There’s a lot of value that we can provide that side terms of automation, in terms of productivity and just thinking outside the box, you might have done something one way for five years, ten years, right? And what we are doing a lot has changed in five years. Ten years? Yeah. Not just in terms of companies and acquisitions and their value pops evolving, you know, sort of falling into bigger umbrellas and dropping down on costs and all the rest of it.

00:14:29:22 – 00:14:55:18
Luke Thompson – Leopard Host
But I think especially when you’re looking at, you know, companies running, you know, 100, a couple of hundred different client sites, there’s more now to be said for provider. They can say, look, we can take away all the hassle of actually supporting that. If you want to keep the relationships, keep the relationships 100%. But if you just want to white label help and to have them be able to get past you while retaining them as a client, we can do that as well.

00:14:55:22 – 00:15:13:09
James MacDonald
Yeah. My hosting space has changed quite a bit over the past 5 to 10 years. Obviously with it. Yeah, the three big players right now, Microsoft and then go, have you got any opinions? Are you brave enough to make a call on what the next five years looks like in that hosting space?

00:15:13:21 – 00:15:34:14
Luke Thompson – Leopard Host
Look, with the number of acquisitions that we’re seeing now, even just in a regular hosting space like the umbrella that say, for example, Crazy remains around with new for digital is such a wide umbrella now and encompasses brands that you would still think are Australian owned brands but haven’t been for years and years and years. So I think we’re going to see more of that.

00:15:34:18 – 00:15:56:09
Luke Thompson – Leopard Host
And I think what we’re already seeing and we’ll just see more of as smaller players starting up carving out their niche, but quite quickly then saying like, I can’t do it, it’s too competitive, I can’t get enough traffic in the door, the why should I be doing this? Yeah, yeah. And then a convenient knock on the door. Would you sell out for block?

00:15:56:09 – 00:16:20:12
Luke Thompson – Leopard Host
Oh, okay. That’s my ticket. Thank you so much. Yeah, it’s I think we’re going to see more of that scaling up and transitioning and yeah with the likes of Net registry having lifted and shifted their own hosting to Amazon, they don’t even leave wanting to run the data centers, the service, the infrastructure these days. So there’s something to be said for a hosted, I want to say grassroots independent.

00:16:20:14 – 00:16:28:12
Luke Thompson – Leopard Host
Yeah and keeping it sort of true to form is what hosting is all about and what computing solutions are meant to do for businesses.

00:16:28:18 – 00:16:45:13
James MacDonald
How does that play out for the leopard Hi server five up here? Where would you like leopard hosted debate? Is that a growing acquisition or is it growing an exit for you guys? Do you have any any thoughts you like to say independent and you know to a more service orientated business.

00:16:46:02 – 00:17:15:02
Luke Thompson – Leopard Host
I this the service and the relationships honestly number one for us is relationships. Yeah I think when you forge high quality partnerships yeah you’ll be with that clients for a long while and it’s not about racing for us, but I think the stability and the strength of the growth is most important for us. So having that been running now as a power company for five and a half, six years, we’ve learned a lot, We’ve evolved a lot.

00:17:15:02 – 00:17:33:18
Luke Thompson – Leopard Host
We’ve always had the hosting operating in that time. We went down the MSPs out in the Denver out and all that sort of thing. So I think now that we are at a point where mature in terms of the systems that built out, like I said before, the reliable. Yeah, we’re loving how it works everything and talk to everything and there’s flexibility everywhere.

00:17:34:07 – 00:18:00:24
Luke Thompson
I think for us it’s a case of just keep consistently scaling up and getting the word out there and probably forging more diversity around the partnerships. So delivering more value. I think what we’re seeing now is so many businesses just give up on the traditional hosting and inverted quotations and will shift over to a flywheel too akin to a company that says we will take your problems away.

00:18:01:15 – 00:18:07:22
Luke Thompson – Leopard Host
So sort of half going down that road with the other half focusing on the relationship and a lot’s possible.

00:18:08:04 – 00:18:08:10
James MacDonald
Yeah.

00:18:08:12 – 00:18:24:14
Luke Thompson – Leopard Host
So growth really for us is no, there’s no exit plan, there’s no American superhero acquisition plan. But yeah, there’s a lot of people out there that have made promises, but we’re happy. And family owned carbon negative companies is what we’re all about.

00:18:24:14 – 00:18:28:18
James MacDonald
Talk about that carbon angle. Where did that come from?

00:18:29:18 – 00:18:37:21
Luke Thompson
That’s really important. We’ve got two young kids. I’ve got a four and a half year old. I’ve got somehow a seven month old. That feels like it was just yesterday at John Hunter.

00:18:38:01 – 00:18:38:10
James MacDonald
Yeah.

00:18:38:20 – 00:19:01:13
Luke Thompson – Leopard Host
And I think there’s not enough focus on tomorrow. So I think for us it’s about doing good today with what we do, but with the number of kilowatts that we’re always pulling, it’s important for us to make sure that we’re not just offsetting that, but we’re trying to do something in return as well. So in terms of data centre space, we like to keep it at Tier four where we can.

00:19:01:13 – 00:19:26:00
Luke Thompson – Leopard Host
So sort of best the best. And thankfully with next DC and we’re mostly in there as two done in Macquarie Park and Sydney. We’re trying to get out of Sydney, but it’s a bit tricky at the moment. Still up here I’ve built out a platform called Next Neutral, which is starting with carbon neutral and we’re able to opt in and automatically, you know, adds on every month what we need to pay to offset the tonnage that we are putting out.

00:19:26:14 – 00:19:50:07
Luke Thompson – Leopard Host
And from there on the, you know, taking it from neutral to negative, I think it’s easy to say positive and sounds like a good word, but it means the wrong thing. Yeah, So we’re taking it to a negative view. We’ve then got the set up with Start Climate. Yeah. That 2% of all of levitates card revenue gets pumped into startup climate and that goes into their carbon reduction storage plans that they’re enacting.

00:19:50:09 – 00:19:54:24
Luke Thompson – Leopard Host
Yeah, and that’s the difference for us going from neutral to negative and actually making a difference.

00:19:55:05 – 00:20:04:10
James MacDonald
That’s Yeah. And just came from, I guess from your internal hey, I’ve got a family, I’ve got kids I want to make. Yeah. I look after the environment for them.

00:20:04:19 – 00:20:15:16
Luke Thompson – Leopard Host
Yeah. We’re pulling crazy amounts of power so it’s when naturally putting out pollution. So it’s really important for us that we’re, we’re not just undoing it, but we’re trying to go further than that.

00:20:16:12 – 00:20:29:22
James MacDonald
So that’s something we actively promote out then. Yeah, it sounds like it’s definitely not a sales angle for you, but it’s actually somewhere it comes from a genuine place. But that is a nice it’s a nice angle. It’s it’s something to think about.

00:20:30:15 – 00:20:43:10
Luke Thompson – Leopard Host
I think it’s a lot of value to it. Yeah, it’s, yeah, it doesn’t seem all that significant, but I think if every host and cloud provider operating in this country just did it by default, we’d be better placed.

00:20:43:10 – 00:21:02:01
James MacDonald
Than us obviously, to get to a CTO. It sounds like it’s belonging to Satya, to CTO plus you play the relationship management part. So there’s a technical aspect and a more relationship aspect to it as well as a bad aspect as well as an operational aspect I guess, to what you do.

00:21:02:03 – 00:21:02:23
Luke Thompson – Leopard Host
Oh, it’s hands on.

00:21:03:00 – 00:21:09:03
James MacDonald
Yeah, I had your Creed drive from some Yeah. Early days into where you are at now.

00:21:09:12 – 00:21:43:17
Luke Thompson – Leopard Host
There has been so much learning. It’s, Yeah. A lot of evolution I think working with everybody from you know a sole trader on day one and trying to map things out for them to having spent time at the computer store with people walking in the door and yeah, sort of back in Macquarie Uni days and Yeah, sort of mapping out how that looks and where they could go and then getting into dev and bigger clients and different needs and 11th hour changes and yeah, managing devs, managing engineers across to the MSSP side where anything could change in a heartbeat.

00:21:44:01 – 00:22:07:17
Luke Thompson – Leopard Host
You can put all the precautions in place, but you can still have, you know, sudden chaos when somebody in the office clicks a link, punches in details, ignore the warnings and goes, I mean of course the problem. Yeah. So I think all of the different avenues that we’ve been down while focusing still on this hosting site, it’s led me to to have a really good viewpoint over not just where we are and where we’re heading.

00:22:07:17 – 00:22:16:23
Luke Thompson – Leopard Host
Instead sort of 2 to 5 year plan, but I think more so the voyage along the way. I think the context really helps. I think having all that experience really helps.

00:22:17:07 – 00:22:35:04
James MacDonald
So get around, it’s obviously CTO and CTO can be different at different companies. It’s always looked upon differently. Oh yeah, It sounds like you haven’t played as a specialist throughout by any means, but more so you’ve gone for a breadth of opportunity, a breadth of experience that’s led you to get to where you’re at now.

00:22:35:16 – 00:22:53:01
Luke Thompson – Leopard Host
I think. Tweak and refine. Yeah, lots of adjusting, lots of reviewing and not being afraid to say not sure this is the right fit for us. Yeah. In terms of the systems engineering side, there has been Linux in my blood. I think for well over ten years. Yeah, so that was always going to play a part. I have to play a part.

00:22:53:15 – 00:23:11:07
Luke Thompson – Leopard Host
I think the MSSP side was very Windows based and was a bit of a case of This is great and you know, we can do this and this can grow. But then we enjoyed this. And more importantly, am I loving this every day not getting off? Is it a case of fantastic? I can’t wait. And now where we are?

00:23:11:07 – 00:23:19:14
Luke Thompson – Leopard Host
I think it’s a real case of that is there. And that’s that’s really motivating. Keeping eyes open and keeping on growing. It has been fantastic.

00:23:19:17 – 00:23:40:15
James MacDonald
Very nice. So one of the questions we asked pretty much every episode of the New Tech People podcast is people’s thoughts on education and education, on whether that contributed to where they’re at in their career. Yeah, I noticed you started University Deferred University. So can you give us any background insights, thoughts around that?

00:23:41:09 – 00:24:11:11
Luke Thompson – Leopard Host
I think university is fantastic and a lot of different applications. It’s kind of similar to, I guess going down the out as well, but saying on the the uni train, I think it was pretty clear by about that sort of 1 to 1 and a half year mark is, you know, tying into Microsoft databases and tying into sort of business analysis at a higher level and where it was going, I was ready to get hands on as opposed to, you know, sort of sitting idle and being held back and, yeah, what am I doing here?

00:24:11:11 – 00:24:33:00
Luke Thompson – Leopard Host
Is this really going to help me? Am I really going to need this at the end of it? Yeah. But at the same time, I think there’s still a lot of merit to it. Yeah. And I also think that was back 2013, 14 era sort of in that weird transitional phase variety degree is where I think the content was five issue years before a lot was starting to happen.

00:24:33:00 – 00:24:58:06
Luke Thompson – Leopard Host
And we’re sitting here now in 2022 and it’s a real case of so much is evolving every month. Something is rapidly unfolding in front of us. So I think I’ve got no regrets in deferring. I’d look at going back at some point in the future in more of a leisure, almost capacity to kind of say, I’ve ticked that box off, but at the same time I don’t I don’t think it was something I’m pretty happy about.

00:24:58:06 – 00:25:19:05
James MacDonald
The deferral that there are. As you said, things change so quickly now. Education is one of those things. Yeah, there’s so much free content available online, There’s so many short courses. A lot of the big industry players have their own certifications. Is there any any other parts of education that you’ve undertaken yourself that you think are that super valuable?

00:25:20:08 – 00:25:44:10
Luke Thompson – Leopard Host
Like you say, there’s so much online. I think you could almost argue that there’s too much online, you know, sort of finding what you need to find can be like finding a needle in a haystack. But it’s an industry with so many prongs coming out from. It really depends what your getting into. But then you’ve got the other side where you’ve got if you’re going in for a role, that company might say, well, if you don’t have anything tertiary, we really want to have a conversation with you.

00:25:44:16 – 00:26:16:10
James MacDonald
I think that’s happening less frequently now, thank goodness. Yeah, I feel like that the job advertisements are the role description. Say is degrees necessary? Is it changing, changing based especially on talent show market like we now desirable? Yeah, it’s desirable. And I guess the boss if you had to make a generalization around thoughts are you university? I think a generalization is university, especially in technology university teachers you really good theoretical base of which you can build upon.

00:26:16:18 – 00:26:17:01
Luke Thompson – Leopard Host
Absolutely.

00:26:17:04 – 00:26:34:10
James MacDonald
And there are a lot of managers out there have done a degree in thought and their experience was taught a really good fundamental base of which to build upon. And that is still valuable. Yes. And then you’ve got to stay relevant with, you know, you show courses or just learning new skills consistently. That degree doesn’t, you know, stay relevant.

00:26:34:14 – 00:27:11:04
James MacDonald
And I feel like that’s I do have a mass generalization that is the general thought yeah it’s not everyone so but that is I guess a general generalization and I agree my university degree I thought is solid theoretical knowledge. I probably more my first three months at university. I didn’t three years in university. Yeah but yeah definitely in the technology space there’s so many niche subjects and and skills to be learned that you can learn audience of free online offer some pretty cheap you know pretty cheap online short courses from some of the best people not some.

00:27:11:04 – 00:27:32:10
Luke Thompson – Leopard Host
Of them are absolutely fantastic. Yeah I think as well if you have a yes so for example going down a networking route, whether it’s engineering or security or anything else, I think not only have you got options, they’re like types that are networking in general, but I think specifically what people want these days is a mixture of hands on experience.

00:27:32:10 – 00:27:42:15
Luke Thompson – Leopard Host
Yeah, which doesn’t always have to actually be in a corporate or enterprise world. It can just be, Have you built a kickass home lab? What can it do? How have you done it? Why did you do it that way.

00:27:42:18 – 00:27:43:11
James MacDonald
In your space?

00:27:43:22 – 00:28:02:21
Luke Thompson – Leopard Host
100% as well as on the other side if you’re going into a company. Yeah. Again, in that networking realm, it’s a case of, Well, I’ve always worked on Cisco. Kit, have you ever touched Juniper? Do you have certificates and juniper? And then it’s a case of, okay, well, because you did a lot there, you get the fundamentals. So we’re happy with that.

00:28:02:21 – 00:28:24:20
Luke Thompson
Yeah, but we’re probably going to say we really like you. I like your approach. How can you handle yourself in a crisis? You know, how would you tackle ap1 occurring right in front of you and you’re assigned to manage the team that’s responsible for that at the minute. I guess the hands on side and the management side has more value arguably than all that.

00:28:25:08 – 00:28:31:08
Luke Thompson – Leopard Host
You don’t have the type of certificate, you don’t have the brand certifications type of thing. Yeah.

00:28:31:08 – 00:28:52:18
James MacDonald
I think the other parts of your company, in particular being a service based business and not just a product based business, the technical skills is probably half the battle now that liaising with clients, working with customers, it’s not exactly sales, it’s just customer service, really ability to have communication, the ability to sort of liaise, understand what people’s problems are.

00:28:52:23 – 00:28:54:05
Luke Thompson – Leopard Host
Expectation management.

00:28:54:13 – 00:28:59:03
James MacDonald
Yeah, all as big as the actual technical skills in fixing a problem, right?

00:28:59:09 – 00:29:12:00
Luke Thompson – Leopard Host
Absolutely. Especially when it’s also reliable. I think the technical side doesn’t dwindle away, but I think it’s when it’s so rock solid, you need to be focusing on what you’re delivering and how you’re delivering it.

00:29:12:01 – 00:29:26:02
James MacDonald
Yeah, from an education pot, obviously it is less formal education comes ratings, books, podcasts, anything like that. Is there any blogs, Is there any go to spaces for you in, you know, you staying abreast of what’s happening in the industry?

00:29:26:19 – 00:29:39:18
Luke Thompson – Leopard Host
That’s a real mess I think at this point now depend on what it is. You know, if it’s people on LinkedIn, there’s probably a handful of people putting out relevant, really interesting content has been really good for us.

00:29:39:18 – 00:29:42:09
James MacDonald
Hey, people in particular you’d like to shout out.

00:29:42:21 – 00:30:01:23
Luke Thompson – Leopard Host
In terms of the shout outs? I think it’s sort of back to the industry of many industries, you know, now sort of mini industry. You’ve got people like Pavel at Fastnet Modern sort of did us detection and disruption sort of package, which ties into a lot of almost pseudo network engineering sort of works. That’s always fascinating tools, this cheat sheet.

00:30:01:23 – 00:30:25:09
Luke Thompson – Leopard Host
So there’s explanations that you might not have been thinking about. You’ve then got people like Bevan Slattery who sit up next day say, who set up Superloop or Cloud St, and he’s now doing the NBN competitive hyper one, random content, all sorts of bits and pieces, but things that you just wouldn’t otherwise stumble upon. Yeah, and I’m struggling to think of his name, but there’s a guy called Louie that’s now a technical editor at GitHub.

00:30:25:13 – 00:30:47:00
Luke Thompson – Leopard Host
Yeah. And since he’s jumped in there and he’s sort of getting his hands dirty with this and over here and in Python that all the rest of it, the content that he puts out by coincidence is really fascinating to keep an eye on. But I think part of it for us, a lot of it is depending on what we’re operating like, the vendors, the patches, you know, CV and that sort of thing.

00:30:47:13 – 00:31:15:01
Luke Thompson – Leopard Host
A lot of it is RSS monitoring, if that’s 2022, Yeah, it’s still pretty current for us. So keeping abreast of what’s happening and it sounds so simple, you know, in the cyber space, but keeping everything up to date has a lot of value. Yeah, a lot of those basic things. But other than that, I’d sort of say I’ve got some long term loves, if you will, in that world, which would be a mix of Ars Technica, Slashdot and places like Hacker News.

00:31:15:03 – 00:31:27:15
Luke Thompson – Leopard Host
Yeah, all good places generally for mission, but you can deep dive enough and then if you’re really feeling a bit keen, if you delve into the comments section, that’s where the real dialog happens. Yeah.

00:31:27:23 – 00:31:45:24
James MacDonald
I think a bigger publishing place that obviously has, if you got you go there and use that to stay abreast at a high level and then you find something of interest, then you can deep dive offsite with one of those subjects are in the comments, but I feel like they’re good to stay abreast. Right.

00:31:46:08 – 00:31:52:16
Luke Thompson
And you start to pick out who’s writing what and you almost have to follow people by the articles that they’re pushing out. Nice.

00:31:52:23 – 00:32:11:04
James MacDonald
Obviously your overall CTO plus plus, plus, plus, it sounds like a pretty big role. One of the other questions you like to ask quite frequently here is just how do you manage your day? Is there any productivity solutions you use, any tools, any frameworks that you use to set out your day or your week?

00:32:11:04 – 00:32:20:07
Luke Thompson – Leopard Host
We have been all over the world in terms of productivity. It’s at number one for us and almost feels like the glue in the company is of course Slack.

00:32:20:14 – 00:32:20:22
James MacDonald
Yeah.

00:32:21:16 – 00:32:28:18
Luke Thompson – Leopard Host
Everybody runs Slack, so it’s not going to be a massive well, but one thing that we’ve been trying to do is reduce our dependance on JIRA.

00:32:29:00 – 00:32:29:08
James MacDonald
Yeah.

00:32:29:12 – 00:33:00:20
Luke Thompson – Leopard Host
And so it’s part of that. It’s not quite the same solution. But what we’ve found is trying to find a mix of calendaring dollarization against task, list against notes with sort of a color based mapping system. We’ve landed on one called Tick Tick. That’s been quite good for us. So in terms of the productivity side, but I’d say then at that point you’re tying into the other side of that has been things like GitHub issues has been good for us and moving from keeping it project based in JIRA to keeping it repository based in GitHub has been fantastic.

00:33:01:13 – 00:33:29:06
Luke Thompson – Leopard Host
But overall pseudo productivity, I think one password for us is phenomenal in terms of being able to share fine grained levels of access. The audit logging abilities and keeping all of that safe. You know, we’ve got to find a lot of the stuff, of course, but to draw it back, if you’re doing a comparison of something like LastPass against one password, I’m quite happy and confident over here, whereas wouldn’t be quite as much over there.

00:33:29:19 – 00:33:34:22
Luke Thompson
And it’s less friction. It’s it lets us know that it’s it’s got our back.

00:33:34:22 – 00:33:41:01
James MacDonald
Excuse my ignorance, but the difference between those two and you mentioned.

00:33:41:21 – 00:34:05:10
Luke Thompson – Leopard Host
Last place on password without getting to two anti LastPass anti lock me and I think wait for a password manager that’s not getting compromised all the time. That’s certainly number one one password is just built really smoothly. If you jump into LastPass it looks like it looks, you know, five, ten years ago, it’s easy. They stay on piece of software.

00:34:06:03 – 00:34:32:19
Luke Thompson – Leopard Host
And I think they’re going down the road now of trying to remove password and go passwordless, which is a great push overall with biometrics and all the rest of it. But I’m not sure it’s the company to be doing it. Whereas when one password comes to the point of saying, Hey, you’ve got this additional option, whether you want to add a yubikey or something physical, you want to go another way, which is trust almost by default, that they’ve got it right the first time, which is really, I think, a fantastic way to try and approach business.

00:34:32:19 – 00:34:35:19
Luke Thompson – Leopard Host
There’s no friction there. Clean, quick, reliable.

00:34:35:20 – 00:34:43:14
James MacDonald
Yeah, frictionless is the way I was always going. Right. And if you can remove friction for people or your customers, you a long way to.

00:34:43:15 – 00:34:44:21
Luke Thompson – Leopard Host
Say happy days.

00:34:45:03 – 00:35:03:17
James MacDonald
Yeah. How about is there any other pieces of advice? Well, that’s get piece of advice for, I guess, a younger version of yourself. So back to, you know, a younger look starting out to where you are now. Is there any one key piece of advice you think that’s how you get to from where you was, where you are now?

00:35:03:17 – 00:35:26:13
Luke Thompson – Leopard Host
I’d say, well, it’s a good question. I think I think the key thing would probably be to understand really early on that one of the most significant fundamentals of business is that you’re never really there. It’s all about the voyage. Every week, every month, every year. You know, things are always changing. Things are always growing and not being afraid to go.

00:35:27:03 – 00:35:45:13
Luke Thompson – Leopard Host
This isn’t quite right. And we need to that’s about to cut our losses as much as it’s okay for us to pull back from that shift over here. Perfect. Yeah, that’s more the dream run type of thing. So I’d say that’s that’s probably key in terms of anything else about it being a pretty good question right now.

00:35:45:13 – 00:36:07:18
James MacDonald
I really like I think I’m paying I agree. I feel like there is some one only way of doing things towards varied paths and sometimes what might look like the best path when you’re looking at an I might not be the best path in reality. And even if you do, it’s it’s not the best path isn’t always manageable.

00:36:07:18 – 00:36:17:18
James MacDonald
Sometimes, you know, you can’t get the best way. Sometimes you’ve got to go a detour and sometimes that detail leaves you in a better place. Now, I think it’s good advice because it’s something you just learn over time, right?

00:36:18:03 – 00:36:42:22
Luke Thompson – Leopard Host
Absolutely. I think as well the amount of time that we invest now compared to when we started in I mean, it’s the classic adage of measure twice and cut once. Most of our major projects, systems networking projects, 80, 90% of the time is spent in the planning phase. And that means for us, the implementation phase is on average incredibly successful and again about the frictionless.

00:36:43:15 – 00:37:07:23
Luke Thompson
So documentation and planning is brilliant. And over the years that’s happened is we’ve spent more time and energy on that side and reaping the rewards of spending all that time mapping it out. And like you saying, not just always going, that’s what we need, that’s stepping back and going fairly. So that’s what we need. But let’s question that thought process and strip it back and make sure we get there again.

00:37:08:10 – 00:37:25:08
James MacDonald
Yeah, probably ties into you mentioned earlier today around those discovery meetings with your clients as well on how you approach it sounds like the way you approach your individual projects and how you approach life really ties in really closely with how you approach working with your clients with big discovery planning face upfront. Understand your problem.

00:37:25:18 – 00:37:26:12
Luke Thompson – Leopard Host
Absolutely.

00:37:26:22 – 00:37:28:23
James MacDonald
I like that. I think that’s a really nice way to finish.

00:37:28:23 – 00:37:30:18
Luke Thompson – Leopard Host
Actually pays off every time I.

00:37:30:18 – 00:37:39:08
James MacDonald
Though are might not know who you are or might have some questions on anything that you’ve got. You’ve mentioned that was the easiest best way for people to get in contact with you.

00:37:39:20 – 00:37:47:20
Luke Thompson – Leopard Host
I think number one is always LinkedIn. Yeah. For me, I’m a big fan of a traditional phone call and something to be said about voice to voice type of thing, person to person, your.

00:37:47:20 – 00:37:49:22
James MacDonald
Phone details on your LinkedIn page.

00:37:50:03 – 00:37:53:01
Luke Thompson
Absolutely. Everything’s on their nearest slack as well.

00:37:53:10 – 00:37:55:07
James MacDonald
Like Tom. So it’s a little purple background.

00:37:55:20 – 00:38:04:08
Luke Thompson – Leopard Host
But purple and orange background, you can’t miss it in the news. Slack as well. But yeah, phone call, LinkedIn, Slack, it all works.

00:38:04:12 – 00:38:06:01
James MacDonald
Yeah. I appreciate your time.

00:38:06:06 – 00:38:10:01
Luke Thompson – Leopard Host
No, thank you. Likewise. Great to be here. Just.